Karl Liebknecht (1905)
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|---|---|
 The destroyer still as Finn |
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| Overview | |
| Type | destroyer |
| units | 4th |
| Shipyard |
Sandvik Shipyard (Сандвикский кораблестроительный док и механический завод), |
| Keel laying | 1904 |
| Launch | April 4, 1905 |
| delivery | 1906 |
| Namesake | the German politician Karl Liebknecht |
| period of service |
1906-1923 |
| Whereabouts | 1925 demolished |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
Construction: 570 t |
| length |
72.5 m |
| width |
8.2 m |
| Draft |
2.8 m |
| crew |
91 men |
| drive |
• 4 coal-fired Thornycroft steam boilers |
| speed |
26.5 kn |
| Range |
500–780 nm at 25 kn |
| Armament |
• 2 × 102 mm L / 60 guns |
| Bunker quantity | |
| Sister ships |
Emir Bukharsky , Moskvitjanin , Dobrowoletz (sunk in 1916) |
The Karl Liebknecht ( Карл Либкнехт ), until February 1919 Finn ( Финн ), was a Russian torpedo boat destroyer (Russian: Эскадренный миноносец / Eskadrennije Minonosci ) of the Emir Bukharsky class . She was ordered by the "Committee to strengthen the Russian fleet through voluntary contributions" with the three sister ships at the Schichau shipyard in Elbing / Germany , and took over the planning of the boats and the delivery of the propulsion systems. The construction was carried out by Russian shipyards. Originally, like all ships in the series, it was armed with two 75 mm and six 57 mm rapid fire guns , four machine guns and three 45 mm deck torpedo tubes and had the ability to carry 20 mines. When they were ordered, the boats were still called torpedo cruisers.
During the First World War , the Finn was involved in several skirmishes on the Baltic Sea . During the Russian Civil War in 1919/20 she was the flagship of the Astrakhan-Volga Flotilla of the Red Fleet on the Caspian Sea as Karl Liebknecht .
Use in the First World War
During the First World War, the boat was used in the Baltic Sea to guard the mine barriers in the Riga Bay and in August 1915 was involved in the defense against the German advance into the Riga Bay .
On October 17, 1917, the Finn took part in the Battle of Moon Sound .
Use in the Russian Civil War
In October / November 1918 the Finn was moved together with the two remaining sister ships from the Baltic Sea via the inner-Russian canal system and the Volga to Astrakhan . The sister ship Moskvitjanin was sunk on May 21, 1919 by the British Caspian Flotilla in Fort Alexandrowsk in the Caspian Sea . The Emir Bukharsky was renamed Jakow Sverdlov on April 12, 1919 . It is unclear when the Finn was renamed. It cannot be ruled out that the name was changed to Karl Liebknecht after Karl Liebknecht was murdered in January 1919. Another unit of the Caspian Flotilla was named after Rosa Luxemburg .
The Karl Liebknecht was the flagship of the Astrakhan-Volga flotilla . The commander of the flotilla was an official named Saks until June 1919. He was replaced by Fyodor Fyodorowitsch Raskolnikow (actually Ilyin, 1892-1939). Raskolnikoff, a former midshipman in the Tsarist Navy , had already directed the self-sinking of most of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Novorossiysk on behalf of Lenin in June 1918 , since the ships were not to fall into German hands.
The aim of the relocation was to arm the flotilla in the fight against the British Caspian Flotilla under Commander David Thomas Norris (1875-1937), which consisted exclusively of former Russian merchant ships from the Caspian Sea and had been provisionally armed. The flagship of the British flotilla was HMS Kruger , the former passenger steamer President Kruger , who was named after the Boer leader Paul Kruger . The British side also had a dozen small motorized speedboats equipped with torpedoes. In addition, the British possessed by the in Petrovsk (now Makhachkala stationed) seaplanes of the Royal Air Force on the air superiority on the Caspian Sea. The British flotilla operated from Baku .
On May 5, 1919, the Karl Liebknecht intercepted the steamer Leila , which was with an emissary (General Alexei Grischin-Almasow) from General Denikin on the way to the Reich Administrator Admiral Kolchak . Apparently the emissary was in possession of the deployment plan for the joint action of Denikin's and Kolchak's troops against the Soviet government in Moscow .
On 21/22 May 1919 took over the Karl Liebknecht at the naval battle of Fort Alexandrovsk part. A large part of the Red Flotilla, as well as the sister ship Moskvitjanin , was lost. Apparently the Karl Liebknecht was not damaged too badly, but remained usable.
The company against Enseli / Persia in May 1920
In August 1919 the Caspian squadron was handed over to naval personnel from General Denikin. As a result, she was practically incapable of action, as the Russian personnel were too weak to adequately manned the ships or to keep them operational. After Denikin's defeat, the leadership of the flotilla decided to retreat to neutral Persia and called on Enseli (now Bandar Anzali ).
On May 18, 1920, the Red Flotilla carried out a coup on Enseli. Their commander, Raskolnikov, saw the still existing flotilla as a permanent threat to shipping on the Caspian Sea; In addition, the ships had a high material value and were needed as merchant ships. Raskolnikov's wife Larissa Reissner was allegedly involved in the company as a commissioner of the flotilla. The chief of staff (since spring 1919) of the flotilla, the former imperial captain II. Rank ( frigate captain ) Alexander Karlowitsch Wekman (1886–1955), who was awarded the Order of the Red Banner on July 10, 1920, also took part in the company.
With the breach of Persian neutrality , the Red Flotilla entered Enseli and suspended landing commands. There was a brief skirmish with British troops of Indian origin and Gurkhas . The Soviets captured a total of ten auxiliary cruisers in Enseli , including presumably President Krüger , seven transporters and smaller ships as well as a good 50 guns and 20,000 rounds of artillery ammunition , six seaplanes, over 20 radio stations for ships and field radio stations together with supplies. The ships were manned by crews from the Red Flotilla and brought to Baku. This ended the naval war on the Caspian Sea.
The end
The Karl Liebknecht was decommissioned on June 13, 1923 together with the sister ship Jakow Swerdlow and was scrapped from December 1925. The flag of the boat received in 1926 the Kiel local group of the Red Navy , a subdivision of the paramilitary Red Front Fighter League of the KPD . A reconstruction drawing by the marine painter Olaf Rahardt is printed in Patrick Thornhill's diary.
The name was given to the destroyer Kapitan Belli of the Leitenant-Iljin class in 1926 . The ship remained in service until 1956.
In the People's Navy of the GDR there was a coastal protection ship (KSS) with the name Karl Liebknecht .
literature
- B. Weyer (Ed.): Taschenbuch der Kriegsflotten. XVII. Born 1916, Munich 1916, pp. 130f. u. 365.
- Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I. Foreword by Captain John Moore RN, London 1995 (reprint of the 1919 edition), p. 241.
- Harald Fock: Black journeymen. Vol. II: Destroyer until 1914. Herford 1981, p. 175f.
- David Norris: Caspian Naval expedition, 1918–1919. In: Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society. Vol. 10, Issue 3, 1923, pp. 216-240.
- Elmar B. Potter / Chester W. Nimitz : Sea power. A history of naval warfare from antiquity to the present. German version published on behalf of the Defense Research Working Group by Jürgen Rohwer , Herrsching 1982.
- Karl Schmiedel, Helmut Schnitter: Civil War and Intervention. Military-historical outline of the civil war and foreign intervention in Soviet Russia. East Berlin 1970.
- Horst Steigleder: Stalin's Terror and the Red Fleet. Fates of Soviet admirals 1936-1953. Rostock 2009.
- Sir Percy Sykes : The British Flag on the Caspian. A side show of the Great War. In: Foreign Affairs , Vol. 2, 1923, pp. 282-294.
- German Society for Shipping and Marine History (Hrsg.): Patrick Thornhill: From Scapa Flow to the Caspian Sea. An uncensored diary 1918-1919. Edited by Cord Eberspächer and Gerhard Wiechmann, translation by Dirk Nottelmann, Bremen (Hauschild) 2011 ,. ISBN 978-3-89757-498-4 .
Web links
- Fyodor F. Raskolnikow: Tales of Sub-Lieutenant Ilyin. First published in Moscow in 1934, online version of the memoirs published in Great Britain in 1982
- John Guard: The Royal Navy in the Caspian Sea 1918-1920. Online version
- Colored drawing by Karl Liebknecht , date of manufacture unknown [1]