The Gotland battle in Russian journalism occupies a very little honorable place. At best, the commander of the Russian forces, Mikhail Koronatovich Bakhirev, is mildly criticized for being overly cautious and lacking a pronounced offensive spirit. In the worst case, this operation of the Baltic Imperial Fleet is awarded with such epithets that are already very close to the battle of the market. For example, the famous translator of foreign historical sources into Russian and the author of a number of books on the history of the navy, Alexander Gennadievich Bolnyh, in his book The Tragedy of Errors, devoted an entire chapter to the Gotland battle, giving it an extremely “telling” title:
"Day of Shame, or" Victory "off the island of Gotland on July 2, 1915"
What happened off the island of Gotland? In short, the situation was as follows: the command of the Baltic Fleet decided to carry out a sortie of light forces with the aim of shelling the German city of Memel and sent a large group of cruisers to the southern part of the Baltic. The fog prevented the fulfillment of the task, but radio intelligence discovered the presence of German ships in the sea. Rear Admiral M. K. Bakhirev was able to intercept the German detachment - against two Russian armored and two large armored cruisers, the Germans had only a light Augsburg, a minelayer Albatross and three old destroyers. A battle ensued, as a result of which the Augsburg and the destroyers were able to retreat, and the heavily damaged Albatross threw itself on stones in neutral Swedish waters. Then the Russian detachment met with the covering forces - the armored cruiser Roon and the light Lubeck. Possessing, in essence, superior forces, M. K. Bakhirev did not impose a decisive battle on the enemy, but preferred to call the powerful armored cruiser Rurik, while he himself retreated. "Rurik" managed to intercept the German detachment, but the matter ended in even greater embarrassment - despite the fact that the Russian cruiser was much stronger than both German ones, it did not achieve any success. "Rurik" never hit the enemy and as a result, having received minor damage, left the battle and did not pursue the enemy.
The Battle of Gotland was the first and last somewhat serious clash between the Russian and German fleets on the high seas. According to its results, the Russians did not lose a single ship, but they themselves forced the enemy minelayer Albatross to wash ashore. It seems to be a victory - but given the overall superiority in the forces involved in this operation, many historians believe that the losses of the German fleet should have increased significantly. The most common opinion about this battle today is that the Russian artillerymen fired very badly, the Russian commanders showed incompetence, and, in addition, they were also afraid of the enemy, as a result, the Baltic Fleet missed an excellent opportunity to inflict a heavy defeat on the Germans. A. G. Sick summarizes the results of the Gotland battle:
“Let's look at the facts alone. For more than an hour, 4 cruisers shot at a defenseless minelayer and could not sink it. "Augsburg" evaded combat, and 88-mm guns "Albatross" can be ignored. In fact, it was shooting practice at a target, and the artillerymen of the Baltic Fleet showed what they were worth. Admiral Bakhirev, having 4 cruisers, runs cowardly, dodging a fight with the Roon. The shootout between "Rurik" and "Lubeck", which is 20 times inferior to him in the weight of an onboard salvo (!!!), ends with damage to the "Rurik". I am ready to bet anything that in the Royal Navy after such a "victory" the entire command staff of the squadron - both the admiral and the commanders of the ships - would go to court. In fact, this "victory" put an end to all claims of the ships of the Baltic Fleet for some role in this war. The enemy no longer took them into account or feared them, their own high command no longer counted on them."
In the series of articles offered to your attention, we will try to figure out what actually happened near the island of Gotland on a foggy summer day on June 19, 1915 (according to the old style, which differs from the current calendar by 13 days). Let's start, as always, from afar - because in order to understand certain actions of the Russian and German commanders in the Gotland battle, it is necessary to understand what was the situation and the balance of forces in the Baltic in the summer of 1915, as well as the goals and objectives that were set in front of him the German and Russian fleets.
Of course, the Royal Navy remained the main problem for the Kaiserlichmarine, so the Germans concentrated their main forces in the North Sea. In the Baltic, they kept only a small detachment, the basis of which was already obsolete warships, whose value in operations against the British was small, if not negligible. Of the modern ships in the Baltic, the Germans had only a few light cruisers and destroyers. Accordingly, the main tasks of the Germans in 1915 were demonstration actions and support of the coastal flank of the army. The first was necessary in order to prevent the active actions of the Russian fleet, which, despite the fact that its core was made up of obsolete ships, nevertheless significantly exceeded the forces that the Germans constantly kept in the Baltic. It was assumed that the active actions of a few German ships would force the Russians to think more about defense and not carry out operations outside the Gulf of Finland and Riga - at this stage the Germans were quite satisfied. As for the second task, the German troops approached Libau and the Germans were interested in capturing this port city in order to base their ships there. Therefore, in the spring of 1915, the German fleet conducted systematic hostilities, mining the waters at the throat of the Gulf of Finland, invading the Gulf of Riga with light forces for demonstration operations, but most importantly, they organized systematic support for their troops near Libava, not sparing for this the ships of the 4th reconnaissance group (light cruisers and destroyers) and the 4th battleship squadron (old battleships) for cover, which the latter carried out while in Kiel. In the end Libava was captured, the next target of the Germans was Vindava. The Russian 5th army in Courland could not hold back the German troops and gradually rolled back in the direction of Riga. Accordingly, the coastal flank of the armies gradually moved towards the Gulf of Riga.
The Russians were stronger in the Baltic, but did not carry out any major operations. In addition to the defense of the Gulf of Finland and Riga, the Baltic Fleet laid minefields near Libava and Vindava, Russian and British submarines constantly went to sea. But the surface ships showed a certain passivity, although the 5th and 6th destroyer battalions, together with the Okun submarine, quite successfully “crumpled” the bombing of Vindava, undertaken by the detachment as part of the coastal defense battleship Beowulf, light cruisers Lubeck and Augsburg ", As well as three destroyers and six minesweepers. The first brigade of cruisers went to lay mines at Libau and had a short night skirmish with the German cruiser "Munich", which, however, did not lead to anything.
This inaction of the Baltic Imperial Navy was due to three factors. The first of them was that despite the presence of the signal book of the German cruiser Magdeburg that died on the stones and the ability to read German radiograms, the command never knew what exactly the German fleet had in the Baltic. It is well known that the Germans at any moment could transfer many times superior forces along the Kiel Canal from the North Sea to the Baltic.
The second factor is the absence of modern high-speed ships in the Russian fleet, with the exception of one single oil destroyer, Novik. Absolutely all Baltic cruisers, from "Diana" to new-built armored cruisers such as "Bayan" and "Rurik", had a speed of up to 21 knots. Thus, they lacked the speed to evade combat with modern dreadnoughts and, of course, they did not have the combat power and protection to resist the latter. In other words, each exit of Russian cruisers to the sea was a game with death.
And, finally, the third factor is the unavailability of the Sevastopol battleship brigade. Formally, all four ships of this type entered service in the fall-winter of 1914, but they did not have time to complete the prescribed course of combat training before the freezing of the Gulf of Finland (February 1915). Having resumed combat training at the end of April, they were still not ready "for a campaign and battle" at the beginning of the summer of 1915. I must say that von Essen believed that after gaining full combat readiness, Sevastopoli would allow him to conduct active offensive operations at sea … He counted on leading them out to sea and using them to cover the operations of the old cruisers. But while the unfortunate situation was developing - Sevastopoli could not be sent into battle due to their unavailability, and the old battleships of the Baltic Fleet - Slava, Tsarevich, Emperor Paul I and Andrew the First-Called could not be sent into battle either, because that the dreadnoughts are not yet ready, it was they who provided the defense of the central mine-artillery position, which protected the throat of the Gulf of Finland. All that the fleet commander managed to do was in February 1915 to "knock out" from Headquarters permission to use two dodreadnought battleships outside the Gulf of Finland.
Unfortunately, on May 7, 1915, the Baltic Fleet suffered a terrible loss - the commander of the Baltic Fleet, von Essen, died of croupous pneumonia. He was supposed to be replaced by an experienced and proactive officer - Ludwig Berngardovich Kerber, but he was "pushed" - "spy mania" and intolerance towards people with German surnames began in the country. Against brother L. B. Cerberus, completely absurd charges were brought forward, which were later dropped, but the admiral was compromised by this. On May 14, Vice Admiral Vasily Alexandrovich Kanin was appointed to the post of the commander, who was significantly inferior to N. O. Essen and L. B. Kerberu.
Nevertheless, almost the first thing that V. A. Kanin, having assumed the position of the Comflot, asked the Stavka for permission to use the battleships of the Sevastopol class for offensive operations, but he was refused. However, in fairness, it should be pointed out that V. A. Kanin about "Sevastopol", apparently, had a demonstrative, image character - in 1916, when all restrictions on the use of the latest dreadnoughts were lifted by the Stavka, he never once used them to cover the active operations of cruisers on the high seas. On the other side, V. A. Kanin obviously understood that it would be impossible for him to avoid comparison with the untimely deceased Nikolai Ottovich von Essen, and that in order to increase his reputation he should do something, some kind of operation that would strengthen his faith in him as a capable commander.
This is the environment in which the planning of the raid on Memel was carried out, and it happened like this. The plan of the operation did not originate in the higher command hierarchies, but, one might say, "in the field", more specifically: in the department of Rear Admiral A. I. Nepenin, head of the Baltic Sea communications service. This service, in fact, was a radio intelligence service for the Baltic Fleet. And so, on June 17, 1915 (we will talk about the exact date later), the communications service reported to the fleet command the text of the intercepted German radio message, from which it followed that all German warships were returning to their bases, and even the destroyers were being replaced by improvised minesweepers - armed trawlers. The reconnaissance report of the headquarters of the Baltic Fleet No. 11-12 (from June 17 to July 7) in the part "Intentions of the enemy" read:
“On the 17th (June) it became definitely known that all the ships that took part in the Windavian operation returned to Libau on the morning of the 16th … There was good reason to think that reconnaissance would not be intense in the coming days. Comparing this basis with the intelligence report about the impending … imperial review of the fleet in Kiel, where up to forty ships had already been assembled by the 15th, it could be assumed that the Germans, completely ignoring our fleet in recent years …, would send there all the best ships, placing the protection of the coast from Danzig to Libau by comparatively insignificant forces."
Thus, it became clear that the Baltic Fleet would be able to use its relatively slow-moving ships to conduct an operation off the German coast, practically without fear of interception. And so the senior flag officer of the operational unit of the headquarters of the commander of the Baltic Fleet, Lieutenant A. A. Sakovich and the second (radiotelegraph) flagship mine officer (in fact, an officer of radio-technical intelligence), Senior Lieutenant I. I. Rengarten got the idea:
"To quickly use the created situation in order to inflict at least a moral blow on the enemy, which at the same time can somewhat raise the mood in our rear."
Thus, initially, this operation had a moral, not a military significance, which, however, should not be underestimated. The fact is that public opinion in Germany was increasingly dominated by anxiety, and there were many reasons for this. First, in spite of all pre-war plans and no matter how the high military command was striving for this, the country could not avoid a war on two fronts, which, obviously, it should have avoided by all means. Secondly, there was no prospect of a quick victory at least on one of the fronts. The "lightning-fast" campaign in France obviously did not go well, and there was no need to expect quick results, and the hope of defeating the Russians in 1915 faded much faster than the March snow. Despite a series of heavy defeats and the beginning of the "great retreat", the armies of the Russian Empire were not defeated at all and painfully "snapped" at every opportunity. The Austro-German troops were enough to crowd out the Russian regiments, but not enough to achieve decisive results, and there was nowhere to take new troops. Thirdly, (and this was, perhaps, more important than the first and the second), although the famine was still very far away, the first problems with food began in Germany precisely in 1915. Our agents in Germany repeatedly reported that:
"This moment must be used for the actions of our fleet, at least purely advertising, in order to show the" German crowd "the incorrect information that Russia will not be able to do anything more, in particular, the Russian fleet of the Baltic Sea"
In general, it can be stated that the time of the imperial review in Kiel, at which the Kaiser himself was supposed to be present, was the best fit for such an action.
According to A. A. Sakovich and I. I. The Rengarten was to be bombed by the cruiser together with the Rurik, the most powerful ship of this class in our Baltic Fleet. The lieutenants proposed Kolberg (today Kolobrzeg) as an object of attack. This city, located on the coast of East Prussia, as will be shown below, was very well suited for the action they planned.
With their plan, the lieutenants turned to the flag-captain for the operational unit, the captain of the 1st rank A. V. Kolchak (the same one), and he fully approved of him, noting only that the object of the attack requires additional discussion. Further, the officers turned with this project to the chief of staff of the fleet (in his memoirs A. A. Sakovich mentions that at that time L. B. dreadnoughts), and he, too, praised the plan and felt that it absolutely and urgently needed to be implemented.
This is how, following the chain of superior officers and earning their approval, the project of the attack on Kohlberg came to the commander of the fleet, V. A. Kanin. A meeting was immediately assembled, in which, in addition to the command of the fleet, the flag officer, the chief of staff and the entire operational unit took part.
But Vasily Alexandrovich was cautious. First, he considered the raid on Kohlberg too dangerous, and changed Kohlberg to Memel (now Klaipeda). Generally speaking, Memel is a Lithuanian city, and during its existence it changed many masters, but since 1871 it was listed as the northernmost city of the proclaimed German Empire.
Nevertheless, Kohlberg was much better suited for the attack, and A. A. Sakovich:
“Kohlberg was elected because Swinemunde, not to mention Kiel, was too far and strongly fortified, Neufarwasser, also fortified, was supposed to have minefields, and Memel was too close and did not matter. Kohlberg was, firstly, quite remote from the Gulf of Finland and, secondly, was a rather significant point on the Pomeranian coast, why a strike on it, naturally, would stimulate the large scale and courage of the Russian command, which had been passive until that time."
In addition, V. A. Kanin categorically refused to use "Rurik" in this operation, not wanting to risk the best cruiser of the Baltic Fleet.
It must be said that such decisions characterize V. A. Kanin is far from the best side. Below we present a map, on which, for the convenience of the dear reader, Kiel is highlighted with a black circle, Kohlberg - in red, and Neufarwasser and Memel - in blue.
The change in the goal of the operation reduced the route to it from about 370 to 300 nautical miles, and this is not the distance for which it was worth giving up Kohlberg in favor of the much less significant Memel. In addition, one glance at the map showed that the ships from Kiel, even if there were German battle cruisers in it, had no chance of intercepting the Russian detachment after the shelling of Kohlberg - almost 200 miles from it to Kiel by sea. In fact, if anything could threaten the cruisers of the Baltic Fleet, it was some German naval forces that remained in Libau or Neufarwasser. But, being in Libau, in any case, they would have been between the Russian ships and the Gulf of Finland, the choice of Memel instead of Kohlberg did not affect this in any way. And to intercept the Russians from Neufarwasser, if they went to shoot at Kohlberg … Theoretically it was possible, but practically - almost unrealistic, because for this it would be necessary to have warships under steam, in a three-minute readiness to leave, then there would still be some- that's a chance. At the same time, in fact, the German ships that left Neufarwasser on June 19, 1915 to help the ships of Karf took four hours just to separate the couples - by this time the Russian detachment that fired at Kohlberg would have already been halfway to the island of Gotland.
And in any case, neither in Libau, nor in Neufarwasser could one expect anything more terrible than the German armored cruisers.
However, for the 1st brigade of the Baltic Fleet cruisers, they also posed a serious threat, because individually they were much stronger than the Bayan and Admiral Makarov, not to mention the armored Bogatyr and Oleg. If suddenly there were three such ships in Libau: "Roon", "Prince Heinrich" and "Prince Adalbert", then they could not only intercept the Russian squadron, but also destroy it, or at least inflict heavy losses on it. In order to avoid this, it was precisely necessary to include the "Rurik" in the squad, because for this ship, designed after the Russian-Japanese war, any German armored cruiser (at least in theory) was nothing more than " legal prey”. Comparing the tactical and technical characteristics of the "Rurik" and the German armored cruisers, we see that even two German ships were hardly equal to one "Rurik".
Summarizing the above, it turned out that the only threat to the ships participating in the raid was the German armored cruisers in Libau (if they were there, which no one knew for sure). The inclusion of "Rurik" in the Russian detachment would have completely neutralized this threat, but it was precisely this V. A. Kanin did not want to do it! Fearing for the fate of his most powerful cruiser, he put the ships of the 1st cruiser brigade at completely unnecessary risk. The rest of the officers of the headquarters and the operational department understood all this perfectly, and tried to dissuade the newly-made fleet commander from such rash decisions. The meeting lasted five hours and ended only at 2 am! However, to "persuade" V. A. Kanin succeeded only partially. This is how A. A. describes this meeting. Sakovich:
“Until 2 am, even at times crossing the line of command, the initiative group was fought with the support of the chief of staff and the flag-captain against the commander of the fleet, and one could think that the victory would remain with the commander, who, as always, considered the proposed operation from the point of view of possible failure and the resulting unpleasant consequences for him personally.
A blind accident tipped the scales in the opposite direction. Rengarten, known for his self-control, seeing that everything was crumbling, lost patience and said some harsh phrase to the next sad remark of the commander. The result was unexpected. Did Kanin understand at that moment what they were trying to prove to him for 5 hours in a row, or was he simply tired of the lengthy discussion, but he suddenly conceded with regard to “Rurik”, while saying a very characteristic phrase for him: “Well, okay, since Ivan Ivanovich (Rengarten) is angry, I'll give you Rurik. " He still left Memel as the object of the operation, which, as already mentioned, significantly reduced the integrity and significance of the original operational concept."
Nevertheless, the decision was made and the purpose of the operation was formulated as follows:
"Taking advantage of the concentration of the German fleet in Kiel before the imperial review, make a surprise attack on Memel and through vigorous bombardment influence public opinion in Germany, which will be especially sensitive to this due to the coincidence of this review with the active performance of our fleet, which is considered by the enemy to be completely passive."
I would like to note an amusing incident in the sources: for example, D. Yu. Kozlov. in the "Memel operation of the Baltic Sea Fleet" indicates (and we talked about this earlier) that the command of the Baltic Fleet received information about the return of all ships to the bases on June 17, 1915 (old style), at the same time its description and memoirs A. A. Sakovich lead to the following:
1) A. A. Sakovich and I. I. Rengarten received a telegram from the Germans and began work on drawing up a plan on June 17, and on the same day they presented a draft plan to their leadership.
2) At 21.00 on the same day, the meeting began with V. A. Kanin.
3) The meeting lasted 5 hours and ended at 02.00, i.e. at 2 o'clock in the morning.
It seems to follow from this that the decision to carry out the operation was made on 18 June. But why, then, the same D. Yu. Kozlov points out that, according to the revised plan of operation, the ships were supposed to go to sea on June 17-18 (retroactively?), And that the detachment was to gather at the Vinkov bank at about 05.00, i.e. just three hours after the end of the meeting? And then the respected author informs that M. K. Bakhirev, the detachment commander, received an order from the fleet commander on June 17, and bunkering (loading of coal) before the operation was completed on June 17 at 17.52?
In the opinion of the author of this article, an unfortunate mistake occurred - the German telegram was decoded not on June 17, but on June 16, then everything converges - the results of its analysis are included in the intelligence report for June 17 - July 7, for the development of A. A. Sakovich and I. I. The Rengarten are not starting on June 17, but on June 16, the five-hour meeting at which it was decided to carry out the operation took place on the night of June 16-17, and starting from the early morning of June 17, preparations are underway for the ships to leave. in the sea. If we assume that there is no mistake in the sources, then we will have to admit that two lieutenants, having invented something for themselves, managed to give all the necessary orders for the operation even before they reported their projects to their superiors, and even forged them as if they come from the fleet.
Accordingly, we will focus on the fact that the decision to conduct the operation was made on the night of June 16-17. But before proceeding to the description of the plan of the operation, let us also mention … the ethical side of it.
The fact is that A. G. Patients, commenting on the purpose of the Russian operation, writes:
“Curious wording, too much like the headlines in British newspapers after Hipper's bombardment of Scarborough and Whitby in December 1914. But what is interesting, was it possible that Vice-Admiral Kanin was seduced by the laurels of Hipper, who in England after these raids was not called anything other than a child killer?"
However, there is a nuance here. The fact is that the raid on Whitby and Scarborough looked like this - "Derflinger" and "Von der Tann", emerging from a strip of fog, lay parallel to the coastline in some 10 cables from it - and, going from Whitby to Scarborough opened fire. At the same time, the Germans fired precisely at the cities - both of them are medium-sized settlements, there were no ports (except for those of berths for yachts and fishing vessels) or military facilities were not there. In other words, the Germans deliberately struck at the civilian "non-combatants."
At the same time, the Russians were not going to shoot at the city, but were planning to shell the port facilities. According to A. K. Weiss:
“All the commanders of the cruisers were very unhappy with this order … … it was necessary to fire at the naval port, but there were also civilians, wives and children, and we could not reconcile with this. Despite all the protests of the commanders, I still had to go … Then the commanders decided that we would only shoot at port establishments, but this was only a deal with our conscience, and yet everyone understood that the shells could also hit living quarters”
It is possible that for many of us, whose perception of the ethics of military action was formed through the hellish prism of World War II with its countless burned down villages and cities, all this will seem like some kind of posturing, but … Then there was a different time, and in any case an artillery strike on buildings a military port is fundamentally different from shelling residential areas.
To be continued!
