by Alex Hook
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Western Front: Campaign to bomb Paris and towns in England by Zeppelins begins.
31
United States: The U.S. War College Division warns its employees ‘to engage in no discussion whatever concerning the progress of the European War.’.
FEBRUARY
German Verdun offensive starts
February 1916
With spring on the way Germany launches huge offensives on the Western Front. British munitions minister, David Lloyd George, approves full production of the first tank.
3
United States: U.S. President Wilson delivers final speech of his Preparedness Campaign in Saint Louis.
7
Western Front: The RFC forms its first single-seat fighter squadron – No. 24 – flying Airco DH2s.
8
War at sea: French cruiser Admiral Charner is torpedoed off the Syrian coast by U-21: 374 lives lost.
9
Politics: Military Service Act becomes law in Britain allowing conscription.
10
War at sea: Minesweeping sloop Arabis is sunk by German destroyers east of the Dogger Bank. Grand Fleet and Harwich Force are ordered out of port to search for the enemy.
Retreat from Suvla Bay.
Commander-in-chief of the British armies in France, Sir Douglas Haig, seen in the special train placed at his disposal in France.
Armenia, most of Mesopotamia and the north of Persia — the areas fought over by the Russians and Turks in the winter of 1915-16.
11
War at sea: Returning Harwich Force flagship Arethusa mined off Harwich.
16
Caucasus: In Armenia the Russians capture Erzerum, taking 13,000 prisoners. Large numbers of Arabs desert from the Turkish Army.
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Africa: German troops in Cameroon surrender at Mora to British, French, and Belgian troops attacking from neighboring colonies.
21
Western Front: The Battle of Verdun starts with a German attack on Mort-Homme ridge, west of Verdun. The fighting lasts for ten months until 6 December and claims over a million casualties.
23
Western Front: French artillery kills the entire French 72nd division at Samogneux, Verdun.
24
United States: U.S. Acting Secretary of War, Hugh L. Scott asks the United States War College Division what plans have been made in the event of a ‘complete rupture’ with Germany.
Western Front: Marshal Pétain is given command of the defense of Verdun.
Marseilles—Scots troops en route from India to the Western Front, 1916.
25
Western Front: Fort Douaumont falls to Germans and the French are driven out during the battle of Verdun. 500 soldiers are either killed or injured.
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War at sea: German commerce raider Wolf runs aground in the Elbe Estuary and heavily damaged, decommissioned as a raider.
German submarine sinks the French transport ship Provence II, killing 930.
27
War at sea: In the Straits of Dover P&O liner Maloja is blown up by a mine: 155 lost.
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War at sea: British auxilary ship Alcantara sunk in action with German raider Greif 70 miles northeast of the Shetlands. The badly damaged Grief finished off by other Royal Navy forces.
MARCH
Unrestricted U-boat warfare begins again; Sussex torpedoed
March 1916
The German attack on Verdun eventually falters and fails to make a breakthrough. The German unrestricted campaign against shipping is resumed, even at the risk of alienating American opinion.
1
War at sea: Germany starts an ‘unlimited’ submarine campaign to break Britain by starving her of food and supplies and by destroying British shipping.
In the Mediterranean HMS Primula is torpedoed.
6
United States: Pacifist Democratic lawyer Newton Baker is made U.S. secretary for war.
Russian troops freshly arrived from Siberia being reviewed by their commander-in-chief, General Sarrail, in Salonika.
French grenadiers.
Women took on many jobs after conscription was introduced in 1916.
9
Italian Front: Fifth Battle of the Isonzo starts.
Politics: Germany declares war on Portugal on the latter’s refusal to give up seized ships.
United States: Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico. Pancho Villa leads 1,500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17.
11
Italian Front: 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Battles of Isonzo between Italy and Austria-Hungary are rugularly launched until 14 November.
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Italian Front: The Fifth Italian Isonzo Offensive, lasts until the 29th.
13
Africa: In German East Africa the British led by General Smuts start the major Morogoro Offensive.
15
Politics: Austria-Hungary declares war on Portugal.
United States: President Woodrow Wilson sends 12,000 U.S. troops led by General Pershing over the Mexican border to pursue Pancho Villa into Mexico.
16
War at sea: Off Harwich the Dutch liner Tubantia is torpedoed without warning.
Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz resigns as Prussian navy minister in protest at restrictions on U-boat activity. Replaced by Admiral Eduard von Capelle.
Map showing the terrain of the nine-month struggle of the Germans to take Verdun. The thick line shows the battle front as of 21 February 1916.
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Eastern Front: Start of the first Battle of Lake Naroch.
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United States: First U.S. air combat mission as eight American planes take off in pursuit of Pancho Villa.
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War at sea: French cross-channel steamer Sussex is sunk by a torpedo from a German submarine off Dieppe with many Americans aboard. 50 lives are lost but no Americans die.
25
War at sea: HMS Cleopatria sinks a German destroyer.
Following a collision in the North Sea the destroyer HMS Medusa sinks.
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Western Front: Melancourt taken by Germans in the Battle of Verdun.
APRIL
Easter Rising in Ireland
April 1916
British forces in Mesopotamia begin to advance on Baghdad but fail to relieve Kut-el-Amara. The United States compels Germany to stop unrestricted submarine warfare.
4
Eastern Front: Alexi Brusilov is given command of Russia’s Southern Front.
United States: American naval and military attaches in Paris and London draft plan for mobilizing US shipping to carry an American army to Europe, but their plan is ignored (this plan did not survive, but is referred to in a memorandum of 14 November 1916, Record of the Joint Army and Navy Board).
Former luxury liner Braemar Castle in hospital ship livery at quayside in Salonika as she embarks wounded soldiers to take back to Britain.
The Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow. In the foreground HMS Royal Oak.
Marshal Pétain, one of the great French commanders of the First World War, seen before he was promoted to chief of staff in 1917.
5
Mesopotamia: First Battle of Kut – third and final attempt by the British to raise the siege of Kut and rescue the British garrison.
7
Caucasus: Supported and covered by the Black Sea Fleet 16,000 Russian troops land on the Turkish coast at Rize to support Allied operations in the area.
9
Mesopotamia: A British attack on Turkish positions at Sanna-I-Yat fails.
Western Front: New German offensive at Verdun.
12
United States: A plot is discovered in the U.S. to blow up munitions ships.
15
Mesopotamia: First use of aircraft for delivering food and supplies when RFC and RNAS aircraft carry 13 tons of stores to Allied 9,000 men holding beseiged Kut-el-Amara from
the Turks.
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Caucasus: Russian troops take Trebizond.
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War at sea: U.S. President Wilson calls for Germany to stop their submarine policy of sinking all ships in enemy waters without warning. This follows the sinking of the Sussex on 24 March.
British artillerymen forced to pull their own due to the lack of transport animals and the impassability of the ground for vehicles.
20
War at sea: Germany stops unrestricted U-boat attacks against shipping.
Western Front: Russian troops land at Marseilles in southern France for service on the French Front.
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Politics: The Easter Rising – Irish rebellion against British rule in Ireland – begins in Dublin. The Irish Republic declared and Patrick Pearse appointed first President.
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War at sea: German battlecruisers bombard Yarmouth and Lowestoft.
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United States: Marshal Lord Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War, asks America to send troops and participate in the war in Europe.
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Mesopotamia: In Kut-el-Amara British forces under General Townshend surrender to the Turks after 146 days of siege. 3,000 British and 6,000 Indian soldiers are taken prisoner.
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Politics: The Irish rebellion ends with the unconditional surrender of Pearse and other leaders, who are tried by court-martial.
MAY
Crucial sea Battle of Jutland; German fleet returns to harbour for rest of war
May 1916
The Italian mainland is invaded by the Austrian army. On the Western Front the fighting at Verdun intensifies. Russia wins victories in the Caucasus. At sea, the most significant battle of the war takes place in the North Sea. At Jutland, 274 ships and over 70,000 men of the German High Seas Fleet and the British Grand Fleet fight for control of the North Sea. While the Germans sink more ships, the British win the strategic battle and the German fleet returns to harbour: it does not come out to fight the British again.
The Sussex was struck by a torpedo in the bows. Here she is in Boulogne harbour.
Bivouac of French colonial troops from Cochin, China who were fighting with the Allies based in Salonika and commanded by General Sarrail.
The battle front around Verdun before the 1916 German offensive.
3
Politics: Britain executes 15 leaders of the Easter Rising between 3rd and 12th, turning the men into Republican heroes and martyrs.
4
War at sea: Germany renounces submarine policy. Germany makes the ‘Sussex Pledge’ to the U.S. promising to stop sinking merchant ships without warning; however, they add that this promise isn’t permanent.
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War at sea: The White Star liner Cymrio torpedoed off the Irish coast.
14
Italian Front: Start of the Battle of the Trentino: Austrian troops mount an offensive against Italy on the Trentino Front.
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Italian Front: Start of the Battle of Asiago.
Start of the Trentino Offensive.
Western Front: Severe fighting on Vimy Ridge.
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Politics: Britain and France conclude Sykes-Picot agreement.
Australian troops wave to the camera as they march up to the front line.
25
General: In Britain the Military Service Act comes into effect.
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Balkans: Bulgarians invade Greece and occupy forts on the Struma.
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War at sea: Battle of Jutland – the only major naval battle of the war – begins. The British lost three battlecruisers – the Invincible, the Queen Mary, and the Indefatigable – plus three cruisers, eight destroyers, and 6,100 men. The Germans lost one battleship, one battlecruiser, four cruisers, and five destroyers, with 2,550 casualties. Following sinking of French steamer Sussex, Germany again agrees to ‘visit and search’ rules, insists that Great Britain should obey international laws on freedom of the seas.
JUNE
Arab Revolt takes Mecca; US/Mexican clash at Carrizqal
June 1916
The Austro-Hungarian Army is destroyed on the Southern Front by Russian activity and Turkish forces, led by Enver Pasha, are defeated by the Russians in the Caucasus. Germany’s Verdun offensive grinds to a halt following General Brusilov’s highly successful Galician offensive which started on 4 June, forcing Germany to respond by diverting troops to the Eastern Front. The last Germany offensive in the battle for Verdun was launched at the end of June.
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War at sea: End of the Battle of Jutland. Ultimately the British lost more ships and men but the German fleet turned back and remained in port for the rest of the war. The Allies’ blockade continues. Both sides considered they had won a victory.
Torpedoed by a German submarine this merchant ship quickly sank.
German soldier searching for British wounded among men and horses wiped out by a shell attack.
Behind German lines a British pilot and his plane have come to grief.
2
Western Front: Third Battle of Ypres starts with two German attacks on British trenches.
3
United States: National Defense Act authorizes the five-year expansion of U.S. Army, but at the same time drastically limits the size and authority of the U.S. War Department General Staff.
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Eastern Front: Brusilov Offensive in Galicia and southern Russia (Carpathia). Massive Russian offensive launched front stretches from Pripet in Poland to the Romanian frontier. The assault is initially successful and the Austrian army takes heavy losses.
Russians take 13,000 prisoners on the first day and 12,000 the following.
Start of the Battle of Lutsk.
5
General: Lord Kitchener, British Secretary of War, dies when the cruiser HMS Hampshire is mined and sunk in high seas northwest of the Orkney Islands, Scotland. Kitchener and staff were journeying to Russia for discussions on the progress of the war.
Middle East: With British support (led by T.E. Lawrence), Hussein, grand sherif of Mecca, leads an Arab revolt against the Turks in the Hejaz. They were made promises of post-war independence against Ottoman rule.
6
Western Front: Germans capture Fort Vaux an attack on Verdun.
Irish Guardsmen undergoing gas mask drill behind the lines on the Amiens-Albert road. They are wearing PH helmets fitted with goggles — they were later issued with box respirators.
7
Middle East: The Sherif of Mecca and other tribes of western and central Arabia withdraw their allegiance to the Ottoman Turks.
9
Italian Front: Italian counter-offensive ends the Battle of Trentino and starts a new phase.
16
Italian Front: As the Austrians suffer reversals the Italians launch a counter-offensive on the Asiago plateau.
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Balkans: King Constantine of Greece orders the demobilization of the Greek army.
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Western Front: British Somme offensive, a week-long artillery bombardment.
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Eastern Front: Russia began offensive in eastern Galicia.
JULY
Somme offensive in west: 60,000 British casualties on first day
July 1916
Germany is forced to return to the defensive on the Western Front as the Allies take the initative. On the Southern Front the Russian advance in Galicia grinds to a halt.
1
Western Front: Battle of the Somme starts with an Anglo-French attack on a 25-mile front north and south of the Somme. The offensive starts with almost 750,000 soldiers attacking out of the trenches. 58,000 British troops are casualties on the first day, one third of them killed – the heaviest loss suffered by the British army in a single day during any war. The RFC establishes air superiority over the Somme and for some 30 miles behind, enemy lines. The offensive ended on 18 November with British army having
taken its worst losses in history.
Diagram showing the courses of the British and German squadrons during the battle cruiser action before the main battle off Jutland.
Marshal Fayolle, commander of the French 6th and 1st armies.
Commander-in-chief of the British Grand Fleet, Admiral Jellicoe.
3
Western Front: The first RFC aircraft with a synchronized propeller/gun mechanism, the Sopwith 11/2 Strutter, becomes operational with 70 Squadron and takes part in the Battle of the Somme. The RFC has 27 squadrons with 421 aircraft and four kite balloon squadrons with 14 balloons assigned to support the British Army Corps.
