Voennyi Sbornik

11-21

Authors: Roman V. Lapshin

The defensive battles of the Red Army of 1941 are traditionally divided into many operations. In one of them, the Tikhvin defensive operation, which had already grown in 1941 into the Tikhvin offensive operation, the presence on the river Volkhov and Lake Ilmen armed flotilla was of great importancer. Unfortunately, only encyclopedic articles are devoted to the Volkhov’s rivermen and their participation in the war. Based on scattered information, the combat route of the Ilmen Flotilla that existed during the defensive battles of 1941 was restored. The ship’s composition of the flotilla was established, and the biography of the vessels was traced. It was shown that the tasks of the flotilla were mainly to evacuate people and property, as well as repel attacks by German aircraft. In connection with the retreat of the Soviet army, individual flotilla vessels entered the Ladoga flotilla and other formations.

32-39

Authors: Alexander F. Mitrofanov

The paper considers the history of the creation and operation of gunboats of the «Cánovas del Castillo» class in the Spanish Navy. Ships of this class became an important stage in the Spanish military shipbuilding; they eliminated the flaws inherent in the gunboats of the previous «Recalde» class, having received a generally quite successful type, well suited for service in Spain and military operations in Morocco. Subsequently, this successful class after a small upgrade resulted in gunboats built for Mexico «Guanajuato» class. Gunboats of the «Cánovas del Castillo» class took an active part in the Spanish Civil war of 1936–39, all of which ended up in the Nationalist Navy. One of the gunboats, the «Dato», was sunk by Republican Naval forces. After her rise, gunboat repair was combined in a modernization that turned out to be so successful that the rest of the gunboats also underwent a similar alteration. However, created for the colonial service, gunboats of the «Cánovas del Castillo» class could not fit into the Spanish post-war doctrines and already in the 1950s they were all scrapped.