1918
Page 22
The Russian Navy was still suffering from the traumatic experiences of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–05. So it decided to remain on the defensive and to concentrate on the defence of the Finnish Gulf – the entry to St Petersburg – and the long Russian coastline against German attacks. By and large this strategy proved successful, though parts of the Russian coast had to be surrendered after the Russian Army had been pushed back by German troops in 1915–16. In the Black Sea the Russian Navy played a more offensive role. Whereas attacks on Turkish convoys proved very successful, attempts to attack and break the Turkish Straits had no chance of success despite Russian naval superiority in these waters.
And the Central Powers? Due to their geographic positions and their numerical inferiority big battles made no sense, neither for the High Seas Fleet nor for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. As a result both navies remained on the defensive. Nevertheless they hoped to diminish the superiority of their respective enemies in the North Sea, in the Baltic, and in the Adriatic by laying mines, through submarine attacks, or by attacking only parts of their fleets. The German sorties against the British East Coast and the Dogger-Bank in 1914–15, the battle of Jutland in 1916, or the Austrian sorties against the Italian East Coast and the barrage of the Otranto Straits in 1917 had been remarkable events at sea, but they had not changed the strategic situation. Rather, both navies had risked valuable ships and even incurred considerable losses without achieving any real strategic gains.
Though the strategy of fleet-in-being did not match with the great expectations of the naval leaderships in Germany and in Austria, it proved successful, because it helped protect the respective coasts from invasion and secure the lines of communication in parts of the North Sea, in the Baltic, and in the Adriatic. The only really offensive strategy was the introduction of submarine warfare in 1914. Directed first only against warships, this new weapon had inflicted heavy losses upon the Allies, when both the German and Austrian navies began to attack merchant ships in the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediterranean in 1915.
And the oceans of the world? In 1918 these were free from German warships apart from submarines. The German East Asian Squadron had disappeared in the battle of the Falkland Islands on 8 December 1914 after a successful battle against an inferior British force at Coronel only four weeks before. Similarly all German light cruisers waging commerce warfare had also either been sunk like SMS Emden, SMS Königsberg, and SMS Dresden or disappeared after an internal explosion like SMS Karlsruhe. Most German auxiliary cruisers had suffered the same fate. The only exceptions were SMS Möve and SMS Wolf and the famous SMS Seeadler, a sailing vessel. Sent out in 1915–16, their attacks on Allied supply and trade lines had caused a lot of confusion and damage to British shipping in waters as far away as the South Seas, and had been regarded with great concern by the Royal Navy. Attempts to hunt them down like the big ships of the German Fleet had failed, however. When the German raiders had eventually returned to Germany after long months away from home, their captains and crews had, of course, been welcomed as heroes. Though they had tied down many warships and had inflicted painful losses on the enemy at a time of worldwide shipping shortage, their importance should not be overestimated.
The North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean
The North Sea and the waters around Great Britain were still the most important theatres of the war at sea at the beginning of 1918. For the British Grand Fleet the year 1917 had been a year of great disappointments. Though the Grand Fleet had, like her enemy, decided to avoid bigger actions, it had nevertheless tried to inflict losses upon the enemy’s surface ships. However, it was the German High Seas Fleet with its energetic commander-in-chief, Admiral Reinhard Scheer, which had tried to strike again in the North Sea in late 1917. After the Kaiser had forbidden a major attack planned by Scheer into the Hoofden in early 1917, two sorties by light cruisers against Allied convoys in the North Sea had proved very successful. In mid-October two German light cruisers, SMS Brummer and SMS Bremse, had attacked a westbound Scandinavian convoy 70 miles east of Lerwick, and in mid-December the Germans had struck again. Two torpedo-boat flotillas accompanied by the light cruiser SMS Emden attacked Allied convoys in the war channel along the east coast and on the Bergen–Lerwick route. Each time they sank not only many of the merchant vessels, but also most of the convoy escorts. Last but not least, a British attempt to retaliate had failed in mid-November. Hampered by mist, incomplete intelligence, and ill-prepared charts, an attack on the German minesweepers and their covering forces in the waters around Heligoland had to be broken off when superior enemy forces opened fire on the British ships.
Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, who had already lost his command of the Grand Fleet because he was blamed for the escape of the High Seas Fleet at Jutland and who – in order to save face – had been appointed First Sea Lord in 1916, again became the scapegoat of these losses and failures and was forced to resign from his position on Christmas Day 1917. This change went hand-in-hand with a new strategy, developed by the commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet, Admiral Sir David Beatty. For Beatty a great battle was no option, at least for the time being. Despite superiority in numbers, the risks were too high in his eyes. The High Seas Fleet could always ‘dictate’ the place of the battle, he argued, and thus try to ambush his ships and whittle down his strength. Moreover, British numerical superiority, which was enlarged by the arrival of a US battle squadron at Scapa Flow in December 1917, to some extent existed only on paper, because many ships were bound by escort duties and therefore not available for a great battle. Most importantly, however, despite some technical improvements, Beatty was not convinced of the quality of his ships. The battle of Jutland had made clear that his own as well as Jellicoe’s apprehensions at the beginning of the war that British warships were ‘inferior in construction and protection’ to the German vessels had been justified. Under present conditions, Beatty wrote to the First Sea Lord in December 1917, a battle between the High Seas Fleet and the Grand Fleet might result in a ‘rude awakening for the Country’.2
Contrary to Beatty the Admiralty expected an improvement of the general situation and more offensive action after the arrival of urgently needed US destroyers for escort and other duties. Nevertheless, they approved Beatty’s decision to concentrate on the protection of the convoys and the fight against the U-boats. In addition to the already existing minefields in the German Bight, thousands of mines were laid in spring and summer in the northern North Sea as well as in the Channel. The so-called Northern Barrage eventually consisted of more than 70,000 mines. Its effectiveness was, however, more than doubtful, because the American mines very often exploded prematurely. Only six U-boats became victims of the barrage; another two may have been damaged. The convoy system, which had been much improved in the meantime, proved much more effective and also much cheaper than this undertaking. In addition depth charges, Q-ships, and aerial bombing also proved increasingly effective weapons against the U-boat threat.
In contrast to the almost useless Northern Barrage, the mine-offensive in the Channel war was far more successful. From the early months of 1918 British warships effectively blocked the Channel for the U-boats with mines, anti-U-boat nets, and drifters backed by monitors and destroyers. The result was that the U-boats were forced to take the much longer route around the British Isles or face grave danger in the Channel. Some U-boats tried to find a way through the minefield and 14 U-boats were lost. The Royal Navy also tried to block Germany’s U-boat bases in Flanders by sinking blockships and destroying the locks of the sea-canals. Attacks on Zeebrugge and Ostend in April and May 1918, however, failed utterly. Despite attacks from the air all U-boat bases therefore remained open until the end of October, when the Germans withdrew from Flanders after the Allied success in the ‘Hundred Days’ campaign. German attempts to break the Dover Barrage and to attack Allied positions on land with torpedo boats in mid-February, in March, and in April proved unsuccessful and costly, for several torpedo boats were s
unk or severely damaged.
And what did the Germans plan for and do in 1918? Scheer was fully aware of his weaknesses. Since U-boat warfare had become his priority, the sweeping of minefields in the German Bight kept the fleet occupied to a steadily increasing degree. Without the support of big ships, minesweepers had no chance of fulfilling this dangerous and difficult task. Moreover, German operations in the Baltic against Finland in spring 1918 required further support from the fleet. As a result all ideas to support the army’s great offensive in the West in March 1918, which was supposed to crush the Allies by attacking Allied transport in the Channel, were put aside. Economic pressure exerted by submarines remained the only contribution of the High Seas Fleet in these months. The risks of an operation against the French coast as far as Calais seemed too high compared with the gains such an attack might bring about.3 Nevertheless, this did not mean that the High Seas Fleet wanted to remain idle. In late April the High Seas Fleet left port again, though not for the French coast but for Scandinavian waters as in the year before. ‘Our U-Boats,’ Scheer argued in his memoirs,
had learnt that the steamers were assembled there [between Britain and Norway] in large convoys, strongly protected by first-class battleships, cruisers and destroyers. A successful attack on such a convoy would not only result in the sinking of much tonnage, but would be a great military success, and would bring about welcome relief to the U-boats operating in the Channel and round England, for it would force the English to send more warships to the northern waters.4
The rationale behind this strategy seemed sound; reality, however, proved much more difficult. Though the High Seas Fleet left Schillig Roads – the Jade bay and the approach to the main naval base of Wilhelmshaven – without being detected and reached the envisaged position off the Scandinavian coast safely, the convoy they wanted to intercept and attack had already left due to a change in departure times. To make things even worse, on the way back the battle-cruiser SMS Moltke not only lost its starboard screw, but was eventually also torpedoed by a British submarine on patrol in the German Bight. Though the Grand Fleet had put to sea after receiving news of the sortie of the High Seas Fleet, it was unable to intercept it before Scheer’s vessels reached Wilhelmshaven again. For the High Seas Fleet it proved to be the last sortie for the remainder of the war.
With only 22 operational capital ships left compared to the Grand Fleet’s 43, a new attempt would have been suicidal, especially after Beatty’s decision to transfer the Grand Fleet closer to the German bases and seek a battle at the same time. Scheer therefore again fully concentrated on submarine warfare. After long discussions on this strategy between the Kaiser, the Chancellor, and the navy, the Empire had eventually put all its stakes upon this weapon in early 1917 with the declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare. The admirals had promised that Britain would be forced to its knees within six months. Victory would thus be won before the United States with all her resources could turn the scales in the Allies’ favour. The first months seemed to justify this all-or-nothing strategy. Allied losses had jumped from 335,106 5 tons in January 1917 to 841,118 tons in April. From then on, they had, however, continued to fall. Whereas the U-boats had sunk another 669,218 tons in June, numbers had slowly gone down to 285,593 tons in January 1918. For the navy this had been a disaster – politically and military. Instead of supporting the Empire in winning the war quickly and decisively, it had helped to enlarge the numbers of enemies. Apart from the United States of America, other neutrals had also declared war on Germany. Most important in this respect was the enormous weight the United States could throw onto the scales with their economic power and the men they could mobilize for the Allied war effort. Militarily, the entry of the United States meant for the navy that the number of Allied ships in the North Sea as well as in the Mediterranean increased, and made naval operations even more difficult than they already were. It was not the big ships that mattered in this case, but the number of destroyers, which were so important for convoy services and hunting for U-boats in the North Sea as well as in the Mediterranean, and, last but not least, the huge amount of mines they could and did drop in the German Bight.
Scheer was, however, determined to put all his stakes upon the continuation and, if possible, the intensification of submarine warfare. Eventually appointed chief of the Seekriegsleitung (Naval Command) in August 1918 and thus the most powerful naval officer within in the German High Command, he developed a so-called Scheer Programme to greatly increase the number of U-boats built.
Eventually Scheer failed not only because the war was lost only a few months later, but because the obstacles to square the circle proved too high to overcome. Though the U-boats continued to sink many ships in 1918 – figures varied from 250,000 to 343,000 tons – these successes had little impact upon the course of the war. First, after many difficulties in the early months the Allied convoy system had proved a very effective scheme to protect ships from U-boat attacks. Second, even more important were the increasing problems in building and manning the U-boats urgently required to replace losses, which continued to rise. In September 1917 the High Seas Fleet lost 13 U-boats, and in the following months until the end of the war numbers varied from three – the lowest figure – in February 1918 to an incredible 20 in October. On average nine U-boats were lost after the beginning of the U-boat offensive. The decision to try to win the war in a final land offensive meant that all men available were either sent to the Western Front or – if they were skilled workers – had to work in arms and ammunitions factories. Scheer’s appeals to the army to make more men available for Germany’s shipyards in order to repair and maintain the ships the navy had under commission and, moreover, to build as many U-boats as possible – he envisaged increasing the monthly output from 12 to 36 in 1919 – accordingly fell on deaf ears. As a result the Imperial Navy had great problems to keep up the level of U-boats available for operations in the North Sea. Losses and new commissions just kept the balance in 1917 and 1918. In 1917, for example, the navy lost 75 U-boats, in 1918 another 102. In the same period only 87 and 88, respectively, entered the service. With only roughly 120 U-boats available on average in all theatres of war, victory in the tonnage war was not achievable. Especially in the North Sea and in Flanders the number of U-boats amounted to only 55 to 60 and 25 to 30 U-boats, respectively, on average.6 The main reason for this was that, in contrast to the decreasing shipbuilding capacities of the Germans, the Allies were able not only to replace those sunk by the U-boats but to build even more to support the Allied war effort on the Western Front – not to speak of the steadily increasing amount of food, war materiel, and men that crossed the Atlantic successfully and without being detected by U-boats. Attempts to increase Allied losses by concentrating several U-boats – like the ‘wolf packs’ that would be used in World War II – on convoy routes in the Western approaches, sending U-boat cruisers far into the Atlantic and even to the US coast, did not bring about the expected results. Obviously, as in World War II, the Allies had begun to intercept U-boat signals and were thus able to take precautionary measures. Though the U-boat war was eventually given up following US demands in the negotiations about an armistice on 24 October 1918, it had been lost long before. The mines in the German Bight and the inability of the German minesweepers to sweep the routes fast enough to allow safe passage into the North Sea had effectively stopped the U-boat war. In September only seven U-boats could get through; the only exception was the passage through the Baltic, but this cost time and fuel, thus diminishing the time left for operations against Allied ships.
The Baltic
Compared to other theatres of war, the German Navy was in a very favourable situation in the Baltic. After severe losses in 1915 and 1916, the Russian revolutions in 1917 had changed the situation completely. The Russian Baltic Fleet was severely weakened by revolutionary turmoil right from the outbreak of the revolution. Dozens of officers and petty officers were murdered by revolutionary sailors at Kronstadt and in H
elsinki, Russia’s main naval bases in the Baltic. Among them were the harbour admiral at Kronstadt, Vice Admiral Robert N. Viren, and the commander-in-chief of the Baltic Fleet, Vice Admiral Adrian Nepenin. Even before the Bolsheviks took over in November, revolutionary committees, so-called soviets, were elected and played an increasingly important part in planning and conducting naval operations. The result was idleness. The German Navy watched these events carefully, hoping that the collapse of the Russian Empire would only be a matter of time. However, the decision of the OHL to accelerate Russia’s downfall by attacking Riga eventually resulted in Germany’s first amphibious operation. After successful operations on the land-front, the army and navy attacked the Baltic Islands of Ösel, Dagö, and Moon in mid-October 1917 in order to remove the threat of an attack on the army from the costal flank and pave the way for a further advance on Petrograd. Despite heavy resistance by the remaining Russian ships, the islands were quickly conquered. Only a few weeks later the Bolshevik revolution effectively ended all naval operations in the Baltic.
However, for the German Navy this was not the end of the war in this area. Though Russia had been beaten and had to sign a harsh peace treaty in early March 1918, German intervention in the Finnish War of Independence led to a final naval operation in March 1918. A task force including several battleships convoyed 10,000 German troops to Finland in early April. Following the wishes of the German High Command the German task force had occupied the Aaland Islands, which after diplomatic negotiations with Sweden were divided between the two countries. The unmolested retreat of the rest of the Russian Baltic Fleet from Helsinki to Kronstadt at the same time, however, ended the war in the Baltic. Plans of the German High Command to attack Kronstadt and Petrograd in late 1918 in order to crush the Bolshevik movement came to nothing. Neither the army nor the navy had enough men and ships available for such an operation.