Huns with Web-Feet: Operation Albion, 1917

In: War in history, Band 12, Heft 4, S. 396-417

Abstract

In October 1917 the German army and navy were able to mount a successful joint operation to seize the Baltic islands in the Gulf of Riga. Although undertaken by each service for motives of its own, and against disintegrating Russian resistance, Operation Albion was the kind of improvised operation at which the German army in particular excelled. The operation featured an interesting employment of aircraft, and marked about the only time in the First World War where the German army and navy were able to co-operate successfully. The landings secured the islands of Oesel, Moon and Dagö, thus giving the Germans the ability to use the port facilities at Riga. After the war, however, the German military establishment quickly forgot about this operation, and paid little if any attention to it in both its professional military publications and in the Kriegsakademie. Thus Albion was an unlearned lesson for the Germans in the interwar period.