Start of the German attack on the Gulf of Riga

Before dawn on 8 August 1915 (26 July by the Julian calendar) German minesweepers entered the Irbe Strait, between the coast of Courland and the island of Ösel. They began clearing a path through the Russian minefields into the Gulf of Riga. It was the first of two attempts that went down in history as the Battle of the Gulf of Riga.

A fleet from the North Sea

For the operation the Germans moved a large part of the High Seas Fleet to the Baltic. Vice-Admiral Ehrhard Schmidt was to force his way into the gulf with the IV Squadron of older battleships, cruisers, torpedo boats, minesweepers and the minelayer Deutschland. On the open-sea side he was covered by Vice-Admiral Franz von Hipper with dreadnoughts and battlecruisers, ready to fight should the Russian fleet come out of the Gulf of Finland. The plan allowed two days: to destroy the Russian ships in the gulf, lay mines in the Moon Sound, the strait linking the gulf with the Gulf of Finland, block the port of Pernau with sunken ships, and carry out a demonstrative bombardment of the fortifications at the mouth of the Dvina. For several weeks the German army had stood on the shore of the gulf, and Russian ships had been shelling its flank. In July the Germans had lost the action off Gotland and now wanted to demonstrate their superiority in the Baltic.

Six hours for one barrage

The minesweepers set off at about 4 a.m. Behind them sailed the cruiser Bremen and the battleships Braunschweig and Elsass. Within an hour the minesweeper T 52 blew up, fortunately without casualties. Shortly afterwards the cruiser Thetis struck a mine missed by the minesweepers, and at seven o’clock the torpedo boat S 144. Both had to be towed to Libau. The Russians, who had detected the Germans early from the air, threw gunboats, destroyers and seaplanes into the fight. Their attacks were beaten off by the fire of the German battleships. Elsass hit the gunboat Grozyashchiy, and one of the Russian seaplanes had to come down next to a German torpedo boat and its crew were taken prisoner. At about 10.30 a.m. the old Russian battleship Slava arrived, but under the fire of two German battleships at a range of about 16 kilometres she quickly withdrew.

Despite good weather and a calm sea, the passage through the first barrage was not ready until after 11 a.m. The sweeping had taken six hours, twice as long as planned. Two miles further on the minesweepers ran into another barrage the Germans had not known about. After 1 p.m. the minesweeper T 58 sank on it.

The attack broken off

Vice-Admiral Schmidt calculated that he would not manage to enter the gulf and mine the Moon Sound before dark, and that there would not be enough coal to last until the next day. He was also short of torpedo boats for protection against submarines. At about 1.45 p.m. he broke off the operation, to the surprise of the minesweeper crews, who believed the worst was behind them. In the evening he reported by wireless that the mine defences were “very strong” and that a new attempt made sense only with a much larger number of minesweepers.

In Kiel and Berlin the news was received with surprise. The commander of the forces in the Baltic, Prince Henry of Prussia, believed that the operation had to be completed, while Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and part of the Admiralty considered it too risky, especially as the army did not intend to attack Riga for the time being. The dispute was settled by the Kaiser, who agreed to a second attempt. The Russians used the week’s pause to lay several hundred new mines in the strait.