On This day in World War 1

@wittmann:

On the 27th October 1914, the British Dreadnought, Audacious Was the first battleship to sink in WW1. […] Her sinking was covered up until the end of the war.

Thanks for this item.  The part about the cover-up is especially interesting.  I wonder if the Admiralty would have tried to keep the sinking a secret if there had been heavy loss of life rather than no casualties?

Could they have? There was the sister ship to the Titanic close by, the Olympic. In an ironic twist, it heeded the distress call.  It rescued many of the crew and tried to tow it.
I am on my phone, so can’t attach a link. Is quite an interesting read.

On November 1, 1914 the First World War naval Battle of Coronel took place on the coast of central Chile near the city of Coronel. German Kaiserliche Marine forces led by Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee met and defeated a Royal Navy squadron commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock.

Evening Worsham. Thanks for posting that. I saw it on twitter this morning and was unaware of the battle. Was interesting to read about it.
I saw it was a  Cruiser battle and that Cradock died along with 1600 sailors. Two of the modern German Cruisers were called Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
I think it said it was the  first time the Royal Navy had lost a ship since 1815. Remarkable fact.

@wittmann:

Evening Worsham. Thanks for posting that. I saw it on twitter this morning and was unaware of the battle. Was interesting to read about it.
I saw it was a  Cruiser battle and that Cradock died along with 1600 sailors. Two of the modern German Cruisers were called Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
I think it said it was the  first time the Royal Navy had lost a ship since 1815. Remarkable fact.

Graf Spee knew that his victory over the RN at Coronel spelled his doom. Any chance he had of anchoring in home water had just vanished. The best he could do was to cause as much damage for the German cause before his time ran out. Coal was becoming a constant problem, and refueling in the busy Atlantic was dangerous unlike the wild open quiet South Pacific. Heavy shells were running extremely low from the victories at Papeete and Coronel. His cruisers were far beyond the need of a dry-dock overhaul.

While resupply his ships in a pro German Chilean after the battle he was presented a gift of flowers from the local governor, his reply was, “Thank you, they will look great at my funeral.”

I just picked up a book about WW1 in the Pacific called Spee Raiders. Its been a great read.

It is so weird (to me) to hear German and Pacific in the same sentence.
I am reading Osprey’s new release  about Kursk’s Northern shoulder (Model). Lots of great pictures of tanks. Especially the Ferdinand!

@wittmann:

It is so weird (to me) to hear German and Pacific in the same sentence.

One still-surviving relic of Germany’s small and short-lived colonial empire in the Asia-Pacific region is the name of a particular group of islands off New Guinea: the Bismarck Archipelago.  Another relic is Tsingtao Beer, which started being produced in 1904 by the Germania-Brauerei.  Tsingtao (now Qingdao) was a German-controlled territory in China from the late 19th century to 1914, when Japan seized it.  The beer is still being produced in Qingdao, under the old Tsingtao name.

The Battle of Cambrai began today, the 20th November, in 1917.
The British 3rd Army(Byng) pushed 3-4 miles into Germans lines, but were unable to surround Cambrai itself and break The Hindenburg line. The whole of The Tank Corps’ strength was utilised: 476 tanks. By the end of the day 179 had been destroyed or had broken down. The Cavalry Corps (Kavanagh) was poorly led and did not fulfil its objectives. The 4000 British casualties were low for such an operation, however.
Two weeks later the Germans would successfully counter attack.

@wittmann:

The whole of The Tank Corps’ strength was utilised: 476 tanks.

If I’m not mistaken, this was the first time in history in which tanks had been used in massed formations.  The results, although limited by the slow speed, limited range and poor reliability of WWI tanks, were nonetheless a precursor of the tank tactics that came to maturity during WWII.

As a child, I learnt Cambrai was the first battle in which tanks were used.
Later, I discovered it was at the Somme!
500 is certainly a large number. Did I read the Germans only had 20 Battle Tanks?

@wittmann:

Did I read the Germans only had 20 Battle Tanks?

That figure sounds right.  Germany domestically built only a small number of tanks.  I think they had only one model, called the A7V as I recall, a big squarish boxlike contraption that required a ridiculously large crew – more than a dozen men, I think.

On 21 November 1918, the German High Seas Fleet surrendered to the British Grand Fleet, as described in detail below.  The meeting of the two fleets was the greatest gathering of warships the world had ever witnessed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30128199

Wonderful piece, Marc. Thank you; I had no idea.

Glad you enjoyed it.  I once briefly visited Orkney, where the High Seas Fleets was interned and later scuttled.  I got to see a little museum in Kirkwall that displays, among other things, salvaged relics from the German ships – brass machinery dials with German lettering and so forth, plus part of the torpedo that sank the Royal Oak in WWII.  That alone was worth the trip up from Edinburgh.

I’ll try to catch up by summarizing the main developments in the various theaters of World War I during the period from late September to early November, 1914 - though I can’t promise to stay on track, as life gets in the way.

The French and the British won the First Battle of the Marne. This crucial victory stopped the rapid German advance and saved Paris from being cptured. If this bat t- though I can’t prole would have ended with a German victory, it could well have meant the defeat of France.
But now that the Germans had been turned back, the Allies tried to follow up on their success and started a flanking maneuver in an attempt to envelop the right flank of the German army in what would become the First Battle of the Aisne. The Aisne, like the Marne, runs east-west, but is some 25 miles further to the north.
The Germans countered this by sending troops south from Belgium. And during the weeks that followed this game of flanking and countering continued, resulting in the inconclusive battles of Picardy, Albert and Arras. As the focus of the fighting gradually moved north, this stage of the war has been dubbed the “Race to the Sea”, though neither party actually intended to reach the sea - it was just the direction that the respective maneuvers followed. This period also saw the beginning of the entrenchments that would become so characteristic of the Western Front.
In early October, the Belgians were still holding on to their fortress of Antwerp, where the king and the government resided after the loss of Brussels. Antwerp was defended by two circles of forts, an inner line immediately near the city, and an outer line some 5-10 miles away. The Germans kept advancing slowly but steadily, and they captured several of the outer forts after heavy artillery bombardments. A problem began to form further south, where the Germans were starting to threaten Ghent, thereby separating the Belgian forces at Antwerp from the Allied front further to the South. Despite British and French aid, the Belgian position became untenable, especially when the Germans gained enough ground to bring their heavy artillery within range. Antwerp surrendered on October 10. The majority of what remained of the Belgian army had retreated to fight another day, but some 30,000 were captured by the Germans, and even more fled north to the Netherlands, where they were interned. During the war, the Dutch interned all soldiers found on their soil: mostly Belgians, but also a British force that had been cut off at Antwerp, a few thousand Germans, and a few French and American pilots.
After the fall of Antwerp, the Germans continued to push westward, capturing Ghent a few days later. The Belgian army fell back behind the river Yser, almost the last natural line of defence that was actually in Belgium. German pressure was intense, and the Belgians, now joined by French and British forces, were gradually forced back. To stop this, the Belgian inundated a large part of the area toward the end of October, and this indeed worked: the terrain became almost impossible to traverse, and at the end of what became known as the First Battle of the Yser, the Belgians were still holding on to a small part of their country. King Albert I would continue leading his army in that area for four more years.

On the Eastern front, the Russian attempt to capture East Prussia had been crushed at the Battle of Tannenberg. Soon after, they suffered another major defeat, when the Russian First Army was soundly beaten at the Battle of the Masurian Lakes. The Russians were much more successful against Austria-Hungary, however. The Battle of Rawa was a major Russian victory, and the Russian third army laid siege to the fortress of Przemysl. Lemberg, the capital of the province of Galicia, had already fallen of September 3, and by the end of the month, the Austro-Hungarian army was in full retreat towards the Carpathian mountains. The situation alarmed Germany, that saw its key industrial area of Silesia threatened as Austrian resistance in neighboring Galicia collapsed. Von Hindenburg therefore started to advance southward from Eastern Prussia, but this time he was unsuccessful. On the other hand, a genuine Russian threat to Silesia never materialized.

In the South, the Serbians actually launched a limited offensive into Austro-Hungarian territory in September, but were soon confronted with a massive counterattack from their numerically superior opponent. The ensuing Battle of the Drina River lasted until early October and was inconclusive, but the Austrians could better afford the losses. Moreover, the ensuing trench warfare didn’t go well for the Serbians, who were seriously short of heavy artillery and suffered many casualties from Austrian bombardments. Eventually, they had to retreat and established a new position on the Kolubara river, where a lengthy and costly battle began on November 16.
Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire on November 2, and launched a campaign in the Caucasus. Their attack was repulsed a few weeks later, however.

In Africa, the Germans were rapidly losing ground in their Kamerun colony. The major city of Douala had fallen on September 27, and aided by their naval superiority, the British and French took the eniter coastal area. In East Africa, it was a different story however. The famous German commander Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, leading a combined force of Germans and native Askari’s, defeated a British naval invasion attempt at Tanga in early November, despite being heavily outnumbered. The parallel land invasion was also defeated at the Kilimanjaro, where the Germans were actually being led by a  major actually named Georg K raut (I had to put the space in to make the forum show the man’s name!). Finally, the anticipated South African invasion into German Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia), was thwarted by a rebellion among South African soldiers of Boer descent. The Boers, who were of Dutch origin and had been defeated by the British in their own independence war a little over a decade earlier, were not at all eager to fight for the British cause. But the South Africans still captured Luderitz, and all in all, the German prospects here were looking bleak in the face of the South African numerical superiority.

Germany’s Kiautschou Bay Concession in China had been under attack by the Japanese since September. The Japanese military had been strengthened considerable during the pre-World War I period, and they were eager to capitalize on their power by extending Japan’s influence. A British request for assistance against the German colonies gave Japan a welcome opportunity, and they sent an overwhelming force against Kiautschou. The attack culminated in the siege of Tsingtao, which capitulated on November 7 after heavy bombardments. By then, the Japanese had already captured Germany’s Pacific islands, that Germany itself had bought from Spain some 15-20 years earlier. German New Guinea had been captured by Australian troops in September. Lieutenant Hermann Detzner and a few of his men would hold out in the jungle for the remainder of the war, however.

Various naval engagements that took place during these months have already been covered by AB Worsham an Wittmann (thanks, gentlemen!), but we might add SMS Emden, a German cruiser that sank a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer at the battle of Penang in late October, but had to be beached in the Cocos Islands when HMAS Sydney proved too strong an opponent on November 9.

Emden, what a ship!

A few days ago a hundred years ago, December 8, 1914 the Battle of the Falkland Islands was fought. This battle ended the threat of the elite German Far East Fleet.

On the morning of 16 December 1914, the shipping town of Hartlepool in north-east England was bombarded by the German Navy during its first attack on the UK’s home front during World War One.

During the 40-minute attack, 1,150 shells were fired, devastating large areas of the town. It left 130 people dead and hundreds more injured.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-30484951

A hundred years ago today saw the Christmas Truce between German and British troops.

Amazing story.