A Naval History of World War I

by Paul G. Halpern

  Regardless of the events on land, the Italian navy stepped up its guerrilla war in the Adriatic. Once again the Mas boats were in the fore. On the night of 10 February, three Mas boats were towed to the vicinity of the Gulf of Buccari near Fiume. This was a very bold move, because the objective, a number of laid-up steamers, was deep in Austrian waters. The Mas boats made their attack but did not sink any of the ships, at least partially because faulty torpedoes failed to explode. The noted poet, novelist, and nationalist Gabriele D’ Annunzio immortalized the raid as the “Beffa di Buccari,” and the propaganda value was immense. The Austrians replied the night of 4 April with a daring raid on Ancona with the objective of seizing a Mas boat and blowing up the submarines that were reported to be there. Linienschiffsleutnant Joseph Veith, five cadets, and fifty-five men landed north of the town, unfortunately in the wrong location owing to a faulty compass. The raid was a failure, and the entire party was captured, although the Italian authorities were dismayed that the raiding party had gotten so close to its objective.53

  The Italians developed an ingenious device for another bold attempt to get at the Austrian capital ships in their base. They built four Grillo-class barchini saltatori, or “jumping boats,” a form of naval tank fitted with two lateral caterpillar chains for climbing over barrages protecting a harbor. Each was armed with two torpedoes. The Italians made their first attempt against Pola on the night of 8 April but were frustrated by the arrival of dawn before they could get into the harbor. Their second attempt on the night of 12 April was also frustrated by delays, and they had to scuttle two of the craft, the Cavalletta and Pulce, on the approach of Austrian aircraft. Mechanical difficulties halted an attempt by the Grillo on the night of 6 May. Lieutenant Mario Pellegrini was finally successful on the night of 13 May in maneuvering the Grillo past some of the barriers at Pola before the craft was discovered, sunk, and the crew taken prisoner. The Italians had bad luck, for Pola was in a state of heightened readiness as a result of special measures that Horthy had ordered a few weeks before in order to guard against the sort of raid that the Grillo had attempted. He was determined to preserve the irreplaceable battleships either for combat or to uphold Austria-Hungary’s position as a great power. The Austrians raised the Grillo and eventually began to build two similar craft of their own, which were incomplete at the war’s end. They also tried to build their own versions of the Mas boats, but these were, for the most part and for various reasons, still incomplete at the end of the war.54

  The ability of the Austrians to disrupt the Otranto barrage was substantially reduced. By the spring of 1918 there were destroyers available to protect the drifters, including six from Australia, which had arrived at Brindisi in October of 1917. There were still not as many as the Allies desired, but their presence made a difference. On the night of 22–23 April, five Tátra-class destroyers made a sweep southward toward the Strait of Otranto. The British destroyers Jackal and Hornet encountered them about 15 miles west of Valona, and there was a sharp fight in which the Hornet was badly damaged. The Austrians might have been able to finish her off, but under orders to avoid being cut off by superior forces, and in the vicinity of Valona with a bright moon, they turned for home. The Jackal, which had lost her mainmast, pursued, joined by the other destroyers that had been on patrol that night, the British Alarm and Comet, the Australian Torrens, and the French Cimeterre. The Austrian destroyers steadily pulled ahead, and the Allied destroyers turned back west of Cape Pali. Once again the Austrians escaped in a night action without suffering any damage or losses; the British lost seven dead and twenty-five wounded. However, there had been no massacre of the drifters as there had been the preceding year. The Allied patrols were both stronger and more alert.55

  The Austrians also had to call off another raid on the night of 8–9 May when the raiding forces were discovered prematurely. The plan had been for four destroyers of the Huszár class to land a raiding party to cut the coastal railway near Silvi to the north of Pescara. This in itself was not exceptional and needs no further comment. What was interesting, however, was that two of the destroyers suffered mechanical breakdowns of one sort or another on their return, which greatly reduced their speed. The Huszár-class destroyers were older and had seen much hard use, but it is significant that the Austrian naval command saw fit to inquire as to the nationality of the crewmen on duty in the engine room at the time. The men in one destroyer turned out to be German; in the other destroyer, a Czech and a Hungarian. No sabotage was proven, but it is significant that the question was asked and that the naval command felt obliged to add a warning that in the future machinists in the fleet should be chosen with care. The k.u.k. Kriegsmarine was proud that like the monarchy it served it was a multinational institution and sailors of different nationalities served together on its ships, unlike the army where whole regiments might be of the same nationality. Nevertheless, there had been the mutiny at Cattaro, a conspiracy led by two Slavic ringleaders uncovered in a torpedo boat at Pola in May, and the example of the Russian revolution—all while the condition of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy itself steadily deteriorated. Some commanders thought the socialistic spirit did more harm than the nationalism of the subject peoples, and the submarine ace von Trapp seemed particularly suspicious of Czechs and reported how all work on his boat had to be personally checked. It is difficult to know how much to make of this. As late as 9 August Horthy assured AOK that although the fleet was a mirror of opinion in the Dual Monarchy itself, circumscribed to a certain degree by discipline, the fleet was in hand and in all probability would continue to remain so during and after a hostile action against the Austrian coast. The fleet did continue to function loyally to the very end of the war, but there can be no denying the fact that officers were now inclined to look over their shoulder and that the atmosphere had changed.56

  Horthy had been hailed as “new blood” with the mission of rejuvenating the fleet, and it was widely anticipated, once he had the battle fleet in hand to his satisfaction, it would see action. The predictions were correct. Horthy planned a major attack on the Allied forces in the Strait of Otranto to take place at dawn on 11 June. The stated reason for the operation was to relieve the pressure the enhanced Allied mobile barrage had been exerting on the German and Austrian submarines seeking to pass through the Strait. The real reason was possibly Horthy’s desire to raise morale by giving the fleet something to do. The plan was similar to that of the 15 May 1917 operation. The light cruisers Novara and Helgoland with four Tátra-class destroyers would attack the line Santa Maria di Leuca-Fano while the light cruisers Spaun and Saida and four torpedo boats would sweep the waters off Otranto and attack the seaplane station located there. The major difference from the operation of the preceding year would be the use of the four dreadnoughts from Pola and the three Erzherzog-class battleships from Cattaro. They would be out in seven separate support groups, each accompanied by destroyers and torpedo boats. Horthy expected the Allies to repeat their actions of 1917 and send light cruisers and perhaps armored cruisers out from Brindisi to intercept the raiders. If they did, they would encounter the big guns of the Austrian battleships and suffer accordingly. In addition, German and Austrian submarines were deployed off Brindisi and Valona and Austrian aircraft would join the action.

  The dreadnoughts were scheduled to leave Pola in two echelons, steaming at night and anchoring at different secure anchorages during daylight hours. Horthy left Pola in his flagship Viribus Unitis together with the Prinz Eugen the evening of 8 June, anchored at Tajer the following day, and then proceeded to Slano by night, arriving on the morning of the 10th. The second echelon, the dreadnoughts Szent István and Tegetthoff, sailed from Pola on the evening of the 9th, escorted by one of the older destroyers and six torpedo boats. By chance, Rizzo, now promoted to capitano di corvetta, was out in Mas.15 together with Mas.21, searching for mines. At about 3:30 A.M. on the 10th, approximately 9 nautical miles southwest of the island of Premuda, Rizzo encountered the Austrian ships.
Rizzo torpedoed the Szent István; Mas.21’s torpedoes missed the Tegetthoff. The Italians escaped. The efforts to save the Szent István were not successful, and shortly after 6:00 A.M. she capsized and sank with the loss of four officers and eighty-five men. Horthy immediately called off the operation. He believed that the all essential surprise was lost and that the Austrians might encounter a superior force of dreadnoughts from either the French fleet at Corfu or the Italian fleet at Taranto. Allied submarines would probably be off Brindisi and the Albanian coast and other submarines and Mas boats would converge on the approaches to Cattaro. The unspoken sentiment in the Austrian navy might well have been that when Horthy deviated from Haus’s policy of the fleet-in-being, the results were disastrous.

  One can never know what would have happened if Rizzo had not had his chance meeting with the Austrians. The Allies were alert to some Austrian move because of an increase in Austrian wireless traffic and air activity. There were ten British, Australian, and French destroyers on patrol north of the drifter line that night, so the Austrian light forces might have had a hot time of it. The Allies realized after the aborted raid that they could not afford to relax, although the Austrians had also found they could not really change the situation at the entrance of the Adriatic. There was one harmful result for the Allies. The Austrian sortie led them to believe, quite erroneously, that if the Austrians had been willing to take such risks to attack the Otranto barrage it must really be effective. For the Italians the affair was, perhaps, the one they most like to remember in the entire war. Rizzo’s Mas.15 is still preserved in the Museo del Vittoriano at the base of the Victor Emmanuel II monument in Rome. The news of the sinking arrived at the perfect psychological moment for the Italians, as it helped to strengthen Revel and the Italian navy—the object of often scathing criticism over the lack of activity by their dreadnoughts—to resist British, French, and American demands they integrate their fleet more closely with those of their allies.57

  The Austrian navy did not undertake any major sortie for the remainder of the war, although, ironically, the last real offensive by the Central Powers was undertaken by the Austrian army in Albania at the end of August and there was some fear on the Allied side the Italians would not be able to hold Valona. The Italians were rather embarrassed about all the Allied attention in Albania where they had their own ambitions, but the Italian army reinforced its forces in front of Valona and the port was secured.58

  The waters off Albania were also the scene of the last naval action of any size in the Adriatic during the war. General Franchet d’Esperey, the Allied commander in the Balkans, began his offensive on the Macedonian front on 14 September. The Bulgarian lines were broken, and on 29 September the Bulgarian government was forced to conclude an armistice. Bulgaria was the first of the Central Powers to leave the war, and her collapse set off the chain of events leading to the collapse of the others. Franchet d’Esperey now anticipated that German and Austrian forces in the Balkans would be forced to rely on Durazzo for supplies, and he asked for some action on the part of the Allied navies to neutralize the port as an enemy base. The old problem of command in the Adriatic reared its head. Durazzo was in the Italian sphere of operations, and the Italian navy had indeed considered various plans since July involving the place, but they were never implemented for the familiar reason: the potential gains did not seem worth the potential risks. The French government put the Italians on the spot. If the Italians did not act, the French navy would. The prospect of a sizable intervention by the French navy in the Adriatic was unacceptable to the Italians, and Revel decided to act.

  The bombardment of Durazzo on 2 October 1918 can be compared to using a hammer to swat a fly. The bombarding force was truly international. Commanded by Rear Admiral Palladini, the first echelon consisted of the three Pisa-class armored cruisers, preceded by four British destroyers fitted as minesweepers, and escorted by four British destroyers and eight Italian torpedo boats. The second echelon consisted of three British light cruisers escorted by four British destroyers. The American submarine chasers acted as a screen to the north and south of the bombarding area. Four to six Mas boats were also on patrol. Farther offshore there were three groups serving as advanced covering forces ready to engage any Austrian vessels that might sortie from Cattaro. The covering forces included three Nibbio-class scouts and one Italian and two British light cruisers escorted by four British and Australian destroyers. The third and most powerful group consisted of the dreadnought Dante Alighieri escorted by seven Italian destroyers and flotilla leaders. Revel was in the Dante, although he did not fly his flag. The group was commanded by Rear Admiral Mola. There were also seven to eight British, French, and Italian submarines on either their normal or additional patrols off the Austrian bases, and Revel ordered the torpedo craft at Venice to be ready to attack any Austrian vessels that might come out of Pola. Furthermore, British and Italian aircraft carried out a series of air raids throughout the day. The bombardment of Durazzo was the only thing approaching a fleet action that U.S. naval forces participated in during the First World War.

  Revel reduced the scope of the operation to avoid running unnecessary risks. The original plan had called for destroyers to rush into the port to destroy all floating matériel while the cruisers engaged the shore batteries. Revel canceled the destroyer action; it would be a long-range bombardment only. This failure to press home the attack reduced much of the value of the bombardment, and, as the British pointed out, the risks of mines and torpedoes remained. There were only three Austrian warships in port when the bombardment began, the old destroyers Dinara and Scharfschütze and the torpedo boat Tb.87, along with three steamers and the hospital ship Baron Call. The Austrian submarines U.29 and U.31 were on patrol in the area. The hospital ship Baron Call left port at the beginning of the action, and after being stopped and inspected by British destroyers, was allowed to proceed on her way. One of the Austrian steamers in port was burnt out and sunk, the others received only minor damage. The three Austrian warships dodged about, close to land, evaded an attack by the Mas boats, and escaped with only minor damage. There were a number of houses destroyed on shore, the inevitable casualties, and the morale of the garrison was certainly lowered. However, while the second echelon, the British cruisers, bombarded the town, U.31 succeeded in torpedoing the Weymouth, blowing off the cruiser’s stern and killing four men. U.29’s attempt to get into a firing position was frustrated by the screening forces, and the submarine was subjected to a heavy depth-charge attack. The Americans for many years cherished the erroneous belief that their submarine chasers had sunk two submarines that day. They had not.59

  This was the last action of the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine, which was destined to disappear forever in little more than a month. The action also may have been unnecessary, for the military situation in the Balkans compelled the Austrians to evacuate Durazzo on 11 October. The empire was beginning to break into fragments. On the 16th Kaiser Karl issued a manifesto that offered to turn the Habsburg monarchy into a federal state, but it was too late for an offer of this sort. On 17 October the Austrians ceased to participate in the submarine war outside the Adriatic. The kaiser’s manifesto had a serious effect on discipline in the fleet; by 23 October officers were noting widespread demands for a return home and the formation of national committees. On 24 October General Diaz, who had replaced Cadorna as head of the Italian army after Caporetto, began his long-expected offensive on the Italian front. The climactic battle generally known as Vittorio Veneto followed. The Austrians resisted fiercely for a few days but began to give way on the 29th with a general collapse on the 30th and 31st. The Austrians were forced to conclude an armistice at the Villa Giusti near Padua on the evening of 3 November.

  The kaiser ordered Horthy to turn over the fleet and naval property to a newly formed South Slav National Council in Agram. Those men who were not of the South Slav nationality were free to go home, although Horthy urged those who did not take service with the new Yugoslav navy
to remain at their posts during the period of transfer. Linienschiffskapitän Janko Vukovic de Podkapelski was named the provisional Yugoslav fleet commander. At sunset on 31 October, the red-white-red ensign of the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine was lowered for the last time, and Horthy left the ship with the old ensign under his arm. The new red-white-blue Yugoslav flag was raised to a twenty-one-gun salute.

  The Slavic sailors were jubilant, and that night the ships were fully illuminated for the first time since the beginning of the war, and apparently no watch on the entrance to the harbor was maintained. This was a mistake, for technically the war was still on, and during the night two Italian officers, Tenente medico (medical lieutenant) Raffaele Paolucci and Maggiore del Genio navale (major of naval engineers) Raffaele Rossetti, penetrated the harbor with a new and ingenious device. The two men, dressed in rubber suits, guided the mignatta (leech), a torpedolike self-propelled mine, and attached explosive charges to the hull of the Viribus Unitis and Austrian Lloyd liner Wien (7,376 tons), which until shortly before had been used as an accommodation ship by German U-boat crews. The two officers were captured, but the charges exploded and the Viribus Unitis—the first Austrian dreadnought, symbolic of Austro-Hungarian efforts to become a real sea power—capsized and sank around dawn. The Wien also sank, but was later salved.60 It remains a matter of controversy how much the Italians knew of the situation in Pola before the attack.61

  Although the war in the Adriatic was over, there was no real peace. The Allies in Paris had drafted stiff terms concerning what warships the Austrians would have to surrender. These terms became moot when the empire itself ceased to exist. The Allies initially were suspicious about recognizing the new Yugoslav flag. There was some distrust this was a ruse to avoid surrendering the ships. The Yugoslavs in the long run received comparatively few of the former Austro-Hungarian warships, which were divided among the Allies. The big ships and most of the old ones were quickly scrapped, but a few of the light cruisers served in the French and Italian navies until the late 1930s, and torpedo boats could be found in the Romanian navy even after the Second World War. The Italian navy rapidly sought to occupy points Italy claimed in the Adriatic, and very quickly the rivalry between the French and Italians turned poisonous. The new Yugoslav state, supported by the French, seemed a new rival to replace the old Austro-Hungarian empire. The acrimonious disputes that accompanied Italian, French, and Yugoslav policies in the Adriatic are beyond the scope of this book, but it is perhaps indicative of Italian feelings about the outcome of the peace conference that the final volume in the Ufficio Storico’s history of the Italian navy in the war is subtitled “The Mutilated Victory.”