A Naval History of World War I
Page 11
Lapeyrère, once he was reasonably sure Italy would remain neutral and Britain would be an ally—despite the ministry’s inexcusable delay later in informing him of the official declaration of Italian neutrality—divided his fleet into three groups headed toward the coast of Algeria. Lapeyrère interpreted the bits of intelligence that reached him through the fog of war as pointing to the western basin of the Mediterranean becoming the decisive area. There were, for example, reports the Germans had colliers in the Balearic Islands and that the latter would serve as bases for attacking the French convoys. The French fleet therefore missed Souchon after the Goeben and Breslau had raided the Algerian coast, and by the time the presence of the Germans at Messina was signaled on the 6th, some of Lapeyrère’s ships needed to coal, and he remained convinced the ultimate objective of the Germans was either the Austrian base at Pola or a breakout into the Atlantic.9 French forces were therefore far from the scene when Souchon came out of Messina and headed for the Dardanelles. Would their presence have made a difference? The fact France and Austria-Hungary were not yet at war might have inhibited French action in any pursuit into the Adriatic, while respect for Italian neutrality would have prevented a really close blockade. Perhaps even more important, once the Goeben got to sea the French had nothing large enough to damage her that could catch her.
All of this meant that the primary task of destroying the Goeben after she broke out fell on the British. French and British coordination at the very beginning of the war was difficult because the Entente Cordiale had not been a binding alliance, and the British had been careful to limit their prewar contacts in the Mediterranean.10 Moreover, the orders to Vice Admiral Sir Archibald Milne, the British commander in chief in the Mediterranean, had the effect of drawing his attention to the French transport. On 30 July the Admiralty informed him that his first task would be to assist the French transport by covering and, if possible, engaging individual fast German ships such as the Goeben, but to avoid being brought to action against superior forces except in combination with the French as part of a general battle. He was also to avoid becoming seriously engaged with Austrian forces before Italy’s attitude was clarified, and when it was, Milne was subsequently ordered to respect Italian neutrality and not allow any of his ships to come within 6 miles of the Italian coast. This meant British warships could not enter the 2-mile-wide Strait of Messina.11
When Souchon broke out of Messina, he feinted toward the Adriatic and then turned eastward. Captain Howard Kelly in the light cruiser Gloucester followed and exchanged fire with the Breslau, but had to break off pursuit on the afternoon of the 7th when his bunkers were nearly empty. This left Rear Admiral E. C. T. Troubridge patrolling south of Corfu off Cephalonia. Troubridge commanded the First Cruiser Squadron, consisting of the armored cruisers Defence, Black Prince, Duke of Edinburgh, and Warrior. Troubridge could have intercepted the Goeben. He began a move toward this objective, but, finally, influenced by his flag captain Fawcett Wray, turned away after deciding that to engage would be a violation of orders not to engage a superior force. His cruisers had only 9.2-inch and 7.5-inch guns and might have been destroyed by the faster Goeben’s 11-inch guns before they could get within range. Souchon therefore had a clear run to the Aegean, for Milne with the three battle cruisers wasted twenty-four hours by diverting northward to combine with Troubridge at the entrance to the Adriatic after receiving an erroneous signal on 8 August to commence hostilities with Austria.12 Souchon coaled unmolested in the Aegean at the island of Denusa, near Naxos, and was eventually allowed by the Turkish government to enter the Dardanelles on the evening of the 10th. Thanks to the fumbling of their enemies, the Goeben and Breslau had escaped to exercise an important role for the remainder of the war.13
The escape of the Goeben and Breslau opened the war on a sour note for the British and French, far overshadowing any Austro-German coolness over the reluctance of Haus to rush to the aid of Souchon at Messina. Actually Haus’s action was a blessing in disguise, for the Goeben might then have been bottled up in the Adriatic. It is interesting to see how the differing dates for the respective declarations of war managed to upset everyone. Troubridge’s decision not to engage was probably the most controversial, because he had interpreted his orders to avoid action with superior forces as meaning to avoid the Goeben rather than the Austrian fleet, which the Admiralty had intended. Troubridge was later tried before a court martial for failing to engage the Goeben but was “fully and honourably” acquitted. He was not, however, employed at sea again, although he was later given command of the British mission to Serbia, where he would have an adventurous time (see chapter 9). Milne’s conduct was approved by the Admiralty, at least on the surface, but he too was never employed again.14
The escape of the Goeben had its effect in France too, and Lapeyrère was the subject of fierce criticism, particularly after he relinquished his command in October 1915. A retired naval officer and nationalist deputy, Vice Admiral Bienaimé, led the attack, which culminated in hearings before the Chamber of Deputies Commission de la Marine de Guerre in 1917. The hearings, in which the minister of marine in the first year of the war, Victor Augagneur, strongly backed Lapeyrère, provided an insight into the personal animosities and rivalries within the French navy among the minister, the commander in chief, and the naval staff. Charles Chaumet, former president of the commission, himself became minister in August 1917 and conducted his own enquiry. These enquiries resulted in at least a partial exoneration for Lapeyrère. The general conclusions were that although he had used the fleet to convoy transports despite orders not to, the minister had declared that he approved and covered the dispositions taken, and in view of the speed of the Goeben, it was impossible to affirm that if offensive measures against her had been taken from the first day of operations the enemy cruisers would have been destroyed.15
The Ottoman government evaded any British and French protests over sheltering the Goeben and Breslau by announcing it had “purchased” the ships, and in a formal ceremony on 16 August, both hoisted the Turkish flag. The Turks were able to justify their action by claiming the ships were substitutes for the two dreadnoughts, the Sultan Osman and Reshadieh, which they had been building in Great Britain and which had been seized by the British on the outbreak of war although Turkish crews had already arrived to bring them out. Churchill had been well advised to seize the ships, which became the Agincourt and Erin in British service, for after the signature of the Turkish-German alliance on 2 August, the Ottoman government had offered to send the Sultan Osman to a German port. Turkish public opinion was incensed because the two ships had been the object of public subscription and had been symbolic of Turkish aspirations to avenge the losses of the Balkan Wars. The Turks were not mollified by an Admiralty offer of a fixed payment per day for their use for the duration of the war. The Goeben now became the Jawus Sultan Selim and the Breslau became the Midilli, and Souchon later became chief of the Turkish fleet (Befehlshaber der schwimmenden Türkischen Streitkräfte). The sale was a fiction, and it was also not until 23 September that the Turks offered Souchon command of the Turkish fleet and general supervision over a naval reform program to be undertaken by a German naval mission. Souchon was appointed a vice admiral in the Ottoman navy while remaining a rear admiral on active service in the German navy.16 The wearing of Turkish uniforms and fezzes was another pretext, used only for ceremonial purposes, and few Turkish personnel initially joined the ships. On the other hand, the Germans became trapped in their fiction, for after a short time it was very difficult to take the ships back without alienating the Turks. Souchon and the Admiralstab were also far from happy over the prospect of having to fight under the Turkish rather than their own flag.17
There were other disadvantages as well, as the Goeben and Breslau were now removed from the Mediterranean scene with little likelihood of ever joining the Austrian fleet and more easily bottled up in the Dardanelles than they would have been in the Adriatic. The French troop transport was virtua
lly undisturbed, and for the next several months the British and French enjoyed the free use of the Mediterranean. They made good use of it, and large convoys and a steady stream of shipping brought men and supplies to the western front with the Germans powerless to impede it. Yet the Germans had gained a significant diplomatic advantage, because the Goeben, as one historian expressed it, greatly facilitated, although not necessarily caused, Turkish entry into the war on the side of Germany.18
While the fate of the Goeben was still undecided on 6 August, the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, Prince Louis of Battenberg, and Captaine de vaisseau Schwerer, subchief of the French naval staff, concluded a convention in London that gave the French the general direction of naval operations in the Mediterranean. The British naval forces in the Mediterranean would cooperate with the French fleet until the Goeben was destroyed, but once this was accomplished, the three battle cruisers and two or three armored cruisers would regain their liberty of action unless the Italians broke their neutrality. The British forces remaining in the Mediterranean, namely, one or two armored cruisers, four light cruisers, sixteen destroyers, and the mobile defenses of Malta and Gibraltar, would be placed under the orders of the French commander in chief, and Malta and Gibraltar would serve as bases for the French. The French navy would assure the protection of British as well as French commerce throughout the Mediterranean and also would watch the exits of the Suez Canal, as well as the Straits of Gibraltar, to prevent enemy cruisers or auxiliary cruisers from entering the Mediterranean. If war was declared between Austria and France, the French would act against Austrian naval forces and assure a vigorous surveillance of the entrance to the Adriatic.19 The Anglo-French Convention of 6 August 1914 reveals to what a startling extent the British were ready at the beginning of the war to turn over their historic role in the Mediterranean to the French in order to concentrate against the Germans in the North Sea, where they anticipated the decisive encounters would take place. The British discovered, as the war became a protracted one, that their interests in the Mediterranean were simply too great to entrust everything to the French, and they were forced to devote more and more resources to this theater.
Actually, the ink was hardly dry on the convention when the British realized that they could not abandon as much in the Mediterranean to the French as they might have desired. The Goeben had escaped, and this now meant that the battle cruisers Indomitable and Indefatigable, supported by the Gloucester, had to keep close watch off the Dardanelles. The news that German crews were to remain in the Goeben and Breslau despite their alleged sale to Turkey led the Admiralty on 15 August to order the armored cruiser Defence, all available British destroyers, and the destroyer tender Blenheim to the Dardanelles. Although Lapeyrère retained theoretical command over these British forces, in practice the eastern Aegean was to become what amounted to a British zone outside of direct French control.20
Lapeyrère was not terribly concerned with the Dardanelles and apparently happy to leave watching them to the British. The transport spéciale was his first major concern, and once that was successfully accomplished, he was preoccupied with the Austrian fleet in the Adriatic. In the beginning the French government was as reluctant to declare war on the Austrians as the Austrians were to declare war on the French. The French had, however, to take their Russian allies into account, for the Russians were and would remain apprehensive that the Austrian fleet might go to the Dardanelles for operations in the Black Sea. There was, as we have seen, little basis in reality for this concern.
By 13 August the French had finally declared war on the Austrians, and the minister of marine ordered Lapeyrère to undertake immediate action against the Austrians with a view to influencing the Italians. He left the choice of an objective up to Lapeyrère. The French actually had no plan for war against Austria alone, but the naval staff hoped the demonstration might lead to the Austrian fleet coming out for a decisive battle and cause the Austrians to lift their blockade of the Montenegrin coast. The naval staff did not consider an attack on the major Austrian naval base at Pola possible, and penetration into the Gulf of Cattaro would be equally difficult. Lapeyrère’s solution was a sweep into the Adriatic to surprise the Austrian ships blockading the Montenegrin coast. Joined on 16 August by Troubridge’s cruisers and destroyers, the French fleet managed to cut off the small Austrian cruiser Zenta off Antivari and overwhelm it. An Austrian destroyer managed to get away.21 The operation used the proverbial hammer to swat a flea, and naturally the Austrian fleet was sensible enough to refrain from coming out to certain defeat. A curious feature of many prewar plans was the near total absence of what to do next if the enemy fleet did not come out to do battle.22 Lapeyrère was now faced with the problem of what action to take while his fleet consumed about five thousand tons of coal and one thousand tons of fuel oil per day. He needed a base in the Adriatic or near its entrance, but the search for one was complicated by the necessity to respect Italian and Greek neutrality. The French navy also possessed little in the way of colliers or oilers. As Admiral Docteur later put it, the naval authorities seemed to think that a battle would take place off the piers of Toulon in the first days of a war. In good weather the French were able to improvise limited replenishment at sea, but Lapeyrère was eventually forced to establish a system of rotation between the Adriatic and distant Malta for replenishment and essential chores such as boiler cleaning.23
The French had difficulty bringing their superior force to bear on the Austrians. Haus would do little to oblige them, especially after the loss of the Zenta. Moreover, he kept a wary eye on his former ally Italy. As long as the possibility existed that Italy might attack Austria, he considered it his first duty to keep the Austrian fleet intact as much as possible “for the decisive struggle” against the Austrians’ “most dangerous foe.” He would therefore risk little against the British and French, for even a glorious victory that resulted in heavy losses would be much more harmful than useful. He had the full support of Kaiser Franz Joseph in this policy.24
The lack of a major fleet action or serious landing attempt in the Adriatic did not preclude minor operations with limited risks on both sides. The Austrians operated against the Montenegrin coast, which was restricted in length and where the Montenegrin port of Antivari was only 35 miles from Cattaro. The French made periodic sweeps into the Adriatic, frequently to cover ships carrying supplies to Montenegro. The French operations hardly troubled the Austrians. A serious operation against Cattaro certainly would have, and the Austrian naval base in the gulf—commonly referred to in the Austrian navy as the Bocche—was vulnerable, relatively isolated, and dominated by Montenegrin guns on Mount Lovčen. The navy studied the project, but any serious expedition was vetoed by the French army’s general staff.25 General Joffre, chief of the general staff, opposed any expedition against the Austrians anywhere in the Balkans. The army could not spare troops from the western front, and it was necessary to defeat the Germans, not the Austrians. At the beginning of 1915, he ordered the Operations Bureau of the general staff to prepare a paper to “kill the project in the egg.”26 The expedition against Cattaro as far as the French were concerned would never occur. The Italians, the British, and the Americans all considered projects against the Dalmatian coast during the war, but for various reasons the plans came to nothing. The common thread was that there always seemed to be better places to employ troops. Cattaro remained in Austrian hands and was eventually used as a valuable submarine base until the end of the war.
The French eventually and with great difficulty established artillery on Mount Lovčen, but the Austrians took effective measures in their own defense. When the French 15-cm guns on Mount Lovčen were finally in a position to open fire on 15 October, they found themselves faced with strong counterbattery fire from the 24-cm guns of the small, old Monarch-class battleships in the Bocche. On 21 October Haus sent the semidreadnought Radetzky to Cattaro, and her 30.5-cm (12-inch) guns were decisive. The French artillerymen on Mount Lovčen were forc
ed to evacuate their positions.27
Haus continued his refusal to be drawn into a risky and what some Austrian officers termed a hurrah action against the French despite pressure from some Austrian and German quarters. It was the old embarrassing question, at a time when the army was fighting so hard with such heavy losses: What is the navy doing? This pressure became particularly strong after the beginning of the Dardanelles campaign (see chapter 5). The Austrians could provide strong technical reasons for it being impracticable to send desperately needed ammunition to the Turks by means of an Austrian light cruiser or to use any of their handful of submarines to attack Allied warships off the Straits.28 The inability of the Austrians to do this would be the major reason why the Germans eventually established their own submarine force in the Mediterranean (see chapter 12).
In March 1915 it was more difficult for the Austrians to reject a German request for a diversionary attack on the French at the mouth of the Adriatic for the purpose of drawing Allied ships away from the Dardanelles. Haus had the courage of his convictions and defended what was to many an inglorious and certainly an unpopular position with a classic statement of defensive strategy. He argued that despite their great superiority, the French had not really achieved anything in the Adriatic, and their blockade line had been forced farther to the south. If the Austrian fleet could not get out of the Adriatic—and where would it go or what would it want to do?—the French had not been able to seriously disturb Austrian shipping along the Dalmatian coast. The strategy of patient waiting, the fleet-in-being, was the only rational one for the Austrians because Lapeyrère had nothing to do with the Dardanelles landings and none of the French ships reported at the Dardanelles had come from the Adriatic. Even an Austrian success at the mouth of the Adriatic would not alter the situation at the Dardanelles. Haus argued that it was difficult to make many men understand that in certain cases not to do anything was the only correct thing.29