In the early hours of August 19th 1919, a handful of small British torpedo boats snuck into
Kronstadt, the most heavily defended naval base in the world. They launched a daring attack on
the Russian Baltic Fleet inside its own harbour, determined to cripple Bolshevik sea power and help
to secure the independence of the Baltic States. -
Though the armistice of November 1918 brought the first world war to an end,
in the territories of the former Russian Empire fighting still raged. A brutal civil
war had broken out between the Bolsheviks and their counter-revolutionary opponents,
known as the white Russians. The victorious Allies were not as it turned out big fans of bolshevism,
and from 1918 intervened to support their n opponents.
After the e nd of hostilities with Germany, Britain expanded its intervention to the
Baltic Sea. A naval task force was sent to “help strengthen the populations of that part of the
world against Bolshevism and to assist Britain’s interests in the Baltic.” Principally this meant
supporting the newly independent nations of Estonia and Latvia, which were threatened by a
Red Army that was every bit as imperialist as the Tsarist one that had gone before.
The British sq uadron, under Rear Admiral Walter Cowan from January 1919, did what it
could to help- though with no plans for British land troops to be dispatched to the Baltic this
help was mostly limited to the supply of arms and occasional naval gunfire support .
Cowan’s ships were the only major naval force initially, but as winter turned to spring,
the sea ice in the gulf of finland began to melt, threatening to unleash a serious threat
in the shape of the Russian Baltic Fleet. Under the control of the Bolsheviks and
operating from the heavily defended fortress of Kronstadt were three battleships , two cruisers,
eight destroyers and five submarines. With the ba ttleships wielding 12 inch guns they had a
clear superiority over Cowan’s force of light cruisers and destroyers, and the alarm b ells
began to ring when B olshevik ships skirmished with their British counterparts on May 17th.
Luckily for Rear Admiral Cowan, help was on the way in the shape of six men and a couple
of speedboats. -
At the start of 1919, Augustus Willington Shelton Agar was a twenty-nine year old
royal navy lieutenant with nothing to do. He had served during the war supporting supplies
to Russia and later in motor torpedo boats. These t wo experiences made him an ideal candidate for
a rather more low publicity deployment to the Baltic. In February Agar was recruited
by Britain’s secret intelligence service to lead a detachment of two coastal motor boats
at the small finnish town of Terrioki. These small craft could move quickly and stealthily
through Russian minefields, making them ideal for running spies to and from Petrograd undetected.
This task alone was not enough for Agar though, who saw an opportunity to take a rather more
active role in the conflict. His boats were capable of carrying a single torpedo on their
stern, and Lieutenant Agar saw that it might be possible to ambush an unsuspecting Bolshevik ship
inside their protective minefields, where larger British ships and submarines could not venture.
Such an attack was not actually within the remit of Agar’s orders, but he didn’t let that deter
him, persuading Rear Admiral Cowan to provide him with two torpedoes shortly after arriving.
In the middle of June, Agar got a chance to test out his idea when the Russian fortress
at Krasnaya Gorka rebelled against the Bolsheviks and was soon under bombardment by
heavy units of the red fleet. On the night of June 17th Agar took CMB7 over to the Russian ships,
crept within a few hundred yards of the cruiser Oleg and began an attack. Because of the way the
torpedo was mounted on the boat this was a fraught business- Agar had to accelerate to top speed,
fire the torpedo off the back of the boat, and then turn hard to get out of its way.
Managing to accomplish this, the torpedo slammed into the Oleg’s hull underneath
the forward-most funnel, causing the cruiser to sink steadily into the gulf of finland,
as Agar and his crew crept away into the night. When news emerged of Agar’s raid, Rear Admiral
Cowan was delighted at the initiative , even though it had taken place without his orders.
Cowan was so impressed in fact, he decided to see if it could be replicated on a larger scale.
He secured more coastal motor boats from the Admiralty and positioned them at Biorko,
which was being used as a forward base for Britain’s naval forces. These were larger
craft than Agar’s , carrying two torpedoes each, with the flotilla led by Commander Claude Dobson.
Cowan was also reinforced at about the same time by the aircraft carrier HMS
Vindictive , which provided an air wing to the British forces in the Baltic for the first time.
Before these aircraft had a chance to be put to use though the ship was dealing with a tragedy.
On the morning of July 22nd, while the ship was at hands to bathing stations, Leading Aircraftman
Charles Henry England got into trouble and drowned whilst swimming. He was buried the following day
in the town of Koivisto , and he also happened to be my great-great-uncle, which brings me neatly
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this video. -
With aircraft and a flotilla of speedboats at his disposal Walter Cowan now hatched an incredibly
bold plan. Drawing inspiration from Roger Keyes’ raid on Zeebrugge, which Lieutenant Agar had
taken part in, he outlined ‘Operation R.K’: The plan was for a massed torpedo boat attack
inside Kronstadt harbour , aiming to destroy or damage as much of the red fleet as possible.
This was no small feat – Kronsdtadt was protected by more than 20 invididual forts
as well as extensive shore batteries. To aid the boats, Cowan ordered a simultaneous bombing raid,
aiming to distract the Bolshevik gunners as much as possible and cover the high
speed approach of the coastal motor boats. The attack was scheduled for the middle of August,
and in rehearsals the boat crews soon found out what a tough task they had. The harbour
entrance was only 50 metres wide, and the harbour itself barely a kilometre across.
The boats would need to manuever inside this tight space at incredibly high speed, both to avoid the
copious fire from Bolshevik shore batteries and because the torpedoes wouldn’t work if fired from
less than 30 knots. And they’d be doing all of this in the dark. Because of the lack of room,
it was decided to attack in two waves of three , with Agar on overwatch outside and one boat
ordered to attack the destroyer Gavriil, which was guarding the entrance to the main harbour.
At 9.30pm on August 18th, the now Lieutenant Commander Augustus Agar lead the eight motor
boats east towards Kronstadt. At some point after crossing the Russian minefields the
group became split up in the dark, with Commander Dobson’s boat taking a more
southerly course towards the line of forts that guarded the entrance to Petrograd.
Soon Agar only had two boats for company – Lieutenant Lawrence Napier’s CMB24 and Sub
Lieutenant Francis Howard’s CMB86. Howard’s boat was in all sorts of engine trouble, and
shortly after passing through the forts broke down entirely, unable to keep up with its compatriots.
Meanwhile, the route taken by Dobson actually turned out to be quicker, and he arrived ahead
of schedule. LundSegment
This was problematic because not only had the diversionary air assault not started yet,
Lieutenant Napier’s boat was the one detailed to sink the Russian destroyer before the others
entered the harbour, and he was not there yet. Luckily for Dobson and the two other boats in the
first wave, the crew on Gavriil were completely unaware of their presence, and the British ships
began their attack. First in was CMB31 under Lieutenant William Bremner, who sped into the
harbour just as the first British planes arrived overhead, sending Bolshevik sailors to their guns.
Lieutenant Bremner steadied his boat and sped towards the submarine depot ship Pamyat Azova.
While this was happening, outside the harbour Agar and Napier arrived, and the latter began an attack
run on Gavriil whilst under the fire of at least nine shore batteries and the destroyer itself.
The torpedo was launched, but it missed and CMB24 was blown apart by shellfire.
Exposed to intense fire from the very much intact Russian destroyer, Commander Dobson in CMB31
dashed into the harbour. The gun and shellfire was now just as bad inside the harbour, with
searchlights sweeping the area. There was a large explosion as Bremner’s torpedo found its mark and
sank the Pamyat Azova. Dobson’s boat was in fact travelling so fast when it entered the harbour
it very nearly ran into the sinking depot ship. In the nick of time, the helmsman RussellMcBean
cut one engine and shoved the rudder hard over, lining it up on the Andrei Pervozanni
then racing across the harbour towards it. Dobson waited for the engine to reach 1000rpm
and then fired both of his torpedoes. They surged forwards and both smashed into the pre dreadnought
battleship, blowing massive holes in its side. Lieutenant Dayrell-Reed’s boat was the next to
make an attack. Under intense fire, Dayrell-Reed was hit and mortally wounded, so Lieutenant
Gordon Steele took over the helm, steering the boat to fire a further torpedo at Andrei
Pervozanni , and then a few moments later one at Petropavlovsk. Two large explosions were observed.
Outside the harbour, the second wave was now preparing to enter. The boats under Lieutenant
Commander Frank Brade and Lieutenant Edward Bodley approached the entrance. Bodley was forced to turn
away when a shell hit broke the torpedo releasing mechanism, but Brade pushed on at high speed.
As soon as he entered the harbour, searchlights picked up the boat,
blinding the crew with a bright light that meant they couldn’t see Lieutenant Bremner’s boat
emerging from the dark directly into their path. Bremner’s boat, which was on its way out after
waiting to see Dobson and Dayell-Reed clear, was almost cut in half by Brade’s, and the
two vessels were stuck together, stationary, in the middle of lethal fire from all directions.
A few RAF planes remained overhead, and they dived to strafe Bolshevik gun and
searchlight emplacements, giving enough cover for the boat crews to disentangle themselves
and transfer the crew of Bremner’s shattered boat to Brade’s rather more intact vessel.
Lieutenant Brade now took his damaged boat out of the harbour, but was still determined to use
his torpedo before heading home. He lined the boat up on Gavriil, racing towards it under a hail of
fire from the destroyer and the shore batteries who now had virtually nothing else to shoot at.
Before he could complete the attack though, Brade was shot dead. Bremner immediately took over
command, firing two torpedoes that went on to pass agonisingly underneath the Bolshevik destroyer.
CMB62 was then hit twice by shellfire, disabling the boat and leaving it stranded.
Bremner and his crew refused to surrender the boat, and its two machine guns continued
firing even as their captain was wounded eleven times and the boat disintegrated beneath them.
LundSegment end -
By the morning of August 19th, both sides were counting their losses.
The British motor boats arrived back at Biorko having lost 3 of their
number and having narrowly avoided more – it was only thanks to RAF aircraft that others had
made it back through the line of Russian forts to safety. 18 men were missing presumed dead, though
it would turn out that nine of these had in fact been captured, including incredibly Lieutenant
Bremner, who should probably have won the Victoria cross for his actions that night. Lieutnenant
Steele and Commander Dobson were awarded Britain’s highest award for gallantry,
and Augustus Agar received the same decoration for his solo raid on the cruiser Oleg in June.
On the Bolshevik side, the raid had done serious damage to its Baltic fleet. The battleship Andrei
Pervozanni and submarine depot ship Pamiat Azova had been put out of action and the British claimed
the Petropavlovsk was similarly damaged, though this is disputed by Soviet sources.
Tracking down exact numbers for Russian casualties has proved elusive, though considering the shallow
surroundings they are likely to have been relatively limited. Regardless of the exact
amount of damage done, the effect of the Raids on Kronstadt was that the Red fleet ceased to
be a serious problem for the British operation in the Baltic, and when combined with fuel shortages
meant that the Bolsheviks were unable to project serious naval power beyond its own minefields,
securing Estonia and Latvia’s seaward flank and aiding their successful fight for independence.