Chapter 228: The Tsars and the Revolutionaries - The Battle of the Gibraltar Straits (Part 2)
From: "The Leviathans at War - Navies of the Great Powers 1939-1950, Chapter 21, the battle of the Gibraltar Straits"
Third Phase: The General Engagement
Pyotr Velikiy
The Commune fleet was visible now, with optical assistance at least, a line of angry shadows that rippled with the flashes of gunfire.
Kolchak had been confident as the Pyotr strode through the near misses. Confident in his gunners and the miraculous fire control systems that had been installed.
He didn’t see the shell come in. He couldn’t. All he saw was a bright flash against the face of “A” turret, followed by a punishingly loud bang and a tremor that shook the deck of the bridge.
He waited for a flare of flame, perhaps the otherworldly experience of being lifted into the air or pulverised as the magazines touched off beneath the turret. Instead, as the smoke cleared, he could see “A” turret, scarred, blackened, but very much intact. As if to confirm its status among the living, the turret rippled out another salvo not twenty seconds later.
The confidence returned as quickly as it had left. Naval architects could tell a man as often as they liked what his armour could withstand. It was quite another to see it before his very eyes.
Ears ringing, feet trembling, Kolchak gripped a girder for support but glared at the Communard ships with cold appraisal.
The Reds were fast; sprinters, athletes, but they’d chosen the naval equivalent of a street fight with a heavyweight boxer, and they were about to pay the price.
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By 09:38, less than ten minutes after the general engagement began, the engagement distances had closed considerably, reaching 8 kilometers at their closest point between the screening ships, and both fleets had begun to turn onto more Southerly headings and increased
their speed, slowing the rate of closing.
The respective squadrons unleashed their primary and secondary batteries on their designated targets.
Fatefully, the Commune captains primarily made the decision to focus on the leading Russian vessels, considering them the easiest targets to hit. This marked out the Russo-Roman heavies for particular punishment, but spared many of the lighter fleet elements.
The Russo-Roman fleet meanwhile, split their fire. The Ganguts, limited by the calibre of their main guns, focused on the softer opposing targets.
The light cruiser Paris, following the Internationale in to screen her against Imperial destroyers, was to become the battle’s first naval casualty, falling victim to the veteran battleship Gangut, which bracketed and then blasted her apart with salvos of 12 inch of shells guided by the recently updated radar fire control system.
This affront marked Gangut as a primary target for the Internationales who began slinging shells in Gangut’s direction with steadily increasing accuracy.
The first hit on a capital ship would go the Internationale, with a hit on Gangut near the rearmost turret. Internationale had however in turn been designated priority target for the entire Gangut squadron. While the 12 inch guns were obsolete by 1942 standards, forty eight of them now marked the Internationale for death.
While her main belt proved resistant to the shells, the Commune ship quickly disappeared under a rolling hail of blasts and detonations. Her superstructure was wracked by multiple hits, her under-armoured areas blasted open to the sea, her bridge destroyed by a direct hit, and her deck punctured by plunging shells sparking rolling fires across much of the ship. With most of her command crew dead, the surviving officers moved command to a secondary bridge, and then, when that too had to be evacuated, tried to marshal damage control efforts from inside the ship’s citadel. After Petropavlovsk launched another demolishing salvo, the call was made to abandon the thoroughly mission-killed Internationale and set scuttling charges.
Despite having been bracketed several times by her opponents, Pierre Kropotkine had avoided the kind of mass deluge of shells that had wrecked International. Her secondary battery had claimed a Russian destroyer and her primary guns had three hits into her closest capital opponent Gangut, disabling two of her guns in the process. Unlike the other Internationales she was not wasting her gunfire on the larger Imperial battleships, and her next volley scored a lucky hit which caused Gangut to slow and take on a list to port.
The ship's luck ended as Aleksandr I fired her eighth salvo at the Commune ship. One of her shells impacted cleanly with the number two turret, burrowed straight through the armour plate, and detonated in the interior, just as the guns were being reloaded. The flash carried down the shell lift, and touched off an explosion that blasted the turret and vast chunks of the ship’s forward section into the air in a conflagration of shockwaves and flame.
As Pierre Kropotkine began to sink, the bullying guns of the "Tsars" (as the Commune called them) claimed more victims. Commune’s superstructure was shredded by two shells which burst in her upper levels while three of the Danton’s took hits from the big guns in the next few minutes. Marx was forced to flood her forward magazine when a shell punched through her armoured citadel and touched off fires dangerously close to the stockpile of charges and rounds. Danton’s captain meanwhile had to deal with extensive casualties among his crew and the loss of one of her two forward turrets.
As the shells began to land, now ever more accurately, damage accumulated rapidly on the Commune side. As men died and ships burned, they were treated to the demoralising sight of shells striking home on the Russian “Tsars”, only for the great ships to plow on, seemingly unperturbed.
As the ranges closed, the lighter combatants and secondary guns made their presence known, and torpedo evasion forced both lines to take evasive measures, but the trend of damage was clear.
Fourth Phase: The Run South
Izmail
On the bridge of the battlecruiser Izmail, Captain Bakhirev saw the change in the Commune fleet long before the fleet signals were sent from Pyotr Velikiy. The Commune ships were turning south and gaining speed, most of them anyway. A few of the wounded prey to the North were turning East instead and laying smoke, showing their backs to the Imperial battlefleet.
They were running, they had to be.
He did a quick accounting, there were three of the faster, heavier French ships making the run, along with the Italian battlewagon, plus an escorting destroyer screen.
The chase group had the old Izmail, the cruiser Rossiya, a pair of light cruisers and Alexander II. That left them well behind on displacement and so short on relative firepower that it bordered on insanity.
But the French were running, and the overconfident bastards had never heard of a main battery gun that wasn’t pointed forward. That worked for him.
He turned to his XO, Skyrdlov, and gave the word.
“They’re fleeing South. Set course one-seven-zero to pursue, all ahead flank.”
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With the sinking of Internationale and the abrupt detonation of Pierre Kropotkine, the Internationale battle line was forced to re-evaluate its situation.
The Russian Tsars had proven impervious to concentrated gunfire, while the lighter fast battleships in the Internationale line were showing their wounds. There was a belated realisation that the target prioritisation had been wrong, and Commune de Paris, Georges Sorel, and Auguste Blanqui all did switch fire to the less heavily protected Ganguts, but by then, the situation was critical. Ranges were down to seventeen kilometres and the fear of the long-range Russian torpedoes was also growing, just as the disparity in heavy gun-power widened.
At 10:10, Georges Sorel signalled to the fleet that its units should attempt a breakaway manoeuvre. The French ships laid a spread of torpedoes to break up the Russo-Roman line, accelerated to flank speed, and turned South, seeking to disengage and run for the African coast and, eventually, friendly ports.
A majority of the Dantons were able to swing South and chase after the Masaniello who had already moved to disengage without orders from fleet command, but for the slower elements of the Commune fleet, especially those at the Northern end of the battleline, the order was a virtual impossibility.
It would have required the surviving Internationales, the wounded Marat (which had been slowed by counter-flooding and several underwater hits, and various older screening ships and transports to steam broadside on to an Imperial force that could at least keep up with them for a period of time.
The Northern group thus instead elected to turn East, running back towards the straits of Gibraltar and at least fleeting safety.
The decision to run, while understandable, turned what had been an (admittedly unequal) battle into a shooting gallery for the Imperial heavies. The Internationale forces made smoke to cover the retreat, forcing the Imperial ships to switch over to radar-directed gunfire and bypass optical guidance.
Ironically, this may actually have increased accuracy by the Pyotr Velikiy class ships with their brand new fire-control radar systems. At the same time, the Commune ships were forced to conceal most of their surviving guns, allowing the Imperials to pursue and fire at their leisure.
As the range slowly extended, casualties mounted. Marat lost her turbines to gunfire from the Ekaterina and would ultimately be sunk by torpedoes launched by the ship’s armed reconnaissance floatplanes. The Cruiser Diderot was blasted apart by a magazine flash and Robespierre would be slowed by heavy shells and then scuttled before Imperial destroyers could deliver a coup-de-grace. The heavy cruiser Toulouse would fall to the storied and veteran Sevastopol, the only undamaged Gangut.
In the end, only Saint Just and Mikhail Boukunine and their screens were able to make it back to the safety of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean beyond, leaving a mass of shattered steel and sinking hulks behind them.
Their flight had won at least split the gunfire of the Imperial heavies and given the faster ships a chance to run, but if this was a victory, it had been a thoroughly pyrrhic one, and one not to be kindly respected by the Imperial pursuit force led by the Alexander II.
Fifth Phase: Wrath of the Masienello
Izmail
On the now open air bridge of the
Izmail the wind buffeted Captain Bakhirev and hurled charts and debris alike.
To port, the brave
Sotnik was listing badly, dead in the water, lifeboats and jumping men streaming away from the dying ship.
To starboard, poor
Rossiya was peeling off and making smoke, some deliberately from her engines, some from the fires across her deck. She looked like a junkyard, her entire superstructure shattered, one of her funnels all but blown away and three great gouges punched in her prow.
In the distance, smoke from the three Syndicalist battlewagons, among them the bloody Italian ship that was picking apart the pursuers.
Bakhirev could almost hear his XO’s voice in his ear, asking if he should turn back. He was outnumbered now, and
Izmail didn’t have the armour for this fight. If he fell back,
Alexander II was still at the edge effective 15 inch gun range, itcould score hits with some luck.
He knew he couldn’t actually hear the voice though, Skyrdlov was dead, lying motionless behind the chart table after taking a brace of shrapnel and a long shard of metal to his neck.
And all he could see was the enemy before him.
“Continue firing.”
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The Southerly pursuit was both more protracted and less one sided than the flight to the East. The Imperial forces involved were weaker relative to their opponents, and the gun battle was not entirely one-way.
As Izmail, Alexander II, and their cruiser and destroyer escorts made their flank speed pursuit, the Commune ships were only able to reply with their rear mounted secondary batteries which, while giving the lighter ships something to think about, did not pose a serious threat even to lightly armoured Izmail.
Masaniello however, still had a rear facing triple turret, flat shooting overcharged 15 inch shells, and a smorgasbord of targets.
The light cruiser Sotnik was to be the first victim of the Italian “X” turret. Bravely racing after the fleeing reds as fast as her swift-running screws would power her, Sotnit would be hit no less than three times by main battery fire before her fire slackened at last, convincing the Italians to switch their fire.
While Alexander II and Izmail put shells into the Marx, Masaniello turned its attention to the heavy cruiser Rossiya, while her secondaries began blasting apart chunks of Izmail’s superstructure. In another display of fine gunnery, Rossiya was left burning, and was only kept floating by heroic damage control efforts. The heavy cruiser, the only one in the Imperial navy, was forced to flood its magazines, drop out of line, and undertake extensive counter-flooding just to keep the ship from keeling over on the battlefield.
The Imperial destroyers likewise paid a price, being targeted by the Communard’s lighter guns, but they pressed on resolutely, screening the capital ship pursuit.
While the Masaniello turned the pursuit force into a shooting gallery, the Imperial gunners found their range and zeroed in. A shell from Izmail would cause a partial magazine touch-off in the rear secondary-battery magazines, starting a chain of events that would ultimately sink her as damage control efforts broke down.
The older Izmail would also claim the Danton as fire from Alexander II forced the Communard ship to slow and deprived her of most of her rearward firepower. Izmail would follow up Alexander’s efforts with a number of waterline hits which sent the ship into a list, and reduced her available reserve buoyancy to the point where scuttling became inevitable.
Finally, the pursuit claimed its last major victim when Alexander II, now firing at the limits of its effective range at a radar-only contact, put a plunging round into Masaniello that knocked out part of her power-plant, forcing the ship to slow dramatically.
Seeing their chance, the Imperial destroyers surged forward at flank speed, and the battle moved into its final phase.
Fifth Phase: Coup de Grace
Russian Destroyer "Bedovyi"
Brine washed over the decks of the swarming destroyers as they raced in against the
Masaniello. She was running slow, her superstructure addled by shells, but still two of the guns of her “X” turret rang out, straddling
Izmail yet again.
The Italians hadn’t struck their colours, and that was enough for the destroyers.
At nineteen kilometres, the destroyers turned like a flock of birds, peeling off in formation.
They laid a spread of forty Type 93 torpedoes, running at a speed of fifty knots.
The click watch counted down the remaining minutes of
Masaniello’s defiance.
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Slowed by direct hits from Izmail and Alexander II, The Italian battleship finally began to yield distance to its pursuers. With guns still functional, her captain elected to partially abandon the ship, but kept his gunnery and fire control crews at stations, guaranteeing that at least the swift light cruisers and destroyers could continue their flight.
Four Communard destroyers turned back rather than continue their flight South, central control by the Admiral long having since evaporated. These engaged in a gunnery duel with the approaching Russian destroyers, but ultimately could do little to prevent the Russian ships closing and then laying a spread of Japanese designed Type 93 torpedoes targeting the Italian flagship.
In her final minutes, Masaniello would land two main battery hits on the Izmail, opening the battlecruiser’s prow to the elements. Her secondary guns claimed one of the small ships involved in laying the torpedo spread.
Then the first of the torpedoes impacted, four hits all to the starboard side of the ship.
Partially evacuated, Masaniello lacked the damage control teams to deal with the horrendous underwater carnage.
Critically wounded, the order was given to set scuttling charges and abandon ship. The pride of Mussolini’s navy would subsequently disappear below the waves twenty minutes later, ironically, leaving her crew to be recovered by the very destroyers and battlecruisers that had sent the ship to the bottom.
As Masaniello sunk, the Russian ‘chase’ wing finally gave up its task. Only Izmail had ever had any chance of catching the Communard light cruisers and destroyers still running, and with the ship badly holed and much of “A” turret’s ammunition depleted, Captain Bakhirev opted not to expose his ship to torpedoes and chance catastrophic failure in his overloaded turbines just for the chance to claim an additional light ship. Alexander II, lagging only shortly behind, would soon join Izmail in recovering survivors,
The battle, which had raged four hours, was now over.
For the Communard elements that fled back into the Mediterranean, the retreat provided only a short reprieve. Damaged, and with their locations known to Imperial forces, both the Saint Just and Mikhail Boukunine would be sunk by Imperial aircraft flying from Corsica and Italy on their way to Malta.
Aftermath:
As the first major engagement for both the Commune and Russo-Roman navy since the war began, and one in which both forces consented to the initial engagement, it was perhaps inevitable that casualties would be high by the standards of previous big-gun engagements.
The ‘chase’ element of the Russo-Roman navy had suffered heavily.
The light cruiser Sotnik had been sunk, a victim of Masaniello. Rossiya was not much better. Her superstructure was all but gone, crew casualties were extreme, and only truly heroic damage control efforts and extensive counterflooding kept her afloat. She would arrive in a captured Spanish port sitting low in the water, crawling at ten knots, and was immediately designated for extensive dock works just to get the ship ready for a cruise to the Black Sea where nine months of rebuilding would follow.
Izmail, in many ways the hero of the hour, had suffered too. The ship's rebuild had increased her speed but only patched the worst weaknesses in her obsolete armour scheme. The lone ship of the Borodino class had been holed badly at her prow and had lost the use of one of her rearmost gun turrets. Her escorting light cruisers had all suffered damage, varying from the moderate to critical, and the destroyer arm had lost nine ships in the engagement.
Of the chase group, only the Aleksandr II, at the rearmost of the group avoided major damage and was able to demonstrate skilled gunnery in relative peace.
While the Russian forces had suffered some losses however, the main clash and then costly pursuit had all but destroyed the Communard forces.
Seven battleships had been lost during the engagement itself, and the battlecruiser Charles Fourier had become a victim of the Pyotr Velikiy before the run South had really begun in earnest. The two escaping battleships that made it back into the Mediterranean were subsequently destroyed by air attack, along with their screening destroyers.
In total, casualties from the battle for the red navies totaled eight capital ships, four light cruisers, thirty destroyers and a heavy cruiser. The defeat, and subsequent air-attacks, represented the near complete destruction of Commune naval power.
For the Imperial fleet, the battle delivered increased freedom of movement in the Mediterranean that was now only challenged by Republican air and naval assets on Malta and the surviving Italian air-forces on Sicily. It also, importantly, gave the Imperial navy some credence in domestic and international circles, where it had previously been looked on as a (very expensive) potential paper tiger that had yet to make any real contribution to the war.
Analysis of the battle began almost immediately on all sides (with Japanese, Austrian, and Canadian observers present on the Imperial ships). It was clear to all that the scenario which forced the battle had played into Imperial hands. The faster ships of the Commune navy had been forced to engage in a head-on gun battle rather than evade the fight. Those circumstances aside however, the Imperial super-heavies appeared to have been validated as a concept. The Pyotr I, Nikolai I, Ekaterina II, and Aleksandr I, had drawn a strict majority of all Commune and Italian capital ship fire during the battle, but suffered mostly superficial damage. With their anti-aircraft crews sheltered inside their armoured citadels, the ships had taken shell hit after shell hit without major reduction in their combat capabilities. Their eighteen inch guns had, in turn, proven capable of reducing opposing vessels to scrap in contemptuous disregard for their armoured protection.
Outside of these superheavies though, the battle also gave Saint-Petersburg reasons to be dissatisfied and sparked further debates in the naval staff.
The Ganguts, despite performing gloriously in their foray in gunning down a number of more modern opposing ships with their massed guns, also received blame and a critical eye. Even with their rebuilds, the ships were the slowest by far in the battlefleet, and hampered by questionable protection and limited range. The Ganguts had almost caused the Imperial fleet to miss their intercept entirely, and once the battle started to disperse, they had proved utterly powerless to pursue. Outside of the very specific circumstances at Gibraltar, the Ganguts were increasingly seen as an anchor being dragged behind the battlefleet. The navy thus started to seriously consider how quickly the ships could be replaced and relegated from the battleline.
There was also an obvious need for faster gun-ships. The Pyotr class vessels were needed to counter the perceived threat of the Chainbreaker class, as well as the new Browder class ships being laid down in America, but the proliferation of allied and opposing fast carrier units meant there was increasingly a call for speed as well as firepower and protection. Izmail and Rossiya, ancient as they were, clearly would not cut it for fast battlefleet service against the Republican Navy, and the Alexander II was barely fast enough, only one ship, and needed on the gunline.
The navy had won a strategic and public-relations victory at Gibraltar, but the fight over how its political capital would be best utilised would cause rolling battles in the halls of Saint Petersburg.
But for the Internationale, and the many thousands of sailors sent to the bottom of the Gibraltar straits and surrounding waters, such debates must have felt insultingly far removed. The Commune of France, once a broken nation, had built an army that had brought Germany to its knees, and was proud of a navy that it hoped would, eventually, challenge British dominance of the waves.
Instead, for the first time in history, it was the Russian navy that had thrown down the gauntlet of implied challenge to centuries of British naval dominance, the destruction of the French fleet being the opening argument of this Imperial challenge.
