The raid on Kronstadt was an attack by Royal Navy coastal motor boats (CMBs) and Royal Air Force aircraft on the Bolshevik Baltic Fleet at its home base on 18 August 1919. After the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, Allied naval units operated in the Baltic Sea to support the independence of Estonia and Latvia, which were threatened by Bolshevik movements. The raid followed a similar one carried out by a single motor torpedo boat outside the harbour on 17 June 1919, in which Lieutenant Augustus Agar's CMB-4 sank the Bolshevik cruiser Oleg.
Two CMBs, a two-torpedo version (foreground) and single-torpedo version (rear)
An aircraft returning to Vindictive, ditched in the sea
Plans of a 55ft CMB
Wreckage of the Pamiat Azova
Coastal Motor Boat was a small high-speed British torpedo boat used by the Royal Navy in the First World War and up to end of the Second World War.
HM Coastal Motor Boat 4 (1916) on display at the Imperial War Museum Duxford. View from the stern showing the torpedo launching ramp.
CMB 103 at Chatham