page_title: NMS Mihail Kogălniceanu
section_title: World War I
hierarchical_section_title: NMS Mihail Kogălniceanu / World War I
caption_attribution_description: English: The warship depicted in the picture is the Romanian river monitor Brătianu
context_page_description: NMS Mihail Kogălniceanu was a monitor of the Romanian Navy. She saw service in both world wars, being the most successful vessel in her class of four ships. Like her three sisters, she was initially built as a river monitor, but in early 1918, she was converted to a sea-going monitor. During the Second Balkan war, she supported the Romanian crossing of the Danube into Bulgaria. During World War I, she carried out numerous bombardments against the Central Powers forces advancing along the shore of the Danube and carried out the last action of the Romanian Navy before the 11 November 1918 armistice. She later fought successfully against Bolshevik naval forces during the early months of the Russian Civil War, helping secure the Budjak region. During the interwar period, she contributed to the suppression of the Tatarbunary Uprising and was rearmed with longer main guns towards the end of the 1930s. During World War II, she fought several engagements against the Soviet Navy in the first month of the Eastern Front, but was ultimately sunk by Soviet aircraft shortly after Romania ceased hostilities against the Soviet Union, on 24 August 1944.
context_section_description: When Romania entered World War I in 1916, Mihail Kogălniceanu was commanded by Captain Constantin Miclescu.
  She and her three sisters took part in the Battle of Turtucaia. The four warships kept Bulgarian and German ground forces under a powerful and accurate barrage of fire, allowing thousands of Romanian troops to escape the encircled city. She was especially active in the last two days of the battle, 5 and 6 September 1916.
  The Romanian monitors contributed significantly to the Romanian-Russian victory during the First Battle of Cobadin. As a consequence of this and previous actions at Turtucaia and elsewhere, German General August von Mackensen decided to eliminate the Romanian monitors. He delegated 7 artillery officers, possessing guns with calibers ranging from 150 mm to 305 mm, to attack and destroy the monitors as they were travelling between Rasova and Oltina on 21 September. The German batteries fired with intensity, but by the end of the day, all that was achieved was minor damage to one of her sisters, the monitor Alexandru Lahovari, which also had 6 wounded. When a German aircraft reported at the end of the day that none of the monitors had been sunk, Mackensen dismissed all 7 officers.
  At the start of October, rumors about approaching Romanian river monitors caused the Austro-Hungarian naval forces to retreat, thus putting an end to the Battle of Flămânda.
  In December, she and the rest of the Romanian Danube Flotilla retreated to the Danube Delta, in the aftermath of a Central Powers offensive that conquered almost all of Southern Romania. On 21 December, she and one of her sisters supported a Russian advance against the Bulgarian lines. The two warships fired a powerful barrage of fire against the Bulgarian-occupied villages of Cerna and Piatra Roșie, and  the German-occupied Satul Nou. Under intense fire from the Romanian monitors, the Bulgarians temporarily retreated, but soon returned to their positions after the Russians failed to take the offensive. In the last days of 1916, Mihail Kogălniceanu was at Ismail, covering the vessels which were ferrying the Russians North across the Chilia branch.
  After a winter of relative inactivity, the Romanian Navy took some defensive measures as well as performing warship upgrades, the monitors being fitted to fire French 120 mm rounds, which gave their main guns a range of up to 11 km. In July 1917, the Romanian monitors took part in an intense bombardment of Bulgarian-occupied Tulcea. The bombardment caused significant losses, and the monitors fired until all enemy artillery batteries in and around the city were silenced, suffering light damage themselves. The bombardment lasted several days, and on the last day, 26 July, Mihail Kogălniceanu was struck and damaged by a howitzer shell. She had no casualties, but this for her was the baptism of fire.
  She carried out the last action of the Romanian Navy during the war, which took place after Romania re-declared war on the Central Powers on 10 November 1918. In the morning of 11 November, three hours before the Allied Armistice with Germany was signed, the monitor, together with the 30-ton river torpedo boat Trotușul, occupied the port of Brăila, after the Germans retreated from the city. The two Romanian warships captured 77 assorted German vessels abandoned in the city's port (barges, tankers, tugs, floating cranes, motorboats).
caption: Sister ship Ion Brătianu in 1913
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)"}