The Battle of Lake Baikal
Introduction
Czechoslovakia has a 100%-win rate for naval battles. Which is odd considering that they are in a landlocked country. Then how'd they do it? Well, it was the battle of Lake Baikal which is in Russia. How did a landlocked country win a naval battle in Siberia? Before we discuss the battle itself, we should probably address why a bunch of Czech boys were doing 6000 miles away from Czechoslovakia in the first place.
Figure 1.
Map of Europe before and during WWI
Backstory
Once upon a time, Europe was having this war that is often referred to as “The Great War” or WWI. There were two groups at war with each other. However, for this story the only two we care about are Austria-Hungary and Russia. There were quite a few Czechs and Slovaks from a certain area of Austria-Hungary who thought it should be called Czechoslovakia instead and they went and signed up for the Russian army to make that happen. These Czechs and Slovaks who signed up were put into their own division which came to be known as the Czechoslovak legion. They were intent on creating this nation but unfortunately this plan hit a slight bump when there was a teeny tiny itsy-bitsy little problem when the complete overthrow of the Russian government occurred in October of 1917.
After the Bolsheviks rose up against the Tsar. The Czechs weren't exactly keen on fighting for a bunch of communists. The Bolsheviks for their part weren’t exactly too keen on having a large foreign army in their territory. The Czechs wanted out and the Russians wanted them out. It should have been terribly easy but the central powers still own Czechoslovakia and that was a bit of a problem. The Czechs still had over 70000 men with them, but the central powers had more troops. Obviously, they weren't going to be able to do this one by themselves. Fortunately, France said they could host them. But unfortunately, as you may have noticed from the Figure 1 map, the central powers are in the center of Europe. Therefore, were between Russia and France. More fortunately the United States offered to ship them over to France. But this meant they were going to have to go the long way around.
Figure 2.
Map of Trans-Siberian Railway. (Sourced from Wikipedia Commons)
First, they were going to have to get themselves to Vladivostok. Thus, began their odyssey across the entire Soviet Union. Unfortunately, traveling is not like straight lines on a map. This means that they were going to have to fight the entire way there. As a result, they had to fight past the Germans in Ukraine, fought past the Reds in Russia, they hijacked the trans-Siberian railway, they stole the Russian gold reserves (okay maybe the Bolsheviks were right to be angry with them), and then the Czech desperados fought their way across Siberia running from the Reds like a bunch of outlaws fleeing the law in the Wild West. Anyways, that's the backstory. Now finally for the battle of Lake Baikal.
Figure 3.
WW1-era Howitzer. It is a short cannon for firing shells on high trajectories at low velocities.
The Battle
The Trans-Siberian railway happens to run by Lake Baikal. Also, fun fact: it is the deepest lake in the world. Since the Czechs and Slovaks were spread out across Siberia at this point, they were afraid that after they passed by the Russians might sail across the lake and land troops behind them and cut off their comrades. This simply would not do. For that reason, they captured the port of Listvyanka and two steamships, the Sibirjak and the Fedosia, which they installed howitzers on. Then on August 15, 1918 they set sail to destroy the other major harbor at Mysovsk. They encountered one other ship, the SS Baikal. It was sunk almost immediately because they thought the Czech ships were friendly and let them get in close after which it turned out they weren't friendly. The Czechs then shelled the harbor at Mysovsk for a few minutes before an armored train arrived to stop them. With the harbor destroyed and the only other warship on the lake sunk, they wisely decided that they'd rather not join them and they left. So there you go, the only naval victory of Czechoslovakia.
Written by Erick Johnson