Die Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine
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.
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 the Dual Monarchy, and the number of Germans, Czechs, and Hungarians grew accordingly, while the number of Croatians fell to a third of the total.
In 1913 there were 401 chief petty officers and 3,776 junior petty officers, mostly graduates from the Machine School at Pola and the school for noncommissioned officers (NCOs) at Sebenico, with others coming from the ranks of reenlisted cadres. In 1913 there were 12,500 men from the 1st Reserve, 7,100 from the 2nd, 2,260 from the additional reserve, and 800 on permanent leave. Through mobilization on 31 July 1914 the numbers of personnel rose to 33,736 men, with 19,405 embarked on operational ships.
Training
The Naval Academy at Fiume trained officers. It usually had 180 pupils (Seeaspiranten) but accepted additional students in the last years before the war. Supply officers were trained on the hulk Bellona at Pola. There was another school for naval aspirants on the hulk Feuerspeier used by the Artillery School at Pola, and the midshipmen (Kadetten) from Fiume went together with those from Pola to complete their theoretical studies on the training hulk Custozza at Pola. Practical studies were undertaken on ships of the fleet. At the end of each school term a cruise was conducted on board a training ship. After leaving the academy in the grade of ensign (Fähnrich), naval officers were further trained in specialties, like artillery, mining, or torpedoes. The Artillery School at Pola instructed officers, together with ninety NCOs and 650 sailors each year. Mining and torpedo schools were organized on two hulks, with annual classes of fourteen NCOs and 130 sailors in the Torpedo School and two hundred sailors in the Mining School, together with twenty-five NCOs and a hundred sailors of the wireless branch. The Machine School at Pola instructed 650 students in three classes, with a further four to five hundred active personnel designated for the machine branch. The NCO school at Sibenik had at its disposal two harbor ships and a new building at Mandalina, where six hundred pupils were trained as future NCOs in all branches, except for machinery and electrical.
During the war the Naval Academy was moved from Fiume to Schloss Hof, near Vienna, and later to Braunau at Inn, in Austria, remaining there until 1918. The level of naval officer training remained high, but during the war it was necessary to mobilize former merchant marine officers as reserve second lieutenants, and their training and sense of duty was sometimes seen as inadequate.
From Tegetthoff’s time on, the Austrian officer corps learned in the Naval Academy not only the nautical and warrior “trades” but general education and culture as well, including at least two foreign languages. The officers were to know German as the official language, with Italian or Croatian as “unofficial” languages and English and French for general studies. After 1882, Hungarian language instruction was mandatory for all students coming from this part of the empire, and these students afterward could learn either English or French, but not both.
Austria-Hungary was a multinational empire, with twenty different nationalities. In contrast to the separate national regiments and battalions of the Austro-Hungarian army, every naval ship was an ethnic microcosm of the Dual Monarchy. The naval officer corps—in contrast to that of the army—contributed to the navy’s successful record as a multinational institution. High-ranking officers, like Admiral Spaun, spoke and wrote German, English, Italian, and French, which was necessary for political, military, and diplomatic missions. Sailors often selected their specialties in accordance with their national and social backgrounds: Croatians and Italians were mostly deckhands, Germans and Czechs gunners and machinists, Magyars machine-gun crews, and so forth.
Table 1.1 Nationalities of Austro-Hungarian Officers and Seamen, 1885 and 1910
Source: After Lawrence Sondhaus, The Austro-Hungarian Naval Officer Corps, 1867–1918.
Moreover, despite the emperor’s title “His Most Catholic Majesty,” the k.u.k. navy practiced religious freedom, and even the Chief Naval Constructor, General-Engineer Siegfried Popper (who designed all modern Austro-Hungarian battleships), was of the Jewish faith. (See table 1.1.) Social differences between officers (coming from the middle class, with some from aristocratic circles) and their men (originating from the working class) were typical for this era and were more distinct on larger warships. For example, the living quarters for the thousand enlisted men on a Tegetthoff-class dreadnought were no bigger than the quarters for a hundred officers, including the admiral’s cabin and saloon. The differences escalated during the war, when victuals became rare and officer’s messes were better supplied than those of the crew, with some officers sharing the provisions with their families. In combination with war weariness (many peacetime sailors had already seen seven years of service), this resulted in bad blood between hungry crewmen and their officers and led to the mutiny in the Bocche in February 1918. The riots exploded on bigger warships, lying idle in harbor. On scout cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo boats the differences were less pronounced and the sense of duty higher, even more so in submarines, where everybody was literally in the same boat.
The Austro-Hungarian navy was a highly professional and effective force, maintaining the tradition and the spirit of Lissa, but when Emperor Charles ceded the fleet to the South-Slav National Council on 31 October 1918 it dissolved almost overnight, like the empire it represented. All non-Slav officers and men were disembarked and sent home, but the remaining South Slav and Czech seamen were not able to retain the fleet after Italians occupied Pola and French units Bocche di Cattaro. The ships were divided between the victorious states in 1920, to be—with few exceptions—scrapped shortly thereafter.
THE WAYS OF WAR
Surface Warfare
Doctrine
In the Austrian navy much greater attention was always given to tactics than to strategy, and the Naval Section regularly issued tactical and tactical-operational instructions for the fleet. Three principal factors were regarded as crucial in bringing a decisive outcome in battle: superiority in speed over the enemy, simultaneous concentrated fire on the weakest part of the enemy’s main body, and the spiritual strength of commanders in combination with high crew morale.
The battle fleet included the most modern and largest battleships, fast cruisers, destroyers, and high-seas torpedo boats. Each of the several fleet detachments was subdivided into smaller tactical units. To be capable of successfully engaging the enemy at both short and long ranges, each fleet detachment was intended to include no more than eight and no fewer than six battleships, to ensure effective control. The basic tactical unit was a battle division, composed of three units of the same class, with exception of the 1st Battle Division with four units (after 1915, when the fourth dreadnought was completed). Two battle divisions constituted a battle squadron.
By day the fleet’s cruising formation was to include an antisubmarine screen of cruisers and destroyers, while some ten to twelve miles ahead of the main body an armored cruiser was placed as the lead ship. Three scouting groups, each comprising a scout cruiser and a destroyer, were spread out and positioned within ten nautical miles of the lead ship. Torpedo flotillas were to sail in the rear, to be out of the way during a daylight battle. Torpedo boats were to intervene in the daylight battle only if their own battleships were disabled or to attack damaged enemy battleships. During the night, the scouting vessels and the protective screen were positioned within signal distance from the main body. The cruisers and destroyers were separated within supporting distance, and a pair of cruisers reinforced each side of the protective screen. The naval staff believed that night torpedo attacks would be more effective than during daylight but generally doubted that opportunities for night attack would be offered.
The most favorable cruising formation of the main body was the squadron in line abreast, because by simply turning to one side ships could assume divisional column formation. Another formation was en echelon. After establishing contact with the enemy’s main body, the Austrian main body was to deploy from cruising into single-line battle formation in the direction of the approaching enemy. Before 1914 it was considered that long-range artillery duels were those conducted at ranges in excess of nine thousand yards. According to the prevalent Austrian view, the ideal firing range was about 6,500 yards; the k.u.k. command believed that long-range battles were ineffective and led to too great an expenditure of ammunition. In the initial phase the fleet commander was to withhold his own fire while trying with successive changes in course to close the distance rapidly and then open fire at short range.
The final phase of the artillery duel was to follow after the fleet had broken up the enemy’s battle fleet. The firing range was then to decrease rapidly until at under 3,300 yards torpedoes would be used against the enemy battle formation. Following the breakthrough, the end result would be the “melee,” enabling the use of rams (!) and torpedoes. If the enemy tried to escape the Austrian cruiser flotilla was to give chase and execute a series of concentrated torpedo attacks.
The basic tactical unit for a torpedo attack in a fleet action was to comprise one scout cruiser, two destroyers, and four to six high-seas torpedo boats. The cruiser was to serve as a leader, and the destroyers would fend off attacks by enemy torpedo boats. The execution of the attack was to be left to the initiative of the torpedo-boat group commander.
Ships/Weapons
Battleships
Four 20,000-ton turbine-powered dreadnoughts of the Tegetthoff class, together with three semidreadnoughts of the Radetzky class (14,500 tons, driven by vertical triple-expansion steam engines), formed the backbone of the battle fleet. They were strongly armed and armored but lacked sufficient underwater protection, a defect they shared with most of the world’s battleships. Austro-Hungarian dreadnoughts had four triple 305-mm (12-inch) centerline turrets, with the inner pair superimposed. In July 1914 only Viribus Unitis and Tegetthoff were commissioned, Prinz Eugen was in training, and Szent István still incomplete, joining the fleet only in December 1915. Radetzky, Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand, and Zrinyi were armed with six twin turrets in a hexagonal formation, with 305-mm guns forward and aft and 240-mm (9.4-inch) guns in side turrets. Of the older battleships the Erzherzog-class ships (Erzherzog Karl, E. Friedrich, E. Ferdinand Max, 10,600 tons) were of some value thanks to their 20.5-knot speed and a strong intermediate battery of twelve 190-mm guns, in addition to their (relatively weak) main battery of four 240-mm guns. Battleships of the Habsburg class (Habsburg, Árpád, and Babenberg, of 8,300 tons, with three 240-mm guns in two turrets and twelve 150-mm [5.9-inch] secondary guns, nominal speed of 19.5 knots) were better suited for coastal-defense duties. The Habsburg class was an evolution of the Monarch class (Monarch, Wien, and Budapest, 5,700 tons, four 240-mm and six 150-mm guns), built in accordance with restrictive financial politics and called “coast defense ships” to push their approval through. Projected dreadnoughts of an improved Tegetthoff type would have been more strongly armed (with ten 350-mm guns in two twin and two triple turrets), but if built on 24,500 tons’ displacement as designed, they would have suffered from size limitations again, as well as from some of the Tegetthoffs’ defects.
Cruisers
The armored cruiser Kaiserin und Königin Maria Theresia (5,247 tons) was, in spite of her reconstruction in 1909/10, obsolescent and of scant military value. Kaiser Karl VI (6,325 tons, two 240-mm and eight 150-mm guns) and Sankt Georg (7420 tons, two 240-mm, five 190-mm and four 150-mm guns) were useful as a support for scout cruisers but weaker than foreign ships of their type. Three old Zenta-class cruisers (2,350–2,456 tons) were slow and weakly armed (with eight 120-mm guns), and two older torpedo cruisers, Panther and Leopard (1,582 tons) were even worse, useful only for local defense against a weaker enemy. Two “tin cans” of the Kaiser Franz Joseph I class (4,031 and 4,064 tons) were reconstructed in 1905/1906, receiving 150-mm/40 (that is, 40-caliber) guns in place of a heavy, single 240-mm mount, in addition to their casemate 150-mm/35 guns. Kaiserin Elisabeth was at Qingdao in 1914, taking part in the defense of this German base against the Japanese, and was scuttled in the harbor after her ammunition was spent.
The cruisers best suited for the Adriatic naval war were four 3,500-ton scout cruisers of the Admiral Spaun and improved Admiral Spaun classes. Admiral Spaun was the first Austrian warship powered by steam turbines and was prone to teething problems, but the other three cruisers had more reliable machinery. Arsenal-built Spaun had a four-shaft arrangement with six Parsons turbine sets, CNT-built Saida had two shafts with two Melms-Pfenniger steam turbines, and Danubius-built Helgoland and Novara were similar but with two AEG steam turbines. The main deficiency of the ships of this class was their small-caliber main battery (seven single 100-mm/3.9-inch mounts in Spaun, nine in the other three); it was envisaged to partially rearm them, replacing some of the 100-mm with one or two 150-mm mounts, but this was never executed, because they were always needed for raids. During the war their torpedo armament was strengthened: instead of two single 450-mm tubes Spaun received four twin 533-mm torpedo mounts, and other three cruisers three 533-mm twins. Their high speed (officially twenty-seven knots) made them almost invulnerable when chased by Entente cruisers and destroyers.
On the stocks in the CNT shipyard at Monfalcone were four cruisers ordered for China. The “great China cruiser,” displacing 4,900 tons, was to carry four 203-mm (8-inch) and twelve 120-mm (4.7-inch) guns, but in 1917/18 it was decided to complete her with eight 150- and two 90-mm guns and four 450-mm torpedo tubes. Because CNT was situated in the middle of the front line with Italy, no work was possible before the end of 1917, and the plans never materialized. Three smaller (1,860-ton) “China cruisers” made such scant progress that completion was never considered feasible.
Destroyers and Torpedo Boats
In naval Habsburg nomenclature destroyers were called “torpedo vessels” (Torpedofahrzeuge), to distinguish them from smaller “torpedo boats” and bigger “torpedo ships” and “torpedo cruisers.” Older Austrian destroyers were useful for local and secondary tasks, like minelaying. Better suited for fleet and escort duties were twelve four-hundred-ton VTE-powered destroyers of the Huszár class, of which the Yarrow prototype was built in Great Britain and eleven in domestic shipyards. In 1912/13 all received five 66-mm/30 guns in place of seven 47-mm/44 guns, in addition to their single 66-mm/45 gun. Single 450-mm torpedo tubes were replaced by twins. There was an additional unit of this class, the former Lung Tuan, ordered by China and completed in 1914 as Warasdiner. Despite being already outmoded in 1914, the Huszárs served together with bigger turbine-powered Tátra-class destroyers as jacks-of-all-trades in the Adriatic. The Tátras were built at Porto Re and represented the type best suited for the Adriatic. Six more were envisaged in the 1914 program but were canceled when the war began. The Tátras had two 100-mm/50 and six 66-mm/45 guns and two twin 450-mm torpedo tubes. After two of original six were lost in December 1915, four more were built to a slightly modified design and completed in 1917.
There were many 200-ton Kaiman torpedo boats and older Schichau-, Yarrow-, and Pola-built boats. New “high-seas” turbine boats were designed in 1910, but because of chronic underfunding, these 250-ton boats were more coastal than high-seas vessels. Eight were built at Trieste, with Danubius to build sixteen and CNT three follow-ons. They were Austria’s first smaller turbine-powered vessels. When completed between 1913 and 1916, they became useful escorts and patrol vessels and supported seaplane raids against the Italian coast.
Coastal Units
The Austro-Hungarian navy ignored at first the potential of small, fast boats powered by gasoline engines, but after initial Italian successes with their MAS boats work started on similar designs, including the world’s very first “air-cushion” craft. After successful trials that boat was dismantled and the “borrowed” aircraft engines returned to the Arsenal. There followed armored motor torpedo boats, but only one of nine ordered was launched, and it was never used in anger. Another design was for a versatile motor torpedo/gunboat; Gleitboot No. I was tested in May and June 1918. A second unit of this class was probably launched, and four were in the early stages of construction when the war ended.
Weapons
All modern Austrian naval guns were quick-firing weapons, with simple operating breechblocks (mostly of the sliding type) and propellant charges in brass cases. The 305-mm guns in their cramped triple turrets achieved a rate of fire of one round every two minutes. It is interesting to note that 120-mm guns on the Zenta-class cruisers were followed on scout cruisers by lighter but more powerful 100-mm guns, with greater range and higher kinetic energy on target. They used fixed shells, enabling a high rate of fire, but contemporary 150-mm weapons used separate shell and propellant charges, because the fixed ammunition initially used was too heavy for manual handling. Most representative of the lighter Austrian guns was the so-called 7-cm gun (in fact a 66-mm-caliber weapon), with various types and marks, including antiaircraft guns, later replaced with heavier 90-mm antiaircraft guns.
Austro-Hungarian submarine, destroyer, and torpedo-boat torpedoes were of 450-mm caliber, but scout cruisers and battleships were armed with larger 533-mm weapons. (See tables 1.2 and 1.3.)
Submarine Warfare
Offensive
Doctrine
Initially Austro-Hungarian submarines were to provide harbor and coastal defense, but soon it became clear that their best role was strategic war against enemy trade routes. The k.u.k. submarine flotilla, however, was too weak for offensive high-seas operations; it could not send even one submarine to the Dardanelles in 1915, and Germany finally dispatched boats to the Mediterranean. German submarines initially operated there under the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish flags, because war between Italy and Germany was not declared until 28 August 1916. Some of the best-known German submarines (U 35, U 38, and U 39) retained the Austrian flag even after this date, to conceal earlier “misuse.”
Admiral Haus was often criticized for not understanding the possibilities of the submarine, but the deficiencies of the small boats in Austrian service were well known to him. When better types were available, he became a major proponent of unrestricted U-boat warfare. The results achieved by Austrian boats operating on the Adriatic and on Mediterranean trade routes were small in comparison to German successes (220,421 gross registered tons, or GRT, of merchant ships sunk and captured by Austro-Hungarian submarines, versus 3.5 million GRT sunk by German boats in the Mediterranean theater during the war), but these figures were in direct relation to the strengths of both submarine flotillas in this theater.
Boats/Weapons
The Austro-Hungarian navy was late in forming a submarine flotilla, awaiting developments and finally ordered six experimental 240-ton boats of three different designs. The Lake boats U 1 and U 2, assembled at Pola and armed with three torpedo tubes, were obsolete and unreliable when completed and suffered from problems even after modifications, being finally relegated to secondary duties. The German-built U 3 and U 4 had two forward torpedo tubes and were powered by kerosene engines. U 3 was lost in 1915, but U 4 remained in service to the end of the war. The Holland type boats U 5 and U 6 were built by Whitehead at Fiume, followed by U 12, built on speculation and bought by Vienna in 1914. They were armed with two bow torpedo tubes and were successful in attacking enemy warships. After trials were evaluated, five 695-ton submarines (U 7–U 11) were ordered from Germania in 1913, to be delivered in 1915. They were armed with six torpedo tubes and one 66-mm deck gun and designed for high speed on the surface and underwater (seventeen and eleven knots, respectively). The outbreak of war prompted the Austrian naval leadership to sell them uncompleted to Germany.
After German submarines started to arrive in the Adriatic in 1915, the Austro-Hungarian navy ordered three coastal 125-ton boats of the German UB I type and bought two completed, already in German service. These were renamed U 10 and U 11 (former UB 1 and UB 15), and new construction was designated U 15–17. All had two torpedo tubes and two torpedoes, serving mostly in the Adriatic because of their short range. The Whitehead shipyard was building small submarines for Denmark, and the navy officially seized their construction plans, ordering four units (U 20–23) on 27 March 1915. The construction of these 173-tons boats, of limited military value, was divided between Austria and Hungary, but the modification of many details delayed completion. They were commissioned in 1917 and operated without success; two were lost during the war. Better was the idea to build modified German UB II–type coastal submarines of 264 tons on the surface and 301 tons submerged, armed with two torpedo tubes and four torpedoes. U 27 and 28 were completed by CNT in the Pola Arsenal and U 29–32 by Danubius. All were commissioned in 1917, with two more ordered from CNT being completed as U 40 and U 41 in 1917–18. The navy purchased two worn-out German UB II boats, UB 43 and UB 47, and commissioned them in July 1917 as U 43 and 47. Austrian designers were in the meantime developing bigger submarines—the U 48 class at Pola, U 50 class at Fiume, and U 52 class at Trieste—in fact wasting efforts and materials on several projects with similar characteristics (818–849 tons surface displacement, 1,100–1,200 tons submerged, six 450-mm torpedo tubes, and two 100-mm or 120-mm deck guns). Similar was the case with German UB III–type submarines, whose design was bought and modified by at least two shipyards (U 101 class). Danubius was also designing the U 107 class, similar to the original Germania 695-ton boats sold in 1914. Several boats of all these classes were laid down but never completed because of material and workforce shortages.
Table 1.2 Principal Austro-Hungarian Naval Guns
* BAG: Ballonabwehrgeschütz = anti-aircraft gun, TAG: Torpedobootabwehrgeschütz = anti-torpedo-boat gun
Table 1.3 Austro-Hungarian Torpedoes (in service 1898–1918, all built by Whitehead, Fiume)
Austro-Hungarian submarines were armed with 450-mm torpedo tubes. The first submarines had no deck guns but later received 37- or 47-mm guns from old warships, as it was simpler and cheaper to sink coastal vessels with shells than with torpedoes. U 14, the ex-French boat Curie, received a German 88-mm gun, as did U 43 and U 47. U 20–class boats were armed with 66-mm guns and the U 27 class with 75-mm.
Antisubmarine
Initially Austrian forces attacked enemy submarines—if sighted on the surface—by ramming and shelling, as happened to the French boat Monge, surprised on the surface off the Bocche and run over by the cruiser Helgoland in December 1915. Later, specialized weapons against submerged submarines were adopted, like a towed underwater explosive sweep called Drachen (Dragon). Carbonit depth charges of the C 15 type were of German origin, and there were also Austrian Schönthaler and Langen-Müller types. Detection was the main problem; submarines were attacked when sighted during or after their attack. Clear seawater on the eastern Adriatic coast enabled the spotting of submarines from prominent observation posts along the coast or from seaplanes patrolling overhead. This was one of the reasons the Austro-Hungarian navy neglected the development of acoustic search and detection systems. Austrian seaplanes scored two world antisubmarine firsts: a seaplane from Trieste heavily damaged the British B 10 at Venice in August 1916, and the aircraft L 132 and L 135 sank the French submarine Fresnel in open waters on 15 September 1916. Killing enemy submarines was another specialty of Austrian and German submariners in the Adriatic. Other measures, like patrolling and escorting transports along the coast, were of less significance. Austro-Hungarian convoys included one or two merchantmen with single escorts; some ships sailed alone, with naval vessels patrolling in key areas. In 1918 the Habsburg navy established a Submarine Chaser Flotilla, using smaller steamers. It is not confirmed that these ships sunk anything, but one became a victim of an Italian submarine.
Passive antisubmarine measures included nets (in fact, steel ropes hanging free from boom barricades) and mines in front of Austrian bases, and at least one submarine—Curie—was trapped in the net at Pola. Large k.u.k. warships were initially equipped with Bullivant antitorpedo nets, but these were removed during the war, because of their effect on the ships’ speed.
Mine Warfare
Doctrine
The Austro-Hungarian navy was interested in defensive mining to protect naval bases and coastal zones and in offensive operations using mines embarked on ships of the fleet. Four Pola mine barrages included 1,500 mines laid in “rays,” with concentrations higher near the coast and thinner at the rims some ten nautical miles offshore. Coastal artillery covered the passages between the fields and the shore.
Mines envisaged for the defense of Trieste remained initially at Pola, to be laid after Italy declared war. Sebenico was defended by minefields between the outer islands and by barrages between the islands facing the harbor entrance, with two smaller fields east of the islands, extending to the coast. Off Bocche di Cattaro a twenty-one-mine barrage was laid in the Bay of Traste to prevent enemy landings there, with further barrages off Prevlaka and Cape Ostro (twenty-eight mines) and in front of the main entrance (thirty-three mines). Across the straits between Kobila and Kabala a controlled minefield was laid, supported by artillery batteries and by two torpedo-launching stations. These fields were later enlarged.
To defend Pola, Austria produced numerous mines of simple construction, but before 1914 these weapons lacked the autodestruction device required by the 1907 Hague naval conference. Because of the adverse weather during the winter of 1914/15, many active mines became loose (476 from Pola barrage and 107 from the Bocche barrages!) and posed a great danger for Austrian and neutral vessels. The first victim of the Pola mines was the Austrian passenger ship Baron Gautsch, which strayed into the field off Rovigno on 13 August 1914 and sank with great loss among her passengers, including the families of civil servants evacuated from Dalmatia. In the night of 23 August the old torpedo boat Tb 26 sank after hitting a floating mine off Pola, and two more merchantmen were lost in the barrage, one of these a Greek three-masted schooner.
During the war Austro-Hungarian warships laid four thousand defensive and two thousand offensive mines along the Albanian coast between Medua (Shin-Gjen) and Durazzo (Dürres), as well as off Venice and Brindisi.
Ships/Weapons
There were three old minelayers—Dromedar (with a capacity of 50 mines), Salamander (90 mines), and Basilisk (145 mines)—and a newer vessel, Chamaeleon (240 to 300 mines). The old steamer Carniolia served as a mine depot, and mines could also be laid by numerous warships, such as cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo boats, together with special mining launches and lighters. Older torpedo boats were converted for minesweeping, together with five requisitioned steamers, eleven large motorboats, and some tugs and naval tenders. Between 1908 and 1918 a series of forty-seven-ton mine tenders/tugs was ordered and built. Austro-Hungarian mines were of the older A, B, and B1 electrical-contact types and of newer C type (in several variants), with a 250-kg and a 70-kg explosive charge. Because mines were costly, Italian mines of different types were also salvaged and used.
Amphibious Warfare
Doctrine/Capabilities
Being a coastal-defense force, the Austro-Hungarian navy envisaged landing operations and defense of threatened coastal zones, and it performed several related exercises before the war. The first combined exercise with army units was conducted in 1902, during the last visit of Emperor Franz Joseph I to the coast. This involved three Monarch-class battleships and three torpedo cruisers covering the landing of two infantry regiments, one light battery, and one cavalry squadron, transported by four merchant vessels. The troops landed on 3 September at three points on the eastern coast of Istria, out of range of Pola’s coastal artillery. As the first wave, each of the battleships sent ashore a naval detachment. The landing of troops, guns, and horses lasted almost five hours, because small ship’s boats were used and many crossings were needed. “Defending” troops were too weak to prevent the landing or halt the advance of the “attackers,” and when the defenders retreated to the Pola fortress the exercise was terminated. The lessons learned were that a superior naval force could choose where and when to land and that Trieste, Pola, and Fiume could be threatened by enemy landings. Other lessons included that weather conditions in Quarnero Bay often prohibited landing operations and that the eastern Istria coast—stony, with scarce vegetation and water sources—was not an optimal landing area. Afterward it was decided to extend Pola’s fortifications to the east, covering possible landing points with artillery fire.
The navy performed another large-scale exercise in the Gruz area in 1906, with a beachhead in brigade strength. Archduke Franz Ferdinand himself commanded the landing, General Conrad von Hötzendorf led the defense, and battleships operated with both the attacking and defending forces, demonstrating that the old days of the coastal-defense navy had ended.
The Austro-Hungarian navy had neither independent nor attached marine units, but all sailors were trained to participate in landing detachments. There were plenty of occasions for landings in the Balkans and in the Levant during the volatile years between 1878 (occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina) and 1914 and in the Far East during the Boxer Rebellion. There were no dedicated landing craft built, and the infantry went ashore in ship’s boats towed by steam pinnacles, while towed rafts were used for artillery and cavalry. During the First World War a naval battalion was formed at Trieste to operate on the southern wing of the Isonzo front, and some of its personnel manned the “Lagoon Flotilla” vessels.
The only real landing from Austro-Hungarian warships during the war was a raid against Italian-occupied Pelagosa Island on 28 July 1915, when four Tátra-class destroyers landed four officers and 104 men, thinking the Italian garrison was only thirty men strong. Because in fact there were ninety Italian marines with five guns, the Austrian detachment was (perhaps prematurely) recalled after losing two dead and eight wounded from infantry fire. There were numerous river crossings on the “lagoon front” in 1917 after the victory at Caporetto, but the landing at Grado of one strengthened company with four guns by motorboats of the lagoon flotilla, scheduled for 29 October 1917, was postponed because of heavy weather. It finally took place on 31 October, after the Italians retreated from this occupied township.
Coastal Defense
Before the war Pola was already the best protected of all the Dual Monarchy’s coastal areas. On 15 May 1915 artillery on the naval front included one modern 420-mm howitzer, six 305-mm guns, two 305-mm mortars, sixteen 280-mm guns (four modern), three 240-mm guns, four-240-mm mortars, thirty-six 210-mm mortars, two 190-mm guns, and thirty-four 150-mm guns—in total, 104 heavy mountings, together with 157 lighter artillery pieces. On the land front there were 110 heavy- and intermediate-caliber guns, with 140 mostly obsolete lighter guns and 86 machine-guns. Naval guns on the coast and on the Brioni Islands were mounted in forts, some in armored turrets, protecting Fasana anchorage, the harbor entrance, and the southern approaches. On Monte Cope, south of Pola and dominating the Premantura Peninsula, there was a powerful and modern 150-mm battery, and a mobile 420-mm howitzer battery protected the southern flank. The fortifications were extended to the east, but the northern defense line was obsolete in 1914, and it was envisaged to move it farther north. The harbor of Lussin Piccolo was protected by old batteries, with the main position on Monte Asino modernized in 1907 with two 240-mm guns and several 210-mm mortars. The old ironclad Mars (ex-Tegetthoff) was initially part of the harbor defenses.
Troops defending Pola on 1 June 1915 totaled 1,410 officers and 51,840 men, with 3,500 horses and 1,200 oxen, and included Sea Battalions I, II, and III, the coastal-defense garrisons of Rovigno, Albona, and Fort Lussin. The naval contingent (excluding fleet personnel and the sea battalions) numbered 1,000 officers and 5,070 men.
Another important fortress was the Bocche di Cattaro in the south, where the maritime front included Fort Ostro, with four old 210-mm mortars and four old 90-mm and four newer 80-mm guns; Fort Mamula, with four 210-mm mortars and eighteen 80-mm guns; batteries on Prevlaka, with 80-mm guns; Lustica, with four 210-mm mortars and four 150-mm guns; Kabala and Kobila (the same as Lustica); and Fort Spanjol at Castelnuovo, with four 210-mm mortars and six 90-mm guns. The coastal Fort Radisevic, with two 150-mm coastal guns and four 210-mm mortars, covered mine barrages in the Bay of Traste. On the land front there were eighteen 120-mm guns, eight 100-mm howitzers in armored turrets, twenty 150-mm mobile howitzers, thirty-seven field guns, two mortars, and forty-one machine guns. The 47th Infantry Division was detached to defend the Bocche, but only five battalions were present, together with three batteries (comprising twelve guns) and one cavalry troop. The 14th Mountain Brigade, with five battalions, operated outside of the fortress.
Old fortifications at Spalato, Sebenico, Lessina, Zara, Fiume, Zengg, and Carlopago were abandoned or razed. Some fortifications modernized in the second half of the nineteenth century were obsolete in 1914 and likewise abandoned, like those of Ragusa and Sebenico, but the navy later restored the old Fort St. Nikola at Sebenico’s harbor entrance to serve as the mine-defense center, with five antique 210-mm guns, five old 150-mm, and some 47-mm guns. Later six 120-mm guns from the old station ship Donau were added, but the value of all these batteries was minimal, and the navy intended to defend Sebenico actively using the cruiser Maria Theresia and the torpedo flotilla stationed there.
In spite or because of these measures, none of the Entente states during the war seriously contemplated landing on the Austro-Hungarian coast. There were never enough troops for this kind of enterprise (especially after bad experiences with the landing on Gallipoli in 1915), and neither the French-Montenegrin plans to occupy the Bocche in 1914 nor the Italian idea to land on Lagosta or Sabbioncello in 1915 were realized.
Aviation
The advantages of naval aircraft were recognized by Austro-Hungarian naval authorities as early as 1910. The navy’s first aircraft were fragile and vulnerable, but better types were designed and built by domestic industry to operate in the relatively good weather of the Adriatic. Austro-Hungarian naval aircraft were flying boats, able to remain on the surface after forced landing to be towed away and repaired. Some early aircraft were ordered abroad, but most were produced by Phönix/Albatros and Lohner at Vienna, by Austro-Daimler at Wiener Neustadt, by the Austrian Oeffag, the Hungarian UFAG, and some other firms.
The first Austro-Hungarian seaplane base was founded in 1910 at Altura, near Pola, and was moved in 1912 to the small island of Sta. Catarina in Pola Harbor. The island was artificially enlarged for trials and training; after Puntisella was completed in 1916 Sta. Catarina served as a repair center and, from 1917, as the air arsenal. A station at Cosada, near Pola, served for schooling, and Puntisella became Pola’s main seaplane station, being protected by wheeled fighters stationed at Valbandon. Another principal seaplane base was founded at Kumbor, in the Bocche di Cattaro, with numerous hangars and workshops. After Durazzo was occupied in 1916 a naval air station was established there, and smaller stations were organized at Gravosa near Ragusa, Sebenico, Spalato, Lagosta, Rogoznica (near Sebenico), Curzola, Zara, Lussin, Fiume, and Parenzo. Naval Air Station Trieste was founded in 1915. Another small air base was organized at Grado in 1917 and two auxiliary stations at Keszthely and in Odessa.
Austrian naval aviation never came under control of another service, and observers—with some of the pilots—were naval officers, trained in navigation and ship identification. Austro-Hungarian seaplanes performed reconnaissance, mine and submarine search, and fighter-interceptor and bombing over the sea but also over enemy territory, and the navy’s seaplanes conducted numerous air attacks against Italian harbors. From 1917 onward, Austro-Hungarian naval aircraft were outnumbered by enemy air forces but tied up three times their numbers on the Italian-Austrian front.
In 1914 there were only 14 aircraft, but 570 flying boats entered service during the war. Of these 72 were lost in action, 163 by accident, and 94 were deleted as worn out. There were heavy losses among flying personnel, and despite replacements there were only 120 such personnel in January 1918, the same as a year earlier. In September 1918 the navy still had 230 operational seaplanes and wheeled fighters at its disposal, but only 48 pilots and 31 observers.
Riverine Forces
An important instrument of Austro-Hungarian power projection was the Danube Flotilla, centered in 1914 on a fleet of six river monitors, with four more building and completed during the war. Two “supermonitors” with 190-mm and 90-mm guns were contemplated in 1917 but never built. Austro-Hungarian monitors and armored patrol boats served in riverine operations against Serbia and Romania, and monitors fired the first shells in anger against Serbian positions at Belgrade, starting the First World War. Two monitors (Temes and Inn) were sunk by mines, but they were raised and repaired during the war, and by 1917 Austro-Hungarian riverine units operated in the Danube estuary, on the Black Sea, and along Ukrainian rivers.
Wartime Evolution
Surface and Submarine Warfare in the Adriatic
In accordance with the initial war plans, modern Austro-Hungarian naval units were to operate in the Mediterranean together with the Italian fleet and the German Mediterranean Division. In the Adriatic, Italy was to be represented by one old battleship, three armored cruisers, and four destroyer and several torpedo boat flotillas, and Austria-Hungary with three old coastal-defense battleships and five older cruisers, together with several divisions of older torpedo boats. The plan even called for Germany to operate some of its training ships and older cruisers in the Adriatic.
Early on 4 August, Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau attacked French North African harbors and went to re-coal at Messina. The responding French battle fleet—wrongly informed as to their movements—missed the enemy by forty nautical miles. Although shadowed by British warships, Goeben and Breslau escaped. The German commander, Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, asked on 5 August for an Austro-Hungarian fleet to come to Messina, but Austria-Hungary was still not at war with Great Britain, and Haus declined. The German ships left Messina on 6 August and set out for the Dardanelles. Meanwhile, two British battle cruisers sailed west to protect French convoys, and only four British armored cruisers were waiting south of Otranto Straits to intercept Goeben and Breslau (presumed to be sailing to Pola). These, after a short pursuit, gave up in face of a “superior force.” In the meantime Haus received instructions to sail south to meet the Germans, supposedly en route to the Adriatic. He left Pola on the morning of 7 August with six battleships of the 1st Squadron, two cruisers, six destroyers, and thirteen torpedo boats. On the evening of 7 August Haus received news that Germans were heading for the Dardanelles, and he returned to Pola. Haus rejected a German proposal to send the Austrian battle fleet to the Dardanelles to operate alongside the German-Turkish fleet against Russia in Black Sea. He considered it impractical because of a slow fleet train and the threat to the Austrian Adriatic coast from expected Italian aggression.
Before May 1915, when the French squadron at Corfu was the main enemy at sea, the Austro-Hungarian fleet remained at Pola, with older vessels in the Bocche ordered to blockade the Montenegrin coast. There on the morning of 16 August the old cruiser Zenta and destroyer Ulan were surprised by the French battle fleet and British armored cruisers. Zenta was sunk with heavy losses, while Ulan escaped to the Bocche. The French sustained significant self-inflicted losses when three major guns exploded during the action and two battleships collided afterward. Nonetheless, this action effectively ended the Austrian blockade.
During 1914 the French fleet entered the Adriatic eight more times, escorting single transports with provisions for Montenegro, shelling fortifications protecting the Bocche, or attacking isolated islands. Although it would have been easy to transfer heavy units unnoticed from Pola to the Bocche or to Sebenico, or to attack the French fleet on several occasions, Admiral Haus ignored these opportunities, because of his obsession with Italy. The only sallies made by k.u.k. units occurred on 17 October, when twelve destroyers with six torpedo boats of the 1st Torpedo Flotilla made a sortie from Sebenico, an attempt that was quickly terminated after it was learned the enemy had left the Adriatic. On 3 November the cruiser Helgoland led the flotilla to Lissa, returning after French warships departed the area.
Of note is the mission of the semidreadnought Radetzky, sailing unopposed from Pola to the Bocche on 21/22 October to neutralize French naval guns that had been mounted on the heights of Lovcen. They had shelled Austrian naval and military installations from 19 October, and the ranges of the guns of older warships in the Bocche had been inadequate to answer. Radetzky started a systematical bombardment on 22 October—aided by observation balloons and aircraft—and five days later the French batteries withdrew. Radetzky shelled some other targets on the Montenegrin front before returning to Pola on 17 December.
Austro-Hungarian submarines became active in the autumn of 1914, and after several unsuccessful attempts U 12 (Lieutenant Commander Egon Lerch) torpedoed the French flagship Jean Bart on 21 December, compelling her return to Malta for repairs. Another French loss was the submarine Curie, which, sent to attack Pola anchorage, became entangled in the harbor boom on 20 December and was sunk by the Austrians. Curie was initially towed to Pelagosa by the French armored cruiser Jules Michelet. Michelet was sighted and the k.u.k. 1st Torpedo Flotilla sailed, but it did not encounter the enemy.
Before Italy entered the war, the French fleet lacked adequate bases. After Jean Bart was torpedoed, the French patrol line was moved south of the Otranto Straits. Even there, near the Cape Santa Maria di Leuca, the submarine U 5 (Lieutenant Commander Georg von Trapp) on 27 April 1915 torpedoed the French armored cruiser Léon Gambetta, which sank with heavy loss of life. Afterward the French patrol line retired even farther south.
Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May 1915, and at dawn on the 24th the Austro-Hungarian battle fleet, covered by six cruisers, fourteen destroyers, thirty torpedo boats, three submarines, and six seaplanes, attacked Ancona and other Italian Adriatic cities, sinking in the process the small Italian destroyer Turbine off Barletta. It was the second and only successful sortie of the battle fleet during the war. The blow to the Italian morale outweighed the material damage inflicted.
Later actions were less spectacular, but Austrian local supremacy on the Adriatic was secured by the repulse of intruding enemy forces and attacks on targets on the enemy coast. On 11 July 1915 Italians landed unopposed on Pelagosa Island. The cruisers Helgoland and Saida, with six Tátra-class destroyers and two torpedo boats, shelled Pelagosa on 28 July, but a counterlanding was aborted when it became clear that the Italian garrison was stronger than anticipated. Italian and French submarines were afterward patrolling off Pelagosa, but on 5 August U 5 sank there the Italian Nereide. In a bombardment conducted on 17 August, Austrian shells destroyed the island’s only water cistern; the Italians evacuated one day later.
On 9 June 1915, U 4 (Lieutenant Commander Rudolf Singule) torpedoed and heavily damaged the British cruiser Dublin off the Albanian coast. On 18 July, while an Entente squadron was shelling the railroad line near Ragusa Vecchia, in southern Dalmatia, U 4 struck again, sinking the Italian armored cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi. Other Italian losses in this period included the submarine Medusa, torpedoed on 10 June near Venice by U 11; the torpedo boat 5 PN, sunk on 27 June by U 10; and armored cruiser Amalfi, torpedoed on 7 July by the German UB 14. Newly laid Italian minefields were fatal for Austrian U 12, destroyed off Venice on 8 August 1915, and on 13 August U 3 was lost in the southern Adriatic. Even more serious was the mining of two Tátra-class destroyers in December 1915 during a bombardment of Durazzo by the cruiser Helgoland and five destroyers; Lika and Triglav represented one-third of Austria’s modern destroyer force. Surviving k.u.k. warships, including the damaged destroyer Csepel, returned to base despite enemy pursuit.
An Italian land offensive west of Trieste in May 1915 was stopped on the Isonzo line. Despite a series of bloody battles the front remained stalemated until 24 October 1917, when the Austro-German offensive at Caporetto ruptured the Italian line. The Italians retreated to the River Piave, where the front stabilized. During the trench war that ensued between May 1915 and October 1917, smaller Austro-Hungarian vessels, as noted above, operated on the sea flank as a lagoon flotilla, supplying and supporting the army. The old battleships Wien and Budapest bombarded Italian positions; when Wien was sunk by Italian MAS at Trieste in December 1917, she was replaced by Árpád.
German submarines operated in the Mediterranean from Pola and the Bocche, and the Entente tried to block their passage from Adriatic with ships, nets, and the mines of the Otranto Barrage. Submarine losses in the barrage were negligible—in fact, only the Austrian U 6 and German UB 53 (and perhaps UB 44) were lost in the barrage, with other boats slowed or damaged during passage and the Austrian U 30 lost nearby to an unknown cause. Fast Austro-Hungarian units were ordered to clear this passage. The greatest attack occurred in the night of 14/15 May 1917, when scout cruisers Novara, Helgoland, and Saida, under Captain Horthy, attacked British antisubmarine drifters, sinking fourteen; the detached destroyers Csepel and Bálaton sank one Italian destroyer and a freighter from a convoy of three. This aroused a hornet’s nest at Brindisi, and numerous British, Italian, and French warships rushed to intercept the Austrian intruders. They damaged Novara during the chase, but all Austro-Hungarian ships escaped to their bases. Skirmishes between Austrian and Entente fast warships constantly occurred along both Adriatic coasts but never led to a decisive battle.
After the mutiny in the Bocche in February 1918, Horthy—promoted to the rank of rear admiral—became the navy’s new commander in chief, and the fleet was rejuvenated, with several admirals retired and old ships without military value stricken. To improve the morale of the crews Horthy decided to repeat his attack against the Otranto Barrage, but this time taking along four dreadnoughts of the Tegetthoff class and three Erzherzogs to form seven support groups. On the move from Pola to the south Tegetthoff and Szent István ran into two Italian MAS, and Szent István was torpedoed and sunk. (Ironically, both k.u.k. battleships sunk during the war, Wien and Szent István, were torpedoed by the same Italian officer, Luigi Rizzo.) After this loss the attack was canceled, practically ending Austro-Hungarian fleet operations in the Adriatic.
Submarine Operations in the Mediterranean
Not counting sorties to the Ionian Sea, Austro-Hungarian submarines operated in the Mediterranean only from autumn 1916, beginning with a cruise of the old U 4 in the Bay of Taranto. In February 1917, U 29 started her cruise as the first of the UB II boats, returning prematurely because of mechanical defects. Similar problems plagued U 30 during her first sortie in March, and in April she disappeared without a trace when under way to the Mediterranean. U 27—the most successful of all Habsburg submarines—made her first sortie in April 1917, being followed by other UB II boats, finally by the rebuilt U 14. Even the small U 15 made a sortie into the Bay of Taranto in June 1917, and U 4 went again to these waters. U 14 made her last Mediterranean cruise in November 1917, operating afterward in the Adriatic. UB II boats were active in the eastern Mediterranean until 1918. Of interest is the cruise of U 27, whose crew discovered that a ton of lubricating oil was missing and that Durazzo, the nearest Austrian-controlled port, was therefore out of reach. The boat went to Beirut, using only the starboard diesel, her electric motors, and even sails. In Beirut there was no oil; U 27 was finally supplied by the German U 65. She completed her cruise and arrived back at the Bocche in September 1918, only a month before the armistice.
Overall, Austro-Hungarian submarines in the Adriatic and Mediterranean sank 196,093 GRT of enemy and neutral merchant ships. The top aces were Lieutenant Commander Zdenko Hudecek and Georg von Trapp, who accounted for 47,788 and 44,595 GRT, respectively. (See table 1.4.)
Summary and Assessment
The Austro-Hungarian navy committed several mistakes before and during the war. The navy did not order enough destroyers and submarines, and the loss of two Tátra-class destroyers left it with even fewer of these valuable ships. Six destroyers were canceled in 1914 without logical reason, and the fleet command irresponsibly sold five bigger submarines ordered in Germany on the mistaken assumption that they would not be able to sail to home waters during wartime. The decision to order them abroad in the first place—because of the slightly lower price offered by Germania shipyard at Kiel—was another error, because home-built boats of similar Whitehead or Danubius designs would have been available during 1915.
Table 1.4 Results of German and A–H Submarines against Merchant Tonnage in the Mediterranean, 1914–18 (including the Adriatic and Black Seas)
Source: E. Sieche, La Guerra Sottomarina Tedesca nel Mediterraneo 1915–1918.
It was also wrong to refund the financial allocations approved by the 1914 program and to allow the army to send trained shipbuilding personnel to the front. The Austro-Hungarian navy also lacked a mobilization shipbuilding program adapted to its needs for building new destroyers, submarines, minesweepers, tugs, and other vessels. The main reason was, again, savings. Delaying the order for new battleships was no loss for the navy, because these would have been completed too late to be of use. A better option would have been to build three new cruisers and complete the “China cruisers” at Monfalcone before Italy entered the war. Between July 1914 and May 1915 there was enough time to have made them ready for launching, for completion at Pola. During the war only ships already laid down were completed. Important newly built additions included twelve submarines (but four of them of scant military value) and four 850-ton destroyers. At the same time Great Britain and United States, thanks to their broader industrial bases, were building hundreds of bigger and thousands of smaller warships, along with scores of merchantmen. Moreover, the battleship-oriented Austro-Hungarian naval leadership ignored the development of fast motor torpedo boats, starting their trials with this type too late and not completing the designed boats in time for war.
Regarding tactical errors, the cruiser Zenta was lost because command failed to use faster vessels or aircraft for reconnaissance in the south. On the following day, it suddenly became possible to send seaplanes to scout the same area. It was also wrong to retain the fleet at Pola during French sorties into the Adriatic, especially on 3 November 1914, when the enemy fleet was sailing without a destroyer screen near Lissa, only 150 nautical miles from Pola. The k.u.k. battle fleet was weaker than the French, but in case of damage all Austrian vessels were near their operational base, the French ships some 750 miles away from Malta. Mistakes committed by the French commander in chief, Vice Admiral Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère—like attacking one old cruiser with every ship at his disposal, and escorting single merchantmen to Montenegro with the whole fleet—were not exploited by Admiral Haus. He was obsessed with the unfaithful Italians, ignoring French movements but in September 1914 sending the whole Torpedo Flotilla to search for an Italian volunteer force incorrectly reported to be landing in Dalmatia. The French fleet was finally “chased” from the Adriatic, not by k.u.k. battleships but by two small submarines.
The May 1915 bombardment of the Italian coast was successful, being performed without losses on the Austro-Hungarian side. The next failure occurred during the evacuation of the Serbian army from Albania in 1915/16, when Haus neglected to attack the enemy convoys. Only a few cruiser and submarine sorties were envisaged (and these were interrupted prematurely), where an action of the whole fleet would have at least disrupted, if not terminated, the Serbian Dunkirk. An army of 150,000 men was left to escape, to be rearmed at Corfu and play a significant role on the Salonika front later, contributing to the Entente victory. One of the reasons against attacking enemy convoys might have been humanitarian—the Serbians were dragging with them thousands of Austro-Hungarian prisoners through Albania and evacuating the survivors on Allied vessels along with their own troops—but it is not clear whether Admiral Haus was aware of this.
It is inexcusable that during the operations of the Austro-Hungarian scout cruisers in December 1915 and May 1917 there were no heavier units at sea to support them if pursued by a stronger enemy. Armored cruisers sailed from the Bocche only after receiving calls for help. With better strategy it would have been possible to intercept enemy cruisers poised to attack these scouts.
The last and biggest error led to the sinking of Szent István. To counter enemy cruisers and destroyers at Brindisi (the Italian main fleet was still at Taranto, too far away to be of concern), four k.u.k. scout cruisers with eight destroyers were more than enough. If stronger vessels had been needed, three Erzherzog-class battleships would have been sufficient. Dividing battleships into seven separate support groups was unnecessary and irresponsible, producing more targets for enemy submarines and fast attack craft. If confronted by the enemy battle fleet, these battleships would have been overwhelmed one by one. It would have been better to send the whole Austro-Hungarian battle fleet out as one body, perhaps directly from Pola, to attack Brindisi. An even greater impact would have been achieved by a landing (even a feinted one) on the Italian coast behind the enemy lines somewhere near the estuary of the Po River during the Austrian offensive on the Piave, to distract and disrupt the allies. Another mistake was to send four dreadnoughts south in two separate groups, halving the number of available escorts and doubling the chance of incidental encounter with the enemy. And finally, when Szent István developed machinery problems, it would have been better to send her back to Pola than to risk the discovery or delay the whole operation.
It was not necessary to retain so many obsolete warships in service, tying up their crews, and at the same time not permitting leave from fleet units. It would have been better to decommission all vessels of small value, and to “rotate” the crews of active vessels. Lack of coal was another big problem: ships lying idle in harbor became centers of discontent. Other reasons for the mutiny in February 1918 were scarce food rations (an effect of the bad harvest in 1917), lack of replacement uniforms, and war fatigue.
In spite of all this, Austro-Hungarian navy remained effective during the war, retaining control over Austrian coastal waters, preventing enemy landings, chasing superior French forces from the Adriatic, deterring allied battleship squadrons from entering this coastal sea, attacking Italian coastal cities and targets in Montenegro and Albania, supporting Austro-Hungarian army forces and aircraft in their operations, and enabling German and Austrian submarines to operate in the Mediterranean.
The Austrian and the Austro-Hungarian navies went through several phases of evolution, from a Category III, or “third grade,” naval power dedicated to coastal defense before 1786 to a Category I (“first grade”) sea power in the twentieth century. During the last years of its existence, the Imperial and Royal Navy was a valuable instrument in foreign politics, trade, and economics, making the empire a worthy member of the Central Powers and a respected adversary of the Entente. Austro-Hungarian naval power was not a result only of material resources in the form of ships, submarines, aircraft, naval bases, and industrial foundation but also of the ideas introduced by Tegetthoff, whose spirit guided his successors in building and organizing the navy, making operational control the main issue, and rendering the commander in chief independent in his actions. The Austro-Hungarian navy remained unbeaten until the end, but it dissolved from within, especially after old Emperor Franz Joseph I died in November 1916. The “rejuvenation” of the fleet in 1918 came too late. Horthy was neither Nelson nor Tegetthoff, and his action-at-any-cost principle caused one of the navy’s biggest losses during the war. It was followed five months later by the delivery of the fleet to the South Slavs and by the loss of Viribus Unitis at Pola from an explosive device installed by Italian frogmen—a symbolic end for this multinational navy.
