Soviet Naval Battles

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Juha Tompuri
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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#676

Post by Juha Tompuri » 02 Dec 2016, 21:47

lupodimare89 wrote:The other details concern naval encounters in Petsamo during 1939.
Previously it has been wrote here how the two main local Finnish guardboats were Jäämeri and Turja: both scuttled with no contact with enemy.
Jäämeri was a liaison vessel, mail, passenger, cargo and pilots. not a guard boat.
Digging through Russian sources however there are two cases of meetings/seizure of intact(?) boats:
1) On 30 November 1939. Soviet auxiliary mineswepers Tszcz-895 and Tszcz-897 intercepted and captured two small motorboats that were evacuating civilians from Rybachi peninsula (no exact number of people present, but included women and children).
Mikko Uola at his book Petsamo 1939-1944 mentions that after the failure of evacuation (liaision vessel Jäämeri didn't manage to arrive on time) of the Pummanki village at Kalastajansaarento (Rybachi peninsula) the civilians decided to try to flee from the Soviet shelling and evacuate themselves to Norway with four of their motor boats. One boat managed to get through. The boats Soviet Navy captured were left to drift away empty.
2) On 1 December 1939, the same Tszcz-895 and Tszcz-897, in addition of the more armed guard vessel/torpedo boat Gruza after receiving from shore (and firing back) found what's described as an "auxiliary minesweeper" named "Suomi-14" (=Суоми-14). Another report say it was seized (no word of crew, maybe it was abandoned intact?). No idea if it was really a small minesweeper boat, maybe it was a trawler?
Trawler Syväri (Suomi-14)
According to Uola, taken to Finnish Defence Force use in autumn-39 and not demolished because of the already weak boiler.
http://www.aanimeri.fi/gallery2/main.ph ... emId=32383
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igorr
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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#677

Post by igorr » 03 Dec 2016, 09:27

I can say that SUURSAARI leave Petsamo on 8.6.43 and never come back.


lupodimare89
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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#678

Post by lupodimare89 » 03 Dec 2016, 11:45

interesting details and corrections, thanks.

Also that finnish site linked above provide details about an event I never heard before:
http://www.aanimeri.fi/gallery2/main.ph ... emId=33144
15 Sept 1944: nearly captured by Soviet forces when still in the central part of the Gulf of Finland, NE of the Island of Nargön, and ordered by Finnish patrol boats to proceed direction east, towards Soviet bases.
16 Sept 1944: under escort of Finnish patrol boats approached the skerry island of Porkkala, then sharply turned west on maximum speed. The Finnish patrol crafts retreated when the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and 2 destroyers approached the scene and escorted Netlayer VIII to Danzig.
First time I saw about this. There are other sources/known details?
From this description, it seems there was no direct involvment of soviet units, nor direct confrontation between Finnish units and Germans.
Or maybe cruiser opened fire? From pics and description, the netlayer too was armed.
By sheer size of ships involved (including the netlayer and of course the Prinz Eugen) this could be the naval confrontation involving Finnish boats (VMV?) with largest ever enemy vessels during the whole conflict.

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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#679

Post by Juha Tompuri » 07 Dec 2016, 23:10

Apparently not quite exactly so.
According to the Finnish -Soviet armistice negotiations, from the begining of 15th September, all German property and personel should be arrested. That also included the German netlayer unit, that was at the German naval base at Aspö islands.
During the next morning the German Cruiser unit the area and informed to the local Utö coastal artilley (152mm guns) that if the netlayer unit was not to be released, the cruiser will open fire (outside the range of the Finnish guns). After that the commander of the Finnish Navy ordered the Netlayer unit to be released.
On the contrary to the year of 1941, on 1944 the Finns allowed instead of Aland proper, the German navy to use only Aspö and Nötö as the naval base Rotbuche as there was a suspicion of the Tanne West operation which would have led to the German occupation of Aland Islands. The question became actual from 20 June to 27 June, when the president of the republic of Finland, mr. Risto Ryti and the foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop negotiated the terms continuing the war after the German arms export embargo in since April, 1944 due to the negotiations of peace with the Soviet union. A heavy naval detachment was sent via Utö towards Aspö.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asp%C3%B6

Regards, Juha

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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#680

Post by igorr » 12 Dec 2016, 08:14

At night 15/16.09 Netztender 25 stay near Uto blocked by VIDSKAER and TORVSKAER (citating from N.25 radiomessage for PE). Uto light was out, so N 25 can't move. Leave Uto at first lights and on 06.30 17.09 was 5 sm south of Uto with T.9 as escort, heading Libau.
PE commander thinks, that Uto battery was 12 cm and wish come near, to 5 miles.

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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#681

Post by Juha Tompuri » 12 Dec 2016, 22:06

igorr wrote:At night 15/16.09 Netztender 25 stay near Uto blocked by VIDSKAER and TORVSKAER (citating from N.25 radiomessage for PE). Uto light was out, so N 25 can't move. Leave Uto at first lights and on 06.30 17.09 was 5 sm south of Uto with T.9 as escort, heading Libau.
PE commander thinks, that Uto battery was 12 cm and wish come near, to 5 miles.
AFAIK Vidskaer (Vidskär) and Torvskaer (Torvskär) are islets near Utö and Aspö.
Utö had (at least early 1944 did) 3 x 152mm Canet (long range mount) and 2 x 57mm Nordenfelt coastal artillery pieces.

Something about Utö earlier:
ML wrote:According to armistice conditions, Finns had to expel German forces in Finland before 15.9.1944. Germans had a minor naval base in Aspö, Turku Archipelago, and disbanding it took some time. Most of the German vessels managed to flee Finnish waters in time, but netlayer ship Netzleger VIII and smaller net transport vessel were still taking apart anti-torpedo netting of base. The work lasted too long and Finns prevented the ships, accompanied with 2 tugs, from leaving and diverted them to Turku. However, during the night 16.9.1944 the ships had turned back to south towards Utö and open seas. Utö fort got orders to stop the ships, by force if necessary. In the dawn German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and escorts (5 destroyers among them) was sighted in south, outside the range of 6" battery of Utö. Prinz Eugen sent its Arado 196 aircraft to drop a message to Utö, demanding free passage for the leaving German ships. The fort got permission to let the ships go, to avoid unnecessary and destructive artillery duel with Germans.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 0#p1600659
and:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 1#p1600672 on.

Regards, Juha

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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#682

Post by igorr » 13 Dec 2016, 05:04

Sending Ar.196 was only intention for sending message to Netztender, not reality. PE can establish radio negotiation with Netztender, and she answered that ready to go at dawn. Also PE has optical conversation with Uto "Signalstelle".
Escort of PE consists from 5 T-boote: T.1, 4, 5, 9, 10.

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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#683

Post by lupodimare89 » 03 Apr 2017, 11:41

Some time passed since my last message (IRL keeping me busy).

Meanwhile I started gathering some info from tsushima.su with questions&answers by m.morozov about soviet minelaying operations in Black Sea (with a focus on enemy units sunk or damaged). Not the primary interest of many, but there was little description of these events, eventually I am going to upload here a semi-complete list...

On another note I would like to ask as genera question (igor maybe?) if there is some known list of REAL enemy aircrafts shot-down by Soviet naval anti-aircraft fire.


I found zero pages online with this specific focus, but I found some german lists of real air losses, with a specific focus for Arctic operations (that is igorr's main field).

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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#684

Post by lupodimare89 » 26 Apr 2018, 17:56

Hello again.
One year is passed, meanwhile i gathered some extra info about soviet minelaying successes in black sea (Siebel/MFP barges and other small targets sunk in Azov and Kerch etc.). But my work is a bit incomplete because it was mostly fruit of Q&A on tsushima.su and now seems a bit out of service the site, plus M.Morozov possibly is busy?

As question to igor, I recently made some research for Soviet ships successes in terms of Anti-Aircraft activity (enemy planes shot-down or damaged).
Merging the work of a couple of russian-translated Luftwaffe losses sites, with info gathered on tsushima.su and two books I found and google-translated by authors Mikhail Zefirov&Nikolay Bazhenov I think to have got a good result for the Arctic operations (protection of Convoys and Murmansk defense).

What is your knowledge about it, igor? I have some potential Luftwaffe losses with hints of possibility of naval AA opponents but no neat and clear Soviet/Russian claim.


Also got a similar good result for Baltic Sea (mostly focused on the few aircrafts shot-down over Kronstadt and Leningrad in 1941-1942).


Sadly I found nothing much for the Black Sea activity: I found lists of a series of Luftwaffe (and Romanian!) losses in Odessa and Sevastopol sieges (1941-1942) but no precise Russian literature matching specific losses with specific claims by Soviet ships.

Any kind of shared knowledge is welcome x3



Same things go for the active Finnish users here: so far I found no trace of possible Finnish aircrafts lost due Soviet naval Anti-aircraft fire during the Continuation War.

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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#685

Post by igorr » 27 Apr 2018, 03:52

Luftwaffe losses due soviet ships is very little and mostly well documented.

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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#686

Post by lupodimare89 » 27 Apr 2018, 09:43

igorr wrote:Luftwaffe losses due soviet ships is very little and mostly well documented.
If you've some list/site/forum post about it, I would totally welcome it because could spare me some further hours of work ^^


And I guess the "very little" is a bit relative? Obviously wartime claims are overclaims.

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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#687

Post by lupodimare89 » 27 Apr 2018, 09:44

lupodimare89 wrote:
igorr wrote:Luftwaffe losses due soviet ships is very little and mostly well documented.
If you've some list/site/forum post about it, I would totally welcome it because could spare me some further hours of work ^^
I found nothing of this in easy-to-find russian pages online (nor german)


And I guess the "very little" is a bit relative? Obviously wartime claims are overclaims.

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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#688

Post by lupodimare89 » 27 Apr 2018, 09:48

Btw this is the list so far of the Arctic Sea I have gathered in 1941 : feels free to fix/correct/comment etc.


30 June 1941
Ju-87 (GroupIV,1st training squadron, serial 5878) by Soviet destroyers Uritskyi and Valerian Kuybyshev. Pilot wounded but escaped to German lines, co-pilot killed. Solely Uritskyi claimed victory but it is possible the other ship achieved it.


11 July 1941
Ju-87 (serial Nr. 5424) shot down by the Soviet submarine chaser MO-141 north-west of Murmansk, while suffering damage. Both crewmembers survived, reached the shore and German lines.


11 July 1941
Ju-87 (serial 5469) was also lost while flying back to the base when the engine caught fire possibly due ship’s anti-aircraft hits: after an emergency landing the aircraft completely burned (crew saved).


19 July 1941
Ju-87 (serial 5502 "L1 + FW", crew MIA) shot down by the combined anti-aircraft fire from auxiliary patrol boat Shtil and auxiliary minesweeper Tszcz-31.


16 September 1941
Ju-88 (Group II, 30th Squadron, serial 3306) shot down by anti-aircraft fire from corvette Sapfir and submarine chaser MO-252. Crew saved.
NOTE: of this I found no trace on Mikhail Zefirov&Nikolay Bazhenov book


29 September 1941
Ju-88 (Group II, 30th Squadron, serial 5039) shot down by ant-aircraft fire from Soviet ships in Barents Sea.
NOTE: of this I found no trace on Mikhail Zefirov&Nikolay Bazhenov book

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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#689

Post by Felix C » 27 Apr 2018, 19:57

Nice to see you gentlemen are back. that is all.

igorr
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Re: Soviet Naval Battles

#690

Post by igorr » 28 Apr 2018, 06:11

lupodimare89 wrote: And I guess the "very little" is a bit relative? Obviously wartime claims are overclaims.
I've talk about real successes

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