This monument—three large anchors attached to flagpoles—
together with the unmarked grave where fallen seamen lay,
is a memorial honoring the naval glory of the Krasnoflotsky Fort.
The fort was built near the village of Krasnaya Gorka
and was known as Alekseevsky before the revolution.
There were good reasons for the fort’s construction...
Naval Fortresses
By the middle of the first decade of the 20th century, when the first dreadnoughts came into existence,
it became clear that the Kronstadt fortress was practically obsolete.
Its 250-millimeter guns had a maximum range of nearly 14 kilometers,
while the newest enemy ships could hit the fortress from twice that distance.
The brick walls of the fort wouldn't hold against a salvo from the 305-millimeter guns of dreadnoughts.
... two underground concrete forts were built along the southern and northern coast of the Gulf of Finland.
They were named after their locations: cape Inoniemi
(Ino for short)
and cape Krasnaya Gorka.
The total area of the Krasnaya Gorka Fort is 450 hectares.
The fort’s highest point is the observation tower of the 305-millimeter gun battery,
rising 36 meters above sea level.
The internal walls were 1 meter thick, while the slabs were at least 2 meters thick.
The fort had four batteries. The first battery had eight 280-millimeter howitzers with a range of 7 kilometers.
The second battery housed eight 250-millimeter Brink guns with a range of almost 14 kilometers.
The third battery consisted of eight 305-millimeter guns:
four guns in open mounts, and another four in twin turrets.
Finally, the last battery had six 152-millimeter Canet guns primarily intended for fighting enemy landing parties.
The fort garrison consisted of 2,570 people.
A hot air balloon was used to observe targets. It floated above a special tower at a height of 1 kilometer.
The enemy ships didn't stand a chance of making it to the mouth of the Neva river
when caught in the crossfire from the Ino and Krasnaya Gorka forts.
This is the gun position for the 250-millimeter gun battery. There were eight gun positions in the fort—one for each gun.
They housed the guns designed by the Russian scientist and artilleryman Anton Frantsevich Brink.
Each gun position had an area of about 200 square meters
and could accommodate a whole crew of 45 gunners.
But there was no need for this since most of the gunners were frequently underground.
So usually only 10 people stayed here at one time.
The gun barrel was more than 11 meters long. A shell weighed 225 kilograms.
Rate of fire was one shot per minute. Range of fire was almost 14 kilometers.
At the time, when Krasnaya Gorka was being built,
the battery with Brink guns was intended to become the main armament of the fort.
Gun positions are connected to each other by posterns— long underground corridors—and surrounded by casemates.
These bell mouths were used for communication. An officer gave the orde,
“Attention! Alert! Action stations!”
The communication system is connected to the adjacent casemates: this is how orders are passed along.
On the walls, you can see fixtures for bunks.
During operations, gunners slept right here, in the basement next to their stations.
When Krasnaya Gorka was being built, reinforced concrete was not yet known
and concrete production was costly.
This is why more than half of the fort's walls are made of lime and only ten percent of them are made of concrete.
That being said, they are hard to destroy even one hundred years later.
Still, these posterns are only one of the many fortifications at Krasnaya Gorka...
We are standing on an artificial hill.
To the right, behind two rows of barbed wire, there is a military base.
The majority of the fort now lies on its territory and the public is not admitted there.
Behind and below, is a mine and searchlight station.
As you can guess from the name, this was where mines were stored and assembled.
Powerful searchlights illuminated access to the fort.
Towards the sea, the construction was protected by a low firing wall which operated as a kind of bastion.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg.
The most exciting constructions are hidden underground.
In the basement, there is a wide corridor with ventilation tubes
that run through the whole firing and searchlight station.
You can see cable channels on the floor and numerous casemates to the right and left.
Here, fuel tanks were built into the floor. Before they were cut down, they reached the ceiling.
The fuel supply was enough to keep a small standalone power plant running for precisely 90 days.
This is a pumping plant. It housed a pumping system which took in water from the swamp.
Then the stagnant water was thoroughly filtered, turning it into high-quality drinking water.
This space housed the equipment which gave the station its name:
it's a shaft for storing disappearing Siemens-Schuckert searchlights with a glass diameter of almost 2 meters.
There are two shafts at the station. They are covered over with slabs now.
But when they were operational, the searchlights were brought to the surface right from here.
It's hard to believe, but at the beginning of the 20th century the fort had its own telephone station,
water facilities, heating system, sewage collection system, and a standalone power plant.
The engineers who worked on the construction of the fort became real pioneers.
This was the era of breakthroughs in Russian engineering.
It was so surprisingly productive
that Germany no longer tried to use its High Seas Fleet
to enter the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland.
These forts fought a silent war deterring all challengers...
In the summer of 1918, news arrived that Germans were going to attempt a landing.
The Russians decided to mine the fort.
On August 19, 1918 a violent thunderstorm passed over the fort.
The charges detonated resulting in a massive explosion.
This is where the explosion happened: the location of the 250-millimeter gun battery.
Right behind me is a giant crater which was created by the explosion.
Part of the fortifications were blown sky-high before falling back down.
This is all that is left of the gun positions and the command and observation post of the battery.
The 250-millimeter guns were torn off the mount and thrown 30 meters backwards.
Can you imagine that? A giant 10-meter gun weighing 22 tons flying 30 meters!
... these concrete blocks are part of the battery's command post.
They were brought here by the explosive force. Cutting down trees as they went...
... before reaching the water. The distance from here to the battery is more than 1000 meters.
You can imagine how violent the explosion was.
In late May and early June 1919,
a major part of the garrison staged a White Guard mutiny led by the commandant.
Three days later, the mutiny was suppressed.
Two years later, the garrison, now red, supported the suppression of the Kronstadt
rebellion against the Bolsheviks.
But battles for the Red and White army were not the only battles that the fort was engaged in.
In 1919, the coastal artillery of the Krasnaya Gorka Fort had to fight with a British warship...
In 1919, England built and launched a special purpose ship for destroying coastal fortifications.
The ship was built based on US technology,
with a rounded design, and equipped with two powerful 381 mm guns.
It was known as the monitor HMS Erebus
HMS Erebus was towed to the destination and brought to anchor,
followed by the fire adjustment procedure…
The guns fired a few salvoes, but the 900 kg projectiles landed near the fort,
failed to detonate, and did not inflict any damage.
Meanwhile, an observation scout at the hot air balloon from the Krasnaya Gorka spotted the target,
and two trial shots were fired from the fort.
The third 305 mm gun’s shot could have reached the ship, the Englishmen hastily cut the anchor cables
and towed their monitor straight back to the port in Edinburgh.
Thus, the first successful fight of the Kronstadt Fortress was provided by the Krasnaya Gorka Fort.
However, the battle was not over yet.
The Englishmen needed to learn how the fort artillery guns aimed,
detect the observation scout, and eliminate him...
Two planes came from the direction of Karelian Isthmus.
Their task was to detect the observation scout and find out how the artillery guns of the Krasnaya Gorka Fort aimed.
The first plane did not detect the subject and returned to base.
The pilot of the second plane suddenly noticed a hot air balloon with a person
wearing a fur coat in a wicker basket at 1,000 meters above the ground.
The pilot came closer and fired with his machine-guns.
Two of four cables of the balloon basket were cut, and the basket tilted with one side downward.
The plane started turning in a wide arc to return and destroy the balloon.
The observation scout fired back at the tail of the plane with his machine-gun and shot it down.
This is the first case that a hot air balloon was used to shoot down an enemy plane during World War I by Russians.
After the Russian Civil War and the first years of a hard post-war period,
the Red Army decided to renovate the fort’s defense system.
One of the key requirements of the time was the use of mobile artillery.
The weak point of coastal artillery is its immobility.
The enemy is always aware of gun battery positions and knows where projectiles will come from.
It makes the fixed guns an easy target for return fire.
Mobile artillery, for example mounted on a railway car, is another story.
From the early ‘30s of the 20th century, the construction of special railways
and artillery positions for this type of gun began at the Black Sea,in the Far East, and at the Baltic.
Mobile railway guns are a low-cost option used as a substitute for stationary fortifications.
Railway guns can be quickly positioned for firing, discharge several salvoes,
and be withdrawn to a safe position.
About 80 km of railway lines were built across the fort’s surface for this purpose.
This railway artillery mount TM-3-12 is equipped with a powerful 305 mm gun.
It used to be installed on battleship Imperator Alexandr III,
but in 1944, it was relocated to the Krasnaya Gorka Fort.
The projectiles were collected from a truck and an armored wagon behind the railway car,
by means of a cradle moving along the guides.
After a projectile was delivered to the gun, a device in the shape of a log,
located behind the gun breech, pushed the projectile into the barrel with compressed air,
unfortunately this device has not survived the test of time.
When firing, this type of gun could easily collapse,
that’s why it was positioned on a special site.
At the Krasnaya Gorka Fort, this site was called “Object-100.”
When delivered to the site, guns were fixed and connected
to the fire-control system located at the observation post.
To ensure precise fire for the new artillery systems, the fort required a modern approach to aiming.
A hot air balloon with an observation scout in a basket became a thing of the past.
Instead, a 38-meter concrete lookout tower was constructed at the “Object-100.”
There is no way up—two flights of stairs have been removed.
At the very top of the tower, there is a large room equipped with a Launitz range finder, telephone station, and radio.
By the beginning of World War II, the Krasnaya Gorka Fort
was considered an elite unit of the nation's coastal defense.
Three months after Nazi Germany invaded the territory of the USSR,
the Wehrmacht troops were stunned by the heavy fire of the fort’s gun batteries.
It was then that the Oranienbaum Bridgehead was established.
Its boundaries were determined by the firing range of the Krasnaya Gorka’s artillery.
This artillery mount has the code name TM-1-180.
TM is the Russian acronym for a railway gun, 1 is a design number,
and 180 stands for the gun’s caliber in millimeters.
The crew was partially protected by armor.
The front end of the armor is 39 mm thick, which is almost as thick as the front armor of the T-34 tank.
Immediately before firing, the crew laid crossties under the railway car on the rails to prevent damage from the recoil
caused by a powerful blast.
The gun fires—the clock is ticking.
The seamen start throwing the crossties on the lower deck—here.
The support legs came out of the ground, but there’s no need to fold them into the transport position—
they do not prevent the car from moving.
The worse thing they can do is break a few trees along the railway.
The railway gun withdraws from the firing position.
This is where an electric motor would sit, allowing the railway car to cover the distance of 30 km
and stay out of sight of enemy scouts.
The Krasnaya Gorka artillery not only deterred the enemy on land,
but ensured security in the sea lane forcing the Finnish gun batteries to stay silent.
In 1942, the fort was even provided with supplementary armament despite the ongoing siege.
This is a well-known Soviet 130 mm B-13 Pattern 1935 gun.
Judging by its appearance, it is inferior to Canet and Brink guns.
However, the B-13 has its own advantages:
it is equipped with an armored shield protecting the crew from shrapnel and bullets
and has a high rate of fire, producing up to 14 rounds per minute.
In January 1944, the Oranienbaum Bridgehead served as a starting point for Operation January Thunder,
aimed at ending the siege of Leningrad.
Later, the fort’s gun batteries were used to fire on Finnish fortifications at the Karelian Isthmus.
By the end of World War II, the railway guns were far from the fort—near Königsberg.
Of all the forts of the Kronstadt Fortress, the Krasnaya Gorka had the most prominent career.
The fort stirred up and suppressed rebellions, and fired at enemy land troops and even neighboring forts.
During the Russian Civil War, it fought against an English warship and Kronstadt battleships.
During World War II, it served as the last stand of the Leningrad defense.
Nowadays, the partially abandoned Krasnaya Gorka Fort is one of the most interesting memorials of the Kronstadt Fortress
and Russian naval glory.