Evacuation of Tallinn

27–29 August 1941, Gulf of Finland, from Tallinn to Kronstadt

Soviet disaster; most warships reached Kronstadt, but more than 60 ships and some 15,000 people were lost

With the German army closing on Tallinn, the main base of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, Vice-Admiral Vladimir Tributs was ordered to bring the fleet and the garrison back to Kronstadt, 170 miles up the Gulf of Finland. About 225 ships and vessels sailed in convoys on 28 August, with Tributs in the cruiser Kirov. Off Cape Juminda they had to cross a minefield laid by the Germans and Finns, without enough minesweepers, while German bombers attacked from the air and Finnish torpedo boats by night. Five destroyers, Skoryy, Yakov Sverdlov, Kalinin, Volodarsky and Artem, were sunk by mines, along with transports packed with soldiers and civilians. By most counts 19 warships, 18 transports and 25 auxiliaries were lost, and some 15,000 people died. The warships that got through, Kirov among them, became the floating batteries that helped Leningrad survive its siege.