The effective pursuit of the retreating Russians was out of the question. On 19 October the Admiralstab ordered operations against the Russian fleet to be broken off and for the battleships to return to the North Sea as soon as possible. The Russians also left the gulf. On the afternoon of the 19th, Bakhirev led the Russian naval forces through the northern exit of Moon Sound into the Gulf of Finland and behind the “Forward Position,” which the Russians now prepared to defend. They left the two British C-class boats behind in the Gulf of Riga, and on the 20th C.32 attempted to attack the netlayer Eskimo, only to be badly damaged by the escorting destroyers. The submarine was run ashore on the 21st near Pernau and blown up.78 The Russian mines continued to cause losses in the sweeping that followed the operation. Furthermore, on 29 October, the dreadnought Markgraf was damaged by a mine, probably torn loose by a storm, while leaving the gulf.
During the struggle for the Baltic Islands, the Russians once again appealed to the British for assistance. The Russians feared this was the beginning of a German offensive directed at Revel and Helsingfors and, with so much of the German fleet apparently in the Baltic, wondered if it might be possible for the British fleet to undertake an offensive. The geographical realities that effectively isolated the Baltic had not changed. Admiral Oliver informed the Russian naval attaché that the British sent several squadrons cruising in the North Sea with a view toward stirring German counteractivity, but that the extensive minefields prevented the British fleet from a close approach to the German coast and bad weather had been preventing aircraft from operating and British minesweepers from working. It did not matter what proportion of the High Sea Fleet was in the Baltic, because the defense of German bases rested on mines and heavy artillery. Once again the British pointed out that even if they succeeded in getting their fleet into the Baltic, they could not maintain its long lines of communications, and the Russians could not supply it.79
Although Operation Albion had ended in a German victory, it had not been free of cost. A destroyer, three torpedo boats, and eight of the minesweeping and mine-hunting force had been sunk, and vessels damaged by mines included three dreadnoughts and two destroyers. Other craft were damaged by gunfire or grounding. The army losses were relatively light, barely 400 men, and the Germans had captured more than 20,000 Russians. The Russians lost the Slava and Grom, along with the British C.32, the Grazhdanin, and Bayan, and two gunboats and three destroyers suffered damage.80
A noted historian described Operation Albion, in which the German navy used no fewer than eleven of its most powerful capital ships, as “a classic case of overkill,” intended primarily as a morale booster.81 The question should be put to the German high command rather than the navy. Was it really necessary to take the islands? Once the decision to do so had been made, the navy had little option but to act as it did. The numbers of troops involved—a reinforced division—were certainly not excessive by World War I standards. Once they were committed to the hazards of an amphibious operation, however, the Germans faced a situation best described by General Tschischwitz, the former chief of staff of the expeditionary corps: “The experience of Moon Sound amply proves that one can not dispense with battleships so long as the enemy uses them. It is impossible to conduct a naval war with torpedo-boats and submarines alone when the enemy can effectively bring to bear the fire from long range guns.”82
Furthermore, there was always the problem of the fleet-in-being. The Russians had four dreadnoughts and two modernized predreadnoughts at Helsingfors. With hindsight, there was little chance those forlorn ships, unkept and with politicized and undisciplined crews, would ever have put to sea, or have stood much of a chance in battle, given the state of training. But the Germans could not take the chance those six capital ships—or at least some of them—would not eventually intervene. The ratio in capital ships would then be 11 to 6, and with two German battleships damaged by mines at the beginning of operations, the German margin of superiority was reduced to 9 to 6. Of course the German ships were qualitatively far superior to their Russian opponents, but the numbers are given to show how an apparently overwhelming German lead could melt away. The Germans actually had great difficulty bringing their superior strength to bear given the geographical realities, difficult hydrographic conditions, and the Russian tactic of fighting behind mine defenses coordinated with coastal batteries. Under these circumstances minesweepers became as valuable as capital ships, and the Germans admitted they did not have as many as they needed. However, the exercise of naval power in this operation required both sweepers and capital ships; one could not do without the other. It was in all respects a combined operation.
There was a tendency for some Germans to compare their success in the Baltic with the Anglo-French failure at the Dardanelles. They stress that the Russian batteries were more modern than the Turkish, and the Russians had more than two and a half years to perfect their mine defenses. But the analogy is misleading. The Russian army at this stage could in no way be compared as far as fighting capacity is concerned with the Turkish forces at Gallipoli, and General Tschischwitz added a cautionary note: Albion could not be used as a model for future operations, for the Russian army and navy were “no longer a full-fledged adversary,” and the Germans took chances in their presence they would not have risked with an enemy who was a proper match.83
The operations in the Gulf of Riga marked the effective end of the Baltic Fleet’s participation in the war. On 7 November the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd and quickly began negotiations with the Central Powers to take Russia out of the war. On 15 December an armistice was concluded on the eastern front. The Allies, particularly the British, now had to worry about what would happen to the Russian fleet. Would the ships fall into the hands of the Germans? What of the British submarines in the Baltic? There was a wide spectrum of proposals, generally impracticable, which ranged from having the British submarines attempt to torpedo the big ships in Helsingfors to inducing so-called loyal officers and men to try to at least get the valuable destroyers out of the Baltic.84 According to the armistice terms, the Russian fleet, in theory, was secured from seizure by the Germans.85 Would the Germans respect those terms? The problem became acute in the winter of 1918 when the Germans resumed their advance in the east in order to compel the Bolshevik government to sign the peace treaty. The Russians gave in, and the Peace of Brest-Litovsk was concluded on 3 March. The Germans also intervened in the civil war that had broken out in Finland between the White and Red forces. In fact the German navy took the initiative before the political decision to intervene had been reached. There were some in the navy, notably Rear Admiral von Trotha, the chief of staff of the High Sea Fleet, who bluntly recommended seizing the Baltic Fleet as “war booty.”
On 28 February 1918, Rear Admiral Hugo Meurer, commanding a special division including the dreadnoughts Westfalen and Rheinland (later joined by the Posen), sailed with approximately 1,000 troops to establish a base in the Åland Islands. The Swedes also had a strong interest in the islands, and there were approximately 700 Swedish troops at Eckerö preserving law and order against the threat of the Red Guards—along with the Swedish coast-defense ships Sverige, Oskar II, and Thor. The Swedes had been unpleasantly surprised by the arrival of the Germans, and Meurer had a certain amount of difficulty in reaching an agreement on 6 March with the Swedish commander, Vice Admiral Count Ehrensvärd, about Swedish and German zones of occupation.86
Ice had greatly hampered the movements of the Germans, who now turned their attention to the Finnish mainland. On 2 March the kaiser authorized sending the Baltic Division (approximately 9,000 men) under the command of General von der Goltz to join the Finnish White Army. On 5 April the German force, convoyed by Meurer’s three dreadnoughts, three cruisers, and numerous escorts, landed at Hangö on the southwest tip of Finland. The Russians did not resist, although they scuttled three AG-class submarines, a supply ship, and a patrol boat to prevent them from falling into German hands. In the next few days the
navy also transported a brigade of 3,000 men from Revel to a point on the Finnish coast approximately 100 kilometers east of Helsingfors.
The seizure of the Russian Baltic Fleet was not official German policy, and Meurer negotiated an agreement with the Russians at Hangö on 5 April whereby the Soviets agreed not to destroy the port facilities and ships at Helsingfors and to disarm all Russian ships in the harbor. The Germans, in turn, agreed to permit the Russians to move the ships to Kronstadt if ice conditions permitted. The Admiralstab still placed its priorities on the U-boat war, and on 8 April the kaiser ordered Meurer’s special division to be disbanded and its ships returned to the High Sea Fleet. Meurer’s ships reached Helsingfors on 12 April where German sailors joined in the heavy fighting between the Red and White forces. The German navy, despite the lack of opposition at sea, paid a certain price for the intervention in Finland. The battleship Rheinland, which had remained in the vicinity of the Åland Islands, ran on the rocks in foggy weather on 11 April while returning to Danzig to coal. The Germans managed to get the ship off the rocks and back to Kiel, but she was so badly damaged the Germans could not use her at sea again.
The Russians at Helsingfors must have suspected that possession is nine-tenths of the law and worked feverishly to move the Baltic Fleet to Kronstadt. Although hampered by the ice, they managed to get all but a very few ships of little fighting value away before the Germans arrived. They used icebreakers to tow those ships whose engines would not function. The crossing through the ice was particularly difficult for small ships, and the destroyers took eight to nine days instead of the normal ten to twelve hours. Some of the destroyers were also damaged by the ice.87
The British did the only possible thing with their submarines: the surviving boats, four E class and three C class, were scuttled just before the Germans arrived. Lieutenant Downie, commanding the detachment, overcame the Russian reluctance to supply icebreakers by threatening to blow the boats up in the harbor.88 Naval operations in the Baltic ended until after the Armistice.
8
THE BLACK SEA
THE GERMAN AND TURKISH CHALLENGE: 1914–1916
The World War I operations in the Black Sea are not well known in the English-speaking world. There is sometimes a tendency to assume that because the Goeben—one of the kaiser’s newest, fastest, and most powerful warships—had played such an important role in the series of events that drew the Turks into the war, the Turco-German forces enjoyed domination of the Black Sea. This view is probably reinforced by the events of 1918 when, after Russia dropped out of the war, German forces penetrated deeply into southern Russia, occupied the Russian naval base at Sebastopol, and succeeded in getting their hands on a portion of the Black Sea Fleet. The Allies were genuinely concerned the Germans and their allies would succeed in putting some of these ships in commission and break out into the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, the view of the Black Sea colored by the events of 1918 is quite erroneous. It was actually the Russians who enjoyed mastery for most of the war. The Black Sea Fleet was both more active and more successful than the Baltic Fleet. This is hardly surprising given the weakness of Turkey at sea, which the Goeben episode has tended to obscure. Before the disorders following the Russian Revolution slowed naval activity and the Bolsheviks concluded the disastrous Peace of Brest-Litovsk, the Russian Black Sea Fleet had disturbed Turkish communications at sea, executed ambitious amphibious operations on the seaward flank of the Caucasus front—and were planning others—and made innovative use of naval aviation from seaplane carrier groups roaming the Turkish coast.
The Black Sea had been a backwater for the Russians. Their primary concern once Germany became the most likely and dangerous enemy was obviously the Baltic. Here their capital was vulnerable to an enemy naval force breaking into the Gulf of Finland. Nevertheless, the war plans of 1907 and 1908 had called for an offensive stance by their fleet with the objective of blockading the Bosphorus and preventing an enemy force from breaking into the Black Sea. By 1911 the Russian naval command recognized that its superiority over the Turkish navy was “insignificant.” The Black Sea Fleet had only two battleships completed since the Russo-Japanese War and the Turks were likely to have allies. In 1912 the naval staff concluded a permanent blockade of the Bosphorus would be impossible. The likelihood that the Turks would obtain two powerful dreadnoughts by the summer of 1914 initiated a crisis. The Black Sea Fleet would now remain on the defensive. The four dreadnoughts of the Russian naval building program were not due to begin entering service until the end of 1915, and in the operational plan for 1914, Vice Admiral Ebergard, commander in chief of the Black Sea Fleet, anticipated the now-stronger Turkish fleet would attempt to destroy or bottle up the Russians. Consequently, he intended to fight the decisive naval battle from a position relatively close to Sebastopol, where he could make full use of submarines, small torpedo boats, and naval aviation—the weapons of the weaker naval power. The minister of marine did not agree to these plans, which apparently failed to take land operations into account, and by the summer of 1914 the Russian naval authorities had not yet agreed on how a war in the Black Sea would be fought. Once the Turkish dreadnoughts proved to be a mirage after the outbreak of the war, the Russians returned to the idea of a distant blockade of the Bosphorus, with variants as to whether or not an attempt would be made to mine the Strait before the enemy fleet tried to pass into the Black Sea. The Russians now thought of a landing near the Bosphorus to take control of the Strait and capture Constantinople. This, however, could not take place until the Russians were victorious on the main front in the north.1
During the period of Turkish neutrality the Black Sea Fleet was placed under severe constraints by the Russian high command, which supported the policy of the Russian foreign ministry that if war with Turkey could not be avoided, the Turks should bear the onus of starting it. Ebergard’s suggestion that if the Goeben and Breslau entered the Black Sea they should be treated, regardless of the flag they flew, as German ships was rejected. The Russian navy was thus forced to let the Turks get in the first blow.2 Whether or not their surveillance of the Bosphorus could have been more effective, and whether they acted effectively when the attack came, are open questions. At one point during the attack on the morning of 29 October, the Goeben and two Turkish destroyers were actually observed off Sebastopol in a minefield that had not been activated because the Russians were expecting the arrival of the minelayer Prut (scuttled by her crew under fire from the Goeben shortly afterward). It took twenty minutes after the Goeben was recognized to execute the orders to activate the minefield, and the Germans escaped. Much of the problem may have been due to military rather than naval control of sea defenses during daylight hours.3 Ebergard put to sea in pursuit, without success. Nevertheless, the Turco-German blow caused no serious damage to the Black Sea Fleet. A gunboat (later salved) and a minelayer were sunk; another gunboat, a minelayer, and a torpedo boat were damaged. Approximately six, mostly small, merchant ships also were sunk or captured.
The Goeben posed definite problems for the Black Sea Fleet in 1914. With her ten 280-mm guns she was more powerful than any of the five Russian battleships in service, generally armed with only four 305-mm guns. The Russians, in order to avoid being overwhelmed in detail, had to keep their battle squadron together. They could then concentrate a superior weight of metal if enough ships got in position to open fire, but the Goeben was far superior in speed and could disengage whenever she chose. The Goeben and Breslan also were faster than the sole pair of armored cruisers available to the Russians. There were four modern light cruisers under construction, but none were finished before the end of the war.
Beyond the Goeben and Breslau, the remainder of the Turkish fleet was weak. The Turks could not risk their two old former German battleships; they were too slow to venture into the Black Sea, and they did not have all their artillery. The Russians also had a numerical advantage in destroyers and torpedo boats. What is even more important, the large Russian Bespokoiny-class
destroyers (1,320–1,460 tons) just entering service (4) or under construction (9) had the speed and range to operate against the Turkish coast. The Turks had nothing to match them for the closure of the Dardanelles, and Allied superiority in the Mediterranean cut off recourse to foreign yards. The Turks did have eight French- or German-built high-seas torpedo boats (some might classify them as small destroyers) and at least three older and smaller torpedo boats. German officers and men were seconded to the Turkish craft, and a German officer acted as commodore of the Turkish torpedo boat flotilla.
The Russians had six submarines under construction to supplement the four admittedly not very effective boats in service at the beginning of hostilities. The Turks had none until German U-boats reached the Black Sea in the summer of 1915. There was also the specter of the Russian dreadnoughts in the distant future. They were likely to tip the naval balance irretrievably in favor of the Russians.
Rear Admiral Souchon, commander of the Mittelmeerdivision and now chief of the Turkish fleet with the rank of vice admiral in the Ottoman navy, realized that time was not on his side. He was also aware of the deficiencies in training and lack of technical expertise plaguing the Ottoman navy. Souchon hoped to stiffen the Turkish ships by adding as many Germans as possible, particularly in the engine room and to work gunnery and fire control. He had a less-than-favorable view of his Turkish allies and doubted if it would be possible to make extensive reform or improvements during the war, for the rot was too deep.4 The Ottoman minister of marine intended to order twenty-four destroyers and twelve submarines from the Krupp yards in Germany. Souchon considered this a wise decision, for he thought it would take years of work before the Turks had the technical personnel to man and employ large ships.5 But the question was largely academic. The Turks obviously had no hope of getting the ships during the war. Incidentally, the term Mittelmeerdivision, although used by the Germans throughout the war, is something of a misnomer. With one fatal exception in 1918, the Goeben and Breslau had nothing to do with the Mediterranean and sailed mostly in the Black Sea.
A Naval History of World War I Page 39