Talk:Battle of Moon Sound

There appear to be a number of problems with the article but it is dificult to edit it as there are few mentions of the action in generalist sources. I'm not an expert in naval warfare or the Eastern Front in the First World War and I don't have much in the way of specialist sources on those subjects. I found a mention in the Times in the regular 100 years ago feature and have added something from this. I have access to 3 histories of the war. Two of them are rather old (one of these very old) and are of course by British historians who perhaps have less of an interest in the Eastern Front than the fronts in which Britain took more of an active part and they may have had difficulty in examining Russian (Soviet) material. None of them mention the Battle of Moon Sound or Operation Albion. Liddell Hart writing in 1930 and revising in 1934 deals very briefly with the capture of Riga and in the next sentence moves onto the "October Revolution." AJP Taylor in what is a very brief and witty popular history entitled "The First World War: an illustrated history" first published in 1963 calls the capture of Riga on 1st September 1917 "the last engagement between the Germans and the old Russian army." he then deals with Kornilov's attempted coup and the October revolution. John Keegan in 1998 likewise does not mention Moon Sound or Albion but does mention at Page 234 (in my edition) that the Russians were wary generally of sending their Dreadnoughts far from port because of German mines which had badly damaged their state-of-the-art-cruiser Rurik in 1916 and Russian mines were a major feature of the Battle of Moon Sound.^{[1] [2][3]} The questions that need to be answered to improve this article are I think 1) The main Russian fleet was in or near Petrograd and Finland. Dreadnoughts and other modern ships could have been sent to Estonia which was not all that far away. Were they not sent because of the fear of mines,because the Kerensky Government had no control over the navy,because the admirals had no control of the navy,for lack of reconnaisance or what other reasons? 2)The article mentions three submarines were involved on the Allied side (all British) and mentions them by number. It also says one was lost but the wikipedia pages for those boats make it clear they all survived until at least 1918- I think 2 survived the war. Was there a Russian submarine or submarines also present, one of which was sunk? 3) The German victory enabled the completion of the German invasion of the archipelago and this could be added to the article. It also allowed a landing on the Estonian mainland but nothing appears to have much happened afterwards. Why? The Russians sued for peace after the October Revolution but that did not happen until November. Why did the German army not advance towards Petrograd or Talinn? Did they expect the revolution or was it the advance of winter or pre-ooccupation with Passchendaele which prevented them? Spinney Hill (talk) 16:41, 22 October 2017 (UTC) Since posting the above I have read that there were actually German attacks on the mainland in the region of Virtsu (Verder) and that Russian forces repulsed these attacks. Maybe the Russian army was not quite so beaten and demoralised as we have been led to believe. The source for this the website: First World war.com in the day by day section. The last page I read was for 29 October 1917,but there have been other mentions of these attacks. Furthermore the Germans had yet another pre-occupation as they re-inforced the Austro Hungarians in the Battle of Caporetto (in Slovenia and Italy) Spinney Hill (talk) 00:16, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Re: 3): You do know that the Armistice between Russia and the Central Powers was signed immediately after the Battle of Moon Sound? --Jaan Pärn (talk) 14:02, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

No it wasn't. The battle was fought on the 17 and 18 October 1917 according to the calendar that most of the world apart from Russia used. The Armistice was agreed by the Bolshevik Government which didn't come to power until the revolution of 7 November according to that calendar. (This was 25 October according to the old calendar that the Russians used at the time.) There was thus nearly three weeks between the Battle of Moon Sound and the Bolshevik Revolution. I notice there is much confusion about this at the moment and many websites do not acknowledge the change in calender which did not take place in Russia I think until 1918,which had taken place in Britain in the 18th century and before that in most of Western Europe. This confusion is of course re-inforced by the customary use of the phrase "October Revolution" Spinney Hill (talk) 09:27, 24 October 2017 (UTC)