War and Propaganda
Secret History: Churchill Blew up the Red Fleet
Abstract
Can we Trust Our Leaders? Shameful History
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.George Santayana
Original articles lightly edited. Freely distribute
Contents Updated: Tuesday, 26 September 2006, Friday, 2 October 2009
When Churchill Blew up the Red Fleet
It is secret history that Britain and the US intervened in Russia between 1917 and 1921. Churchill tried to stop the communists.
The scale and complexity of British operations in the budding USSR is not generally admitted, nor is Winston Churchill’s personal role in it. After the Bolshevik Revolution, internal conflict within Russia developed into a full-scale Civil War in which western powers fought the Red army in support of the counter-revolutionary (White) armies. Though the Armistice of November 1918 had been signed, Churchill, as UK Secretary of State for War, intensified Britain’s fight against the Russian Revolution.
Churchill took up the crusade against Bolshevism with fervor and conceived a master-plan for “strangling the Soviet regime at birth”. By bolstering anti-Bolshevik regimes in Archangel, in Siberia, on the Caspian and in the south, he hoped to encircle and starve the Reds. British officers were sent to Siberia to help Admiral Kolchak organize and train an army. In the south, an RAF squadron, allegedly on a training mission, flew in combat against the Red Armies. A British crew drove a British tank through the defenses of Red-held Tsaritsyn—later Stalingrad. British officers took batteries into action. Some 330 British soldiers and sailors were killed. Most of this was Churchill’s doing. The rest of the Cabinet were lukewarm or skeptical, and Prime Minister Lloyd George told Churchill Russia was “an obsession, upsetting your balance”. British aid, which Lloyd George estimated cost over £100 million (£several billion today), achieved nothing, and Churchill’s strategy of dissipating his forces was wrong. Only in one sector, the Baltic, did it have dramatic and lasting results.
The British were particularly interested in the Russian Baltic Fleet at anchor in the apparently impregnable fortress harbor of Kronstadt. After the Armistice, Churchill’s British strategy was that the Navy should be the dominating force in the Baltic, and so anti-Bolshevik forces should be given every support. But, despite the presence of a powerful naval force under Rear Admiral Cowan and of an RAF squadron on a secret Finnish airfield, the threat of Russia’s capital ships in Kronstadt harbor remained.
To deal with these vessels, on the night of Sunday 17 August, 1919, eight British torpedo craft, guided by Finnish smugglers, crept through the chain of forts that guard Petrograd bay. At the same time, the RAF launched a bombing raid on the heavily defended island harbor. Under this cover, the boats swept into the main docking area. It was only about half a square mile, forcing them to throttle right down and reverse to turn. Confined, the frail craft were easy targets, and the Soviets, once aware of the enemy’s presence, opened up with every weapon they had. One torpedo boat (No 24) was sunk almost at once, split clean in two by high explosive. Two others, desperately maneuvering at the harbor-mouth, collided. The commander of the undamaged vessel went full ahead to keep the boat he had rammed afloat until her crew could come aboard, but no sooner was this accomplished than the surviving craft was sunk by shell-fire. Lieutenant Steele, who had taken over No 88 after her commander was shot in the head, recorded that when he loosed his torpedoes at the battleship Andrei Pervozvannyi:
We were so close to her that a shower of picric powder from the warhead of our torpedo was thrown over the stem of the boat, staining us a yellow color which we had some difficulty in removing afterwards.
No 86 broke down and was taken in tow by No 72 under intensive fire from the forts. Dawn was breaking as the boats finally turned away for their secret base in Finland, speeded by the fire of every battery in Kronstadt. But the damage they had done spoke for itself. They had broken into “the strongest naval fortress in the world”, and succeeded in sinking two battleships, the Petropavlovsk and Andrei Pervozvannyi, a large depot ship and a destroyer, for the loss of three torpedo boats with six officers and nine ratings killed, and three officers and six ratings captured. The “cradle of the revolution”, manned by the ultra-revolutionary Red sailors, had been penetrated by boats devoid of armour and dependent entirely on the skill of the men who handled them.
The Illustrated London News announced on 30 August:
The sinking of two Bolshevik battleships by British coastal motor boats—a brilliant naval exploit. The Admiralty announced on 19 August—“A report has been received from the British senior naval officer in the Baltic that a naval engagement took place in the Gulf of Finland early on 18 August. Two Russian battleships, the Petropavlovsk and the Andrei Pervozvannyi and one destroyer were sunk. A cruiser was also probably seriously damaged. The British losses were three coastal motor boats. The Petropavlovsk had a displacement of 23370 metric tons and carried twelve 12-in guns. The Andrei Pervozvannyi had a displacement of 17680 metric tons, with a complement of 933, an indicated horse-power of 17600 equal to 18 knots and four 12-in guns”. In a list of casualties issued later by the Admiralty, among the officers reported killed were Lieutenant Archibald Deyrell-Reed, DSO, Lieutenant William H Bremner, DSO, and Sub-Lieutenant Thomas R G Borne. Among those reported missing and believed to be dead were Acting Lieutenant-Commander Frank G Brade, DSC, Lieutenant Laurence E S Napier, Sub-Lieutenant Osman C H Giddy, and Sub-Lieutenant Hector P Mclean… It has been stated that the motor boats attacked immediately off Kronstadt without the support of the fleet, but accompanied by three aeroplanes. The British squadron in the Baltic which has done such brilliant work is under the command of Rear-Admiral Cowan.
No declaration of war had been made by the UK. The British cabinet had only vaguely approved. They were trying at the time to negotiate the peaceful withdrawal of the Archangel troops, so the sinking of the Soviet Baltic Fleet was hardly well timed. The gallantry of the crews could not be passed by and two VCs and three DSOs were awarded. Yet there was no rejoicing, no campaign medal, and the cabinet made it clear that they wanted to forget the incident.
The interventions failed. The anti-revolutionary Whites had to be abandoned and were left to fight their last battles alone. For a while, the Bolsheviks were hard put to defend Petrograd itself from Yudenich’s White army, but the new nations hostile to the Soviets on the Baltic shores were freed of any fears of Russian naval action against them. It made possible the survival of an independent Finland and the creation of the Baltic States, though they ended up supporting the Nazis, before being absorbed by the Soviet expansion post WWII.
Above all, it impressed the Soviets with the dangerous and undying hostility and duplicity of Great Britain, and the people of the east have not forgotten it to this day. Indeed, the present UK Prime Minister, Anthony Blair, is duplicitous to his own party and country, and very likely to himself!
in The Observer supplement, May 1972.
