Battle of the Gulf of Finland (MastahCheef117)

The  was a naval action during the Baltic War in 1909 fought between warships of the German High Seas Fleet and the Russian Baltic Fleet. It was the last decisive naval action of the war, with the battles preceding it being inconclusive and fairly unimportant affairs.

Frustrated by lack of success or decisive results, Kaiser William II ordered Admiral Reinhard Scheer to sortie from Wilhelmshaven and hunt down and destroy the Russian Baltic Fleet. Admiral Tirpitz gave Scheer a number of cruisers, destroyers, several predreadnoughts and more modern dreadnoughts, and the newly-minted battlecruiser Seydlitz. His job was to destroy the Baltic Fleet in it's entirety "when the opportunity presents itself with minimal losses and damage to the German fleet," or to damage the fleet to a point where the fleet would be forced to port for an extended period of time in the face of overwhelming odds. Scheer departed Wilmhelmshaven on June 2, entering the Baltic proper on the 4th, where they encountered two Russian armored cruisers that were promptly driven away by long-range gunfire. The fleet continued east until reaching the Gulf of Finland, several hundred miles west from the Baltic Fleet's main port near St. Petersburg. The two fleets met on the 7th and fighting went on through the night until the early morning hours of the 8th, where the severely bruised Russian fleet retreated after her flagship Sevastopol suffered a direct hit and was severely damaged.

The exchange, although not totally one-sided, is easily identified as a sweeping German victory, having annihilated a large portion of Russia's naval power in the Baltic and forcing the remnants of the fleet into port for the rest of the war.