On the professionalism of the Red Navy officers in the 30s
In my previous article, I described three problems that created a "perfect storm" in the Soviet Navy's training system in the 30s. Specifically:
1. A decline in the quality of education due to a chronic shortage of teachers, given that many of them were "stuck" in the past and were unable or unwilling to keep up with the times: the knowledge they imparted to cadets would have been relevant before the First, but certainly not before the Second World War.
2. A decline in the quality of applicants compared to tsarist times.
3. Explosive growth in numbers fleets and the corresponding increase in the need for commanders.
I would like to talk about the latter in more detail.
About the shortage in 1937-1941.
The authorized strength of commanders and political officers in the USSR Navy increased from 13,500 to 40,662 between January 1, 1937, and February 1, 1941, a period of four years and one month—an almost threefold increase. This despite the fact that in 1937, the fleet was nowhere near its authorized strength. The shortage of commanders at all levels amounted to:
In the surface fleet - 40%;
In the submarine fleet - 24%;
In fortified areas - 40%;
In ports - 30%.
Moreover, in 1937, the number of graduates from existing military schools did not cover the existing needs within a reasonable timeframe (2-3 years), so extraordinary measures had to be resorted to: short-term courses for junior lieutenants and technicians (for 300 people) and for administrative and economic service command personnel (for 60 people). Given this, the 1937 shortage could have been resolved, but where would the nearly 30,000 additional commanders be found in the next four years?
Titanic efforts were required to address the personnel shortage. But the problem could not be resolved in such a short timeframe, which is why, for example, the Red Banner Baltic Fleet (RBF) had a total shortage of 30,6% of its total command personnel (2,421) on January 21, 1941. Meanwhile, the shortage in the surface fleet was 26%, meaning the situation had improved percentage-wise compared to 1937. However, in the submarine fleet, the situation worsened, as the shortage increased from 24% to 31%. There was a shortage of commanders at all levels, but especially miners, navigators, mechanics, and gunners. The RBF headquarters was 86,6% staffed, with 84 instead of 97.
The situation in other fleets was no better. And so, despite the 30,6% rate, the Red Banner Baltic Fleet command was forced to transfer 66 commanders (0,86% of the authorized strength) to other fleets in 1940.
On the one hand, given the threefold increase in the fleet's authorized strength, even this shortfall seems like a victory and an achievement on the brink of possibility. On the other hand, it was a colossal failure. In 1940, half of the Baltic Fleet's submarines lacked navigators, and a third lacked commanders for their mine-torpedo unit.
When speed is harmful
The fleet was being built, but graduates from the Naval School and other higher education institutions were nowhere near providing the necessary flow of commanders. It's important to understand that the Naval School doesn't train senior officers or ship commanders, just as a modern technical university doesn't train chief designers or technologists. Graduates from these institutions were entitled to junior officer ranks, and they had to "grow" further during their service to reach higher ranks.
But the new ships required not only junior but also senior officers, and there was absolutely nowhere to get them. Therefore, the only way to obtain the required number of commanders was through a highly flawed method: the rapid, essentially out-of-turn promotion of military ranks.
This circumstance was particularly noted by the Commander-in-Chief of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, Second Rank Flag Officer L.M. Galler, back in 1935. He noted that the promotion of naval commanders was becoming extremely rapid, citing the situation on the Malyutka-class submarines, where half of the commanders were graduates of the Naval School of the 1931-1933 class. This means that even in 1935, there were ship commanders who had served in the navy for only a couple of years!
The situation didn't improve further. Thus, at a meeting of the Baltic Fleet Military Council in the presence of People's Commissar of the Navy N. G. Kuznetsov on June 4, 1939, officers noted that of the seven patrol ship commanders, only one was in his second year of command. Of the seventeen submarine commanders, only one had been granted independent command. Was it any wonder that the overwhelming majority of the Baltic Fleet's main formation commanders received critical reviews at this meeting? After all, they were just as "precocious" as the ship commanders.
When in June 1940 it was necessary to transfer submarines from the Baltic to the Northern Fleet, they had to replace their commanders - it was simply dangerous to send "regular" ones on such a mission.
By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, only 25% of all submarine and submarine brigade commanders had held their posts for more than 2 years, and among submarine division commanders, only 36%.
Those who lacked sufficient education were also forced to be promoted. If we look at the naval command staff, ranging from junior lieutenant to captain lieutenant, we see that such officers were required to have at least a secondary education. However, as of early 1941, the following officers held these ranks:
With higher education - 21%;
With secondary education - 40,5%;
With incomplete secondary education - 24%;
With primary education - 14,5%.
Thus, it can be concluded that 38,5% of our commanders from junior lieutenant to captain-lieutenant did not have the education corresponding to their position.
The composition of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet headquarters at the beginning of 1941 is very revealing. Clearly, this headquarters occupied a high position in the naval hierarchy. However, while the authorized strength was 97, only 84 were available, but among those available were officers who had completed:
Naval or Military Transport Academies - 11%;
Higher specialized courses of the Navy - 46%;
Other military schools or schools of the Red Army (in the naval direction) - 20%;
Commander courses - 7%;
Without education - 15%.
That is, even in the KBF headquarters, out of 84 people, 6 were “students” and 13 people had no education at all!
Among the senior naval commanders, who a priori were expected to have a higher education, 29% had only a secondary education.
But the problem with the senior command staff was not so much a question of education as a lack of continuity. The country had only recently survived the First World War, which ended for us with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed on March 3, 1918. But by the start of the Great Patriotic War, only four officers and admirals had command experience at the officer rank during the First World War. In general, the problem of insufficient training and inexperience among the command staff was fully evident among the senior naval officers. It's enough to look at the leadership of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet.
At the beginning of the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940, the Baltic Fleet was commanded by the 2nd rank flagship V.F. Tributs.
During the Civil War, he served as a medical assistant on ships of the Volga-Caspian Military Flotilla, then from 1922 to 1926 he studied at the M.V. Frunze Naval School. He then served for three years on the battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna, the first year as commander. artillery tower, the next two—as the watch officer. The problem, however, was that in the three years from 1927 to 1928, the Parizhskaya Kommuna logged a whopping 821 sailing hours, equivalent to 34,2 days at sea. This means its operational stress coefficient, even if calculated by sailing hours (which is generally incorrect), was 0,031. I don't think the future admiral had the opportunity to learn much with such a long history at sea.
V.F. Tributs then trained at the Red Banner Baltic Fleet Naval Academy from 1929 to 1932, immediately following which he served for two years as first mate on the Marat. Following this, V.F. Tributs gained experience in independent ship command: for two years, from December 1934 to January 1937, he commanded the destroyer Yakov Sverdlov. V.F. Tributs was then sent to serve further at the Red Banner Baltic Fleet headquarters, where, in just over two years, he held the position of head of the combat training department, then acted as chief of staff, and then became chief of staff of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet. In April 1939, he was appointed to command the fleet.
That is, the fleet commander, under whose leadership the Red Banner Baltic Fleet entered the war with the Finns, had previously commanded a small warship with a crew (after modernization) of 168 people for only two years, and had never commanded a naval formation at all!
Things were slightly better with the Chief of Staff of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, Yu. A. Panteleyev. Before becoming Chief of Staff, he had commanded a submarine brigade and then served as Deputy Chairman of the Standing Commission for Admissions to the People's Commissariat of the Navy.
The problem, however, was that Yu. A. Panteleyev's entire naval service, including command of a submarine brigade, was spent in the Black Sea, and he was appointed commander of the Baltic Fleet headquarters only on October 26, 1939, a month before the Finnish War. And, obviously, in such a short period of time, Yu. A. Panteleyev was unable to grasp the nuances and peculiarities of the new Baltic.
About junior commanders
The problem of officer shortages and inadequate training could have been somewhat offset by the presence of experienced and well-versed junior officers—that is, petty officers and squad leaders (meaning squad leaders, a rank abolished in 1943)—who were familiar with the materiel. But the Soviet Navy didn't have them either!
The Russian Imperial Navy placed a great deal of emphasis on training junior command personnel, resulting in some excellent conductors and non-commissioned officers. But even in Tsarist Russia, things weren't always smooth sailing, as one might recall. stories about the improper operation of water-tube boilers. However, after the revolution, the overwhelming majority of conductors and non-commissioned officers left the navy, and the USSR was forced to rebuild its junior command staff practically from scratch.
And things didn't work out. The fact that junior command personnel were required to possess a certain amount of technical knowledge was well understood in the Soviet Union. That a petty officer should be not just a technical specialist but also a commander was, apparently, less so. As a result, the average junior commanding officer in the 30s was a fairly good technical specialist, but a lousy line commander. In 1940, People's Commissar of the Navy N.G. Kuznetsov spoke at a meeting of fleet commanders:
Much has been said and written about the role of the junior commander and his or her importance in our armed forces. Everyone recognizes the exceptional role of such a figure in combat training and personnel management, yet very little is being done in this regard. Furthermore, almost nothing has been done to prepare the junior commander, to ensure that the navy has a truly junior commander...
Moreover, the situation with the training of junior commanders largely mirrored that of the Higher Specialized Courses: rather than the best sailors, the uneducated and undisciplined were sent for training, with the goal of eliminating them. Commanders preferred to retain disciplined and competent specialists, and given the chronic personnel shortage, it's hard to blame them for this.
In general, the situation with junior commanders was the same as with officers: their training did not meet the fleet's requirements, and their numbers were completely insufficient. As of October 1, 01.10.1940, the Baltic Fleet was short 719 petty officers and 217 squad leaders.
On the typical career of a Soviet Navy commander in the 30s
All of the above paints a rather bleak picture. There were many applicants to the Naval Schools, but the standard of applicants was so low that even those who failed the entrance exams had to be admitted. There was a shortage of teachers at the Naval Schools, and of those that did exist, many were stuck at the level of the First World War, if not the Russo-Japanese War. The educational institutions' facilities left much to be desired, and there were enormous problems with the training ships, resulting in cadets receiving theoretical training with little practical support. Cadets spent very little time at sea: "Our cadets sail the least; even the Finns sail three times more than our commanders" (Commander of the Baltic Fleet, Flag Officer 1st Rank I.S. Isakov, 1937).
But there was still a silver lining: despite all of the above, the technical training at the Naval Academy was considered quite good. Unfortunately, the theoretical training was not backed up by practical experience. As a result, a Naval Academy graduate, in the words of I.S. Isakov, "is a propagandist, a theoretician, anything but a sailor; he's afraid of the weather, gets seasick, and he's prone to accidents that cause the ship to run aground in calm waters, in broad daylight."
So it turns out that a young officer joins the navy, well-versed in technical matters but poorly trained in tactics and seamanship. If such an officer were assigned to a well-coordinated and professional ship crew intensively engaged in combat training, his lack of this knowledge wouldn't be a major problem: he would have been trained and taught everything on the spot.
Instead, the young officer finds himself on a ship with an officer shortage. His commanders haven't been in their positions long and are not entirely competent (often downright incompetent), so they have little to teach him. The recent Naval Academy graduate has to work hard to compensate for the officer shortage, despite the fact that his own command and those under his command are also short of junior commanders. Then, at some point, he discovers to his horror that the few petty officers or squad leaders he does have aren't fully up to the job. The young officer turns to his senior comrades, but they only shrug their shoulders: the navy is chronically short of junior commanders, and those who are eventually nipped in the bud, despite having the necessary training, are often lazy and prone to disciplinary violations.
As a result, in order to somehow organize the service, a young officer has to take on not only the duties of officers absent from the ship, but also some of the duties of his junior commanders, who simply do not know how and are not able to perform them.
But let's say we come across a smart, proactive young officer who's passionate about his cause. He works hard, but still manages to get his department into a more or less acceptable shape. And, of course, when he receives orders to send sailors to junior commanders' courses, he "sheds the ballast," sending the most negligent ones there. Because what's most important to him isn't the uncertain future of the Soviet Navy, but rather bringing his own department into decent shape. For which, by the way, his superiors will hold him accountable. No, if the sailors he sent had returned to his ship upon completion of their training, things would be quite different. But that's not the case: on the contrary, the officer knows that he'll likely never see the sailors he sent to the courses again.
But then our enterprising and talented officer is noticed by his superiors and promoted to a higher position. But what does he need—a higher position? He hasn't yet studied the ship, and in his now former command, he only knows the bare essentials, the very basics without which the ship won't sail at all. But our officer is already the ship's senior assistant. The entire crew now reports to him, and he is responsible for everything—safety, service organization, and combat training. Even though he himself has only the vaguest understanding of many of the issues for which he is now responsible.
But, beyond his own inadequacy for the job, he faces the same problems: a shortage of officers and junior commanders, many of whom are new and haven't yet fully mastered the equipment and duties entrusted to them. Some don't even want to learn anything because they're lazy and undisciplined, but there's no one to replace them anyway.
In general, the problems are the same, only the scale has grown significantly. While an officer commanded his own warship, he could compensate for his subordinates' incompetence through direct intervention, performing tasks for them, teaching them by example, and then holding them accountable for what he taught and demonstrated personally. But in ship management, such a trick won't work; there's not enough time to personally understand all the nuances of each warship's operations and then train his subordinates. Authority must be delegated to those who, like the officer himself, are new, have only a limited understanding of their department, and rely on the hope that they'll figure it out somehow.
And so the newly minted first mate flounders for a year and a half, maybe two. He has no time for tactical intricacies, because as soon as he manages to "get a handle" on some combat unit, the officer commanding it soon gets promoted to another ship, and he's assigned a young and green one, and the whole thing starts all over again...
But somehow our first mate manages to steer the ship here—for better or worse, the ship is ready for a voyage and battle. At least in terms of reaching the naval range without breaking down or ramming anyone along the way. And considering the crew the first mate started with and the constant turnover, even this is an achievement. But it turns out that the crew has barely mastered the most basic, elementary tasks, and our first mate is already being appointed commander of the ship.
And if only the ship where he served as first mate was gone, he's gone! They're giving him the latest destroyer or submarine.
And it's good if he's in the same fleet where he served, but that's far from always the case. The ship's design is unfamiliar to him because it's brand new and has the same components, and our officer wasn't taught this at the Naval Naval School. And the ship is new, of course, but the problems... The problems are old. Young officers, some of whom have just graduated from the Naval Naval School or have not yet learned the ropes of the navy, a shortage of command personnel at all levels, incomplete service qualifications among some of these same personnel, high turnover, and so on and so forth.
And the commander is once again forced to devote 24/7 time to personally learning the ship, somehow assembling and training the crew to perform simple, fundamental tasks. The cadets' dreams of distant seas remain just that, because the ship doesn't sail beyond the training ground—there's no navigator, and they're not promising to hire one until next year, and even that's uncertain.
And so it turns out that our commander, as a cadet, made his last and only deployment beyond the Baltic, and of all his naval skills, the only one he's developed is the ability to "put out fires"—keeping the ship ready to handle the simplest tactical tasks amidst officer shortages and constant turnover. But he's already being promoted to brigade commander...
Given the explosive growth of our navy in the 30s, we were forced to create hierarchical chains in which officers at every (!) level of command weren't fully qualified for their positions. There was, of course, an alternative: we could have "capsulated" the naval forces and gradually "grew" them, then moved on to a slow and gradual expansion. But how long would that have taken?
For example, Vl. Semenov, a renowned Russian naval officer who served in the Russo-Japanese War, first in the 1st and then in the 2nd Pacific Squadrons, graduated as a midshipman in September 1887. He participated in numerous long-distance campaigns and distinguished himself during the capture of the Taku forts. But he only received the rank of senior assistant commander on January 1, 1904, after 16 years of service!
Of course, by this point, his experience as a sailor was decidedly incomparable and immeasurably superior to any first mate of the Red Navy. But the USSR didn't have many decades to gradually and "properly" develop its navy. The threats to the young Soviet state were completely real, and a strong navy, at least numerically, was an important factor in high-level politics.
Let's return to the training of Soviet Navy officers. All of the above are objective challenges of a growing fleet, but unfortunately, there were also subjective ones, which we created ourselves. People's Commissar of the Navy N. G. Kuznetsov specifically noted that, when promoting commanders, priority was unfortunately given not to their personal qualities, professionalism, and leadership abilities, but to their background, and, of course, the absence of damaging connections.
N. G. Kuznetsov, having become People's Commissar of the Navy in April 1939, tried to combat this practice as much as he could and as far as he could. But, of course, firstly, not everything was within his control, and secondly, his struggle began too late. On the other hand, oddly enough, the practice of promoting commanders "by origin" had one subtle and rather vague, but nonetheless advantage.
Talented officers with "nuances" in their biographies whose promotions were delayed were given the opportunity to better acclimate to their current positions and acquire a higher level of professionalism upon moving up. That is, of course, if such a move ever took place.
Let us now look at the exercises of the Baltic Fleet in the 30s.
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