Ice Cruise of the Baltic Fleet

Ice Cruise of the Baltic Fleet (Russian: Ледовый поход Балтийского флота) was an operation which transferred the ships of the Baltic Fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy from their bases at Tallinn and Helsinki to Kronstadt in 1918, caused by the possible threat to those bases from the final German offensives against Russia during World War I.

When on February 25, 1918 the German troops entered Revel, a significant part of the ships escorted by the ice-breakers had already been moved. On March 5, 1918 all ships except one submarine, crushed by ice, reached Helsinki.

On March 12, 1918 another group of ships with the ice-breakers Yermak and Volynets had done 330 km through the heavy ice and after five days reached Kronstadt. In all 6 battleships, 5 cruisers, 59 destroyers and torpedo-boats, 12 submarines and several other ships were moved to Kronstadt.

In Finland, Russian sailors scuttled four submarines in the harbour of Hanko on April 3, 1918, just before the 10,000-strong German Baltic Sea Division landed in support of the White side in the Finnish Civil War. The 355 ton submarines, AG 11, AG 12, AG 15 and AG 16, were made by Electric Boat Co. in the United States.

See also: British submarine flotilla in the Baltic

References

In Russian

• Н. С. Кровяков. "Ледовый поход" Балтийского флота в 1918. Moscow, 1955.
• В. И. Сапожников. Подвиг балтийцев в 1918. Moscow, 1954.