Tag Archives: German navy

21 November 2018 · 11:38 am

The End of the German High Seas Fleet

By late September 1918, the German military High Command (OHL), headed by General Erich Ludendorff, had accepted that the Germans could no longer hold the Western Front. Ludendorff hoped that forming a parliamentary government might enable Germany to obtain better terms.

On 1 October, Prince Max of Baden, a liberal, became Chancellor of Germany at the head of a coalition of the Social Democrats, the Catholic Centre Party and the Liberals. On the night of 4-5 October the new government asked US President Woodrow Wilson for an armistice based on his 14 Points. This enabled Ludendorff and other generals to blame the new government for ending the war rather than admitting that the German army had been beaten in the field.[1]

Wilson insisted on 14 October that the Germans must end unrestricted submarine warfare before armistice negotiations began. Admiral Reinhard Scheer, Chief of the German Admiralty Staff, opposed this, arguing that the U-boat campaign against merchant shipping should not be ended until armistice negotiations had begun. On 20 October, however, Prince Max ordered that it should end. This released the U-boats to support operations by the High Seas Fleet, which had been inactive since April.[2]

Scheer ordered Admiral Franz von Hipper, C.-in-C. of the High Seas Fleet to conduct an operation in the North Sea. Hipper’s Plan 19 was to:

  1. Leave the Helgoland Bight during the day, remaining out of sight of the Dutch coast.
  2. Destroyers and light cruisers should attack warships in the North Sea and merchant shipping off the Flanders coast and in the Thames Estuary. The High Seas Fleet’s 18 Battleships would cover the operation off Flanders and its five battlecruisers the attack on the Thames.
  3. This was intended to provoke the British Grand Fleet to leave port and head south. It was by this time based at Rosyth in the Firth of Forth.
  4. Cruisers and destroyers would lay mines and U-boats wait in ambush in order to reduce the Grand Fleet’s strength as it headed south. About 25 U-boats were to take part and their orders were to take all opportunities to fire on battleships and battlecruisers.
  5. Hipper planed to engage the Grand Fleet on the night of the second or third day of the operation. If no battle had taken place by then, German destroyers would conduct a sweep towards the Firth of Forth.

Scheer approved the plan on 27 October and it was to be launched on 30 October. The British had a good idea that something major was about to happen because they had detected the movements of U-boats by radio direction finding. The Grand Fleet was reinforced by more destroyers.[3]

The operation did not take place. The High Seas Fleet was ordered to put to sea from Wilhelmshaven on the afternoon of 29 October. A large number of men from the battlecruisers Derfflinger and Von der Tann, mostly stokers, did not return from shore leave that day. There was mutiny and insubordination in other ships as the sailors feared that they were going to be sacrificed in a pointless battle intended only to save the navy’s honour. Hipper called off the operation the next day and dispersed the fleet, which only carried the mutiny to other ports.[4]

Saving the navy’s honour was certainly part of the motivation for the operation. Konteradmiral Adolf von Trotha, Hipper’s Chief of Staff, wrote in a memorandum that:

‘As to a battle for the honour of the fleet in this war, even if it were a death battle, it would be the foundation for a new German fleet of the future if our people were not altogether defeated; such a fleet would be out of the question in the event of a dishonourable peace.’[5]

There were, however, other motivations. In 1667, towards the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch successfully attacked the Medway, which enable them to get better peace terms than had seemed likely until then.[6]

The Germans would have been outnumbered even more heavily than they had been at Jutland, where their 16 dreadnought battleships and five battlecruisers had faced 28 British dreadnoughts and nine battlecruisers

Wikipedia lists the ships that were likely have taken part in any action. The Grand Fleet had 35 battleships, including five from the USN, and 11 battlecruisers, including two that had only four 15 inch guns and very weak armour, to 18 battleships and 5 battlecruisers. Ten British battleships and five battlecruisers had 15 inch guns and many other Allied ships 14 or 13.5 inch guns, with only the oldest ones having 12 inch guns. Only two German battleships had 15 inch guns, with the others and two of the battlecruisers having 12 inch guns and the three oldest battlecruisers 11 inch guns.

The Germans would be using Zeppelins for aerial reconnaissance, whilst the British had a Flying Squadron of three aircraft carriers and three seaplane carriers. Two of the aircraft carriers. HMS Furious and Vindictive, retained their funnels and superstructures with separate flying off and landing decks. This system created turbulence that made landing difficult. The third, HMS Argus, was the first carrier with a single flight deck running her full length.

At Jutland, the British suffered from lax flash protection and ammunition handling procedures, lack of armour, poor armour piercing shells and an inadequate system for passing intelligence on from the Admiralty to the Grand Fleet’s C.-C. They believed that these problems had been tackled, although Admiral Sir David Beatty, C.-in-C. of the Grand Fleet, thought that the armour protecting magazines was still inadequate.[7]

The British reforms were untested, the U-boats and mines might have inflicted losses as the Grand Fleet advanced and the battle was to be fought near the German bases. The Germans might have repeated their performance at Jutland, when they claimed a tactical victory after sinking more ships than they lost before withdrawing. However, they might also have been annihilated by a fleet that had an even greater numerical and firepower advantage than in 1916 and had corrected many of its faults.

All that can be said for certain about Plan 19 is that if it had led to a battle, American, Australian (the battlecruiser HMAS Australia was then part of the Grand Fleet) , British and German sailors would have died at the end of a war that Germany had already lost.

The fate of the High Seas Fleet was a major concern for the British at the Armistice negotiations, at which the British delegate was the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Wester Wemyss. The British wanted to eliminate any future naval threat from Germany. They planned to intern the entire U-boat fleet but feared that the Germans could rebuild it. However, without a German battle fleet the British could have cleared German minefields, carried out a close blockade and destroyed the U-boats close to their bases.

Wemyss therefore wanted the Germans to surrender 10 dreadnoughts, six battlecruisers, eight light cruisers, fifty destroyers and 160 U-boats. The number of dreadnoughts and battlecruisers was intended to leave the Germans with eight or nine, the number that Beatty thought that the Grand Fleet would have lost in a decisive battle that destroyed the High Seas Fleet. [8]

Some generals and politicians, including Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, C.-in-C. of the BEF, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the French delegate to the Armistice negotiations, and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, feared that these terms were too harsh and that the Germans might reject them and fight on. Eventually a proposal by Admiral William Benson, the US Chief of Naval Operations, that the German surface ships be interned in a neutral country was accepted. He feared that the British would get the bulk of them if they were surrendered, whilst the British admirals worried that the Germans might get them back if they were interned in a neutral port.[9]

The Germans claimed that they had fewer than 160 U-boats, so Wemyss asked for all their submarines, which was what he really wanted. They had only five battlecruisers as SMS Mackensen was incomplete. The terms signed on 11 November therefore stated that 10 battleships, five battlecruisers, eight light cruisers, 50 destroyers should be interned in a neutral port and all U-boats surrendered. No neutral country was interested in taking the German ships so they were interned in British ports. [10]

The first group of 20 U-boats left Wilhelmshaven on 18 November. They were met by the Harwich Force of cruisers and destroyers, which them boarded and escorted them into Harwich. Their crews were then transferred to a transport ship, which took them back to Germany. Eventually 176 U-boats were surrendered, including 18 that had been completed in order to make the passage. Seven more sank on the way to Britain.[11]

On 21 November Operation ZZ took place. The Grand Fleet put to sea in order to escort the German surface ships into internment. An Allied force of 370 ships, mainly British but including the American and Australian ships of the Grand Fleet and three French ships, met nine German battleships, five battlecruisers, seven light cruisers and 49 destroyers: a battleship and a light cruiser were in dock and did not come until December and a destroyer struck a mine on the way and sank.[12]

The two forces met at 9:30 am. The Germans the sailed into the Firth of Forth in a single line between two lines each of over 30 battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers. The Allied ships were all at action stations but there was no last minute gesture of defiance by the Germans. The Firth was full of all sorts of vessels carrying civilian spectators. At 11 am Beatty signalled that the German flags should be hauled down at sunset and should not be raised again without permission. This was done at the exact time: 3:57 pm. The German ships were escorted to Scapa Flow on 24 November.[13]

The Germans later scuttled their ships on learning the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty. This will be described in a later post.

Film of the German surrender from YouTube. You may have to watch an add at the start. The submarines flying British White Ensigns are surrendered U-boats.

 

 

[1] D. Stevenson, 1914-1918: The History of the First World War (London: Allen Lane, 2004), pp. 466-71.

[2] A. J. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow; the Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904-1919, 5 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1961-70). vol. v, pp. 170-71.

[3] P. G. Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (London: UCL Press, 1994), pp. 445-46; Marder, From. vol. v, p. 171

[4] Marder, From. vol. v, pp. 172-74.

[5] Quoted in Halpern, Naval, p. 445.

[6] J. S. Corbett, H. Newbolt, Naval Operations, 5 vols (London: HMSO, 1938). vol. v, p. 369.

[7] Marder, From. vol. ii. pp. 260-70.

[8] Ibid. vol. v, pp. 177-78.

[9] Ibid. vol. v, pp. 177-81,

[10] Ibid. vol. v, pp. 183-89.

[11] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol. v, p. 380; R. H. Gibson, M. Prendergast, The German Submarine War, 1914-1918 (London: Constable, 1931), p. 364.

[12] Marder, From. vol. v, p. 190.

[13] Ibid. vol. v, pp. 190-92.

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26 October 2018 · 6:37 pm

The Second Battle of Heligoland Bight 16-17 November 1917

During the First World War, the British laid large numbers of mines in the Helgoland Bight in an attempt to prevent U-boats travelling to the Atlantic via the North Sea. The Germans sent  minesweepers up to 100 miles from Heligoland almost every day in an attempt to clear them. They were normally escorted by light cruisers and torpedo boats, with battleships sometimes covering them. By mid November 1917 the British Admiralty had enough intelligence on German operations to plan an attack on the minesweepers and their escorts.[1]

The British striking force that sailed from Rosyth on the Firth of Forth at 4:30 pm on 16 November comprised: 1st Cruiser Squadron (Vice Admiral Trevelyan Napier) of two light battle cruisers and four destroyers; 6th Light Cruiser Squadron (Rear Admiral Edwyn Alexander-Sinclair) of four C class light cruisers and four destroyers; 1st Light Cruiser Squadron (Commodore Walter Cowan) of one C and 3 Arethusa class light cruisers and two destroyers; and 1st Battle Cruiser Squadron (Vice Admiral William Pakenham (five battlecruisers, a light cruiser and eight destroyers.

Pakenham was in overall command of the operation, but Napier commanded the two light cruiser squadrons as well as his own cruiser squadron.

The 1st Battle Squadron of six battleships and 11 Destroyers was in a supporting position several hours steaming away.

The Germans had the VI Minesweeping Group, II and VI Support Groups and IV Barrier Breaker Group, totalling 16 auxiliaries and a similar number of trawlers, escorted by eight destroyers of the 7th Torpedo Boat Flotilla and the four light cruisers of the II Scouting Group (Konteradmiral Ludwig von Reuter). Two German battleships were in support near Heligoland.[2]

The light battlecruisers, HMS Courageous and Glorious, were fast (32 knot), lightly armoured ships armed with four 15 inch, 18 4 inch and two 3 inch guns plus two 21 inch torpedo tubes. They had very shallow drafts and had been intended to take part in operations in the Baltic, which were cancelled when Admiral Lord Fisher ceased to be First Sea Lord. Fisher called them large light cruisers in order to evade a government order forbidding the construction of more capital ships.[3]

The British spotted German ships at 7:30 am on 17 November, opening fire seven minutes later. The Germans destroyers and light cruisers turned towards the British and covered the minesweepers with a smokescreen. All withdrew except the armed trawler Kehdingen, which had been hit and immobilised. The other German ships were in the smoke before the British could ascertain their strength.[4]

The German ships became visible briefly and were fired on but the situation remained unclear until 8:07, when Napier’s flagship Courageous cleared the smoke, allowing him to see three German light cruisers to the south east, steering east north east. Four minutes later they changed course to the south east.[5]

The German auxiliaries were now to the north east and were not being pursued. Reuter could therefore draw the British through the minefields towards the German battleships.  The British could fire only their forward guns at his light cruisers but a single hit by a 15 inch shell on one of them could slow her by a few knots, meaning that he would have to abandon her, as Admiral Franz von Hipper had had to do with SMS Blücher at the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915.[6]

Courageous and Glorious opened fire at 8:10, but it was another 10 minutes until all the British ships were in range of the Germans. They then laid another smokescreen and 15 minutes later disappeared into dense smoke. Napier was now at the edge of the British minefields and turned to port, considering that the situation was too uncertain to risk continuing. The light cruisers followed just after 8:40. The 6th Light Cruiser Squadron made the smallest turn and HMS Cardiff was hit and damaged at 8:50. The smokescreen was now clearing, revealing that the Germans had not changed course. [7]

Napier’s squadron had lost five miles and was now at extreme range, although the 6th Light Cruiser Squadron and HMS Caledon of the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron were closer.[8]

The British opened fire again at 8:52. Napier decided to follow the Germans for 12 more miles, which would take his force to the edge of an area that the Admiralty had in 1915 labelled as being dangerous because of mines. His force had now been reinforced by the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, which had been ordered by Pakenham not to enter the minefields.[9]

At 8:58 Pakenham  ordered the British to withdraw. He had received a signal from Napier at 8:52 that implied that contact with the Germans had been lost permanently but actually meant that they had temporarily disappeared behind a smokescreen. All British ships were in action by the time that Pakenham’s withdrawal order was received, and it was disregarded.[10]

Firing was intermittent, but the British believed that they had damaged at least one German cruiser. The Germans launched an unsuccessful torpedo attack around 9:30. At 9:32 Napier took Courageous and Glorious out of the action because they had reached his danger line, but the light cruisers, whose commanders  did not have the chart Napier had based his decision on, continued. At 9:40 HMS Calypso was damaged, but the British appeared to have the advantage until 9:50, when shells from two German battleships started to land amongst them. The light cruisers withdrew, covered by Repulse. The Germans did not pursue them and a thick fog descended at 10:40.[11]

The British thought that some of the eight or 10 torpedoes fired at them came from a U-boat but none were present.[12]

The Germans repeatedly straddled the British ships but scored only seven hits, all on the light cruisers. The British managed only  five hits, with SMS Königsberg being the only German ship seriously damaged.  A shell from Repulse penetrated her three funnels and exploded over one of the boiler rooms. Her repairs were completed on 15 December.[13]

Naval-History.net lists 22 British sailors killed at the Second Bight of Heligoland Bight, all of them on light cruisers. None of the sources consulted give German casualties.  One of the British dead, Ordinary Seaman John Carless of HMS Caledon, was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. Carless, who had joined the Royal Navy in September 1915 after being rejected by the army four times because of a weak heart, remained at his post and continued to load his gun despite being severely wounded.  The citation for his VC, quoted on Wikipedia, stated that:

For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty. Although mortally wounded in the abdomen, he still went on serving the gun at which he was acting as rammer, lifting a projectile and helping to clear away the other casualties. He collapsed once, but got up, tried again, and cheered on the new gun’s crew. He then fell and died. He not only set a very inspiring and memorable example, but he also, whilst mortally wounded, continued to do effective work against the King’s enemies.

— The London Gazette, No. 30687, 17 May 1918

The British failure to pursue more effectively was partly due to the light cruiser admirals not having all the information about minefields available to the Admiralty and to Napier. Additionally, Napier pursued at 25 knots when Courageous and Glorious were capable of at least 30 knots and were superior to the German light cruisers that they were chasing.[14]

The only vessel sunk in the battle was the German Kehdingen but losing only one trawler when so heavily outnumbered was a success for the Germans in an action where the British might have sunk a large number of minesweepers, destroyers and cruisers.

 

 

 

[1] J. S. Corbett, H. Newbolt, Naval Operations, 5 vols (London: HMSO, 1938). vol. v, pp. 165-66.

[2] M. Faulkner, A. D. Lambert, The Great War at Sea: A Naval Atlas 1914-1919 (Barnsley: Seaforth, 2015), pp. 138-39; A. J. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow; the Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904-1919, 5 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1961-70). vol. iv, pp. 300-1,

[3] R. Gray, Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships, 1906-1921 (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1985), pp. 39-40.

[4] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol. v, pp. 169-70.

[5] Ibid., pp. 170-71.

[6] Ibid., p. 171.

[7] Ibid., p. 172.

[8] Marder, From. vol. iv, p. 302.

[9] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol. v, pp. 172-73.

[10] Ibid., p. 173.

[11] Ibid., pp. 175-76.

[12] Marder, From. vol iv, p. 305.

[13] Ibid., p. 304.

[14] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol. v, p. 177; Marder, From. vol. iv, p. 305

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21 October 2018 · 7:06 pm

Victory over the U-boats

On 21 October 1918 Admiral Reinhard Scheer, the German Chief of the Admiralty Staff, ordered all U-boats to return to base. This ended the German campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare, which meant sinking merchant ships without warning, that had begun on 1 February.[1]

Scheer’s orders were obeyed by almost all U-boat captains. UC 74 (Oberleutnant Hans Schüler) sank the 85 ton Greek sailing ship Aghios Gerasimos by gunfire in the Eastern Mediterranean on 23 October and a number of merchant ships were sunk by mines laid by UC 74 after 21 October off the Suez Canal. Other ships were sunk after 21 October by mines laid earlier.[2]

Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, Scheer’s predecessor, had argued that the Germans had to break the British economy in order to win the war and this could be achieved by destroying 600,000 tons of merchant shipping per month for five months, which would cut British trade by 39% within five months. The Germans were aware that this might bring the USA into the war against them but thought that it would not be able to replace the lost merchant shipping and that there would be insufficient transports to take US troops to Europe.[3]

The U-boats’ best month before February 1917 was October 1916, when they sank 341,363 tons of merchant shipping according to German records. There are some differences between British and German figures but they are not large. German ones are slightly higher over the whole war but are lower in some months. V. E. Tarrant argues that the German numbers are the more accurate and they are quoted here.[4]

As shown in the table below, the Germans achieved their target of sinking 600,000 tons of shipping in only three months: April, May and June 1917. However, the 860,334 tons sunk in April meant that the average for the first seven months of unrestricted submarine warfare was 612,310 per month. Von Holtzendorff’s belief that this level of loss for five months would break the British economy was proved to be wrong.

These figures are for ships from all countries, not just Britain sunk by U-boats, including by mines laid by U-boats, but excluding ships sunk by surface raiders and aircraft.

Month Gross tons
Aug-14
Sep-14
Oct-14 866
Nov-14 2,084
Dec-14
1914 Total 2,950
Jan-15 17,577
Feb-15 22,785
Mar-15 89,517
Apr-15 41,488
May-15 126,895
Jun-15 115,291
Jul-15 98,005
Aug-15 182,772
Sep-15 136,048
Oct-15 86,064
Nov-15 167,523
Dec-15 107,739
1915 Total 1,191,704
Jan-16 49,610
Feb-16 95,090
Mar-16 160,536
Apr-16 187,307
May-16 119,381
Jun-16 93,193
Jul-16 110,728
Aug-16 163,145
Sep-16 231,573
Oct-16 341,363
Nov-16 326,689
Dec-16 307,847
1916 Total 2,186,462
Jan-17 328,391
Feb-17 520,412
Mar-17 564,497
Apr-17 860,334
May-17 616,316
Jun-17 696,725
Jul-17 555,514
Aug-17 472,372
Sep-17 353,602
Oct-17 466,542
Nov-17 302,599
Dec-17 411,766
1917 Total 6,149,070
Jan-18 295,630
Feb-18 335,202
Mar-18 368,746
Apr-18 300,069
May-18 296,558
Jun-18 268,505
Jul-18 280,820
Aug-18 310,180
Sep-18 171,972
Oct-18 116,237
Nov-18 10,233
1918 Total 2,754,152
Grand Total 12,284,338

Source: Tarrant, V. E., The U-Boat Offensive, 1914-1945, (London: Arms and Armour, 1989), pp. 152-53. Originally from Der Krieg zur See, 1914-15, vol v: Der Handelskreig mit U-booten.

The losses were stemmed by the adoption of various counter-measures of which the introduction of convoys was the most important. Convoys had been used in previous wars and for troopships in this one. The Admiralty opposed them for a number of reasons:

Code breaking and radio direction finding could enable it to track U-boats. This had worked against surface raiders but was ineffective against U-boats because they could not be detected once submerged except by spotting their periscopes or torpedo tracks

An armed merchantman could avoid torpedo attack by zigzagging and fight off a gun attack by a surfaced U-boat.

Merchantmen would not be able to keep station, especially at night. In fact convoys were in areas where U-boat attack was unlikely for most of their journeys, giving them time to practice formation sailing.

Ships would be delayed in sailing. This was false as ships were already delayed by reports of U-boats near their ports.

Convoys would give U-boats an attractive target as they assembled in open seas. The US entry into the war meant that they could assemble in US ports. They could in any case have done so at Bermuda or Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Convoys would concentrate targets together, so would require to be escorted by as many as one destroyer per merchant ship. Allocating this number of destroyers to convoy escort would mean that the Grand Fleet would have to stay in port. Only eight to 10 escorts were actually needed for a 20 ship convoy and smaller ships than destroyers proved to be adequate convoy escorts.[5]

It was actually almost as hard for a U-boat to spot a convoy as it was for it to find an independent ship. According to Vice Admiral Sir Arthur Hezlet, a British WWII submarine captain, a ship could be spotted from 10 miles away. A 20 ship convoy would be two miles wide so could be seen from 11 miles away. Convoys therefore meant that U-boats would find fewer targets, not more. Even if a U-boat spotted a convoy, it would probably have time to  torpedo only one, at most two of its ships and would be counter attacked by the escorts. The British also used radio direction finding to avoid U-boats.[6]

This was confirmed by Karl Dönitz, commander of Germany’s U-boats in WWII and a U-boat captain in WWI. He wrote that ‘[t]he oceans at once became bare and empty…for long periods…the U-boats…would see nothing at all.’ When a convoy did appear, the ‘U-boat might well sink one or two of the ships, or even several; but that was but a poor percentage of the whole.’[7] It would also be vulnerable to counter-attack by the convoy’s escort.

The British had been using convoys in the war. As well as troopships, ships sailing between England and the Netherlands had been convoyed since July 1916 because of the risk of destroyer attack. Ships carrying coal from Britain to France were convoyed from February 1917 at the request of the French. The Admiralty insisted on calling the convoys controlled sailings.[8]

The French coal convoys had been organised by Commander Reginald Henderson.[9] He obtained figures from the Ministry of Shipping that showed that the number of ocean going ships sailing to and from the UK was much lower than realised.

The Admiralty had included short voyages made by small, coastal ships in its reports of the number of ships calling at British ports in order to make the Germans think that the sea traffic to the UK was too great for the U-boats to destroy. The 2,500 voyages each way per week claimed was too many to convoy but the true number of ocean going ships arriving and leaving was 120 to 140 per week.[10]

On 25 April 1917 the War Cabinet decided that the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, should visit the Admiralty in order to find out what it was doing about U-boats. Lloyd George and his colleagues were in favour of convoys but the Admirals had resisted them. However, the next day Vice Admiral Alexander Duff, head of the Admiralty’s Anti-Submarine Division, who now had Henderson’s figures, submitted a paper to the Admiralty stating that ‘[i]t seems to me evident that the time has arrived when we must be ready to introduce a comprehensive scheme of convoy at any moment.’[11]

Convoys would need 70 escorts. Only 30 destroyers were currently available but more would be built by the time that convoys could be fully organised and USN ships would soon be available.[12]

The introduction of convoys did not eliminate shipping losses but it reduced them sharply, from 5% of sailings in the UK in April 1917 to 0.5% by the end of the war. Some ships continued to sail independently and suffered heavy losses.[13]

A large number of aircraft were allocated to anti-submarine warfare in home waters: an average of 189 aeroplanes, 300 seaplanes and 75 airships in the last six months of the war, with an average of 310 being available each day. Their bombs were too small to sink U-boats but they had a significant deterrent effect. In 1918 U-boats attacked only six convoys with air escorts, sinking only three ships. Over the whole war only five ships were sunk in convoys with both air and surface escort.[14]

The Americans and British were also able to build new ships more quickly than the Germans had forecast. The US entered the war with a relatively small shipbuilding industry but rapidly built one, including constructing accommodation for workers and public transport to take them to work. The British made the Admiralty responsible for both naval and merchant shipbuilding, so that it could make the necessary trade-offs. These including suspending construction of three of the four Hood class battlecruisers in order to build more merchantmen. Sir Eric Geddes, a businessman who had solved railway supply problems behind the Western Front was made Controller of the Admiralty, putting him in charge of the materiel side of the navy. This job was normally done by the Third Sea Lord, an admiral. Ships were built to standardised design.[15]

Merchant shipping construction (tons)

1915 1916 1917 1918
UK          1,000,000         600,000          1,800,000   2,400,000
USA             250,000  n/a          1,500,000   4,500,000

Source: Friedman N., Fighting the Great War at Sea: Strategy, Tactics and Technology (Barnsley: Seaforth, 2014), pp. 284-86.

About 1,700,000 tons of Austrian and German merchant shipping interned in US ports were requisitioned by the US government. They included a number of liners, which transported US troops to France. Amongst them was the giant Vaterland, renamed the Leviathan in US service.[16]

The U-boats failed to stop over 2,000,000 US soldiers sailing to Europe, 10% of them on board the Leviathan. Two eastbound troop transports were sunk by U-boats and another accidentally by collision. Three returning to the USA to collect more troops were also sunk. The total of US soldiers killed by U-boats was less than the 700 who died as a result of influenza caught on the voyage.[17]

German U-boat construction in 1918 was only able to keep pace with losses. They had 224 [Sondhaus] or 226 [Gibson and Prendergast] under construction at the end of the war and completed 13 in October 1918. The hoped to complete 30 a month in 1919. However, they were struggling to man their new boats. U-boats needed experienced captains and fully trained crew: the six most successful U-boat captains in terms of tonnage sunk and 14 of the leading 18 survived the war. Consequently, the Germans refused to cut the training programme given to men before they were assigned to an active U-boat. About two dozen of those under construction at the end of the war could have been commissioned had trained personnel been available.[18]

The U-boats inflicted severe damage to Allied shipping but their attempt to blockade the UK failed and brought the USA into the war against Germany.

 

[1] L. Sondhaus, German Submarine Warfare in World War I: The Onset of Total War at Sea (Boulder MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). Kindle edition, location 4855.

[2] Ibid. Kindle locations 4861-68.

[3] D. Steffen, ‘The Holtzendorff Memorandum of 22 December 1916 and Germany’s Declaration of Unrestricted U-Boat Warfare’, Journal of Military History 68, no. 1 (2004).

[4] V. E. Tarrant, The U-Boat Offensive, 1914-1945 (London: Arms and Armour, 1989), pp. 152-53.

[5] N. Friedman, Fighting the Great War at Sea: Strategy, Tactics and Technology (Barnsley: Seaforth, 2014), pp. 274-78.

[6] Original source A. R. Hezlet, The Submarine and Sea Power (London,: 1967), pp. 94-95; Quoted in A. J. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow; the Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904-1919, 5 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1961-70). vol v, pp. 88-89.

[7] Original source K. Doenitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days (London,: 1959), p. 4;  Quoted in Marder, From. vol. v, p. 89.

[8] Friedman, Fighting, pp. 276-77.

[9] C. E. Fayle, Seaborne Trade, 3 vols (London: HMSO, 1920). vol. iii, p. 100.

[10] J. S. Corbett, H. Newbolt, Naval Operations, 5 vols (London: HMSO, 1938), p. vo. v. p. 18.

[11] Ibid. vol. v, p. 19.

[12] Ibid. vol. v, pp. 18-19.

[13] Marder, From. vol. v, p. 87.

[14] Ibid. vol. v, pp. 91-93.

[15] Friedman, Fighting, pp. 284-86.

[16] Ibid., p. 286.

[17] P. G. Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (London: UCL Press, 1994), p. 437.

[18] R. H. Gibson, M. Prendergast, The German Submarine War, 1914-1918 (London: Constable, 1931), p. 363; Sondhaus, German. Kindle locations 4497-4513.

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24 July 2018 · 3:56 pm

The Dover Straits in the First World War

Origin of the Dover Patrol

At the outbreak of war the main British naval force in home waters was the Grand Fleet, based in Scotland. There were, however, four different forces based in the south east of England: the 1st and 3rd Destroyer Flotillas under Commodore (T) and the 1st Submarine Flotilla under Commodore (S) at Harwich; Cruiser Force C at the Nore; the 6th Destroyer and 2nd and 3rd Submarine Flotillas under the Admiral of Patrols at Dover; and the Channel Fleet of 20 pre-dreadnought battleships. These forces were not under a single command.[1]

The 6th Destroyer Flotilla of two light cruisers and 20 destroyers was responsible for the defence of the Dover Straits and was named the Dover Patrol.[2] The loss to U-boats of the cruiser HMS Pathfinder off Berwickshire on 5 September 1914 and of three armoured cruisers of Force C in the southern North Sea on 22 September showed the importance of the Patrol Flotillas in anti-submarine warfare. At the same time, the work of the Admiral of Patrols was becoming more complex, including minelaying, prevention of enemy minelaying and organising the transport of British troops to France and Belgium and the evacuation of Belgian refugees. On 7 October it was decided that the Dover Patrol should become a separate command. Rear-Admiral Horace Hood took it over six days later.[3]

Hood was replaced by Vice Admiral Reginald Bacon in April 1915. Bacon later wrote a two volume history of The Dover Patrol, which is now out of copyright and available to read at Naval-History.net or to download at The Internet Archive.

Bacon listed the achievements of the Dover Patrol: drifters, crewed by pre-war fishermen, maintained anti-submarine nets, which stretched for 45 miles in 1917; trawlers, also crewed by fishermen swept for mines across 250 miles per day; 120,000 merchant ships passed through the straits with light losses; 5,600,000 troops crossed the Channel without loss; the enemy held coast was bombarded from sea 28 times from ranges of up to 15 miles versus a maximum of 12 miles on ranges in peacetime; examination of merchant ships; and laying of minefields.[4]

The first anti-submarine drifters arrived at Dover in January 1915 and there were over 130 of them there by June. They dragged an average of 1,000 yards of nets with a mesh pattern of 10 foot squares to a depth of 120 feet. The straits were a maximum of 21 miles wide and 180 feet deep, with an average depth of 108 feet. This meant that 36 drifters could in theory block the passage, but in practice tides and current made the task of such small craft difficult even in good weather. They were at best armed with a 6 pounder gun and sometimes with just a machine gun, requiring them to be protected by destroyers and armed auxiliary steamers. German records show that U8, scuttled on 4 March 1915 after being caught in the nets, was the only U-boat lost to the Dover barrage in 1915 or 1916. It did, however, force the larger U-boats that were based in Germany to take the longer route round Scotland to the Atlantic, with the smaller UB coastal submarines and UC minelayers based in Flanders using the shorter route through the Dover Straits.[5]

Mine Warfare

The Allies used mines to combat U-boats but U-boats also laid mines. The 15 boats of the UC I class carried 12 mines but had no deck gun or torpedo tubes. The 64 UC II class boats carried 18 mines and had two bow and one stern torpedo tubes. They initially had no deck gun although some were fitted with a 105mm gun in 1918. The 16 UC III class boats that were commissioned had 14 mines, the same torpedo armament as the UC IIs and either an 88mm or a 105mm gun.

Most German mines laid in British waters were laid by U-boats. In the second half of 1916 an average of about six merchant ships were sunk per month in British waters. This increased to 10 in the first half of 1917 but fell back to four in the second half of that year. On average 178 mines were swept in each month of 1916, rising to 355 in 1917. Even the English Channel was too big an area to sweep completely and only about 10 per cent of the waters around Dover could be swept regularly.[6]

As an example of the size of the Dover Patrol, in October 1916 it comprised:

The Auxiliary Patrol of 2 yachts, 78 trawlers (56 fitted as minesweepers), 10 paddle minesweepers, 130 net drifters, 24 motor launches and 5 motor boats.

The 5th Submarine Flotilla of the light cruiser HMS Arrogant and 10 submarines.

The 6th Destroyer Flotilla of the light cruiser HMS Attentive, 33 destroyers of 400-1,000 tons, 12 monitors with 7.5 to 15 inch guns, 12 gun or patrol boats, 5 paddle minesweepers and a seaplane carrier.

In late October the light cruiser HMS Carysfort and the 8 L class destroyers were detached from Harwich.[7]

The Germans made several attacks by destroyers on the Dover Straits. Click on the links for more details of the larger attacks.

The first of these, on 26-27 October 1916, resulted in the sinking of the old destroyer HMS Flirt, called a 30 knotter after her designed speed, the transport Queen, six drifters, a trawler and serious damage to the destroyers HMS Nubian and Amazon. The Germans suffered no losses but missed opportunities to do more damage. The German success was helped by their previous inactivity, which made the British complacent. This action showed that the barrage had limited effect, as 14 British destroyers had crossed it without being damaged.

The Dover Patrol was reinforced by destroyers from the Humber and Harwich. Destroyers had then to be sent from the Grand Fleet to the Humber. This meant that the Grand Fleet might have had to leave part of the 4th Battle Squadron behind when it put to sea because of a lack of destroyers. The Germans were unable to base a large number of destroyers at Zeebrugge because of the risk of air attack, meaning that they face a lengthy canal journey from Bruges. This meant that the British normally detected their operations early, The Germans usually reinforced their Flanders Flotillas with extra destroyers from the High Seas Fleet before raids. [8]

The second, on 23 November 1916, was ineffectual. Six German destroyers approached the Downs and fired at the drifters, damaging one without causing any casualties, before turning away before the British destroyers in the area could engage them. They made no attempt to enter the Downs, where over 100 merchantmen were moored. The Germans claimed to have bombarded Ramsgate, but no shells landed on land.[9]

On 25-26 February 1917 the Germans sent destroyers to attack the traffic rout from England to the Hook of Holland, the Downs and the barrage. The only effects of this raid were that the destroyer HMS Laverock was struck by a torpedo that did not explode and that a bombardment the Thanet coast slightly damaged some houses.[10]

A German raid on 17-18 March resulted in the sinking of the destroyer HMS Paragon and the merchant ship SS Greypoint and the damaging of the destroyer HMS Llewellyn.

The next attack came on 20-21 April 1917. It was the first to end in a major German defeat. The destroyers SMS G42 and G85 were sunk by the British flotilla leaders HMS Broke and Swift.

This was a loss of almost 10 per cent of the destroyers based in Flanders and could not be replaced. The Germans therefore changed their strategy. Future attacks would be aimed at the Netherlands to UK convoys rather than the Channel patrols and barrage. Raids on shipping at the mouth of the Thames on 26 and 30 April encountered no shipping, although Margate was bombarded on 26 April. [11]

On 10 May a planned attack on Netherlands to UK convoys led to a battle between German destroyers and three British light cruisers and four destroyers., Neither side suffered any losses, but the British achieved their objective of protecting the convoy.[12]

A week later the Germans attacked a convoy in fog, sinking the merchantman SS Ciro. The British destroyer HMS Setter also sank after collided with HMS Sylph.[13]

A further raid on 23 May was unsuccessful. Three days later a raiding force encountered two monitors and two French torpedo boats, but a fifteen minute gun battle caused no losses to either side.[14]

The German surface forces in Flanders remained on the defensive for the remainder of 1917, fearing that the British might try an amphibious attack as part of their Passchendaele offensive. The British planned such an operation, but the land offensive did not go well enough for it to be carried out. The main tasks of the Flanders Flotillas in the rest of 1917 were minesweeping and coastal patrols. The British carried out a number of coastal bombardments, which were normally accompanied by major air battles, as both sides attempted to drive off the enemy’s observation aircraft. There were some naval encounters, but none resulted in losses to either side. By the end of 1917 too many vessels had been transferred away from Flanders, mainly to take part in Operation Albion, an amphibious assault in the Baltic Sea, for them to carry out offensive operations.[15]

Keyes takes Command

By late 1917 the Admiralty was concerned that up to 30 U-boats a month were evading the barrage. Rear Admiral Roger Keyes in December 1917, the Admiralty’s Director of Plans, proposed illuminating the mine and net barrage with searchlights at night in order to force U-boats to dive into the minefield. Bacon argued that this would reveal the barrage and make it vulnerable to attack. On 18 December he was ordered to institute an illuminated patrol. The next night UB56 was forced to dive and was destroyed by mines. Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, the First Sea Lord, was a supporter of Bacon, but he was dismissed and replaced by Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss in late December. Soon afterwards, Bacon was replaced by Keyes.

Keyes strengthened the minefields and employed a patrol of a monitor with a 12 or 15 inch gun, four 30 knot destroyers, patrol boats, 14 trawlers, 60 drifters, four motor launches and two paddle minesweepers. At night the minefield was illuminated by flares from the trawlers and the destroyers’ searchlights.[16]

The larger U-boats stopped using the Straits in February and the smaller boats based in Flanders became less active from April. They laid 404 minefields in 1917 but only 64 in 1918. A 1922 Admiralty document claims seven U-boats sunk in the Dover Straits area in the first four months of 1918 and six in the rest of the year, 12 of them being UB or UC type boats.[17]

Uboat.net lists five boats lost to mines and one to depth charges in the Dover area in the first four months of the year, with the seventh described as missing. It gives four lost to mines in the Dover area and one off Flanders in the rest of the year, with the final boat having been rammed by the steamer Queen Alexandra off Cherbourg.

The Germans bombarded Yarmouth on the evening of 14 January 1918. They did not encounter any British warships and the only German ships damaged was the torpedo boat SMS V67, which struck a mine and had to be towed back to port. No ships on either side were sunk in minor actions on 23 January and 5 February.[18]

The last and seventh German raid on the Dover Barrage came on 14-15 February 1918. It was the most successful, sinking seven drifters and a trawler and severely damaging five drifters, a trawler and a paddle minesweeper without loss. Six of the raids had been successful, but they were at least a month and as much as nine months apart, with the result that the losses from one attack had always been replaced by the time of the next one. The Dover Straits Barrage therefore continued to keep U-boats out of the busy shipping lane of the English Channel, and to force them to sail round the British Isles on their way to the Atlantic, reducing their time on station. It is unclear why the Germans stopped attacking the Dover Barrage, especially when their last effort was so successful.[19]

The Dover Patrol took part in the attacks on Ostend and Zeebrugge on 23 April 1918, for which eight VCs were awarded, and the follow-up raid on Ostend on 9 May 1918, for which another three VCs were awarded. These raids were intended to close the canals that connected the ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend to the German naval base at Bruges. The first raid closed the Zeebrugge canal to larger destroyers until 14 May, but smaller torpedo boats and U-boats were able to use it and both raids failed to block the Ostend canal.

In 1918 the British launched a series of aerial bombing raids on the German naval bases in Flanders. From 17 February to 1 April five destroyers and torpedo boats and a U-boats were damaged by bombing. The Germans were forced to reinforce their fighter defences, but the raids became heavier from 10 May. Between then and 2 June 12 destroyers and torpedo boats and two U-boats were damaged by bombing. On the night of 28 May the Zeebrugge canal lock gate was hit by a bomb, putting it out of action for a week. On 9 June it was damaged by a coastal bombardment, closing the canal for the rest of the month to all shipping.[20]

The English Channel, a vital communications link for British troops in France and Flanders, remained open to Allied shipping throughout the war. By April 1918 it was largely closed to U-boats.

[1] Naval Staff Monograph (Historical) 1922 vol. vi, The Dover Patrol i, pp. 5-7.

[2] J. S. Corbett, H. Newbolt, Naval Operations, 5 vols (London: HMSO, 1938). vol. i, p. 16

[3] Naval Staff vol. vi, pp. 8-9.

[4] R. H. S. Bacon, The Dover Patrol, 1915-1917, 2 vols (London,: 1919). vol. i, pp. xii-xiv.

[5] L. Sondhaus, German Submarine Warfare in World War I: The Onset of Total War at Sea (Boulder MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). Kindle Edition, locations 1902-50.

[6] M. Faulkner, A. D. Lambert, The Great War at Sea: A Naval Atlas 1914-1919 (Barnsley: Seaforth, 2015).

[7] Ibid., p. 105.

[8] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol iv, pp. 66-67; P. G. Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (London: UCL Press, 1994), pp. 346-47.

[9] Naval Staff vol. vi, p. 88.

[10] Ibid., pp. 88-91.

[11] M. D. Karau, The Naval Flank of the Western Front: The German Marinekorps Flandern, 1914-1918 (Barnsley: Seaforth, 2003), p. 126.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Naval Staff Monograph (Historical) 1939 vol. xix, Home Waters part ix, May to July 1917, pp. 10-12.

[14] Karau, Naval, p. 126.

[15] Ibid., pp. 161-65.

[16] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol. v, p. 309.

[17] Naval Staff vol. vi, p. 136.

[18] Karau, Naval, pp. 174-75.

[19] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol. v. p. 217; Karau, Naval, p. 179.

[20] Karau, Naval, pp. 207-10.

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14 April 2018 · 4:24 pm

German Attack on the Dover Straits 14-15 February 1918

The last German attack on the British anti-submarine barrage across the Dover Straits came on the night of 14-15 February 1918. The previous one on 20-21 April 1917 had resulted in the loss of two German torpedo boats and a clear British victory. The Germans then changed strategy, launching a number of attacks on shipping between the Netherlands and the UK, the largest of which took place on 10 May.

The Germans then sat on the defensive because they feared that the British Passchendaele offensive might include an amphibious assault. The British planned such an operation, but the land offensive did not go well enough for it to be carried out. By the end of 1917 too many vessels had been transferred away from Flanders, mainly to take part in Operation Albion, an amphibious assault in the Baltic Sea, for them to carry out offensive operations.[1]

The attack in mid February was carried out by Korvettenkapitän Heinecke’s 2nd Flotilla of the High Seas Fleet, which sailed from Heligoland Bight without stopping in Flanders in order to achieved surprise. Its eight torpedo boats were meant to sail on 13 February but were delayed a day by bad weather and then reduced to seven when one of them suffered condenser problems.[2]

Heinecke’s plan was to divide his force into two groups. He would lead one, which would attack patrols south of Dungeness and then the patrol line from Folkestone to the Varne Bank. The other, led by Kapitänleutnant Kolbe, would attack the patrols on the south side of the Channel.[3]

Weather conditions on the night of 14-15 February were ideal for a raid. The weather was fine but overcast, the sea was unusually calm for the time of year and visibility was variable, with patches of haze. The minefield was illuminated by flares and searchlights in order to detect surfaced U-boats, but this blinded the vessels burning them, produced smoke and potentially obscured warning lights and gun flashes.[4]

The British had a light cruiser and three destroyers in the Downs, two destroyers on the West Barrage Patrol, four destroyers on the East Barrage Patrol and two paddle minesweepers, a monitor, a destroyer, a Patrol boat, two French torpedo boats and 10 trawlers supporting the 58 drifters patrolling the deep minefield. There should have been a monitor with 12 or 15 inch guns on duty but none was available so the 7.5 inch gunned HMS M26 was on duty.[5]

Between 11:30 and midnight on 14 February the drifter Shipmates (Lieutenant W. Denson RNR) spotted a submarine and fired the appropriate warning signal of red and white lights. The submarine soon disappeared. Around 00:30 am two German destroyers fired on the paddle minesweeper HMS Newbury. She was set alight and was unable to fire the green warning signal for surface raiders. British ships that heard the gunfire assumed that it was British ships attacking the U-boat.[6]

Denson of the Shipmates saw the gun flashes and realised that a German destroyer attack was underway. Before he could report it, his drifter was caught in German searchlights and his division was under fire. Presumably fearing that his vessel might be captured, he threw his confidential books overboard. The Shipmates managed to escape but did not fire a warning signal as Denson had seen two or three signal rockets. He could not send a coded radio message as he no longer had any codebooks and he had been ordered not to send uncoded messages.[7]

The British failed to realise what was happening, assuming that gunfire was aimed at the U-boat spotted by the Shipmates and that any destroyers that they spotted were friendly. Even the captain of a British motor launch fired at by German destroyers assumed that they were British and had mistaken his vessel for a U-boat. The Germans sank seven drifters and a trawler and severely damaged five drifters, a trawler and a paddle minesweeper; 89 British officers and men were dead or missing. Vice Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, C.-in-C. Dover Command, was not certain of what had happened until nearly 3:00 am, by when the Germans were on the way home.[8]

The British held a Court of Inquiry, which highlighted the faults in the processes for challenging, reporting and signalling in the Dover Straits. Lieutenant Adam Ferguson, captain of the destroyer HMS Amazon, challenged an unknown ship three times, which he said was the normal procedure. He was then supposed to open fire but the ship was by then out of sight. Ferguson was Court-Martialed and severely reprimanded. He and his immediate superior, Commander Bernard of the destroyer HMS Termagant, were both relieved of their commands.[9]

Keyes subsequently issued new orders stating that ‘Suspicious vessels are to be regarded as enemy, unnecessary challenges are to be avoided.’ Offensive action should be taken against ships that did not immediately reply to challenges.[10]

This was the seventh and last German attack on the Dover Barrage. Six of them had been successful with only the raid of 20-21 April being a British victory. However, the attacks came at least a month and as much as nine months apart, with the result that the losses from one raid had always been replaced by the time of the next one. The Dover Straits Barrage therefore continued to keep U-boats out of the busy shipping lane of the English Channel, and to force them to sail round the British Isles on their  way to the Atlantic, reducing their time on station. It is unclear why the Germans stopped attacking the Dover Barrage, especially when their last effort was so successful.[11]

 

[1] M. D. Karau, The Naval Flank of the Western Front: The German Marinekorps Flandern, 1914-1918, pp. 161-65.

[2] Ibid., p. 176.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Naval Staff Monograph (Historical) 1922 vol. vi, The Dover Patrol i. p. 104.

[5] J. S. Corbett, H. Newbolt, Naval Operations, 5 vols. vol. v, pp. 210-11.

[6] Ibid., p. 212.

[7] Ibid., pp. 212-13.

[8] Ibid., p. 217.

[9] Ibid., p. 216; A. J. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow; the Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904-1919, 5 vols. vol. v, p. 44.

[10] Marder, From, p. 45.

[11] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval, p. 217; Karau, Naval, p. 179.

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16 March 2018 · 5:26 pm

German Destroyer Raid of 10 May 1917

In late 1916 and early 1917 the German carried out a number of raids on shipping in the Dover area and the anti-submarine net barrage across the Dover straits. The first that resulted in a German defeat was on 20-21 April 1917 when the destroyers SMS G42 and G85 were sunk by the British flotilla leaders HMS Broke and Swift.

The level of loss from this mission was unsustainable so the Germans changed their strategy. Future attacks would be aimed at the Netherlands to UK convoys rather than the Channel patrols and barrage. Raids on shipping at the mouth of the Thames on 26 and 30 April encountered no shipping, although Margate was bombarded on 26 April. [1]

In the early hours of 10 May the eight destroyers (822-960 tons, three 10.5cm (4.1in) guns, six 50cm (19.7in) torpedo tubes, 33.5-34 knots) of Korvettenkapitän Kahle’s 3rd Flotilla and the four destroyers of the Zeebrugge 1st Half Flotilla put to sea with orders to attack a large convoy that was due to leave the Netherlands for Great Britain that evening. Another 12 destroyers were on reconnaissance missions: four of the Zeebrugge 2nd Half Flotilla to the west and eight of the Flanders Torpedo-boat Flotilla to the south west.[2]

That night there were 12 merchant steamers heading from Great Britain to the Netherlands, with 10 travelling the other way. Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt, commanding the Harwich Force, was at sea in the C Class cruiser HMS Centaur (4,165 tons, five 6in (15.2cm), one 13 pounder (76.2mm) and two 3in AA (76mm) guns, two 21in torpedo tubes, 29 knots) accompanied by the similar but slightly older HMS Carysfort and Conquest (4,219 tons, two 6 in (15.2cm), eight 4in (10.2 cm),one 13 pounder (76.2m), two 3in AA (76mm) and four 3 pounder (47mm) guns, two 21in torpedo tubes, 28.5 knots) and four destroyers. Other British destroyers were escorting the convoys.[3]

Between 3:50 and 3:55 am the British spotted the Germans to the south west, 8 or 9 miles away. Tyrwhitt ordered his ships to head south at full speed in an attempt to cut them off from Zeebrugge. At 4:05 am the British opened fire at about 13,000 yards range. The Germans headed south, returning fire. The light was poor and visibility was made worse by a German smoke screen and the smoke from the British cruisers, but both sides managed to straddle enemy ships with their gunfire and the British believed that they scored hits.[4]

The British pursued, but their cruisers were slower than the destroyers. By 5:02 am the German destroyers were out of range of the cruisers. The British destroyers, who had taken some time to work up to full speed, continued the chase. At 5:15 am some of the Germans turned, apparently to engage HMS Stork (975 tons, three 4in (10.2cm) and one 2 pounder (40mm) guns, four 21in torpedo tubes, 29 knots), the leading British destroyer, but withdrew on spotting that more British destroyers had arrived. Tyrwhitt called off the chase at 5:33 am , by when Stork had come under fire from German shore batteries.[5]

Neither side suffered serious damage in this operation, but it was a British victory since they prevented the Germans from carrying out their mission.

[1] M. D. Karau, The Naval Flank of the Western Front : The German Marinekorps Flandern, 1914-1918, p. 126.

[2] Naval Staff Monograph (Historical) 1939 vol. xix, Home Waters part ix, May to July 1917. p. 5; R. Gray, Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships, 1906-1921, pp. 168-69; Karau, Naval, p. 126.

[3] Naval Staff vol. Xix. p. 4; Gray, Conway’s 1906-1921, pp. 56, 60.

[4] Naval Staff vol. Xix. p. 4.

[5] Ibid., p. 5; Gray, Conway’s 1906-1921, p. 81.

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10 March 2018 · 3:23 pm

German Attack on the Dover Straits 20-21 April 1917

Following the German attack of 17-18 March 1917 on the anti-submarine net barrage in the Dover Straits, the Admiralty told Vice Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, C.-in-C. Dover, that his forces should be more concentrated on nights when enemy attack appeared to be likely. The night of 20 April appeared to be such a night, as it was there was a new moon the next day and high water was at 2230.[1]

The British had two flotilla leaders (large destroyers) on the western part of the barrage and four destroyers to the east. There was a light cruiser, a flotilla leader and three destroyers and a monitor protecting shipping in the Downs, off the east coast of Kent and six destroyers at Dover.[2]

The Germans had strengthened their destroyer force at Zeebrugge by transferring Korvettenkapitän Kahle’s 3rd Flotilla from the High Seas Fleet. The operation on 20-21 April was to be controlled by Kahle. He would not be at sea but instead would command from Bruges, where the Germans collected and deciphered intercepted British orders. According to the British Official History, two groups would again attack the net barrage, but this time there would be no raid on the Downs.[3]

The force on the Dover side of the straits consisted of six destroyers from the 3rd Flotilla (822-960 tons, three 10.5 cm (4.1 inch) guns, six 50 cm (19.7 inch) torpedo tubes, 33.5-34 knots). That on the Calais side comprised four from the Zeebrugge Flotilla and two from the 3rd (852-990 tons, three 105 cm guns, six 50 cm torpedo tubes, 32-34 knots).[4]

However, Mark Karau’s history of the German naval forces in Flanders during the First World War says, based on German archives, that the Calais force included only three destroyers, with the other three operating in the Downs.[5]

A bombardment of Calais started at 2310 and one of Dover at 2330. Little damage was done to either town but  the armed trawler Sabreur was damaged at Dover. British batteries returned fire but without hitting the enemy. However, the bombardment caused Bacon to keep his Dover destroyers in port until 2355, by when the Germans had gone.[6]

At 0038 on 21 April, the Dover raiders sighted the flotilla leaders HMS Broke (1,610 tons, six 4 inch and one 1.5 pounder (20mm) guns, two .303 inch MGs, four 21 inch torpedo tubes, 31 knots) and Swift (2,170 tons, one 6 inch and two 4 inch guns, two 18 inch torpedo tubes, 35 knots). Broke was named after Sir Philip Broke, a successful frigate captain from the War of 1812.[7]

Firing commenced at 0044. Swift, which was ahead of Broke, turned towards the German line with the intention of ramming one of the smaller German ships. She missed and was hit by several shells, but one of her torpedoes hit SMS G85. Swift then pursued the Germans as far as the barrage but then had to give up because a shell hole had caused flooding in one of her forward compartments.[8]

Broke also fired torpedoes and attempted to ram a German destroyer. She missed first time but struck SMS G42 with her second attempt. She took several minutes to extricate herself, during when she came under fire from two other German destroyers. She tried to pursue the Germans but was too badly damaged to keep up with them. She therefore returned to G42, which was sinking by the stern but fired on Broke, which replied until the German guns fell silent about 0120. Broke’s engines then broke down and she began to drift towards G42. Some other British destroyers then arrived and took Broke under tow.[9]

G42 and G85 both eventually sank. The British picked up about 100 survivors from crews of 87 and 85 respectively. British losses were 40 killed or wounded on Broke and one killed and four wounded on Swift. The British casualties are listed on Naval-History.net.[10]

The two British captains, Commander Ambrose Peck of Swift and Commander Edward Evans of Broke, were awarded the Distinguished Service Order and promoted to Captain. Evans became a national hero as ‘Evans of the Broke‘ and reached the rank of Admiral, serving in the 1940 Norwegian Campaign. He had previously been second in command of Captain Robert Scott’s ill fated 1911-13 Antarctic Expedition.

The losses from this operation caused a change in German strategy. Future attacks would be aimed at the Netherlands to UK convoys rather than the Channel patrols and barrage.[11]

 

 

[1] Naval Staff Monograph (Historical) 1922 vol. vi, The Dover Patrol i. p. 97.

[2] J. S. Corbett, H. Newbolt, Naval Operations, 5 vols. vol. iv, , pp. 373-74..

[3] Ibid. vol. iv, p. 372,

[4] Ibid. vol. iv, p. 378; R. Gray, Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships, 1906-1921, pp. 168-69.

[5] M. D. Karau, The Naval Flank of the Western Front : The German Marinekorps Flandern, 1914-1918, p. 124.

[6] Naval Staff vol. vi. p. 98; Corbett, Newbolt, Naval, p. 375; Karau, Naval, p. 125.

[7] Gray, Conway’s 1906-1921, pp. 73, 77-78; Karau, Naval, p. 125.Karau gives German times that were an hour ahead of British time. All times quoted have been adjusted to British time.

[8] Naval Staff vol. vi. p. 99; Karau, Naval, p. 125.

[9] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol. iv, pp. 377-78.

[10] Ibid. vol. iv. p. 378; Gray, Conway’s 1906-1921, pp. 168-69.

[11] Karau, Naval, p. 126.

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8 March 2018 · 3:50 pm

German Attack on the Dover Straits 17-18 March 1917

The Germans attempted to repeat their successful attack of 26-27 October 1916 on the Dover Straits anti-submarine net barrage and shipping on 23 November 1916, but it and a raid of 25-26 February on shipping between England and the Hoof of Holland did little damage.

A new attack on the Dover Straits was planned for 17-18 March 1917. Seven destroyers (802-960 tons, three 10.5 cm (4.1 inch) guns, six 50 cm (19.7 inch) torpedo tubes, 33.5-34 knots) of the 6th Flotilla would operate in the western half of the Dover Straits, five (852-990 tons, three 105 cm guns, six 50 cm torpedo tubes, 32-33.5 knots) of the 1st Zeebrugge Half Flotilla in the eastern half and four (568 tons, two 88 mm (3.45inch) guns, four 50cm torpedo tubes, 29 knots) of the 2nd Zeebrugge Half Flotilla in the Downs off the east coast of Kent. Korvettenkapitän Tillesen of the 6th Flotilla would lead the attack. Tillesen planned the operation carefully in order to give each group of destroyers  separate lines of approach and areas of operation.[1]

The British had the K class HMS Paragon (1072 tons, three 4 inch guns, two 21 inch torpedo tubes with 4 torpedoes, 29 knots) and three L class (965-1010 tons, three 4 inch guns, one .303 inch MG, four 21 inch torpedo tubes, 29 knots) destroyers protecting the net barrage, a light cruiser, a flotilla leader, four destroyers and two monitors off Deal and a flotilla leader and five destroyers at Dover.[2]

At 2250 HMS Paragon encountered three or four destroyers. She exchanged gunfire with them and fired a torpedo that hit a German ship without exploding. Paragon then blew up and sank with the loss of all but 10 men.[3]

HMS Laforey, assuming that Paragon had struck a mine, stopped at about 2300 and switched on her searchlight in order to see and pick up survivors. About 2315 she was narrowly missed by a torpedo that damaged HMS Llewellyn. Laforey’s captain assumed that it had come from a U-boat so set off in search of a submarine. Other British ships therefore remained in port.[4]

The German destroyers attacking the Downs came across the SS Greypoint, which was anchored in an exposed position because her engines had broken down. They torpedoed and sank her, damaged a drifter and bombarded Broadstairs and Ramsgate without causing much damage, although some civilians had narrow escapes. They then withdrew, outpacing Torpedo Boat 4, the only British warship to spot them.[5]

The British casualties are listed on Naval-History.net.

 

 

[1] J. S. Corbett, H. Newbolt, Naval Operations, 5 vols. vol. iv. pp. 361-62; R. Gray, Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships, 1906-1921, pp. 168-69; P. G. Halpern, A Naval History of World War I, p. 348.

[2] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol. iv. pp. 361-62; Gray, Conway’s 1906-1921, pp. 75-76.

[3] Naval Staff Monograph (Historical) 1922 vol. vi, The Dover Patrol i. p. 92.

[4] Ibid., pp. 92-93.

[5] Ibid., p. 94.

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6 March 2018 · 7:34 pm

German Attack on Dover Straits, 26-27 October 1916

The English Channel, especially the Dover Straits at its eastern end, was one of the main Allied shipping routes during the First World War. It saw a variety of different types of traffic: supplies and troop movements for the British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders; shipping heading for London, Britain’s biggest port; coastal shipping sailing between British ports; and coal shipments from Britain to France to replace supplies from French coalfields now occupied by the Germans. About 80-100 merchant ships passed through the Dover Straits each day.

German U-boat minelayers of the UC type were very active in minelaying in this area. The British employed trawlers as minesweepers. In the second half of 1916 an average of just under six merchant ships  per month were sunk or damaged by mines in British waters. This rose to 10 in the first half of 1917 but then fell back to four in the second half of 1917. On average 178 mines a month were swept in 1916, rising to 355 in 1917.[1]

An anti-submarine net barrage was also laid across the Straits, which was maintained by drifters, but in practice tides and current made the task of such small craft difficult even in good weather. They were at best armed with a 6 pounder gun and sometimes with just a machine gun, requiring them to be protected by destroyers and armed auxiliary steamers.[2]

On 24 October 1916 Vice Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, commanding the Dover Patrol, was warned that the German naval forces in Flanders had been reinforced by a flotilla of destroyers. He thought it unlikely that the Germans would attack the Straits because no troops were transported at night but that an attack on shipping in the Downs, an area off the north east coast of Kent, was likely.

He had defending Dunkirk the flotilla leader HMS Swift (2,170 tons, four 4 inch guns, two 18 inch torpedo tubes, 35 knots), four modern L class destroyers (966-1010 tons, three 4 inch guns, one .303 inch MG, four 21 inch torpedo tubes, 29 knots) on loan from the Harwich Force and four old destroyers, called 30 knotters because of their design speed (310-70 tons, one 12 pounder (76mm) and five 12 pounder (57mm) guns, two 18 inch torpedo tubes, 30 knots).

Four more L class destroyers were at Deal, defending the Downs.

Six Tribal class destroyers (855-1090 tons, two 4 inch or five 12 pounder (76mm) guns, two 18 torpedo tubes, 33 knots), two 30 knotters, two old torpedo boats (specifications varied but would have been small than the 30 knotters) and a P boat (613 tons, one 4 inch and one 2 pounder (40mm) AA guns, one 14 inch torpedo tubes, 20 knots) were at Dover.

The Tribals were assigned to the Dover Patrol because of their poor endurance. The P or Patrol boats were a wartime design with a low freeboard, a sharp turning circle and a deliberate resemblance to submarines, which it was hoped would allow them to close on U-boats and sink them by gunfire or ramming.

The wide range of displacements was a consequence of a British policy of giving different shipyards some discretion over ship design, provided that various criteria for speed, range, protection, armament etc were met.[3]

That night 24 German destroyers put to sea, commanded by Kapitän Andreas Michelsen, commodore of the High Seas Fleet’s flotillas.  They were divided into two flotillas, each split into two half flotillas. The 3rd Flotilla consisted of the 5th (seven ships) and 6th Half Flotillas (six ships), all armed with three 105mm (4.1 inch) guns and. The 9th Flotilla was made up of the 17th (six ships) and the 18th Half Flotillas (5 ships), armed with either three 105mm guns or three 88mm (3.45 inch) guns. All had six 50 cm (19.7 inch) torpedo tubes. They displaced 800-960 tons and were capable of 33.5-34 knots. The Germans called them High Seas Torpedo Boats but they are referred to as destroyers here as they were comparable to British destroyers.[4]

The 9th Flotilla was to attack the transport line between Dover and Calais and the 3rd the drifters and the barrage. Each Half Flotilla would have its own area of operation. The 30 knotter HMS Flirt, supporting the drifters, saw but did not identify German destroyers at 2135. The Germans opened fire on the drifters just after 2200. They sank six out of 28 drifters, a trawler and HMS Flirt. The other drifters were able to escape into the darkness, though three were badly damaged.[5]

The six Tribals at Dover were ordered to put to sea at 2250. Five minutes later the four L class destroyers at Dunkirk received the same instruction. The L class ships in the Downs were supposed to remain where they were but instead headed for Dunkirk because of two signalling errors. Fortunately for the British the Germans did not attack the Downs. The Germans attacked the transport line between 2300 and 2330 but sank only one of the 57 ships crossing the Channel, the transport Queen, whose crew were first allowed to board her lifeboats.[6]

The Tribals failed to concentrate but came into contact with the 9th Flotilla as it withdrew from its attack on the transport line. HMS Nubian came under heavy fire at close range. She attempted to ram the last German torpedo boat but was instead torpedoed in the bow. She was put out of action and had to be towed back to port.

HMS Amazon, which had become detached from the other Tribals, encountered some destroyers that he captain assumed were L class ships. They were Germans., who opened fire, putting her after gun and two boilers out of action. They also damaged a trawler.

HMS Viking, Mohawk and Tartar engaged the Germans but a shell hit Mohawk and jammed her helm. Tartar followed her and Viking had to change course to avoid a collision, with the result that contact was lost. The Dunkirk destroyers saw gun flashes but were too far away to get into action. This action showed that the barrage had limited effect, as 14 British destroyers had crossed it without being damaged.[7]

Nubian was too badly damaged to be repaired. On 8 November her sister ship HMS Zulu had her stern blown off by a mine. The two ships were put together by Chatham Dockyard and the combined ship was commissioned as HMS Zubian on 7 June 1917. She was credited with sinking the U-boat UC50 on 7 January 1918.[8]

The Germans sunk six drifters, a trawler, an empty transport ship and a torpedo boat and damaged two destroyers and several auxiliaries, suffering only minor damage to SMS 91 in return. British human losses were 45 dead, four wounded and 10 captured. The dead included all the crew of Flirt, except for a boat party that had been lowered just before she was sunk to pick up survivors from the drifters. The German success was helped by their previous inactivity, which made the British complacent.[9]

 

[1] M. Faulkner, A. D. Lambert, The Great War at Sea: A Naval Atlas 1914-1919, p. 105.

[2] L. Sondhaus, German Submarine Warfare in World War I: The Onset of Total War at Sea. Kindle Edition, locations 1902-50.

[3] Naval Staff Monograph (Historical) 1922 vol. vi, The Dover Patrol i. pp. 69-70; R. Gray, Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships, 1906-1921, pp. 71-72, 76, 96.

[4] J. S. Corbett, H. Newbolt, Naval Operations, 5 vols. vol. iv, p. 52 and footnote 2; Gray, Conway’s 1906-1921, pp. 168-69.

[5] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol. iv, pp. 55-57; Faulkner, Lambert, Great, p. 113; M. D. Karau, The Naval Flank of the Western Front : The German Marinekorps Flandern, 1914-1918, p. 77.

[6] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol. iv, pp. 58-62; Faulkner, Lambert, Great, p. 113.

[7] Naval Staff vol. vi. p. 82.

[8] Gray, Conway’s 1906-1921, p. 72.

[9] Karau, Naval, pp. 77, 79.

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30 January 2018 · 4:56 pm

The Battle of Imbros 20 January 1918

The evacuation of Gallipoli did not end the Royal Navy’s presence in the Aegean. There was a risk that the German battlecruiser Goeben and light cruiser Breslau might break out of the Dardanelles. This ships had officially been transferred to the Ottoman Navy and renamed Yavuz Sultan Selim and Medilli, but the German names are used here because they remained under German command and had German crews.

Rear Admiral Sydney Fremantle, commanding the RN’s Aegean Squadron, thought that  a break out would have one of three objectives: joining the Austro-Hungarians in the Adriatic was the most likely and had the highest chance of success; a raid on Allied transport routes was possible but had too low a chance of success to justify the risks involved; and raiding Mudros, Salonika, Port Said or Alexandria was unlikely as it would be a ‘desperate venture…end[ing] in the eventual destruction of the enemy.’ In fact, the last option was the one chosen.[1]

On 12 January 1918, Fremantle was succeeded by Rear-Admiral Arthur Hayes-Sadler. His squadron included the last two British pre-dreadnought battleships, HMS Agamemnon and Lord Nelson. Their speed of only 18 knots meant that they could not intercept  Goeben (22 knots) and Breslau (designed for 27.5 knots but capable of only 20 according to Arthur Marder). However, their armament of four 12 inch and ten 9.2 inch guns each versus Goeben’s ten 11 inch and twelve 5.9 inch guns and Breslau’s twelve 4.1 inch guns meant that they could stop them returning to the Dardanelles. The British had also laid a number of minefields.[2]

The Germans had also changed their command. In September Vizeadmiral Wilhelm Souchon had returned to Germany in September to take command of the 4th Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet. His replacement, Vizeadmiral Hubert von Rebeur-Paschwitz, hoped that a sortie would draw Allied ships away from Palestine, where the Ottomans were under pressure; boost Ottoman morale after the loss of Jerusalem; and show that warships were meant to be used.[3]

Aerial reconnaissance had told the Germans that HMS Lord Nelson was not at Mudros. She was taking Hughes-Sadler to meetings in Salonika. He would normally have used the yacht Triad for such a journey, but she was unavailable so he chose to use his flagship rather than a destroyer.[4]

The German staff assumed, on the basis of information from minesweepers, that the mines laid across the entrance to the Dardanelles in 1916 had been washed away. They did not know that more minefields had been laid since, which they could not avoid. Just before the operation began they received a captured chart that showed that there were more minefields than they had realised. It appeared to show that there was a gap between them, but they did not realise that it was only a rough indication rather than an exact plan. The German sortie achieved surprise but at the cost of not properly reconnoitring the enemy minefields .[5]

Goeben and Breslau sailed at 4:00 pm on 19 January, accompanied by four Ottoman destroyers. They left the Dardanelles at 6:00 am the next day, when destroyers turned back. Ten minutes later Goeben struck a mine, receiving only minor damage.[6]

In Mudros harbour on Lemnos the British had HMS Agamemnon, three light cruisers, a sloop, and four destroyers, only two of which were ready for action. Another minesweeper and a monitor were under repair. As well as HMS Lord Nelson, another 23 ships were on detached duty in six squadrons, including two cruisers, four light cruisers, six destroyers and eight monitors.[7]

Freemantle’s orders to detached squadrons, which were still in effect, were that if they encountered Goeben they should lead her ‘in a direction in which support may be obtained.’ However, the general signal that was to be made if Goeben was out was to ‘take all necessary action to engage the enemy.’ RN officers were bound to interpret this as an order to attack her. At 7:40 am the Germans attacked the British ships at Kusu Bay, Pyrgos. They quickly sank the monitors Lord Raglan and M28 before heading for Mudros, pursued by the destroyers HMS Tigress and Lizard.[8]

At 8:30 am Breslau struck a mine. The Germans could now see mines in the clear, blue water. Goeben attempted to take Breslau in tow but at 8:55 struck a mine, which caused serious damage. Breslau then detonated another four mines and began to sink. The Ottoman destroyers came out in order to pick up survivors but withdrew after coming under fire from the British destroyers at 9:30. The British briefly chased them but had to give up due to the risk from shore batteries and mines. They picked up 14 officers and 148 men from the Breslau.[9] Her official crew was 354.[10]

Goeben withdrew.  She struck another mine at 9:48, causing her to list by 15 degrees. She came under air attack but by 10:30 was into the Straits. At 11:32, however, she ran aground and was stuck for six days. Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service aircraft flew 270 sorties against her, dropping 15 tons of bombs. Strong winds, low clouds and effective anti-aircraft fire meant that only two hits were scored. Even if more had been obtained, the 65 and 112 pound bombs used could have done little damage. Two seaplanes armed with 18 inch torpedoes arrived on the seaplane carrier Manxman too late to attack. Indirect fire from a monitor was also ineffective.[11]

This left submarine attack. One E-class boat, E12 was available on 21 January, but one of her engine shafts had been fractured. This restricted her surface speed and battery recharging, but not her submerged speed, so Hayes-Sadler refused to allow her to attack, although her captain, Lieutenant F. Williams-Freeman, was willing. Two more, E2 and E14 arrived on 21 January, but nothing was done until the C.-in-C. Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sir Somerset Gough-Calthorpe, arrived on 25 January. E14, which was newer and had a more experienced captain and crew than E2, was sent in two days later, by when Goeben had been refloated and left. E14 was detected by hydrophones, forced to the surface by depth charges and destroyed by shore batteries. Her captain, Geoffrey Saxton White, was later posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. The citation, from naval-history.net, which also lists all the British casualties, read:

31354 – 23 MAY 1919

Admiralty, S.W., 24th May, 1919.

The KING (is) pleased to approve of the posthumous award of the Victoria Cross to the undermentioned Officers:

Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Saxton White, R.N.

For most conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty as Commanding Officer of H.M. Submarine “E 14” on the 28tlh of January, 1918.

“E 14” left Mudros on the 27th of January under instructions to force the Narrows and attack the “Goeben,” which was reported aground off Nagara Point after being damaged during her sortie from the Dardanelles. The latter vessel was not found and “E 14” turned back. At about 8.45 a.m. on the 28th of January a torpedo was fired from “E 14” at an enemy ship; 11 seconds after the torpedo left the tube a heavy explosion took place, caused all lights to go out, and sprang the fore hatch. Leaking badly the boat was blown to 15 feet, and at once a heavy fire came from the forts, but the hull was not hit. “E 14” then dived and proceeded on her way out.

Soon afterwards the boat became out of control, and as the air supply was nearly exhausted, Lieutenant-Commander White decided to run the risk of proceeding on the surface. Heavy fire was immediately opened from both sides, and, after running the gauntlet for half-an-hour, being steered from below, “E 14” was so badly damaged that Lieutenant-Commander White turned towards the shore in order to give the crew a chance of being saved. He remained on deck the whole time himself until he was killed by a shell.

_____

Enver Pasha, the Ottoman War Minister had warned von Rebeur-Paschwitz to be careful with his two ships because of their great value to the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans thought that the Germans had taken too great a risk with them.[12]

Goeben’s damage was not fully repaired until after the war, by when she was the property of Turkey. She was not scrapped until 1971. although she had by then been out of service for many years.[13] The Allies did not realise the severity of her damage and continued to fear another sortie by her.[14] She did operate in the Black Sea later in 1918.[15]

Hayes-Sadler, who was in poor health, was replaced by Rear-Admiral Cecil F. Lambert. The main negative for the Royal Navy of the action was that it allowed the Press to again bring up the story of the blunders that had led to Goeben and Breslau getting to the Ottoman Empire in 1914.[16] The operation was a mistake by the Germans, who upset their Ottoman allies, lost a modern light cruiser and had a battlecruiser damaged in return for sinking two monitors and a submarine.

[1] A. J. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow; the Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904-1919, 5 vols. vol. v, pp. 12-13.

[2] Ibid., p. 13.

[3] P. G. Halpern, A Naval History of World War I, p. 255.

[4] Marder, From. vol. v, pp.15-16.

[5] J. S. Corbett, H. Newbolt, Naval Operations, 5 vols. vol. v, pp. 85-86.

[6] Marder, From. vol. v, p. 15.

[7] Ibid., p. 14.

[8] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol. v, p. 84.

[9] Ibid., pp. 88-90.

[10] R. Gray, Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships, 1906-1921, p. 159.

[11] Marder, From. vol. v, pp. 16-17.

[12] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol. v, p. 92.

[13] Gray, Conway’s 1906-1921, p. 152.

[14] Marder, From. vol. v, pp. 18-19.

[15] Corbett, Newbolt, Naval. vol. v, p. 294.

[16] Marder, From. vol. v, pp. 19-20.

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