To Crown the Waves: The Great Navies of the First World War

INTRODUCTION

It has been a century since a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in Bosnia and the continent of Europe descended into an orgy of savagery that today is called the First World War. The reason why such a relatively rich and self-confident community of nations, sharing for the most part a common culture, could turn upon itself in such barbaric fashion is perhaps the great question of the twentieth century. A short list of the war’s tragic offspring includes the Great Depression, World War II, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. Even the political divisions of the Middle East that are at the roots of much twenty-first century unrest are a consequence of the Great War.

The veterans of the First World War are all gone. The picture of the conflict that lingers in the collective memory of their descendants is one of muddy trenches and young men, faces encased in gas masks, crouching in a blasted landscape. The land armies numbered almost seventy million, and the deaths eight million, so this perception is natural. However, it obscures that essential fact that the First World War was also fought at sea, and there, in the failed naval blockade of the United Kingdom and the successful blockade of the Central Powers, the war was eventually won.

The carnage inflicted at sea was tremendous. It included the loss of over 13 million tons of mercantile shipping and 756 major warships, including 27 Allied and 7 Central Power capital ships. More than 100,000 men died. From this turmoil the images that resonate are dreadnought battleships cutting through the waves in massive lines and predator submarines lurking in the oceanic wastes. The war at sea, however, was more, and these images might as well include a German cruiser bottled up an African river, or the kaiser’s East Asian flotilla massacring a British squadron off Chile or being annihilated itself in the South Atlantic; more than 8,500 men died in a single North Sea clash of dreadnoughts; battleships dueled on the Black Sea; there were amphibious assaults against Baltic islands; and bi-wing bombers clustered on the decks of primitive aircraft carriers. The war at sea was global in its dimensions, and once the land war stalemated on the western front, it was on the waves that victory was determined.

The world’s premier navy, Britain’s Royal Navy, led the Triple Entente, or the Allies, with support from the French Marine Nationale and the Imperial Russian Navy. In opposition, the German Kaiserliche Marine teamed with the Austro-Hungarian Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine, but a diplomatic twist sent the third member of this Triple Alliance, Italy’s Regia Marina, to the Allied side. Two years later Germany’s own naval efforts provoked the United States into joining the Allied camp as well.

At sea World War I was a time of new and rapidly evolving martial technologies and the collision of nineteenth-century concepts with twentieth-century weapons. Admiral Jacky Fisher, the creative genius behind the all-big-gun battleship, first served on board HMS Victory, which had been Admiral Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar. Within the span of Fisher’s career, steel superseded wood, sail gave way to steam, and giant guns hurling one-ton shells a distance of ten miles replaced muzzle-loading smooth-bore cannons. Torpedoes appeared, launched now by the sinister submersible and the pesky airplane that transformed sea warfare to a three-dimensional affair. The challenges faced by men like Fisher and his near contemporaries Germany’s Alfred Tirpitz, Italy’s Paolo Thaon di Revel, Japan’s Heihachiro Togo, and America’s William Benson seem likely to be repeated as twentieth-century militaries struggle to incorporate twenty-first-century technologies.

To Crown the Waves is an examination of the war at sea and the seven major navies that fought this war. It pools the expertise of historians from five nations who examine not only ships and weaponry but also doctrines and traditions, industry and bases, training and goals—less tangible factors that gave each fleet a unique personality and influenced how it met the challenges it faced. Laid out to a common structure, the chapters allow for easy reference and comparison following this outline:

I.Backstory

A.Pre-1914 history

B.Mission/function (navy’s prewar missions, intended enemy, construction philosophy)

II.Organization

A.Command structure

1.Administration

2.Command and fleet organization

3.Communications

4.Intelligence

B.Infrastructure, logistics, and commerce

1.Bases

2.Industry

3.Shipping

C.Personnel

1.Demographics

2.Training

3.Culture

III. The Ways of War

A.Surface warfare

1.Doctrine

2.Ships/weapons

B.Submarine warfare

1.Offensive

a.Doctrine

b.Boats/weapons

2.Antisubmarine

C.Mine warfare

1.Doctrine

2.Ships/weapons

D.Amphibious warfare

1.Doctrine/capabilities

2.Coastal defense

E.Aviation

IV. War Experience and Evolution

A.Wartime evolution

1.Surface warfare

2.Submarines

3.Aviation

B.Summary and assessment.

To Crown the Waves follows several conventions. Rather than wrestle the metric-measurement navies into the imperial system used by the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy (or vice versa), this work adheres to neither one system nor the other; the appendix provides a conversion table. All miles are nautical miles. Non-English terms are used sparingly, and ranks are expressed in English. The book is lightly footnoted, and a selected bibliography lists the more important works consulted by the authors as well as additional references in English.

Editors:

Vincent P. O’Hara, of Chula Vista, California, W. David Dickson of Hernando, Mississippi, and Richard Worth of Bolivar, Missouri, also edited On Seas Contested: The Seven Great Navies of the Second World War, published by Naval Institute Press (2010).

Contributing authors:

Chapter 1, the Austro-Hungarian Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine, is the work of Zvonimir Freivogel, who is based in Germany. Dr. Freivogel has published books and articles in German, English, Italian, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian in periodicals including Warship, STORIA Militare, and Okręty Wojenne. Dr. Freivogel’s most recent work is Tauchgang um das K.u.K. Schlachtschiff Szent Istvan (Marine Arsenal, 2008).

Chapter 2, on the French Marine Nationale, is authored by Jean Moulin of Blois, France. Mr. Moulin has written forty-seven books and more than a hundred articles on naval subjects, most recently Les contre-torpilleurs de type Aigle (Marine Editions, 2012).

Chapter 3, on the German Kaiserliche Marine, is a collaboration by the authors who also wrote the German chapter in On Seas Contested. It is led by Dr. Peter Schenk and includes Axel Niestlé, and Dieter Thomaier, all from Germany.

Chapter 4, on the British Royal Navy, is by John Roberts of England, whose recent credits include Battleship Dreadnought (Conway Maritime Press, 2003) and British Warships of the Second World War (Chatham, 2003).

Chapter 5, on the Italian Regia Marina, is the work of Enrico Cernuschi of Pavia Italy and Vincent P. O’Hara, the co-authors of the Italian chapter in On Seas Contested. Mr. Cernuschi has written more than twenty books and three hundred articles. Mr. O’Hara’s most recent work is In Passage Perilous: Malta and the Convoy Battles of June 1942 (Indiana University Press, 2012).

Chapter 6, on the Russian Imperial Navy, is authored by Stephen McLaughlin. Mr. McLaughlin’s credits include the Soviet chapter in On Seas Contested, Russian and Soviet Battleships (Naval Institute Press, 2010), as well as many articles on the Russian navy in Warship and Warship International.

Trent Hone contributed chapter 7, on the U.S. Navy. Mr. Hone also wrote the U.S. Navy chapter in On Seas Contested. He is coauthor of Battle Line: The United States Navy 1919–1939 (Naval Institute Press, 2006) and has written for the Journal of Military History, Naval War College Review, and Warship.

The introduction, chapter 8, and the conclusion are the work of the editors.

1

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

Die Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine

Zvonimir Freivogel

BACKSTORY

Pre-1914 History

The Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal ( kaiserliche und königliche , or k.u.k.) Navy was a relatively recent naval force, despite the facts that the Austrian Empire was one Europe’s oldest states and that as early as 1379 and 1382 the towns of Duino and Trieste on the northeastern Adriatic coast had sworn allegiance to the Habsburgs. Austria was, like Germany, a predominantly continental-oriented power, and over the next four hundred years few efforts were undertaken to develop a navy. Attempts by Emperors Charles VI (1685–1740) and Joseph II (1741–90) were thwarted by Venice, a regional naval power, and Austria commanded only several gunboats for trade protection along its short coastal stretch.

Austria’s first real chance to develop a navy came in 1797, when Austria—in accordance with the peace treaty of Campo Formio and in exchange for its Dutch provinces—received from Napoleon all Venetian territories, including Istria and Dalmatia, and the naval arsenal at Venice as well. But this gift horse was toothless: French soldiers removed most of the materials from the arsenal, damaging warships being built or repaired there, and between 1798 and 1805 the Austro-Venetian navy had at its disposal only few frigates and smaller sailing vessels. In 1805 even these became French, but in 1814 Austria conquered Venice, Istria, and Dalmatia once again, acquiring the remnants of France’s Venetian and Illyrian naval detachments. Thereafter the small Austrian navy patrolled the Adriatic and sent single ships into the Levant, and in 1840 a naval force operated with British and Turkish warships off the Syrian coast against Mehmed Ali’s efforts to establish Egyptian independence from the Ottomans.

The Austrian navy’s organizational structure became independent from the army in 1824, but the fleet—with Venetian (Italian) officers and crews from Venice, Croatia, Dalmatia, and Istria—remained a foreign body for continental Austrians. This was accentuated by the mutiny at Venice in 1848, during which most of the ships raised Italian flags. A small part of the navy operated from Trieste in the blockade of Venice put the mutiny down in 1849. Afterward the navy was reorganized: the officer corps, the command language, and the ship’s names were Germanized, and the main naval base was transferred from Venice to Pola, where a new naval arsenal was established in 1856. In 1859, during the Franco-Sardinian war against Austria, a French naval detachment operated unmolested in the Adriatic, even using Lussin Island as a naval base, but after 1860 the imperial navy, under Archduke Ferdinand Max—the future and ill-fated Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico—made great progress, building its first ironclads and taking part in the Danish-German war in 1864. The war of 1866—with Prussia and Italy against Austria—forged the navy: under Rear Admiral Wilhelm v. Tegetthoff it defeated off Lissa a larger Italian fleet in the biggest naval action fought between Trafalgar and Tsushima. Nonetheless, defeated by Prussia on land, Austria was compelled to cede Venice to Italy, though it retained the eastern Adriatic coast.

After the glorious 1866 victory, the Austrian (from 1867 Austro-Hungarian) navy was neglected again. Its best commander, Admiral Tegetthoff, died prematurely in 1871, and the fleet fell into disrepair. Financial restrictions made shipbuilding almost impossible. In addition to four newly built center-battery ships, four Lissa veterans (including one wooden ship of the line) were similarly modernized, built anew but using funds appropriated for refit and repair. The fleet commander, Admiral Maximilian von Sterneck, adapted the ideas of the Jeune École, and between 1880 and 1898 Austria built two ram-cruisers, called Sterneck’s tin cans, followed by one armored cruiser, five coastal-defense battleships, three torpedo cruisers, and scores of torpedo boats. In fact, the fish torpedo was invented in Fiume by the English businessman Robert Whitehead from an idea of the Croatian/Austrian naval officer J. Luppis. Torpedo units of the Austrian navy were seen as a mobile line of defense in the passages between the numerous islands along the eastern Adriatic coast.

Between 1898 and 1913 systematical building programs were possible for the first time under Admirals Hermann von Spaun and Count Rudolf Montecuccoli di Polinago, officers who held in succession the post of commander in chief, leading the navy in accordance with Alfred Thayer Mahan’s ideas. Three 8,000- and three 10,000-metric-ton battleships were built before 1907, together with two armored and three protected cruisers, twelve destroyers, and thirty-six torpedo boats. The Austrian navy was, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the world’s eighth largest, climbing to the seventh after the Russian fleet was decimated during the Russo-Japanese war.

After 1907, there followed three 14,000-ton predreadnoughts and the first submarines. Two 20,000-ton dreadnoughts were ordered in 1910, followed by two more dreadnoughts, four scout cruisers, six destroyers, twenty-seven torpedo boats, and several smaller units. All these vessels were completed before or during the war, in contrast to the follow-on units of the 1914 program (four 24,000-ton dreadnoughts, three 4,900-ton cruisers, six destroyers, and five submarines), which were not laid down due to the outbreak of war.

Mission/Function

Austria ruled 370 miles of Adriatic coast but lacked a port on the open Mediterranean. Not surprisingly, the Austrian navy considered the Adriatic and its approaches as its most probable theater of war, and for strategic (and economical) reasons the fleet was configured for coastal defense. Nonetheless, naval operations between 1872 and 1914 included international peacekeeping missions in the eastern Mediterranean and numerous training and diplomatic missions around the world, like the participation of Austro-Hungarian cruisers and landing detachments in the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900–1901. At the same time Austria pursued a policy of expansion to the east in the direction of Greece, coming into conflict with Serbia. Another rivalry existed between Austria-Hungary and Italy, which was trying to expand in the same area and saw the Adriatic as an Italian lake. Czarist Russia, which sought free access to the Mediterranean and wished to conquer Constantinople, was another traditional Balkan rival. Great Britain opposed Russian aspirations, wishing to see the Ottoman Empire slowly fade away and thus to increase its influence in the Middle East and secure vital routes to India. France sought influence in Syria, and Germany in Asia Minor. Thanks to delicate British diplomacy (and to several blunders on the German and Austrian side), the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy was slowly encircled by the Entente Cordiale of France, Great Britain, and Russia. In the case of war against the French and British navies in the Mediterranean, the combined Italian and Austrian fleets, together with the German Mediterranean Squadron, were to operate from Sicilian bases under the overall command of the Austrian commander in chief, Admiral Anton Haus.

Because of rising tensions in Italian-Austrian affairs, the Austrian chief of the General Staff, General Conrad von Hötzendorf, developed from 1909 new war scenarios: War Case I assumed war against Italy, with Germany and Russia remaining neutral; War Case B (for Balkans) assumed war against Serbia and Montenegro, with all other nations neutral; War Case R assumed a conflict in alliance with Germany and Romania against Russia, with other nations neutral, but included secondary actions against Serbia and Montenegro.

In the case of war with Italy military strategy envisaged an offensive thrust into Italian territory by the bulk of the army—supported by the navy, assuming command of the sea was acquired. Although the Italian navy was stronger than the Austrian, Austrian naval strategy was conceived in an offensive spirit, and the war at sea was to start with a massive surprise attack by a cruiser flotilla on large Italian bases, merchant shipping, and coastal targets. The strategic doctrine was based on belief in the need to seek a decisive battle with the enemy in order to obtain command of the sea, and it was thought that this decisive battle would take place immediately after the outbreak of war. Because the Austrian main battle fleet was based at Pola, this engagement could take place in the area between Pola and Trieste or, in case Italy was allied with Montenegro, off the Gulf of Cattaro. If the Italian navy obtained command of the sea, the principal mission of the Austrian fleet would be defense of the coast, with the battle fleet concentrated at Pola and the mobile defense resting largely on torpedo boats, augmented by scout cruisers and destroyers.

These plans came to nothing in the summer of 1914, when the chain reaction of alliances and treaties pulled almost all nations into the Great War. Italy remained neutral at first, which left the Imperial and Royal Navy locked in the Adriatic and the Germans at Constantinople. Austria’s major opponent at sea during this period was the French Marine Nationale. The navy’s task was to defend the Adriatic, but Admiral Haus did not react to the French battle fleet’s initial probes into the Adriatic in 1914, trying to preserve his fleet for the decisive battle against the Italian archenemy. When Italy finally joined the Entente in May 1915 and declared war on Austria-Hungary, the k.u.k. main fleet shelled Italian Adriatic towns unopposed while the Italian dreadnoughts remained at Taranto. The Austrian battle fleet was afterward degraded to the role of a fleet-in-being, and the war theater was left to light forces and submarines. At this point the navy’s war tasks were to protect supply lines, support air attacks against Italian soil, and help Austrian and German submarines reach the Mediterranean. There were neither enough fast cruisers and destroyers for the all necessary tasks nor large enough submarines to wage a traffic war in the Mediterranean. Nonetheless, the Austrian navy was successful in defending the coast and in providing the logistical base for submarine operations in the Mediterranean.

ORGANIZATION

Command Structure

Administration

In the Dual Monarchy there were only three ministries: war, finance, and foreign affairs, with the navy represented by the Naval Section in the War Ministry. Austria-Hungary concentrated its main interest and resources on the army, and the navy was a stepchild in regard to financial allocations. Between 1866 and 1904 the naval share of the total defense budget rose from 7.7 to 15.7 percent. In 1867 the Austrian naval budget amounted to 7.625 million crowns, rising to only 17.4 million crowns in 1899, compared to an Italian naval budget of 90 million crowns and a British Royal Navy budget of 550 million crowns.¹ Another obstacle was the initial Hungarian opposition to increases in naval expenditure. Because of the dual status of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the two independent parliament delegations of Austria and Hungary needed to mutually approve the defense budget, and the Hungarians were initially against naval programs, partially because the kingdom lacked significant ship- and ordnance-building facilities.

In 1904 the navy was required to cut its special budget requirements from 50 to 25 million crowns, while the army was asked to reduce its provision by only 5 million crowns; Admiral Spaun resigned in protest. No new construction was provided between 1905 and 1909. The 1910 budget included two installments to amortize old debts but again no funds for new ships. The heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, became in the meantime fond of the navy, supporting Admiral Montecuccoli in plans that included ordering two dreadnoughts in 1910 and taking a credit of 32 million crowns for this purpose.² In 1911 these funds were approved, and when Montecuccoli retired in 1913 on his seventieth birthday the Austro-Hungarian navy had 700 officers, 10,000 sailors and technicians, and 16,000 reservists. Montecuccoli’s successor, Vice Admiral Haus, had more luck with his 1914 budget, but these funds had not been used when the war broke out.

Organization

Command Organization

The commander in chief of the Austro-Hungarian navy was at the same time head of the Naval Section in the War Ministry at Vienna and supervised several departments. His staff included two admirals, ten staff officers (i.e., in the rank of captain or commander), fourteen more junior officers and nine officers for local duties, five high-ranking engineers, one high-ranking legal and medical officer, fourteen supply officers, and several clerks. Having ministerial rank, the commander in chief was responsible for naval matters and funding and answered to delegations of both parliaments. In 1913 Admiral Haus transferred his seat of command from Vienna to Pola, but the Naval Section of the War Ministry, under his deputy, Rear Admiral Karl Kailer von Kaltenfels, remained at Vienna. Haus had with him at Pola only a small staff, led by his chief of staff, Captain Alfred Cicoli, who was succeeded in 1914 by Captain Joseph Rodler.

Haus—promoted to the rank of grand admiral—died in February 1917, and his successor, Admiral Maximilian Njegovan, remained responsible for operational control, but the position of the head of Naval Section was separated and given to Vice Admiral Kailer, partially to curtail the commander in chief’s political influence in Vienna. Njegovan was retired in February 1918, after a sailors’ mutiny in the Bays of Cattaro, to be replaced by young Rear Admiral Miklós Horthy de Nagybanya, popular after his dashing attack against the Otranto Barrage in May 1917. Local naval commanders on land were the:

a.Harbor Admiral of Pola (in 1914 Vice Admiral Eugen Ritter von Chmelarz), responsible for the defense of Pola and Istria, except the Trieste area

b.Naval coastal commander of the Trieste area (Rear Admiral Alfred Freiherr von Koudelka), responsible for shipbuilding at Trieste

c.Naval coastal commander of the Sebenico area (Rear Admiral Hugo Zaccaria from 1913, when this command was established)

d.Naval coastal commander at Castelnuovo in the Bocche di Cattaro (Captain Egon Klein).

Fleet Organization and Order of Battle

The Austro-Hungarian navy was organized after well-proven British and French principles. In peacetime one squadron under a vice admiral was operational year-round, with one division of the three newest battleships and the Cruiser Flotilla, which included one armored cruiser, one light cruiser, and a destroyer/torpedo-boat flotilla. In summer a second squadron, with another battleship division, additional cruisers, and more torpedo units reinforced the active squadron. In winter these vessels served at Pola as a reserve squadron, for training purposes with reduced crews but ready to be operational at short notice.

After mobilization, according to the order of battle for 27 July 1914, principal seagoing forces were the Battle Fleet at Pola, under the direct command of Admiral Haus, and the Cruiser Flotilla. The Battle Fleet included 1st and 2nd Heavy Squadrons. The 1st, under Vice Admiral Maximilian Njegovan, comprised the 1st Division, with three Tegetthoff-class dreadnoughts under Njegovan himself, and the 2nd, with three Radetzky-class battleships under Rear Admiral Anton Willenik. The 2nd Squadron, under Rear Admiral Franz Löfler, comprised the 3rd Division, with three Erzherzog-class battleships under Löfler, and the 4th, with three Habsburg-class battleships under Rear Admiral Karl Seidensacher.

The Cruiser Flotilla, under Rear Admiral Paul Fiedler, comprised the 1st Cruiser Division (with three armored cruisers, three light cruisers, Szigetvár, Zenta, and Aspern) and two torpedo flotillas. The 1st Torpedo Flotilla—led by the scout cruiser Saida, under Captain Heinrich Seitz—included the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Torpedo Divisions, with six Tátra- and six Huszár-class destroyers and ten torpedo boats. The 2nd Torpedo Flotilla—led by the scout Admiral Spaun, under Captain Benno von Millenkovich—comprised the 4th, 5th, and 6th Torpedo Divisions, with six Huszár-class destroyers and eighteen torpedo boats. Attached to the torpedo flotillas were the torpedo depot ships Gäa and Steamer IV.

The fleet train included the repair ship Cyclop, the yacht Lacroma, oil tanker Vesta, water carrier Najade, tug Gigant, old destroyer Meteor, and several steamers for transport and storing of ammunitions, provisions, coals, fuel, and barrage equipment, like antisubmarine nets and booms. The 5th Heavy Division, with three coastal battleships of the Monarch class under Rear Admiral Richard Ritter von Barry, and the 2nd Cruiser Division, with the old cruisers Kaiser Franz Joseph I and Panther, were initially stationed in the Bocche di Cattaro for defense against Montenegro.

The local command at Pola was responsible for the inner harbor, the Fasana anchorage, and the areas between Cap Compare and Peneda and between Cap Compare and Promontore. It had at its disposal several hulks and harbor-defense vessels, including the old cruiser Leopard, two minelayers, some tugs and dispatch boats, and the 7th Torpedo Division, with three old destroyers and eight old torpedo boats. Attached to the Pola defenses were the Submarine Station, with the depot ship Pelikan under Lieutenant Commander Franz Ritter von Thierry (also commander of the Submarine Station) and six submarines, and a detachment of seven minesweepers converted from torpedo boats. Defense of Lussin (part of the Pola Harbor Command) was provided by the old destroyer Magnet, four smaller torpedo boats, and several mine depot ships.

The Trieste Naval Command had at its disposal mine depot ships of Mining Command IV, with four older torpedo boats, four customs guard steamers, and two requisitioned vessels. Local defense of Sebenico included Mining Command III, with two mine depot ships, two minesweepers, old destroyer Komet, and eight older torpedo boats. Naval defenses of the Bocche di Cattaro comprised the Mining Command II, with the old ironclad Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolf as harbor guard ship, under Commander Richard Florio, together with the minelayer Dromedar and the tug Büffel, two minesweepers, the old torpedo ship Zara, the stationary ship Kaiser Max, the old destroyer Blitz, and four old torpedo boats.

Communications

As early as during the 1866 war, telegraph lines from Lissa and Lessina had served to inform Tegetthoff at Pola about the activities of Italian fleet, enabling him to sail in time to defeat the enemy. Before 1914 communication lines along the coast were modernized to include wireless equipment.

Tactical

During peacetime the naval reconnaissance and communications service used signal stations along the coast. Before the war this service was upgraded by powerful wireless stations at Pola, Sebenico, and Klinci in the Bocche di Cattaro, new observation and signals stations, and the construction of the Central Information Collecting Station at Pola. There were sixteen peacetime signal stations—four in the Pola Section, nine in the Sebenico Section, and three in the Klinci Section—with another eleven installed after mobilization. Civilian postal installations at Trieste, Pola, Spalato, Zara, and Ragusa served as signals stations for the navy. After mobilization all regular stations received additional personnel, and new stations were established in shortest possible time. During the war their number grew again, with observation posts on Curzola, near Raguza, in the Trieste area, and between the Bocche and Durazzo.

In 1903 some Austro-Hungarian ships were equipped with experimental wireless stations of Siemens-Braun and Rochefort types, and from 1904 additional Siemens-Braun wireless stations were ordered. After 1907 the navy introduced a new wireless specialty for crewmen. Some ships received Telefunken or Poulsen wireless apparatus, but Telefunken-type stations were found to be of better quality, being also promoted for merchant ships by the Ministry of Commerce, in contrast to the Marconi apparatus carried by some merchant vessels. In 1914 there were fifty-five wireless stations on k.u.k. warships, and during the war their number rose to 219, all of Telefunken type and mostly delivered by the Siemens & Halske factory at Vienna.

Strategic

Long-range wireless stations at Pola (Radio-Pola, from 1916 called Radio-Tivoli, with a thousand-kilometer range), Sebenico, Castelnuovo, and Lussin enabled communications with fleet units on the Adriatic and in the Mediterranean. During the war a strong new wireless station was built east of Pola (Gross-Radio-Pola), to become operational on 5 September 1916. Old Radio-Pola served afterward as a reserve and eavesdropping station.

Intelligence

Admiral Haus upgraded the intelligence organization and modeled it after British naval intelligence. The Naval Evidence Bureau at Pola collected data on foreign navies and published reports and books for use of naval officers. Foreign wireless and telephone messages were intercepted even before the war and partially deciphered. Collecting offices (Sammelstellen) at Sebenico and Klinci sent data received from local signal stations—like visual and sound detections of ships or naval gunfire, sightings of airplanes, suspect movements of boats or people—to the Central Office (Zentrale Sammelstelle) at Pola, where all information, including items dispatched by secret agents, was collated, compared, and evaluated by naval officers to build a plotting image for use by naval commanders.

To protect Austrian wireless traffic, firm rules were followed and codes were completely changed each time it seemed they might have been compromised, such as after the losses of U 12 off Venice, of destroyer Lika in shallow water off Durazzo, and of German UC 12 off Taranto, and after the defection of torpedo boat T 11 to the Italians. This was in contrast to German practice, where codes remained unchanged after the loss of the cruiser Magdeburg, enabling British cryptographers to read German wireless messages for the remainder of the war.

Regarding special operations of Austro-Hungarian agents, the Italian battleships Benedetto Brin and Leonardo da Vinci were sunk in harbor by Austrian saboteurs who smuggled explosive devices on board. Another action, to kidnap Italian MAS (motor torpedo) boats from Ancona in April 1918, went awry. Austrian sailors entered the city unhindered in uniforms similar to those of the Regia Marina, but the single MAS found in the harbor was not operational, and the Austrian agents all became prisoners of war.

Infrastructure, Logistics, and Commerce

Bases

The principal Austro-Hungarian naval base was the Central War Harbor (Zentralkriegshafen) at Pola, with an extensive naval arsenal. There were numerous workshops, four slipways, four large and several smaller floating docks, floating cranes, and a score of harbor tugs, with two thousand permanent and up to three thousand periodically employed workers. In June 1915 the number of workers in the Arsenal and the Building Establishment reached 8,130. All kinds of warships and even seaplanes were built and repaired there, machinery, artillery, and torpedoes were serviced, ship’s boats produced, and so forth. Attached to the arsenal was the Ammunition Institute at Vallelunga. Pola was the seat of the Naval Technical Committee, responsible for technical research, ship design, and improvement of armament. Other institutions were the Building Establishment, Hydrographical Institute, Naval Hospital, Supply Institute, Naval Clothing Institute, and Naval Court. The whole k.u.k. fleet could be anchored in the main harbor or dispersed to the Fasana anchorage. Pola was located at the southern tip of the Istria Peninsula, and it dominated the northern Adriatic, including shipping routes to and from Venice—the main Italian harbor on the Adriatic—and to Ancona in the southwest. At the same time it shielded the principal Austrian merchant harbors of Trieste and Fiume. The harbor was protected by older and newer fortifications, as well as by fortified lines on land. The harbor of Lussin Piccolo on Lussin served as a base for torpedo boats and a dispersion anchorage for bigger vessels.

Because Pola was near Italy, the navy envisaged building another naval base. One of the locations considered was Sebenico, easy to protect because of its narrow entrance but even easier for a determined enemy to blockade, because the islands off Sebenico were not fortified. Another possible location was Trau, west of Spalato, but the cost of fortifying nearby islands was again prohibitive, and only Sebenico was developed, as a secondary base for torpedo flotillas.

In the south, the great natural harbor of Bocche di Cattaro encompassed several deep and well-protected bays, but they were within artillery range of Montenegrin positions. After the defeat of Montenegro in January 1916, the Bocche served as a permanent base for Austrian and German submarines operating in the Mediterranean and for the k.u.k. Cruiser Flotilla. The local arsenal at Teodo performed small-scale repairs. (See map 1.1.)

Map 1.1. Austro-Hungarian Naval Bases

Industry

Austria-Hungary had before 1914 an industrial base adequate to build and maintain the navy. In addition to the Pola Arsenal the major shipyards included:

•At Trieste: Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino/STT, where all modern battleships except one were built.

•At Monfalcone: Cantiere Navale Triestino/CNT, which constructed lighter units.

•At Fiume, on Hungary’s coastal enclave: the new Ganz-Danubius shipyard, where one dreadnought, two scout cruisers, and several destroyers, torpedo boats, and submarines were built. One of the consequences of building warships in Hungarian shipyards was that they differed in detail from the Austrian-built ships. Most extreme was the case of dreadnought Szent István, which had a completely different power plant, with only two, and not four, steam-turbine sets and screws.

•At Porto Re: Danubius branch, which specialized in destroyers and torpedo boats.

In addition, the Skoda armament factory at Plzen delivered naval guns of all calibers. The steel factory at Witkowitz fabricated excellent armor plating, and even in the Hungarian half of the empire, at Györ, there was a naval armament factory. As mentioned, torpedoes were manufactured at Fiume, and the small Whitehead shipyard produced submarines as well.

One of the problems in developing the navy was a 1904 agreement between the Naval Section and the Hungarian government that called for 34.4 percent of all expenditures for industrial products to be spent in Hungary. If a particular product was not available from a Hungarian source, Hungary was to be compensated by a larger percentage of funds spent for purchasing products it could produce.

Austro-Hungarian warships were mostly coal burners, but domestic coal was of inferior quality and was used for secondary purposes only. The fleet used imported British coal. Before the turn of the century the navy used 30,000 tons of coal annually. Consumption rose steadily to 50,000 tons in 1900, and in the decade before the First World War the navy consumed between 100,000 and 115,000 tons annually. In 1912, for example, 150,000 tons were procured abroad, and 117,000 tons used. By 1914 the reserve equaled 500,000 tons—a quantity insufficient for a long war, when imports would be cut by blockade. It was one of the reasons fleet movements were curtailed in the second half of the war. Some of the ships had partially oil-burning furnaces (new battleships, destroyers of the Tátra class, 250-ton torpedo boats) or used only oil (new coastal torpedo boats), and twelve big oil tanks were built at Pola.

Shipping (Sea Routes and Traffic)

The Austro-Hungarian merchant navy had a strong presence in the eastern Mediterranean and operated on the high seas as well. The oldest and biggest shipping company was the Austrian Lloyd of Trieste, with sixty-two steamers at the turn of the century transporting yearly 1.5 million tons of cargo, followed by Austro-Americana, founded in 1895, with thirty-five steamers and a million tons of cargo. The third significant company was the Hungarian Adria firm, with thirty-five steamers and 0.95 million tons of cargo yearly. The main merchant harbors were Austrian Trieste, where two-thirds of the maritime cargo and passenger traffic of the Habsburg Empire took place, and Hungarian Fiume, with one-third. Other harbors along the coast were of local significance, with smaller coastal shipping lines connecting the towns and the islands. One of the reasons for their existence was the insufficient road and railroad net: only Trieste, Pola, and Fiume were connected to the hinterland with standard-gauge railroad lines. The lines to Spalato and Sebenico were narrow-gauge, similar to the railroad connecting Sarajevo in Bosnia with Metkovic and Ragusa. From there a line led along the coast to the Bocche di Cattaro.

After the outbreak of war, almost all merchantmen, except these needed for local traffic or set aside for the navy, were sent to protected anchorages in the Bay of Buccari, on the Novigrad Sea near Zara, and to Prukljan Lake near Sebenico. Ships outside home waters were captured by the enemy or interned in neutral harbors, to be requisitioned later by the adversaries. Other merchant vessels in protected anchorages were later chartered by the Austro-Hungarian navy or army as transport or accommodation ships, auxiliary escorts, or submarine chasers.

Shipping routes along the coast were shielded by outer islands and protected at critical points by minefields, but there were two exposed areas—off Cape Planka (between Sebenico and Spalato) and between Ragusa and Bocche di Cattaro. There French submarines waited for Austro-Hungarian maritime traffic, damaging and sinking several merchantmen; later, Italian submarines penetrated the inner passage to attack shipping there.

Personnel

Demographics

In 1913 there were nine hundred naval officers, and together with naval clerks their number eventually reached 1,630. Some 72 percent were embarked (including stationary, harbor accommodation, and training ships), and the rest were stationed on land.

Conscripts were recruited in commands at Trieste, Fiume, and Sebenico for a period of four years, remaining later in the 1st and 2nd Reserves. Initially mostly Croatian seamen and fishermen from the coast were recruited for the navy. Their number—some five thousand—remained always constant, even in 1900, when the navy was only ten thousand men strong. Because the demands for crewmen grew to 18,000 in 1913 and to 20,000 in 1914, it became necessary for the navy to recruit from all parts of