Nikolay Pavlovich Egipko

Nikolai Pavlovich Yegipko (; ; – 6 July 1985) was an officer of the Soviet Navy and a Hero of the Soviet Union. He saw action during the Russian Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second World War, and rose to the rank of vice-admiral.

Born into the family of a shipyard worker, Yegipko and several of his brothers joined up to fight for the Soviets in the Russian Civil War. He served initially as a field telephonist, though he was wounded, twice captured by White forces, and twice escaped. He spent the rest of the war working with the Komsomol in Nikolaev, though he was not permitted to join their ranks after a report circulated that he washed with "perfumed" soap. With the Soviet victory in the civil war, Yegipko was demobilised and returned to shipyard work. He reenlisted in the armed forces in 1925, serving on ships of the Black Sea Fleet, and then on submarines in the Baltic and Pacific Fleets. In 1936 he commanded the submarine Shch-117 on a record-breaking voyage of endurance, for which he and his entire crew received honours. He then went to Spain to support the Republican faction in the Spanish Civil War. He commanded two submarines during his time there, and though the cause ultimately failed, he was rewarded for his service with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Yegipko commanded submarine brigades after his return to the Soviet Union, including during the Soviet-Finnish War, and after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, participated in the Soviet evacuation of Tallinn in August 1941. During this time his submarine, S-5, was sunk by a mine, and Yegipko had to be rescued from the water after being blown overboard. He then became naval attaché to the United Kingdom and was an observer on several of the Arctic convoys, including the disastrous Convoy PQ 17. The later war years were spent with the General Staff of the Armed Forces, after which he held several posts in naval education and academia, ending as head of the Higher Naval School of Submarine Navigation. He retired in 1967 and wrote his memoirs before his death in 1985.

Family and early life Yegipko was born in Nikolaev, Kherson Governorate, part of the Russian Empire (now Mykolaiv, Ukraine), on . His father, Pavel Osipovich, was a worker at the city's shipbuilding yards; his mother was Euphrosyne Mikhailovna. The family was a large one, Nikolai had four brothers and three sisters. He went on to serve as a cavalry scout, and saw action against the Armed Forces of South Russia led by White General Anton Denikin. Several times the crew were forced to improvise repairs. Storm waves tore off the edge of a steel sheet, which struck the submarine's hull, damaging the stern of the superstructure. Later problems involved the anchor, the steering gear and one of the electric motors. Each time the crew was able to make repairs. The city fell to the Nationalists soon afterwards, and Yegipko and his crew evacuated the city in a British transport ship. The ship was intercepted and captured at sea by the Nationalist cruiser Almirante Cervera, but a patrolling British warship intervened and forced the Nationalists to release their prize.

He had married and had two sons and a daughter. His eldest son, Vladimir, followed his father into the navy and rose to captain 1st rank, and taught at the Naval Academy. His younger son, Viktor, had a naval education at the Nakhimov Naval School, but became interested in cybernetics and went into teaching as a Candidate of Sciences. Nikolai Yegipko's daughter Lyudmila married Vladimir Bondarev, a graduate of the Submarine Navigation school, who rose to the rank of rear-admiral. The museum contains over 2,000 artefacts, and in 2018 a permanent exhibition "The man of legend, Nikolai Pavlovich Yegipko" opened to commemorate the 115th anniversary of his birth. A second attempt failed when having approached the target, the submarine suddenly dived before the torpedoes could be launched. Yegipko suspected that the helmsman was unwilling to sink a fellow Spanish vessel.