World War I at Sea

The naval arms race between the British Empire and the German Empire was one of the most important causes of the First World War . Germany wanted to increase its navy to a size that would allow German overseas trade not to depend on the goodwill of Britain. However, an increase in the German fleet to a value comparable to the British fleet inevitably threatened the very existence of the British Empire .

The main type of warship in World War I was a battleship built on the model of the dreadnought . Naval aviation was just beginning to develop. Submarines and sea ​​mines acquired a large role.

German code disclosure

On August 26, 1914, the Russian cruisers Pallada and Bogatyr grabbed a signal book from the German light cruiser Magdeburg , stranded near Osmussaar Island in the Gulf of Finland . The Russian authorities handed over the book to the British Admiralty , which played a decisive role in revealing the naval code of Germany. The disclosure of the code subsequently had a tremendous impact both on the hostilities at sea and on the course of the war as a whole.

North Sea

The North Sea was the main theater of war for surface ships. Here, the British Grand Fleet and the German High Sea Fleet opposed each other. A significantly larger British fleet supported the blockade of Germany, cutting it off from overseas resources. The German fleet mainly remained in the harbor, waiting for a favorable situation for the battle. When Germany faced the blockade of German ports by the British fleet, and Britain’s refusal to comply with the London Declaration on the Laws of the War on the Sea , according to which food and non-military cargo should be allowed into blocked ports, the development of plans to use submarines to inflict proportional damage to Britain began. ^[one]

There were several major battles : the Battle of Helgoland , the Battle of Dogger Bank , the Battle of Jutland , and the Second Battle of Helgoland . On the whole, the British fleet, although it did not always achieve tactical successes, was able to maintain the blockade and keep the German fleet in the harbor, although until the end of the war the German fleet remained a serious threat that had attracted most British forces.

English Channel

Atlantic Ocean

While Germany was experiencing significant difficulties due to the British naval blockade, the British metropolis was heavily dependent on imports of food and raw materials. The Germans found that their submarines, although ineffective against surface warships, do a good job with merchant ships and can easily patrol the Atlantic even when British forces dominate the surface of the sea. In 1915, the Germans tried to establish a blockade of Britain with the help of submarines. They managed to cause significant damage to British shipping, but failed to stop it.

Mediterranean Sea, Adriatic, Dardanelles

Black Sea

At the beginning of the war, neither the Russian nor the Ottoman Empire had dreadnoughts on the Black Sea. Two dreadnought, built for the Turkish fleet in England, with the outbreak of war were requisitioned and included in the royal fleet under the names HMS Erin and HMS Agincourt . In autumn 1914, Germany transferred the Ottoman Empire the battlecruiser SMS Goeben and the light cruiser SMS Breslau . Far surpassing the armored ships of the Black Sea Fleet of Russia, the Goeben played a decisive role in further events.

The fighting on the Black Sea began in October 1914 with a bombardment by German-Turkish forces of coastal Russian cities, while the Goeben and Breslau attacked the main base of the Black Sea Fleet - Sevastopol. This bombardment led to the declaration by Russia of the war of Turkey and, accordingly, the entry of the latter into the war on the side of the Central Powers. On November 5, 1914, the main forces of the Black Sea Fleet suddenly met "Geben" and "Breslau" in the Yalta region. Despite a favorable set of circumstances for the Russians, it was not possible to achieve a decisive result - after an exchange of volleys, the enemy was able to leave (See. Fight at Cape Sarych ). Until the beginning of 1916, the Goeben and Breslau remained a bone in the throat of the Russian fleet. Only at the beginning of 1916 the Black Sea Fleet received the first dreadnought battleships - “ Empress Maria ” and “ Empress Catherine the Great ”, which radically changed the balance of forces in favor of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

The commissioning of new battleships allowed the Russian fleet to establish a blockade of the Ugolny district in Anatolia (the ports of Zunguldak , Kozlu, Eregli , Kilimli), which served as the only source of local coal for Constantinople, the Turkish fleet and railway transport ^[2] . By October 1916, the supply of coal from Zunguldak to Constantinople had virtually ceased. The blockade led to a sharp reduction in the operations of the Turkish fleet, including the cessation of minesweeping at the mouth of the Bosphorus ^[2] . Due to the lack of coal in 1917, "Goeben" never went to sea ^[3] .

Soon after the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd and the ensuing anarchy, the Black Sea Fleet lost its combat effectiveness. After the conclusion of the Brest Peace Treaty and the advance of Germany, the main fleet base in Sevastopol came under German control.

Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea was considered by the leading maritime state - Great Britain and Germany - as a secondary theater. The British believed that the Russian fleet, slowly recovering from the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, would not be able to provide any significant assistance to the British fleet, and the Germans were primarily afraid of the British fleet, therefore they kept only outdated ships in the Baltic. The main combat mission of the Russian fleet was to resist the penetration of the enemy into the Gulf of Finland by fighting in a prepared position. To solve this problem, a defensive position was appointed in the narrowness of the bay formed by the island of Norgen and Cape Porkkala-Udd - the so-called central mine-artillery position. Military operations in the Baltic Sea began on July 31. At 6.56, Russian mine-layers under the guise of battleships began to put the first mines.

Capture of Magdeburg

On August 26, 1914, an event occurred in the Baltic that had a significant impact on the further course of the war. In the Gulf of Finland, near the island of Osmussaar , the German light cruiser Magdeburg ran aground. Attempts to save the ship ended in failure and soon it was captured by the approaching Russian cruisers Bogatyr and Pallada . The main success was the cruiser’s signal book raised from the sea, which was then transferred to the British Admiralty, which played a decisive role in uncovering the German naval code. The disclosure of the code subsequently had a significant impact, both on hostilities at sea and on the course of the war as a whole.

The initial period of the war

On October 11, the German torpedo submarine U-26 sunk the Pallada cruiser. In mid-October, two British submarines broke into the Baltic . On November 17, the German cruiser Friedrich Carl was blown up by mines and sank. At the end of 1914, four new battleships, Poltava , Gangut , Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol , were completed, which changed the balance of forces in the Baltic Sea.

On January 25, 1915, the German cruisers Augsburg and Gazelle were injured in mines.

On June 19, 1915, a Gotland battle took place between Russian and German cruiser groups. The German Albatross mine layer was sunk.

Gulf of Riga Defense in 1915

On August 8, 1915, German forces, consisting of 7 battleships, 6 cruisers, 24 destroyers and 14 minesweepers, tried to break into the Gulf of Riga through the Irbensky Strait . They were opposed by the battleship “ Glory ”, gunboats “The Terrible” , “The Brave” , “Sivuch” , the mine loader “Amur”, 16 destroyers and a submarine division. At 4 o’clock in the morning German minesweepers began making a passage in the minefield. They were noticed by Russian planes; soon gunboats “The Menacing” and “Brave” and destroyers, which opened fire on minesweepers, approached the scene of the battle. At 10.30 a.m. battleship “ Glory ” arrived at the battlefield and entered into an artillery duel with two German battleships - “Alsace” and “Braunschweig” . Having lost two minesweepers T-52 and T-58 on mines, the Germans abandoned the attempt to break through. On August 10-15, the Amur mine layer put an additional minefield in the Irbensky Strait.

On August 16, German forces repeated an attempt to break through the Irbensky Strait. During the day, the Germans managed to penetrate the Irbensky Strait, although they lost the T-46 minesweeper. “Glory” was forced to retreat after the battle with the German battleships “Nassau” and “Posen” . On the night of August 17, the German destroyers V-99 and V-100 entered the Gulf of Riga. In the battle with the Russian destroyer Novik , the V-99 was damaged, and then was blown up by mines and was flooded by the crew. On the afternoon of August 17, Glory again entered into battle with the battleships Nassau and Posen, received three hits and retreated to Moonsund . On August 19, the German destroyer S-31 was blown up by mines and sank, and the British submarine E-1 torpedoed the German cruiser Moltke . After that, German forces left the Gulf of Riga.

Fight for the Gulf of Riga 1917

On October 12-20, 1917, a battle broke out between the German and Russian fleets over the Moonsund Islands, during which the German fleet landed troops on the islands of Ezel , Moon and Dago , captured them and, having cleared minefields in the Irbensky Strait , broke into the Gulf of Riga . But they again lost a lot of minesweepers, and the channel was closed by the flooded battleship Slava.

Revolution

After the October Revolution, the Russian fleet completely lost its combat effectiveness. Under the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty, the Russian army and navy were to leave the coastal fortifications in Finland and Estonia, which had gained independence. In May 1918, the Baltic Fleet's Ice Campaign took place: ships were sent across the ice from Revel and Helsingfors to Kronstadt. The transition was made at the initiative of the fleet commander, Captain 1st Rank A. M. Schastny .

British submarines in the Baltic Sea

In the fall of 1914, three British submarines of type E broke into the Baltic Sea through the Danish Straits : E1 , E9 and E11 . In the fall of 1916, four more British submarines were delivered to the Baltic via Arkhangelsk , and then on barges along the Northern Dvina , Sukhon and the Mariinsky system : S26, S27, S 32, S36. British submarines were based in Revel , and at the end of December 1917 the flotilla was relocated to Helsingfors .

On April 3, 1918, after the conclusion of the Brest Peace , the British, under the leadership of Commander F. Cromie, took the boats E-1, E-9, E-19 from Helsinkors to great depths and there, in order to avoid capture by the Germans, they were flooded. On April 4, 1918, E-8 and S-26 were flooded there, and on April 5, S-27 and S-35. The submarine S-32 was blown up, and the submarine E18 died on May 25, 1916 for an unknown reason ^[4] .

Barents and White Seas

Military goods were delivered to Russia from Great Britain by sea to Arkhangelsk . This journey took about two weeks. The ships followed without security, as a result, German submarines sank 3 vessels. The German auxiliary cruiser Meteor was able to enter the northern part of the White Sea and establish mines near Cape Svyatoy Nos , 10 ships, two sailing ships and two warships blew up on them.

German submarines operated in the Barents Sea since 1916. In September 1916, 30 steamers and a sailboat were sunk. From October 1916 to January 1917, only 148 Norwegian ships were killed by German submarine attacks. An effective way to protect merchant ships from submarines was the convoy system, which began to be widely practiced in the autumn of 1916. The escort was carried out from the Norwegian border almost to Arkhangelsk in turn by Russian and British ships ^{[5] [6]} .

Pacific and Indian Ocean

A small part of the German naval forces located in the Pacific Ocean, with the outbreak of war, participated in raider operations. The German cruiser Emden with an unexpected attack destroyed the Russian cruiser Pearl and the French destroyer Mosquet (Musket) in Penang harbor and sank about thirty merchant ships in raid operations, but was eventually badly damaged in a battle near Cocos Islands with the Australian cruiser Sydney .

The German East Asian cruising squadron of Admiral Maximilian von Spee defeated Rear Admiral C. Cradock's cruising squadron at the Battle of Coronel , sinking the armored cruisers HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmout. In December 1914, the squadron went to the Falkland Islands , where it stumbled upon a more powerful British squadron and was destroyed . Only the cruiser Dresden damaged in the battle managed to escape. After repair, he cruised off the coast of Chile, but in March 1915 he was blocked by British cruisers in the bay of. Mas a Terra and flooded by the team.

The German cruiser Königsberg at the beginning of the war was in Dar es Salaam , the capital of German East Africa . He also conducted several operations: captured an English ship in the Gulf of Aden, fired at the coast of Madagascar ; September 20, 1914 in the port of Zanzibar island sank in battle the English cruiser Pegasus. Then the Königsberg hid in the Rufigi Delta, where it was overlaid by the British and sunk in battle on July 11, 1915 with four English ships.

The German cruiser Kormoran (retrained as a gunboat) was repaired at the Qingdao docks in August and was flooded by dock workers in September. Its guns were transferred to the captured Russian ship “Ryazan”, transformed into an auxiliary cruiser “Cormoran” . In December 1914, the exhausted coal reserves Kormoran entered the island of Guam , which led to a two-year confrontation with the local American administration. After the United States entered the war, the team flooded the cruiser on October 7, 1917.

The German cruiser "Geyer" , which appeared at the start of the war in Singapore, cruised for several months, capturing one British ship. October 14, 1914 he went to Honolulu , where he was interned on November 8, despite the neutrality of the United States . After the United States entered the war, the Americans introduced the cruiser into their fleet under the name USS Schurz. The cruiser carried convoy and patrol service, but sank after a collision with the merchant ship Florida on June 21, 1918.

• Corbett Julian. Operations of the English fleet in the first world war
• Novikov N. Fleet operations against the coast on the Black Sea in 1914-1917.
• The history of the creation and service of the German light cruisers of the First World War.
• "WWI: The War at Sea"
• E. Abramov. World War I on the seas and oceans