A Naval History of World War I
Page 26
It is hardly surprising that Revel was not satisfied with the treaty. He suspected Italy’s position in the Mediterranean naval balance would suffer to the advantage of the French should a major battle, even if victorious, leave the Italian fleet weakened by the inevitable losses. He was also concerned that the British and French might have suffered greater losses than they had admitted at the Dardanelles. Why else could the British, the world’s leading naval power, not send a meager four battleships to the Italians from the Dardanelles until they had been replaced by the French? Would the British and French really be able to live up to their obligations to provide active and permanent support to the Italians until the destruction of the Austrian fleet or the conclusion of peace? Reve suspected that if the Allies could not offer the very little that Italy was asking, it would be proof that they were reduced to a bad way in the war at sea and had, as he put it to Sonnino’s secretary, “more need of us than we of them.”10 Revel and the Italians wen also strengthened in their determination not to risk their major assets, the dreadnought; and battleships, unnecessarily. The mutual suspicions among the Allies over Adriatic operations never disappeared.
The actual entry of Italy into the war was by no means a foregone conclusion for there was substantial opposition to it. The former prime minister, Giovanni Giolitti a firm believer in neutrality, returned to Rome and gained widespread support in parliament. The government resigned, but the opposition to intervention melted away under the pressure of mass demonstrations led by fiery nationalists such as Gabriele D’ Annunzio and the more covert influence of the king. The majority of Italians probably preferred neutrality.11
The events in Italy also provided plenty of warning to the Austrians about what was coming, and Haus decided to strike the first blow as soon as possible after the outbreak of war. He hoped the effect on morale would be great. Haus was ready on 23 May to sail with the fleet as soon as it was dark. There was spontaneous and spirited cheering aboard the Austrian warships when news of the Italian declaration of was reached Pola about 4:00 P.M., and around 8:00 P.M. the fleet sailed. The majority of the heavy ships bombarded Ancona early on the morning of the 24th, while other force attacked Corsini harbor (near Ravenna), Rimini, Senigallia, and the mouth of the Potenza. There were also air raids on Venice and the airship hangars at Chiaravalle. In the northern Adriatic, the Italian destroyer Zeffiro attacked Porto Buso, destroying the pier and taking some prisoners. The Austrians, however, with the largest number of warships they would employ in a single operation during the entire war, inflicted the most damage that day with their bombardments. The cruiser Helgoland and two destroyers also sank the Italian destroyer Turbine in the south off Pelagosa. The operation was in many ways a gesture of spite and contempt by the Austrians, a thunderous opening to the war. There was never any chance of a real naval battle, the bulk of the Italian fleet was far away, and the French even farther.12
THE ADRIATIC STALEMATE
Abruzzi planned for a campaign in three phases in order to obtain command of the Adriatic. In the first phase, torpedo boats and light craft would undertake a relentless sweep of the lower and mid-Adriatic in order to seek and destroy enemy torpedo boats and submarines. Once the lower Adriatic was relatively clear, the Italians and their allies would proceed with the second phase, which would be the destruction of the bases for the enemy’s light craft at Ragusa, Gravosa, and possibly Spalato. They also would dismantle lookout stations in the lower Dalmatian archipelago, cut submarine cables, and occupy some of the smaller islands as observation posts. The older and smaller cruisers as well as auxiliary cruisers might be used in this phase. The third phase, aimed especially at provoking the Austrian fleet and attracting it to the south, would be the occupation of some island, such as Lagosta or Lissa, in the lower Dalmatian archipelago. This might be followed by other major occupations, such as Curzola or Meleda, again with the idea of tempting the Austrian fleet to battle. The occupations would, however, be transitory. The advance of the fleet to the north, which the Italians had anticipated in the later stages of the war, would be dependent on the outcome and speed of the first three phases.13 Unfortunately for Abruzzi and the Italians, their entry into the war coincided with the arrival of German submarines at Pola. Moreover, the Austrian fleet refused to be tempted into a move to the south. The Italians would not get very far in implementing their plans.
The reinforcements the Italians received from the British also must have been something of a disappointment. The four battleships under Rear Admiral Cecil F. Thursby that joined the Duke of the Abruzzi’s fleet at Taranto were all predreadnoughts, had seen service at the Dardanelles, and needed refitting—two had especially severe defects. They were a far cry from the dreadnoughts or Lord Nelson-class semidreadnoughts Revel had wanted. Given the nature of the war in the Adriatic, Revel was more concerned about the four British cruisers that were to be based at Brindisi. Three of the four were little better than the battleships: the Dartmouth had two boilers out of action and her speed reduced, and the older Amethyst and Sapphire could not make more than 20 knots—nowhere near the speed of the new Austrian light cruisers. The Dublin, which was in the best condition, was torpedoed on one of the early operations. Balfour, the first lord, admitted: “We cut a very poor figure with our Allies in the Adriatic.” The British, with many calls on their resources, did not believe they had anything better to spare.14
The French did better. Lapeyrère, the Mediterranean commander in chief, designated the twelve “best units” of his destroyer flotillas, as well as six submarines, to join the Italians at Brindisi. There was a price for this. Lapeyrère warned the British that with his restricted means he could not guarantee the extensive lines of communication in the Mediterranean, and this, with the impending arrival of German submarines, was ominous. The French suffered from an acute shortage of destroyers. Lapeyrère estimated that, counting patrols and the immediate protection of his battle fleet, the French needed a minimum of 56 destroyers and torpedo boats, but had only 47, and 5 of these had been detached for service at the Dardanelles, leaving a deficit of 15. The 12 destroyers Lapeyrère counted on for the immediate protection of his fleet were notoriously unreliable, and he considered he would need at least 20 in order to be sure of always having 10 ready to sail at any moment.15
However, these problems were counterbalanced by the fact that with the entry of Italy into the war the naval superiority of the Allies in capital ships was overwhelming. The big battleships and cruisers of the French navy became in fact something of a reserve force, almost searching for a role. The French battle fleet later shifted from overcrowded Malta to Argostoli (Cephalonia) and later to Corfu. This put them in a better position to intercept the Austrian fleet should it attempt to break out of the Adriatic, for it was not absolutely certain the Italian fleet could get around from Taranto in time. It was a hypothetical question; the Austrian fleet had no intention of, or any reason for, trying to break out of the Adriatic. The French destroyer problem worsened. With the development of the submarine war, no one ever had enough destroyers, and later in the war the French battle fleet at Corfu, unlike the Grand Fleet in the North Sea, had virtually no destroyers attached to it. They had to be recalled from other duties in the event it put to sea.
The French destroyers at Brindisi were a welcome addition to the Allied forces and did good work, but the French were compelled to withdraw them for other duties at various emergencies, such as the heavy troop movements to Salonika later that year. This added to the friction between the French flotilla leader and local Italian commanders.16
Abruzzi began his operations with a series of raids and bombardments of Austrian coastal installations in the lower and mid-Adriatic on 1, 5, and 9 June. In the northern Adriatic, Italian warships, usually destroyers operating from Venice, bombarded Austrian positions around Monfalcone. The Austrian light craft proved elusive; none were obliging enough to be caught at sea. Abruzzi thought high speed would preserve his ships from torpedo attack, but this
proved a false assumption. On 9 June, despite high speed and a strong destroyer escort, the British cruiser Dublin was torpedoed by the Austrian submarine U.4. The Dublin made it back to port but required extensive repairs.
The Austrians soon resumed their raids against the Italian coast in the north and central Adriatic. These pinpricks contributed to a disastrous decision on the part of the Italian naval staff. The division of old Sardegna-class battleships at Venice was far too slow to catch the Austrians. The Italians decided they should be supported by powerful but fast warships and sent the Fourth Division of four large Pisa-class armored cruisers and a squadriglia of Indomito-class destroyers to Venice. The cruisers were commanded by Rear Admiral Umberto Cagni, a well-known personality—he had been with Abruzzi on the Arctic expedition—but, perhaps, excessively bold officer. Revel thought the Pisas were fast enough to avoid an unequal encounter with the Austrian battleships and that their presence at Venice would curtail the activity of Austrian light craft or force the Austrians to expose large warships to support their flotillas. The move was also to partially answer the demand by the Italian army for support on their seaward flank. Abruzzi was reportedly “furious” about being deprived of the ships, and foreign observers with the Italians were equally critical. Captain Richmond, now liaison officer with the Italian fleet, regarded the Pisas as too slow to catch the Novaras—the newest and best of the Austrian light cruisers—as unnecessarily large for fighting them, and as a big target that would now be cut off from the rest of the Italian fleet. They really were, as we shall see, a disaster waiting to happen.17
Abruzzi, disappointed at the apparent lack of results from the pinprick raids, decided on 8 June that more tangible results would follow from the occupation of the island of Lagosta. The island, which Abruzzi thought could be taken by surprise with two hundred volunteers, could be part of a chain of lookout stations running eastward from Monte Gargano on the Italian mainland. It also could serve as a submarine base as well as an intelligence center to gather information for an advance to Sabbioncello. Revel and the staff initially had no objections to Lagosta, but questioned the advance to Sabbioncello, which, unlike Lagosta, was part of the mainland and could not be held without powerful forces. He suggested Abruzzi consider occupying and installing a signal station on the little island of Pelagosa in the middle of the Adriatic as a preliminary move toward landing on Lagosta. Pelagosa for Abruzzi had little value by itself to justify the risks involved, except as a complement to Lagosta. They could use Pelagosa as the optical connection between Lagosta and the Italian mainland and thereby reduce wireless transmissions except when urgent necessity or atmospheric conditions prevented visual signals. Nevertheless, Abruzzi ordered the Italian admiral at Brindisi to prepare for the occupation and informed Revel on 6 July that the landing would take place within a few days and that he also was preparing for the occupation of Lagosta.
Revel, however, was becoming increasingly concerned about taking Lagosta. The Italian army’s advance in the north had not yet achieved the desired breakthrough into Austrian territory, which meant that the Austrians might be able to spare sufficient troops without excessive risk to recapture Lagosta. Revel considered Montenegrin policy ambiguous, the Serbian army at the moment relatively inactive, and relations with Greece strained—leading to the danger that the Greeks would fall into the camp of the Central Powers. The increasing activity of submarines added to the danger to larger ships participating in the occupation of an island like Lagosta, which was close to the Dalmatian mainland. On 7 July the capo di stato maggiore advised waiting for the situation to clarify before reaching any definite decision. There was no objection to the occupation of Pelagosa.18
The same day the disaster many feared occurred in the northern Adriatic. That morning Cagni sent the large armored cruiser Amalfi, escorted by only two torpedo boats, to support a sweep by Italian destroyers. The Amalfi was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine UB.14, the first naval disaster of the war for the Italians. The small submarine had only just been assembled at Pola, and a week after sinking the Amalfi it left for Aegean waters. Her commander, Oberleutnant zur See von Heimburg, and all the officers and men, save for a single Austrian officer embarked as a pilot, were German. Germany and Italy were not yet officially at war, however, and would not be for another year, and the submarine had the Austrian designation U.26. The practice of giving German U-boats in the Mediterranean an Austrian number as well as their own created a certain amount of confusion, which was no doubt deliberate on the part of the Germans. They also paid little attention to the technicality of not being at war with Italy. Heimburg had already surprised and sunk the Italian submarine Medusa on 1 June while commanding UB.15 (Austrian U.11), which was on trials before being turned over to the Austrian navy and also had, except for an Austrian second in command, an all German crew.19
The loss of the Amalfi did not stop the first stage of Abruzzi’s plans. On 11 July the Italians occupied Pelagosa without opposition. The island had been undefended; the Italian garrison—just ninety men—found only a few lighthouse keepers hiding in a grotto the morning after they landed. The lighthouse was the principal feature of this barren little island, hardly more than a kilometer in length and 330 meters wide. What now? Was Pelagosa a preliminary to Lagosta? The Italians had not been able to make up their minds. The issue had been debated back and forth between the duke of the Abruzzi, the naval staff in Rome, and the ministry for over a month, to the exasperation of the British and French liaison officers with the Italian fleet. Both Thursby and Richmond urged taking Lagosta at the same time as Pelagosa. Richmond wrote in his diary: “Why the deuce don’t the Admiral go on & take Lagosta? If he waits, he will find they’ve defended it, & instead of walking in he’ll have to fight his way in. It is madness to delay.” Capitaine de vaisseau Daveluy, the French liaison officer, agreed, but doubted the island’s value: “The most certain benefit one would draw from its possession would be the preoccupation with keeping it.” A reconnaissance party that had landed from French destroyers gave weight to his words; the island had numerous points suitable for a landing and would therefore require many troops to be held securely.20
The landing on Lagosta was finally canceled on 27 July, although a force of almost three hundred sailors, guardia di finanza, and carabinieri had been assembled at Brindisi for the operation. The deciding factor was apparently the loss of the armored cruiser Garibaldi on the morning of 18 July. Abruzzi had shelled Ragusa the preceding month, putting the railway between Ragusa and Cattaro out of action. When Abruzzi learned the line had been restored, he sent the Fifth Division (Garibaldi-class cruisers) on another mission to cut the line. The cruisers were apparently spotted by an Austrian aircraft shortly after leaving Brindisi the evening before. Revel blamed the commander of the cruiser division for not informing the commander in chief he had been observed, thereby giving the latter the opportunity to cancel the operation because the essential element of surprise had been lost. The Austrian submarine U.4 torpedoed and sank the Garibaldi off the Dalmatian coast. Revel decided the second major loss in a week made the moment for landing on Lagosta “inopportune” and that it had to be deferred until the impression created by the losses had been “somewhat dissipated.”21
The decision left the fate of Pelagosa, which Abruzzi had regarded as merely a complement to the occupation of Lagosta, in doubt. The Italian garrison had a few pieces of light artillery for defense, and a submarine, either French or Italian, was stationed at the island. The initial Austrian reaction to the occupation was slow. A seaplane flew over the island on the afternoon of 13 July and returned with the destroyer Tátra, which shelled the wireless station, only to move off when the seaplane reported the presence of the French submarine Fresnel. The Fresnel was unable to get into a firing position and was bombed by the seaplane. The Austrians, now that they knew of the Italian occupation, improved their defenses at Lagosta and Lissa, thereby confirming Richmond’s warning that if delayed, future landings would be mo
re costly.
The Austrians counterattacked in the central Adriatic on 23 July. Cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo boats raided the Tremiti Islands and the Italian coast from Grottamare to Termoli. They repeated the attacks, joined by aircraft, somewhat farther to the north between Fano and Ancona on the 28th. The same day they made an unsuccessful attempt to recapture Pelagosa. The expedition consisted of two cruisers, six destroyers, and a number of torpedo boats, with the submarine UB.14 scouting in advance. The Austrian force subjected the island to heavy bombardment, but they had underestimated the Italian garrison as numbering only thirty, and the landing party of four officers and 104 men had to be recalled after meeting stiff resistance. The Italians did not enjoy the victory for long. Linienschiffsleutnant von Trapp in U.5 torpedoed the defending submarine, the Italian Nereide, under the cliffs of the island on the morning of 5 August.