It all began with a statement by Lord Balfour in 1918:
"The new anti-Bolshevik administrations grew up under the cover of the allied forces, and we are responsible for their existence and must make efforts to support them."
November 1, 1918.
The statement had purely pragmatic reasons - the property of the British in Soviet Russia was nationalized, the former empire was rapidly disintegrating, the Civil War was gaining momentum inside …
And in the North - furs and timber, and in the South - the abandoned oil and coal of Donbass, and in the Baltic - the birth of the Baltic limitrophes and a chance to recapture Petrograd …
Talking in general about the naval war between England and Soviet Russia is not a matter of fasting, but, perhaps, of books.
So briefly. And about the Baltic. Fortunately, the most ambitious battles and the loudest episodes took place there. And we must start with the strength of the parties.
Forces of the parties
The Baltic Fleet was formally a formidable force, despite the loss of Finland, the Baltic States, and with them part of the ships. It consisted of four dreadnought battleships, two dreadnought battleships, five armored cruisers, armored decks, dozens of destroyers and submarines….
The entrance to the Gulf of Finland was covered with powerful minefields, which turned it into a real soup with mines. Kronstadt itself is a base with a developed ship repair, huge reserves. And perfectly covered by coastal batteries.
For three years of the First World War, the Germans did not dare to storm the Marquis's puddle, and they acted carefully in the Gulf of Riga. So everything is fine on paper, but in reality …
The steamship plant is paralyzed, the sailors first killed / dispersed most of the officers, then fled themselves. Not all, of course, but in a significant number.
To understand the state of the ships and crews, it is enough to look at the fate of the battleship Frunze (nee Poltava).
“On November 24, 1919, a fire broke out on the disabled battleship Poltava, which lay in a sludge near the wall of the Admiralty Plant, practically without a crew, due to an oversight of the watchkeepers.
On the ship prepared for winter storage, the water systems were drained, electricity had to be supplied from the shore, and only one boiler in the bow boiler room operated to heat the premises.
The stokers who worked by candlelight and kerosene lamps did not notice that fuel oil was entering the hold due to the loosely battened neck of the oil storage, and when the fuel floating on the surface of the bilge water reached the level of the boiler furnace, an extensive fire broke out in the stoker.
Despite the arrival of city firefighters, a rescue ship and two icebreakers, the fire on the ship lasted 15 hours.
The fire damaged the premises adjacent to the bow boiler room, in particular the central artillery post and the armored pipe of wires under it, the forward conning tower, one of the power plants and the bow corridors of the electrical wires.
In addition, the central post was flooded with water, as well as the cellars of the bow tower of the GK”.
There is no light on the ship, the stokers have forgotten or have forgotten the safety measures, during the extinguishing they destroyed more equipment than the fire itself destroyed …
The battleship was never restored. There was no one, nothing and not for anything.
Roughly the same thing happened everywhere, it was just that there were no fires on other ships. But the submarine did not manage - all four lost Baltic "Bars" were lost after the February revolution. Yes, in addition, there is also one AG.
What to do - the fleet cannot fight without officers, strict discipline and normal supplies. And rallies with the elections of commanders only aggravate the situation. So the British had nothing to fear. Well, apart from mines and navigational hazards.
The fleet disintegrated by the end of 1918, and it posed a danger rather to its crews. The British saw their task not in sea battles with the Red Fleet, but, rather, in supporting the offensive of the opponents of Soviet power on land and ensuring the escort of transport ships. For which the divisions of the dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet were clearly not needed. They were not sent. And they sent:
5 light cruisers, 9 destroyers, weapons transports and several minesweepers
under the name of the squadron of Admiral Edwin Alexander-Sinclair.
In principle, that was enough. But in the end, the British had to replenish the squadron several times, transferring both exotic (like the Erebus monitor) and high-tech (in the form of an aircraft carrier and torpedo boats, and the latest L-type submarines).
It can be stated that the whole campaign the Baltic Fleet outnumbered the British by a head in quantitative terms. And in the same way he was losing qualitatively.
However, no decisive tasks were set for the fleets. The Soviet leadership had no one to install them. The British do not need it, and it is politically risky.
First operations
It all started by naval method.
I mean, at first, the British, rushing to the aid of the Estonians, lost in this very way the cruiser Kassandra on December 5, 1918, having driven it into a minefield (either German or Russian) near the island of Dago. The brand new cruiser went to the bottom.
And the initiative of the British was picked up by the Red Warriors, who, under the command of the revolutionary tribune Raskolnikov, handed over to the British two Novik-class destroyers - Avtroil and Spartak - safe and sound. The second (with great skill) was driven onto the stones, having organized a rally on the topic
"Should the revolutionary sailors pump out the water."
And the first surrendered to the British without a fight.
After that, the beauty and pride of the revolution without a twinge of conscience merged the position of the cruiser "Oleg". But, fortunately, he left her without permission. Actually, the entire special task force of Raskolnikov (the battleship "Andrey Pervozvanny", the cruiser "Oleg", three destroyers and the submarine "Panther" - all running in the Baltic at that moment) risked ceasing to exist, shrinking to one battleship. But lucky.
"Oleg" is gone. But Azard didn’t arrive. Due to the lack of fuel oil. The Panther's reconnaissance attempt was terminated due to a breakdown.
Then there was a subtle moment of searching for the extreme.
The operation was sanctioned and appointed to lead by Raskolnikov by a certain Lev Davydovich Trotsky. But they did not touch the fiery revolutionaries. The last was appointed "Tsar's satrap" Zarubaev, who had fought in Chemulpo on board the "Varyag" and the First World War in the Baltic.
All the same, we must pay tribute to the Bolsheviks - in addition to excluding Lev Davydovich and his protégé, serious conclusions were drawn.
It became clear that the fleet was not capable of fighting without supplies and specialists. It also takes discipline. And yet, it turns out that rallies interfere with the military operation. And it also surfaced that the officers and the conductor were hit in the face not because of class hatred, but because one revolutionary sailor, pulling the wrong lever or throwing a cigarette butt in the wrong place, could ditch the newest ship.
They began to return personnel. To recruit former officers (whom the sailors did not finish off) and repair ships. The formation of a pillbox began - an active detachment of ships of the Baltic Fleet.
By March 1919, it included two dreadnought battleships, a dodreadnought battleship, six destroyers, seven submarines and two minesags. Rear Admiral Dmitriev, a hero of the Russo-Japanese War, was appointed to command the detachment. And the chief of staff with him was Lev Haller, who had previously commanded the battleship "Andrew the First-Called".
In a word, the fleet was revived within a year (by the spring of 1920).
The only problem was that in the spring of 1919 they had to fight with what they had.
The fighting in March-June 1919
By the spring, the British had strengthened their detachment by transferring a flotilla of submarines and a floating base. The group of cruisers also changed, which immediately affected.
On May 13, the cruiser "Curacao" was blown up by a mine. And he was taken to England, losing the steering wheel on the way. Fighting on land was already on the territory of Russia.
And the British were not particularly eager to fight:
“The situation and the nature of the intervention instantly change as soon as the Russian whites begin to demand from the British offensive actions against the Bolsheviks.
Here, in front of inquiries in parliament and wide publicity, you can’t get out of it, so the English squadron becomes lethargic, the English admiral begins to cunning and at the right moment leaves the side without a shot."
Since England officially did not fight with Russia.
The pillbox was not much better with success.
Thus, an attempt to fire at the Estonians and Yudenich's troops with "Andrew the First-Called" ended with the refusal of five boilers and a return to the base. Most of the activity was shown by the destroyers.
In the spring, two battles between Russian and British destroyers took place without decisive results.
The first time on May 18, four British destroyers pursued the Russian "Gabriel", firing 500 shells at it and not hitting never (hello to those who like to laugh about the accuracy of the "Varyag"). But he himself slapped one of the British.
In the second battle on May 31, the destroyer Azard retreated to board her older brother, the battleship Petropavlovsk. And the destroyer Walker, which rushed after him, received a Russian shell from 47 cables, as a kind of explanation that the British exaggerated the problems of the Baltic Fleet.
And on June 4, this fact was brought to the enlightened navigators in more detail.
The attempt to attack all the same Noviks with the L-55 submarine ended for the British with a miss, an attack by Russian destroyers and an explosion in their minefield. Subsequently, the boat was raised and became the only major trophy of the Russian fleet of the technical era, taken from the battle.
The Russian fleet was gaining momentum. And, despite the additions from the British:
“Since the end of June, reinforcements have begun to arrive, in particular, the cruiser Calydon, four light cruisers, the Vindictive airplane, on board which 22 seaplanes were based.
By the end of July, there were already 38 ships of the Royal Navy in the Baltic.
And the provision of bases in Finland.
On June 10, all the same "Gabriel" and "Azard" attacked the British destroyers in the roads at night. A fire broke out on one of the British ships.
Ours went unnoticed. The destroyers of the bunker (who did more than all his other ships) were commanded by yesterday's midshipmen of the RIF Nesvitsky and Sevastyanov.
And two young hooligans had a full blast.
Looking ahead, Sevastyanov will not survive this war. And Nesvitsky will die in 1945 as an honored admiral …
Kronstadt wake-up call
In the same summer, a new factor appears in the theater of operations - the British replenished their forces with torpedo boats.
Their first victim was the cruiser Oleg. Alas, there were not enough RIF warrant officers for everyone. And on "Oleg" they did not even understand what had happened, attributing everything to the attack of the submarine.
There were also a number of small episodes with the participation of TKA of the type CMB 40 feet, but they were not given importance.
And on August 18, 1919, something happened that went down in history as the Kronstadt wake-up call:
“It was supposed to use 7 torpedo boats of the 55-foot type to attack the ships of the Red Fleet. and 1 boat of the 40-foot type, which arrived earlier, and aviation to support the attack, consisting of 12 aircraft based on the Vindictive airplane …
Torpedo boat No. 1, acting in accordance with the order and not encountering booms on its way, burst into the harbor and, finding the Pamyat Azov floating base, which was at the Surgin dock, fired two torpedoes at it, one of which hit …
Boat number 2, which burst into the harbor, immediately behind boat number 1, attacked the battleship "Andrey Pervozvanny", which was standing at the wall of Ust-Rogatka.
Judging by the explosion characteristic of the hit, the boat retreated, firing machine-gun fire at the ships, and then left the harbor.
Boat number 4, passing through the gate, lost the commander and 2 sailors killed."
The same Sevastyanov and his "Gabriel" saved the fleet. Fighting off an air attack, the ship opened fire on the English TKA:
"On the British side, the loss boiled down to the following: the artillery fire from the Gabriel sunk 3 torpedo boats and one exploded when approaching the forts and soon sank."
Bottom line. Having lost four boats, the British damaged the pre-dreadnought "Andrew the First-Called" (the ancient "Memory of Azov" should not be counted for a warship converted into a floating base).
One of the boats, by the way, was raised.
On its basis, the Soviet TKA "G-5" were designed.
To summarize: the brilliantly conceived combined attack of the Air Force and TKA of the best fleet in the world brilliantly failed, thanks to the 27-year-old midshipman.
"Andrey" was not restored. And there was no need. Having two dreadnoughts against the light cruisers of the British did not have to spend money on an obsolete ship.
Last battles
The war, meanwhile, went on as usual.
And the parties exchanged losses on mines. We lost a minesweeper, the British lost a destroyer.
The British carried out air raids on Kronstadt, incurring losses, but without much success (do not count them as a success - eleven civilian casualties in the Summer Garden of the city).
We continued to plant mines and carry out submarine exits, which yielded results.
On August 31, the submarine "Panther" under the command of a young lieutenant of the RIF Bakhtin sank the destroyer "Vittoria" of the Royal Navy, opening an account of the victories of Soviet submariners. Bakhtin was 25 years old in 1919 …
And then there was a disaster.
“On the night of October 21, the Baltic Fleet suffered a heavy loss.
Destroyers "Gabriel", "Azard", "Svoboda" and "Konstantin", which left for the Koporsky Bay to carry out a mine-barrage operation, swooped down on British mines.
"Gabriel", "Svoboda" and "Constantine" were blown up by mines and sank.
Only Azard managed to avoid the explosion and return to Kronstadt.
484 people were killed, including the entire command staff of the sunken destroyers.
Among the dead was the commander of "Gabriel" V. V. Sevastyanov ".
A disaster caused by dizziness from the success of the pillbox command.
Still, a night mine setting in the conditions of that time was a frank gamble, which could not have ended in a different way.
The last combat episode was an attempt to scare the Russian fleet with a large-caliber Erebus monitor. But it didn't work out to get anywhere. And the return fire forced the British to retreat.
Then the British quietly cleared out.
And in December 1919, the fighting on land ended.
Ended up in a draw. Petrograd held out, but the Baltics were lost for 20 years.
The sea is also a draw. Still, taking into account the state of the Baltic Fleet at the end of 1918, it is strongly in our favor.
And they forgot the war.
From among her heroes in the current Russian Federation, only Bakhtin was erected. And that was not for the battles-victories, but for the fact that he served on Solovki in the 1920s.
The names of Nesvitsky and Sevastyanov, which would become the pride of any fleet and showed that even on worn-out ships and with anarchist crews, not prone to discipline, Russian sailors can beat the Lady of the Seas in the tail and in the mane.
But history was sacrificed for the sake of politics. And the exploits of those sailors (for whom there were neither red nor white, but there was Russia) were first ideologized in Soviet times (they were not communists, and fought not for the International with the World Revolution, but for the Russian land) and are not particularly remembered during Russian times, because partnership and sworn Bolsheviks.
And I would like to see the frigates "Sevastyanov" and "Nesvitsky". And SSBN "Lieutenant Bakhtin".
And rightly so. And thus the "partners" would be pleased to remember, probably …
