AMERICA'S BLACK SEA FLEET: the u.s. navy amidst war and revolution 1919-1923

In a high-tempo series of operations throughout the Black Sea, Aegean Sea and eastern Mediterranean, a small American fleet of destroyers and other naval vessels responded ably to several major international crises including the last days of the Russian Revolution and the 1920–1922 Turkish Nationalist Revolution. Officers and men of the navy’s “four-piper” destroyers began by investigating circumstances on the ground in mainland Turkey right after World War I, and by transporting American relief teams to ports throughout Turkey and Southern Russia to aid the tens of thousands of orphans and refugees who had survived the wartime Armenian genocide.
Then the destroyers assisted in the final evacuation of 150,000 White Russians from the Crimea to Constantinople (one of the final acts of the Russian Revolution); coordinated the visits of the Hoover grain ships to ports in Southern Russia where millions were enduring a horrendous famine; witnessed and...