Benbow Naval Warfare 1914-1918

From Coronel to the Atlantic and Zeebrugge
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-908273-12-3
Verlag: Amber Books Ltd
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

Reihe: History of WWI

The struggle for naval supremacy and the naval arms race inspired by HMS Dreadnought may have captured the headlines, but the opening stages of the naval war were dominated by the threat from German cruisers stationed outside European waters, until they were hunted down and sunk by the Royal Navy, notably at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914.
Germany switched its focus to the U-boat, seeing it as a weapon capable of winning the war by starving Britain into surrender. Unrestricted submarine warfare led to the sinking of millions of tons of shipping, but it would also force the USA to enter the war on the Allied side in 1917.
In the Mediterranean, the French fleet took the lead, while Austria-Hungary supported German actions. The Allied attempt in 1915 to use maritime power to break the strategic deadlock with an amphibious operation in the Dardanelles ultimately failed, although Allied sea power helped sustain the successful campaigns against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East.
What would prove to be the decisive naval engagement of the war took place in 1916 at the Battle of Jutland. Whilst the clash itself was inconclusive, the German High Seas Fleet would be all but confined to port for the rest of the war, handing the initiative to the Royal Navy. The resultant command of the seas allowed the Allies to carry fresh American armies and much-needed supplies to Europe in 1917.
However, victory for the Allies was ultimately delivered by the naval economic blockade. By preventing the import of war materials and food, the fighting power and morale of the German armed forces was weakened. It was the mutiny of the High Seas Fleet in October 1918 that prompted the German Revolution and the subsequent abdication of the Kaiser.
With the aid of over 300 photographs, complemented by full-colour maps, Naval Warfare provides a detailed guide to the background and conduct of World War I naval operations, describing the struggle to win control of the high seas around the globe.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Benbow, Tim

Leseproben

The Royal Navy battleships that would fight World War I were all but unrecognizable from those that had fought under Nelson. Steam propulsion, iron hulls and great advances in guns and armour revolutionized navies. Sea power was central to the causes and outcome of the war. INTRODUCTION
The Coming of War
At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain enjoyed an unrivalled predominance on the seas. The British rule of the waves sustained the ‘Pax Britannica’ throughout the nineteenth century, deterring great power rivals as well as permitting expansion of the empire. By the end of the century, however, as storm clouds began to gather over Europe, this maritime strength had changed utterly in composition. Britain's maritime strength also appeared to be losing much of its value as the industrial revolution threatened to reduce the advantages of Sea Powers relative to Land Powers. A new Continental enemy arose, which was less dependent on the sea and hence less vulnerable to naval power. This might have marginalized the struggle at sea in any future conflict. Yet when the great powers of Europe fought each other once again, the war at sea was to prove just as important as in almost all of the previous or later conflicts. The nineteenth century saw the sailing warship, which for centuries had been the key instrument of naval warfare, displaced by a very different kind of vessel, as the effects of the industrial revolution were felt at sea. Changes in technology gave rise to major developments in naval tactics and strategy, and also affected wider issues such as the place of naval power within national policy. The most significant of these were the adoption of steam power, the advent of iron hulls, rapid advances in guns and armour and the development of underwater weapons. The great powers in Europe on the eve of World War I were very different to those that had fought the Napoleonic Wars, mainly due to the unification of Italy and Germany. STEAM POWER The most momentous change was the gradual move from sail to steam as the means of ship propulsion. Adopting steam power freed warships from dependence on the wind, reducing journey times as well as making them more predictable, and making feasible some routes that had previously been impossible. In battle, warships became easier to manoeuvre, which greatly simplified tactics as well as changing the range of skills required to handle a ship or a squadron effectively. A steam-powered warship also had a good chance of either securing a favourable tactical position against a sailing ship or, alternatively, of avoiding battle altogether. This freedom, however, came at the cost of the need for fuel – initially coal, though the move to oil began just before the outbreak of World War I – which tied ships to their bases far more closely than hitherto. Strategically, this favoured local over more distant powers and also made the acquisition of overseas bases more important. At the widest level, it changed the physical and human resources needed to be a great naval power, although Britain still enjoyed an early lead in the production of coal and steel, and industrial capacity. J.M.W. Turner's painting The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up (1838). This picture, recently voted Britain's most popular, symbolizes the demise of the old sailing battleships that had dominated naval warfare for centuries, replaced by the steam-powered offspring of the Industrial Revolution. The ship depicted was launched in 1798, and was named after a ship captured from the French; she also fought at the Battle of Trafalgar. Steam power was initially taken up with greatest enthusiasm by merchant shipping. It was first introduced to navies on a large scale by Britain, with France also showing considerable interest, and some experiments took place in the United States. It seemed to offer particular advantages for short-ranged warships such as the small gunboats so often used in minor wars during the nineteenth century, not least due to their ability to use shallow waters and rivers. Steam warships and gunboats performed well in the Crimean War (1853–56); most of the British and French battleships deployed to the Black Sea were sailing ships, but the majority of the smaller warships were steam powered. This war established the advantages of steam ships, which not only proved extremely efficient in bombardment of targets ashore, but also at times inflicted the indignity on their sail-powered colleagues of towing them into position. By the end of the war, sailing warships were well on the way to becoming a thing of the past, with sails used only to supplement steam, and then only temporarily. HMS Wivern was one of two ironclad steam ships initially built for the Confederate Government. They could have helped to change the balance at sea in the American Civil War, but were taken over by the Royal Navy. The use of steam power on land in the form of railway engines raised some doubts about the impact of military power landed from the sea, given that large armies could be swiftly deployed by Continental powers. Napoleon had complained that if the British had 30,000 troops at sea, he had to tie down 300,000 in garrisoning all of the places where they might land. In contrast, when Bismarck was asked what he would do in the event that the British Army landed in Germany, he is said to have responded that he would send out the local police force and arrest it. However, if the ability of navies to influence events ashore was reduced by steam power, so too was the ability of armies to guarantee a swift victory over the mobilized army of another great power. Without such a knockout blow, there could still be an important wartime role for sea power. IRON HULLS Following soon after the adoption of steam power by navies came the increased use of iron in warships. At first, this took the form of plates of iron bolted to the outside of wooden ships, to provide protection against shell guns. While the old wooden hulls had been able to take considerable punishment from solid shot, guns firing explosive shells threatened to blow them apart. This was demonstrated at the Battle of Sinope (1853), with the destruction of a Turkish fleet by Russian warships using the new Paixhans shell gun. Protection was needed against this threat, so the ‘ironclad’ was born. Moves to adopt iron for the construction of the ship, rather than simply as additional armour, proceeded slowly because of its tendency to splinter. However, advances in metallurgy changed this. Iron (and then steel) construction proved attractive because it permitted larger as well as more robust vessels that were not as vulnerable to fire as wooden ships, and were able to carry the ever heavier guns and armour that were developed during the century. National rivalries helped to drive the process of innovation. The first ironclad battleship was the French La Gloire, launched in 1859. The advance represented by this ship drove an urgent counter-reaction in Britain, as would the German naval expansion at the start of the twentieth century. The British response was to build HMS Warrior, launched in 1860 and commissioned the following year, which was not an ironclad but rather the world's first iron-hulled warship. She carried an 11.4cm (4.5in) belt of iron armour, backed by 45.7cm (18in) of teak between it and the iron hull, and was divided into internal compartments to further reduce her vulnerability. She was steam powered, although she was also fitted with sails to save fuel, and heavily armed. Warrior never fired her guns in anger and was considered obsolete after just 10 years – in stark contrast to HMS Victory, which was over 40 years old at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) yet still at the cutting-edge of quality. This tendency of warships to become obsolete more quickly, and the related importance of retaining technological parity with rivals, was an important new development in naval warfare. HMS Warrior HMS Warrior, the world's first iron-hulled warship, was theoretically a frigate due to her single gun deck, but was at her launch the most powerful battleship in the world, armed with 26 x 68-pounder guns (as opposed to the usual 32-pounders) and 10 massive 110-pounder, breech-loading guns. She was nicknamed ‘The Black Snake’, after the reported comment of the French emperor Napoleon III that, against his warships, Warrior would be like a ‘black snake among rabbits’. She can be visited today at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. HMS Hercules (at centre) together with HMS Warrior and HMS Bellerophon. These vessels demonstrate the changing character of warships as a result of the impact of the Industrial Revolution. GUNS AND ARMOUR Shortly after the launch of Warrior, guns and projectiles that could penetrate her armour were already being tested. This illustrates the ongoing duel waged over the course of the nineteenth century between guns and armour. The effect of explosive shells, as opposed to solid shot, against wooden hulls has already been noted. Solid shot remained better for penetrating armour for some years, though this would change as armour-piercing shells were developed. Other advances that enhanced the offensive side of the balance included improvements in metallurgy (which resulted in stronger guns, able to withstand more powerful charges), rifled barrels firing cylindrical projectiles (which...