DOP, Field depots, warehouses, Central Bases NKO

[Der Alte Fritz]

I am looking for sources on two subjetcs:

1) What did Divisional Exchange Points (DOP) and field warehouses look like?

I have a little information on these for instance:
Defense scheme of the military warehouse No. 1428
Schemes. Archive: TsAMO, Fund: 369, Inventory: 6725, File: 80, Sheet of the beginning of the document in the file: 27
Authors of the document: 17 A, Lieutenant Sikharulidze
Describes combat operation: no data

Схема обороны военного склад № 1428
Схемы. Архив: ЦАМО, Фонд: 369, Опись: 6725, Дело: 80, Лист начала документа в деле: 27
Авторы документа: 17 А, лейтенант Сихарулидзе
Описывает боевую операцию: нет данных
https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=132630688

Some other details in these identical (?) documents
https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=262181942
https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=262181940

a pamyat-naroda.ru search for the term "склад" finds 318 documents but these are mainly just short reports.

2) Information on the Central Bases of the NKO
I have two main sources:
Golushko, I. M. Shtab Tyla Krasnoĭ Armii v gody voĭny 1941-1945 [Staff of the Rear of the Red Army 1941-45]. Moskva: Ėkonomika i informatika, 1998.

Skryabin, S. N. ‘Sozdanie baz snabzhenii͡a T͡sentra’ [Establishment of Supply Bases of the Centre]. Voenno-Istoricheskiĭ Zhurnal [Military History Journal], no. 10 (1986): 54–60.

and early ones (pre-war or June 1941) are listed in
Артиллерийское снабжение в Великой Отечественной войне 1941-45 гг. [Artillery Supply in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945]. Moskva: GAU, 1977. https://www.soldat.ru/news/242.html.

[Der Alte Fritz]

One thing I would like to clear up is the date of NKO Order No.300
It is listed here for 1941:
300 Об организации на узловых станциях отделений вещевых складов НКО Наименование уточнено на основании данных, полученных на ВИФ РЖ http://www.teatrskazka.com/Raznoe/Prika ... 1_all.html but the document link (http://old.russ.ru/forums-new/war-ist/m ... 39003.html) is broken

and here for 1942:
300 Организация вещевых складов на узловых станциях Дублирование номера
http://www.teatrskazka.com/Raznoe/Prika ... 2_all.html

Russian Archive subject list has it under 1942:

[Anatol]

https://smolbattle.ru/threads/%D0%92%D0 ... 201/page-2

[Der Alte Fritz]

Thank you Anatol, I have seen several maps on Pamyat Naroda which show the location of DOP (Divisional Exchange Points) as a circle with an 'X' in the middle however I am particularly interested in what the structures or dugouts looked like which made up DOPs or Полевой склад - field warehouses as I am working with a group of archeologists exploring the Berlin battlefield and trying to identify various large holes dug into the ground.

[Der Alte Fritz]

Something of the 'official structure of artillery depots can be gleaned from this order:

Order

for the 61st Rifle Corps No.023 on the state of protection and organization of ammunition storage in the warehouses of divisions (March 26, 1945)

SECRETLY

ORDER

NO. 023 OF THE 61ST RIFLE CORPS
26 march 1945 Active Army
Content. On the state of protection and organization of ammunition savings in divisional warehouses.

on march 23 and 24, 1945, the chief of artillery supply of the corps checked the organization of storage, conservation and protection of ammunition in the artillery depots of the divisions.
The inspection revealed a number of violations of the rules for the conservation and protection of ammunition.
In the 247th Infantry Division:
1. The warehouse is located in the forest and covers an area of 15,000 square meters, guarded during the day by one sentry, and at night by two sentries. 15 pits have been opened for ammunition storage.
2. The territory of the warehouse is fenced with two rows of barbed wire in one stake.
3. Fire-fighting equipment is not enough; in total, there are two boards with shovels and axes in the warehouse and two barrels of water are installed.
4. Ammunition for batches of shot assembly is not sorted, their content is unsatisfactory, some of the shells of 45-mm and 122-mm howitzer are dirty and with a touch of rust.
In the 274th Infantry Division:
1. The warehouse is located in the forest and covers an area of 20,000 square meters, guarded by one sentry during the day and two sentries at night. 22 pits have been opened for ammunition storage.
2. The territory of the warehouse is fenced with four rows of barbed wire in one stake.
3. Fire-fighting equipment is scarce. In total, there are three shields with shovels, axes and bagrams in the warehouse, [these means] do not provide firefighting.
4. Ammunition for batches of shot assembly is not sorted, their content is unsatisfactory. 82 mm mines in the upper boxes of the stacks, with rust deposits.
Similar shortcomings exist in the warehouses of other divisions. Guards of 1-2 hours and in one stake wire fence [warehouses] are not provided from the penetration of persons into the territory of the warehouse for sabotage purposes.
This situation with regard to the protection and conservation of ammunition can lead to their damage and losses.
ORDER:
1. Provide reliable security that excludes the penetration of unauthorized persons into the territory of the warehouse.
Fence the warehouse with barbed wire in 3 stakes. Guard posts must be provided with communication (sound and visual) with a distance between posts of not more than 200 meters during the day and 100 meters at night.
2. Equip with firefighting posts, each stack with ammunition has a box with sand and a shovel or scoop; in addition, in the warehouse to have at least 3-4 barrels of water and buckets, 3-4 shields with axes and bagrams.
The entire territory of the warehouse should be cleared of debris and branches that contribute to the spread of fire.
3. In the warehouse to have at least 20 pits with a capacity of 2-3 three-ton vehicles for storing existing and incoming ammunition. The gap between the pits should be at least 35 meters.
4. All ammunition should be put in full order, artillery and mortar rounds should be sorted into batches of shot assembly, and hand grenades by batches, years of manufacture and factories.
5. Pits with ammunition are carefully camouflaged under the background of the surrounding area.
6. Organize systematic monitoring of the conservation and protection of ammunition.
Execution reported on April 1, 1945.

Commander of the 61st
Rifle Corps (signed)

Chief
of Staff of the 61st Rifle Corps
(signed)

Commander of
Artillery of the 61st Rifle Corps
(signed)

F. 1428, op. 62812c, d. 2, fol. 70.
Collection of combat documents of the Great Patriotic War. Issue 22.
http://www.teatrskazka.com/Raznoe/Sborn ... 22_58.html

[Der Alte Fritz]

The Vologda Centre Base NKO served the North Western Direction (Northwestern Leningrad, Volkov and Karelian Fronts)
Commander: Lieutenant General Gerasimenko (Asst Chief of Rear)
Генерал-Лейтенант Герасименко Gerasimenko Vasiliy Filippovich Герасименко Василий Филиппович
Summary Documents
1. Announcement of arrival of Gerisimenko at Base Oct 1941 https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=455001205 He is only commander for a month!
2. Order moving a warehouse and linking it to the Central Base https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=455001206

In 1941, the Central Supply Base of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR was established in Vologda. Its management became, in essence, a headquarters that directed transportation and provided everything necessary for the Leningrad Front, the city, the Baltic Fleet and all the armies that defended Leningrad from the southeastern shore of Lake Ladoga, as well as the Karelian Front. The base reported directly to the head of the Red Army Logistics, A.V. Khrulev. Major General P.V. Karpukhin was appointed its head. As in any front headquarters, the central base had all the rear services. At the disposal of P.V. Karpukhin, two automobile battalions were allocated to work inside the base and three battalions to deliver goods along dirt roads from Vologda through Volkhov to Lake Ladoga. In addition to autobats, three more horse-drawn transport battalions were fixed. As evidenced by the documents of the Vologda City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of that time, local party and Soviet bodies rendered great assistance in the creation of rear institutions of the Leningrad and other fronts. In particular, the necessary premises were allocated for the placement of warehouses, workshops and service units; a lot of work was carried out to increase the storage area due to new construction; helping the workshops of the People's Commissariat of Defense,Vologda also hosted one of the supply bases for the USSR Navy.

From the first days of the war, Vologda became an important point for the evacuation of the wounded and sick from the places of hostilities, their admission to hospitals or further transportation to the rear. There was a distribution evacuation point (REP-95) here, the system of which included dozens of hospitals, evacuation facilities and means of transportation. The REP-95 office was located in the building at 9 Mira Street (now the regional House of Sanitary Education), as well as in an unpreserved house on Mira Street, where the Book House is now. Already on June 27, 1941, military hospital train No. 312 headed from Vologda to the front, equipped in a few days at a locomotive-carriage repair plant, staffed in Vologda by a team, medical personnel. Subsequently, this VSP will be widely known - after Vera Panova writes the story "Companions" about him. The wounded flocked to Vologda from three fronts: Karelian, Leningrad, Volkhov. One of the documents of the city committee of the party noted: “The war promoted Vologda as a major medical center of the country ... More than one division of recovered soldiers and officers of the Red Army went to the front after treatment in our hospitals. Numerous scientific works have been published in Vologda.” Some hospitals were stationed in the city for years, others for several months or even less. According to researcher B. N. Konasov, only nineteen evacuation hospitals were deployed in Vologda in different years of the war. One of them is reminded by a memorial plaque fixed on the second building of the Polytechnic Institute (Voroshilov Street, 1): “In this building from June 24, 1941 to December 1945, the evacuation hospital 1184 was located for the treatment of wounded soldiers of the Red Army.” A lot of research work was carried out in the military medical institutions of the city during the war years. So, only in 1943, several scientific conferences of military doctors were held, in which hundreds of delegates and guests, representatives of the army, front and rear areas participated. The staff of the Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, the blood transfusion station, located on Sovetsky Prospekt, worked fruitfully. ... Not all the wounded returned to duty from hospitals. Some of them could not be saved. Some died while still on hospital trains. There are three mass military graves in the city: in the Zarechnaya part, along the Poshekhonskoye highway and in the village of Molochnoye. Vologda residents sacredly honor the memory of the fallen...

[Der Alte Fritz]

Central Artillery Base No.34 Rybinsk Commemorative album of photographs:
https://www.yar-archives.ru/action/phot ... a584539491

Central Military Artillery Base No. 34 was an artillery rear organ subordinate to the Main Artillery Directorate. This is one of the first artillery bases of the Soviet state, created in 1918 near the city of Rybinsk. During the Great Patriotic War, 4 workshops worked as part of the base: cannon - for assembling cartridge loading shots; front-line - for the assembly of large-caliber shots; cartridge case - to update the shell casings coming from the troops; woodworking - for the repair of the old and the manufacture of a new special closure. The ammunition produced and accumulated by the base was sent to various military units, ensuring their combat capability. Base No. 34 had a developed infrastructure: barracks, a dining room, a bath and laundry complex, a kindergarten, a club, a library. The base's ORS provided food procurement.

The album was prepared for the 25th anniversary of the artillery base No. 34 in 1943 and handed over to the First Secretary of the Yaroslavl Regional Committee of the CPSU (b) A.N. Larionov.

[Der Alte Fritz]

Military everyday life of artillery base No34
https://ryabinsk.bezformata.com/listnew ... s712374316

Military everyday life of artillery base No. 34 - http://gazeta-rybinsk.ru/

What did the workers of the military base in Rybinsk do in the early forties? They collected shells, updated the shell casings, packed ammunition into boxes, and sent them to the front? Yes, but not only. They also raised geese, salted cucumbers by tons, and sang in a choral mug.

The Central Artillery Military Base No. 34, located in Mariivka, is one of the oldest in the country. In 2018, it (now military unit 55443) celebrated its 100th anniversary. Interesting details about the life of the rear unit during the war, we learn by leafing through the album prepared for the 25th anniversary of the base. In 1943, it was handed over to the secretary of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), comrade Larionov. In electronic form, the document is posted on the portal of the Yaroslavl Regional Archival Service as part of the project "75 - Victory! 1941-2020».

At the Turn of the Line

On the eve of the war in Soviet Russia there were only thirty military warehouses and bases. They were located on the lines of location of military enterprises and civilian factories, which were involved in the production of military themes. The 34th artillery base was located on the third (there were eight of them in total) conditional line, which passed along the line: Rybinsk - Moscow - Lozovaya.

Ammunition from Rybinsk was sent to various military units of the RSFSR and other Union republics. In the first half of the war, cargoes went to Moscow and Leningrad, Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, Rzhev and Stalingrad, to Orel, Kursk, Odessa, Sevastopol, Kharkov, Tbilisi, Baku ... - about thirty main areas of supply.

In the shops, at the machines

On July 23, 1941, Rybinsk was declared "in a threatened position." The rear military base, located in Marievka, was also brought to full combat readiness. During the war, they not only store mobilization stocks here, but also produce ammunition themselves: they carry out equipment, assemble, equip shots, and also ensure the supply of troops.

As part of the Rybinsk artillery base, there are four workshops.

In cannon, they are engaged in the assembly of cartridge loading shots. In the front- - collect large-caliber shells. In the cartridge case, the fired cartridges coming from the troops are updated: they are cleaned, crimped on machines. In the woodworking shop, boxes for ammunition are crushed and an old special closure is repaired.

On the basis, as well as at other enterprises of Rybinsk, front-line brigades are being created. Men who went to the front are replaced by their mothers, wives, daughters. On the dark, fuzzy photos of the album, the front-line brigades of Shuvalova, Sukova, Prokhorova ... Kurochkina's brigade is for assembling shells, Semeykina's brigade is for patronizing shots. Gubanova's Stakhanov Brigade controls 122-millimeter shells. Very young girls, yesterday's schoolgirls, also go to work with ammunition. Such as Antonina Abroskina. As a seventeen-year-old girl, she arrives at Base 34. For 12 hours a day, he fills shells with gunpowder and packs them in boxes.



In the first months of the war, the Komsomol members launched the movement of the two hundredths. This is the name of drummers who fulfill production plans by 200% or more. The archive has preserved a photograph that depicts two-hundred and even three-hundredths of the Rybinsk base - 13 people, mostly female faces, there are also quite children's.

Ammunition is delivered by truck. At the beginning of the war, there is an acute shortage of liquid petroleum fuel in the country. And the machines are converted to firewood. At the artillery base on gas generation, ZiS-5 works, which is heated with wooden chips.

In the margins and on stage

Artillery base No. 34 is not only workshops, but also a whole town with barracks for workers. There is a Red Army canteen, a bath and laundry plant, a kindergarten, a library.

In 1943, the construction of a club with a hall for 500 (!) seats was completed. The working people are engaged in amateur artistic activity and sing in a choral circle. To maintain morale, artists come to the club on tour, including groups of republican significance - for example, the State Ensemble of Song and Dance of the Belarusian SSR.

At the base, the tasks of food procurement are solved. This is done by the Department of Workers' Supply (LFS). Potatoes, cabbage, carrots are grown on their own subsidiary farm. And the harvests, as noted in the album, are collected "abundant". Cucumbers, for example, 21 tons per hectare. Interestingly, vegetables are not pampered as people - they grow in the open ground, without any greenhouses and film. There is even a salting station at the base.

The war was going on, and the economy was expanding. For the sake of milk and meat, almost six dozen cows are kept here. In 1943, a waterfowl farm was opened, for which 117 geese were purchased. In the same year, the fishing brigade of ORS manages to get 26 tons of fish from the Volga.

In the field of agitation

The head of the base in the forties was Colonel K. Grigorovich. Unfortunately, information about him could not be found. But on the portal about the front-line soldiers there is information about the partorg - Senior Lieutenant Pavel Skib.

He was our colleague, a journalist. When the war broke out, he was 34 years old. Skiba is from Ukraine. What did he do in Rybinsk? "By means of oral and printed agitation and propaganda, he sought to educate the personnel in high consciousness and responsibility for the clear and uninterrupted supply of artillery units with military equipment and ammunition," his card says. After the war, the former partorg headed the Donetsk branch of TASS-RATAU, was awarded two Orders of the Badge of Honor, died in 1983.

[Der Alte Fritz]

Pamyat Naroda has a wider number of documents relating to DOP (Divisional Exchange Points) some of which give us an idea of the size and layout of the DOP for Rifle Divisions:
‘Calculation of Cargo Transportation OF DOP"a" 4 Gv. Cd’. Accessed 23 October 2022. https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=110355055.
‘Defense Scheme of DOP 188 SD in the Area of Uduba’. Accessed 23 October 2022. https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=114649187.
‘Defense Scheme of DOP 332 SD in Belousovo’. Accessed 23 October 2022. https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=136249487.
‘Information on the Availability of Personnel, Weapons and Ing. Structures. DOP-332 Sd’. Accessed 23 October 2022. https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=136249503.
‘Layout of the 535 Rear and Artillery Supply Depot 265 SD (DOP)’. Accessed 23 October 2022. https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=136885424.