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Very nice AAR, I like you did diffrent flag for your navy. Good luck!
 
Finally, another real battle!

May the Navy show it's skills.
 
Wooyt!

The big showdown!
 
Delex - It is as comrade Velendesril explains.

Velendesril - Don't embarrass me! :eek:o

General_Hoth - This "go" you mention is, I assume, "down", right?

Roman_legion - Many thanks, but it is not yet over! The pocket in the North might become rather tricky, especially if the Germans start convoying supplies again.

Emperor_krk - A Secret Nazi Barrel, mind you. Months of work and thousands of Reichsmarks into developing those.

Edzako - :D very good one!

Faeelin - World in Flames? :confused:

Asalto - Many thanks. The flag is just a gimmick to make sure the images focus on the Navy really, it's so much work sometimes I kinda curse it :eek:o

Maj. von Mauser - Yeah the game was kinda slow on the Naval Battles indeed. I blame Raeder.

RGB - Showdown? Considering we're outnumbered, that's a risky thing to ask for!
 
I recently came across this poem by a young Soviet sailer which he wrote whilst shipping supplies to the Republican side during the SCW.

Let it inspire your men so that the commissars won't have to!


I am a brave sailor from the Red Navy
I am exactly twenty years old.
I am sailing out into the vast expanse of the sea
To bring Great October to the whole world.

Oh, our noise and uproar,
Resound against the bourgeois shores,
Our Soviet fleet is the stronghold
All the working people, foward!



It probably sounds better in Russian though.
 

I am a brave sailor from the Red Navy
I am exactly twenty years old.
I am sailing out into the vast expanse of the sea
To bring Great October to the whole world.

Oh, our noise and uproar,
Resound against the bourgeois shores,
Our Soviet fleet is the stronghold
All the working people, foward!
The images are ready, I'll post an update tomorow... :(
 
thats a pretty good poem, and surprisingly you can almost get it to rhyme in english too.
 
Dmitriy Liadov and his comrades knew the Germans were coming. They even knew they should have expected to see the Bismarcks. But they still weren't expecting this many targets. It seemed as if every single ship the enemy had was present.

Most of all though, the sailors and their Admiral weren't expecting such a tenacious attack on their blockade. Dmitriy might not have studied at the Naval Academy, but even he could tell the Germans had a plan. It was the first time he had seen the enemy use escorts effectively, and they were very effective at that, completely screening the big capital monsters behind a wall of smoke and ships.


From his position at the forward cannons Dmitriy could only wonder why Admiral Smirnov wasn't reacting to the German Admiral's manoeuvres. The word around with the other sailors was that he was waiting for positive identification of the Kriegsmarine's guns.

The time lost in this research allowed the enemy to position itself in equal terms to the Baltic Fleet, despite their much larger numbers. Not only that, but they were also the ones initiating the battle, when the by-then-identified Tripitz fired a broadside at the Sovetskiy Kazahstan, causing a frightening explosion.


This explosion seemed to either coincide with, or cause, Admiral Smirnov's decision to leap into action, and Dmitriy's gun finally received the order to fire.
Unable to target any of the capital ships, the Sovietsky Soyuz turned it's massive canons to the German light cruisers.

He couldn't really pay attention to the other ships, but it seemed no-one else had a clear shot at the Kriegsmarine's mightiest ships, and all Soviet guns were aimed at cruisers and destroyers.


One hour into the battle, the German Admiral's strategy was proving superior, with the Red Fleet still unable to reliably fire on even the Heavy Cruisers, while the Bismarcks kept hiting the Soviet battleships, even for little result.

And then, out of the battle chaos, a shell hit next to the Sovietsky Soyuz aft guns. The explosion rocked the whole ship, but as everyone in it still alive 3 seconds after could see, the armour had held up and protected the ammunition.

Just the the first explosion on the Sovetskiy Kazahstan, this one also seemed to coincide with Smirnov's change of plans. Possibly realising he was losing the battle, but determined not to retreat, he ordered all ships to close in on the German capitals.

That order was quickly annulled when out of the surf rose countless enemy submarines, greatly limiting the Red Fleet's movement options.


Changing targets again, from the sinking remnants of a light cruiser to several destroyers, Dmitriy and the rest of the crew at the forward cannons had to move very fast, while watching their step because of all the empty shells.

It was one of those shells that betrayed Dmitriy while looked, for just a second, to one of the small aircraft from the Leningrad, returning from a heroic, but futile bombing, run. He tripped and hit his head on the floor, hardly having time to curse once before losing conscience.

Almost night it was, when the sailor woke up to the shouts of joy from his comrades, running out of the ship's infirmary with a terrible headache and tremendously worried.

He had little reason for it. The Kriegsmarine was retreating towards the south-west, a dozen ships lighter, and with no Soviet loses to report. It seemed in the end, plain simple superior armour had done the trick for the Red Fleet, taking as many hits as it gave, but resisting them a whole of a lot better.

The superiority of Free Engineers, Free Workers and Free Sailors had done it again!


It wasn't all celebration though. It didn't take a detailed damage report to see that the Kazahstan had taken heavy punishment, that would have probably sunk any worse-designed ship, and needed somewhat urgent attention. The request from the Varyag for whatever crew members the rest of the fleet could dispense also suggested that light cruiser's original crew had worked to exhaustion to protect the rest.


Kuznetsov seemed to be happy with the Baltic Fleet's performance. Or perhaps he worried that it wouldn't survive another such attack? In either case, a return to Leningrad was ordered, for repairs and rest. The 17th, previously helping the Army near Königsberg, was sent to take Smirnov's blockading position.


3 days after the Large Battle, as it was now known amongst sailors, Dmitriy Liadov and other just-landed crew members were at the Naval Commissariat Offices to receive a speech by Kuznetsov, when news comes to that the 17th Fleet had found a single Heavy Cruiser trying to break the blockade. It was the Admiral Hipper, leading ship of her class, and the 17th was giving chase.

The Commissar felt this could boost morale, and decided to let everyone listen into the radio reports, which were quite trilling, telling for ever increasing approximation to well-escorted by vastly out-gunned German cruiser.


But then something went wrong.

The Karl Marx communications officer reported a sharp turn by the Hipper, that couldn't be matched because of the way it's apparently exhausted and thus ignored screens had positioned themselves.

And then the sentence that filled everyone with fear:
- "It's going for the Oktyabrskaya! She's too slow! She can't get away!"

As the assembled sailors, officers and office workers felt an ever greater urge to know more, the radio reports became ever fewer and more nervous.

- "We're focusing the forward cannons on the Hipper but it's just not enough, and the destroyers are still stopping us from using the aft. The Marat's guns can hardly hit it either."

The reports continued, expressing the mounting frustration of not being able to do more...

- "She's burning! There's fire and smoke everywhere! It was a huge explosion, they must have it the magazines. It doesn't look like she'll last much longer!"


- The Hipper is runing away! It's runing away!

The sound from the radio sent a wave of relief to all of the room.

- But it's too late. It's too late, she's going under. Yes, too late.


A stunned audience heard about the rescue of survivors, of wich it seemed there were quite a few, of how the rescue had meant letting the Hipper escape, and other details, but it mattered little. The Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya was lost. The first major loss of the Red Fleet - the first Battleship sunk anywhere since the Great War - and it was the old Soviet flagship. The one named after the very birth of the USSR. It was national shame.


One of the many drawings representing the ship and crew's Heroic Sacrifice,published in the weeks following the battle
 
bugger. that battle was pretty embarrassing. no matter how old they are, three battleships should be able to destroy one heavy cruiser. the rest of the news is good, though.
 
Admiral Hipper for the WIN!
 
I still cant believe you lost a battleship (even if it is an old one) to a f*cking heavy cruiser. :eek: I think its time for some sweet revenge for that embarrassing defeat. Send the Red Marines to take all of the Kreigsmarine's ports and starve their navy out.
 
Even a WW1 battleship should wipe the floor with a WW2 heavy cruiser that comes in range. I have no doubt that the Red Fleet will overcome this embarrassment, but in the meantime I'd expect some angry communiques from Moscow over such a debacle. Hopefully the larger victory over the might of the Kriegsmarine will lessen the blow.
 
A notable victory and an embarassing loss, all within days.

The Germans still seem to be utilizing their doctrines better...but the Red Navy will surely get there!
 
Noo, not Great October!
Those darned fascists will pay (even more) for this, or else uncle Joe will make someone else pay.
 
Just read the first half of this AAR, all the way up to the first encounter with the Bismarck in the Baltic - trying hard to ignore the posts higher up on this page, as I don't want to find out anything further along yet (I just spotted a screenie with Soviet forces in Denmark! Aaargh!).

It's a fun story and I look forward to catching up on the story of the Red Fleet. :)