Hattori Han has an in-depth impression of the Imperial Japanese Army infantry during the 1904-05 war with the Tsar in Manchuria, a conflict now some 120 years in the rearview. He includes the blue field training uniform, white summer dress, and winter sentry and front-line service with wartime theatre modifications.
Like an Osprey book come to life. Really well done.
Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger
U.S. Navy Photo donated by Charlotte Koch, whose husband, Richard Koch, was a Navy P2V pilot who served in Antarctica in the 1950s, via the National Science Foundation’s U.S. Antarctic Program archives.
Above we see the well-traveled Wind-class “battle icebreaker” USS Staten Island (AGB-5) hanging out with the locals and breaking a channel into McMurdo Sound on 11 February 1959, some 65 years ago this week. Staten Island served in three different fleets across 30 years and had an interesting tale to tell.
When World War II started, the U.S. Navy was up to the proverbial frozen creek as far as icebreaking went. While some foreign powers (the Soviets) really liked the specialized ships, Uncle Sam did not share the same opinion. However, this soon changed in 1941 when the U.S., even before Pearl Harbor, accepted Greenland and Iceland to their list of protected areas. Now, tasked with having to keep the Nazis out of the frozen extreme North Atlantic/Arctic and the Japanese out of the equally chilly North Pac/Arctic region (anyone heard of the Aleutians?), the Navy needed ice-capable ships yesterday.
The old (read= broken down) 6,000-ton British-built Soviet icebreaker Krassin was studied in Bremerton Washington by the Navy and Coast Guard. Although dating back to the Tsar, she was still at the time the most powerful icebreaker in the world.
The 10,000-ton. 323-foot Russian icebreaker Krassin, seen here in the Panama Canal, was studied by the USCG stateside for several months in 1941, with her design teaching the service many lessons
After looking at this ship and the Swedish icebreaker Ymer, the U.S. began work on the Wind-class, the first U.S. ships designed and built specifically as icebreakers.
Set up with an extremely thick (over an inch and a half) steel hull, these ships could endure repeated ramming against hard-pack ice. Just in case the hull did break, there were 15 inches of cork behind it, followed by a second inner hull. Now that is serious business. These ships were so hardy that one, USCGC Westwind (WAGB 281), almost 30 years after she joined the fleet, was heavily damaged by ice in the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea but still made it back. About 120 feet of the port-side hull was gashed when brash ice forced the ship against a 100-foot sheer ice shelf. The gash was two to three feet wide and was six feet above the waterline. The crew patched the side, there were no injuries, and the breaker returned home under her own power.
At over 6,000 tons, these ships were bulky for their short, 269-foot hulls. They were also bathtub-shaped, with a 63-foot beam. For those following along at home, that’s a 1:4 length-to-beam ratio. Power came from a half-dozen mammoth Fairbanks-Morse 10-cylinder diesel engines that both gave the ship a lot of power on demand, but also an almost unmatched 32,000-mile range (not a misprint, that is 32-thousand). For an idea of how much that is, a Wind-class icebreaker could sail at an economical 11 knots from New York to Antarctica, and back, on the same load of diesel…twice.
A photo of USCGC Eastwind, circa 1944. Note how beamy these ships were. The twin 5-inch mounts on such a short hull make her seem extremely well-armed. USCG Photo
To help them break the ice, the ship had a complicated system of water ballasting, capable of moving hundreds of tons of water from one side of the ship to the other in seconds, which could rock the vessel from side to side in addition to her thick hull and powerful engines. A bow-mounted propeller helped chew up loose ice and pull the ship along if needed.
With a war being on, they just weren’t about murdering ice, but being able to take the fight to polar-bound Axis ships and weather detachments as well. For this, they were given a pair of twin 5″/38 turrets, a dozen 40mm Bofors AAA guns, a half dozen 20mm Oerlikons, as well as depth charge racks and various projectors, plus the newfangled Hedgehog device to slay U-boats and His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s I-boats. Weight and space were also reserved for a catapult-launched and crane-recovered seaplane. Space for an extensive small arms locker, to equip landing parties engaged in searching remote frozen islands and fjords for radio stations and observation posts, rounded out the design.
Two of the class, Eastwind and Southwind, operated against teams of German scientists and military personnel who attempted to establish weather stations in remote areas of Greenland late in the war.
As noted by the USCG Historian’s Office in this chapter of “The Weather War,”:
On 4 October 1944 Eastwind captured a German weather station on Little Koldewey Island and 12 German personnel. On 15 October 1944 Eastwind captured the German trawler Externsteine and took 17 prisoners. The trawler was renamed East Breeze and a prize crew sailed her to Boston.
The tender was so specific and intricate that only a single shipbuilder submitted a bid, the Western Pipe & Steel (WPS) Corporation of Los Angeles, the yard that would build all eight members of the class.
Laid down on 9 June 1942 at WPS as Yard No. CG-96 for a contract price of $9,880,037, our icebreaker would be the first Northwind (more on that below) but that was just a placeholder as from the outset it was intended to Lend Lease this first ship of the class to the Soviets, who desperately needed it to keep the country’s chimney at Murmansk and Archangel (Arkhangelsk) open during ice season– and to repay the loan of Krassin, whose design helped influence the Winds.
As such, she shipped out without radar, some of the more sensitive commo gear that her sisters had, and a simplified armament (four 3″/50 singles, 8x40mm Bofors, 6x20mm Oerlikon, and two depth charge racks).
“Hull #96 Launching Dec. 28, 1942 – #63.”; Note her forward screw shaft under a huge overhanging bow, augmenting two shafts on her stern. Photo by “Dick” Whittington Photography, Los Angeles, CA via USCG Historian’s Office.
Hull CR96 [sic, CG96] 3/4 Bow view – San Pedro Harbor; Western Pipe & Steel Co. Shipyard. 10 February 1942. Note her two 3″/50s forward, Bofors singles under her wheelhouse windows, and magazine-less 20mm Orlikons on the roof. Also, note that she has no radar fit. Photo No. 42-69-92 by “Dick” Whittington Photography, Los Angeles, CA via USCG Historian’s Office.
Launched 28 December 1942, she commissioned 26 February 1944– 80 years ago this month– with a placeholder Coast Guard crew and USCG hull number (WAG-278) but was turned over to a waiting Russian crew almost immediately, with the Coasties only riding along as far as Seattle, which the Northwind left on 9 March headed for the Motherland with a red flag flying.
In total, three of the eight Wind-class icebreakers were lent to the Soviets: our Northwind (renamed Severnyy Veter= North Wind), Southwind (Admiral Makarov), and Westwind (Severnyy Polyus= North Pole).
In Soviet service, Northwind/Severnyy Veter was placed under the direction of the state-owned Arkhangelsk Arctic Shipping Company (GUSMP), based in Murmansk, but had to get there first. She was assigned to the Navy List of the list of vessels of the Main Northern Sea Route on 4 March and, leaving Seattle five days later, arrived at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on 25 March where she temporarily became part of the Vladivostok Arctic Shipping Company, spending the rest of the year escorting ships and patrolling waters in the Russian Far East before making the trip along the country’s Arctic coast– the Northern Sea Route– arriving in Arkhangelsk in December 1944.
Northwind/Severnyy Veter spent the rest of the Great Patriotic War conducting ice escorts of ships and allied convoys in the White Sea. As for her two sisters that were transferred– Southwind/Admiral Makarov and Westwind/Severnyy Polyus— they were only turned over to the Soviets in February and March 1945, respectively.
When the wartime commander of the GUSMP, Captain 1st Rank Mikhail Prokofievich Belousov, a proper Hero of the Soviet Union, passed away in 1946, Northwind/Severnyy Veter was renamed Kapitan Belousov in his honor.
Belousov, a trained polar navigator who had in the 1930s commanded the old icebreaker Krassin– which the U.S. Navy had studied before designing the Wind class– had crossed the roof of the world several times along the great Northern Sea Route, come to the rescue of the disabled icebreaker Georgy Sedov, and had supervised Soviet maritime transport in the Arctic during WWII.
Her time under the Red Banner over, her Soviet crew sailed Kapitan Belousov to Bremerhaven in West Germany where she was met by a party from the U.S. Navy, and the ship was unceremoniously transferred back to American custody there on 19 December 1951. As with other Allied ships returned from the Russians in this era, she was reportedly in very rough shape and filthy, no doubt done on purpose.
After six weeks of cleaning and repair at Bremerhaven, she was commissioned there as USS Northwind (AGB-5) on 31 January 1952, with CDR John Boynton Davenport, USN (USNA 1941), in command. Arriving at Boston after a slow Atlantic crossing, she needed a further four months to bring her back up to Navy standards.
In the eight years that Northwind/Severnyy Veter was loaned to Uncle Joe and the gang, the Coast Guard had picked up a second USCGC Northwind (WAGB-282), which was commissioned in July 1945. Thus, to keep from confusing the two, the original Northwind/Severnyy Veter was renamed USS Staten Island (AGB-5) on 25 February 1952—the only Navy vessel to carry that name.
Her Russian-era armament landed, and she picked up her first 5-incher, a sole 5”/38 DP in a Mark 30 enclosed single mount, as well as an SPS-6 radar set and lots of new commo gear.
Now haze gray and underway, Staten Island‘s first Navy deployment from Boston was to Frobisher Bay, where she conducted ice reconnaissance from July through September. The next year she notably became the first Navy ship to cut through the Davis Strait from Thule Air Base to the Alert station on Ellesmere Island, just 435 miles from the North Pole.
She was a key vessel in Project Mushrat and sortied 14 Rockoons (balloon-assisted stratosphere sounding rockets) carrying instruments for the Naval Research Laboratory and Iowa State University.
An 11-foot long/200-pound Deacon sounding rocket is shown being towed by a Skyhook balloon in a combination known as “Rockoon”. It was launched from the icebreaker USS Staten Island during the Arctic expedition of 1953. The rocket was wrapped in plastic to avoid freezing at altitude. (via Stratocat)
As detailed by the Navy:
This project, known as Project Mushrat, is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research with the assistance of the Bureau of Aeronautics and the Military Sea Transportation Service – Atomic Energy Commission Joint Program of Basic Research in Nuclear Physics, and the Naval Research Laboratory Program of Upper Atmosphere Research. Because of the widespread interest in the project, and particularly in the balloon-rocket technique, several observers from the three military services will accompany the expedition. The Balloon-Rocket Technique, commonly referred to as Balloon Assisted Take-Off (BATO) or Rockoon, was developed by Dr. James A. Van Allen at Iowa State University and used on board the USCGC Eastwind during the summer of 1952. This method makes it possible to reach high altitudes by small, inexpensive rockets. During the summer of 1952, one of the balloon rocket flights launched from Eastwind and achieved a peak altitude of about 295,000 feet.
Mushrat: The U.S. Navy icebreaker USS Staten Island (AGB-5) with a group of civilian and naval scientists onboard left Boston, Massachusetts, on July 18, 1953, for the North Geomagnetic Pole. They will make a comprehensive series of high-altitude observations of the primary cosmic radiation and the pressure, temperature, and density of the atmosphere in the northern latitudes. 330-PS-6008 (USN 483600)
Mushrat: “Navy Testing Cosmic Radiation at North Geomagnetic Pole. USS Staten Island (AGB-5) is shown reflecting in the water. Photograph released June 28, 1953.” 330-PS-6008 (USN 483601)
Coverage of Staten Island and Mushrat in the December 1953 All Hands:
In all, while stationed in Boston, Staten Island conducted six ice-breaking operations in northern waters between 1952 and 15 December 1954.
She then transferred to the Pacific in May 1955 and, joining her classmate icebreakers of Service Squadron 1 at Seattle, would shift to resupplying the new Distant Early Warning (DEW) radar stations in the Arctic, a role that would endure for a decade. It was during these trips that Staten Island was used as a Rockoon platform, launching a further 26 aloft in 1955 and 14 in 1958.
Northwind, I presume? Navy icebreaker Staten Island (AGB-5)/ex-Northwind (WAGB-278) approaching sistership, USCGC Northwind (WAGB-288), off Icy Cape, Alaska. 30 July 1955. Note her 5″/38 forward and her twin Bofors on the bridge wings. She also carries LCVPs. USCG Photo No. 07-30-55 (06) via USCG Historian’s Office.
She also started clocking in on regular Operation Deep Freeze runs to Antarctica’s Byrd Station and the later McMurdo Station.
USS Staten Island (AGB-5) temporarily stalled by pressure ice in the Ross Sea, during Antarctic operations, on 9 December 1958. Note Adelie penguins in the foreground. NH 99297
The above image of USS Staten Island (AGB-5) was used as the cover for the 15 July 1959 edition of Our Navy
Icebreaker USS Staten Island, AGB-5, and transport USS Calvert APA-32
USS Staten Island AGB-5 in the Amundsen Sea, 21 September 1960. Note the stacked LCVPs. U.S. Navy photo via USAP
14 November 1962 Staten Island (AGB-5) follows a lead in the ice of McMurdo Sound. U.S. Navy photo via USAP
25 November 1962. Steaming past Antarctica’s only known active volcano, Mount Erebus, the Seattle-based icebreaker USS Staten Island (AGB-5) widens a channel in McMurdo Sound for trailing cargo ships en route to McMurdo Station Antarctica. U.S. Navy photo via USAP
USNS Chattahoochee off-loads fuel into drums on a sled to be towed to McMurdo Station 13 miles away. The ice breaker Staten Island (AGB-5) is the center ship. The USNS Mirfak (T-AK-271) is a cargo ship to the far left. U.S. Navy Photo
In addition to paving the way to install and resupply Arctic DEW stations and Antarctic bases, Staten Island often embarked scientists directly, such as a 1963 U. S. Antarctic Research Program expedition to the Palmer Peninsula and South Shetland Islands. The expedition, led by Dr. Waldo LaSalle Schmitt from the Smithsonian, directed the icebreaker to call at 26 remote points between 18 January and 5 March, and her botanists and biologists harvested 27,000 specimens.
The U.S. Navy icebreaker USS Staten Island (AGB-5) with a HUL-1 helicopter on board approaches the Palmer Peninsula during Antarctic operations in early 1963.
1964: Navy Icebreaker AGB-5 USS Staten Island at McMurdo Station Antarctica. Note that her 5-incher has been removed
Operation Deep Freeze 1965: Fifty crewmembers of the USS Staten Island haul a damaged LH-34D helicopter across three miles of fast ice to the ship where it will be on-loaded
A USS Staten Island (AGB-5) postcard, seen late in her Navy career
By agreement with the Coast Guard, our girl– and all other Navy icebreakers– was placed out of commission on 1 February 1966, struck from the Navy list, and recommissioned as USCGC Staten Island (W-AGB-278), thus starting her third life.
She was painted white and upgraded, including strengthening her flight deck and hangar to permit her to operate with the new generation of HH-52 helicopters in a telescoping hangar, and her engineering plant was upgraded. By this time, she carried an SPS-10B and SPS-53A radar set in addition to her circa 1956 SPS-6C.
Wind Class Icebreaker USCGC Staten Island pictured c1968 with Navy Sea Sprite 9021 from Guam-based HC-5.
Meanwhile, in Coast Guard service her main guns had already been removed, and she spent the rest of her career with a few machine guns (four M2 .50 cals) and her small arms locker.
Staten Island at a Navy pier with her hangar fully extended. 31 July 1967; Photographer unknown. Photo No. 073167-49 via USCG Historian’s Office.
Staten Island. 14 August 1967; Note the large ice launch on her davits and telescoping hangar. Photographer unknown. USCG Photo No. 278-081467-63 via USCG Historian’s Office.
USCGC Staten Island (WAGB-278), a United States Coast Guard Wind-class icebreaker, makes its way to McMurdo Station in this undated photo. NSF photo via USAP archives.
Staten Island ice rescue team retrieving mail drop in Bering Sea. 1 March 1969; Photo No. 2780021169-23A; photographer unknown. via USCG Historian’s Office.
In late 1969, she navigated the Northwest Passage, escorting the Esso-chartered oil tanker SS Manhattan eastward from Seattle to New York, in concert while in Canuk waters with the smaller Canadian icebreaker Sir John A. MacDonald.
Original Kodachrome of the Staten Island (lead) and Canadian icebreaker CCGS John A. MacDonald (red hull) escort the tanker SS Manhattan (where the photographer is standing) through the Northwest Passage, September through December of 1969. Via USCG Historian’s Office
As detailed by the USCG Historian’s Office:
She rendezvoused with Manhattan and CCGS John A. MacDonald on 20 September 1969 and departed the next day. The convoy searched out heavy ice on the trip. Manhattan was testing its unique ice-breaking bow and searching for routes that merchant ships might use to transport oil from the oil fields of Alaska’s North Slope to the East Coast. By 1 October 1969, the convoy had broken through the heaviest ice in Prince of Wales Strait and Viscount Melville Sound. Staten Island assisted Manhattan “with evaluation project, photo, and ice helicopter reconnaissance, diving operations, dental treatment of Manhattan personnel and ice-breaking assistance.”
The convoy arrived in New York on 9 November 1969. On 9 December 1969, she returned to Seattle after becoming the fourth American ship in history to make the voyage around the North American continent. The others had been the cutters Storis, Bramble, and Spar in 1957. By the time she arrived back at Seattle, Staten Island had traveled 23,000 miles, stopping at New York City, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Acapulco, Mexico after transiting the Panama Canal.
When in the Arctic, she often tracked Soviet shipping, as noted by Crewman Ronald Lange, from the files of the USCG Historian’s Office of her 1970 Alaska cruise:
Our ship operated west of the Alaskan Straits to identify and track Russian merchant ships moving down towards the Straits bound mostly Vietnam. Our 2 helicopters identified ships and we were on the bridge and CIC group (I was in CIC. an RD3) documented. We identified different types of ships using mixed drinks for keywords (Martini for a freighter, whiskey sour for a tanker, etc.)…There were several Russian corvette-type escort ships and a Russian icebreaker as well. The captain of the Russian vessel came over by helicopter and saluted Captain Putzke, who was on the wing of the bridge…We were generally left alone by the Russians, except when one of our helicopters got into Russian air space near one of their early warning radar stations in the fog.
“269-ft. USCG C Staten Island (WAGB-278) masking trails through ice-paved [sic] for deliveries.”; 29 December 1970; no photo number; photo by PH3 D. H. Walker, USCG. via USCG Historian’s Office.
Deep Freeze ’71 saw Staten Island accomplish the feat of circumnavigating Antarctica, she transported a U.N. inspection mission around to the different international outposts on the continent– including the Russian bases– to ensure weapons-free treaty compliance.
U.S. Navy aerial photo of Hut Point Peninsula taken in February 1971 when the fuel tanker USNS Maumee arrived to off-load fuel (Feb 12-14). The smaller vessel to the outside is the USCGC Staten Island (WAGB-278). A careful examination of the photo will reveal the roof of British explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s 1902 Discovery Hut. The other building and fuel storage tanks have been removed since this photo was taken. Photo via USAP
13 February 1971: McMurdo Station Antarctica. Ships moored in Winter Quarters Bay. Present are USNS Maumee (T-AO-149), USNS Wyandot (T-AK-283), USCGC Staten Island (WAGB-278), and USCGC Burton Island (WAGB-283). National Archives. K-88755
Five ships in Winter Quarters Bay on 13 February 1971. In the foreground is HMNZS Endeavour (A184), across the right is USNS Wyandot (T-AKA-92) and USCGC Burton Island (WAGB-283), across the left, is USNS Maumee (T-AO-149) and USCGC Staten Island (WAGB-278). Along the shoreline, work is underway to repair and install facing an Elliott Quay – a steel-and-timber reinforcement barrier to protect the shoreline from erosion. Photo by Carl Norton, via USAP
On 9 January 1971, one of Staten Island’s embarked HH-52A Sea Guards (#1404) crashed while some 12,000 feet high into the side of Mount Erebus while on a Deep Freeze mission. The crew, uninjured, was rescued and returned to McMurdo. The helo had already suffered a near-catastrophic water landing earlier on the deployment.
As detailed by Lange:
“After the Arctic West trip of 1970, we were assigned to Operation Deepfreeze. Our ports of call on the outward leg of our trip were Hawaii. Suva, Fiji, and Wellington, New Zealand. Our air element came from Mobile, Alabama along with 2 HH-52 helos. Our trip through Fiji was uneventful, but while conducting air operations (SAR) drills, one the helos (#1404) experienced a total electrical failure at approximately 500 feet altitude and autorotated onto the ocean. No one was injured and the helo was hauled aboard with only slight damage to its hull. The copter was repaired, and electrical components were changed out on our way to McMurdo station.
We conducted ice-breaking operations along with the Burton Island in McMurdo Sound while the air element assisted ashore with cargo operations. In January 1971, while transporting base personnel around Mount Erebus, our HH-52 (#1404), experienced a severe downdraft and crashed near the summit of the mountain. It took several hours to find the aircraft as our choppers then were mostly white against a snowy background.
Staten Island also kept up her long-running knack for linking up with the Russkies.
For two weeks in February-March 1973, Staten Island met 475 miles north of Adak Island with the Soviet Far Eastern Shipping Company research vessel Priboy for a series of joint meteorological experiments in the Bering Strait. They were assisted by a NASA flying laboratory aboard an American Conveyor 990 aircraft out of Kodiak and a Soviet Il-18 operating from Cape Schmidt. The joint sea and ice study was code-named “Bering Sea Experiment” or Project BESEX, which surely inspired no shortage of Mad Magazine-level humor among all those involved.
USCGC 278 Staten Island, Pier 91 Seattle, 1972
She then spent a month (7 March to 3 April 1973) under the operational control of COMSUBPAC involved in supporting ICEX 1-73, the long-running U.S. Navy submarine exercise in the Arctic, which led to the ship earning the Coast Guard Unit Commendation with Operational Distinguishing Device. She added it to a CGUC she already picked up in 1969 for the SS Manhattan mission through the Northwest Passage and a Meritorious Unit Commendation she received in 1971 for her circumnavigation around Antarctica.
Then came, what turned out to be, Staten Island’s final Deep Freeze deployment down south.
The red-hulled USCGC Staten Island (WAGB-278) late in her career seen underway departing San Diego Bay, on 16 November 1973 after completing Fleet Readiness Training and was en route to Antarctica for Deep Freeze 74. Marine Photos and Publishing Co. canceled postcard via the NYPL collection (NYPL_b15279351-105169).
Returning to Seattle one final time, Staten Island was decommissioned on 15 November 1974 and soon afterward sold for scrap.
In all, she had counted no less than 22 skippers– 6 Soviet, 10 USN, and 6 USCG– across her 30 years of service.
Further, as far as I can tell, she was the only ship to pull off the polar hattrick of navigating the Northern Sea Route over the top of Asia and Europe (1944), the Northwest Passage over the top of North America (1969) and circumnavigating the continent of Antarctica (1971).
From patrolling for U-boats at Murmansk to supplying Byrd Station and launching Rocktoons into the stratosphere, if it was cold, Northwind I/Severnyy Veter/Station Island got it done.
Her plans and a few logbooks from her time as a Navy icebreaker have been digitized in the National Archives.
Meanwhile, hundreds of preserved scientific specimens in the Smithsonian’s collection were gathered along the Palmer Peninsula and South Shetland in 1963 by the USARP Expedition working from Staten Island’s decks.
HH-52 Sea Guard #1404, lost by Staten Island in 1971, remains on Mt. Erebus and is often visited by NSF staff.
Photo by Michael Carroll and Rosaly Lopes, NSF, 24 December 2016
A second Sea Guard from Staten Island is one of the few of the type that is preserved and on display, donated to Seattle’s Museum of Flight in 1988 and put on display in its standard livery in 2011.
The Russians still remember her as well. A detailed scale model of Northwind/Severnyy Veter is in a place of honor at the Museum of the Murmansk Shipping Company, the successor to GUSMP.
While the Navy has not commissioned another Staten Island, the Coast Guard perpetuated the name in the 45th 110-foot Island-class patrol cutter, WPB 1345, which joined the fleet in 2000.
21 October 1999. U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Staten Island (WPB 1345) is underway from Washington, DC. The cutter is returning to its homeport in North Carolina. USCG photo by PA3 Bridget Hieronymus.
She served until 2014 and was transferred to the former Russian Republic of Georgia, where she currently patrols the Black Sea as Ochamchire (P 23)-– where she will no doubt continue to cause heartburn to the Russians for years to come.
Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.
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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
Above we see the modified Russian Sokol (Falcon) class destroyer Reshitel‘nyi (also seen in the west transliterated as Rieshitelni, Ryeshitelni, or Reshitelnyy, and often confused with sister Rastoropny) and her crew in Port Arthur in 1904.
She had…an odd career.
Basically the default class of Russian torpedo boat destroyers in the 1900s, the Sokols (sometimes referred to as the Krechet class as the second ship incorporated several minor changes) were a Yarrow design and were one of the world’s fastest such ships when they took to the water, with the lead ship hitting 30.2 knots at 4,500hp on trials– although with the more typical 3,800 hp output they were rated at 29 knots, which was still plenty fast for the era.
An artist’s impression of Sokol
Small and sleek, they were not much larger than torpedo boats, running about 190 feet overall with just a narrow 18.5-foot beam. They could float in just seven feet of water, making them ideal for littoral operations. Displacing around 240 tons, they used 2 VTE steam engines fed by 4 Yarrow boilers and were good for about 600 miles on a maximum 58-ton coal load when chugging along at 15 knots.
Sokol before delivery in 1895 while still in the Glasgow area on trials with her recently arrived Russian crew, but no armament. Via Cassiers Magazine circa 1897
Destroyer Сокол ‘Sokol’ during her travels from Great Britain to St. Petersburg in 1895, after a heavy green paint was applied and her armament installed.
Owl, later Ryanyy, on trials in the Gulf of Finland in May 1901. She would serve in the Baltic Fleet her entire career, survive the Great War, and was captured in Helsingfors by Finnish White Guards in 1918, later becoming S1, the first Finnish destroyer although she was largely just used for training along with four of her sisters. She was the last of the class afloat, only discarded in 1939.
Sokol class destroyer Prytkiy (Quick) formerly Kretchet
Their main armament was two Russian-pattern 15-inch Lessner-type torpedo tubes on aft turnstiles with six Whitehead torpedoes (two loaded, four in the bow cockpit with their warheads in the magazines) while her guns were French: a single 3″/48 Canet gun with 180 shells, and three 47mm 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns with a supply of 800 rounds. They could also carry as many as 18 mines in a pinch.
Sokol class destroyer. Note her large Canet gun forward, three smaller Hotchkiss guns spread out stern and amidships, and her two aft torpedo tubes. Observe the rail track running down the starboard side of the deck. This allowed reload torpedoes to be moved from the bow cockpit to the tubes and could also double as parking for mines, which could be deployed over the side
The crew was about 50 officers and men.
In all, 27 hulls of the Sokol/Krechet class were constructed between November 1894 when the class leader was laid down at Yarrow in Glasgow and the final, Statnyy, laid down by the Nevskiy works in St. Petersburg, was completed in July 1904. In between, two other yards– that of Wm. Crichton’s works in Finland and St. Petersburg and the Izhora Admiralty Works at Kolpino– got in on the contracts. Following Sokol’s lead, they were initially all issued bird names, but in 1902 this was changed to a more dynamic naming convention after attributes (Obedient, Strong, Zealous, et.al.)
Laid down at the Nevskiy Works as Kondor in 1900, just after the Tsar’s government had wrestled a 25-year lease on the Chinese harbor at Port Arthur along with a concession to extend the Russian-run Chinese Eastern Railway to the port, the 12th Sokol was also the first of a series of 12 destroyers that would be shipped, incomplete, in sections some 7,000 miles east by rail and boat to be completed at the growing naval base on the Liaotung Peninsula.
These 12 were very slightly longer (200 feet oal vs the 190 feet of the standard Sokol) and heavier (300 tons full load vs 240) with a beam a few inches wider and a draft a few inches deeper. This was to accommodate eight smaller but more efficient Yarrow boilers and bunkers to carry as much as 80 tons of coal, giving them an endurance of 750 miles at 15 knots, something thought beneficial for the Pacific.
At that, Kondor, which had been renamed while incomplete, first to Baklan (Cormorant) and then to Reshitel‘nyi (Resolute) under the new naming convention for the type, took to the water of the Pacific and was commissioned on 14 July 1903.
Russian destroyer Reshitel‘nyi. One of the very few images of her
Of the 12 stretched Sokols sent to Port Arthur in such a manner, all managed to be completed although the final three– Strashnyy, Stroynyy, and Statnyy— were done in the summer of 1904 while the port was under Japanese blockade, so the shakedown period was…difficult.
As covered above, Reshitel‘nyi was the oldest of the dozen modified Sokol class destroyers at Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War.
Her first skipper, the noted polar explorer LT Alexander Alekseevich Korniliev, died of pneumonia and severe concussion received in his ship’s first battle with the Japanese fleet in the frigid waters, one that saw the sister destroyer Steregushchiy sent to the bottom while on a scouting mission that bumped into a superior force.
Japanese destroyer IJN Sazanami attempting to tow a sinking Steregushchiy, lost in action against two Japanese cruisers, while Reshitel‘nyi managed to escape. In the fight, Reshitel‘nyi lost one killed and 16 injured– a third of her crew. William Lionel Wylie painting.
Reshitel‘nyi’s second skipper was Capt. (2nd Rate) Fyodor Emilievich Bosse, who had been in command of the two-ship task group when Steregushchiy was lost and was ordered to take over for the ailing LT Korniliev. Bosse, who was also wounded in the engagement, surrendered his command in March 1904 and was invalided back to European Russia (while the railroad was still connected) for recovery– saving him from the disaster that would befall the Tsar’s Pacific Squadron.
Bosse, who commanded the ill-fated task group that left Steregushchiy sunk, Reshitel‘nyi damaged, and himself wounded bad enough to be sent home. He would retire as a rear admiral in 1916 after 40 years of service, survive the Revolution and Civil War, and then go on to be an advisor to the Peruvian Navy during the 1932-1933 Peruvian-Colombian War. He is buried in Lima.
With her third skipper in less than a year, LT Platon Platonovich Travlinsky, the scratch-and-dent Reshitel‘nyi was one of the Russian destroyers on patrol just outside of Port Arthur that spoiled the second Japanese attempt to scuttle four blockships at the entrance, torpedoing them well short of the outer harbor, too far out to fill their intended role.
Russian accounts credit the destroyer Silnyii with hitting two of the blockships while Reshitel‘nyi torpedoed a third.
Second attempt to block Port Arthur, 27 March 1904 William Lionel Wylie RMG PV0976
In July, out of torpedoes, Reshitel‘nyi conducted two successful mine laying operations near the harbor’s approaches.
Russian RADM Wilgelm Vitgeft, the third head of the Russian Squadron at Port Arthur since the war started (the first was sacked and the second killed when his flagship was sunk), was ordered against his better judgment to break out of the besieged port in early August 1904 and form up with a group of armored cruisers that made up the Vladivostok squadron, turning the tables on the Japanese blockade force under Admiral Togo.
In a poor state and with repair facilities in Port Arthur lacking, Reshitel‘nyi was unlikely to be able to break out for Vladivostok and would have to remain in the port to be destroyed or scuttled by her crew should the siege not be lifted.
On the morning of 10 August, Vitgeft took everything he thought that could make it– the battleships Tsesarevich, Retvizan, Pobeda, Peresvet, Sevastopol, and Poltava, the protected cruisers Askold, Diana, Novik and Pallada, and 14 destroyers– out to sea. A few hours later, most of them limped back after being repulsed by Togo. Vitgeft and his staff were killed by a 12-inch salvo from the Japanese battleship Asahi that cleared the bridge of his flagship, Tsesarevich, which, heavily damaged, made for exile in the German treaty port of Tsingtao along with three German-made destroyers.
That afternoon came orders for Reshitel‘nyi to limp out under the cover of darkness to the nearest neutral port with a Russian consulate, Chefoo (now Yantai), some 100 miles directly across the Bohai Strait from Port Arthur on the Shandong Peninsula. There, she would bring vital dispatches for the consul to send on to the higher authorities, among them the details of Vitgeft’s defeat.
But first, let us paint you a picture of Chefoo during the Russo-Japanese War.
It was from Chefoo that the flotsam and jetsam of the combat at Port Arthur washed up. As early as February 1904, shipwrecked Japanese sailors rowed into the harbor in the lifeboats. This was followed by successive waves of Russian refugees and blockade runners of all stripes smuggling contraband across to the besieged garrison via sampan and coaster. Meanwhile, foreign correspondents of all stripes set up shop in Chefoo to turn second and third-hand tittle-tattle into news stories for the hungry masses back home. For example, many of the columns on the war appearing in the New York Times in 1904 were filed from Chefoo.
The indifferent Chinese Qing dynasty’s government at Chefoo was represented by one Admiral Sah aboard the fine German-built protected cruiser Hai Yung (2680 tons, 3×5.9 inch, 8x 4.1 inch, 3 tt), resting at anchor under the protection of a battery of Krupp-made coastal artillery that controlled the harbor.
Ashore was a division of the Qing New Army’s infantry and brigade of cavalry, both of which had Japanese instructors, so there is that.
Western warships also often could be found in the harbor, with the American cruiser USS Cincinnati sharing space that summer with German VADM Curt von Prittwitz’s visiting East Asiatic Squadron, with the old man aboard his flagship, the cruiser Furst Bismarck.
Now back to the story of our little destroyer’s breakout.
Moving out of Port Arthur on the dark night of 10 August, Reshitel‘nyi was able to make 18 knots and miraculously threaded her way through holes in the Japanese screen, arriving at Chefoo at 0605 on the morning of 11 August.
Reshitel‘nyi (spelled “Rieshitelni” on the record), was photographed at Chefoo, China, on 11 August 1904, possibly by U.S. Navy personnel or the American consul. Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil, 1982. NH 94358
Her fourth skipper, the eager LT Mikhail Sergeevich Roshchakovsky (formerly of the daring little minelayer Avos who had crept within yards of Japanese warships to lay mines outside of Port Arthur), had a plan of his own which included patching his little warship up enough to be able to sortie south to the only allied port, Saigon in French Indochina, where he could presumably join Admiral Rozhestvensky’s Russian Baltic Fleet (dubbed the Second Pacific Squadron) for their final voyage.
Floating under the radar, so to speak, in the Chinese port without surrendering to internment wasn’t out of the question. At the same time, the damaged Russian light cruiser Askold and the destroyer Grosovoi had taken refuge in the port Wusong on the Yangzi and remained there, fully armed, until they voluntarily accepted internment the next month.
Service aboard shrapnel-riddled Askold in Shanghai
However, even in good repair, the likelihood that Reshitel‘nyi would be able to cover the 1,085 sea miles from Chefoo to Saigon, when her maximum range at 15 knots was only about 750 miles when packed with coal, avoiding prowling Japanese warships along the way, was slim.
Still, she would eventually link up with Rozhestvensky but in a quite different way than what Roshchakovsky had in mind.
Unluckily for Roshchakovsky’s plan, Admiral Sah, sending over officers from his cruiser, ordered the Russian destroyer disarmed within 24 hours or he would eject them from the port. Taking a vote from his crew, who elected to tap out rather than roll the dice at sea with moody engines, Roshchakovsky dutifully handed over the breechblocks from his deck guns, barred his torpedo tubes, and surrendered his small arms locker (13 rifles and two revolvers), in addition to disabling his engines and supplying the Chinese with a list of names of his crew. The Russians signed a pledge not to participate in further hostilities.
Roshchakovsky requested his ship be moved from the outer mole closer to shore where the guns of the cruiser Hai Yung and the Chinese coastal battery could protect it. Just in case, he ordered three small charges placed on the bulkheads in the magazines belowdecks, ready to scuttle if needed.
Reshitel‘nyi was out of the war.
Except she wasn’t.
Not wanting to let a juicy prize slip away, the Japanese destroyers Asashio and Kasumi entered the port shortly after Reshitel‘nyi was disarmed but before she could be moved to the inner harbor and dropped anchor in a position that cornered the Russian tin can. Refusing Admiral Sah’s signals to disarm and be interned or leave immediately, they replied that they would leave the next morning
Putting an armed prize party aboard the disarmed Reshitel‘nyi at 0330 on 11 August from two whale boats, Roshchakovsky confronted the Japanese officer in charge. With his hand on a sheathed sword, the Japanese lieutenant offered two options: immediately go to sea and engage in battle, even if he had to be towed, or surrender. Roshchakovsky selected a third option, and grabbed the Japanese officer, forcing him overboard and following him over the side into the harbor. A volley of fire from the Japanese blue jackets wounded the Russian with a bullet in his thigh.
In the ensuing melee, the Reshitel‘nyi’s crew, which more than outnumbered the two boats of Japanese, armed themselves with wrenches, fire axes, and coal shovels and fought it out, that is, until someone triggered the charges in the magazine, which were lackluster in performance.
Damaged but not sinking, the battle could end only one way, with the Japanese eventually taking over the Russian destroyer. Meanwhile, the waterlogged and bleeding Roshchakovsky and his 55 crew– with two men missing and several wounded– withdrew and made for shore. The Japanese suffered as well, losing at least two of their own.
Dawn came with the Japanese towing the captured Reshitel‘nyi out of the harbor and the Russians proceeding to their consulate, where most would spend the rest of the war.
The body of one of Reshitel‘nyi’s missing was recovered and buried ashore with full military honors, carried by her crewmates and escorted by an armed honor guard provided by Admiral Sah.
The crew of the Reshitel‘nyi in the courtyard of the Russian consulate in Chefoo grave of sailor Volovich. Roshchakovsky is the bearded officer in the center.
The fisticuffs became worldwide news and were interpreted by newspaper artists around the globe.
The crew was decorated, with Roshchakovsky both the Order of St. Stanislaus, 2nd class with swords, and the Order of St. Vladimir, IV degree with swords and bow. His men received the Order of St. Anne.
They were Russian heroes in a war with few of those and became legends.
The Russians in late 1904 lodged a “Seven Points” letter with the Great Powers protesting China’s Japanese-leaning neutrality including the use by Japan of the Chinese Miano islands as a naval base, the transport of Japanese war material on the Shanhai-Newchwang railway, China’s Hongkew ironworks accepting Japanese military contracts, Chinese soldiers being enlisted in the Japanese Army, the use of Japanese officers in training the Chinese army, Japan paying Manchurian Hunhutses bandits as irregulars, and, last but not least, the Reshitel‘nyi incident in Chefoo.
Illustration of a “shameless geisha” holding Reshitel‘nyi after Japan captured the destroyer in a neutral port, from the Russian magazine Budil’nik. No. 32, 1904.
Of course, the Japanese countered with an equally lengthy list of instances where Russia had abused Chinese good graces during the conflict including the use of Chinese Army uniforms captured during the Boxer rebellion by scouting units in Manchuria and the entire concept of the East Chinese Railroad.
It turned out that, as Reshitel‘nyi was built to a British Yarrow design and carried common boilers and engines, the British-allied Japanese were able to repair her rapidly.
The breechblocks to her guns were replaced, and her 15-inch torpedo tubes were swapped out for larger 18-inch tubes. The refurbishment took six months, and she entered Japanese service on 17 January 1905 as the destroyer Akatsuki, taking that moniker to obscure the fact that the Japanese had lost a tin can of the same name to a mine the previous May.
Japanese Navy destroyer Akatsuki (ex-Russian Reshitelnyi) underway to participate in the Battle of the Sea of Japan
Placed under the command of Capt. Masasaku Harada, she was with Togo’s fleet as part of his 1st Destroyer Division when it met Admiral Rozhestvensky’s Second Pacific Squadron at Tsushima in May 1905.
Ironically, her last Russian skipper, LT Roshchakovsky, was there as well, sailing on the old Admiral Ushakov-class coastal battleship Admiral Seniavin as the commander of the ship’s bow 10-inch turret. Roshchakovsky had quickly left Chefoo for Russia the previous August and, after meeting with the Tsar personally to brief him of the loss of Reshitel‘nyi, had asked for an appointment with Rozhestvensky’s squadron, joining Seniavin in October only days before the tub left Russia on her 18,000 trip that ended at Tsushima.
While Roshchakovsky and Harada did not personally engage in the swirling fleet action, the battle did not go well for either. Admiral Seniavin was surrendered on the morning of the 28th and became a Japanese prize– with Roshchakovsky becoming a guest of the emperor for the rest of the war. Meanwhile, Akatsuki/Reshitel‘nyi got so turned around in the dark due to heavy seas and harsh weather that she caused Japanese TB No. 69 to capsize and sink– one of Togo’s few losses in the battle.
Following the end of hostilities, Akatsuki/Reshitel‘nyi/Kondor/Baklan picked up her fifth name, Yamahiko (also seen as Yamabiko), and the loss of the original Akatsuki, a war secret, was finally announced. She would be joined in Japanese service by her sister Sokol class sister Silnyy, which had been scuttled at Port Arthur and rebuilt and renamed Fuzuki/Fumizuki.
Also captured by the Japanese were sisters Serdityy, Smelyy, Skoryy, and Statnyy, who were not returned to service. Meanwhile, sisters Storozhevoy, Steregushchiy, Razyashchiy, Rastoropnyy, Strashnyy, and Stroyny had been lost during the conflict.
Yamahiko in the 1914 Janes, the last of her class in Japanese service. Silnyy/Fuzuki had already been hulked in 1913.
Yamahiko in the 1915 Brassey’s
In 1917, our little destroyer was disarmed and removed from Japanese naval service. Working as the coaster Yamahiko Maru for some time, she was scrapped in 1919.
Of the 15 Sokols left in Russian service after 1905, two (Berkut and Prytkiy) were disposed of interwar while the rest were eventually rerated as dispatch vessels or torpedo boats, in the latter tasking picking up larger 450mm tubes. They would endure in the Baltic and Black Sea fleets for another decade, with some transferred to the inland Astrakhan-Caspian Sea flotilla via the Volga.
Baltic Fleet Sokol class destroyers 1912, Ryanyy in front
The Black Sea Sokols, in the 1914 Janes.
The final members retained in Soviet service– Prochnyy, Porazhayushchiy, Retivyy, Strogiy, and Svirepyy— would all be gone by the late 1920s.
The Sokol class destroyer Porazhayushchiy, which served in the Baltic fleet from commissioning until 1918, her crew helped to recover the vital cipher book from the grounded German cruiser Magdeburg in 1914. Porazhayushchiy was later transferred to the Caspian where she retired in 1925.
Following the collapse of Imperial Russia, five of the Sokols in the Baltic fleet– Korshun, Prozorlivyy, Rezvyy, Ryanyy, and Podvizhnyy— were captured by the newly independent Finns at Helsingfors (Helsinki) and Hango in 1918. They would be used by the nascent Finnish Navy as S1-S5 and disposed of throughout the 1930s.
S3 (Finnish destroyer) in commission from 1898 to 1921. Photographed about 1920. This ship was the former Russian Sokol-class Prozorlivyy,
The Finnish S-class boats in the 1931 ed of Janes, which at the time still in numbered two former Russian Sokols picked up in 1918.
Now, we touch on the fate of the unsinkable LT Roshchakovsky.
Repatriated from Japan in January 1906 and still nursing wounds from Tsushima and Chefoo, he was seconded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for use as a naval attaché in Greece and Germany until he was able to return to duty with the Baltic Fleet in 1908. He would go on to spend the rest of his career with the Tsarist Navy in minelaying/minesweeping work and in small escorts, including command of the Ohotnik-class mine cruiser (minnykh kreyserov) Pogranichnik in the Great War. By 1916, he was in command of the defenses to Kola Bay and Arkhangelsk, where war material was stacked up.
When the Revolution came, Roshchakovsky was cashiered and denied even a pension despite his 23 years of service. He sat out the Civil War in Norway without taking sides– notably writing White Russian General Denikin and urging him to throw in the towel for the sake of the country-– but would spend the rest of his life filing requests with the Soviets to return to naval service, all of which were officially denied. A trained engineer who had won the Admiral Nakhimov Prize while a cadet in 1896, while in Norway Roshchakovsky worked for a shipbuilding company.
Returning to the Motherland in 1925, he served as head of the foreign department under the board of НиГРЭС, the new Nizhny Novgorod powerplant, until 1928, when he was arrested for his past ties to the old regime and exiled to Siberia for three years.
In 1937, at age 61, Stalin’s NKVD picked him up again and gave him five years in a labor camp due to being a “socially dangerous element.”
Capt. 1st Rank Mikhail Sergeevich Roshchakovsky, three-time winner of the St. Anne in addition to the St. Stanislaus and St. Vladimir, perished in the gulag sometime in 1938, the date and place lost to the butcher.
Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.
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From the AP’s Archive, how about this great 55-year-old color clip of the Soviet squadron (5th Eskadra) in the Mediterranean. Likely shot from a Navy P-2 Neptune (at least one can be seen in formation out the window), it shows a wide swath of the Red Banner fleet including the brand-new (only commissioned 11 months prior) 15,000-ton Project 1123 Kondor helicopter carrier Moskva, Kresta and Kynda-class cruisers, Kashin class destroyers, an Osa-class missile cutter, and a spy “trawler.”
As noted by the CIA at the time, ” In April 1968 the Soviets deployed almost as many ships to the Mediterranean as they had the previous June, apparently to carry out their first major exercise there. In September the new helicopter carrier Moskva was deployed to the Mediterranean for the first time and in October the number of ships in the squadron rose to a new high.”
All good Cold War stuff.
Enjoy!
I bought my first hardcover edition of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Guide to Combat Fleets of the World, a sort of upgraded Jane’s Fighting Ships, in 1995, and I still often flip through it. Of course, they long ago went digital and, many don’t know, but USNI also runs a regular online Combat Fleets column where they cover some of the most interesting (and terrifying) warships afloat.
In the past few weeks, they have also started releasing short yet still in-depth videos on select classes including the massive People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 055 Renhai-class guided-missile cruisers– which are very much today’s Admiral Hippers in terms of the China Sea– Russia’s Steregushchiy-class Frigates, and China’s Jiangdao-class Type 056 and Type 056A guided-missile corvettes.
Enjoy, and do your homework.
Spotted on a Ukrainian coastal craft recently:
Besides the normal MiGs and Sukhois, note the assorted drone silhouettes.
Of note, the U.S. has donated 62 “coastal and riverine patrol boats” to Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict with Russia. Presumably, these are all small enough to be carried in via Eastern Europe from Poland and Romania via rail (under 89 feet) and truck (under 53 feet).
Last year, it was disclosed that at least 20 of those were 36-38 foot aluminum hulled boats from Metal Shark in Alabama.
Speaking of which, the Department of Defense this week quietly posted the latest, 34th, drawdown from DoD inventories for Ukraine since August 2021 which is valued at up to $350 million. Big ticket items include HIMARS rockets, 155mm artillery rounds, 25mm cannon ammunition, 81mm and 60mm mortar rounds, grenade launchers, demo equipment, more riverine patrol boats, thermal sights, and other gear. Also included were additional small arms– classified as .50 caliber BMG and under– along with associated ammunition.
Overall, this brings the total of American military assistance to Ukraine to more than $33.2 billion since the beginning of the Biden Administration took office– roughly the cost of three new Ford-class supercarriers. By comparison, Ukraine spent just $5.9 billion on its entire military in 2021.
When it comes to the running tally of equipment transferred from U.S. stocks to Ukraine this year, more than 150 million rounds of small arms ammunition have been allocated along with 232 pieces of artillery and over 2 million shells. Add to this over 1,600 Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems, 8,500 Javelin tank killer missiles, and 58,000 “other anti-armor systems.”
The full list, as of March 20, is below:
Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
Original print with McCully report MSS.-AR branch. Naval History and Heritage Command Catalog #: NH 91178
Above we see Tsar Nicholas II’s once-mighty Russian Pacific fleet at anchor at Vladivostok, in September 1903. From left to right: the battleship Sevastopol, armored cruisers Gromoboi and Rossia, battleship Peresviet, protected cruiser Bogatyr, cruiser Boyarin, center; auxiliary cruiser Angara (three funnels, black hull); and battleships Poltava and Petropavlovsk. Of course, the following year would bring war with the Japanese Empire, and just about all the above would be swept away.
Tracing its origins to the old Okhotsk flotilla of 1731, the Tsarist Pacific fleet would reach its zenith in 1904 and, just a decade later, was a shadow of its former self.
Here is the tale of how the Tsar’s final Pacific flotilla ended its days, 100 years ago this week.
When Russia entered the Great War in August 1914, the renamed Siberian Military Flotilla included the smallish protected cruisers Askold (Krupp-built, 5,900 tons, 12×6-inch guns) and Zhemchug (3,100 tons, 8×4.7 inch), a mix of 22 old/small torpedo boat-sized destroyers, seven or eight early submarines, a couple of auxiliary cruisers (really just converted steamers), three minelayers, some random gunboats exemplified by the old Danish-built Mandzhur, and two new Taymyr-class icebreakers.
The flotilla was manned by some 6,000 officers and men, including shore establishments, magazines, and drydocks.
Russian protected cruiser Askold under repair in Toulon, Sept 1916
Russian Cruiser Zhemchug as part of the Siberian Flotilla
Russian Siberian Military Flotilla Ulysses Bay 1908 with the submarines Delfin, Kasatka, Skat, Nalim, Sheremetev, Osyotr, Kefal, Paltus, Bychok or Plotva, and destroyer Grozovoy
All-in-all, a respectable coastal defense force to protect its two key ports at Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk, both of which had a serious network of modern coastal artillery emplacements ashore. Further, this did not consider the 30 or so small shallow-draft gunboat flotillas on the Amur, Ussuri, and Sungari River systems coursing through the somewhat outlaw China and Korean border regions.
Its commander, since November 1913, was RADM Maximilian Fedorovich Schultz, one of the few Russian officers who came out of the 1904 War with a decent combat record as the skipper of the hard-fighting cruiser Gromoboi.
However, this force was soon whittled down as the war went on, with Zhemchug scandalously blasted away at her moorings at Penang by the German raider Emden in October, and Askold was sent into the Indian Ocean to search for Emden and then spent practically the rest of the war in the Mediterranean Sea.
Once the Ottoman Turks entered the war and closed off Russia’s Black Sea ports to British and French war material in late 1914, coupled with the destruction of the German East Asia Squadron under Admiral Maximilian von Spee, leaving the Pacific largely safe, Russia’s far Northern ports at Archangel and Romanov-on-Murman (today’s Murmansk) would become strategically important to the War effort. This saw a lot of the Siberian Flotilla siphoned off to become part of the new Arctic Flotilla/Northern Fleet in the freezing White Sea under Rear Admiral Ogrimov.
Askold would eventually end up in Archangel, as would the six best torpedo boats from Vladivostok and the submarine Delfin— the latter sent across the Trans-Siberian railroad and then barged up the Dvina River, a trek of over 8,000 miles. The minelayer Ussuri, along with the shiny new icebreakers Taymyr and Vaygach, would likewise be sent to the White Sea in 1915, largely by the Northern Route.
The twin icebreakers Taymyr and Vaigach are coaling from a freighter at Emma Harbor, 1913. Part of the Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition under CDR (later ADM) Aleksandr Kolchak that helped chart the Northern Sea Route over Siberia and discovered what is now Severnaya Zemlya, they were assigned to the Pacific pre-war but would end up in the White Sea by 1915.
The Japanese, now Russian allies on paper at least, also retroceded (for a token fee) some wrecked old Tsarist warships captured during the 1904-05 War that they had rebuilt on a budget: the Petropavlovsk-class battleship Chesma (ex-Poltava), the battleship Peresvet (reclassified as an armored cruiser as she had been equipped with smaller caliber British Armstrong guns by the Japanese), the cruiser Varyag, and the auxiliary cruiser Angara.
Transferred by the Japanese at Vladivostok in March/April 1916, the first three were soon dispatched to the Med (where Peresvet was promptly sunk by a German mine off Port Said) within weeks, and two would end up in Archangel by 1917.
Chesma was photographed at Vladivostok in 1916, after being repatriated by Japan to Russia. This ship served as The Japanese Tango after being salvaged at Port Arthur after The Russo-Japanese War; previously, she was The Russian Poltava. NH 94326
Chesma, foreground, and Varyag, background, photographed at Vladivostok after being retroceded by Japan in March 1916. NH 94355
Peresvet photographed at Vladivostok in 1916 after being returned by Japan to Russia. This ship was sunk at Port Arthur in 1904 and served the Japanese Navy as the Sagami from 1905 to March 1916. Peresvet was mined and sunk on 4 January 1917 near Port Said, Egypt. NH 94791
Staffing these three large ships significantly drained the flotilla of manpower, leaving several ships laid up afterward.
Angara, in poor material condition, never left Vladivostok and served as a barracks and depot ship there.
Pechenga, a Russian depot ship probably photographed at Vladivostok during World War I. This ship was built in 1898 in Scotland as Moskva for the Russian Volunteer Fleet Association; it was renamed Angara in late 1903 for naval service and sunk at Port Arthur. She was raised by Japan and renamed Anegawa Maru, then served as a transport until and ceded back to Russia in 1916. Scuttled in 1922, she was later raised and scrapped by the Soviets. NH 92087
Further transfers of the rest of its submarines to the Black and Baltic Sea via rail, and the paying off of three worn-out torpedo boats/destroyers (Besposhtchadny, Boiki, and Grozny) in 1916 would leave the Siberian Military Flotilla in 1917 without any battleships, submarines, or cruisers, and precious few escorts. Its two most powerful ships being its auxiliary cruisers.
Orel (“Eagle”), a German F. Schichau-built fast passenger steamer with accommodations for 390 passengers, built originally for the Russian Volunteer Fleet, was the Siberian Military Flotilla’s most fearsome warship after October 1914 and would remain so until she sailed away in January 1920. Mounting eight deck guns ranging from 47mm to 120m,m along with a few machine guns and capable of maintaining 16 knots, she was classed as an auxiliary cruiser by the Russians. During the Great War, she looked for the German raider Emden, landed her naval infantry at Singapore to suppress a rebellion of Sepoys, and patrolled from Hawaii to Bombay. She was sold after the Russian Civil War to an English shipping firm and, as the SS Silvia and later SS Haitian, would survive in merchant service until 1950. Image from Yu.N.Trifonov, A.E.Volkov’s “Marine collection” 2007/06.
Orel and her sisterships, the passenger steamers Poltava, Simbirsk, Pensa, and Rjasan, from the 1910 Engineering magazine
By the time of the March Revolution that overthrew the Tsar in far-away Petrograd, the Siberian flotilla would number only about a dozen semi-active torpedo boats/destroyers, the auxiliary cruisers Lieutenant Dydymov and Orel, the 700-ton gunboat Adm. Zavoyko, the gunboat Mandzhur, and the 2,500-ton minelayer Mongugay.
On 29 November 1917, Adm. Zavoyko raised a red flag on her masts while in Golden Horn Bay, the first such vessel in the Pacific to do so, and the rest of the fleet went over to the Bolsheviks, becoming the Red Siberian Flotilla on 12 December 1917– with most ships’ officers and senior NCOs released from duty.
RADM Schultz, after a term in the brig guarded by red-arm banded sailors, was retired. He returned to his sister’s home near Luga, outside of Petrograd, and was later arrested in late September or early October 1919 and shot by the Bolsheviks. His body was never found.
Meanwhile, with stockpiles of allied war aid crowding the docks of Vladivostok, American (cruiser USS Brooklyn), British (cruiser HMS Suffolk), and Japanese (battleships Iwami and Asahi) warships were in the harbor by January 1918 and had sent marines ashore to protect their consulate.
Bundled up, U.S. Marines landed from USS Brooklyn (CA-3) at Vladivostok, Siberia, in 1918-19. 111-SC-76186
This soon expanded to a mandate to support the withdrawal of the newly formed Czech Legion, recruited from Austrian POWs held in Russian camps, and whole divisions of ground troops came ashore over the summer, with the Japanese eventually landing 72,000 troops under the command of Gen. Kikuzo Otani. By comparison, the smaller American Expeditionary Force, Siberia, of Maj. Gen. William S. Graves only amounted to about 8,000 soldiers. The latter was supported by a U. S. Navy task force under RADM William L. Rodgers. Similar forces were landed by the Canadians (4,400) and British (6,700, mostly Indian, troops).
American sailors equipped with Remington-made Mosin rifles and helmets in Vladivostok, Russia, 1918. 111-SC-50100
U.S. Soldiers in Vladivostok, Aug. 1918, a mission that would span four years
Russian Intervention, 1918-20. Hospital Car operated by the American Expeditionary Forces at Khabarovsk, north of Vladivostok. American Red Cross Collection. The war in Siberia was one of railways and ports. Photograph received November 11, 1919. National Archives.
With the change in Eastern Siberia’s political polarity in June 1918, the anti-Bolshevik White Russians under then-Admiral Kolchak, with the interventionists as muscle, took control of the Siberian Military Flotilla. The Japanese duly impounded the destroyers Tochnyy, Tvordyy, Smelyy, and Skoryy, along with most of the gunboats of the Amur River flotillas, and never gave them back.
Russian destroyer Skoryy, seen at Port Arthur in 1903. The 258-ton Sokol-class destroyer was assembled at Port Arthur from a Nevsky-supplied kit and, escaping the fall of the fortress in 1905, was eventually taken over by the Japanese in June 1918, who kept her in operation for four years, scuttling the vessel in October 1922 along with the other destroyers the Japanese had taken up.
Bereft of lower ratings, who had either signed up with the Reds or deserted, the Flotilla was sidelined through most of the Russian Civil War. During this period, its leadership shifted between Rear Admirals Sergei Nikolaevich Timirev and Mikhail Andreevich Berens. Efforts to train new officers and crews from local recruits were begun but, as it would turn out, were short-lived.
Once Kolchak was betrayed and executed at the end of 1919 and it looked like the Reds were going to win, a great flight from Vladivostok led to the departure of a convoy led by Orel (with RADM Berens aboard), the transport Yakut, and a group auxiliary ships manned by midshipmen of the local Naval School and refugees from Vladivostok to Japanese-held Tsingtao in January 1920, with Orel proceeding ultimately to Sevastopol where they would join the White Russian forces there.
Two Siberian Flotilla units were probably photographed off Vladivostok. Transport Yakut was a former British Steamship, purchased in 1892. A Nevski-built, Yarrow-Type Destroyer appears at left. NH 94289
In their wake, Berens (or the Japanese) had scuttled the destroyers Trevozhnyy, Inzhener-mekhanik Anastasov, and Leytenant Maleyev.
Destroyer Inzhener-mekhanik Anastasov in Vladivostok. She had been scuttled in 1920.
Their supply lines running short and the Japanese still in control of the region as far inland as the eastern shores of Lake Baikal, the Reds stopped just short of overrunning the maritime region and Vladivostok languished as the principal port of a rump state– the Far Eastern Republic– under the protectorship of the Allied interventionists and with the tacit agreement of Moscow.
This thing. The population, just 1.7 million-ish, half of it Chinese/Mongol, was sparse but the mineral riches were heavy
It should be noted that the FER kind of wanted to just break away from the whole Russia thing and go its own way, much like the Baltics, Caucasus, Ukraine, Finland, and Poland had already. Their much-divided 400-member representative Constituent Assembly consisted of about a quarter Bolsheviks with sprinklings of every other political group in Russia, including Left and Right Social Revolutionaries, Kadets (which had long ago grown scarce in Russia proper), Mensheviks, Socialists, outright Monarchists, and Anarchists. This produced a weak and divided buffer state between Soviet Russia and Imperial Japan, and Moscow, fighting Poland in the West and against Wrangel’s White Russian forces in Ukraine at the time, had bigger fish to fry.
The thing is, Washington and London were tired of their Russia expenditures once it became clear regime change wasn’t going to be a thing, and, with the withdrawal of the British, the Czech Legion, and AEF-Siberia by April Fool’s Day 1920, it became an outright Japanese puppet, safe and snug behind a cordon sanitaire of the Emperor’s bayonets.
The descendant of a Scottish family of the Clan Donnachaidh that moved to Russia back during the days of Peter the Great, Stark was a career naval officer born in 1878. Graduating from the naval cadet school in 1898, he was well-placed as his great uncle was Admiral Oskar Viktorovich Stark, the commander of the Russian Pacific Fleet at the beginning of the 1904 war. The younger Stark spent his career in destroyers, ultimately going on to command the 5th and 12th destroyer divisions against the Germans in the Baltic in 1916 and, after the March Revolution, was promoted to rear admiral in charge of the Baltic Fleet’s mine forces– the most effective unit of that fleet.
Cashiered once the Bolsheviks came into power, Stark made his way east and fell in with Kolchak by June 1918, ultimately leading an infantry division of all things in combat along the Trans-Siberian. Narrowly escaping the White collapse along the shores of Lake Baikal and crippled by typhus, he was in a Vladivostok convalescence bed when Berens pulled stumps with the flower of the Siberian Flotilla’s officer corps.
Under the squishy politics of the FER, the flotilla was rechristened the republic’s “People’s Revolutionary Fleet” but, following a pro-White coup under Gen. Mikhail Diterikhs and others in Vladivostok in May 1921, became the Siberian Military Flotilla once again– using the old St. Andrew’s naval flag– under the new Provisional Priamur Government, with a recovered Stark in command. Reforms and rebuilding efforts by Stark (who also pitched in with running the government) put some of the fleet’s destroyers and gunboats back in service, and they were used to support a variety of amphibious landings along the coastline to fight Red partisans throughout the summer periods of 1921 and 1922.
The gunboat Adm. Zavoyko, away on a mission when the coup went down, rather than sail for Vladivostok and join the Whites, instead made for Shanghai. There, according to legend, she successfully fended off several plots from foreign actors, Whites, monarchists, and the like to take over the vessel.
Then, starting in June 1922, the Japanese began to slowly withdraw from the Priamur enclave, with the final troops sailing away in early October. Diterikhs tried to go on the offensive near Khabarovsk to scare the Reds off, but they were driven back. On 9 October, the Reds occupied Spassk and began moving into South Primorye, then, by 19 October, were on the outskirts of Vladivostok.
Members of the Provisional Amur Government in Vladivostok, 1922. In the center are the brothers Spiridon (Chairman of the Government) and Nikolai Merkulov (Minister of Foreign Affairs), and to the right, in a bow-tied Tsarist admiral’s uniform, is RADM Georgy Stark, commander of the Siberian Flotilla.
This left Stark tasked with a maritime evacuation of the last die-hard White Russians, bereft of international support, using what remained of the flotilla. A genuine spit-and-bubble gum effort. Scuttling the already disarmed destroyers-turned-minesweepers Serdityy and Statnyy, as well as the Pechenga (old Angara) after stripping them of everything useful, he was able to scrape together a handful of vessels that could make the open ocean.
Serdityy, a Russian destroyer, photographed at Vladivostok in 1916. Note that the ship’s guns have been removed, probably for service as a minesweeper. This ship was ordered as Bekas but was renamed on 26 December 1899 (old-style calendar). Note the floating dock in the left background. NH 92392
Stark’s force included the auxiliary cruiser Lieutenant Dydymov, the gunboats Mandzhur, Farvater, Strela, Strazh, and Porazhayushchiy; the minelayer Mongugai, the tug Baykal, dispatch boat Ayaks, and the freighters Diomed, Zapal, Patrokl, Svir, Uliss, Il’ya Muromets, Batareya, and Parizh. Joined by a dozen miscellaneous civilian vessels– including fishing trawlers and construction barges– under a tri-color Russian flag at Posyet Bay, Stark’s little fleet numbered 28 ships all told by 28 October, filled with over 10,000 refugees.
Sailing 370 miles for Genzan (Wonson) in what is now North Korea, they arrived on Halloween 1922 and remained there for three weeks as other White Russian vessels swelled Stark’s exile fleet to over 40 ships. Ordered to leave by the Japanese, who were not anxious to support a Russian exile community in the Hermit Kingdom, Stark consolidated his ships, shedding the crippled vessels along the way (Dydymov was tragically lost in a storm while the dispatch boat Ayaks was later lost off Formosa) and stopped briefly at Fuzan (Busan) before arriving at Shanghai with just 15 ships. He was joined there by the White Russian gunboat Magnit, which had left Petropavlovsk with 200 Siberian Cossacks aboard.
Soon, the gunboats Farvater, Strela, Strazh, and Porazhayushchiy were disarmed and sold to a French concern in Shanghai in exchange for enough credit to buy 1,500 tons of coal for the ships that were left.
Meanwhile, (acting) RADM (formerly Capt. 2nd rank) Vasily Viktorovich Bezuar remained at Genzan with 11 broken ships that he would liquidate, arriving in Shanghai before the year was out.
In a state of the surreal, the exiled anti-White gunboat Adm. Zavoyko was still in Shanghai at the time, and only sailed back home to the now-all-Soviet Vladivostok in March 1923 (after Stark’s fleet left), where she became a unit of the Red Banner Fleet– the only one in the Pacific until 1932.
ADMIRAL ZAVOYKO 1921
It was in Shanghai that Red Navy Capt. Vladimir Alexandrovich Belli– like Stark from a Scottish family that had been in Russia since the 1700s– was sent by Moscow to talk with Stark. He brought the White admiral a photo and letter from his family in Petrograd and offered a general amnesty on behalf of the Central Committee in exchange for the return of the flotilla. Stark refused and, according to some reports, Belli didn’t blame him. Nonetheless, some of the refugees had second thoughts about their new lives abroad and returned to Russia with the Red officer.
With most of the sad little fleet’s refugees leaving the ships to cast their lot ashore with the thousands of White Russian exiles in Manchuria and China, by January 1923 it had been decided that the remaining ships which could still steam would head as a force to Manila, where– with the diplomatic support of fellow White RADM Boris Petrovich Dudorov who was serving as naval attaché in Tokyo from 1918 to 1922 and Washington after 1923 for the exile government as the Japanese did not recognize the Moscow government– they would be given a literal safe harbor.
Much like the welcome the Tsar’s battered fleet received in 1905 and the exiled South Vietnamese Navy would receive in 1975 following the fall of Saigon, the Philippines became home to Stark’s Whites.
On 20 January, ten of Stark’s vessels carrying 720 or so White Russian naval officers and sailors, along with 175 of their wives and children, appeared in the Lingayen Gulf. They would be escorted into Cavite by the U.S. Navy, where their ships would be swept for weapons, the breechblocks of their guns removed, and a (guarded) camp established at Olongapo ashore.
Governor General Leonard Wood went on to secure $5K from the American Relief Administration for Russia and a matching $5K from the American Red Cross while pushing the local government to allow some of the smaller Russian ships to engage in inter-island trade. On 23 March 1923, in agreement with the U.S. Navy, Stark ordered the St. Andrews Cross lowered on his ships, replaced by the Stars & Stripes alone.
In April, President Harding authorized the emigration of 500 Russian refugees from Stark’s ships to the U.S., provided they could pay their own way on an Army-provided transport and be granted visas– while many of the balance would go on to take jobs in Mindanao.
On 24 May 1923, some 529 Russians, mostly former naval personnel and their families, were taken on the 3,000-ton U.S. Army Transport Merritt and, subject to military justice with Stark’s blessing, would sail for San Francisco in a transit paid for by Stark’s remaining funds. The fees for the necessary visas, likewise, had been paid for out of the fleet’s strongbox.
The USAT Merritt. Built in China in 1912 for the U.S. Army Quartermaster Department, she would ply the Philippines and run a shuttle service to Hawaii and California for 20 years. Sold on the commercial market as SS Bisayas, she was lost in 1942 to the Japanese, who raised her and put her back in service as the Hishigata Maru until the USAAF sent her to the bottom for a final time in 1945.
As for the last of Stark’s ships, they were left to sway at their moorings in Cavite with 75 volunteers to keep them afloat until they could be sold or disposed of.
While many of the principal European countries soon reestablished relations with Soviet Russia– Great Britain concluded a trade agreement with the Soviet regime in 1921 and accorded recognition in 1924, while Germany reestablished diplomatic relations in 1922 and concluded a comprehensive commercial treaty in 1925– U.S. relations with Moscow gently warmed until the Soviet Union was recognized in 1933. However, a Soviet delegation was allowed to visit Cavite in 1925 to inspect Stark’s remaining unsold ships, and, with one curious exception, they elected to sell them for scrap “as-is, where-is.” Of these, one, the gunboat Mandzhur, was purchased by Amagasaki Kisen, refurbished, and placed into service as Kimigayo Maru No.2.
Russian auxiliary cruiser/gunboat Mandzhur (Manchu, Manjur,) built in Denmark in 1886
Kimigayo Maru No.2, formerly the White Russian gunboat Mandzhur, was placed in regular two-day rice and barley runs between Osaka and Jeju Island from 1926 through 1941. Taken up from service by the Japanese Navy, she was lost in the June 1, 1945, B-29 bomber raid on Osaka.
The only ship of Stark’s that went back to Vladivostok was the 2,500-ton minelayer Mongugay.
Built in 1896 in Germany as a commercial steamer, Pronto, Mongugay had been bought by the Russian Navy in 1904 for service during the war with Japan. Able to carry 310 mines and armed with a mixed battery of 75mm and 47mm guns, she served the Tsar, then the Reds, then the Whites, and Stark until abandoned in Cavite. Reclaimed by the Reds in March 1925, she was made ready to sail and arrived back at Vladivostok on 12 April.
Used by Sovtorgflot as a tramp steamer of sorts into 1933, Mongugay was subsequently handed back over to the newly formed Soviet Red Banner Pacific Fleet and used as a receiving ship until 1951, when she was finally scrapped.
As for Stark, the unsinkable admiral would wander around Asia and Europe for a bit before settling with the large Russian exile community in Paris, where he would work as a taxi driver while serving as the chair of the “All-Foreign Association of Russian Naval Officers.” During the occupation of Paris by the Germans, he refused to cooperate with the German authorities and instead was involved with the Resistance.
Passing in 1949, aged 71, Stark was buried in the Russian cemetery at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.
Stark’s second in command, the young Bezuar, would go on to serve as a merchant ship captain in Philippine and Chinese waters during the interwar period and was killed in December 1941 when the Japanese sank his ship. Speaking of which, many of the White Russian exiles that settled in Mindanao would go on to join and support anti-Japanese resistance forces in the islands during WWII occupation.
Belli, the Red officer of Scottish ancestry who offered Stark and company amnesty in Shanghai in 1923, went on to spend 10 years as a guest in Stalin’s gulag during the Purges, then, during WWII, returned to service and eventually retired in 1951 as a rear admiral teaching international naval law at the Voroshilov Naval Academy. He outlived just about everyone else involved in this story and died in Leningrad in 1981, still officially a member of the Frunze Academy’s board at age 93.
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The most current map, via the British MOD:
Tea leaves?
The minutes after the Russian offensive into Ukraine kicked off, RIA Novosti, which is owned and operated by the Russian federal government and is basically just a descendant of the old Sovinformburo, released a fairly wild piece by commentator Petr Akopov that, while it has been zapped from RIA’s website proper, still exists in web archives.
So interesting, and mechanically translated, excerpts (with commentary added), basically painting the conflict as a civil war that is correcting the wrongs of 1918, when the old Russian Empire fell apart, and 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed:
A new world is being born before our eyes. Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has ushered in a new era – and in three dimensions at once. And of course, in the fourth, internal Russian.
Russia is restoring its unity – the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome. Yes, at a great cost, yes, through the tragic events of a virtual civil war, because now brothers, separated by belonging to the Russian and Ukrainian armies, are still shooting at each other, but there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia. Russia is restoring its historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together – in its entirety of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians (Ukrainians). If we had abandoned this, if we had allowed the temporary division to take hold for centuries, then we would not only betray the memory of our ancestors, but would also be cursed by our descendants for allowing the disintegration of the Russian land.
…
Vladimir Putin has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility by deciding not to leave the solution of the Ukrainian question to future generations.
…
Now this problem is gone – Ukraine has returned to Russia.
…
Did someone in the old European capitals, in Paris and Berlin, seriously believe that Moscow would give up Kiev?
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry has set up a Telegram channel with videos that it says show captured Russian soldiers– which the country says they have over 200– and in public statements say they were tricked or otherwise threatened to take part in the operation. These statements were replayed on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is of course paid for by the U.S. government.
These kinds of videos are extremely distasteful, no matter who puts them out, as EPOWs should never be made to release public statements while in enemy custody.
However, it does kind of point to the fact that the Russians seem to have pushed into Ukraine with their “B Team” of second-line units and recalled reservists outfitted with old equipment– the better to soak up Ukraine’s limited supply of expensive donated MANPADS and ATGMs (NLAW, Javelin, Stinger, Panzerfaust 3, etc).
Notably, when you see Russian vehicles and aircraft in videos and images from the conflict they are older models with none of the cutting edge types (e.g. Su-57 strike aircraft and T-14 Armata tanks) seen. Further, there are few divisional- or even brigade-size maneuvers, with the Russians sticking to battalion-sized elements, as well as a lack of significant night-time operations, another indicator of lower-trained, under-equipped troops.
Now a half-week in motion, Russian troops seem to be facing growing morale and logistics issues, with videos circulating widely of tanks and AFVs parks on roadways out of fuel and with poor (no) perimeter security. As anyone who has been around tracks can vouch, armor is the Great White shark of the battlefield, always hungry, always looking to top off every day, whether on the move or not.
The Pentagon on Sunday acknowledged, “We believe that their advance was slowed both by resistance from the Ukrainians, who have been quite creative in finding ways to attack columns and, number two, by the fuel shortages and the sustainment issues that they have had.”
The British MOD had the same take on Saturday:
With the Russian lines of communications being very porous, and growing longer every day, the current Ukrainian bywords seem to be “Ласкаво просимо до пекла!,” or “Welcome to hell” with roadway signs defaced with the warning and official government ministries signing off their social media posts with the catchphrase.
Ironically, as far as I know, the most popular pop culture reference to this is in the tragically underrated popcorn action film Men of War (1994) in which Swedish strongman Dolph Lundgren, portraying former SF weaponsman Ameri-Swede Nick Gunar, uses it when taking on a group of mercs looking to carve off a random South Pacific island for its value in guano. Welding a CG-84, he also delivers a great “Spring, era jävlar” line, which is funny if you know Swedish.
The Ukrainians say the current tally (as with all “body counts” issued during war should be taken with a grain of salt) 60 hours into the war is:
Aircraft – 14 (including an Il-76 reportedly full of VDS)
Helicopters – 8
Tanks – 102
Combat armored vehicles – 536
Guns and howitzers – 15
SAM (Buk-М2) – 1
The war is also getting very asymmetric, with reported “Russian saboteur teams” engaging in wild gun battles in Kyiv and elsewhere. These units, dressed in Ukrainian police and military uniforms, and in Ukrainian-marked vehicles, are a throwback to Skorzeny’s Battle of the Bulge Operation Greif and need lots of pre-planning.
At the same time, the Western Europeans are getting more muscular with their support of Ukraine, mirroring roughly what was seen with the Finns and the Soviets in 1939.
As noted by the ISW:
The European Union announced direct military aid to Ukraine for the first time in EU history (€500 million worth) on February 27 while Germany announced a dramatic reorientation of its foreign policy to mitigate the threat that Russia poses to Germany and its allies. Germany will prioritize military spending and energy independence despite short-term economic costs.
Unexpected new allies such as Belgium, Sweden, and Germany are all sending Ukraine anti-armor weapons directly from their war stocks while France and Denmark have announced they will allow volunteers– including furloughed military personnel– to head to join a new “foreign legion” set up by Kyiv and recruited through the country’s embassies and consulates abroad.
A number of Americans have been war tourists in Ukraine since 2014, sometimes paying for it with their lives, and I am 100 percent sure this next wave will be high and deep. I can vouch that some of my own acquaintances have messaged they will be taking an extended vacation in Eastern Europe starting as early as next week, a sticky proposition if captured, as they are on the Retired Reserve rolls.
While peace talks are reportedly on the horizon, there seems to be little hope of them yielding any results in the near future. I hate to say it is WWIII by proxy, so maybe let’s just call it the Winter War Part II.
In case you missed it, (most of) the body of fallen General of Division Charles-Étienne César Gudin de La Sablonnière was reinterred at the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris on 2 December 2021, marking the anniversary of the French victory at the Battle of Austerlitz. The event was complete with a Napoleonic honor guard.
Gudin, from a noble family, was born in 1768 and served with the King’s Guard prior to the Revolution. Keeping his head (see what we did there), the reported childhood friend of Napolean fought with the Army of the North and of the Rhine from 1793, distinguishing himself at Auerstaedt in 1806 and at Eylau in 1807, then was wounded at Wagram.
Rising to command a division for the disastrous Russian campaign in 1812, he died at age 44 near Smolensk three days after his leg was amputated following it being smashed by a Russian cannonball during the battle of Valoutina Gora.
As the convoy back to Europe was small, the French buried his shattered body in one of the bastions of the Smolensk fortress then carried Gudin’s heart back home, later installing it in a chapel in Paris’ Père Lachaise cemetery, and added his name to the Arc de Triomphe.
Fast forward to 2019 and, under a dance hall in eastern Russia, a one-legged skeleton of a man, aged 40-45, was discovered by an international team of scholars who chased down Gudin’s story.
Matching the remains with the known DNA of Baron Pierre-César Gudin, Charles-Etienne Gudin’s brother– also a Napoleonic general who died more peacefully in 1855– the body was ceremoniously transferred back to France.
In last year’s interment, chaired by Geneviève Darrieussecq, Minister Delegate of the Minister of the Armed Forces, in charge of Memory and Veterans Affairs, Gen. Gudin has returned from his very cold, and very long, Russian winter.
Camp Kanzense. Matsuyama. Japan, Spring 1905: A group of Russian sailors from the assorted warships sunk by Japanese artillery in the mud of Port Arthur during the siege there. Cap bands show they are from the Баян (Bayan), Бобр (Bobr), Варяг (Varyag), Гиляк (Gilyak), Забияка (Zabiyaka), Паллада (Pallada), Пересвет (Peresvet), Победа (Pobeda), Полтава (Poltava), Ретвизан (Retvizan), and Отважный (Otvazhnyy).
Unlike Japanese EPOW camps in WWII, the Meiji era camps of the Russo-Japanese War were reportedly very hospitable, and the “guests” were returned in good health after the peace. It was only after the corruption of the Bushido code by the 1930s Japanese military elite that the treatment of captured enemy troops and sailors was seen as a dim and distasteful burden.
When the fortress seaport was scandalously surrendered by Baron Anatoly Stoessel to the Japanese on 2 January 1905, despite having another 30-to-60 days worth of shells and supplied on hand, some 8,985 Russian sailors were marched off to captivity along with 878 Army officers and 23,491 of the Tsar’s soldiers.