A Naval History of World War I Read online

  A NAVAL HISTORY OF WORLD WAR I

  A NAVAL

  HISTORY OF

  WORLD WAR I

  PAUL G. HALPERN

  NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS

  ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND

  This book has been brought to publication by the generous assistance of

  Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

  © 1994

  by the United States Naval Institute

  Annapolis, Maryland

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced

  without written permission from the publisher.

  Second hardcover printing, 1995

  Second paperback printing, 1999

  Third paperback printing, 2012

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Halpern, Paul G. 1937–

  A naval history of World War I / Paul G. Halpern.

  p.cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  eISBN 978-1-61251-172-6

  1. World War, 1914–1918—Naval operations. I. Title.

  D580.H34 1994

  940.4´5—dc20

  93-24265

  CONTENTS

  LIST OF MAPS

  PREFACE

  1 • THE NAVAL BALANCE IN 1914

  2 • NORTHERN WATERS: THE FIRST SIX MONTHS

  3 • THE MEDITERRANEAN: 1914–1915

  4 • SWEEPING THE SEAS

  The Defense of Allied Trade

  German Forces Overseas: Colonies and Cruisers

  The Imperial Convoys

  Coronel and the Falklands

  5 • THE OVERSEAS CAMPAIGNS

  Abortive North Sea and Baltic Projects

  The Defense of Egypt and the Suez Canal

  The Dardanelles Campaign

  The Mesopotamian Campaign

  The Eastern Mediterranean after the Dardanelles

  North Russia

  6 • THE ADRIATIC

  Italy Enters the War

  The Adriatic Stalemate

  Evacuation of the Serbian Army

  The Drifter Patrol and the Otranto Barrage

  Attempts to Break the Adriatic Stalemate

  7 • THE BALTIC

  German and Russian Naval Plans

  Opening Moves

  British Submarines

  The 1915 Campaign

  The British and Russian Submarine Offensive

  1916: Mine Warfare Predominant

  1917: Revolution and Paralysis

  Operation Albion

  8 • THE BLACK SEA

  The German and Turkish Challenge: 1914–1916

  Amphibious Operations on the Caucasus Front

  Russian Naval Superiority

  Decline and Collapse of the Black Sea Fleet

  9 • THE DANUBE

  The Serbian Campaign

  The Romanian Campaign

  10 • FROM DREADNOUGHTS TO SUBMARINES: 1915–1916

  The Germans Search for a Strategy

  The First Submarine Campaign

  The “Restricted” Submarine Campaign

  The Battle of Jutland

  Resumption of the Submarine Campaign

  11 • THE SUBMARINE CRISIS: 1917

  The Decision for Unrestricted Warfare

  The Peak of German Success

  British Minelaying

  The Dover Barrages

  The Convoy System

  German Surface Raiders

  The High Sea Fleet and the Submarine Campaign

  12 • THE MEDITERRANEAN: 1915–1918

  The U-Boat Flotilla

  Ineffective Allied Countermeasures

  The British Direct the Antisubmarine War

  The Mediterranean Convoy System

  13 • 1918: THE SUBMARINE THREAT CONTAINED

  A New Strategy for the Grand Fleet

  The Dover Strait and the Coast of Flanders

  The Zeebrugge and Ostend Raids

  The Last Sortie of the High Sea Fleet

  The Atlantic Bridge

  The Northern Barrage

  Naval Aviation in the Final Months

  Der Tag: The End of the War

  MAPS

  NOTES

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  LIST OF MAPS

  1. The North Sea

  2. The British Isles

  3. The Mediterranean

  4. The Adriatic

  5. The Aegean

  6. The Pacific

  7. The Indian Ocean

  8. The North Atlantic

  9. The South Atlantic

  10. Egypt and the Suez Canal

  11. Aegean coast of Asia Minor and approaches to the Dardanelles

  12. Mesopotamia

  13. North Russia

  14. Sabbioncello Peninsula, Curzola, and the Dalmatian coast

  15. The Baltic

  16. Gulf of Riga

  17. The Black Sea

  18. The Bosphorus and vicinity

  19. Lazistan coast

  20. The Middle Danube

  21. The Lower Danube

  22. The English Channel and Dover Strait

  23. Patrol areas established by the Malta Conference (March 1916)

  24. The Otranto barrages (October 1918)

  25. East coast of Northern America

  26. The Northern barrage

  PREFACE

  The first question any reader of this study might legitimately ask is, why do we need yet another history of the First World War at sea? There are a number of excellent histories; however, historians, like naval or aviation designers, often produce similar products when faced with the same requirements. A writer naturally analyzes where and what the most important events were, where the most modern and innovative weapons were used, and what the most important decisions were. But such analysis leads to books centered on events in the North Sea and the waters around the British Isles, with some mention of the Dardanelles and, of course, the distant battles off Coronel and the Falklands in the early months of the war. The books focus to a great extent on the activities of the Royal Navy.

  This is as it should be—there is no denying that the British home waters and the North Sea were the center of gravity, and no matter what angle the war is studied from, the Royal Navy played a major role. A writer who has only a certain amount of space understandably concentrates on these areas. Staff colleges also tend to emphasize these events. The picture of the war that emerges, though, is not complete, for by concentrating on the North Sea and the British Isles, there is an assumption that nothing much from a naval point of view—with a few obvious exceptions—happened elsewhere. The study of these secondary campaigns is relegated to specialized and fairly narrowly focused studies, and some are gradually forgotten. The role of the smaller navies also is glossed over and gradually forgotten.

  The aim of this study, as a glance at the table of contents will show, is to shift the focus and present a very broad picture of the war, for this was indeed a world war, and naval operations took place throughout the world and were conducted by many navies. There is a penalty for this. Just as an aircraft or naval designer must sacrifice some feature to accentuate another, in a broad study of this sort within a single volume, operational detail will have to be sacrificed. The reader will not find an in-depth analysis of naval battles such as Jutland. We already have some excellent studies of that battle, and here depth and detail have had to be sacrificed somewhat for breadth. It appears almost foolhardy to attempt a study of this scope, for it cannot be encyclopedic and include everything. The reader may find one of his pet subjects missing; as I write this, I can think of a few subjects I have not been able to include, such as shipbuilding and logistics, or the
controversial role of the large K-class British submarines. It was not possible, lest the manuscript grow too long, to have a detailed examination of the naval aspects of the peace settlements in 1919. One can only hope that the notes will point the interested reader in the right direction.

  The notes are an aid; they are not essential. They are included to show what material portions of an account are based on and to indicate where one might find further information on a subject of interest. There are those who dislike the “spots and dots” all over a page, but they need not worry. With only a few exceptions I have tried to limit the notes strictly to citations. The extended discussions that sometimes make the notes of a scholarly book or article more interesting than the text are omitted; the reader who is so inclined can safely ignore them.

  In writing a study of this sort, one soon realizes how much opportunity remains for naval historians of the First World War. The Russian navy is a prime example, for there are major discrepancies in Russian, émigré, and German accounts of the same operations. One hopes that recent political developments will permit historians who have the ability to use the Russian language to mine Russian archives. There is also a need for studies of national navies, particularly those of France and Italy, that integrate naval affairs with domestic concerns. Even in the case of the United States, where we have excellent studies on aspects on the American naval role in the war, there is really nothing approaching the study on the navy as a whole similar to what the late Professor Marder did for the Royal Navy.

  There is an old joke that the one thing that distinguishes the history of naval operations from the history of military operations on land is ships sink. We usually know what happened—it’s hard to disguise the fact that a ship sank—but it is much more difficult to determine why a ship was used (or not used) in the way she was. In general there often seems to be more information about the ship’s technical specifications and design.

  In a topic as broad as this study, it would be unwieldy to follow strict chronological lines. I have therefore divided the work into theaters or geographical areas and, inevitably, there will be some going backward and forward in time. Geographical names are always a problem, and I have tried to use those most familiar to the people at the time, rather than those a modern linguistic purist would employ. Most of the places named in the text are on the maps accompanying the volume. The reader is no doubt aware that many names have changed and the current place name will not necessarily coincide with the one in use in 1914–18. Russian ship names were a particular problem. I have attempted to standardize them based on both Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships and Anthony J. Watt’s The Imperial Russian Navy, which usually, but not always, coincide.

  I should like to thank for their assistance: David Brown, Robert Coppock, and the staff of the Naval Historical Branch, Ministry of Defence, London; Roderick Suddaby, Keeper, Department of Documents, and the staff of the Imperial War Museum, London; Dr. R. A. Morris and the staff of the manuscripts division, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; Nicholas Rodger and the staff of the Public Record Office, London; Contre-Amiral Chattel, Chef, and Pierre Waksman, Conservateur en chef, and the staff of the Service Historique de la Marine, Vincennes; G. J. A. Raven, Director of Naval History, Royal Netherlands Navy; and Dr. Evelyn Cherpak, Naval Historical Collection Division, and the staff of the Library, Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.

  For their advice and assistance I would also like to thank: Professor Jon Sumida; Professor Holger Herwig; Professor Charles H. Fairbanks; Professor Robert M. Grant; Dr. David Trask; Dr. John N. Westwood; Dr. Norman Friedman; Mr. Erwin Sieche of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Österreichische Marinegeschichte, Vienna; Ing. Erich Heyssler and Mrs. Nicholas Baker; and Capitano di fregata (CP) Ezio Ferrante. Ms. Carolyn Reynolds and the Inter-Library Loan Office of Strozier Library, Florida State University, performed wonders in tracking down obscure titles, in addition to the extra work caused by the unknown individual who stole the library’s entire set of Der Krieg zur See some years ago.

  For permission to quote from copyright or unpublished material I should like to thank: the Trustees of the National Maritime Museum (Papers of Admirals Beatty and Limpus), Mr. Thomas Troubridge (Papers of Admiral E. C. T. Troubridge), Commander Richard A. Phillimore (Papers of Admiral Richard F. Phillimore), and Mrs. Margaret Munro (Papers of Commander G. M. Eady). I should also like to apologize to any holders of copyright I have been unable to trace.

  Documents that are Crown Copyright appear by permission of the Controller, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

  The maps of the Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Adriatic, the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, Sabbioncello and the Dalmatian coast, the Mediterranean patrol zones, and the Otranto barrage appear by permission of Routledge. Mr. Peter Krafft, Director of Cartography, and his staff at the Florida Resources and Environmental Analysis Center prepared all other maps.

  PAUL G. HALPERN

  Tallahassee, Florida

  A NAVAL HISTORY OF WORLD WAR I

  1

  THE NAVAL BALANCE IN 1914

  The First World War was preceded by a generation of navalism, for perhaps never before or since have naval affairs been of such interest to the citizens of the great powers. This attention was fueled by the popular press, which tended to present warships as the most advanced product of the science and technology of the machine age. The public also was fascinated with more peaceful applications of maritime technology, as evidenced by the cult of the ocean liner, in which interest in the Blue Riband of the Atlantic—the award for the fastest crossing—was strong. Ocean liners were considered potential auxiliary cruisers in wartime, and their silhouettes appeared in naval annuals. Both warships and ocean liners were symbols of national pride and subjects for national competition. In the first decade of the twentieth century, this competition was keenest between the British and the Germans.1

  For roughly a century—the Pax Britannica—the British Empire appeared to be the largest and wealthiest in the world, and the Royal Navy was assumed to have enjoyed supremacy. Like all sweeping generalizations, this supposition must be qualified; for the closer one examines the subject, the more complicated things become. British predominance was challenged, and there were periodic naval scares in the nineteenth century, when British naval supremacy may have been more apparent than real. The French were frequently more innovative, introducing, for example, the ironclad Gloire in 1859 and submarines in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The development of the torpedo gave the French new opportunities, and the theories of the Jeune École concerning commerce warfare against British maritime trade posed a real challenge to the Royal Navy. There were times when the French were a more creditable threat than many have realized. In the 1890s, however, the French for a variety of reasons fell behind, and by the time of the Fashoda crisis in 1898, the French navy was no match for the British.2

  By the beginning of the twentieth century, the traditional British rivalry with France and Russia had been replaced by a far more serious challenge—that of Imperial Germany. The belated unification of Germany and its rapid industrialization is one of the great success stories of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, by the end of the century there had been a gradual cooling of relations and a growing trade rivalry between Great Britain and Germany.3 The fact that the German economy was outstripping the British economy meant that the Germans had the potential to be a far more serious maritime rival. The Germans were in a position to dominate the Continent both militarily and economically, and their decision to challenge the British at sea created a new and revolutionary situation in international affairs. The Anglo-German naval race was one of the most important features of the prewar period, but it is important to remember that the powerful modern warships being built by other countries also did much to erode that perceived British supremacy.

  The German naval challenge to Great Britain is usually linked to the ideas of one man, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. Tirpitz, a torpedo of
ficer who had commanded the German squadron in the Far East, became state secretary of the Imperial Naval Office, or Reichsmarineamt (RMA), in June 1897. Under German naval organization, the state secretary of the RMA was responsible for administration and, of particular importance, for naval building programs. The Admiralstab, created in 1899 to replace the former chief of the high command of the navy (Oberkommando), was responsible for operational planning. The chief of the Imperial Naval Cabinet completed what might be termed the triad of the German naval hierarchy and was certainly of equal importance, for he was close to the kaiser and served as a vehicle of influence for admirals with a grievance. The arrangement seemed almost designed to encourage rivalries; each department might check the others, and Tirpitz operated in a highly politicized environment. He was always, and remains, an extremely controversial figure.4

  Tirpitz outlined the program for his well-known theory of deterrence, Risikogedanke (doctrine of risk), in a memorandum of 15 June 1897 entitled “General Considerations on the Constitution of our Fleet according to Ship Classes and Designs.” Germany must choose its ship designs with the greatest threat to its sea power in mind, Tirpitz asserted, for there was not enough money to meet every threat. Tirpitz considered England to be Germany’s most dangerous enemy, against which “we most urgently require a certain measure of naval force as a political power factor.” Because numerous British overseas bases made commerce raiding against the British “hopeless,” the German fleet should be constructed to “unfold its greatest military potential between Helgoland and the Thames.” A fleet of this type would be adequate to deal with France and Russia, who could be disregarded for the moment in the determination of ship classes. Tirpitz argued that the military situation against England demanded “battleships in as great a number as possible.” Technical factors, such as the capacity of German dockyards, as well as personnel and training, would limit their objectives, at least for the moment. Thus the goal for 1905 would be two squadrons of eight battleships each, a fleet flagship, and two reserve battleships—a total of nineteen ships. Tirpitz cautioned that Germany would have to concentrate its efforts at home and keep overseas commitments within “strict limits,” for “only the main theatre of war would be decisive.”5