Operation Tanne Ost - Battle

Battle

On September 14, 1944, a first wave of 1400 men from both the Wehrmacht and the Kriegsmarine were loaded on ships in Tallinn. Before the assault the German commander tried to negotiate with the Finnish commander on Suursaari, as he had been led to believe from intelligence reports that the Finns might leave without resistance. At midnight, when a pair of Finnish VMV-class patrol boats were preparing to leave to transport a stranded German radio unit, a German minesweeper arrived at the docks on the eastern side of the island and demanded that the island surrender. When the demand was refused the Germans started to land troops which led to Finnish forces opening fire at 00:55 on 15 September 1944. German landing craft arrived at the docks forcing Finnish security force at the location to withdraw but not before torching the two trapped Finnish patrol boats (VMV 10 and VMV 14).

German forces made further landings at the northern part of the island as well as at a beach south from the docks on the eastern side of the island. Finnish troops were however capable of containing landings and even prevent further landing attempted on the island's western side. Finnish Navy reacted by dispatching several motor torpedo boats (Taisto class motor torpedo boats T-3, T-5, T-6 and G-5 class motor torpedo boats V-2 and V-3) to Hogland which started their attacks against German ships supporting the landing effort at 0330. While several explosions were witnessed from the initial attacks made under cover of darkness the later attacks made at dawn provided no further results. Germans lost only one motor minesweeper R-29 to the Finnish attack since the old torpedoes used by the Finns did not have enough yield to sink larger minesweepers of which several were damaged.

Finnish efforts forced Germans naval forces to start moving to the more protected western side of the island leaving the landing forces without effective artillery support. While the operation was underway 36 Soviet aircraft attacked the German forces destroying at least a landing craft. This made the Germans withhold the deployment of the force of three destroyers and two large torpedo boats which were being kept at readiness. Instead German naval forces started a gradual withdrawal to Tallinn leaving several landing craft and barges on the island when no contact with the landing force could be made. This prevented further waves of troops from being landed. The operation ended in a complete failure, with the Finns capturing 1,231 German prisoners (of which 175 were wounded) in addition to 153 Germans killed in action with Finns losing 36 KIA, 67 WIA and 8 MIA.