Although the White Nights meant that the CMB courier service was out of operation for most of July, Gus Agar had not been idle. Like Paul Dukes, Gus could see that there was a very limited window of opportunity for the White forces to overthrow the Bolsheviks and he wished to do all that he could – within the constraints of his operational commitments – to help them. He had seen General Yudenich and his bunch of cronies at first hand, resting in luxury in their Helsinki hotels, and he was not impressed by them. But he thought the Ingrians were tough fighters who might be able to tip the scales if they were properly supported. Gus learned from Raleigh Le May that a force of Ingrian volunteers was going to mount an attack from Finland on Bolshevik forces. Gus offered to have his CMBs transported to one of Finland’s larger lakes to support this attack. For once Gus’s plans were in step with those of MI6 who hoped that the Russians would counter-attack and that this would bring Finland into the war on the Allied side. This matter was urgent as elections were due any day in Finland and it was expected that a strictly neutral Socialist government would replace the anti-Bolshevik administration of General Mannerheim. Unfortunately Scale tried to get clearance for this scheme from the difficult Captain Bruton so the plan came to nought.
However, on 26 July Agar did take CMB4 along the coast to support an attack by a small force of Ingrians. The trenches guarding the Russian border ran right down to the sea. Gus was able to get close enough to the shore to give covering fire into these trenches from a distance of five hundred metres. It was thought that this would draw Russian defenders towards the attack, thus weakening the area to the north where the Ingrians would attack. Certainly, shots were fired back at CMB4 but in the darkness they were well wide of the mark. Still, the effort was wasted: the attack by the Ingrians was successful, but the advance was not consolidated by Yudenich and the ground was recaptured some days later by the Bolsheviks. Even worse was the fact that the Russian pilot, who was supposed to know the area, ran CMB4 aground shortly after the attack. Her propeller shaft and engine mountings were badly damaged. Although Beeley did his best, the engine had been so badly affected that he would not vouch for the boat on long voyages or at high speed. The newly repaired CMB7 would have to be the mainstay of the courier service from now on.
Gus never publicly referred to this little adventure afterwards. The reason is clear: by using the Ingrians to provoke a Russian counter-attack, MI6, together with the outgoing government of General Mannerheim, hoped to create a situation where Finnish forces had to defend themselves. Finland would then be forced into the war on the Allied side. The fact that a Finnish officer accompanied Gus on this mission indicates that General Mannerheim may well have given his support. A declaration of war could have led to the cancellation of the forthcoming democratic election which Mannerheim was bound to lose. The fact that MI6 tried to trick the Finns into war was obviously a source of great embarrassment to the British government which is why the mission has been kept secret to this day. One question remains: did MI6 have government approval? Today it is (supposedly) unthinkable that MI6 would act without ministerial backing. However, in 1919 the situation was very different and the lines of command were not always clearly drawn. Certainly it seems odd that a British Cabinet which could not agree on intervention should suddenly authorise a move as provocative as this.
But despite the defeat of the Ingrians Gus was not too depressed. On the same day as the attack he received a telegram from Admiral Cowan informing him that he had been awarded the Victoria Cross for his sinking of the Oleg. There was no official citation and because the nature of his work was still a secret Gus was referred to in the press as ‘the mystery VC’. John Hampsheir had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and Hugh Beeley the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal. It may seem unfair that Gus was awarded the Victoria Cross and that the other two received lesser medals even though they ran the same risks, but in this case the real burden had been his alone. It would have been his career that would have been destroyed if they had failed, it was his decision to ignore Cumming’s order not to attack and it was his determination that drove the attack home despite the loss of CMB7 and the premature detonation of the torpedo charge. He alone had gambled everything on one shot – and he had won.
So the team was in high spirits when it reassembled at the beginning of August to resume the courier service. They were badly needed. Having fallen out with Gus, Le May and Hall had been trying to send new couriers by land. But it was now incredibly dangerous: the Finns had sent six couriers in two weeks and not one had returned. One of the new MI6 couriers was Vladimir Constantinov, a young officer from the Russian Guards Regiment. On 27 June he was sent with a guide to try to cross the border into Russia from Finland despite Peter Sokolov’s warning that it was too dangerous. Constantinov returned the following morning with a Russian bullet in his shoulder. Either knowingly or not, his guide had led him straight into a trap and he had been lucky to escape with his life. Constantinov refused to attempt the crossing again. Instead he remained at Terrioki as an interpreter and camp helper. At the end of July, Le May finally convinced Peter Sokolov to try the route from Estonia. Peter disappeared and MI6 assumed that he had been either killed or captured. Gus had a different theory. He thought that Peter had run away to join the White forces in Estonia preferring to fight openly instead of having to deal with ‘… all the messing about he got from the people at Helsingfors …’ (i.e. Hall and Le May).
MI6 tried to deal with the unreliability of the courier system by sending radio operators to Terrioki. These were Victor Jones (ST-35) and John Busby (ST-36). Not much is known of Busby, but Jones was a former RNVR Chief Petty Officer who had been demobbed and was working for the Post Office Wireless Department. When he and Busby arrived at the dacha they found that there was only one problem – MI6 had not provided them with any radios! So they spent several weeks doing very little except sunbathing and playing games of cards for haricot beans with the other residents of the dacha. Although radios arrived later, they were never successfully used for agent communication. Couriers carried by CMB were still the only reliable link with Paul Dukes.
But the resumption of the CMB courier service did not run smoothly. Hall and Le May were still determined that Gus would only do what they told him to do. On Monday, 4 August, Le May arrived from Helsinki. Major Scale had returned to England to report on the current situation, so Le May was now effectively in charge of the whole operation. He called a meeting with Gus, Hall and the latest of the couriers, Gefter, who had arrived at Terrioki two days before. Le May immediately annoyed Gus by laying out a series of plans for runs through the forts which the team had not been consulted about. Le May said that he wanted Gefter to be taken in that evening. It was highly dangerous, but Gus duly left to make preparations. A few hours later Hall arrived to say that Le May had abandoned the idea and that Gefter would go later in the week. Gus began to feel like a chauffeur.
The following day Le May called another meeting and once more began to lay out plans for courier runs, all without having consulted Gus at all. When Gus suggested that some of these ideas might prove difficult Le May insinuated that Gus was getting cold feet. He seemed to think that there was no risk at all in going through the forts. At one point Hall interjected:
‘Now come on, Agar, which particular forts are you afraid of?’
Gus was stunned by Hall’s ignorance. Very slowly and carefully he replied:
‘All of them.’
Eventually Gus could stand it no more. He said that if ST-25 must come out now as Cumming was insisting, then he, as leader of the team, would decide how it was to be done. He insisted that an urgent telegram be sent to Cumming to have this confirmed and refused to discuss plans any further. He pointed out that once before Hall and Le May had interfered and that it had almost resulted in the death of his men. Hall breezily replied:
‘Oh, that doesn’t matter.’
Gus looked at him coldly and then left the dacha without saying another word. He refused to speak to either Hall or Le May again and instead made plans to see Admiral Cowan first thing the next morning. That night he wrote in his diary:
‘This may be the end of our whole show, but things cannot proceed on with this sort of dual or triple control and again Le May said to me “We have spent a lot of money on the boats and they have done nothing.” I didn’t remark to him that while he and his people were sitting in nice comfortable places at Helsinki we had been doing the work … Anyway there’s a bust-up and things have come to a head, either I have control and run the show as best I can without him or else they must get somebody else. In the meantime J is stuck in Petrograd and must come out.’
‘J’ meant Paul Dukes. Clearly Gus had only heard the name spoken as he consistently spells the name ‘Jukes’ from this point on in his diary, but it shows once again how operational security had broken down. This lack of security at Terrioki would shock a modern intelligence officer. Not only was the site visited by various Allied military attachés and dignitaries, but there was even a journalist staying at the base at one point. This was Hugh Muir, special correspondent of the Daily Express. It was Muir who first referred to Gus as ‘the mystery VC’. Gus’s papers include several photographs of him relaxing with the crews at the dacha. He appears to have stayed there between 2 and 10 August and seems to have known a great deal about the operation because Gus’s diary entry for 10 August reads: ‘I said I would send him a wire if anything happened’ (!) This is particularly odd since most journalists were granted no access at all to military operations in the area. Even The Times correspondent was only granted one very brief interview with Admiral Cowan. One possible explanation is that Muir was actually working for MI6 – this combination of journalist and spy would not have been unusual in the early days of the Service, but no suggestion of this has ever appeared in papers which have been released to date.
Even Eric Brewerton, a very junior officer who had arrived from England on HMS Vindictive just two weeks before, knew by 10 August what Gus was really doing in the area. He wrote in his logbook that Gus was ‘taking spies up the River (i.e. the Neva) and dropping them off.’ If these men knew all about Gus, it is hardly surprising that, a few weeks later, Bolshevik agents knew exactly where to find him. This seems to be yet another lapse by Le May and Hall because they should have been responsible for the security of the mission.
Once Gus had spoken to Admiral Cowan, a telegram arrived from Cumming confirming that Gus was in complete control of the naval aspect of the operation and Gefter was finally landed by Sindall in CMB7 on 8 August with instructions to bring Paul Dukes out on 14 August. But relations between Gus, Hall and Le May had now broken down irreparably.
Meanwhile, the other project which had occupied Gus’s time during the White Nights of July was coming to fruition: an attack on the Soviet Baltic fleet in Kronstadt harbour. To a certain extent, Admiral Cowan’s hands had been untied on 4 July when the British Cabinet had finally decided that, whilst they would not formally declare war on Soviet Russia, it should now be considered that ‘a state of war’ existed between the two nations. Now Cowan could plan to attack the Soviet fleet in its lair without fear of recrimination. But as he and his staff spent many hours working on the plan, they always came up against the same problem – the noise of the powerful CMB engines would give the boats away as they passed through the forts (they dared not send such a large number of vessels through at low speed) and by the time they reached the harbour the defenders would be waiting for them. The harbour was only about 800 metres wide in any case. Without the element of surprise they would truly be like fish in a barrel.
But finally they came up with the answer. The aircraft carrier HMS Vindictive was due any day. She was only armed with a ragbag collection of old aircraft, but if they could time a bombing run to coincide exactly with the passage of the CMBs through the forts then the boats might not be detected. Furthermore, the harbour gun crews might still be in their shelters when the CMBs arrived. Such precision timing between aircraft and ships at night had never been attempted before, but it was their best chance. Cowan authorised the operation and gave it the code name ‘R.K.’ after the British Admiral Sir Roger Keyes who had commanded a famous blockship attack on the harbour at Zeebrugge in 1917.
HMS Vindictive arrived in Biorko Sound on 20 July. She was a ‘composite aircraft carrier’ – an old cruiser which had been retrofitted with a wooden deck from which aircraft could be launched. However, the launching of aircraft from ships was still in its infancy and was highly dangerous. If at all possible, pilots preferred to take off from dry land or even the sea (the Vindictive carried four seaplanes). HMS Vindictive was commanded by Captain Edgar ‘Dasher’ Grace, son of the famous English cricketer Dr W. G. Grace. On 6 July while en route to Biorko he had committed the ultimate naval sin of grounding his ship. She had been just outside Reval harbour. It took eight days to refloat her and at one stage it looked as though she would have to be abandoned entirely. Two thousand tons of stores had to be manhandled onto shore before she was finally towed clear thanks to a freak high tide, three tugs and the efforts of hundreds of sailors jumping up and down on her deck to shake her clear – a ludicrous sight. Cowan was furious at this delay to his plans and Edgar Grace was determined to make up for his error. The Vindictive was to be the base ship for all the CMBs as well as all the aircraft. It was a job which Gus and other officers quite frankly thought could not be done, but Edgar Grace and his men did it.
HMS Vindictive’s aircraft were a motley bunch. They were really fighter aircraft rather than dedicated bombers and although she carried twelve aeroplanes only eight of these were eventually to assist in the attack, due to maintenance and other problems. Four were Short seaplanes each with a crew of two (pilot and observer). Two were ‘Ship Strutters’, a variation of an old Sopwith aircraft, the Strutter, which first saw service in 1916 and by 1919 was practically obsolete. The Strutter had originally been designed as a two-seater, but the shipborne version was a single-seater in order to reduce take-off weight and therefore reduce the distance necessary to launch it. It was armed with a forward-firing machine gun and carried up to four small bombs. Then there was another obsolete Sopwith two-seater called a Griffin with a similar bomb load and, finally, the best fighter aircraft of all, a solitary Sopwith Camel. Although the Camel had been replaced in front-line RAF service by the Sopwith Snipe, it could still more than hold its own against anything that it was likely to encounter around Kronstadt. It was armed with two fixed forward firing Vickers .303 machine guns capable of unleashing over 600 rounds per minute and carried either four small fragmentation bombs or a single 50lb (23kg) high-explosive bomb.
But none of the Vindictive’s flimsy aircraft could carry bombs large enough to penetrate the Soviet battlecruisers’ armoured decks and there was also the problem of accuracy. These aircraft carried no bombsights. Bomb release was simply a matter of leaning over the side of the aircraft to see if the target was below and then pulling the release toggle. Sometimes the bombs did not release at all because mechanics made very sure to fix them tightly as they had a tendency to fall off and explode during take-off. There was a verse from a song sung in Royal Naval Air Service messes which summed up their feelings about aerial bombing:
There’s a game that some people play for the whole of the day,
Of dropping a bomb from the air,
And men grin with delight if they drop it aright,
A contingency only too rare!
The aircrew were under the command of Major David Grahame Donald. A former Scottish rugby international, Donald’s bluff no-nonsense approach was ideal for the dangerous world of naval aviation in 1919 and he was highly respected by his young pilots. Two bases were built to accommodate the aircraft. The seaplanes were moored on the shore at Sidinsari within sight of Cowan’s squadron. (This proved very popular as they were alongside the local nudist beach.) The remaining aircraft were to be based at an airstrip on the coast near the village of Koivisto. The two-hundred-yard-long stretch of runway was still being hacked out of the virgin pine forest when the Vindictive arrived. Major Donald and his young pilots went to take a look. They picked their way across the shattered terrain, which was still littered with the remains of boulders and tree stumps. As they stood at the end of the airfield and peered over at the steep (and probably fatal) drop into the sea on the other side, the dour Scotsman neatly summed up the feelings of all his young pilots: ‘Jesus Christ!’
Meanwhile, at Osea Island in Essex, as many of the twin-engined 55-foot CMBs as could be found were made ready. Eventually eight were dispatched. They were to be towed in pairs across the North Sea by destroyers. It was a difficult journey. The tows parted no less than sixteen times, all the boats were swamped and one was lost entirely. The first thing the mechanics had to do upon arriving at Biorko was to completely overhaul the engines. This raised another problem: whilst the boats were readily available, mechanics were not. Maintaining high-performance CMB engines was skilled work and could not be done by just any mechanic in the Royal Navy. It was like the difference between the engine of a normal vehicle and a Formula One racing car. Most of the mechanics at Osea were ‘hostilities only’ personnel which meant that as soon as the war was over they were demobbed. Now a message went out for volunteers to return for a one-off mission, even though they could not be told where they would be going or what the mission involved. Eight mechanics bravely answered the call.
On Friday, 25 July, the first CMB arrived. It was number 79A, commanded by Lieutenant William ‘Bill’ Bremner, one of the three junior officers who had first suggested the creation of Coastal Motor Boats in 1915. Although he had already won the Distinguished Service Cross for one action involving CMBs, he was keen to see them used in the role he had always envisaged – skimming across minefields and attacking an enemy fleet in its home port. The other CMB which had been towed across the North Sea with 79A was undergoing a complete overhaul at Reval because of the damage caused by sea water during the journey.
In the early morning of 30 July, Major Donald took nine aircraft on the first bombing raid over Kronstadt harbour. Since the airfield was not ready, they took off from the deck of the Vindictive. The mission was very nearly a disaster. Shortly after the planes were airborne, coloured flares were seen arcing into the night sky from somewhere in the forests beyond Koivisto. This was a signal from Bolshevik spies warning Kronstadt that an attack had been launched. But the British aircraft were not equipped with radios and by the time it was realised that they had been spotted there was no way to recall them. All of the Kotlin Island forts were alerted and Donald’s planes first encountered anti-aircraft fire when they were still four miles from their target. At 0300, just as it was becoming full daylight, the aircraft arrived over the harbour. Major Donald and his men found the Kronstadt air defences waiting for them. In order to have some chance of hitting their targets, they bravely flew no higher than 4,000 feet. The anti-aircraft guns soon locked on to this altitude and gave them a very warm reception indeed. Altogether the aircraft dropped sixteen bombs, claiming four hits, starting two large fires and killing one person. Donald described the anti-aircraft fire as ‘very effective throughout’ and they were lucky to escape without any losses. Although the damage caused by the attack was minimal, the mission did serve one additional purpose – the defenders of Kronstadt now thought that any British attack would come from the sky, not from the sea.
Meanwhile, out at sea, CMBs 4 and 7 sat just off Tolboukin lighthouse, watching the flashes in the early-morning sky as the attack progressed. Their job was to rescue any aircraft that might be forced to ditch in the sea as a result of enemy fire or engine failure. After an hour it became clear that all the British aircraft had returned. But in the meantime a Soviet patrol boat had begun nosing around outside the line of the forts, possibly as the result of the CMBs being spotted by sentries in the lighthouse.
Ed Sindall in command of CMB7 cruised slowly towards Gus Agar in the crippled CMB4 and asked for permission to have a pot at the Soviet boat. Gus knew how keen his junior officer was to see action. Gus gave him permission to make one pass, but not to follow if the Soviet boat retreated behind the protective line of the forts.
CMB7 immediately swung into the attack, making a line straight for the distant Soviet vessel. Although Sindall was still two miles away the sea forts had clearly been warned by the lookouts in the lighthouse because two of them opened fire with their massive naval guns. The shots were well wide but, even so, Sindall began steering a zigzag course to throw off their aim, all the while closing on his target.
Either the Soviet patrol boat could not see CMB7 or she was trying to lure CMB7 in because she did not turn and run. She held steady to her course in front of the line of the forts. Sindall closed to nine hundred yards, ignoring the shellfire directed at him, and then Gus saw the tell-tale swerve which showed that CMB7 had released its torpedo.
Almost immediately Ed Sindall realised that the torpedo was going to miss. The Soviet patrol boat accelerated and changed course towards him. But rather than run ‘Sinbad’ headed straight for them. The patrol boat opened fire with a small-bore deck gun and a shot landed just yards away from CMB7’s port bow. Sindall came on, giving the wheel just a slight nudge to throw off the Soviet gunner’s aim. The two boats were now so close that the sea forts ceased fire for fear of hitting their own men.
At 400 yards’ range Sindall put the wheel hard over and as CMB7 disappeared behind a wall of spray Richard Marshall let fly with both Lewis guns. Osea’s marksman had the satisfaction of seeing his tracer stream into the Soviet boat, killing or wounding the gun crew. Sindall brought CMB7 around in a full circle to give Marshall another shot, but the Bolshevik captain had seen enough. He turned and ran for the line of the forts. Sindall chased him for half a mile, but although Marshall kept firing he failed to hit anything vital and the speed of the Soviet boat did not decrease. Finally, the sea forts opened fire again and, mindful of Gus’s orders, Ed Sindall broke off the attack. Together with CMB4 they turned for home.
On 9 August the remaining CMBs arrived. They were all in a very poor state after the crossing. But Admiral Cowan was concerned that the Russian spies in the hills overlooking the harbour, who had already sabotaged Major Donald’s night attack on 30 July, would see the CMBs, guess his intent and alert the commandant at Kronstadt. He allowed just four days to overhaul the engines and one day for a rehearsal of the attack. By the night of 15 August the CMBs had to be ready to go, come what may.
Most of the hastily assembled crews of the CMBs were junior officers and ratings who had never been under fire before. There were only four officers with considerable experience. The commander of the attack was to be Commander Claude Dobson, a former submariner and leading CMB captain. The second was Lieutenant Archibald Dayrell-Reed, a highly decorated CMB captain who had already sunk one German destroyer. He was known throughout the flotilla as ‘Mossy’ because of his luxuriant black beard. The third most experienced officer was Lieutenant Russell McBean, the best helmsman in the Flotilla. Together with Bill Bremner these men would form the core of the attack. As for the others, the Navy would just have to hope that they proved their worth when the time came.
On 12 August, Bremner and Dobson were taken on a reconnaissance flight over Kronstadt and had a look at the defences. The naval facilities at Kronstadt actually consisted of three harbours side by side. To the west was the commercial harbour where the cargo ships docked. They could ignore that. To the east was a small military harbour that contained patrol boats and other minor vessels. Although lightly armed, some of these would be quite fast and might chase or even intercept the CMBs on their way back. At least one CMB would have to be detailed to deal with this threat. In the middle of these two facilities was the main military harbour where the Baltic fleet was moored. The entrance to this harbour was surprisingly narrow – no more than fifty metres across. Bremner and Dobson were unable to see if there was a boom across the entrance but they assumed that there was and that they would have to deal with it on the night. But the key factor in the defence of the harbour was a destroyer posted just outside the entrance. It would have a point-blank shot at any CMB entering or leaving the harbour. Worse still, that destroyer was the Gavriil, probably the most ably commanded ship in the Soviet Baltic fleet. Her captain, V. Sevastyanov, was a former Tsarist officer and he had already taken his ship into several encounters with Cowan’s squadron. Dobson reckoned that at least one CMB would have to be assigned to deal with the Gavriil before the others could get through.
Both men were also shocked by how cramped the military harbour was. There would be almost no room to manoeuvre and certainly no room for more than two or three CMBs in the harbour at a time. Bremner and Dobson decided that the CMBs should attack in two waves of three. The first wave would have to be allowed to get clear of the harbour before the second wave attacked. But this raised a difficult question: the attack force was divided between four experienced crews and three inexperienced crews. Should the youngsters go first or second? The first wave would have the advantage of surprise and therefore the best chance of sinking their targets. The second wave would be sailing straight into the full force of the alerted enemy defences. They would be lucky to get through at all. It would certainly be no place for an inexperienced crew. In the end, Claude Dobson decided that the most important point was that they cripple the enemy fleet. He ordered that the three most experienced crews, led by himself, Bill Bremner and Mossy Reed, would attack first. The other experienced crew under Lieutenant Napier was detailed to sink the Gavriil at the harbour entrance. The youngsters would have to take their chances in the second wave. Gus Agar, who was too valuable to risk in the main attack because of his secret-service work, was detailed to deal with any patrol craft which emerged from the small military harbour to the east.
That afternoon, Cowan called the CMB officers together for a briefing. He listed the five principal targets: the most important were the two giant battlecruisers Andrei Pervozvanni and Petropavlovsk. If they could be destroyed the Soviet fleet would be effectively crippled and would be unlikely to emerge from Kronstadt harbour for the foreseeable future. The next target was the submarine depot ship Pamiat Azova. Soviet submarines were a constant threat to Cowan’s squadron. Reconnaissance photographs showed that this depot ship currently had two submarines berthed alongside, preparing to go to sea. If a torpedo caused the Pamiat Azova to explode or capsize she might take one or both of these submarines with her.
The fourth target was more of a problem. The large minefields in the Gulf constantly restricted Cowan’s freedom of operation and had sunk several ships. Cowan asked the CMB commanders to attack the Rurik, an ageing Russian cruiser which had been fitted out as a minelayer. According to intelligence obtained by Paul Dukes, she had been loaded recently with 300 live mines and was about to lay a new minefield. Commander Dobson politely pointed out that putting a torpedo into a ship containing 300 live mines would probably destroy the Rurik, half the harbour and every single CMB in the surrounding area. Cowan simply shrugged at this: he just outlined the targets – how the attack was accomplished was down to Dobson and his crews. (After the briefing Dobson privately told his crews that they should forget the Rurik and go for the dry dock instead. They might live longer. Only if every other target had been destroyed should the very last torpedo be sent into the Rurik.)
The fifth target was the caisson of the dry dock where the Soviet warships were repaired. The waters in the harbour were very shallow and although the CMBs might sink the dreadnoughts they would eventually be raised and repaired. Anything the CMBs could do to delay that operation would be invaluable. Taking out the dry dock facilities would be an important stage in that plan.
Dobson then addressed the crews and pointed out that in the confusion of the harbour one of the greatest risks would be a collision between the CMBs. To avoid this, after firing their torpedoes each of the boats would go to a ‘waiting berth’ until the other boats in the group had completed their attacks. Then all three boats in the group would leave together before the second wave attacked. The waiting berth was to be next to a hospital ship which was moored against the southern wall of the harbour. The Russian guns would be unlikely to fire in that direction for fear of causing casualties among their own men. Hiding behind a Red Cross was taking a bit of a liberty, but the flimsy CMBs needed every chance they could get.
Major Donald then briefed the CMB crews about the air support. He told them that he could buy them no more than fifteen minutes. His aircraft carried only a few small bombs and although they would do their best to cause a distraction they did not fancy going up against the Kronstadt anti-aircraft defences at low level with just tracer bullets. The CMB crews did not think that this would be a problem: after fifteen minutes the only people still left in the harbour would be dead.
On Thursday, 14 August Gus made his one last attempt to collect Paul Dukes before the Kronstadt attack. This was the rendezvous which Dukes failed to make because his boat was swamped and he was forced to swim back to shore with Gefter. However, the trip was not a complete failure because Gus was able to drop another one of Paul Dukes’s agents. This was a Bolshevik officer named Kroslov whom Gus describes as looking ‘like an intellectual with a high forehead and wearing pince nez.’ He clearly liked this man a lot more than Gefter whom he described as ‘bombastic’ and someone who ‘might give the whole game away to save his skin.’ Whether Kroslov’s mission was a success is not known. He is never mentioned again in any published record.
This was also to be John Hampsheir’s last trip. He had been staying at the dacha in Terrioki with the rest of the crew and he had begged Gus for the chance to prove himself once more. Gus did not think that he was ready, but he also thought that to show a lack of confidence in his friend might lead to a further deterioration in his condition. Gus had waited an hour at the rendezvous point, but when it was obvious that Paul Dukes was not coming he had had to turn for home. At first the engine nearly did not start because the compressed-air bottle which acted as a starter motor had been leaking and there was barely enough gas left for one attempt. Everything depended on Hugh Beeley and his tending of the engine, but once again he triumphed. Then, as they were returning through the forts at about one o’clock in the morning, they were caught in a squall similar to the one that had swamped Paul and Gefter earlier. Despite the best efforts of the crew, waves poured in over the side and soon there was one and a half feet of water in the hull. CMB7 was reduced to a crawl. The water was up to the level of the flywheel and if it rose any higher it threatened to stop the engine altogether. John Hampsheir bailed frantically as Beeley fought to keep the engine alive, whilst Gus tried to gain them every yard possible to get out of the sight of the forts. After half an hour the squall eased and they were able to turn for home, arriving at Terrioki just before two in the morning. But Gus’s fears had been realised. Following this further brush with a watery grave John Hampsheir’s nerves were finally gone. He was never to make another trip in a CMB.
The following day Gus left for Biorko Sound in CMB7 to join the rest of the flotilla. His task would be to lead the attacking craft through the line of forts and around the eastern end of Kotlin Island to the harbour. He took two Finnish smugglers with him to help guide the attack force through the sea forts. One was the constant if not necessarily trustworthy Veroline. The other was a Finn named ‘Huva’ who had served on a Russian yacht cruising around the Gulf of Finland before the war and knew the waters well. During the war he had worked on an English cargo ship and could speak fairly good English so Gus suggested that he should travel in Dobson’s boat in case the flotilla ran into enemy fire and became separated. Gus did not tell either of the Finns that this time they would be sailing right into Kronstadt harbour rather than just through the forts. When they arrived at Biorko and did find out, they immediately wanted to leave. However, the promise of double pay and two quarts of British navy rum each finally convinced them.
That afternoon, Friday, 15 August the crews held their one and only rehearsal for the Kronstadt attack. They had set buoys in the water to mark the dimensions of the harbour, based on the photographs taken during the reconnaissance flights. Different-coloured buoys marked the positions of the primary targets: the battle-cruisers, the submarine depot ship and the minelayer. It was the first chance the crews had to get a real impression of the task ahead of them. The greatest problem was that the two battlecruisers were moored on the far left-hand side of the harbour. The CMBs would have to enter, turn hard left, reach attack speed, launch their torpedoes and then swing out of the way before the torpedoes hit their target. Russell McBean was the most experienced helmsman in the Flotilla and he would be steering CMB31, commanded by Dobson. He started up the engines and roared into the Sound to make the first attack run. He was closely watched and also cheered on by the other CMB crews from the deck of the Vindictive. He passed at high speed through the buoys marking the harbour entrance, turned sharply through 120 degrees and then lined up on the row of buoys representing the Andrei Pervozvanni. But he had mistimed his turn and although he managed to reach the torpedo-launching speed of 30 knots, he had run out of room. CMB31 rocketed straight through the buoys representing the Andrei Pervozvanni, then through the Petropavlovsk and finally through the thirty-foot-thick harbour wall behind them. If this attack had been the real thing CMB31 would now have been no more than a pool of flaming oil and wreckage decorating the waters of Kronstadt harbour.
It was a sobering moment. McBean was the best helmsman in the flotilla and on the night of the attack they would have the added distraction of the guns of the harbour defences firing at them at point-blank range. The men could also see that the distances they were working with were so small that, even if they hit the target, the chances were that the explosion would destroy them as well. The reactions of the watching CMB crews were not recorded, but they are likely to have been unprintable anyway.
The crews practised all that afternoon, sometimes making it, sometimes not. But there was no time for them to get better. The weather was closing in rapidly and soon the waters became too choppy to practise any longer. The storm grew in force and the attack planned for that night had to be called off. The storm then continued for another day and a half and at one stage was so bad that the CMBs were forced away from the Vindictive to seek shelter in a small inlet off the main bay. But finally, on Sunday, 17 August, the weather broke and Admiral Cowan authorised the attack for that night. Zero hour, the moment when the CMBs would pass through the forts to begin their attack run, was set for 0045 on Monday, 18 August 1919. At Z minus 5, the aircraft would begin bombing Kronstadt harbour in the hope that this would distract the forts from the boats’ run.
At approximately 10.45 p.m. on Sunday the first CMBs left the safety of Biorko Sound. Conditions were perfect for the attack. The sea was calm. A half-moon could occasionally be glimpsed through the scudding clouds, but otherwise the night was fully dark. Eight CMBs headed for the first rendezvous. This was Inonini Point the site of the Finnish fort where Agar had been fired on by Finnish troops just a few weeks before. Here the flotilla waited. The plan called for their attack to be timed to the minute and they were not scheduled to move on until Z minus 50 (11.55 p.m.) or they risked arriving in the harbour during the bombing and being hit by their own aircraft. The schedule had been designed so that they should begin their attack on the harbour at Z plus 20 (1.05 a.m.) – exactly as the bombing finished.
As the CMBs sat bobbing in the water with their engines ticking over, gunners checked ammunition drums and mechanics made last-minute adjustments to their notoriously temperamental charges. The starboard engine of CMB86 was giving particular cause for concern. It was only firing on six cylinders despite frantic last-minute work to repair it. The boat was very nearly pulled from the attack, but Francis Yates, a young – and newly married – lieutenant commander with engineering skills had volunteered to travel with the boat and keep the engine running if it was at all possible. He was still working on the engines as the flotilla was sitting there. Another officer who had not expected to be part of the attack was Lieutenant Commander Frank Brade commanding CMB62BD. At the last moment he had volunteered to take the place of Lieutenant Richard Chapman who had fallen ill.
As the CMBs rocked gently in the cold night air, each man must have been wondering about his chances of survival that night. Some would have been thinking back to a CMB raid almost exactly one year earlier. On 11 August 1918, a cruiser force from Harwich under Admiral Tyrwhitt had carried out a well-planned attack against German naval forces in the Heligoland Bight. The Harwich force had sailed across the North Sea transmitting a series of fake wireless signals which had been carefully designed to tempt German naval forces out of their well-defended harbour to attack what appeared to be easy prey. The plan was that the CMBs, assisted and protected by naval aircraft, would then attack the heavier capital ships with torpedoes. At first all went well. The British naval force arrived at their rendezvous off Terschelling Island on schedule and at 0530 the cruisers lowered six CMBs into the water. They roared off to carry out the attack. But the seaplanes that were supposed to provide top cover never made it. Laden down with too much fuel and ammunition they were unable to take off in the choppy conditions. Not one of the CMBs returned. Every single one of them was cut to pieces by a combination of shore defences and German naval aircraft. Some of the crews made it to the shores of Holland where they were interned for the remainder of the war. It must have occurred to the crews for the Kronstadt attack that this plan was disturbingly similar – except that in this case they were going right into the harbour, the very heart of the enemy defences.
Finally, at almost midnight, Dobson lifted his flashlight, which was covered with a green filter, and gave the signal for the attack to begin. All around Inonini Point CMB engines roared into life, shattering the stillness.
Agar opened the throttle of CMB7 and led the flotilla away into the darkness in a line-astern formation. Behind him followed Napier in CMB24A whose job would be to take out the Gavriil at the entrance to the harbour. He would be first to attack. Then came Group One consisting of Bremner, Dobson and ‘Mossy’ Reed in CMBs 79A, 31BD and 88BD respectively. They were followed by Group Two consisting of the volunteer Brade and two young officers, Howard and Bodley, in CMBs 62BD, 86 and 72.
Almost immediately things began to go wrong.
For some reason, Dobson’s smuggler pilot, Huva, urged him to head further south than the line that Gus was taking because he was sure that Veroline was heading for a gap that was closed. Dobson chose to follow the smuggler’s advice and veered away. The rest of the flotilla followed him.
Glancing behind as he gathered speed for their attack run on the forts, Gus Agar could only see two CMBs still with him. The one immediately behind was Napier’s. As Napier was immediately behind Gus he had not seen Dobson leaving the formation. The identity of the other CMB is not certain, but Gus said later that she was making a ‘fearful din’ and throwing out flames from her exhaust – a sure sign of a malfunctioning engine. This was almost certainly Howard’s boat, CMB86. In the darkness to starboard Gus thought he could see the spray thrown up by what might be the rest of the flotilla, but he could not be sure. He decided that he had no choice but to continue with the attack as planned. He was sure that the noise of their engines would have been heard by now and he increased speed to make CMB7 a more difficult target if the forts opened fire. Sure enough they did, letting go with machine-gun and light-artillery fire. But for some reason they did not use their searchlights and all the fire was well wide of the mark.
Once they were out of range, Gus eased back on the throttle to about 20 knots and steered a course for the eastern end of Kotlin Island, right below the fortress of Kronstadt. Glancing behind, he could still see Napier doggedly maintaining position. There was no sign of Howard at all but Gus could not afford to worry about that now. He pushed on. It would take about 30 minutes to reach the mouth of the harbour.
In fact Howard’s boat, CMB86, was dead in the water several miles behind. He had followed Gus and Napier through the forts, but he had fallen further and further back until finally there was ‘a frightful jarring noise’ and the boat shuddered to a complete stop. Howard immediately thought that the problem was the troublesome starboard engine, but Lieutenant Commander Yates quickly put his head up from the engine compartment and said that the port engine had shattered its crankshaft. There was no hope of restarting it. Howard glanced back over his shoulder – he was trapped on the wrong side of the forts and was within range of the enemy guns. Fortunately, since his CMB’s engines were dead the flames from the exhaust had stopped and they were effectively invisible in the darkness. But when morning came the Bolshevik forces in the forts would see them and they would not stand a chance. Yates told Howard that he would see what could be done and disappeared back into the engine compartment with the other mechanic.
Meanwhile Dobson had been incredibly lucky. His Finnish pilot seemed to become confused by the speed at which they were travelling and he had chosen completely the wrong gap. It was one of those where the Russians had recently repaired the breakwater specifically to stop a vessel such as a CMB. The bottom should have been ripped out of CMB31 and out of every boat following Dobson. But the heavy gales of the past two days had caused such an enormous build-up of waters in the Gulf that the tide that night was about two feet higher than normal. Instead of encountering disaster, Dobson and the following boats sailed over the newly repaired breakwater with plenty of room to spare. They were not even fired on by the forts. Taking this different route had also saved them considerable time compared to Agar and Napier who were now some way to the north. The carefully prepared timetable which called for the Gavriil to be destroyed first had already fallen apart.
CMB31 and the other boats rounded the eastern end of Kotlin Island and arrived at the rendezvous five minutes earlier than planned. Even so, the air attack by Donald and his men had not yet started. They had experienced considerable difficulty getting airborne and they were very late. The harbour was still shrouded in silence and darkness. There were no lights visible on the Gavriil guarding the harbour entrance. Not knowing where Napier was nor why the bombing raid had not started, Dobson decided to signal for the attack to go ahead.
Bill Bremner in CMB79 moved forward steadily, passing around behind the Gavriil and heading towards the narrow harbour entrance. It was his job to destroy the boom or chain guarding the harbour entrance and he carried gun-cotton charges in his boat for just this purpose. But as he drew closer the rating who was poised in the bows to watch for the boom reported that the entrance to the harbour was not guarded by a barrier of any kind. This was another tremendous stroke of good luck. Bremner put CMB79 into a wide circle to pick up speed and then accelerated towards the harbour entrance. The wings of water rose up on either side and he lined up with the Pamiat Azova, which was visible in her berth directly ahead. Even as he did so Major Donald and his aircraft appeared overhead and the first bombs whistled down to explode among the docks.
As the first bombs struck, Bremner was picking up speed. Because the waters in the harbour were so shallow it was vital that the torpedoes were launched at the highest speed possible to prevent a ‘death dive’. Bremner’s young second in command, Sub Lieutenant Tom Usborne, shouted the revolution count into Bremner’s ear above the deafening roar of the engine. Bill Bremner had no time to look down at the controls: there was no aiming mechanism for the torpedoes – everything depended on the skill and judgement of the captain – and he had to estimate the line of attack by sight, just using slight nudges of the steering wheel to correct the CMB’s course. He could not afford to make a mistake: unlike Dobson and Mossy Reed’s boats, his 55-foot CMB was designed to carry only one torpedo.
They were running out of room. From somewhere to his right a bullet ricocheted off the metal frame of the windscreen. Tom Usborne shouted that they had reached 1100 rpm and Bremner pulled the release toggle. There was a loud hiss as the hydraulic ram shoved the torpedo along the trough and over the stern. Immediately Bremner threw CMB79 into a tight turn to port away from the line of the torpedo and the central harbour wall where machine-gun emplacements were positioned. Within seconds there was a crunching roar and a shudder that shook the entire boat. The crew of CMB79 let out a collective shout of joy as a cloud of smoke and flame began to rise above the Pamiat Azova and she immediately began to heel over to her starboard side.
Bremner had no time to look back. He brought CMB 79 to a halt near the dry dock which was his ‘waiting berth’ because crossing to the hospital ship would have risked a collision with Dobson and Reed. Above them the sky was lit up by streams of tracer and red-hot shrapnel like a 5 November fireworks display. But as soon as CMB79 drew to a halt bullets began to whine and ricochet all around them. It seemed that the cover they had hoped for did not exist and at least two emplacements could fire on them. Bremner kept his head down below the windscreen and his gunners did their best to lay down suppressing fire. But it soon became clear that if they stayed there, they were dead. Muttering an oath beneath his breath, Bremner opened up both throttles and steered straight across the harbour between the lines of tracer bullets and the plumes of water that were being thrown up by the shells, just getting across before ‘Mossy’ Reed came racing through. He headed straight on for the alternative ‘waiting berth’ at the hospital ship.
Meanwhile Agar and Napier had arrived just outside the entrance to the military harbour. There was no sign of the other CMBs but since zero hour had passed and the RAF’s attack had clearly begun Napier opened out the engines of CMB24 and headed straight for the Gavriil. The destroyer was in darkness and seemed unaware of the cacophony from the nearby harbour. The second in command, Lieutenant Osman Giddy, primed the charge so that they would be ready to launch the moment Napier had the right line. They were already under heavy fire. Giddy later estimated that there were at least ten different shore batteries firing at CMB24 at this time.
Suddenly Napier spotted another CMB making for the harbour entrance. Afraid of hitting her, he broke off the attack and put CMB24 into a wide turn to buy some time. The other CMB passed and Napier came out of the turn so that he could attack the Gavriil broadside on. As soon as his boat had straightened out, he pulled the toggle and the torpedo slid out of the trough behind him.
Almost immediately the length of the Gavriil lit up against the darkness as her main guns suddenly opened up. Either Sevastyanov’s men were incredibly accurate or they were unbelievably lucky. There was a tremendous flash and an explosion. Giddy was thrown across the cockpit. He felt a searing pain in the small of his back and knew that he had been hit by shell splinters. He lay on the floor of the cockpit for a moment, completely stunned. The CMB seemed to have stopped dead in the water and all he could see was the night sky above him. But why had the Gavriil ceased firing? For a moment Giddy wondered if he was dead.
Then the voice of CMB24’s mechanic, Ben Reynish, brought him back to reality:
Ignoring the pain, Giddy hauled himself upright and looked around, trying to assess the damage. There was no sign of Laurence Napier. He must have been blown into the water, but in the darkness Giddy could not see him. No one else in the crew seemed to be injured and the two sailors who had been manning the machine guns, Charles Harvey and Herbert Bowles, were clambering back to their positions to return fire. Giddy decided that the shell must have been a near miss. He was about to go below and see what could be done to get the engines going again when first one and then another shell landed on either side of the boat, knocking him off his feet again as Harvey fell back with his right arm shattered at the elbow. Giddy looked down, saw that there was water pouring into the boat and realised with horror that CMB24 had been split along her entire length by the force of the explosions. He shouted for Bowles and Reynish to help him unlash the fenders from the side of the boat because these would float, but before they could do this CMB24 simply fell apart and sank below the freezing waters. As he floated in the water, held up by his Gieves life jacket, Giddy began to lapse in and out of consciousness but he could see that the Gavriil was untouched – either Napier had missed or the torpedo had malfunctioned. Either way, the remaining boats were now at the mercy of the Soviet destroyer which would have a clear shot at any CMBs entering or leaving the harbour.
Meanwhile, Claude Dobson and the crew of CMB31 had begun their attack run. Unlike Bremner and Napier’s CMBs, their boat carried two torpedoes and both were intended for the dreadnought Andrei Pervozvanni, the main target of the attack. For the moment the Gavriil was occupied with machine-gunning the survivors of CMB24 as they floated in the water, but the shore defences were fully operational and were pouring in both shell- and machine-gun fire against their attackers. At the helm, Russell McBean took CMB31 through the narrow harbour at full speed, knowing that it was their only hope of getting through the curtain of fire directed against them. Ahead of them the Pamiat Azova was now heeled well over and was a useful landmark in the churning waters of the harbour, which were being swept by searchlights as the Russians fought to protect their ships. CMB31 was travelling so fast that she almost ran into the rear of the Pamiat Azova, but the afternoon rehearsal had not been in vain. McBean slammed the throttle of the port engine to a full stop and threw the helm hard over. CMB31 spun in a tight circle, threatening to throw the crew overboard, and as soon as the Andrei Pervozvanni swung into view McBean opened up the port engine again and they raced across the harbour. The defenders could see who her target must be and Dobson later said that it felt as if every gun in the harbour had opened up against them. With McBean at the helm, Dobson could concentrate on launching the torpedoes, but although the line was right Dobson had to hold his nerve as he knew that launching before they had reached the right speed would be fatal in these shallow waters.
The engines hit one thousand revolutions. Dobson let fly with both torpedoes and McBean instantly threw the boat hard to port to get out of the way. The wake of the torpedoes hissed past, the noise unheard against the deafening roar of engines and gunfire, but Dobson could see from the wakes that his aim was true. Both torpedoes slammed into the Andrei Pervozvanni and twin columns of smoke and flame erupted from her side.
Close behind Dobson was the last CMB in the first wave, number 88, crewed by Lieutenant ‘Mossy’ Dayrell-Reed and his second-in-command Lieutenant Gordon Steele. She too carried two torpedoes and her target was the Petropavlovsk. Reed and Steele were firm friends, having served together on the HMS Iron Duke for several years. They were also both very experienced in CMB work and were reckoned to be the best crew in the flotilla. As McBean had done before them, they rocketed through the harbour entrance at top speed, straight into the maelstrom of fire. Steele and Sub Lieutenant Norman Morley were giving return fire from CMB88’s twin machine guns and, since their target was moored alongside the Andrei Pervozvanni, CMB88 followed the same course as McBean had done before them. As they roared towards the rapidly listing Pamiat Azova Mossy Reed brought one engine to a stop and threw his weight against the steering wheel to yank CMB88 into as tight a turn as possible.
Almost immediately, they nearly collided with Bremner who shot across their bows heading for the cover of the hospital ship. Gordon Steele watched as the shore batteries passed across the sights of his Lewis guns. He pulled the stocks tight into his shoulder and emptied round after round at the harbour wall, hoping to put at least one of the guns out of action. Incoming bullets whistled and ricocheted around him as the Russian gunners returned fire. Above him the sky was lit up by the beams of searchlights and the twinkling streams of tracer fire from the British aircraft.
But then it suddenly dawned on Steele that the boat was turning too far. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Reed slumped over the wheel. Almost automatically, Steele abandoned his machine gun and leaned across to help his dying friend. Mossy Reed had been shot through the head. Steele shifted the apparently lifeless body out of the way and hauled the wheel in the opposite direction. Both throttles were wide open and the massive steel wall which was the hull of the Petropavlovsk was hurtling towards them, growing taller at every moment.
For a second Steele considered going around for a second attempt, but the fire was now so intense that he knew that they would not survive another attack run. There was nothing for it but to go straight on. If necessary he would ram the Petropavlovsk and try to take her with him.
Steele throttled back as far as he dared and as soon as CMB88’s bow came back on line with his target he pulled the lanyard which launched both torpedoes. He stopped one engine and swung the wheel hard to port, but almost as soon as he did so there was a tremendous explosion virtually alongside the boat. They had hit the Petropavlovsk. In fact, they were so close that the picric powder from the explosives in the nose of the torpedoes was thrown over the stern of the boat, staining it yellow. But Steele had no time even to let out a cheer. As the Petropavlovsk disappeared in a curtain of smoke and flames to his right, a barge tied up to the hospital ship where Bremner was waiting swung into view. It seemed impossible that they would miss it as they were still travelling at high speed. Steele hauled on the wheel with all his might and Morley stopped firing as he saw the barge loom towards them. But somehow, just when it seemed that they were finished, they roared past the barge with inches to spare and were back out into the open harbour with all the enemy guns firing at them once more.
Looking ahead, Steele could see Dobson and McBean in CMB31 heading for the harbour mouth. He swung into line behind them and together the two boats, with their machine guns blasting away at the harbour walls, shot back out into the open sea once more. The Gavriil was waiting for them. Both boats had to run the gauntlet of fire that was coming both from the destroyer and from the harbour. Morley poured a stream of tracer fire in the direction of the Gavriil before the two boats swung away to the east and headed for home. Then Morley went to check on Mossy Reed. There were still faint signs of life. With no training in first aid, Morley did what he could, bandaging up the massive head wound and forcing a morphine pill between Reed’s lips to dull the pain. Now his only hope was the surgeon on board the Vindictive. Steele opened out the throttles and stayed close behind Dobson’s CMB as they raced for home.
Meanwhile, the crew of CMB7 were witnesses to the second stage of the attack. Gus had been hanging on to his one torpedo in the hope of doing the most damage. He could see that the Gavriil was still firing and he knew that Napier’s attack must have failed. With the destroyer still in place the attacking CMBs in the second wave were in a bad way and Gus was considering having a crack at her himself. But then Ed Sindall spotted activity in the military harbour as some of the Bolshevik patrol boats tried to put to sea and so Gus had no choice but to stick to the plan. He put CMB7 into a wide circle which brought him into line with the mouth of the little harbour. He opened out to full speed and then launched his single torpedo just before CMB7 reached the harbour entrance, swinging away at the last moment with Richard Marshall giving the Bolsheviks a taste of both barrels of the twin Lewis guns for good measure. The wake of the torpedo streamed straight and true through the harbour mouth. In the darkness they could not see the result of their action, but Gus had aimed directly for the most densely packed area of the moored vessels. There was a tremendous explosion and several smaller secondary explosions so he was sure they must have done a good deal of damage. CMB7 returned to her station ready to intercept any vessels that emerged. But none did.
As Claude Dobson had feared, the second wave of the attack was in tatters. Howard with CMB86 and her two torpedoes was still stranded on the wrong side of the forts north of Kronstadt. Lieutenant Commander Frank Brade in CMB62 and Sub Lieutenant Edward Bodley commanding CMB72 now began their attack run, but almost immediately ran into trouble. The air attack was by now almost exhausted. Several of the aircraft had turned for home, although one or two pilots, including Flying Officer Eric Brewerton in one of the Strutters, were hanging on as long as possible, diving at the shore defences with their machine guns firing in the hope of winning the CMBs a few more precious seconds of time. Brewerton had been circling the area since the beginning of the CMBs’ attack and had an outstanding aerial view of the entire action. He was amazed at how the little boats had been able to survive the storm of fire that had been directed at them, noting that even the anti-aircraft pom-pom guns were now depressed to their minimum elevation so that they could join in the defence.
He saw Brade and Bodley racing forward. He realised that the tracer fire from their machine guns, which had been intended to help them direct accurate fire in the darkness, was actually betraying their position to the Soviet defenders. The Gavriil opened fire and was deadly accurate. Brewerton swooped and raked the destroyer stern to bow in the hope of forcing her to cease firing, but his assault seemed to have little effect. He watched as the second CMB, number 72 commanded by Bodley, was forced to break off her attack run even before she reached the harbour mouth. One bullet or shell splinter had pierced the carburettor, reducing her speed, and then another struck the launching gear, jamming it completely. With no way to fire his single torpedo, Ed Bodley knew that he would only be needlessly endangering his men if he entered the harbour. He veered away to starboard and headed for home.
Now the success of the entire second wave rested on the replacement officer, Frank Brade. He opened out the throttles of CMB62 and raced past the Gavriil without sustaining a scratch, but the heavily defended harbour mouth waited ahead. The air attack was over and, ignoring the two or three remaining RAF aircraft, the searchlight crews all trained their beams on the harbour entrance. Caught in the light of several of these at close range, Brade was blinded just as he entered the harbour. In a desperate attempt to get out of the light he threw CMB62 hard to port. What he could not see was that this put him on a direct course for CMB79 under the command of Bill Bremner, which was trying to fight its way out of the harbour. Enemy fire had put one of Bremner’s two engines out of action and he had fallen far behind Dobson and Steele. Brade’s CMB hit Bremner’s boat amidships at full speed, partially riding over it and locking the two craft together. Several members of both crews were knocked unconscious by the force of the impact. Both boats came to a complete stop and the Soviet gunners now poured their machine-gun and rifle fire into this tangled mess of wreckage.
Frank Brade was one of the first to recover. He immediately assessed what had happened. There was no way he could break free of CMB79 so he opened out CMB62’s throttles and forced his bow around to face the harbour entrance. Bullets were now hammering into the little wooden boats from every direction. Brewerton, Donald and the remaining RAF aircraft could see what had happened and dived desperately time and again at the harbour guns in an attempt to force the defenders to keep their heads down, but there were just too many of them. CMB62 tried to return fire to knock out the searchlights which were now zeroed in on them, but first Leading Seaman Sid Holmes and then Brade’s second in command, eighteen-year-old Sub Lieutenant Hector Maclean, were cut down in the withering fire.
Bill Bremner came to his senses to find that all hell had broken loose. He could see from the damage around him that CMB79 was finished so he quickly organised his three crew members to help him lever CMB62 free of the wreckage. Shouting above the gunfire for Brade to give the engines of CMB62 everything they had, Bremner and his crew tried to force her clear of CMB79. Tom Usborne was cut down at Bremner’s side as they struggled with the wreckage, but with a final grind of splintering timber CMB62 slid clear. Rather than race to safety and abandon Bremner and his men, Brade immediately cut his engines to give them a chance to scramble aboard. Determined to leave nothing for the Russians, Bill Bremner’s last act was to ignite the cordite charge which he had brought to deal with the harbour boom and as CMB62 began to pick up speed and head for open water there was a tremendous roar as CMB79’s fuel tanks exploded and took the remains of the boat to the bottom of the harbour. The explosion was so fierce that Gus reported later that it must have been the Gavriil which had been hit and successfully sunk.
Outside the harbour the Gavriil was waiting and she immediately opened up with a hail of gunfire of her own. Brade still had two torpedoes left and was determined not to take them back, so he shouted to Bremner that he was going to sink the Soviet destroyer. But fire was still pouring into CMB62 from both the harbour defences and the Gavriil and moments later Brade fell dead at the wheel as bullets pierced the canopy of the little cockpit. Bremner, who had already been hit several times, immediately hauled himself forward and took the helm from Brade’s dying hands. He straightened CMB62’s course and headed straight for the Gavriil once more. As soon as he had gained enough speed he launched both torpedoes. The Gavriil was only two hundred yards away, the torpedoes ran true, but to Bremner’s anger and frustration they passed underneath the Gavriil and headed out into the open sea beyond.
Now the Gavriil opened fire once more and her shooting was as deadly as it had been when Napier had attacked. One of the first salvoes bracketed CMB62 and a shell splinter pierced her engine compartment, bringing the boat to a complete stop. Fire rained in on the boat from all sides as the current drifted her ever closer to the Gavriil which was now at almost point-blank range. Bullets pierced the hull time and again, killing CMB62’s Chief Motor Mechanic, 21-year-old Francis Thatcher. Still Bremner refused to surrender, calling for his own mechanic, Henry Dunkley, to get below and see what he could do for the engines. Bremner manned one of the remaining machine guns as Able Seaman William Smith fell dead or dying next to him. Bremner himself was hit several more times but kept firing as they drifted closer to the Bolshevik warship, determined to buy Dunkley time to get the engines going. But then it was all over. The Gavriil’s guns unleashed a final salvo, scoring a direct hit on what was left of CMB62 and sinking her. As the Russian guns fell silent all that remained was a large pool of burning fuel on the surface.
As far as Gus could see there was nothing left to do but head for home. He put CMB7 about and with a final burst of machine-gun fire into the crowded boats of the military harbour he left the flames and smoke behind.
But getting back to Biorko was not going to be so easy. There was still the line of forts to be crossed and this time their gun crews were waiting for the CMBs. The first boats to run this gauntlet were Dobson and Steele in CMBs 31 and 88. The forts opened fire at considerable range, but were very accurate. The searchlights were creeping gradually nearer and both captains wondered how to get through the forts at point-blank range. Steele and Dobson knew that they would have to chance it together. One of them was almost certain to be hit, but at least one of them stood a chance of getting home.
Several hundred feet above them in the darkness Captain Randall, one of Major Donald’s pilots, was flying the only operational Sopwith Camel. Shortly after take-off his engine began to give trouble. But rather than ‘wash-out’ Randall had bravely refused to turn back and had carried on, knowing that every aircraft over Kronstadt would buy another few valuable minutes for Dobson’s team. So he had slowly pushed on, falling way behind the other planes. He had travelled most of the way to Kronstadt when the engine that he had been carefully nursing finally cut out and died. This was frustrating, but Randall was not unduly worried. As had been demonstrated during Gus Agar’s trip to see the wreck of the Oleg, engine problems were not uncommon and Randall simply turned the Camel around and put her into a long slow glide back towards Koivisto. He was about halfway back when he realised that he would not make it – he simply did not have enough height. The dark waters of the Gulf of Finland drew closer and closer until, when he was just a few feet above the waves, the plane’s engine suddenly kicked back into life. A lesser man might have run straight for home but Randall was an experienced pilot and, as he blipped the engine, he felt sure that it would keep running this time. He immediately set course for Kronstadt once more.
However, as he was passing over the line of sea forts the activity of the searchlights attracted his attention. Scanning the water, he could just make out the wakes of what had to be the returning CMBs. He quickly assessed the situation as he watched Dobson and Steele make for one of the gaps. He decided that the sea forts needed something to take their attention off the retreating boats. He shoved the joystick forward and put his Camel into a steep dive.
Dobson and Steele had no idea that someone was coming to their rescue. They were under heavy fire as they raced towards the sea forts when the searchlights which had been hunting for them suddenly switched their attention to the sky and a twin trail of tracer fire marked where a lone aircraft repeatedly dived, zoomed up and dived again. Its machine-gun fire shattered one searchlight and sent the forts’ gun crews scattering for cover. Even though they did not know who the pilot was, both boats gratefully shot through the unguarded gap, Dobson using the smoke apparatus fitted to the exhausts of his boat to create cover for Steele. Once they were through he hung back to see how many of the other CMBs would make it, while Steele turned north for Biorko Sound and raced away in the hope that he could still save Mossy Reed’s life.
Sadly, Captain Randall would not be able to help any of the stragglers: not long after Dobson and Steele reached safety, the engine of his Camel cut out for the final time. Reluctantly, he turned north and was just able to make the coast of Finland where he landed on the beach about fifteen minutes later.
On the other side of the forts Lieutenant Edward Bodley was furious, due to the fact that he had travelled all the way to Kronstadt only to have his firing gear damaged at the last moment. By pure luck he was returning towards the forts when he came within sight of Howard’s crippled CMB86. Yates had managed to get one bank of the starboard engines restarted and they were limping back towards the line of forts at a speed of about seven knots. They had already seen Dobson and Steele streak past on their way home.
Bodley was picked up by a searchlight from one of the forts. He managed to lose this by zigzagging and then turned back to Howard’s struggling boat. He pulled alongside and told Howard to throw him a line so that he could take CMB86 in tow. With the two engines working together they should make a speed of about twenty knots. It was not much but it might be enough. But as Bodley arrived two searchlights locked onto their position. Everyone froze, but for some reason the forts did not open fire. Unable to believe their luck, the two crews worked frantically to secure the towline. Above them Lieutenants Fairbrother and Walne in one of the Sopwith Griffins did their best to help, as Fairbrother later recalled:
‘[We] of course attacked the searchlights of the fort with machine-gun fire, but the ammunition carried in an aeroplane does not last for ever, and though we managed to put the light out several times, we never seemed to get it out for good and when our last rounds were spent we yelled curses down at the Bolsheviks as we saw the light flash out again.’
As that happened Fort Alexander, one of the Kotlin Island strongholds, opened fire with her 11-inch and 8-inch guns. High-explosive shells began to drop all around the little boats. As Howard remarked things were: ‘… pretty gummy as the shooting was rather good.’ Howard’s second in command, Sub Lieutenant Wight, now distinguished himself by virtually single-handedly attaching the towline. Bodley set off, but almost immediately the towline parted. Howard did not want to endanger Bodley any further and waved him ahead. Howard then ploughed steadily on at seven knots, with shells continuing to fall all around them. It took incredible nerve as at any moment the final shot might have come, but eventually CMB86 was out of range and Fort Alexander gave up. Bodley reattached the tow and the two boats headed for Biorko Sound.
Now only CMB7 remained on the wrong side of the forts. Gus was in sight of Bodley and Howard as they passed through the forts. He could see that they were under heavy fire, but he also saw that Fairbrother was keeping the forts occupied. Gus hoped that the Griffin would do the same for him. But then he saw it turn north suddenly and leave – he did not know that the aircraft was out of ammunition. Daylight was coming on quickly and Gus could see that the searchlights of the sea forts were very active: they were hoping to pick off any more stragglers. Gus knew that his chances of getting through were very slim but there was no point in delaying, so he headed for the passage which Veroline indicated. He was still eight hundred metres from one of the northern forts when a searchlight latched onto him. He managed to twist CMB7 out of the path of that one but almost immediately ran into the beam of another. Tracer fire arced out from the fort as the Russians tried to fix his range and for a moment Gus thought he would have to turn away into the darkness for another run. But once again salvation came from Major Donald’s squadron.
Although Randall and Fairbrother had gone, Flight Lieutenant Albert Fletcher, together with his observer Pilot Officer Frank Jenner, had hung back in one of the Short seaplanes in case they could be of help. Fletcher saw CMB7 making for one of the gaps and getting picked up by a searchlight. He immediately dived on the fort from which the searchlight was shining and roared low past it so that Jenner could strafe it with the gun in the rear cockpit. Twice more he dived to cover CMB7’s retreat. The forts were forced to turn their guns and searchlights skyward and, while they were busy trying to shoot down Fletcher, Gus raced through the gap. Gus wrote later that he was in no doubt that Fletcher had saved their lives.
*
By the end of the mission 17 men, almost half of those who had set out from Biorko Sound just a few hours before, were missing, presumed dead. Three of the eight boats – CMBs 79A, 62BD and 24 – had been destroyed. But when Major Donald took off on a reconnaissance mission as soon as it was light he was able to confirm what the survivors had suspected: the attack had exceeded even their most optimistic expectations. They had not sunk the Gavriil as Gus Agar had believed, but the Petropavlovsk, Andrei Pervozvanni and Pamiat Azova were all either sunk or badly damaged.
More good news came from Petrograd a few weeks later. Although eight men had lost their lives on the mission, nine of those missing had survived and were being held prisoner. Among that number was a large British naval officer who refused to be cowed by his captors but instead ordered them around like servants. A diplomat reported that he kept accusing the Russians of being ‘brigands’ and ‘stealing my bloody toothbrush!’ As soon as they heard those words everyone knew that it could only be one man: Bill Bremner. Although wounded an astounding eleven times, including a severe wound in his left thigh, he had been pulled from the water alive. Along with the other eight prisoners he would survive to be repatriated in March 1920. He was awarded the DSO, the medal for gallantry just below the Victoria Cross, for his part in the raid, although when all the facts became known most agreed that he deserved the higher award. However, two Victoria Crosses were awarded for the night’s work: one was to Commander Claude Dobson for commanding the mission, even though he had probably had an easier ride than almost anyone else. The other was to Lieutenant Gordon Steele who had saved CMB88 when ‘Mossy’ Dayrell-Reed was hit.
Sadly, Dayrell-Reed did not survive. All through the journey home he had lapsed in and out of consciousness as Morley tried to keep him alive. Although he could not speak the crew told him of the mission’s great success and they thought that he understood them. He had hung on just long enough to be congratulated by Admiral Cowan when they arrived at the flagship but he died a few minutes later. He was buried on 19 August and his grave remains at the British war cemetery on a hill overlooking Koivisto to this day.
In his report to the Admiralty, Admiral Cowan succinctly summed up the heroism of that night. He knew best of all how vital this naval victory was for the independence of all the Baltic nations and just how slim the prospects for success had been:
‘[Their] … cool, disciplined, dare-devil gallantry … turned what the outside world would have called a forlorn hope into a legitimate and practical operation which met with far greater success than I had ever hoped.’
But for Gus Agar, there was still one more trip to make through the defences of Kronstadt. ST-25 was still not safe.