Inspired by the John Biggins/Ottokar Prohaska novels, I thought I would try and pick up a little more about the Adriatic campaign in WWI. Although this book’s title refers to a single battle, it actually covers the entire naval war in the Adriatic.


The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a rather strange naval power. As near as I can tell, they decided to have a navy so that future war gamers could play Diplomacy. There was a seacoast along the Adriatic, but the exit was choked by the Otranto Straits, which could easily be blocked by any naval power with a presence in the Mediterranean. The only colonial possession the Dual Monarchy had was Franz Josef Land, not exactly a place you really needed a navy to defend. Nevertheless, since the other Great Powers had navies, Austria-Hungary was forced to have one too. (In fact, in one of those confusing things Austria-Hungary was so fond of, a small strip of Adriatic coastline was ceded o Hungary, so the junior partner could have a seaport, too.)


The only other Great Power it made sense for Austria to fight a naval battle with was Italy, but that option was precluded by the Triple Alliance. At least, until Italy decided to change sides and join the Allies in 1915. That left the small KuK fleet facing the combined French, British and Italian naval forces in the Mediterranean, not a pleasant prospect.


However, the Austrians did have a few advantages. The east (Austrian) Adriatic coast had a network of small offshore islands, allowing Austrian coastal traffic to proceed unhindered by the Allies, who were very reluctant to risk ships in waters that were within range of shore batteries, heavily mined, and swarming with torpedo boats. The Austrians had excellent naval bases at Pola (now Pula) and Cattaro (now Kotor). (The Hungarian naval base was at Fiume (now Rijeka)). And the submarine turned out to be a lot more important than anyone expected before the war.


The large Allied navies were thus reduced to lurking impotently at the mouth of the Adriatic in the forlorn hope that the Austrian surface ships would come out and fight, while Austrian and (later) German U-boats sortied into the Mediterranean and raised havoc with shipping. All three Allied navies found themselves embarrassed with an oversupply of large ships and nowhere near enough convoy escorts. The initial Allied solution was to attempt a blockade at the Otranto Straits.


This involved stripping the British fishing fleet of drifters and trawlers (a trawler pulls a net along the bottom; a drifter deploys it in the water column) and positioning them across the straits. (The nets were not intended to “catch” a U-boat; they were studded with small flares that would pop to the surface and ignite if they contacted anything solid. Then some more competent ship was supposed to show up and depth-charge the U-boat. I suppose they didn’t use contact mines because of the danger of reeling in a net with armed explosives on it.)


That brings us to the titular battle. The “drifter barrage” was not having any effect on the Central Powers submarine campaign. It was too easy to avoid the nets or slip past the drifters on the surface at night. However, some of the younger officers in the KuK Kriegsmarine were getting bored sitting around in the harbor and proposed a raid on the drifter line. This was to consist of the light cruisers SMS Novara, SMS Saida, and SMS Helgoland, led by Linienschiffskapitän Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya, and going after the drifters; the destroyers SMS Csepel and SMS Balaton under the command of Fregattenkapitän Johannes Prince von und zu Liechtenstein (bad enough that Austria and Hungary have navies; now Liechtenstein, too), to make a diversionary raid along the Albanian coast; the Austrian submarines U-4 and U-27 and the German mine laying submarine UC-25 were to lurk in useful positions, report on Allied movements, and get off a torpedo or two if possible; the pre-Dreadnaught battleship SMS Sankt Georg, a destroyer, and three torpedo boats were to have steam up ready to go to the assistance of either the raiding or diversionary force if necessary; the old coast defense battleship SMS Budapest and three more torpedo boats were put on alert; and Austrian naval seaplanes were to cooperate once the sun came up. (When considering ship types, WWI classes were usually considerably weaker than their WWII counterparts. For example, the Austrian “light cruisers” were armed with nine 10 cm guns in single shielded mounts, four in each broadside and one on the forecastle, plus a dual tube trainable torpedo mount on each broadside. A reasonably handled WWII large destroyer could have easily dealt with one of these.)


Complicated plans like this usually go haywire, but the Austrians were either lucky or competent or both. The cruisers made their way to the drifter line undetected and worked their way along; a British officer later commented that the Austrians behaved very chivalrously, allowing most drifter crews to take to their boats before sinking their ship, plus picking up men in the water (a couple of drifters attempted fight back with their 2-pounder deck guns; this proved to be a poor idea). In the mean time, the diversionary force encountered an Italian convey of three merchant ships escorted by a destroyer. The second Austrian shell hit a boiler or steam pipe and disabled the destroyer, which later sank; one of the merchant ships sank, one was left dead in the water and on fire, and the crew of the third abandoned ship and could not reboard after the Austrians left. So, at sunrise the score was Austrians: 17 drifters, 1 destroyer, 1 merchant ship sunk; 4 drifters, 2 merchant ships damaged; Allies: nothing.


Now, however, the Austrians had to get back. They were pursued by two British light cruisers, four Italian “scout cruisers”, eight Italian destroyers, and six French destroyers operating in four groups under the overall command of an Italian admiral. The two Austrian destroyers that had made the diversionary attack were found first, and were at a disadvantage when they were engaged by the Italian scout cruiser Aquila, whose 152 mm guns far outranged their 10 cm and 6.5 cm guns. However, Aquila had difficulty spotting the fall of shot and closed in. A couple of Austrian flying boats showed up and spotted for the destroyers; the Csepel’s two 10 cm guns were just barely in range at 9500 meters and the only shell to hit exploded in Aquila’s central boiler room, knocking out two boilers and rupturing a fuel oil tank which caught fire. With the Aquila out of action her escorting destroyers pursued until they were engaged by Austrian shore batteries but never got close enough to fire on the Austrians.


The Austrian cruisers were not as lucky, engaging in a running fight with the 6” gun light cruiser Dartmouth (with Italian Admiral Acton on board), which had pulled ahead of the Bristol and escorting destroyers. The Austrian cruisers made smoke and closed to within range of their 10 cm guns. The Dartmouth was hit repeatedly but none were serious; however, the gunnery officer reported that splashes from near misses interfered with gun aiming. In the meantime, Italian and Austrian flying boats showed up and engaged in what must have been a lumbering air battle, plus making machine gun attacks on each other’s vessels. The Novara, on the other hand, took a hit in her boilers and slowed to a stop. At this crucial point, the Dartmouth turned away to allow lighter craft to catch up, and because aircraft had reported a large Austrian ship sortieing from Cattaro (this was the Sankt Georg). By the time Acton got his destroyers together to continue the attack, the Saida was preparing to take Novara in tow while the Helgoland provided smoke and covering fire. The Allied destroyers made poorly coordinated single attacks and were easily beaten off before they could get into torpedo range. Eventually the Sankt Georg closed; the Allied flotilla couldn’t get in a gun duel with a battleship, even an obsolete one, and departed. All Austrian ships made it back to port.


However, things weren’t over yet for the Allies. As Dartmouth approached Brindisi, she was hit by a single torpedo fired by UC-25. She appeared to be going down and was abandoned; however, after waiting some time and noticing that things didn’t seem to be getting worse, she was reboarded and towed in. Unfortunately, the French destroyer Boutefeu, which had sortied from Brindisi to help with the submarine hunt, ran into one of the UC-25 mines and sank in 90 seconds. Thus the overall battle, despite some close calls, went clearly in favor of the Austrians.


This is one of the better naval accounts I’ve read. Author Paul Halpern, despite having to wade through documents written in four languages and using two different time systems, has managed to make sense out an extremely confusing but very interesting battle. Halpern covers all aspects: the overall naval situation in the Adriatic before and after the battle, and the future careers of the participants. The most intriguing is Horthy, who ended up as Admiral Horthy, Regent of Hungary during WWII, and thus in the probably unique position of being a Regent in a country that had no king and an admiral in a country that had no seacoast. Otranto Straits is sometimes called the “Jutland of the Adriatic”; clearly this isn’t justified based on the ships involved, but the coordinated use of surface, submarine, and air assets prefigures later naval warfare better than Jutland did. My only minor quibble is although the strategic maps are excellent, I would have liked slightly better maps of the close action. However, they probably weren’t possible given the chaos both sides found themselves in. ( )