A Naval History of World War I

by Paul G. Halpern

  Lapeyrère’s successor was Vice Admiral Dartige du Fournet, who was also unable to overcome the submarine menace, and who found himself more and more immersed in the problems of Greece. They eventually caused his downfall. As for the antisubmarine campaign, the French were indeed hampered by their relative poverty of small craft compared to the British. The British at the beginning of the war had been prepared to leave the Mediterranean to the French in order to concentrate on what they considered the decisive theater in the North Sea. They were, however, forced to play a steadily increasing role in the Mediterranean, where their interests were great, until in 1917 they assumed direction of Mediterranean antisubmarine operations. The theoretical French command in the Mediterranean became ever more theoretical.

  The operations of Kapitänleutnant Max Valentiner and U.38 on his way from Helgoland to Cattaro were one of the reasons the sinkings by submarines had been so high in November. Valentiner sank 14 ships (47,460 tons) along the coast of North Africa but frustrated the hopes of the German naval leaders that they could avoid diplomatic complications in the Mediterranean. Fortunately, they had the Austrians to assume the blame. On 7 November U.38 sank the Italian liner Ancona (8,210 tons) off Bizerte with a loss of more than 200 lives, among them approximately 20 Americans. The action had taken place on the surface, and as Germany was not at war with Italy, U.38 had worn the Austrian flag.

  The anticipated diplomatic storm soon followed. Haus was inclined to back his German allies strongly and from the very beginning. The Austrian Foreign Office was a bit hesitant, but finally agreed to the Germans replying to the Italian demands that the submarine that sank the Ancona was indeed Austrian. In case of future arbitration, U.38 and its crew was retroactively entered into the k.u.k. List of Warships.

  The United States pressed the Austrians very hard on the issue, and after what was virtually an ultimatum, the Austrians backed down. The Germans, who were anxious to avoid war with the United States, were particularly insistent they do so. The Austrians, without naming the specific submarine or officer involved, announced in a note of 29 December that the commander of the submarine had failed to take into sufficient consideration the panic that occurred among the Ancona’s passengers, which had rendered the embarkation more difficult, and he had been accordingly “punished” for exceeding his instructions. The Austrians promised to pay an indemnity. The Austrian ambassador in Berlin asked the Germans to refrain in the future from attacking neutral or enemy passenger liners while flying the Austrian flag. There is, however, considerable irony in the fact the United States had come close to breaking off relations with Austria-Hungary and possibly even declaring war over the conduct of submarine operations at a time when the k.u.k Kriegsmarine actually had little capacity to conduct those operations outside of the Adriatic6

  INEFFECTIVE ALLIED COUNTERMEASURES

  The major British and French priority in the face of the submarine menace in the Mediterranean was the protection of troop transports. Unfortunately they did not have enough destroyers. Admiral Sir Henry Jackson, the First Sea Lord, admitted that “the demands on our resources are beyond our capabilities.” He protested, “Everyone is screaming for destroyers, especially the French, & I have to harden my heart to all such requests.”7 Jellicoe, ever alert to demands on the Grand Fleet’s resources, pointedly remarked that “charity begins at home,” and that they should not risk weakening the Grand Fleet or losing command of the sea in home waters to satisfy their Allies in what was primarily a French sphere of action.8

  The French commander in chief in the Mediterranean was fully conscious that British resources were stretched to the limit, but so were his own once the Salonika campaign began. The French played the major role in this expedition, but the heavy demands on destroyers to escort troop transports threatened to wear them out prematurely, particularly when the onset of bad weather in the winter of 1915–16 exacerbated the situation. By the end of November, 28 of 61 French destroyers had broken down or were under refit, a wastage of 46 percent.9

  The British and French resorted to rough expedients. The British escorted troop transports through dangerous points where they also provided patrols, and they frequently varied the routes. They also armed vessels as rapidly as guns became available. The French, given their inability to give direct escort to all transports, tried to provide indirect protection by patrolling routes and hunting for suspected submarine supply bases. In late November the French also decided to completely separate the transport of men from the transport of matériel. Troops for Salonika were carried in six large, fast (minimum speed of 15 knots) passenger liners commanded by naval officers, armed as auxiliary cruisers with naval gun crews, and fitted with a powerful wireless. The liners sailed alone and without escort. Under these conditions tragedy was perhaps inevitable, and it came on 26 February. The fast Cie Générale Transatlantique liner Provence (II) (13,753 tons), now an auxiliary cruiser, was carrying more than two thousand troops to Salonika when Arnauld de la Perière in U.35 torpedoed her south of Cape Matapan. The ship took on an immediate list and many lifeboats could not be used. She went down with close to one thousand men in one of the worst French disasters of the war.10

  The Mediterranean was becoming a much more dangerous place for British shipping, and they were forced to order a partial rather than complete diversion of Mediterranean trade. On 9 March 1916 the Admiralty issued a notice through the Liverpool and London War Risks Insurance Association that on or after 15 March vessels proceeding to or from Atlantic ports and ports in the Far East or Australia would use the Cape route, whereas ships proceeding to or from ports in India would continue to use the Suez Canal.11

  The Allies made a somewhat halting effort at collaboration in the Mediterranean with an agreement signed in Paris on 3 December 1915. The Mediterranean was divided into eighteen patrol zones, four British, four Italian, and ten French. The British zones were mostly adjacent to their possessions, that is, Gibraltar, Malta, and Egypt, as well as the Dardanelles. The Italian zones were off their own coasts and their Libyan colony. The French had the remainder of the Mediterranean coast as well as the Ionian Islands, but the zones were largely coastal and there was a sizable area that was unassigned in the central and eastern Mediterranean. Here each nation allotted what they could spare, the French to the west and the British to the east of Malta.12

  Neither the British nor French authorities in the Mediterranean were particularly satisfied with the Paris agreement, which Commodore Keyes, chief of staff at the Dardanelles, termed “a ridiculous convention” that was “simply futile and impractical.” Nevertheless the Admiralty decreed that they should give the plan a chance and not seek modifications until it had proven to be a failure after sufficient trial.13 It was really the French who soon pushed for a new conference to examine a wider range of Mediterranean problems.

  The Malta conference, 2–9 March 1916, covered a wide range of questions. Some were technical, such as the problem of regulating wireless traffic. De Robeck had termed French wireless procedure “a positive danger.” The most important decisions naturally concerned the antisubmarine war, and here the decisions of the conference were unfortunate. The Allies essentially accepted a British proposal to revise the Mediterranean patrol zones, which were enlarged and reduced in number from eighteen to eleven. The unassigned zone in the central and eastern basin disappeared, most of it going to the British, except for an extension of the French zone in the Ionian Sea. The British also assumed control of most of the Aegean, including the island of Crete. The Allied admirals decided that they lacked sufficient vessels to protect shipping by direct escort and opted for a system of patrolled routes. Escorts were to be reserved for special cases. There were a certain number of these patrolled routes prepared in advance for each journey and designated by letter. The commander in chief then merely ordered a ship to follow, for example, route B between two points in its voyage. There was a single route coming and going, with ships to move out 5 miles to starboard at night or
in thick weather. The routes were the only ones patrolled and were kept as secret as possible. The French commander in chief and the French fleet also shifted their base from Malta, which was now becoming too crowded and was in the midst of a British zone. The French went first to Argostoli in Cephalonia where they would be better situated to intercept the Austrian fleet. They subsequently moved to Corfu where the large harbor, once it was properly netted, provided better scope for exercises and training.14 The big French ships trained for an event that would never occur: an attempt by the Austrian fleet to break out of the Adriatic and into the Mediterranean.

  The Allies following the Malta conference were unduly optimistic because of the fewer number of sinkings by submarines in the first quarter of 1916. This was due to the smaller number of submarines at sea because of refits and bad weather, and the restrictive orders against sinking passenger liners. It was certainly not the result of the ineffectual Allied countermeasures. This soon became evident in the second quarter of 1916. The UB.II boats being assembled at Pola also began to enter service, but it was really the large U-boats under experienced commanders such as Arnauld de la Perière that had the most notable results, particularly in the western portion of the Mediterranean and often in the underprotected Italian and French zones.

  The British drifter patrol in the Strait of Otranto also proved no real obstacle. Submarines often could break through on the surface at night, passing between groups of drifters, and if spotted were usually able to outrun the surface craft. They might be compelled to submerge, particularly if a destroyer approached, but the patrols were not numerous enough to keep them submerged long enough to exhaust their batteries. Many submarines appear not to have been disturbed at all. From April to June of 1916, the Mediterranean U-boats sank either directly or through submarine-laid mines 100 ships representing 195,225 tons out of the 393,981 tons sunk by submarines in all theaters.15

  The German successes continued through the summer of 1916, particularly in the western Mediterranean. The patrolled routes prescribed by the Malta conference proved a failure, not least because in late July the Germans learned which routes were patrolled through intercepted wireless messages. Moreover, by means of log books, maps, and other documents recovered from merchant ships before they were sunk, German intelligence gained a very good idea of what certain of those routes were as well as the instructions to move out 5 miles to the right or left of the route at night or in thick weather. By the end of August, the total tonnage sank by Mediterranean submarines had exceeded one million tons, an achievement for which Kophamel and the flotilla received a special telegram of congratulations from the kaiser. From 26 July to 20 August, Arnauld de la Perière and U.35 enjoyed the most successful submarine cruise of any commander during the war; in the western Mediterranean he sank 54 steamers and sailing craft, representing more than 90,150 tons of shipping. Between July and September of 1916, Mediterranean U-boats sank directly or indirectly through submarine-laid mines 155 ships, or 321,542 tons, out of a worldwide total of 493,184 tons. The Mediterranean percentage of total sinkings by submarines had therefore risen from 49.6 percent in the second quarter of 1916 to more than 65 percent in the third quarter.

  In the last quarter of 1916, and despite the onset of bad weather in the autumn, the tonnage sunk in the Mediterranean continued to rise. The submarines sank 129 ships or 427,999 tons out of 970,423 in all theaters, a respectable 44 percent.16 The German losses in the Mediterranean were light. In 1916 they lest only two submarines in the Mediterranean, one, UB.44, disappeared, and another, UC.12, blew up on her own mines off Taranto.17 The Mediterranean successes justified the dispatch of more submarines. As of 25 October 1916, the Mediterranean U-boat force numbered 10 large U-boats (including 1 in the Black Sea and 4 en route), 2 large minelayers, 5 UB.II boats (3 in the Black Sea), 1 small UB.I boat, and 8 UC small minelayers (including 4 preparing to leave Germany, 1 in the Black Sea, and 1 en route).18

  By the end of the summer of 1916 German U-boats in the Mediterranean had also been freed from the obligation to operate under the Austrian flag when attacking Italian vessels while on the surface. On 28 August the Italian government declared war on Germany. Nevertheless the Germans and Austrians had to cover their past actions, and on 10 September agreed that the six large U-boats that had conducted operations against Italian ships would be formally and retroactively taken into the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine as of the moment they passed through the Straits of Gibraltar. This in no way altered the fact the U-boats were subordinate to the German Admiralstab, which had the responsibility for issuing their orders. The Germans and Austrians hoped these measures would avoid difficulties in prize courts, or if past incidents became the subject of international arbitration.19

  Throughout 1915 and 1916, the German army high command and their Turkish allies periodically attempted to divert Mediterranean U-boats from the Admiralstab’s primary mission—Handelskrieg. The Italian hold on their newly acquired colony of Libya after the Italo-Turkish war of 1911–12 had been tenuous at best, and even before Italy entered the war, the Italian military began pulling back to the coast. This had been the signal for a widespread uprising, and for most of the war the Italians considered themselves lucky to hold on to only a few coastal points in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. The religious sect, the Senussi, had been particularly successful in Cyrenaica, and in the autumn of 1915 the German army general staff believed they were well armed with captured weapons and in a position to threaten the western frontier of Egypt. The navy was not happy, for at the beginning of 1916 they had been forced to employ and risk for a few weeks no less than three of the very limited number of submarines they then had available in the Mediterranean in order to delivery a piddling quantity of supplies.

  The British defeated the Senussi invasion of Egypt from the west and by the end of March 1916 had succeeded in forcing them back from Solium. The Turks, however, were anxious for submarines to continue transporting more men, matériel, and foodstuffs to Libya. They were backed as usual by the German army general staff. The navy would have been glad to wash its hands of these North African projects, but the German Foreign Office joined the army general staff in advocating them. The use of submarines to transport men and munitions to North Africa continued throughout the war, although in 1917 and 1918 the constant use of the converted UC.II-type minelayers UC.20 and UC.73 as transports represented a smaller proportion of the German submarine force.20

  The Allies for most of 1916 responded to this steady hemorrhage of their shipping with antisubmarine tactics that were more of the same, adding whatever craft they could to the ineffective patrols on the patrolled routes while the admirals consistently overestimated the very few losses they actually were inflicting on the submarines. The submarine danger was so acute that in October the Admiralty prevailed on the War Office to agree to send troops going to or returning from Salonika and Egypt overland via Marseilles, which had the advantage of eliminating the long sea journey through the Bay of Biscay and western Mediterranean. Furthermore, as of 11 December the Admiralty prohibited insurance from being issued to ships entering the Mediterranean unless they were provided with a special license that was normally given only to ships carrying cargo to Mediterranean ports or using the Suez Canal while proceeding to ports in India west of Colombo. This had the effect of shifting shipping for Calcutta, Madras, Rangoon, and other Bay of Bengal ports to the Cape route. Once again, as with earlier measures shifting the Far East trade to the Cape, the disadvantages of reduced carrying capacity because of the longer route were offset by the reduced risk.21

  There was dissent to the existing system. Rear Admiral Ballard, Limpus’s successor at Malta, was disgusted with the system of patrolled routes and in October argued that unless they could put at least four times the present number of patrol vessels on the routes to ensure a submarine being brought to action whenever it appeared, they ought to give another system a trial. Ballard suggested convoys. The Admiralty were not prepared to accept convoys at this st
age but eventually agreed on a scheme whereby “ports of refuge” would be established in the western basin of the Mediterranean. They would be protected by guns and nets, and ships would be directed to them during daylight hours when submarines were known to be active in the area. Ships would proceed at night to the next anchorage, keep as close to the coast as possible, and make full use of Spanish territorial waters. In contrast, in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean ships would be dispersed. After passing Cape Bon they would spread out on diverse routes to Malta, Alexandria, Port Said, and the Aegean. They would follow fixed routes in the Aegean and use the same procedure as in the western basin, anchoring in protected ports by day and proceeding by night.22