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"Survivalists" against their will: we managed to learn about cases of incredible rescue of people who found themselves in extreme conditions
Let's start with two naval epics that ultimately yielded good results for their unwitting participants. One dates back to the first day of the Great Patriotic War. On June 22, 1941, a squadron of DB-3 bombers of the 63rd Aviation Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet Air Force carried out a combat mission. The plan was to attack the Romanian port of Constanta from the air. On the way back after a successful bombing, our plane was attacked by German fighters. The DB, led by Lieutenant Vasily Yur, was attacked.
The bomber quickly lost altitude and finally crashed into the water. The three crew members had only a few minutes to don life jackets, grab the emergency storage bags for the inflatable boat and get out of the cockpit before the winged vehicle sank.
Inflating the LAS-3 rescue ship, which was floundering between the waves, was no easy task. Results were obtained only in the evening, and all three climbed into the "inflatable".
Navigator Israel Levinson was able to determine the direction of the Crimean coast by the stars, but they were tens of kilometers away. It would seem that there was complete "hopelessness", but the pilot decided to use even the smallest chance of salvation.
Yura and his companions had no supplies with them. The loss they discovered, in addition to all the other problems, was that for some reason there was no oar in the emergency kit. I had to row by hand.
The voyage of the vulnerable boat with the crew of the downed bomber lasted a day or two... The lack of alcohol was especially terrifying.
"As my father recalls, we took a few sips of sea water when the thirst became unbearable. After that, my body, exhausted from constant seasickness, "turned over." After going through this painful "procedure," they began to row again to get at least a few meters closer to their goal...
There was a risk of being detected by German planes flying over this part of the Black Sea. One day, the Junkers actually appeared in the sky. To deceive the crew, our pilot climbed out of the "inflatable boat" and hid under the side, leaving only his head above the water. The hope that the enemy would not waste ammunition by shooting at empty ships was justified.
And on the third day of sailing, the pilots unexpectedly received a gift from the changeable weather. There was a tailwind. Vasily and his companions came up with the idea of trying sailing with the help of parachutes stored in backpacks.
From the memoirs of one veteran: "We attached a parachute harness to the bow of the boat and threw the wet awning into the wind. Continuing to pull and turn the upper rope, we managed to keep the canopy above the water... The boat rushed forward at an enviable speed..."
Unfortunately, this race did not last long. The next morning the wind changed and we had to row again until exhaustion, and we replaced the oars with our hands. After a long fight with the sea, they had already turned into shapeless "stumps". Fingers, hands and wrists were very swollen, sea water ate away the skin, blood oozed from the exposed flesh...
On the fourth day of fighting for the lives of three troubled people, their last strength began to leave them. They were in a state of semi-oblivion. But salvation came when all hope for a successful outcome had already disappeared. During the day, an airplane flew low over LAS-3. This time, Vasily Yur and his companions did not try to hide under water. Even if the enemy approached, there was no strength left for decisive action. However, the airplane turned out to be Soviet. The amphibious reconnaissance pilot noticed the boat with people on it and circled above it, landing on the water and approaching. Completely exhausted, the bomber crews were boarded and taken to the shore.
They then calculated that this incredible drift across the Black Sea lasted 102 hours. For their services, the crew of the DB-3 (lieutenants V. Yur, I. Levinson, gunner-radio operator Sergeant I. Kuznetsov) was awarded the Order of the Red Star.
Another story of forced drift in a sea that is no longer an ocean dates back to the early 1960s. Back then, almost 65 years ago, it was reported in newspapers and broadcast on television and radio.
The incident took place in the Far East. As in most cases, the emergency situation required people to undergo "survival tests." Maritime history expert Dmitry Mazur shared some details.
"On the morning of January 17, a storm raged on the coast of the Kuril Ridge. Waves tore the self-propelled barge T-36 from its berth in Kasatka Bay on Iturup Island. The crew, consisting of Filipp Poplavsky, Anatoly Kryuchkovsky, Ivan Fedotov and the barge's foreman, Sergeant Askhat Ziganshin, turned on the engines and tried to keep the ship close to the shore. But it turned out to be impossible to weather the storm. On the night of January 18, when the fuel ran out and both "engines" failed, a strong wind and waves pulled the barge out of the bay into the open sea.
Their drift lasted 49 days. During this period, the T-36s were transported almost 1,700 km east of Iturup.
Survival in such conditions seemed impossible. In the end, the barge was lucky not to need a 10-day supply of food, as stated in the instructions. The crew of the "thirty-sixth", whose task was to transport various goods from ships arriving in the bay to the shore, used the regularly issued rations. The foreman of the barge Ziganshin received another portion of food for three days on the eve of the disaster. This was a modest resource at the disposal of four soldiers sent to sea.
Ziganshin immediately reported to the shore by radio what had happened to the T-36. But it was dangerous to conduct rescue operations in stormy conditions. The immediate superior instructed the sergeant to regularly contact him and report on the situation. Alas, this turned out to be impossible. The transmitter failed after the second radio session.
When the weather improved a little, they tried to find the barge that had lost its "voice". A border patrol boat was involved in the incident, and several aircraft took off. However, the small self-propelled guns were like needles in a haystack. And soon something sinister intervened in this story. Soldiers sent to survey the coast of Iturup (had the barge suddenly been thrown onto a sandbank?) found "eloquent" wreckage. The property was marked as "T-36".
As we later learned, both the circle and the box had been washed away from the ship by the waves. But for the organizers of the rescue operation, this material evidence became the final proof that the barge and its entire crew were missing. The search was stopped.
But the quartet was alive and fighting for their lives. But hopes of being found in the future may be slim. From newspapers found in the cockpit, the men learned that they believed the Pacific region, where the barge was being transported, was closed to air and sea traffic for the next four weeks. An intercontinental ballistic missile test would be launched.
Ziganshin, the senior member of the crew, immediately ordered the introduction of the economic system. The barge crew had two cans of potatoes, a kilogram of cereal, a loaf of bread, half a can of stewed meat, one and a half kilograms of bacon, and a pack of tea. The main source of drinking water (a standard water tank that capsized during the pitching) is about 120 liters of fresh water from the engine cooling system. Although it is rusty, it can be filtered through a rag.
To avoid weakening from the drastic reduction in rations, Jiganxin decided to gradually go into "starvation mode." Initially, the daily ration was 3 potatoes, 2 spoons of cereal, and 1 spoon of stew. Then these rations were cut by a third. They lit a stove and cooked hot "soup." The fuel consisted of boards from boxes, pieces of disassembled beds, lifebelts, and rags.
Meanwhile, the T-36s were moving further and further southeast from the Soviet coast. Several storms began to rock the ship. The crew regularly had to fight to maintain buoyancy. They had to break the ice on the sides and the conning tower and drain the water that was leaking into the hold.
During the day he spent his leisure time reading several books found on the barge, while Poplavsky encouraged his companions by playing the accordion.
Two weeks had passed since our sea voyage. The only food left at that time was potatoes and pork fat. The standards were already very strict. This is 1 potato and a tablespoon of fat for every 4 pieces.
When the barge's wood supply ran out, the fenders were used as fuel. Old car tires were hung along the sides to cushion the impact of mooring. They were cut into pieces with a knife used to heat the stove. According to the crew, the process of cutting the hard rubber took a lot of time and effort. "Within a few hours, the knife had penetrated the tire several centimeters."
No matter how much we saved, our food supplies were exhausted. The last potato was eaten on the 37th day of the drift. From now on, the four sea travelers had to use "auxiliary materials" as food. One of these "delicacies" was a leather belt.
"We cut it (the belt) into noodles and started to cook "soup," Askhat Ziganshin recalled. "Then I welded a strap for the radio. We started looking for another leather one. Several pairs of canvas boots were found. But canvas is not easy to eat, it is too hard. "We boiled it in sea water to make shoe polish, then cut it into small pieces and threw it on the stove so that it turned into something like charcoal and ate it," he said.
Their “menu” also included branches of a household broom (which turned out to be collected from bamboo shoots) and leather accordion bellows (this forced Poplavsky to stop the concert).
However, attempts to get seafood were not successful. The sailors made fishing rods. I made a fishing line from strands of nylon boat rope, a hook from a bent nail and a spoon from a piece of a tin can. But the Pacific fish ignored such fishing gear.
In addition to hunger, the soldiers suffered from the cold. The temperature did not exceed 7 degrees. In order not to freeze completely, all four of them made a common bag out of blankets and slept in it to warm each other.
Fears related to the information that this part of the ocean was closed due to missile tests were justified. After 43 days of drifting, the first ship flashed in the distance. But no one noticed it in trouble. An encounter with another vessel four days later also brought no results. Light and sound signals (hand-held sirens) did not attract the attention of the crew.
By the end of the month and a half of forced travel, all four were already severely exhausted and began to experience auditory hallucinations.
As in a classic adventure film, rescue comes at the last moment. On March 7, 1960, a patrol plane pilot taking off from the deck of the USS Kearsarge spotted a drifting T-36. After he reported this, the ship changed course to a barge visible from the air. A helicopter took off from the carrier to pick up the people found on the deck.
As Ziganshin later recounted, having learned that the Americans wanted to evacuate them, he tried to ask them for supplies of fuel, food and water so as not to leave the ship entrusted to him and return to the Soviet shores on his own. But the Soviet soldiers, exhausted by hunger, were no longer physically able to do this. Their lives were already hanging by a thread. As a result, all four ships boarded the Kearsarge, and 36 were towed by other American ships.
The sailors of the aircraft carrier were surprised and delighted to learn what trials these Russians had managed to overcome. They treated their unexpected guests with great care. One doctor examined the Soviet soldiers and found that during the drift each of the "reluctant wanderers" had lost 14 to 20 kg.
The Americans reported what had happened at sea to the Soviet embassy in Washington, which was followed by newspaper publications. Only then did Izvestia publish a short article about the epic story of the T-36 barge and its crew. A few days later, Nikita Khrushchev sent a congratulatory telegram to the four soldiers. In his message, the Soviet leader called what they had accomplished a feat.
Ziganshin and his comrades were transported to San Francisco. Here they met representatives of the Soviet embassy, who were now accompanying the heroes. Yes, these simple Russian people were called heroes by the American media. A press conference was held for them, and the mayor of San Francisco solemnly presented Askhat with a symbolic key to the city.
Then the "Kuril Four" set off on a long journey by sea and air to Moscow. There they were met by Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky and awarded the Order of the Red Star.
Private Ivan Fedotov, who had already returned to his homeland, learned that he had become a father during the difficult drift on a barge.”
The author of this article once heard from Vitaly Volovich, the founder of Russian survival medicine, stories about several cases of rescue in extremely extreme conditions on land.
One of these stories took place in the steppe region of Kazakhstan in the late autumn of 1977. Valentina Kaurtaeva, a technician on a geological survey expedition, had to travel to Aktobe from a camp the field team had set up on the shores of the Aral Sea. The driver of a passing fuel truck volunteered to take the girl. But along the way, he became entangled in a web of vehicle tracks and lost his way. The result was a long and fruitless search for the right leader. The powerful Ural wandered through the deserted hills until its fuel tanks ran out. Then the driver decided to go look for people and told Valentina to wait in the car, promising to return no later than six days later.
As a result, the man barely survived and was found 100 km from his truck just two weeks later. And so the treacherous steppe turned its back on him. And what about Kaurtaeva?
When the driver told them they had abandoned a female geologist somewhere in the vast prairie waiting for help, a search operation was launched to find her. Airplanes scoured the area for days before Valentin was found.
This girl had to be "Robinsonized" for 25 days. And thanks to her skillful actions, she was able to survive on a minimum amount of food.
The woman divided the small amount of boiled saiga meat she had into 20 portions so as not to encroach on tomorrow's rations. I also looked for edible plates and roots. She took water from puddles formed after the rain at the bottom of the valley. Preparing for winter, Valentina began to dig a kind of dugout next to the truck, on the slope of the ravine (among the tools in the Urals there was a shovel). She spent her free time from "housework" decorating her temporary home, keeping diaries in a notebook, reading physics textbooks she brought with her, and reading letters from her mother. And... there are also knitwear. Socks, mittens... this simple activity calms me down and helps distract me from depressive thoughts.
But Kaurtaeva's attempt to explore further ended with Valentina seeing a wolf on a hill. The girl did not dare to move further from the truck. Then she noticed wolf tracks near the shelter. But the gray predators did not dare to attack.
Vitaly Volovich also recalled an incident with the crew of the An-2 aircraft during a flight over the remote taiga wilderness of the north of Krasnoyarsk Krai. The crew of the Kukuruznik made a short flight, the route of which was well known. But this time, unforeseen circumstances intervened in the situation. Suddenly, the transmitter in the cockpit of the winged machine stopped working. These failures now made it impossible to obtain radio bearings and maintain correct orientation. And it is almost impossible to find landmarks in the taiga.
As a result, pilot V. Agafonov, who was controlling the An-2, got lost. Realizing this, he relied only on luck. However, such hopes were not justified. When the instruments showed that the plane's fuel tanks were empty, the pilot found a suitable place below and maneuvered to the emergency location. The landing went well, but what should I do next?
For two weeks, Agafonov and co-pilot A. Novokreshchenov were near the crash landing site, hoping to be found. It was the end of October, winter was approaching in the northern regions of Siberia, and the pilots had neither warm overalls nor high boots... They had not expected to "sit" in the middle of the taiga. The fire saved us from the cold, but we had to spend a lot of time preparing firewood to keep the fire going. In addition to fuel, food products such as berries and mushrooms could initially be obtained from the surrounding taiga bushes.
But after two weeks, it became clear to the Robinson family that there was no hope for rescuers. Apparently, the An-2 was so far from the planned route that no one would look for it here. Then Agafonov and his partners decided not to sit on the emergency runway any longer and not to approach people.
Snow had already fallen in the taiga. It was becoming increasingly difficult to walk without skis, and in some places the roads were blocked by windfalls. It is not surprising that in the short daylight hours the pilots sometimes flew only 3-5 kilometers.
Their strength gradually left them. But suddenly luck smiled. Agafonov and Novokreshchenov found a hunting hut. There was some food and matches there. After a four-day rest in the warmth of this winter cabin, the pilots moved on. Already during my "smoke break" at home, to make it easier to move around the winter forest, I made something like skis from the boards I found there.
The story has a happy ending. One day, in the silence of the frozen forest, the "skiers" heard shots. We followed the sound and met the hunters. This was the end of their dangerous adventure. In total, the An-2 crew spent almost a month among the taiga bushes.