Baltic Fleet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Baltic Fleet (Russian: Балтийский флот, in the Soviet period - The Double Red Banner Baltic Fleet - Дважды Краснознамённый Балтийский флот) is located at the Baltic Sea and headquartered in Kaliningrad, the other major base is at Kronstadt, located in the Gulf of Finland. The Fleet was part of the former Soviet Navy and is now part of Russian Navy.
Contents |
[edit] Imperial Russia
The fleet was created during the Great Northern War at the instigation of Peter the Great, who ordered first ships for the fleet to be constructed at Lodeynoye Pole in 1702 and 1703. The first commander was a Dutch admiral, Cornelius Cruys, who in 1723 was succeeded by Count Fyodor Apraksin. In 1703, the main base of the fleet was established in Kronstadt. One of the fleet's first actions was the taking of Shlisselburg. Specially for this fleet, a navigation school was opened in Saint Petersburg in 1701; it was renamed the Marine Cadet Corps in 1752. By 1724, the fleet boasted 141 sail warships and hundreds of oar-propelled ships.
During the Great Northern War, the Baltic Fleet took Vyborg, Tallinn, Riga, Moonsund, Helsinki, and Turku. The first great victories of the Russian Navy were won at Gangut in 1714 and at Grengam in 1720. During the concluding stages of the war, the fleet would land in mainland Sweden and devastate the shore.
During the Seven Years' War, the Russian Baltic Sea was active in Pomerania, helping the infantry to take Memel in 1757 and Kolberg in 1761. The Oresund was blockaded in order to prevent the British Navy from entering the Baltic. During Catherine II's Swedish War the fleet, commanded by Samuel Greig, routed the Swedes at Hogland (1788) and Vyborg (1790), thus helping to bring the war to a victorious end.
During the Russo-Turkish Wars the fleet sailed into the Mediterranean and destroyed the Ottoman Navy at Chesma (1770), the Dardanelles (1807), Athos (1807), and Navarino (1827). At about the same time, Ivan Krusenstern circumnavigated the globe, while another Baltic Fleet officer — Faddei Bellingshausen — discovered Antarctica.
In the Crimean War, the fleet — although stymied in its operations by the absence of steamships — prevented the Allies from occupying Hanko, Sveaborg, and Saint Petersburg. Despite being greatly outnumbered by the technologically superior Allies, it was the Russian Fleet that introduced into naval warfare such novelties as torpedo mines, invented by Boris Yakobi. Other outstanding inventors who served in the Baltic Fleet were Alexander Stepanovich Popov (who was the first to demonstrate the practical application of electromagnetic (radio) waves[1]), Stepan Makarov (the first to launch torpedoes from a boat), Alexei Krylov (author of the modern ship floodability theory), and Alexander Mozhaiski (co-inventor of aircraft). As early as 1861, first armor-clad ships were built for the Baltic Fleet. Eight years later, the fleet commissioned the first turret battleship in the world - Pyotr Veliky. Furthermore, in the second half of the 19th and early 20th century a strong network of coastal artillery batteries was created to cover the approaches to St. Petersburg, Riga, and other important bases.
The Baltic Fleet took a prominent part in the Russo-Japanese War. In September 1904, a squadron under the command of Admiral Rozhdestvenski was sent around Africa - stopping in French and German colonial ports Tangier, Dakar, Gabon, Great Fish Bay, Angra Pequena, and Nossi Be (Madagascar), then across the Indian Ocean to Cam Ranh Bay in French Indochina and then northward to its doomed encounter with the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Tsushima. The German Hamburg-Amerika Line provided 60 colliers to supply the Baltic Fleet on its epic journey. The decision to send the fleet to the Baltic was made after Russia had suffered a string of defeats at the hands of the Japanese Army in Manchuria. This historic naval battle broke Russian strength in East Asia and set the stage for the unsuccessful Russian Revolution of 1905, setting in motion the decline that would see the monarchy brought down in 1917.
Following the catastophic losses in battleships during the Russo-Japanese war, Russia embarked on a new naval building program which was to incorporate a number of the most modern dreadnaught-type battleships into the fleet. In late 1914 4 dreadnaughts of the Gangut class entered service with the fleet: "Gangut"; "Poltava"; "Petropavlovsk"; and "Sevastopol". Four more powerful battlecruisers of the Borodino class were under construction, but were never completed. The Fleet's main operation during the First World War was the Ice Cruise of the Baltic Fleet (1918), led by Alexander Zelenoy. However, on the whole the heavy units of the fleet remained in port during the war, as the German superiority in battleships was overwhelming.
[edit] Soviet Era
During the October Revolution the sailors of the Baltic Fleet were among the most ardent supporters of Bolsheviks, and formed an elite among Red military forces. Some ships of the fleet took part in the Russian Civil War, notably by clashing with the British navy operating in the Baltic as part of intervention forces [1]. Over the years, however, the relations of the Baltic Fleet sailors with the Bolshevik regime soured, and they eventually rebelled against the Soviet government in the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921, but were defeated.
The fleet was developed further during the Soviet years, initially relying on tsarist warships, but adding modern units built in Soviet yards from 1930s onwards. Among the Fleet's Soviet commanders were Gordey Levchenko in 1938-39 and Arseniy Golovko in 1952-56. Ships and submarines commissioned to the fleet included Soviet submarine M-256, a Project 615 short-range attack diesel submarine of the Soviet Navy. The fleet also acquired a large number of ground-based aircraft to form a strong naval aviation force.
The fleet played a limited role in the Winter War with Finland in 1939-1940, mostly through conducting artillery bombardments of Finnish costal fortifications. Many fleet aircraft were involved in operations against Finland, however. Its operations came to a close with the freezing of the Gulf of Finland during the exceptionally cold winter of that year.
In the beginning of the Great Patriotic War the Baltic Fleet had 2 battleships, 2 cruisers, 2 flotilla leaders, 19 destroyers, 48 MTBs, 65 submarines and other ships, and 656 aircraft. During the war the Fleet, commanded by the vice-admiral Vladimir Tributz, defended the Hanko Peninsula, Tallinn, several islands in Estonian SSR, participated in the break through breach of the Siege of Leningrad, etc. 137 sailors of the Baltic Fleet were awarded a title of the Hero of the Soviet Union. However, for most of the war the fleet was trapped by German minefields in Leningrad and nearby Kronstadt, the only bases left in Soviet hands on the Baltic coast. Many of the fleet sailors fought on land as infantry during the siege. Only submarines could risk the passage into the open sea to strike at German shipping. They were particularly successful towards the end of the war, sinking ships like Wilhelm Gustloff, Steuben and Goya, causing great loss of life.
During the Cold War the importance of the fleet declined, as the Baltic was a shallow sea with the exits blocked by NATO countries. Instead, the Soviet Union poured resources into building up the Northern Fleet and the Pacific Fleet, which both had easy access to the open ocean. Still, it remained a powerful force, which in the event of war was tasked with conducting amphibious assaults against the coast of Denmark and Germany, in cooperation with allied Polish and East German naval forces.
A notable incident involving the fleet occurred in 1975 when a mutiny broke out on the frigate Storozhevoy. There were also numerous allegations by Sweden of Baltic Fleet submarines illegally penetrating its territorial waters. In October, 1981 the Soviet submarine U 137 run aground in Swedish territorial waters, near the important naval base of Karlskrona, causing a serious diplomatic incident. Swedish naval vessels raised the damaged submarine and permitted it to return to the Soviet fleet in early November[2].
[edit] Russian Federation
The breakup of the Soviet Union deprived the former-Soviet and Russian Baltic Fleet of key bases in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, leaving Kaliningrad Oblast as the Fleet's only ice-free naval outlet to the Baltic Sea. However, the Kaliningrad Oblast between Poland and Lithuania is not contiguous with the rest of national territory of the Russian Federation.
As of 1996 operational forces included nine submarines, twenty-three principal surface combatants (three cruisers, two destroyers, and eighteen frigates), and approximately sixty-five smaller vessels.
As of mid-2000 the Baltic Fleet included about 100 combat ships of various types, and the Fleet's Sea Aviation Group units were equipped with a total of 112 aircraft.
The remnant of the 11th Guards Army was reorganised as the Ground and Coastal Defence Forces of the Baltic Fleet in the late 1990s and includes the 7th Motor Rifle Brigade and 18th Motor Rifle Division, plus a Naval Infantry brigade.
[edit] Naval Aviation
The Fleet's Naval Aviation currently consists of:
- 689th Separate Fighter Aviation Regiment (Nivenskoye) (Su-27)
- 4th Separate Maritime Assault Aviation Regiment (Chernyakhovsk) (Su-24)
- 263rd Separate Mixed Aviation Squadron (An-26/Mi-8)
- 396th Separate Shipborne Anti-Submarine Helicopter Squadron (Donskoe) (Ka-27/Mi-14)
- 288th Separate Helicopter Squadron (Nivenskoye/Donskoe) (squadron of Mi-8, squadron of Mi-24)
[edit] References
- Richard Connaughton, 1988, 1991, 2003. "Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear: Russia's War With Japan". Cassell. ISBN 0-304-36657-9.
- Jürgen Rohwer and Mikhail S. Monakov, Stalin's Ocean Going Fleet - Soviet Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programmes: 1935-1953, Frank Cass, 2001, ISBN 0-7146-4895-7.
- Gunnar Aselius, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Navy in the Baltic, 1921-40, Routledge (UK), 2005, ISBN 0-7146-5540-6.
