Angus Konstam, Warships in the Baltic Campaign 1918-20: The Royal Navy takes on the Bolsheviks by Charles Ross Patterson II

Konstam's 83 rd contribution to the Osprey catalog in which Konstam seeks to offer a concise examination of the Royal Navy's participation in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War's Baltic theater.This is done in a manner similar to the Osprey Campaign series, examining the background of the conflict, a summation of the campaign itself, and an overview of the British and Soviet warships involved.Period paintings and photographs are used to depict the various commanders and warships, backed up with modern ship profile and digital image renderings.The work does not have a traditional analytic conclusion but offers a further reading style bibliography and a quick reference index at the end.The first half of the work is largely a chronological study, following the background of the collapse of the Eastern Front, the Soviet push into the ancient Estonian and Latvian states, and the resultant naval aide from the Royal Navy.It then flows into a discussion of the campaign itself, with a discussion of both major naval actions and land actions which directly or indirectly affected the actions of the Royal Navy.Examples of the latter include the actions of still operational German military units fighting in the Baltic region and attempts to relieve targets besieged by Soviet ground forces via bombardment.Operation RK, a daring strike on the Soviet naval base at Kronstadt by British Coastal Motor Boats, is given suitably detailed coverage, with the resultant hesitancy of the Soviets from carrying out sorties from the base reminiscent of the German High Seas Fleet after Jutland just a few years before.This timeline approach then shifts to examinations of the Soviet and British fleets present in the Baltic.While this does result in the retreading of some earlier information from the background and campaign sections due to the discussion of vessels' service history, it does provide more detail into the conditions of the warships involved, the support facilities, and, in the case of the Soviets, the perceptions of their British opponents on the eve of hostilities.Profiles are provided for ten of the warships involved, offering digital reconstructions of their wartime appearances in a way not achievable