A Naval History of World War I
Page 3
On the other hand, the British benefitted immensely from their superiority in older types of warships. Obsolescent ships, particularly cruisers that could not be employed in a major fleet action in the North Sea, performed invaluable work in the exercise of sea power in distant waters. The large British merchant marine, which included vessels of virtually every conceivable type, also provided a source for auxiliaries that after conversion performed tasks scarcely dreamed of before the war.
The British superiority in numbers also must be qualified by the generally better protection afforded German warships and by the excellence of German gunnery and optical systems. Nevertheless German warships tended to have a shorter range than their British counterparts. Newly commissioned warships on both sides were in the process of “working up” at the beginning of the war and nowhere near the peak of efficiency. Mere “bean counting” is therefore a more complicated business than at first sight.21
A realistic estimate of the best and most modern forces likely to be employed at the outbreak of war by the most important British and German forces, the Grand Fleet and the High Sea Fleet, respectively, would give the following results:
Grand Fleet
High Sea Fleet
Dreadnoughts
21
13
Predreadnoughts
8
8
Battle cruisers
4
3
Armored cruisers
NA
1
Light cruisers
11
7
Destroyers
42
90
These are maximum theoretical figures, particularly for destroyers, and take no account of ships unavailable because of refits, accidents, or other detachments. For example, in a flotilla of twenty destroyers, usually 20 percent would be absent, having their boilers cleaned or undergoing minor repairs.22 Ships are also by their nature mobile, and their numbers (particularly of armored cruisers) change at short notice as units are recalled from other stations or entered into service as they are brought out of the reserve.23
There is also the question of quality. How did the British and German navies compare with each other in terms of men and matériel? The subject has been closely examined. Speaking in broad generalities, British warships tended to have larger caliber guns and greater range than their German contemporaries. British destroyers had more guns but fewer torpedo tubes than German destroyers, and they usually enjoyed a larger radius of action. The big German warships were generally better protected both above and below water. They were harder to sink, with more extensive underwater compartmentation, and they were beamier because, for reasons of economy, the beam of British warships was limited by the size of docking facilities.
British gunnery was improved immensely by the introduction of director control for firing, but at the outbreak of war, only eight battleships incorporated this innovation. The Germans had excellent stereoscopic range finders, better than their British counterparts, and displayed a high standard of gunnery. The Royal Navy, as mentioned, missed the opportunity to employ on a wide scale the truly revolutionary system of range plotting developed by Arthur Pollen. British shells also suffered from a hidden defect revealed by the test of war: they were relatively ineffective and tended to break up on contact with enemy armor. British propellant was less stable than that used by the Germans, and their ammunition hoists were not protected from flash. The problem was aggravated by the practice in action of leaving the doors to magazines open in order to speed the rate of fire. All of this, when added to the unstable cordite, proved disastrous to the battle cruisers at Jutland. German torpedoes and, particularly, mines also were more effective. In fact the Royal Navy did not have a truly effective mine until it copied a German example later in the war.24
The British also suffered from a disadvantage in terms of naval bases, because traditional naval bases such as Plymouth and Portsmouth dated from the days of naval rivalry with France. Except for Chatham, too far to the south, the British did not have a first-class naval base on the east coast to face the new challenge from Germany. The development of new bases proceeded very slowly; shipbuilding had a much higher priority. The Admiralty had designated Rosyth on the Firth of Forth as a major base as early as 1903, but little work had been accomplished there by the outbreak of war. Cromarty, farther to the north, had been designated as a second-class base but had no protection against submarines, and the anchorage at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys was virtually unprotected. In contrast the German North Sea bases, notably Wilhelmshaven and Cuxhaven, had elaborate defenses supplemented by the heavily fortified offshore island of Helgoland. The Germans also had the use of the Kiel Canal, recently enlarged for dreadnoughts, to shift warships from the Baltic to the North Sea without the necessity of sailing around the Danish Peninsula.
What of personnel? Here the British enjoyed the advantage of a volunteer service composed of those who had enlisted for long periods of service. The German navy was to a large extent composed of three-year conscripts, which meant that at all times a sizable portion of the service was new to naval life. The Germans were thoroughly drilled and trained, but the fact remained that officers and men of the Royal Navy spent far more time at sea. The Royal Navy possessed that indefinable something, call it confidence, that came from its long tradition of naval supremacy and constant navigation in all seas and under all conditions. The Germans were the newcomers at sea, worried about proving themselves. Unfortunately not all the British in high positions had the imagination or brilliance to match that seamanship, and the war demonstrated that the quality of staff work left much to be desired. Tactical training tended to be unimaginative, training in antisubmarine warfare was largely nonexistent, and the Grand Fleet was bound by extensive and rigid battle orders that left little scope for the initiative of individual commanders. There were those who argued that the changed conditions of warfare necessitated this. The commander in chief of the Grand Fleet, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, fifty-five years old at the outbreak of the war, was highly competent and possessed the full confidence of his officers and men. He was, however, a great centralizer, reluctant to delegate authority. The Germans had their problems too, not the least being the great social gulf between officers and men, and on the whole they were less successful in the question of man management than the British, as the final collapse in 1918 demonstrated only too clearly.25
It is always important to remember, however, that because the British and Germans were the leading contenders, their navies have received the greatest amount of scrutiny, and their faults have been mercilessly exposed. Still, when compared with other navies in the world, they set the standard. Whether it was sea keeping, gunnery, the amount of time spent in port compared with time at sea, or the experience of war, in a host of naval matters, the French, Austrians, Italians, Russians, and even the Americans, until they gained the necessary experience, were a cut below.
The Anglo-German naval race had by 1914 settled down to a long haul in which the British did what they had to do to maintain the necessary lead. Some of the edge seemed to have been taken off the competition by the spring of 1914 and, perhaps symbolic of this, a British naval squadron was actually invited to visit Kiel for the traditional regatta week in June, with each British vessel paired with a German “chummy” ship acting as host. The image of men soon to be at war with one another fraternizing has always had a certain fascination, and especially in this case, for it was in the midst of the regatta that the news of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination arrived, setting off the train of events that led to war. Perhaps this indicates that the Anglo-German naval race was less dangerous by this time, if only because it was predictable. This was not true of the other and less well-known naval races then going on. These were far more volatile—particularly in the Mediterranean and, even more so, in the Aegean.
The French navy was the leading Mediterranean power. For a long time second only to the Bri
tish, the French had been eclipsed by the German fleet by 1905, completing at sea what had been evident on land since the Franco-Prussian war. The French navy without British assistance stood virtually no chance against the Germans in the north and had tacitly recognized this by concentrating its newest and best forces in the Mediterranean. Here the French hoped to maintain their superiority over the Italian and Austrian fleets, allies in the Triple Alliance.
Command of the sea from the very beginning of the war was essential to the French, because of the necessity of repatriating troops from North Africa for what were assumed to be the decisive battles on the French frontier. The fact that Italy and Austria were rivals, perhaps more likely to be fighting against each other than together as allies, certainly was known to the French. But they could not assume Italy would not be against them. At least initially the French had to prepare for the “worst case,” which for them became even worse in the first decade of the twentieth century. Both the Italians and Austrians sought to improve their fleets and began construction of dreadnought-type warships. The two were really building against each other, but as their fleets grew it became apparent that should they combine, they might actually have a chance of wresting control of the sea from the French. This new opportunity was the result of two major factors. The first was the relative decline of the French navy and the delay in its building programs, brought about to a large extent by the ideological shenanigans of the radical governments of the early twentieth century. The second factor was the decision by the Austro-Hungarian government to construct modern dreadnoughts, converting what had been essentially a coast-defense force into a blue water navy that could not be disregarded. Austro-Hungarian naval development was in many ways the truly revolutionary event in the Mediterranean.26
The French navy had emerged from the nineteenth century with what was contemptuously dubbed “a fleet of samples,” the reflection of a confused naval policy resulting from the constant turmoil caused by politics or surrounding the debate over the theories of the Jeune École. The French had seemed on the road to recovery with the passage of the naval law of 1900, which would have provided for a fleet of 28 battleships, 24 armored cruisers, 52 destroyers, 263 torpedo boats, and 38 submarines.27 The law appeared to establish a firm plan for the future, including the construction of homogeneous classes. Unfortunately the minister of marine from June 1902 to January 1905 in the government of the noted radical Emile Combes was Camille Pelletan, another radical who revived the controversies of the late nineteenth century in his attempt to democratize the navy. Pelletan retarded construction of the battleship program, for he was another believer in “cheaper” naval means, such as torpedo boats and submarines. Submarines may have been the weapon of the future, but they were no substitutes for a balanced fleet, and Pelletan played havoc with the naval program at the very moment the dreadnought-type warship was to come into service. French construction fell far behind in both quantity and quality of capital ships. The French built six semidreadnought Danton-class battleships while the other navies were building real dreadnoughts. The first French dreadnoughts were not laid down until 1910, which was not only well after the British and Germans but after the first dreadnoughts of their Mediterranean rivals as well.
The French navy returned to the proper course with a pair of able naval ministers, Vice Admiral Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère and Théophile Delcassé, and the naval law of 1912 provided for a French fleet by 1920 of 28 first-class battle ships, 10 scout cruisers, 52 destroyers, 10 ships for overseas stations, and 94 submarines. The French accelerated this program in 1913 with newer and larger dreadnought classes, but none were ever completed. When war broke out, the French had only two dreadnoughts in service and two still completing their trials. Eight more had been laid down, of which only three were completed. The French had a relatively large number of armored cruisers, but these were big, vulnerable targets, expensive to man, too slow for real cruiser work, and too weak to stand up to real battleships. The program’s scout cruisers also had not been laid down yet—they were scheduled for 1917—and the French suffered severely from lack of this type, which proved invaluable to the British and Germans in the North Sea. Lapeyrère, who followed his term as minister by commanding the 1ère Armée Navale—the major French fleet in the Mediterranean—from 1911 to 1915, also complained of the quality of the destroyers. And many of the submarines were outmoded, their achievements during the war a disappointment despite the gallantry of their crews. To compound their difficulties, the French had the problem of unstable powder, which caused the loss of two battleships before it was solved. The Austrians and Italians had a real chance to catch up, at least on paper. On the other hand, the French retained an advantage in older classes of warships.
On the eve of the war the French navy numbered:
Dreadnoughts
2 (plus 2 on trials)
Semidreadnoughts (Danton-class)
6
Predreadnoughts
14
Coast-defense ships
1
Armored cruisers
19
Protected cruisers
9
Destroyers
81
Large torpedo boats
17
Small torpedo boats
170
Submarines
67–75
Many of the older ships or smaller torpedo boats or submarines were of little value, suitable only for local defense. In realistic terms, in a fleet action the major French force in the Mediterranean—the 1ère Armée Navale—would probably include:
Dreadnoughts
2–4
Semidreadnoughts (Danton-class)
6
Predreadnoughts
9
Armored cruisers
7
Protected cruisers
1–8
Destroyers
24
Once again it is difficult to predict how many of the older battleships and protected cruisers would actually have been included.28
The Italian navy—the Regia Marina—had a tradition in the late nineteenth century for technical innovation, introducing battleships such as the Dandolo or Italia, which placed it at least temporarily in the vanguard of naval design. Unfortunately the resources devoted to maintenance of the fleet were not always adequate, and Italian ambitions did not always match the means of the Italian kingdom. Nevertheless the Italians laid down their first dreadnought in June 1909, a year before their French or Austrian rivals. The ship, the Dante Alighieri, was designed with the then-novel triple-gunned turrets. The execution of the Italian building program proved to be much slower than anticipated, partially due to the inadequacies of the Italian steel industry. Nonetheless the Italians did build extremely powerful warships, and by the outbreak of the European war they had three dreadnoughts in service and another three in varying stages of completion. They were planning another class—never to be completed—of four superdreadnoughts. Vice Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel, capo di stato maggiore (chief of naval staff) in 1913, wanted a fleet at least 60 percent that of the French and with a 4:3 margin of superiority over the Austrians. In July 1914 the Italians had:
Dreadnoughts
3
Predreadnoughts
6–8
Armored cruisers
7
Protected cruisers
11
Light cruisers
3
Destroyers
33
Torpedo boats
71–85
Submarines
20–22
Italian predreadnoughts tended to be more lightly protected and/or armed than their rivals, although faster, and it is questionable whether some should even have been counted as battleships at all. There also were questions on the state of Italian training, and during the war British officers discovered that Italian practices in gunnery and fire control left much to be desired, even on the most imposing of the new dreadnoughts.29
The navy of Austria-Hungary, the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine, was probably one of the most interesting of the world’s navies at the time. At the close of the twentieth century, it is difficult to realize that Austria was once a naval power, but in 1914 the Dual Monarchy controlled much of the eastern shore of the Adriatic, with major ports at Trieste and Fiume and naval bases at Pola and in the Gulf of Cattaro. The k.u.k. Kriegsmarine had a tradition of victory, notably in the Battle of Lissa in 1866, which the Italian navy dreamed of avenging. The navy reflected the multinational composition of the Habsburg monarchy. The majority of officers were German or Hungarian; German was the service language, but ships’ companies were mixed, unlike the army, in which entire regiments were of the same nationality.
The k.u.k. Kriegsmarine essentially had been a small coast-defense force. The decision after the turn of the century to build large modern warships had a significant effect on the Mediterranean balance of power. The expansion of the fleet began when Vice Admiral Rudolph Graf Montecuccoli was Marinekommandant (1904–13). The old emperor, Franz Joseph I, had never been terribly interested in the navy, but his nephew and heir to the throne, the ill-fated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was an enthusiastic supporter. The Austrians made a clear break with tradition when they started to build three ships of the semidreadnought Radetzky-class in 1907. In 1910 they laid down the first two of a class of four true dreadnoughts. By the time the first, the Viribus Unitis, was completed in October 1912, the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine had to be taken seriously. The ship, with triple-gunned turrets, was more powerful than any of the predreadnoughts the British had at Malta. Moreover, Austria-Hungary was far more likely than Italy to be an ally of Germany in the event of war. In 1914 the Austrians were planning to lay down a second class of four dreadnoughts, the Ersatz Monarchs. There was a common assumption in England and France that the Austrians were merely acting as surrogates for the Germans. This was wrong; the Austrians had their own interests, and their major rivals were their ostensible allies the Italians.30 On the outbreak of war Austrian strength was: