Naval battle of Fort Alexandrovsk
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The naval battle of Fort Alexandrovsk on May 21, 1919 was a maritime conflict during the Russian Civil War between units of the British Caspian Flotilla of the Royal Navy and the Astrakhan-Caspian Flotilla of the Red Workers 'and Peasants' Fleet off Fort Alexandrovsk in the Caspian Sea .
Strategic starting position
On July 11, 1918, the British headquarters in Baghdad decided to set up the British Caspian Flotilla to secure maritime domination on the Caspian Sea . It had two tasks:
- Securing the port of Krasnovodsk on the eastern shore of the lake in order to prevent the British Trans-Caspian expedition to what is now Uzbekistan being cut off,
- The prevention of the capture of Baku by the Red Fleet of Workers and Peasants. At that time, Baku was the only oil production facility in Russia. The government of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in Moscow was therefore urgently dependent on the oil supply from the port city.
The British flotilla was set up in Baku from mid-August 1918 by Commander David Thomas Norris (1875–1937); The flagship was the former Russian passenger steamer President Krüger , which was well over 1000 tons and was renamed HMS Kruger . The units all consisted of former merchant ships, often tankers, which were converted into auxiliary cruisers , gunboats , aircraft mother ships and speedboat mother ships. As in the American Civil War , the ships were temporarily armored with cotton balls , especially the machine parts. Apart from British naval officers, the crews consisted almost exclusively of members of the Russian volunteer army led by Anton Denikin .
Due to the Turkish occupation of Baku in September 1918, Norris had to vacate the place at short notice, but was able to occupy it again on November 17 after the conclusion of an armistice. The flotilla was systematically expanded over the next few weeks, mainly with 12 motorized speedboats that were dismantled and transported by rail on the Batum - Baku line. They were stationed in Petrovsk (now Makhachkala ) and Baku. In Petrovsk, the Royal Air Force built for No. 266 Squadron RAF a base for seaplanes type Short Type 184 .
Since a large part of the former Tsarist Kaspi flotilla had become independent as the Centro-Caspian Flotilla and remained practically neutral during the civil war, the Red Russian Astrakhan-Caspian Flotilla was reinforced with units of the Baltic Fleet from the Baltic Sea , which via the Inner-Russian Canal system and the Volga were moved to Astrakhan . Shortly after the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin in January 1919, two units of the flotilla were renamed in honor of the German communists, the torpedo boat destroyer Finn in Karl Liebknecht as the flagship of the flotilla and the tanker Aga Selim in Rosa Luxemburg as the largest gunboat in the formation.
The battle
With the northern half of the Caspian Sea freezing over in the winter months, the Astrakhan-Caspian Flotilla could not begin operations against Petrovsk and Baku until the ice sheets thawed in late spring 1919. Their commander , of whom only the surname Sachs is passed down, took parts of the flotilla at the end of April 1919 from Astrakhan from Fort Alexandrowsk, whose port was to serve as a base for further operations. The Red Russian flotilla suffered from an extreme lack of fuel, a lack of discipline and a lack of specialist personnel, but in contrast to the British Caspi flotilla was equipped with regular warships up to two submarines .
Presumably in order to compensate for the technical disadvantages of his units, especially their relatively slow speed and lack of maneuverability, Norris decided to attack the Red Russian flotilla while still in the port of Fort Alexandrowsk. On May 21, 1919, around 11:00 a.m., he began with a five-ship division, the
- HMS Kruger
- HMS Venture
- HMS Asia
- HMS Windsor Castle (ex Leitenant Schmidt )
- HMS Emile Nobel
the bombardment of both Fort Alexandrovsk and the units of the Astrakhan-Caspian flotilla lying in the port, which immediately returned fire and were supported by land batteries. Another division of auxiliary ships, u. a. the speedboat mother ship HMS Edinburgh Castle and the aircraft mother ships Jusanow and HMS Orlionok , led by HMS Sergie , did not take part in the battle, but remained as a reserve. It is unknown which units were in the port, but the British suspected that at least the torpedo boat destroyers Karl Liebknecht , Jakow Sverdlow (ex Emir Bukharsky ) and Moskvityanin as well as gunboats like the Rosa Luxemburg and auxiliary ships were present.
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The battle reached its climax shortly after 1 p.m., as described by paymaster ensign Patrick Thornhill (1900–1990) as a gun leader on board the flagship HMS Kruger :
“… I had the greatest day of my life and was fortunate to have too much to do to think about it. Which was not bad, by the way, since the rebound from the coastal battery flew over us in abundance. One of these - I could see it, a 3-inch missile I think - only flew over the main deck about two meters away and at head height. I don't know why no one was killed as the whole area was full of people. The guns on the forecastle spat out iron at such a speed that some stokers had to help out with the ammunition supply ... "
HMS Kruger was hit by a 4-inch projectile that disabled the engine telegraph and steering compass so that the flagship was temporarily barely under control. The Emile Nobel was hit in the engine room; five crew members fell and seven were wounded. The Red Russian losses are unknown; In his combat report, Norris assumed that he had sunk or destroyed a total of nine larger and smaller vehicles. After evaluating aerial photos a few days later, 12 vehicles were apparently sunk, including the Moskvityanin . However, after the end of the battle, the main Red Russian units had managed to leave the port and call at Astrakhan.
Results
The British naval victory was a tactical success that guaranteed the naval supremacy of the Empire and its Belarusian allies on the Caspian Sea until the flotilla was handed over to the Russian Volunteer Army in September 1919. Ultimately, however, the war in the region was decided by the land forces, with the Red Army eventually conquering the entire Caucasus . The Belarusian flotilla therefore fled into exile in Persia .
Apparently as a result of the defeat, Fyodor Raskolnikov was appointed the new commander of the Red Russian flotilla and his wife Larissa Reissner as political commissioner . Raskolnikov and his flotilla, led by Karl Liebknecht , carried out a coup d'état against the Belarusian Kaspi flotilla in Enseli (today Bandar Anzali ) on May 18, 1920 and also captured the British General Hugh F. Bateman-Champaign, who was in the area of operations watched an exercise. The entire former British Caspian Flotilla was occupied by Raskolnikov's crews and returned to Russia.
literature
- Keyword: Astrakhan-Caspian Flotilla , in: Soviet Military Encyclopedia , Vol. 1, p. 304.
- Winfried Baumgart : The "Kaspi Company". Ludendorff's megalomania or routine planning by the German General Staff? In: Jahrbuch für Geschichte Osteuropas , 18, 1970, pp. 47–126, 231–278.
- German Society for Shipping and Naval History (ed.): Patrick Thornhill. From Scapa Flow to the Caspian Sea. An uncensored diary 1918-1919 . Edited by Cord Eberspächer and Gerhard Wiechmann. Translator Dirk Nottelmann, Bremen (Hauschild) 2011. ISBN 978-3-89757-498-4
- Werner Zürrer: Caucasus 1918-1921. The struggle of the great powers over the land bridge between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea , Düsseldorf 1978.
- David Norris: Caspian Naval expedition, 1918-1919 , in: Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society , Vol. 10, Issue 3, 1923, pp. 216-240.
