A Naval History of World War I
Page 34
The Russian high command remained committed to the defensive for the bulk of the fleet with only slight modifications. The naval situation for the Russians would improve in the course of the year with the entry in service of the remaining three dreadnoughts. How soon they would work up to efficient units was another question. The Russians had also begun the war deficient in destroyers, with only the Novik (1,260 tons) up to modern standards. The Russians added two more of the same class during the year, as well as three Bars-class submarines. The core of the fleet, however, still had as its major objective the defense of the capital by preventing a German breakthrough into the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland. The dreadnoughts and two most modern predreadnoughts (Andrei Pervozvanny and Imperator Pavel I) together with the cruisers would fight from behind the central mine-artillery position in conjunction with the coast artillery. The battleships would engage the major German units seeking to break through, the cruisers would engage the German minesweepers, and Russian destroyers, deployed between the rear of the minefields and the heavy ships, would engage German destroyers and submarines. The Russians also planned to deploy submarines along the approaches to the “Central Position.”
All of this assumed the Germans would make a major attempt to break into the Gulf of Finland, which by early 1915 the Russian naval staff doubted. They believed the Germans would be more likely to act in the Gulf of Bothnia or the approaches to the Gulf of Finland. They therefore redeployed their forces and shifted two old battleships (the Slava and Tsarevitch), two cruisers, two divisions of submarines, two gunboats, two minelayers, and a seaplane transport to the area between Abo on the Finnish coast and the Åland Islands. Four gunboats, a destroyer, and two submarines were stationed among the skerries off the southern Finnish coast. A division of destroyers and torpedo boats was deployed to the Moon Sound region along with a division (approximately six) of submarines, joined later by two gunboats and a minelayer. In early July the Russians also began laying a new “Forward Position” between Hangö and the island of Dago while they strengthened the “Central Position” by laying antisubmarine nets in front of the minefield.
The Russians carried on their policy of integrating coastal batteries with naval operations, continuing the construction of batteries in the Åland Islands region and Moon Sound. The Russians in fortifying the Åland Islands were in violation of the 1856 treaties ending the Crimean War, which had provided for their demilitarization. The Aland and Moon Sound positions were located on the flank of any force trying to blockade or break into the Gulf of Finland. The importance of the Moon Sound and Gulf of Riga regions grew as the German army advanced along the Courland coast, and in the summer of 1915 the Russians began the construction of a forward naval base in the Rogokul Islands in the Gulf of Riga. On 2 May, when the ice had thawed sufficiently, the Russians commenced mining the Irben Strait, the southern entrance to the Gulf of Riga. These minefields were systematically extended and renewed throughout the year with, according to Russian sources, a total of 2,179 mines. The Russians also dredged Moon Sound to a depth of 28 feet, so that eventually battleships and cruisers could enter from the Gulf of Finland. The Russian high command planned to continue their offensive minelaying operations off the German coast, and they also planned to extend submarine operations against German communications, but they continued to eschew an active role for their main forces on the high seas outside of the Gulf of Finland. The distinctive feature about Russian planning was the close integration of naval forces with minefields and coastal artillery. It was indeed a form of naval trench warfare.29
The great offensive by the Central Powers began on 2 May in the Gorlice-Tarnów area of western Galicia, hundreds of miles from the Baltic. As a preliminary move, the army high command ordered Armeegruppe Lauenstein to attack on the extreme left of the German line on 27 April in order to tie down Russian forces. The army requested naval support, and on 27 April the cruisers Lübeck and Thetis shelled Libau. With the success of the German land offensive, the army announced its intention to take Libau by a surprise assault and again requested naval support. On 7 May a strong German naval force under the command of Rear Admiral Hopman, chief of the Baltic reconnaissance forces, shelled Russian positions around Libau. Two destroyers bombarded Steinort to the north. The old (1890) coast-defense ship Beowulf joined the armored cruisers Prinz Adalbert (flag), Roon, and Prinz Heinrich; the small cruisers Thetis, Augsburg, and Lübeck; and the inevitable destroyers, torpedo boats, and minesweepers. The Baltic forces were reinforced from the High Sea Fleet. The Fourth Scouting Group under Rear Admiral Scheidt, consisting of the cruisers Stettin, München, Stuttgart, and Danzig and two destroyer flotillas (twenty-one destroyers), covered the operation from any Russian surface forces that might sortie from the Gulf of Finland or Riga by patrolling for several days along the line Gotskar Sandö (island north of Gotland)-Ösel and in the channel between Gotskar Sandö and the Swedish coast (Hufvudskär).
The Russians replied to the German operations in the characteristic manner. On the night of 6–7 May, the Novik, four Okhotnik-class (615 tons) and six Ukraina-class (580 tons) destroyers were sent to lay mines off Libau in areas the German minesweepers had already worked. Rear Admiral Bakhirev with the armored cruisers Admiral Makarov and Bayan and cruisers Oleg and Bogatyr came out to support them. The Russians also sent E.1 and E.9 to sea, the former, towed by icebreakers to open waters, went on a wild-goose chase due to faulty intelligence that a German battle cruiser would be passing to the north of Bornholm. The Russian cruisers clashed inconclusively with the München of the Fourth Scouting Group, but the Germans, uncertain of Russian strength, did not close. The Russian destroyers, steaming to the east and close to the coast, were undetected and succeeded in laying their mines. One of the officers in the Novik was surprised they were not spotted with “their funnels emitting flames like torches.”30
Prince Heinrich now decided to make use of the Seventh Battleship Division of the Fourth Squadron (four Wittelsbach class) under Vice Admiral Ehrhard Schmidt, which had been placed at his disposal and were at Kiel. Schmidt, accompanied by the cruiser Danzig but without any destroyer screen against submarines, was to proceed to the west of Gotland and Gotska Sandö to waters off the Gulf of Finland in order to be in a position to intercept the Russian cruisers if they tried another sortie. Schmidt did not have sufficient cruisers for scouting (except for the Danzig) and encountered nothing on his cruise from the 8th to the 10th of May.
The German bombardment of the Russian positions around Libau on 7 May was undisturbed by the Russian minelaying operations, and the following night the Russians evacuated the city. When German light forces entered the harbor early on the morning of the 8th, however, the new destroyer V.107 had her bow blown off by a mine and became a total loss. What of the British submarines? E.1 (Laurence) fired at the cruiser Amazone near the approaches to the Sound, but missed, and on the way back to base spotted the four battleships of Schmidt’s squadron early on the morning of the 10th, but they were too far off to attack. On the 7th E.9 (Horton) fired on the destroyer S.20 on patrol off Brüsterort, but the destroyer saw the torpedo track and took evasive action. On the 10th Horton also appears to have spotted the smoke of Schmidt’s four battleships and spent most of the day maneuvering unsuccessfully to get close enough to attack. The next morning E.9 attacked the armored cruiser Roon, one of three cruisers and several destroyers accompanying three transports on their way back from Libau. They were actually the mother ships for the auxiliary mine-hunting division returning to Neufahrwasser to coal. Horton knew he had missed the Roon, but thought from the sound of an explosion that he had sunk one of the transports. This was not the case; the torpedo must have exploded after striking the bottom.31
The Germans had taken a considerable risk with the old battleships and cruisers and had been very lucky. The forces detached from the High Sea Fleet were recalled to the North Sea shortly after the capture of Libau. The German navy had been sharply divided on the retention of Li
bau, both before and after the operation. The initial German objective had been to render the port useless to the Russians. Prince Heinrich, who had repeatedly advocated a landing at Libau, and Admiral Hopman had been in favor of its retention, but the Admiralstab, chief of the High Sea Fleet, and Tirpitz had been opposed. They believed retention of the port would require resources the navy could not spare, especially when coupled with the demands for garrisoning and administering bases on the coast of Flanders. In the end it was probably the military success on land that decided the issue. Once Libau was firmly in German hands, the navy eventually developed it into a useful base, much closer to the decisive waters at the entrance to the Gulfs of Finland and Riga.32
On 20 May Admiral Essen died suddenly as the result of a lung infection. He was undoubtedly the outstanding Russian seaman of the war. His successor was Vice Admiral Kanin, who had commanded the minelaying forces. Generally acknowledged as competent, he does not appear to have had the commanding personality of his predecessor. A British officer attached to the tsar’s staff noted in his diary: “He wears glasses and looks (as the Emperor said to me) more like a Professor than an Admiral.” Essen was supposed to have recommended his chief of staff, Vice Admiral Kerber, as his successor, but the latter was alleged to have been passed over because of his German name.33 Kanin soon asked for permission to employ the new dreadnoughts outside of the Gulf of Finland. Once again the high command refused the request.
The war of mines went on. The Deutschland, escorted by cruisers, laid another field near the Oleg Bank southeast of the island of Utö at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland on 24 May, and U.26 managed to slip into the Gulf of Finland and on 4 June torpedo and sink the Russian minelayer Yenisei between Odensholm and Baltic Port. The minelayer, hugging the shore en route to Moon Sound, sank with heavy loss of life. The Germans were less successful from the 3d to the 5th of June when they tried to penetrate the Irben Strait and use torpedo boats to lay mines at the southern entrance to Moon Sound while seaplanes launched from within the Gulf of Riga by the seaplane carrier Glyndwr attacked the Mühlgraben works near Dünamünde. The Glyndwr (2,245 tons) was a British freighter interned at Danzig when the war began and subsequently modified to carry four seaplanes. The Russians were alert, and the Germans ran into a hornet’s nest of opposition, including two gunboats and sixteen destroyers and torpedo boats. The Russian submarine Okun attempted to torpedo one of the German armored cruisers covering the operation, only to be rammed by the destroyer G.135. The submarine escaped with a bent periscope. The Germans broke off the attempt to break into the gulf, but the Glyndwr struck a mine off Windau while returning to Libau and was badly damaged. Off Lyserort, two destroyers coaling from the collier Dora Hugo Stinnes were attacked by E.9 on the morning of the 5th. The collier was sunk and S.148 badly damaged.
The Gulf of Riga was steadily becoming a focal point of naval activity as the German army advanced in Courland. The First World War on the eastern front was far different than the picture most people have derived from the more familiar fighting in the west. It was much more fluid, and this was particularly true in Courland, for the major fighting and great battles were taking place far to the south in Poland and Galicia. Courland and the Baltic represented the extreme left flank of the German line. The area consisted to a large extent of barren wastes, and when the German offensive began in April, the front lines were made up of block posts at 10-mile intervals. Roads and communications were poor, and the Germans had few troops to spare for the area. The German forces, the Armeegruppe Lauenstein (the name subsequently changed to Niemen-Armee), represented approximately five and a half infantry and seven and a half cavalry divisions. The Russians retreated steadily under German pressure. The Germans occupied Windau on 18 July, and the advance did not stop until the Russians established a strong line before Riga.34
The German navy cooperated with the German army as it advanced on Windau, bombarding Russian positions and clashing with Russian destroyers on 28 June. At the end of the month, the Russians decided to use their cruisers for a raid on Memel, ostensibly to influence German public opinion at a moment when the kaiser was supposed to review the German fleet at Kiel and to offset German propaganda about control in the Baltic. Rear Admiral Bakhirev, flying his flag in the Admiral Makarov, sailed shortly after midnight on 1 July in company with the Bayan, Bogatyr, and Oleg. The Rurik and the destroyer Novik followed. The Russians deployed submarines in advance along the possible route of German warships in case they put to sea. The other Russian destroyers were considered to be too slow and were left behind. The Rurik and Novik lost contact with the other Russian forces in thick fog, and Bakhirev was forced to postpone the bombardment for a day. The Russians initially intended to proceed down the east coast of Gotland with the bombardment of Memel scheduled for dawn on the 2d.
Fresh intelligence of German movements caused Bakhirev to alter his plans. On the evening of 1 July, the minelayer Albatross laid minefields to the northeast and northwest of Bogskär. She was escorted by the cruisers Roon, Augsburg, and Lübeck and seven destroyers. The Germans had apparently passed very near to the Russians on the night of the 1st, but fog had prevented them from sighting each other. The German senior officer, Commodore von Karpf in the Augsburg, then reported that he had completed his mission and was returning to base, giving his position, course, and speed. This was intercepted by the Russians, and Bakhirev realized he had the opportunity to intercept the Germans with superior forces. He canceled the planned operation against Riga and steamed to intercept. The ability of the Russian naval staff to read German wireless messages enabled them to advise Bakhirev of changes in the Germans’ course and speed. Consequently, there was every chance the superior Russian force (two or three armored cruisers and two light cruisers) would catch the single German armored cruiser, two cruisers, minelayer, and seven destroyers.
Despite their advantage in intelligence, the Russians scored only a partial success. Shortly before they encountered the Russians, the Albatross and Augsburg, accompanied by three destroyers, separated from the German force to proceed via the south end of Gotland to Rixhöft while the remainder of the force proceeded via Steinort to Libau. Just after 6:30 on the morning of the 2d, the Augsburg sighted the Russians. Outnumbered by the four Russian cruisers, Karpfbroke toward the west and recalled the Roon and Lübeck by wireless. Although the Augsburg was one of the fastest German cruisers in the Baltic and had an advantage in speed over the Russians, the Albatross was slower. Karpf ordered the Albatross to make for the safety of Swedish territorial waters at Gotland, while the Augsburg, under cover of smoke from the destroyers, escaped to the south. The Albatross, badly damaged, ran aground in sinking condition in Swedish waters near Östergarn. The Russian cruisers had, according to the Russian official history, wasted time and ammunition in a poorly coordinated effort to destroy her while the remainder of the Germans escaped. They were therefore low on ammunition when they started back toward the Gulf of Finland and encountered the Roon, Lübeck, and the four destroyers at approximately 9:00. Bakhirev called on the Rurik for assistance, but low on ammunition, broke off the action after the Bayan and Roon scored hits on each other. Neither was seriously damaged. The Russian admiral also called on the old battleships Slava and Tsarevitch, then anchored at Örö (northwest of Bengtskär) to support the cruisers. The Germans, fearing an attempt to draw them toward superior forces, also turned away to rejoin the Augsburg. The Rurik, as yet unengaged and whose four 23.5-cm guns outgunned anything in the German force, encountered the Germans at 9:45. The Rurik engaged the Roon but suddenly turned away as a result of what turned out to be a false submarine alarm. The Russians lost contact.
The Germans’ troubles were not yet over. Admiral Hopman put to sea in the Prinz Adalbert together with Prinz Heinrich after receiving wireless reports of the engagement. The German armored cruisers ran into thick fog at first, and then in the early afternoon (1:57) encountered Max Horton in E.9. Horton succeeded in torpedoing the Prinz Adalbert.
Destroyers hunted E.9 without success but prevented Horton from following up his attack, and the Germans managed to get the ship back to port.
The Russians had more reason than the Germans to be dissatisfied with the results of 2 July, for despite their initial advantage, they had succeeded in eliminating only the minelayer Albatross, subsequently raised and interned in Sweden for the duration of the war.35 The events of 2 July remind one of similar incidents in the North Sea, especially the Dogger Bank action. Priceless secret intelligence derived from wireless intercepts is used to obtain an initial advantage that nevertheless fails to yield the desired tactical result. The excessive attention paid to the Albatross in this case parallels the example of the Blücher in the earlier episode.
The immediate German response to the loss of the Albatross and damaging of the Prinz Adalbert was to offset the bad impression and retain the morale advantage by detaching Vice Admiral Schmidt’s Fourth Squadron (the Wittelsbach [flag], Wettin, Mecklenburg, Schwaben, Zähringen, Baunschweig, and Elsass) from the North Sea along with the Eighth Torpedo Boat Flotilla (eleven destroyers). To retain that same morale edge, on the 11th and 19th of July the Germans undertook cruiser reconnaissances toward the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, with the battleships in support. They also hoped to catch the Russians should the latter repeat their sortie of 2 July against the light craft supporting the advance of the German army.