Admiral V. F. Tributs The islands of the Moonsund archipelago, Sarema, Khiuma, Vormsi and others, located to the northwest of the Gulf of Riga, were important for the defense of the western, maritime borders of our country: they covered the distant approaches to Riga, Tallinn, Leningrad. The fire of powerful guns installed on them and on the Hanko Peninsula shortly before the start of World War II reliably covered the entrances to the Gulf of Riga and the Gulf of Finland. In the years leading up to the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet government, concerned about strengthening the borders of the world's first socialist state, reached an agreement with the government of bourgeois Estonia on the lease of certain islands and ports. In the deep autumn of 1939, the People's Commissariat of the Navy of the USSR discussed the defense system for the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, developed by a group of officers of the General Staff of the Navy under the leadership of Vice Admiral S. P. Stavitsky. In the spring of 1940, a specially created commission under the leadership of the flagship of the 2nd rank (later Rear Admiral) I. I. Gren was ordered to select locations for the installation of batteries on the Hanko Peninsula leased from Finland , as well as on the islands of Osmussar 1, Sarema and Hiuma. In July, the Navy's General Military Council reviewed and approved the Commission's proposed defense system for the Moonsund Islands. To create it, the government allocated significant monetary and material resources to the Fleet for 1940-1941. Special construction and installation organizations were created, and heavy parts of tower and open batteries were transported and unloaded to the islands. In Kronstadt, their combat crews were formed, which, as soon as they were ready, were sent to the objects. For the construction of open batteries, a period of six months was set, for long-term large-caliber towers-a year. The case was complicated by a number of technical circumstances, and th ... Read more