EML Lembit

In Spring 1937, Lembit joined the Estonian Navy, where she operated until the Soviet occupation in mid-1940. The submarine carried out one training torpedo attack in her three years of service in the Estonian Navy, but was never used in the minelaying role.[2]

The submarine was formally taken over by the Soviet Navy on 18 September 1940, by which time only five men of the submarine's Estonian crew remained on board. They were needed to assist the Soviet crew in learning unfamiliar machinery.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Lembit was commissioned into the Soviet Baltic Fleet. The original name Lembit was initially retained. At least three of her original Estonian crew helped to operate the submarine during the war.[3] Lembit participated with the Soviet Baltic Fleet in military operations.[4] Lembit carried out a total of seven patrols during the German-Soviet war.[5]

• War patrol 10–21 August. She laid twenty mines near Cape Arcona. Some ships which were damaged in November 1941, due to British and German mines, were described in Soviet literature as Lembit 'successes'.
• War patrol 19–26 October.
• 4–5 November. In battle conditions and through a broken icefield, transferred from Kronstadt to Leningrad.

• War patrol 17 August - 22 September. On 13 September, Lembit was ordered to return to base. Her commander decided to stay in position for one more day to charge batteries. On 14 September, she attacked a convoy and badly damaged the transport ship Finnland (5,281 GRT), which sank on 15 September, at 59°36'8 N/21°14'5 E (the ship was subsequently raised and re-commissioned on 1 July 1943). During a counterattack which involved the dropping of some fifty depth charges, the submarine sustained serious damage, including a fire in the second group of batteries; six men were wounded. After some repairs Lembit returned to base. This episode earned her the nickname "Immortal submarine".

• Awarded the Order of the Red Banner, 6 March.
• War patrol 2–18 October. Laid twenty mines. Destroyed the Dutch merchant ship Hilma Lau (2,414 GRT) on 13 October.
• War patrol 24 November - 15 December.

• War patrol 23 March - 14 April.

Ships sunk by Lembit[6]

Date	Ship	Flag	Tonnage	Notes
14 September 1942	Finnland		5,281 GRT	merchant (torpedo, later salvaged)
13 October 1944	Hilma Lau		2,414 GRT	merchant (torpedo)
15 October 1944	M 3619 / Crabeels		150 GRT	auxiliary minesweeper (mine)
23 October 1944	Pionier 5		?	harbour tug (mine, most likely)
24 November 1944	Spreeufer		216 GRT	fishing vessel (mine)
13 February 1945	M 421		543 GRT	minesweeper (mine)
25 April 1945	Vs 343		?	auxiliary patrol vessel (mine)
Total:			8,604 GRT

Also on Lembit's mines was damaged on 24 November 1944 the German auxiliary patrol vessel V 305 / Halbertstadt.

On 18 June 1946, Lembit was renamed U-1; on 9 June 1949 S-85; on 30 January 1956; STZh-24 on 27 December 1956 UTS-29. Some time between 1949 and 1956 she possibly carried the designation PZM-1 (PTsM-1?) for some time. The original name was probably restored when she was decommissioned and returned to Tallinn as a museum ship in 1979.

Lembit was presented with the Order of The Red Banner on 6 March 1945 for her victories earlier in the German-Soviet war. She was withdrawn from active duty on 17 January 1946 and become a training boat. On 12 January 1949 Lembit was included among medium submarines. She was stricken (disarmed) on 10 June 1955. She was transferred to the Krasnoye Sormovo shipyard on 3 August 1957 and subsequently towed to Gorky (now Nizhni Novgorod). Here Lembit was preserved as an experimental boat and an example of British submarine design. Her hatch for the pressure-tight anti-aircraft gun storage shaft was of particular interest. It was copied into designs for the missile hatches of new Soviet submarines.

The torpedo room of Lembit (2022)

On 28 August 1979 exactly 38 years after she had left Tallinn, Lembit returned – under tow. After a lengthy overhaul, the submarine was opened to the public as a war memorial, (more precisely, as a branch of the Museum of the Soviet Baltic Fleet), on 5 May 1985. She, along with other artifacts, was used to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. Lembit was one of three submarine war memorials in the USSR in 1987, along with S-56 in the Far East, and K-21 in the Far North. There had been plans for displaying all three vessels out of the water, but a floating crane which was to have been used, (which had been moved from Kronstadt), lost its boom during the tow.

Lembit in Tallinn as part of a museum display (2008)

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the subsequent dissolution of its navy, the submarine was taken over by Estonian officials on 27 April 1992 – a few Defence League men hoisted an Estonian flag on the vessel, meeting no resistance.

Lembit is one of two surviving pre-war Estonian warships; the other is the small gunboat Uku on Lake Peipsi, which is a wreck. Lembit received the honorary nomination of 'vessel No. 1' in the new Estonian Navy on 2 August 1994. After a long and expensive restoration, the submarine was opened to the public, as a department of the Estonian Maritime Museum, with a collection of other naval weapons. Lembit is one of the few surviving pre–World War II submarines (among others are the Finnish Vesikko, built in 1933, and Soviet K-21, built in 1937).