Some aspects of operational employment of Russian naval forces in World War I.

Events that occurred in World War I continue to draw the attention of naval specialists to this day, even though almost a century separates us now from that major armed conflict of the first quarter of the 20th century. World War I was a turning point in the history of naval art. An unprecedented leap forward in the development of naval equipment and a dramatic aggravation in conditions of naval warfare entailed radical changes in the nature of combat operations in oceanic and sea TO and, as a consequence, a transformation of the established and customary forms and methods of naval employment into new and more efficient ones.

It was precisely in 1914-1918 that new component services--naval aviation and submarine forces--became full-fledged participants in the armed confrontation on the seas. New types of warships and varieties of naval weapons appeared. Improvements in signals perceptibly enhanced naval command and control capabilities. They also expanded the spectrum of missions tackled by naval forces as well as that of forms and methods of their performance. Conditions of naval warfare became so much complicated that in some cases a number of consecutive and simultaneous battles, engagements and attacks were needed to achieve goals assigned, attacks unified by one concept and plan and involving naval forces belonging to different component services, as well as organization of the entire set of supporting actions and measures (reconnaissance, deception of the enemy, etc.). This led to the emergence and step-by-step evolution of naval operation, a new form of employment of naval forces and weapons.

Another form of operational employment of naval forces--systematic combat operations--saw a dramatic surge in its role as well: formerly a discrete sequence of one-act clashes of groups of surface ships, the war on the seas turned into continuous warfare in all natural spheres, and its results often could be estimated only on the basis of a statistical analysis.

The experience of operational employment of fleet forces in home naval theaters, both closed (Baltic and Black Sea) and open (Northern) is of particular interest for us today. Paradoxical though it may seem, the situation that took shape in those theaters before 1914 is in many respects similar to the situation in the early 21st century. In both cases the Russian Navy found itself weakened. In the former case it was weakened by the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905), which left Russia without its just created Pacific fleet as well as the bigger and better part of the Baltic fleet that had been sent to the Far East as two squadrons under Vice-Admiral Z.P. Rozhdestvensky and Rear-Admiral N.I Nebogatov. Russia, which by the early 20th century was second in number of combatant ships of the main types only to Britain and France, ceased to be one of the leading naval powers. In the postwar years, moreover, it for a number of objective and subjective reasons dragged out the approval and implementation of military shipbuilding programs due to revive the imperial naval forces after the Japanese rout. In the early 21st century, the Navy felt in full the devastating consequences of the USSR's collapse and the grave socioeconomic crisis of the 1990s, whose aftermath exceeds that of many military defeats that befell this country in the past. Against the background of the current dismal state of the domestic shipbuilding industry and the entire defense-industrial complex, as well as the dramatic decline in the Navy's strength and amounts of its operational and combat training, our neighbors, both partners and eventual adversaries, continue building up--qualitatively if not always quantitatively--their naval forces.

The consequence is that today, like in 1914, Russia does not possess superiority in naval forces even over neighboring states, and has to moderate its naval ambitions. It is quite likely, therefore, that the varied and instructive experience of what happened 90 years ago will be not only of scientific-theoretical but also of practical interest--from the point of view of measures due to be taken to restore the combat potential of our fleet.

So, what operational tasks faced the Russian navy during World War I and what forms of tackling them did the Russian naval command choose?

Defense of the coast and the main naval basing areas is to be seen as the first of these tasks. This problem acquired particular importance in the Baltic theater, where the enemy was capable of concentrating naval forces that exceeded Russia's Baltic Fleet many times over (this threat was realized, for example, in August 1915, when the Germans launched the Irben Operation, and in October 1917, when Albion, an amphibious operation designed to capture the Moonsund Islands, took place). For this reason, the danger that the main forces of the German fleet would invade the Gulf of Finland and land troops at the gate of the capital became the main factor that influenced the concept of employment of Baltic Sea naval forces, which was realized both in the last prewar plans and wartime employment plans.

Drawn up in 1912, Plan of Operations of the Baltic Sea Naval Forces for the Eventuality of a European War, (1) which provided the framework for the deployment of the Baltic Fleet under Admiral N.O. Essen in August 1914, envisaged accomplishment of a crucial operational-strategic task--interdiction of enemy naval penetration to eastern Gulf of Finland, thus assuring mobilization of troops intended for the defense of St. Petersburg--in the form of a battle in a minefield and shore battery position. Created after mobilization in a Gulf of Finland bottleneck between Nargen Island and Cape Porkkala Udd, the position was made up of a massive minefield covered on the flanks by numerous shore batteries and of the fleet's attack and support forces. A battle in the minefield and shore battery position was conceived as a totality of combat actions by surface ships and submarines, ones coordinated as to aims and tasks, place and time of combat operations. Stationed in prepared positions, the vessels were to deliver blows against the main forces of the enemy fleet. In terms of modern naval art, these actions can rightly be called a naval operation to defend an important stretch of the coast and a fleet basing area. (2)

It was planned to use in the operation the entire Baltic Sea fleet: battleship and both cruiser brigades, two mine divisions, a submarine brigade, as well as coast defense forces and assets. It was assumed that at the central minefield and shore battery position the Baltic Fleet would be able to contain the German High Seas Fleet for 12-14 days, enough for deploying the 6th army intended to defend the capital of the empire.

The 1912 Plan of Operations ... for the first time envisaged a comprehensive use of mobile forces of different component services--surface ships and submarines, as well as position assets and coast defense assets--in their operational (and in some cases tactical) coordination. In spite of its certain obvious defects (lack of variants and operational prospects), this new method of employment of naval forces can be seen as an important landmark in the evolution of Russian and world naval art.

Defending sea approaches to Petrograd was, throughout the war, the most important task for the Baltic Sea Fleet. It was accomplished owing to the fleet creating in the theater an in-depth system of minefield and shore battery positions (Central, Flank Skerries, Forward, Irben and Moonsund) and naval defense areas (Kronstadt, Moonsund, Abo Aland). Defensive minefields (a total of 34,846 [mines.sup.3] were an important element of the defense system. By early 1917, 83 shore batteries numbering 284 guns of up to 305 mm caliber were installed on the flanks of the minefield and shore battery positions and on important stretches of the coast west of Gogland Island. (4) Protection of defensive minefields was imposed on fleet forces, shore artillery and naval aviation. Defense of the flanks was carried out jointly with the land forces.

The Gulf of Finland defense was not put to a test during the war, because the Germans decided against risking the High Seas Fleet before they could gain supremacy in the North Sea, their main task. Their only attempt to break through the Forward Position undertaken by the 10th destroyer flotilla in the night of November 11, 1916, ended up in complete failure, with seven out of eleven ships perishing on the mines. (5) The Irben Position, however, sustained attacks by major forces of the German fleet in August 1915 and October 1917, and was penetrated by the enemy in both cases. The Irben (1915) and Moonsund (1917) operations showed that the enemy was able to breach even quite powerful minefields where they lacked reliable protection from shore batteries which, in turn, could be vulnerable to land attacks.

The Black Sea Fleet was ordered by the supreme command to interdict an enemy assault landing in the area of Odessa, an order due to unreliable intelligence about the adversary's intentions. (6) To tackle the mission, the fleet created elements of amphibious landing defense (defensive minefields in likely avenues of approach), and engaged in actions designed to timely locate and destroy enemy amphibious assault forces as they steamed to their destination, actions accompanied by efforts to disrupt enemy sea lines of communication and prevent German-Turkish naval forces from exiting from Bosporus.

An important element in combat activities of Baltic and Black Sea fleet forces was protecting respectively right and left strategic flanks of the front against maritime attacks and assisting the land forces as they tackled both defensive and offensive assignments. As a rule, temporary units of different component services were raised specifically to aid the army: Naval Forces of the Gulf of Riga in the Baltic Sea, and Batum Squadron and Western Squadron in the Black Sea. In the course of joint operations, naval forces maintained both operational and tactical coordination with land forces. The nature of this coordination predetermined appropriate forms of command organization in the shape of operational subordination of the fleet as a whole (a) or its separate task forces to the command of a land large strategic formation, in whose interests the coordination was organized. Of much interest is also the organization of a different-service grouping of forces and troops (combined units and units of the army and naval infantry, shore artillery, ships and aviation) under the command of a navy chief, which occurred in late 1916, when it became necessary to defend the mouth of the Danube. Organization of Danube defense forces can without any exaggeration be called the prototype of a "defense area," a form of operational disposition of army and navy forces in a coastal sector, which was practiced on a broad scale during the Great Patriotic War. (7)

Among other things, fleet forces assisted land troops by rendering artillery support to defending or attacking troops, which often became the decisive factor of successes in combat operations in a coastal stretch of the front, securing stability of friendly defenses and breaking enemy defensive positions. The Black Sea Fleet brought reinforcements and supplies to forces of the Caucasian and Romanian fronts. As a rule, military transport movements were performed within the framework of systematic combat operations, but redeployment of big military units (as big as an infantry division in one go) again turned into naval operations aimed to defend sea lines of communications, necessitating assistance from the main fleet forces.

The amphibious assault forces the navy landed (one in the Baltic Sea and three in the Black Sea) did not rise above the tactical level. Preparation of amphibious assault actions on the operational scale (in the Gulf of Riga in 1916, in Sinop area in 1917) and even strategic scale (in the Bosporus area in 1915-1917), though nothing came out of it in practice, was an important contribution to a number of issues related to preparation and conduct of amphibious assault operations.

Disrupting enemy lines of communication was one of the main tasks tackled by the Baltic and Black Sea fleets. Combat operations involving submarines and groups of surface ships (in the Black Sea, at first almost the entire fleet, and later task forces made up of battleships and cruisers, as well as groups of destroyers; in the Baltic Sea, task forces made up of cruisers and destroyers), minelaying and minelaying operations became the forms of employment of naval forces in the course of actions on enemy lines of communication. Some cases in point are minelaying operations in the southern Baltic Sea (October 1914-February 1915) and before the mouth of Bosporus (July-December 1916).

Of particular interest are the Black Sea Fleet's actions in so-called coaling area (Zonguldak-Eregli) and the pre-straits zone, which were characterized by a gradual build-up in attracted forces and assets and expansion of the spectrum of forms of employment of forces and techniques. To disrupt enemy sea transport movements, the fleet engaged in a whole set of measures and actions along the entire 600-mile line of communication stretching from Bosporus to Trebizond: a hunt for Turkish vessels by groups of ships, artillery and air attacks against ports, minefield laying near Bosporus and before Anatolia ports, and fire-ship "plugging" of Zonguldak, the most important coaling port on Turkey's Heracleian coast (the attempt failed, though). In so doing, the fleet command used precisely different-service forces--surface ships, submarines and aviation--in their operational and in some cases tactical coordination. The fleet command used an imaginative approach to the problem of disrupting the enemy lines of communication and contributed a number of innovations to the organization of actions directed against enemy shipping. In submarine action, the static mode gave way, toward the end of the 1915 campaign, to cruising within a limited area. New methods of employment of light surface forces were developed and introduced in combat practice. Some cases in point are an unexpected simultaneous attack along the entire length of the Turkish line of communication in south-eastern part of the sea, delivered by several (as many as six) striking forces (two destroyers each), and control of destroyers after they left the base (radio guidance to targets located by other forces and assets). Ship-based aviation was used for the first time to engage freight vessels at ports. After the coming into service of the dreadnoughts The Empress Maria (June 1915) and The Empress Catherine the Great (October 1915), and the formation of three tactical ("mobile," as the contemporary documents said) task forces, which took turns sailing to combat designation area, the fleet actions directed at disrupting the enemy lines of communication off the Heracleia coast turned into a blockade, the highest form of warfare on lines of communication. (8)

The Baltic Fleet, which had under its operational command a flotilla of British submarines, failed to cut even a single enemy line of communication (transportation of ore from Sweden and troop shipments in the south-western Baltic Sea) for any operationally important stretch of time, although German shipping did suffer certain losses. The Black Sea Fleet actions were much more efficient. Sixty-four enemy steamers with the total freight capacity of about 94,000 grt (9) (including neutral ships found to be engaged in military smuggling) were sunk or captured. As far as Turkish cabotage sailing vessels destroyed by the Black Sea Fleet were concerned, the present writer failed to discover any trustworthy Turkish statistics regarding their number. Judging by Russian documents, the sunk or burned small-tonnage enemy ships numbered several hundred. For example, Admiral A.A. Ebergard reported to the Headquarters on June 30, 1916 that Batum Squadron destroyers had sunk fifty-four Turkish sailing vessels; his July 4 report mentioned another forty-eight vessels. (10) According to Prof. V.S. Shlomin, the hit-and-run raid on the enemy sea route going along the Eastern Anatolia coast, undertaken by a light task force in January of the same year destroyed 204 sailing vessels and two motor-boats, both on shore and off the coast. (11)

It proved impossible to disrupt all of the enemy transport movements in the Black Sea though, but "coal hunger" and food shortages in Constantinople, which had been caused by the elimination of the greater part of Turkish freight tonnage, forced the Ottoman Government, in January 1916, to cut food rations, ration fuel, and start importing coal from Germany to the detriment of weapons and ammunition supplies, which the Turkish army was badly in need of. (12) After a minelaying operation in the latter half of 1916, exiting from Bosporus became practically impossible for big transport vessels during almost half a year.

The problem of defending sea routes acquired special importance in the Black Sea and in the Northern maritime theater. The extremely limited rail transport capacities in southern Russia were responsible for the vital role of Black Sea transportation in supplying the Romanian, South-Western and Caucasian fronts, as well as in maintaining normal economic life in Black Sea governments. The defense of sea routes became even more of a problem in the North in connection with the organization of strategic inter-allied transportation. Suffice it to say that almost 25 million tons of imported freight, (13) primarily costly weapons and military equipment, came to Russian northern ports between 1914 and 1917. To effect defense (antimine and antisubmarine in the first place) of the lines of communication in the north, an operational large force, Arctic Ocean flotilla, (b) was deployed for the first time. Despite an acute shortage of forces and assets, the latter managed, in coordination with allied naval forces, to minimize freight shipping losses. Even in 1916, when German submarines achieved their biggest successes against inter-allied transportation in Russian northern waters, only 31 vessels out of 1,582 that passed through northern sea routes were lost (less than 2%). (14) The defense of sea routes was based on the zonal-target principle, and was effected, as a rule, in the form of systematic combat operations. Only where transportation of troops or particularly valuable cargoes was involved in the Black Sea, these operations assumed the scale of a naval operation to defend lines of communication.

The task of engaging enemy naval forces was tackled by the Baltic Fleet and the Black Sea Fleet within the context of efforts to gain (keep) supremacy on the seas in the form of naval operations, combat operations and sea battles. There were cases where striking forces were guided to the enemy by radio reconnaissance. On May 2, 1915, for example, a guidance session performed by the Black Sea Fleet signal service under Rear-Admiral A.I. Nepenin succeeded in prompting a Russian striking force how to locate a German task force, leading to a battle off Gotland Island between 1st cruiser brigade under Rear-Admiral M.K. Bakhirev (Admiral Makarov, Bayan, Oleg, and Bogatyr) and a squadron under Commodore Karf (light cruiser Augsburg, mine-layer Albatros, and three destroyers), which resulted in the destruction of the enemy mine-layer. (15)

Exemplifying a naval operation designed to destroy an enemy task force, as pursued within a considerable area of the naval theater with the use of the main fleet forces under a fleet commander, was one mounted by the Black Sea Fleet (commander Admiral A.A. Ebergard) with the aim to destroy the German-Turkish cruisers Goeben and Breslau on July 4-7, 1916. (16) The operation failed to achieve its aim, as did other similar attempts. A case in point were combat operations a squadron under Vice-Admiral A.V. Kolchak (battleship The Empress Maria, cruiser Kagul, and five destroyers) pursued against light cruiser Breslau on July 22-23, 1916. As is evident from World War I experience (including in Russian naval theaters), operations and combat actions designed to locate and engage enemy fleet forces may be successful only if forces (usually belonging to different component services) are used in a comprehensive way in their operational and tactical coordination and with efficient reconnaissance support. The war also demonstrated a clear gap between the grown striking potential of forces and their very modest detection and target designation capabilities: organic visual observation equipment was often useless in unfavorable weather and thus undercut capabilities of ship-based weapons, something that disrupted mission performance (the most graphic cases in point being the Black Sea Fleet's battle against the Goeben off Cape Sarych on November 18, 1914, and the Jutland battle between the German High Seas Fleet and the British Grand Fleet in the North Sea on May 31-June 1, 1916). These factors greatly limited tactical and, consequently, operational capabilities of naval forces, and put on the agenda the problem of developing and handing down to fleet forces detection and target designation equipment, a problem solved in the inter-war period, when first radars appeared.

Submarines also engaged enemy combatant ships and auxiliary vessels, pursuing combat operations in assumed or reconnoitered combat designation areas of enemy task forces and on their deployment routes. For a number of technical and tactical reasons, Russian submarine forces failed to succeed in this respect. But British submarines, which were under operational command of the Baltic Fleet, managed to inflict perceptible losses on the German naval forces (they sunk a battleship and a light cruiser, two destroyers, and several auxiliary ships), and to achieve certain operational results, such as a long-term ban on the German use of heavy ships and German curtailment of the Irben operation (August 1915).

The rich practical experience of the use of fleet forces in 1914-1918 laid the basis for the development, in the inter-war period, of a new area of naval art, the Navy's operational art, which theoretically rationalized, systematized and made it possible to realize in the navy's guideline documents the lessons of warfare in the naval theaters of World War I.

NOTES:

1. Rossiyskiy gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Voenno-Morskogo Flota (RGA VMF), rec. group 479, inv. 1, f. 146, sheets 1-40.

2. V.D. Dotsenko, "Baltiyskiy i Chernomorskiy floty v Pervoi mirovoi voine," Morskoi sbornik, No. 9, 1994, p. 40.

3. L.G. Goncharov, B.A. Denisov, Ispolzovaniye min v mirovuyu imperialisticheskuyu voinu 1914-1918 gg., Voenno-morskoe izdatelstvo NKV MF SSSR, Moscow, Leningrad, 1940, p. 29.

4. M.A. Petrov, Obzor glavneishikh kampaniy i srazheniy parovogo flota v svyazi s evolutsiey voenno-morskogo iskusstva, RIO voenno-morskikh sil RKKA, Leningrad, 1927, p. 524.

5. E. Gagern, Der Krieg in der Ostsee, Dritter Band, Von Anfang 1916 bis zum kriegsende, Verlag E.S. Mittler & Sohn, Frankfurt, 1964, pp. 95-97.

6. Rossiyskiy gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskiy arkhiv (RGVIA), rec. group 2003. inv. 1, f. 550, sheets 150-155.

7. For more detail, see: D. Yu. Kozlov, Flot v rumynskoi kampanii 1916-1917 gg., St. Petersburg, 2003, pp. 108-109.

8. I.A. Kozlov, "Deistviya russkogo Chernomorskogo flota na morskikh soobshcheniyakh v Pervuyu mirovuyu voinu," Morskoi sbornik, No. 10, 1951, pp. 76-93.

9. B. Langenspiepen, D. Nottelmann, J. Krusman, Halbmond und Kaiseradler: Goeben und Breslau am Bosporus 1914-1918, Verlag E.S. Mittler & Sohn GmbH, Hamburg, Bonn, Berlin, 1999, S. 238, 250-253.

10. RGVIA, rec. group 2003. inv. 1, f. 555, sheets 125, 129.

11. Quoted from: V.S. Shlomin, Boyevye deystviya russkogo Chernomorskogo flota v kampaniyu 1916 goda (manuscript), Leningrad, 1955.

12. G. Lorei, Operatsii germano-turetskikh morskikh sil v 1914-1918, Transl. from the German, Gosudarstvennoe voennoe izdatelstvo Narkomata oborony Soyuza SSR, Moscow, 1937, pp. 271-273.

13. P.D. Bykov, "Voennye deystviya na Severnom russkom morskom teatre v imperialisticheskuyu voinu 1914-1918 godov," Voina na Severnom morskom teatre. 1914-1918 gody, A collection, Leko Publishers, St. Petersburg, 2003, p. 8.

14. Flot v Pervoi mirovoi voine, Vol. 1, ed. by N.B. Pavlovich, Voenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1964, p. 617.

15. M.A. Petrov, Dva boya (Chernomorskogo flota s l.kr. "Goeben" 5-IX-1914 i kreiserov Baltiyskogo flota u o. Gotland 19-VI-1915), RIO voenno-morskikh sil RKKA, Leningrad, 1926; V. Yu. Gribovsky, "Boy u Gotlanda 19 iyunia 1915 goda," Gangut, Issue 11, 1996, pp. 35-55.

16. For more detail, see: D. Yu. Kozlov, "Takogo sluchaya ... za vsyo vremya voiny do sikh por ne predstavlyalos," Voenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal, No. 1, 2004, pp. 35-43.

Capt. 2nd Rank D. Yu. KOZLOV

Candidate of Historical Sciences

(a) During the first year of World War I, the Baltic Sea Fleet was operationally subordinated to C-in-C of the 6th army Artillery Gen. K.P. Van der Fliet, who formed at his staff a naval section under Capt. 1st Rank V.M. Altfater. From August 1915 to February 1916 (before the Naval Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief was established), and subsequently from April 1917 to the end of military operations the Baltic Fleet was operationally subordinated to C-in-C of Northern Front armies, who controlled the fleet through the medium of the naval directorate of his staff.

(b) The post of flotilla commander was held by Vice-Admiral L.F. Korvin (1916-1917), Vice-Admiral I.I. Fedorov (1917), and Rear-Admiral N.E. Vikkorst (1917).