[Alt-WWII] 26 July 1940- The Galați Raid

In the wake of their failed attempt at crossing the Prut, the Soviet 26th Army desperately needed a new way to quickly get their forces across the river and cut off the retreating Romanians. Eventually, they came up with a very ambitious plan to amphibiously land troops near Galați, seize the port, ferry tanks in from the Soviet-controlled port of Ismail up the Danube, then push west to the Carpathians to encircle the Romanian 3rd Army. This would be accompanied by attacks from the 8th Rifle Corps from their already established bridgehead in order to distract the Romanian troops opposing them.

 

Soviet intelligence had uncovered a complete lack of Army personnel in Galați, and dismissed the large numbers of naval personnel under the assumption that most were either dockworkers or shipbuilders. This assumption did not, however, account for the 1,500-strong 2nd Naval Infantry Regiment.

 

Conceptualized in 1937, the Naval Infantry was part of a series of reforms in the Royal Romanian Navy, and was formed to perform the standard marine roles, including amphibious landings. However, much like the rest of these reforms, the creation of the Naval Infantry was considered a mixed success. The decision to send naval personnel to be trained by Army officers created tension between the two branches over the allocation of resources. For instance, while the Naval Infatry’s official uniform was the Army’s standard-issue khaki jacket and pants over the Navy’s sailor-striped shirt, shortages of uniforms meant that most Naval Infantrymen wore regular sailor uniforms. In addition, the amount of time spent training the men in standard infantry tactics sharply decreased in 1939, as Army training camps were fully dedicated to getting the infantry back into shape. Furthermore, the lack of interest in the design and production of landing craft meant that the Naval Infantry’s training in amphibious landings was entirely theoretical. Nonetheless, the 1st Naval Infantry Regiment would be organized in 1938, followed by the 2nd in 1940. In peacetime, the Naval Infantry Regiments typically served as security detail at the naval bases at Constanța and Galați. They were slightly smaller than a standard infantry regiment, and had fewer heavy infantry weapons such as Hotchkiss machine guns or mortars. As they would, theoretically, be operating in scenarios where they could receive fire support from the Navy, their artillery component was also light, consisting of a “mixed” battery of 3 75mm regimental guns and 2 45mm anti-tank guns. At Galați, they were also supported by the Galați Coastal Battery of 3 150mm guns and 2 100mm guns, just east of the port.

 

At 0400 on 25 July, 5 landing craft (on loan from the Red Navy) carrying 110 men from the 7th Rifle Division set off from Ismail and touched down east of Galați just before dawn. While Romanian sentries at the battery had heard the motors of the landing craft, they failed to raise the alarm before the Soviet troops had seized the battery. By 0600, the Soviets had taken the port, but skirmishes with the sentries there had attracted attention from other Romanian units. The Naval Infantry’s 4th Company was the first to fully mobilize, at 0715, and headed towards the port, but by then the Soviet landing craft had brought in a second wave of troops, doubling the size of the landing party. The regiment as a whole would arrive by 0830, and was able to halt the raiding party’s advance.

 

As the Romanians pushed through the city streets, they found that their lightly equipped nature was becoming something of a burden. Despite outnumbering the Soviets 5 to 1, the Soviets had brought enough light machine guns and mortars to outgun the defenders 2 to 1. This came to a head as the Romanians forced the last Soviets from the city proper but couldn’t advance on the port itself without taking fire from the Soviet-occupied Coastal Battery. The 1st and 3rd Companies organized a bayonet charge on the battery, which, despite the slow rate of fire and reloading of the larger guns and the Soviets’ unfamiliarity with the guns, cost them half of their effective fighting strength.

 

Once the Coastal Battery was back in Romanian hands, the tide of the battle quickly turned in their favor. At 1100, just half an hour after retaking the guns, the third wave of Soviet transports, including two barges carrying tanks of the 34th Tank Division, made their way to the port. While the slower moving barges were easy targets for the battery, the faster landing craft were able to survive the gauntlet all the way to the docks. However, by then, the Naval Infantry had set up their mixed battery within range of the port, and they sank 2 of the landing craft and damaged the other three as their passengers tried to disembark. Demoralized by the sight of their reinforcements being ripped apart, the surviving 154 Soviet troops surrendered.

 

At first, officials within the Romanian Royal Navy were extremely critical of the 2nd Naval Infantry Regiment’s response to the raid. From their perspective, the general state of unawareness that allowed the Soviets to advance as far as they did and the fact that the Romanians had suffered 357 killed and 441 wounded compared to the Soviet’s 168 killed and 76 wounded (and 6 tanks sank) was considered disgraceful for what was supposed to be the Navy’s finest. However, after interrogating several captured Soviet officers and discovering the extent of the Soviet’s intentions for the port, their tune quickly changed. Instead, their losses were spun as a noble sacrifice to secure a vital sector of the front. Regardless of the outlook, the battle highlighted many weaknesses of the Naval Infantry’s current state. It was clear that while being lightly equipped made transportation easier, it drastically reduced the regiment’s effectiveness as a fighting force. But as the war waged on elsewhere, the Army’s needs would continue to take priority over the Navy’s, meaning that the best the Naval Infantry could do was rearming themselves with DP-27s and mortars captured during the raid. Also captured during the raid were the 3 surviving landing craft, which were quickly repaired and pressed into Romanian service. Most importantly, the Royal War Council was able to study the Soviet plans to give them further insight of how to conduct such an operation in the future.

 

-Side Note-

Are people still using flickr? I've been seeing a lot of people promoting their instas, and I really have no interest in moving :/

Done