The Black Sea was not a happy place for German submarines. UC.13, returning from a patrol to the eastern portion of the Black Sea, where she accounted for four sailing craft and a steamer, ran aground in bad weather off the mouth of the Sakaria River near Kirpen Island on 29 November. Souchon sent two small Turkish minesweeping gunboats, the Tasköprü and Yozgat, to help recover matériel from the wreck. They were caught by the destroyers Derzki, Gnevny, and Bespokoiny off Kirpen Island and sunk on 10 December.
Although the end of the Dardanelles campaign relieved the Turks and Germans of the threat of British submarines in the Sea of Marmara, and the fall of Serbia opened the route for munitions, it had little immediate effect on the shortage of coal at Constantinople. The Russians kept the pressure on the Anatolian coast. It nearly cost them one of their precious dreadnoughts on 5 January when the Imperatritsa Ekaterina of the Second Battle Group, covering the operation against the coal traffic, was attacked in error by the destroyer Bystry, which fired seven torpedoes that, fortunately, missed. The incident was blamed on gross navigational errors on the part of both ships.36
The frequent presence of Russian destroyers off Zonguldak brought out the Goeben again. Souchon intended for her to arrive off Zonguldak to cover the entrance of the empty collier Carmen (4,400 tons). The collier, however, was caught and sunk by the destroyers Pronzitelni and Leitenant Shestakov in the early morning hours of 8 January off Kirpen before she could reach Zonguldak. While steaming westward back to the Bosphorus, the Goeben sighted the destroyers after daybreak and gave chase, only to run into the Imperatritsa Ekaterina. The destroyers had used their wireless to warn of the Goeben’s presence, and the Russian dreadnought had increased to full speed to reach the scene. She opened fire at a range of approximately 18,500 meters, and the Goeben turned away to the southwest. The Goeben fired only five salvoes in the first four minutes of the battle before the Russians were out of range. The Imperatritsa Ekaterina fired ninety-six 305-mm rounds, and Russian sources report the artillery duel lasted from 9:45 to 10:13 A.M. Her rate of fire declined, however, due to mechanical problems in the turrets caused by the strain of rapid fire. No hits were scored on either side, although splinters from near misses fell on the Goeben’s deck before the German ship drew steadily out of range and the Imperatritsa Ekaterina broke off the action and turned to the northwest. The brief encounter clearly demonstrated that the Goeben was no longer the most powerful single warship in the Black Sea. The new Russian dreadnoughts may have been slower, but they outgunned her.
The Germans tried to redress the balance by stationing submarines off Zonguldak, but their efforts to attack Russian warships were not successful. On 6 February the First Battle Group attacked Zonguldak again. The seaplane carriers Imperator Alexander I and Imperator Nikolai I launched a total of fourteen aircraft to bomb the harbor after the destroyer bombardment had ended. The seaplanes bombed and sank the collier Irmingard (4,211 tons), which was subsequently raised and temporarily repaired. UB.7 managed to evade the two destroyers circling the seaplane carriers and fire a torpedo at one of the carriers. The Germans heard an explosion and thought they had scored a hit. They had not, but the seaplane carriers rapidly steamed away, leaving two of their aircraft to be recovered and towed by destroyers. The submarine missed an opportunity to attack the destroyers owing to a lack of torpedoes, and there was a fairly general belief among the German naval officers that the UB boats were too small, weakly armed, and slow to achieve good results in the Black Sea.37
The Russian attacks on Turkish shipping also ran into the law of diminishing returns. They increasingly resulted in the destruction of sailing craft rather than steamers. However, many of those small craft were likely to reappear, for they were reportedly sunk by their captains in shallow waters (by withdrawing large cork plugs) and refloated after the destroyers had departed. The extension of Turkish observation posts along the coast, linked by telephone, enabled the Turks to spread the alarm once Russian ships were sighted, and small craft often had the chance to hide in the mouths of rivers or to be safely beached. Starting in the summer of 1915, the Turks also used small craft to carry coal to the mouth of the Sakaria River and then up the river to Adapazar and then by land to Constantinople. Nevertheless, after the loss of the Irmingard in February the number of colliers had fallen to only five, and the German high command had to promise in response to desperate pleas from Enver Pasha that starting at the end of February there would be a daily train loaded with 400 tons of coal from Germany. The Germans would therefore provide roughly 12,000 tons of the estimated 30,000 tons of Turkish monthly coal consumption in order to keep the vital railways and munitions factories in operation.38
The Turks also continued, with what has been described as dogged determination, to bring coal from Zonguldak, and took advantage of every diversion of Russian warships to other areas, such as Lazistan, to resume shipments. Some historians believe the only way to have cut off coal from Zonguldak would have been an expedition and landing to destroy the mining installations and pitheads. The Turkish garrison would have been weak and the poor communications between Zonguldak and the interior would have hampered the arrival of reinforcements. The Russian navy shrank from this in 1915 and 1916, and although landings were contemplated in 1917, by then the Russians had other objectives.39
AMPHIBIOUS OPERATIONS ON THE CAUCASUS FRONT
In the first half of 1916, the Russian navy directed its major effort in the Black Sea toward supporting the operations of the Russian army on the Caucasus front. The Caucasus operations are surely among the least-known campaigns of the First World War. This was not the major front for the Russians, and the general staff had a tendency to syphon off troops from the Caucasus for the benefit of other, more pressing obligations. The Turks had a numerical advantage when they entered the war, and En ver Pasha was tempted to undertake a rash offensive into Russian territory directed at Georgia where he hoped a Turkish victory would provoke a revolution among the non-Russian peoples. The moment was ill timed, for the heavy snow and fierce winter weather worked against the Turks, and in the heavy fighting around Sarikamis at the end of 1914 and beginning of 1915 they suffered a costly defeat. In 1915 the Turks, after an initial success at Malazgirt, were defeated and pushed back near Karakilisse in the area to the north of Lake Van. The Allied evacuation of the Dardanelles threatened to release large numbers of Turkish troops for other fronts at the beginning of 1916, and General Nikolai Yudenich, Russian commander in the Caucasus, decided it would be prudent to forestall them with a Russian offensive, which surprised the Turks on 17 January, capturing Köprükoy. Yudenich gained his major objective by completing the capture of the city of Erzurum by 16 February.40
The Russian navy was called upon to assist these operations along the Black Sea coast on the extreme right flank of the Russian front. The region, known as Lazistan, had poor roads, and the mountains with their steep cliffs and deep ravines extended down to the coast. Under these conditions, sea power could be exploited to furnish significant leverage to the army’s operations. The Turkish line of communications, particularly the road from their major port Trebizond eastward to Rize, was vulnerable to naval pressure, which might tie down Turkish reinforcements and prevent them from being shifted to other portions of the front. The Russian army commander in the coastal sector, General Lyakhov, recognized the value of enfilading fire from warships and delayed his portion of the offensive until the ships were available. The Russians did not have a naval base in this part of the Black Sea, but in the course of the preceding year they had operated torpedo boats, generally their smaller and older ones, from the port of Batum. The demands of the army now meant that substantial portions of the Black Sea Fleet would be employed in the eastern portion of the Black Sea. Other operations in the western portion of the Black Sea would certainly not cease but would inevitably suffer.
On the 17th and 20th of January, Russian destroyers swept the coast of Lazistan destroying a large number of mostly small sailing c
raft assumed to be used by the Turks to supply their army. The weak naval force at Batum was strengthened by two torpedo boats and the gunboats Donetz and Kubanetz, the former salved after having been sunk at Odessa in the Turkish attack that began the war. They were joined by the old battleship Rostislav, escorted by two torpedo boats, for the attack on the strong Turkish position to the west of the Archave River that began on 5 February. The Rostislav and Kubanetz pounded the Turkish positions for three and a half hours and returned the following day to continue the barrage, which forced the Turks to abandon their position. The Turks fell back to new positions at Vice, which the Russians reached on the 8th. The Rostislav with Donetz and Kubanetz, screened by the torpedo boats, returned to the coast to bombard the Turkish positions on the 15th and 16th. This time the Russians established a mobile wireless station on shore to facilitate artillery spotting. Once again the Turks were shelled out of their positions. The Russians were always aware of the danger that the Goeben might try to intervene. Consequently, the three battleships of the Third Battle Group (the Panteleimon, Ioann Zlatoust, and Evstafi) were at sea from the 8th to the 11th, to cover the operation. The Second Battle Group with the Imperatritsa Ekaterina patrolled 20 to 30 miles offshore.
The Turks rushed reinforcements from Trebizond along the coastal road to Rize, and the retreating Turkish forces established a very strong defensive position along the Büyük-dere River approximately 10 miles west of Vice. This position was likely to have been very costly for the army to take, as there were vertical cliffs at the sea, a wide valley with good fields of fire for the defenders, steep ravines along the river, and deep water with only one ford. The navy suggested an amphibious operation, a landing at the small port of Atina approximately 4 miles east of the Turkish position.
The Russian navy, with the prospect of a major landing at the Bosphorus, had already devoted a good deal of attention to amphibious warfare. They had in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov a type of vessel easily adapted to it. The Elpidifors were small craft, generally 1,000 to 1,500 tons, whose engines and superstructures were located aft and cargo holds forward. Consequently, when lightly loaded they drew more water at their sterns than at their bows and were well suited for working close to the shore in shallow waters and at the small undeveloped ports characteristic of the area. The Russians made them into troop landing craft by fitting them with gangplanks overhanging the bow and worked by booms. They were also widely used as minesweepers and minelayers. The Russians were also building substantial numbers of Russud-type landing craft similar to the ones the British had used at Suvla. The 225-ton motor lighters were fitted with a bow ramp lowered by a pair of bow booms and could carry more than 500 men in the hold and 240 on deck. The navy ordered 50 from the Russud yards at Nikolaev at the end of 1915. The yards soon concentrated their efforts on these craft because they were highly profitable, by some accounts, and because shortages and nondelivery of crucial items stalled work on the larger warships. Even so, approximately 30 of them had to be delivered without their diesel engines.41
The landing force, two plastun battalions (dismounted cossacks), two mountain artillery guns, and two machine-gun platoons—a total of approximately 2,100 men—embarked at Batum and in the early morning of 4 March were landed to the east and west of Atina by three Elpidifors, followed by the specially adapted transports Kornilov and Lazarev with the guns and horses. The Rostislav, Kubanetz, and four torpedo boats provided direct artillery support. The landings had taken place before the Turks realized it and could open fire, and, caught off balance, they abandoned the Büyük-dere position. Lyakhov, anxious to forestall the arrival of Turkish reinforcements and profit from his momentum, continued to leapfrog around the Turkish positions. The next day, 5 March, troops were landed farther along the coast at Mapavri, and on the 6th an infantry battalion was landed to the west of Rize, covered by the Kubanetz, while two torpedo boats supported the advance along the coast. Rize fell to the combined attack, and the Russians now had their first small port on the Turkish Black Sea coast. The Russian advance halted for a few weeks, stalled by the spring thaw. The successful amphibious operations had demonstrated how a small number of troops could have a disproportionate effect.42
The first Turkish response to the Russian offensive in Lazistan was to create yet a new role for the Goeben. They used the battle cruiser on 4 February to rush 429 officers and men, a mountain artillery battery, machine-gun and aviation detachments, 1,000 rifles, and 300 cases of munitions to Trebizond. The Goeben had to keep well out at sea to avoid the Russian destroyers along the coast, for, crammed with flammable munitions, she was in no condition for a serious action. On 27 February the Breslau, restored to service with two new 15-cm guns, was also used to carry 71 officers and men of a machine-gun company, bombs and munitions, as well as fuel oil and lubricating oil for submarines to Trebizond. She was to bring back, if possible, flour and legumes. The cruiser was authorized, however, to operate in the eastern Black Sea after landing the troops. The Breslau’s cargo also would have caused embarrassment in case action was necessary. On 28 February the large Russian destroyers Pronzitelni and Bespokoiny shelled Kerasun and were reported heading west along the Anatolian coast to a possible encounter with the Germans. The Breslau put into Sinope to discharge the oil. She was spotted by the Russian destroyers on leaving harbor, but her commanding officer, Korvettenkapitän von Knorr, considered his primary mission was to reach Trebizond with the troops, and he managed to shake off the destroyers in the darkness. After landing the troops at Trebizond, the Breslau cruised northward to the vicinity of Tuapse but encountered nothing and returned to the Bosphorus. She had a brief brush with two Russian destroyers north of Zonguldak on the morning of 2 March, but the Russians managed to outrun her. Von Knorr never had the opportunity to pick up the flour and legumes at Sinope.
Of potentially greater importance, the Admiralstab finally agreed to send a large submarine, U.33, to the Black Sea. The submarine was commanded by Kapitänleutnant Gansser, a veteran of Mediterranean operations. Until she arrived, Souchon did not believe he could do anything to seriously assist the Turkish army in Lazistan. On 6 March he refused Enver’s request to transport a regiment by sea to Trebizond. They now stood a chance of encountering one of the Russian dreadnoughts, and the 510-mile journey from the Bosphorus at high speed would result in excessive consumption of coal, which they could ill spare. Nevertheless, Enver was insistent on how critical the situation at Trebizond was, and Colonel von Lossow, the German military attaché, argued that along the narrow coastal front a few additional troops brought by sea might serve as a reserve to stop the Russian advance until reinforcements arrived by land. Moreover, the troops could be landed at the less exposed Tireboli, to the west of Trebizond. Souchon let the political and military necessities overcome his doubts based on naval reasons. Moreover, the eagerly awaited U.33 had arrived at Constantinople on 11 March and would be ready for operations after a fortnight’s overhaul. The Breslau sailed the afternoon of the 11th with 211 officers and men as well as a dozen barrels of fuel oil and lubricating oil for submarines. The troops were landed without incident on the 13th, and the Breslau was able to call at Samsun for 30 tons of flour, one ton of maize, and 30 tons of coal before returning to the Bosphorus.43
U.33 sailed on her first Black Sea operation on 25 March with orders to attack Russian warships operating off Lazistan and shipping off the Caucasian coast. The Russian advance directed at Trebizond began the following day. The Russian high command had not changed its opinion that this was only a secondary theater of the war, and General Yudenich’s resources remained limited. The renewed advance was primarily to consolidate the existing position before the Turkish troops released from Gallipoli could arrive in force, and Trebizond represented the best of the ports along the eastern Anatolian coast. Moreover, the Russian army and navy had as difficult a time understanding each other’s point of view as their German and Turkish opponents. Yudenich could not understand why the navy with its supe
riority could not prevent all Turkish sea transport along the Anatolian coast, and the army preferred continuous naval support on its flank. Ebergard pointed out that a continuous blockade of the Anatolian coast was not possible given the distance from their base at Sebastopol, and that continuous tactical support on the seaward flank of the army was not desirable because of the danger of submarines and the lack of a base in the eastern Black Sea. The navy preferred large amphibious operations of limited duration. They did agree to provide full support for the transport of two plastun brigades—18,000 men and 4,300 horses—from Novorossisk to Rize. The Russian offensive began on 26 March, and after six days they had managed to advance about 16 to 17 miles to the Kara-dere River, from which they could make no further progress. Yudenich, fearing a counterattack, was anxious for the transport to take place as quickly as possible.
U.33 proceeding eastward off the Anatolian coast sighted the Imperatritsa Maria and the First Battle Group on the 28th, but the dreadnought and her two escorting destroyers were zigzagging, and the submarine could not get into a firing position. On the 30th, U.33 torpedoed and sank the hospital ship Portugal (5,358 tons) at Surmené Bay. The Portugal was a French ship, trapped in the Black Sea by the war, and its sinking inevitably caused controversy. The Germans claimed that she was not clearly marked as a hospital ship, she had been towing lighters full of troops, and there was a heavy explosion after she was torpedoed, indicating she was carrying munitions. A Russian destroyer attacked the submarine with depth charges, but she escaped and proceeded north to sink the following day a coastal sailing vessel and to destroy a small steamer that had run itself aground after a warning shot off Suchumi. On 1 April U.33 received orders to rendezvous with the Breslau at Trebizond.
A Naval History of World War I Page 42