Th e Italian War: Th e Long Stalemate

the damaged railway facilities were under repair or even already repaired.464

Th e Italian Press wrote about the “barbaric enemy” after the Bombardment of Ancona. Later it turned out that while the Italian government declared Ancona an open city in 1914, the government itself did not proclaim this declaration.

It’s worth a closer examination the report on the action of 24 May of the commander of the Viribus Unitis, Linienschiff skapitän Edmund Grassberger in the context of the alleged ventilation problem and lack of oxygen in the triple turrets described one year later. Th e Viribus Unitis which followed the Tegetthoff and was the second ship in Njegovan’s line, opened fi re at 4:38 a.m. and ceased fi re at 5:00 a.m. During this 22 minutes period she fi red an unknown number of 30.5 cm and 15 cm projectiles. Grassberger, who was notorious for his manner and his long, pamphlet-like reports in which he criticized every defect, real or imagined; this time wrote a very short report, the shortest of all the battleship commanders. In his report he did not mention any problem with the turret ventilation.465 It is inconceivable that such a serious problem would not have been reported, especially because a less important problem with one of the Tegetthoff’s 30.5 guns was reported, and this report was repeated in Njegovan’s report.466

After the action of 24 May, during the summer of 1915 the Austro-Hungarian Navy shelled Italian land targets on a few occasions, but in these operations only cruisers or smaller units participated. Th e largest battleships of the Navy remained in the well-defended naval base of Pola for (almost) the rest of the war. Th e Radetzkys until November 1918 left Pola only for gunnery practice in the Fasana Channel. Th e same was true for the Tegetthoffs until 8 June 1918. On 8 and 9 June 1918, the four dreadnoughts of the Monarchy left Pola for participating in the ill-fated “Operation Korfu” which ended prematurely due to the sinking of the Szent István.

Th e Italian War: Th e Long Stalemate

After its entry to the war Italy’s activity on the Adriatic intensifi ed in June 1915. Th e Italians succeeded in occupying the tiny and remote Pelagosa Island on 11 July. Th e four newest and largest Italian armored cruisers were deployed to Venice to support the Army’s operations and also to attack and destroy enemy naval forces in the Northern Adriatic. It was soon demonstrated how dangerous the confi ned waters of the Adriatic were for larger units lacking the proper torpedo protection system. On 7 July, the German submarine UB 14 under Austro-Hungarian fl ag (Germany and Italy were not yet offi cially at war) torpedoed and sank the Italian armored cruiser Amalfi. Th e Italian Navy had a plan for an attack on Ragusa, and this led to their second major loss: the armored cruiser Garibaldi en route from Brindisi to Ragusa was torpedoed and sunk by the Austro-Hungarian submarine U 4 commanded by Linienschiff sleutnant Rudolf Singule on 18 July. Th e Italian Navy planned also the occupation the Island Lagosta, but this was rejected. On 17 August, Austro-Hungarian cruisers and destroyers appeared at Pelagosa and shelled the Italian positions. Th e Italians decided for giving up the tiny, barren island and on the next day evacuated Pelagosa.

Owing to the serious losses of the Italian Navy in the fi rst months of the war, the reputation of the Regia Marina was ravaged in the eyes of the Italian public. After losing two armored cruisers, in September a serious accident occurred: the battleship Benedetto Brin blew up in Brindisi with a great loss of lives.467 By the end of the summer of 1915, the war in the Adriatic was a stalemate and this stalemate lasted practically until October 1918. In October 1915, Th aon di Revel resigned from the position of Chief of Staff and took command of the naval base of Venice. He returned to the top in February 1917 and became the Commander in Chief of the mobilized naval forces when the Commander in Chief of the Navy, Prince Luigi Amedeo was dismissed.

Th e French liaison offi cer, capitaine de vaisseau Renè Daveluy, provided a perfect analysis of the situation by the end of August: “From these facts one can draw the following conclusion: submarines prohibit large warships from keeping to the sea, each party scratched their heads to ‘do something’ but one has not found any other thing to do except small operations which have no real signifi cance and are, above all, intended to give the illusion one is acting. But, as one cannot fi re indefi nitely on the same bridge, the same station, the same railways, the same lighthouses and the same semaphores, it seems

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59 Austro-Hungarian dreadnoughts at Pola in 1916, Szent István in the foreground

clear that now the Italians and the Austrians are at the end of their resources; after having wanted to do ‘something’ no one longer knows ‘what to do’.” 468

Linienschiff skapitän Erich Heyssler who was the Chief of Staff of the Cruiser Flotilla (Kreuzer-Flottille) between 1914 and 1917 had similar thoughts: “Th e military situation on the Adriatic was like that it was not suitable for larger scale, promising actions. Th ere were times in 1915 when our relative inactivity, compared to the performance of the Army, was weighing on our minds. We were always thinking ‘we must to do something; we have to perform something again’. […] Some of our attacks on the Italian coasts originated only from our desire ‘to do something’. Real strategic success was therefore not associated with them.” 469

Behind the inactivity of the large Austro-Hungarian units stood also other factors beside the above described situation. Th e most important of these factors was the fuel shortage. Th e Austro-Hungarian Navy before the war relied entirely on imports of coal. More than 90 percent of the Navy’s coal was imported from Britain. Domestic coal was considered unsuitable for fuel due its high sulfur content.470 British coal was of the best quality and the cheapest so the boilers and grates of the Navy’s ships were optimized for burning British coal. In 1913-1914, on the initiation of the new Marinekommandant, Anton Haus the Navy purchased much higher quantity of coal than in the preceding years. Th anks to Haus, the Navy had stockpiled nearly 330,000 tons of coal before the outbreak of the war. After the outbreak of the war, it became impossible purchasing more coal from Britain and from the USA; therefore the Austro-Hungarian Navy had to rely on the prewar stocks and on the strictly limited shipments of German coal. As the battle fl eet consumed 1,000 tons of coal per hour on the open sea, sending the large units frequently into missions would have resulted in fast depletion of the stock of high quality coal.471

Th e pet project of the Allied Powers especially of the British on the Adriatic was the Otranto barrage from 1915. Th e father and inventor of this barrage was Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty. Its purpose was to prevent the German and Austro-Hungarian submarines entering from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean. As Italy lacked the ships and the fi nancial means, the British took over the barrage and its command. Despite the great eff orts the barrage was ineff ective. Th e idea of closing the narrow entrance of the Adriatic with nets towed by drifter fi shing boats did not work in reality. Th e destroyers and other Allied

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vessels tied up in guarding the barrage were badly missed from convoy escort duties in the worst days of the submarine warfare. Th e greatest and most famous battle of the Adriatic theatre, the Battle of the Otranto Straits in May 1917 evolved from an Austro-Hungarian raid on this barrage.

Th e death of the old Emperor Franz Joseph in November 1916 and the accession to the throne of Emperor Karl brought important changes in the military and civil leadership of the Dual Monarchy. Th e new emperor presumably was planning to remove the old and ailing Haus from his position, but something other was occurred. Karl met the German Emperor Wilhelm II at Schloss Pless in January 1917 discussing the unrestricted submarine warfare. Haus accompanied Karl, and on the way back to Pola get a cold in his unheated railway car. On 8 February, the Marinekommandant died of pneumonia aboard his fl agship, the Viribus Unitis. At the time of Haus’s death now existed a plan to reorganize the Navy’s command, including the separation of the administrative command from the operational command of the fl eet. Vizedmiral Maximilian Njegovan, commander of the First Battle Squadron was appointed to Flottenkommandant and was promoted to full Admiral, but the post of Marinekommandant remained vacant. Vizeadmiral Karl Kailer was appointed to Chef der Marinesektion. Th is system was very short lived: Kailer died in April 1917 and Njegovan was promoted to Marinekommandant and Chef der Marinesektion. With these promotions, the pre-1917 system of command was restored, which had been established by Tegetthoff back in 1868.472 In his one year period of command Njegovan continued the cautious policy of Haus, but he lacked the undoubted authority of his predecessor. In the greater part of 1917, things went relatively well for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. It caused more losses to the enemy than suff ered itself. Th e small Austro-Hungarian submarine force doubled during 1917 and successfully joined the unrestricted submarine warfare being waged at that time. It is worth mentioning though, that this submarine force played a secondary role in the submarine war on the Mediterranean, while the German submarines operating from Austro-Hungarian ports had the heaviest burden of it in this theatre. On 15 May 1917, took place the most famous naval engagement of the First World War on the Adriatic, the Battle of the Otranto Straits, a great success for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Th e three Helgoland class cruisers led by Linienschiff skapitän Miklós Horthy made a raid on the Otranto barrage, sinking fourteen drifters of forty-seven. On the way back to Cattaro a battle evolved between the three cruisers and the joint British-Italian-French forces sailed from Brindisi to intercept Horthy’s ships. Th e heavier artillery of the Allied cruisers crippled Horthy’s fl agship, the Novara. Th e Italian commander, contraammiraglio Alfredo Acton broke off the pursuit seeing the smokes of Austro-Hungarian heavy units closing from Cattaro on the horizon, which enabled to escape the three Austro-Hungarian cruisers. On this day the Allies lost two destroyers, one merchant steamer and fourteen drifters while the Austro-Hungarians lost not a single ship.473

Fortune turned against the Austro-Hungarian Navy on 10 December 1917. On this night an Italian MAS (motor torpedo boat) commanded by Luigi Rizzo sneaked into the Golf of Trieste, and torpedoed and sank the old coastal defense ship Wien. Th is event marked the beginning of the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Njegovan sank into depression, as naval historian Paul G. Halpern wrote: “[Njegovan] who was reputed to be interested solely in regular meals and rest, always refused anything proposed to him and seemed to have given up.” 474

Th e fi rst signs of a breakdown of discipline were the demonstrations in Pola in the summer and fall of 1917. Discontent over shortages of food was the main cause of these demonstrations. Order and discipline was restored with little diffi culty, and Njegovan wisely chose not to enforce harsh punishments.475 Th e discontent of sailors after three and half years of war culminated in the Cattaro mutiny in February 1918. No doubt, there were political motives behind the mutiny, but its main causes were war weariness, shortage of food, and the enormous gap between the life of the sailors and their offi cers. Th is gap under the commanding offi cer of the forces in the Bocche di Cattaro, Kontreadmiral Alexander Hansa had grown too wide on board the idle, older ships. Th e mutiny began at noon on 1 February on Hansa’s fl agship. On 3 February, after the arrival of the three battleships of the Th ird Battle Division (Erzherzog Karl class) from Pola, the mutineers surrendered. From the mutinous crews 392 men were arrested, four of

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