Did Soviet spy Arnold Deutsch die on the SS Donbass? To work towards an answer to that question, I decided to compile my own mini-history of the SS Donbass from numerous archival sources. Here’s what I found…

SS Donbass

There have been several ships called “SS Donbass” in modern times, but we’re only interested in the first of these – the one that was sunk in November 1942. Here’s what it looked like:-

This paricular SS Donbass was built in 1935, with a gross tonnage of 7925 tons and a loading capacity of 7602 tons: a decent-sized ship. Other key statistics to satisfy passing merchant marine historians:-
* Length: 140.12m
* Width: 17.94m
* Draft: 8.45m
* Machine power: 2 x 1400 hp (I think, please correct me if this is wrong)
* Max speed: 10 knots

In 1940, the ship was then transferred across from Sovtanker Steamship Company into the main fleet.

SS Donbass in Convoy PQ-17

According to this post, in mid-1942 the Donbass travelled from Buenos Aires to New York with a large consignment of oil. Once there, it was fitted with two 65mm cannon and eight heavy machine guns to allow it to defend itself, and then sent on to Reykjavik.

En route to Russia as part of the PQ-17 convoy operation, it rescued 51 men from the US transport ship SS Daniel Morgan. It repulsed 13 air attacks and 1 submarine attack, knocking down two German He-111 bombers (04th July 1942) and one Ju-88. The rescued US sailors even helped man the nose gun.

The captain (Mikhail Ivanovich Pavlov) and senior engineer (Mefodiy Martynovich Fedorov) were awarded British medals (I’m guessing Atlantic Star Medals?)

According to the crew manifests, 28 additional Russian crew members came on board in New York: I’m told that these were from the SS Ashgabat, which had not long before sunk off the American coast (but I don’t have a reference for this).

SS Donbass in Operation FB

The Donbass was not so fortunate in Operation FB, travelling from Arkhangelsk to Reykjavik. Having passed Novaya Zemlya on the way out on 4th November 1942, it was attacked by Nazi bombers the following day, but was able to use its cannons to drive them off. However, its lucky streak ended on 7th November 1942, when it was attacked by the vastly stronger German destroyer Z-27: in rapid succession, the Donbass was hit by torpedoes, its oil caught fire and set the whole ship ablaze, the Donbass split into two huge pieces fore and aft, and the front half sank.

However, the crew kept on fighting, manning the cannon and machine guns on the ablaze aft end of the ship. But when their ammunition ran out, Captain Zielke finally ordered the crew to abandon the Donbass’s dying hulk: they were left floating in the icy seas for a while, but were than picked up by the Z-27. The coordinates were: 76° 25’N, 45° 54’E.

On 9th November 1942, the fifteen captured seamen were handed to the Coast Guard at the Northern Norwegian port of Alta, and then driven to a POW camp. In February 1943, they were transported to a concentration camp for sailors in Gdynia (Poland), where they stayed until 1945 (Zielke escaped the camp but was recaptured after a month on the run). While there, however, at least four of these fifteen died of starvation. Captain Zielke, who survived, was awarded the Order of Lenin.

The Dead

Here is the memorial plaque to the SS Donbass, listing the 33 men and women who died on it that fateful day.

With Arnold Deutsch in mind 🙂 , I cross-referenced this list with the various other crew lists available. This is because I don’t even remotely believe that Deutsch would have been on the SS Donbass in both Convoy PQ-17 and Operation FB: hence I think we can almost certainly rule out anyone who was in both convoys. Or who was female.

Key:-
[*] = arrived at New York from Buenos Aires in July 1942
[A] = was taken on board from the Ashgabat
[F] = female crew member
— = (whoever was left)

Left column:
[*] Morozov Arseniy Maksimovich, 1st Assistant, 1894
— Andrianov, Mikhail Ivanovich, 2nd Assistant, ?
[*] Oparin Mikhail Nikolayevich, 3rd Assistant, 1913
[*] Kalandadze Nina Germanovna, 4th Assistant, 1918
[*] Fedorov Mefodiy Martynovich, Art. Mechanic, 1894
[*] Malakhov Ivan Dmitriyevich, 3rd engineer, 1915
[*] Gal’tsev Nikolay Stepanovich, Senior electrician, 1911
[F] Klimushcheva Iya Petrovna, Marine medic, ?
— Cheremnykh Vasiliy Nikolayevich, Boatswain, ?
— Nilov Mikhail Konstantinovich, Motorman Grade 1 (Sailor), 1911
[*] Vasil’yev Boris Mikhaylovich, Sailor, 1917
[*] Yeres’ko Filipp Grigor’yevich, Sailor, 1912
[*] Gorlachev Aleksandr Yegorovich, Sailor, 1915
[*] Butenko Fedor Vasil’yevich, Sailor, 1912
[*] Trimasov (Tremasov) Kuz’ma Andreyevich, Sailor, 1915
[*] Kochurkin (Kochkurin) Nikolay Ignat’yevich, Sailor, 1917
[A] Shibanov Aleksandr Alekseyevich, Sailor, [Aged 36]

Right column:
[*] Slobodzyan (Slabodzyan) Valentin Philippovich, Carpenter 1921
— Lavrent’yev Fedor Ivanovich, Motorman Grade 1, 1910
[*] Khachko Viktor Petrovich, Motorman Grade 1, 1912
[*] Lemza Aleksey Sergeyevich, Motorman Grade 1, 1914
[A] Radionov German Stepanovich, Motorman 1 Class, [Aged 28]
[*] Tagiyev Ismail Dzhanilovich, Motorman Grade 1, 1915
[A] Pashchenko Viktor Filippovich, Motorman Grade 1, [Aged 24]
[*] Galkin Nikolay Pavlovich, Motorman Grade 1, 1912
[*] Kuznetsov Ivan Ivanovich, Motorman Grade 1, 1914
[A] Mashchenko Petr Gordeyevich, Motorman 1 Class, [Aged 32]
[*] Mechik Leonid Aleksandrovich, Donkerman, 1908
[*] Yurkovskiy Fedor Konstantinovich, Cook, 1909
[*] Kamnev Grigoriy Timofeyevich, Chef, 1916
[F] Voronina Avgusta Aleksandrovna, Orderly, 1920
[F] Pakhtusova Agrippina Petrovna, Maid, ?
[A] Afonasenko Trofim Semenovich, Motorman 1 Class, [Aged 25]

Who is left?

If Arnold Deutsch died on board AND he appears under a different name in the lists of the dead, he must be one of the following four people:-

— Andrianov, Mikhail Ivanovich, 2nd Assistant, ?
— Cheremnykh Vasiliy Nikolayevich, Boatswain, ?
— Nilov Mikhail Konstantinovich, Motorman Grade 1 (Sailor), 1911
— Lavrent’yev Fedor Ivanovich, Motorman Grade 1, 1910

Make of that what you will.

Gordon Cramer has just posted about Edward John Rice, a machinist at Australia’s Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation, who the management there tried to dismiss in 1942 for allegedly being a Communist. They were also very annoyed about the way he tried to force Mrs Dawkins, the nice lady from the canteen, into telling him all the gossip to go into the staff magazine of which he was one of the four editors.

What inspired Gordon was what Rice apparently said to a man called Keane (a surname guaranteed to set many Somerton Man theorists aquiver with excitement):-

Mr. Ashburner (for the CAC): Do you remember when you were distributing literature in the factory telling a man named Keane that “My one wish above all is to lead a revolution in this country, and when the shooting starts you want to shoot fast”?

Rice: No. I never said anything like that. You produce this man.

Mr. Ashburner: Don’t worry, he will be produced.

Gordon Cramer then appended lots of pictures of aircraft factories and alleged microwriting to help make his case that all these pieces linked together. But why did he not look at the rest of the reports of the tribunal from that same week to see if he could find out “Keane”‘s first name?

The report Gordon cited was from the Monday 3rd August 1942 edition of the Adelaide News. But the Wednesday 5th August 1942 Daily Advertiser names the same witness as Charles Keenan:-

Mr. Charles Keenan, employee of the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation. said that Rice had distributed pamphlets to some employees. Rice said that the Friends of the Soviet Union had issued them and admitted he was a Communist. He spoke of leading a revolution.

The Thursday 6th August edition of the Sydney Morning Herald voiced Rice’s denials of these lurid claims:

Rice, in evidence, denied that he had told an employee, Keenan, that he wanted to lead a revolution, that he would shoot or cut the throats of capitalists or that he was a Communist.

I’m not keen on this being the Somerton Man’s Keane: in fact, I’d go so far as to say this identification is 100% pants. 🙂

(I’m claiming neither plaudits nor brickbats for this suggestion, it’s Pete Bowes’ bonny baby: but funnily enough, I rather like it.)

Born in 1903 in Hungary, Czechoslavakia, Vienna or somewhere else completely (nobody knows), Arnold Deutsch was a brilliant young academic (with a PhD in chemistry at just 24) with an interest in Wilhelm Reich’s sex stuff who then moved to London to become, while a psychology graduate, a devastatingly well-connected Soviet spy. In fact, the Cambridge Five (including Lil’ Kim Philby) were his boys, and it was Deutsch who came up with the strategy of embedding them deep within the Establishment.

But then in 1937 Stalin got super-edgy and paranoid, and pulled all his wildcard agents back to Moscow, to be executed and replaced by a new cadre of even more hard-core home-bred Communist crazies. However, Deutsch managed to escape that fate: and was kept on “as an expert on forgery and handwriting”, says Wikipedia (with a straight face).

However, when he finally got abroad again in the 1940s, Deutsch is believed to have died, though – as you’d expect – nobody is sure quite how, where or even when.

Might he be the Somerton Man, found dead on an Australian beach in 1948?

Facially, the photos do look quite similar: they were of similar age, and they seem to share the same propensity for mystery. And dying so publicly and yet at the same time so privately has a curious rightness to it.

Up until now, I’ve hated every single speculative spy story floated to explain the Somerton Man that crossed my path: and yet I find myself smiling with delighted intrigue at this particular one. You know, “wouldn’t it be nice if…?”

And surely the best part of it all is that Arnold Deutsch’s fingerprints must surely be somewhere – Nigel West would know, wouldn’t he? Rupert, my man, have you still got a copy of Deutsch’s file upstairs? We have a nice set of fingerprints to compare it with… 🙂

Right now, I think there is a ~35% chance that the Somerton Man was a Russian merchant seaman who had worked on a WWII Lend-Lease ship bringing goods from America to Vladivostok on the Pacific Route. We know his physical appearance, height, fingerprints, and his rough date of birth: and that he was found dead on a South Australian beach on 1st December 1948.

What struck me last night was that this might well be all we need to work with.

So at long last, I’ve finally formed a Somerton Man plan. Here’s what I’ll do (though it won’t happen in a day or even a week):-

(1) Find the Soviet crew lists for Lend-Lease ships landing on the West Coast of America during 1941-1945 (e.g. via Ancestry.com or elsewhere), and merge them into a single list.

Once this is filtered for merchant seamen of the right age (and I’ll happily take your suggestions as to what age range to filter against), my estimate is that I should have ~250 names to work with.

(2) Find out if any of these were alive in 1949 and beyond.

As I recall, there is a Maritime Cemetery in Vladivostok. My guess is that a fair few of these merchant seamen will be buried there: hopefully I’ll be able to find a nice administrative list or database to work with.

I estimate that this should reduce the list to something closer to 100 names. If other usable secondary databases exist, they might help get the list down to ~50 names.

Once I get to this point, it seems that there are four parallel strategies to follow, each of which might independently work:-

(3a) Trace these 50 names further using other Soviet databases. (Though because this was the era of Stalin’s Russia, there might well be rather less to go on than one would normally hope for).

(3b) Find crew-lists of Soviet ships arriving in or leaving from Australian ports 1943-1948 (and/or Australian alien seamen registration forms), and cross-reference against these.

(3c) Network through to retired Russian merchant seamen who worked on Lend-Lease ships and see what / who they remember. (There are, as I also recall, Homes for Retired Seamen in Vladivostok, which would seem to be a good place to start).

(3d) See if I can get a Vladivostok journalist interested enough in the story to try to run it in a paper. Who knows what might come out of it.

Perhaps one of these will work, perhaps it won’t. But it certainly beats sitting around trying to guess what “MLIABO” might conceivably stand for (“Making Love Is A Bad Option”, etc). 😉