The 20-year-old Silesian pastor’s son, Ulrich Rudel began his pilot training for the German Luftwaffe in 1936. Rudel volunteered for the new dive-bombing Stuka formations but started off as only an average pilot. His clean living, exercise and tea-toddling, further ostracized him from the hard-partying pilot culture. No one at the time, could have imagined the extraordinary combat career that lay ahead of the odd-ball Rudel.
With Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941, Rudel was finally given a chance to show his mettle. By this time, Rudel’s flying skills and gunnery had improved greatly. Rudel was in the air from 3 am to as late as 10 pm, supporting the advance of Army Group Center into Belorussia.
In September 1941, Rudel’s Stukageschwader 2, the “Immelmann” Wing, joined Army Group North’s siege of Leningrad. It was here that Rudel would leave his first mark in military history. The Stukas’ targets included the Soviet battleships, cruisers and destroyers, which laid down devastating support fire for the defenders of the city. The fleet was based out of the island of Kronstadt, 12.5 miles from the harbor of Leningrad in the Gulf of Finland.
When on the 16th September reconnaissance spotted the battleship Marat in open water, the whole Stuka wing, some thirty aircraft, were ordered to attack in the foulest weather. With anti-aircraft fire bursting “like the clap of doomsday,”¹ the Marat appeared through a gap in the clouds. Rudel followed Hauptman Ernst Steen into the attack. Steen’s bomb was a near miss; Rudel’s was dead on. His thousand pound bomb hit the deck which erupted in flames. AA fire followed Rudel’s Stuka back into the clouds. Later it is confirmed that the Marat survived, lying in repair in heavily defended Kronstadt harbor. Rudel saw red.
Braving a gauntlet of enemy fighters and ultra heavy AA, Rudel followed Steen into the another attack on September 23rd. This time Rudel dove to within 900 feet. Rudel was so absorbed with hitting his target that he forgot that the new 2000 pound bomb he released had a fragmentation effect of 3000 feet!
“The ship is centered plumb in the middle of my sights. My Ju 87 keeps perfectly steady as I dive; she does not serve an inch. I have a feeling that to miss is now impossible. Then I see the Marat large as life in front of me. Sailors are running across the deck, carrying ammunition. Now I press the bomb release switch on my stick and pull with all my strength.”
Rudel momentarily blacked out, tugging at his stick. He regained consciousness at the sound of his rear-gunner Scharnovski’s voice, “she is blowing up, sir.” As Rudel’s Stuka skimmed ten feet above the water, he thought of the “thousands of grateful infantrymen.”
Marat was sunk at her moorings on 23 September 1941 by two near-simultaneous hits by 1,000-kilogram (2,200 lb) bombs near the forward superstructure. They caused the explosion of the forward magazine which heaved the turret up, blew the superstructure and forward funnel over to starboard and demolished the forward part of the hull from frames 20 to 57. 326 men were killed and the ship gradually settled to the bottom in 11 meters (36 ft) of water. Her sinking is commonly credited to the Stuka pilot Oberleutnant Rudel of III./StG 2, but Rudel dropped only one of the two bombs. The rear part of the ship was later refloated and she was used as a floating battery although all of her 120 mm guns were removed. Initially only the two rearmost turrets were operable, but the second turret was repaired by the autumn of 1942. She fired a total of 1,971 twelve-inch shells during the siege of Leningrad. In December 1941 granite slabs 40–60 millimeters (1.6–2.4 in) thick from the nearby harbor walls were laid on her decks to reinforce her deck protection. Another transverse bulkhead was built behind frame 57 and the space between them was filled with concrete to prevent her sinking if the original bulkhead was ruptured.
Hans-Ulrich Rudel continued his sorties over the Gulf of Finland, adding a cruiser to a prior destroyer and the battleship Marat. He nearly added a second battleship but his 2000 pounder failed to explode on target. Rudel’s sinking of the Marat was only one of his many exploits that would make him a legend in military history. During his 2530 combat missions, unmatched by any pilot, Rudel destroyed 547 tanks and 2,000 ground targets. Field Marshall Schörner did not exaggerate much when he praised Rudel as being “worth an entire division.”
Hans-Ulrich Rudel (2 July 1916 – 18 December 1982) was a German ground-attack pilot during World War II and a post-war neo-Nazi activist. The most decorated German pilot of the war and the only recipient of the Goldenem Eichenlaub zum Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes, Rudel was credited with the destruction of 519 tanks, one battleship, one cruiser, 70 landing craft and 150 artillery emplacements. He claimed nine aerial victories and the destruction of more than 800 vehicles. He flew 2,530 ground-attack missions exclusively on the Eastern Front, usually flying the Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bomber. It was Rudel who delivered the striking blow to Marat on the 23d of September 1941. His gunner reported back to Rudel seconds after he released the bomb that the "ship is blowing up, you got her". The 1000kg bomb fell down the "steam tower" and exploded inside the ship. Rudel thus also destroyed a battleship in addition to the hundreds of tanks he hit in the war. Marat sank in shallow water but three out of her four main gun turrets were operational and she was used as an artillery battery.
Marat was the third of the four Gangut-class dreadnoughts built before World War I for the Imperial Russian Navy, the first Russian class of dreadnoughts. Her first name was Petropavlovsk, named after the Russian victory in the siege of Petropavlovsk during the Crimean War. The ship was completed during the winter of 1914–1915, but was not ready for combat until mid-1915. Her role was to defend the mouth of the Gulf of Finland against the Germans, who never tried to enter, so she spent her time training and providing cover for minelaying operations. Her crew joined the general mutiny of the Baltic Fleet after the February Revolution of 1917 and she was the only dreadnought available to the Bolsheviks for several years after the October Revolution of 1917. She bombarded the mutinous garrison of Fort Krasnaya Gorka and supported Bolshevik light forces operating against British ships supporting the White Russians in the Gulf of Finland in 1918–1919. Later, her crew joined the Kronstadt Rebellion of 1921 and she was renamed Marat after the rebellion was crushed. Marat was reconstructed from 1928 to 1931 and represented the Soviet Union at the Coronation Naval Review at Spithead in 1937. Two years later, she bombarded a Finnish coastal artillery position during the Winter War once before the Gulf of Finland iced up. Shortly afterwards, her anti-aircraft armament was upgraded. When the Germans invaded on 22 June 1941 she was in Kronstadt and provided gunfire support to Soviet troops in September as the Germans approached Leningrad. Later that month she had her bow blown off and sank in shallow water after two hits by 1,000-kilogram (2,200 lb) bombs (dropped by two Ju 87 Stukas, one of which was piloted by Hans Ulrich Rudel) that detonated her forward magazine. The remaining rear section was refloated several months later and became a stationary artillery battery, providing gunfire support during the siege of Leningrad. Marat resumed her original name in 1943 and plans were made to reconstruct her after the war, using the bow of her sister Frunze, but they were not accepted and were formally cancelled in 1948. Petropavlovsk was renamed Volkhov in 1950, after the nearby Volkhov River, and served as a stationary training ship until stricken in 1953 and broken up afterwards.
Sinking of the Soviet Battleship Marat, 23 September 1941. Painting.
Stuka hits the Soviet battleship Marat in the Kronstadt naval port on 23 September 1941. The picture was taken by Karl Bayer.
Stuka hits the Soviet battleship Marat in the Kronstadt naval port on 23 September 1941. The picture was taken by Karl Bayer.
Source :
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek photo archive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mybH4W6siBc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_battleship_Petropavlovsk_(1911)
https://kronnews.ru/history/23-sentyabrya-1941-goda-podvig-marata/
https://pastvu.com/p/118270
https://www.picture-alliance.com/webseries/28673-WWII%201939%20-%201945/271318-WWII%20-%20Siege%20of%20Leningrad-detail(popup:webseries/image/67665155)#list-item-67665155
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattlePaintings/comments/vittd6/sinking_of_the_soviet_battleship_marat_23/
https://tacticmedia.ru/news/chernyy-den-kronshtadta-gibel-marata/
https://uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/5626.html
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/the-day-that-stuka-pilot-hans-ulrich-rudel-sank-the-soviet-battleship-mara.html
https://warspot.ru/11694-samaya-krupnaya-zhertva-lyuftvaffe-na-vostoke
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