Sopwith Cuckoo

The Sopwith Cuckoo of World War 1

In October 1916, Commodore Murray Sueter, the Air Department’s Superintendent of Aircraft Construction, solicited Sopwith for a single-seat aircraft capable of carrying a 1,000 lb torpedo and sufficient fuel to provide an endurance of four hours.

The resulting aircraft, designated T.1 by Sopwith, was a large, three-bay biplane. Because the T.1 was designed to operate from carrier decks, its wings were hinged to fold backward.

The T.1 could take off from a carrier deck in four seconds, but it was not capable of making a carrier landing and no arresting gear was fitted.

A split-axle undercarriage allowed the aircraft to carry a 1,000 lb Mk. IX torpedo beneath the fuselage.

The prototype T.1 first flew in June 1917, powered by a 200 hp Hispano-Suiza 8Ba engine.

Official trials commenced in July 1917 and the Admiralty issued production orders for 100 aircraft in August.

Contractors Fairfield Engineering and Pegler & Company had no experience as aircraft manufacturers, however, resulting in substantial production delays.

Moreover, the S.E.5a had priority for the limited supplies of the Hispano-Suiza 8. Redesign of the T.1 airframe to accommodate the heavier Sunbeam Arab incurred further delays.

In February 1918, the Admiralty issued a production order to Blackburn Aircraft, an experienced aircraft manufacturer.

Blackburn delivered its first T.1 in May 1918.

The aircraft immediately experienced undercarriage and tail skid failures, requiring redesign of those components.

The T.1 also required an enlarged rudder and offset vertical stabilizer to combat its tendency to swing to the right.

Fairfield and Pegler finally began production in August and October, respectively.

A total of 300 T.1s were ordered, but only 90 aircraft had been delivered by the Armistice.

A total of 232 aircraft had been completed by the time production ended in 1919.

Blackburn Aircraft produced 162 aircraft, while Fairfield Engineering completed 50 and Pegler & Company completed another 20.

After the Armistice, many T.1s were delivered directly to storage depots at Renfrew and Newcastle.

After undergoing service trials at RAF East Fortune, the T.1 was recommended for squadron service.

Deliveries to the Torpedo Aeroplane School at East Fortune commenced in early August 1918.

Training took place in the Firth of Forth, where Cuckoos launched practice torpedoes at targets towed by destroyers. Cuckoos of No. 185 Squadron embarked on HMS Argus in November 1918, but hostilities ended before the aircraft could conduct any combat operations.

In service, the aircraft was generally popular with pilots because the airframe was strong and water landings were safe.

The T.1 was easy to control and was fully aerobatic without a torpedo payload.

The Arab engine proved unsatisfactory, however, and approximately 20 T.1s were converted to use Wolseley Viper engines.

These aircraft, later designated Cuckoo Mk. IIs, could be distinguished by the Viper’s lower thrust line. The Arab-engined variant was designated Cuckoo Mk. I.

The Cuckoo’s operational career ended when the last unit to use the type, No. 210 Squadron, disbanded at Gosport on 1 April 1923.

The Cuckoo was replaced in service by the Blackburn Dart.

Planned use
Throughout 1917, Commodore Sueter proposed plans for an aerial torpedo attack on the German High Seas Fleet at its base in Germany.

The carriers HMS Argus, HMS Furious, and HMS Campania, and the converted cruisers HMS Courageous and HMS Glorious, were to have launched 100 Cuckoos from the North Sea.

In September 1917, Admiral Sir David Beatty, commander of the Grand Fleet, proposed a similar plan involving 120 Cuckoos launched from eight converted merchant vessels.

Datafile 90: Sopwith Cuckoo

Sopwith Camel

The Sopwith Camel of World War 1

Sopwith Camel was introduced in 1917 and made by Sopwith Aviation Company.

The company was founded in Kingston upon Thames in the United Kingdom by Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith.

The Warplane was a single-seater biplane fighter, the Plane was regarded as a difficult plane to handle.

The Sopwith Camel had shot down over almost 1300 enemy Aircraft during the First World War more than any other allied fighter plane during the First World War.

The Sopwith Camel was used more as a ground attack aircraft during the later stages of the War as it became outclassed with newer technology in Air to Air Battle

The Sopwith Camel was armed with twin synchronised Machine guns and a powerful Rotary engine.

The Sopwith Camel soon became unpopular with Student pilots being a difficult Aircraft to handle.

By the mid-1918 the Aircraft was more restricted as a day fighter due to the slow speed of the plane and poor performances at high altitudes.

The Sopwith Camel played a key role in the ground-attack and infantry support aircraft during the German offensive of March 1918.

Camel File

Little Willie

Little Willie British Tank of World War 1

Little Willie was a prototype in the development of the British Mark I tank.

Constructed in the autumn of 1915 at the behest of the Landship Committee, it was the first completed tank prototype in history.

Little Willie is the oldest surviving individual tank and is preserved as one of the most famous pieces in the collection of The Tank Museum, Bovington, England. ork on Little Willie’s predecessor was begun in July 1915 by the Landship Committee to meet The United Kingdom’s requirement in World War I for an armoured combat vehicle able to cross an 8-foot (2.4 m) trench.

After several other projects where single and triple tracks had failed, on 22 July William Ashbee Tritton, director of the agricultural machinery company William Foster & Company of Lincoln, was given the contract to develop a “Tritton Machine” with two tracks.

It had to make use of the track assemblies – lengthened tracks and suspension elements (seven road wheels instead of four) – purchased as fully built units from the Bullock Creeping Grip Tractor Company in Chicago.

On 11 August actual construction began; on 16 August Tritton decided to fit a wheeled tail to assist in steering. On 9 September the Number 1 Lincoln Machine, as the prototype was then known, made its first test run in the yard of the Wellington Foundry.

It soon became clear that the track profiles were so flat that ground resistance during a turn was excessive. 

To solve this, the suspension was changed so that the bottom profile was more curved.

Then the next problem showed up: when crossing a trench the track sagged and then would not fit the wheels again and jammed. The tracks were also not up to carrying the weight of the vehicle (about 16 tons).

Tritton and Lieutenant Walter Gordon Wilson tried several types of alternative track design, including balatá belting and flat wire ropes. 

Tritton, on 22 September, devised a robust but outwardly crude system using pressed steel plates riveted to cast links and incorporated guides to engage on the inside of the track frame.

The track frames as a whole were connected to the main body by large spindles.

This system was unsprung, as the tracks were held firmly in place, able to move in only one plane. This was a successful design and was used on all First World War British tanks up to the Mark VIII, although it limited speed.

Tanks of World Wars I and II: An IIllustrated A-Z Catalogue of Tanks, Armoured Vehicles, Tank Destroyers, Command Versions and Specialized Tanks from ... Machine "Little Willie" to the Panzers

Armistice

Armistice of World War 1

An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting.

It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace.

It is derived from the Latin arma, meaning “arms” (as in weapons) and -stitium, meaning “a stopping”.

The United Nations Security Council often imposes or tries to impose, cease-fire resolutions on parties in modern conflicts.

Armistices are always negotiated between the parties themselves and are thus generally seen as more binding than non-mandatory UN cease-fire resolutions in modern international law.

An armistice is a modus vivendi and is not the same as a peace treaty, which may take months or even years to agree on.

Armistice Day (which coincides with Remembrance Day and Veterans Day, public holidays) is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the Armistice of 11 November 1918 signed between the Allies of World War I and the German Empire at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o’clock in the morning—the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918.

Most countries changed the name of the holiday after World War II, to honor veterans of that and subsequent conflicts.

Most member states of the Commonwealth of Nations adopted the name Remembrance Day, while the United States chose Veterans Day.

The 1953 Korean War Armistice Agreement is a major example of an armistice that has not been followed by a peace treaty.
An armistice is also different from a truce or ceasefire, which refer to a temporary cessation of hostilities for an agreed limited time or within a limited area.

A truce may be needed in order to negotiate an armistice.

01/11/1918 00:00:00: Triumph and Tragedy in the Final Days of WW1

Battle Of Tannenberg


The Battle of Tannenberg in World War 1

The Battle of Tannenberg was fought between Russia and Germany between 26 and 30 August 1914, the first month of World War I.

The battle resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian Second Army and the suicide of its commanding general, Alexander Samsonov.

A series of follow-up battles (First Masurian Lakes) destroyed most of the First Army as well and kept the Russians off balance until the spring of 1915.

The battle is particularly notable for fast rail movements by the Germans, enabling them to concentrate against each of the two Russian armies in turn, and also for the failure of the Russians to encode their radio messages.

It brought considerable prestige to Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and his rising staff-officer Erich Ludendorff. Although the battle actually took place near Allenstein (Olsztyn), Hindenburg named it after Tannenberg, 30 km (19 mi) to the west, in order to avenge the defeat of the Teutonic Knights 500 years earlier at the Battle of Grunwald by Poland-Lithuania (which was also known as the Battle of Tannenberg in German).

Contents 1 Background 2 Prelude: 17–22 August 3 Battle 3.1 Consolidation of the German Eighth Army 3.2 Early phases of battle: 23–26 August 3.3 Main battle: 26–30 August 4 Aftermath 5 Post-war legacy 6 Footnotes 7 Further reading Background Germany entered World War I largely following the Schlieffen Plan.

Devised a decade earlier in response to concerns about fighting a two-front war with Russia and France, the Plan depended on differences in the speed with which the different nations could mobilize their armies for war.

The basic idea was for Germany to use its speed advantage to mobilize before the French could, invade and defeat France before it mobilized, and then turn the German army around, send it east, and defeat Russia, which was seen as being slower to mobilize than France. In short, Germany could deliver a devastating one-two punch before either of its adversaries was ready.

Put another way, the Plan depended on Russia’s slow entry into the war.

The French army’s Plan XVII at the outbreak of the war involved swift mobilization followed by an immediate attack to drive the Germans from Alsace and Lorraine. If the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) joined in accordance with their Allied treaty, they would fill the left flank.

Their Russian allies in the East would have a massive army, more than 95 divisions, but their mobilization would inevitably be slower.

Getting their men to the front would itself take time because of their relatively sparse and unreliable railway network (for example, three-quarters of the Russian railways were still single-tracked).

Russia intended to have 27 divisions at the front by day 15 and 52 by day 23, but it would take 60 days before 90 divisions were in action.

Despite their difficulties, the Russians promised the French that they would promptly engage the armies of Austria-Hungary in the south and on day 15 would invade German East Prussia.
East Prussia was a vulnerable salient thrust into Russian territory, extending from the Vistula River in the west to the border with (at the time, Russian) Lithuania in the east, a distance of roughly 190 km (120 mi).

On the north was the Baltic and on the south was the border with (at the time, Russian) Poland; it was about 130 km (81 mi) wide. 

Somewhat east of the center of the province was the heavily fortified peninsula on which its capital Königsberg (modern Kaliningrad, Russia) was located. The Russians would rely on two of their three railways that ran up to the border; each would provision an army.

The railways ended at the border, as Russian trains operated on a different rail gauge from Western Europe. Consequently, its armies could be transported by rail only as far as the German border and could use Prussian railways only with captured locomotives and rolling stock.

The First Army would use the line that ran from Vilnius, Lithuania, to the border 136 km (85 mi) southeast of Königsberg.

The Second Army railway ran from Warsaw, Poland, to the border 165 km (103 mi) southwest of Königsberg. The two armies would take the Germans in a pincer.

The Russian supply chains would be ungainly because—for defense—on their side of the border there were only a few sandy tracks rather than proper macadamized roads.
Adding to their supply problems, the Russians deployed large numbers of cavalry and Cossacks; every day each horse needed ten times the resources that a man required.

The First Army commander was Gen.

Paul von Rennenkampf, who in the Russo-Japanese War had earned a reputation for “exceptional energy, determination, courage, and military capability.”

The Second Army, coming north from Warsaw, was under Gen. Alexander Samsonov, who was “… possessed of a brilliant mind, reinforced by an excellent military education”.

Since commanding a division in the war with Japan he had been governor of Turkestan.

The two armies were directed by the military governor of Warsaw, who in wartime commanded the Northwest Military District, Gen. Yakov Zhilinsky. His duties in Manchuria had been more diplomatic than military. Before moving to Warsaw he had been Chief of the Russian General Staff for two years.

He set up his headquarters in Volkovysk. (Vawkavysk, Belarus), about 410 km (250 mi) from Königsberg. Communications would be a daunting challenge.

The Russian supply of cable was insufficient to run telephone or telegraph connections from the rear; all they had was needed for field communications.
Therefore, they relied on mobile wireless stations, which would link Zhilinskiy to his two army commanders and with all corps commanders.

The Russians were aware that the Germans had broken their ciphers, but they continued to use them until war broke out. A new code was ready but they were still very short of the code books.

Zhilinskiy and Rennenkampf each had one; Samsonov did not. 

Hence, many messages were sent in the clear, hoping that they would not be intercepted.

The German Schlieffen Plan proposed to defeat France swiftly while the Russians were mobilizing. Then Germany’s armies would shift by train to the Eastern Front. Therefore, East Prussia was garrisoned by a single army, the Eighth, commanded by Gen.

Maximilian von Prittwitz und Gaffron, which was to hold back the Russians while the outcome in the West was decided. A tangle of lakes, marshes and dense woods characterized the province, which would help defenders.

When the war began the bulk of the German Eighth Army was southwest of Königsberg, ready to defend either the Western or the Southern frontier: 485,000 Russians were facing 173,000 Germans. More than half of the men in both armies had just been mobilized, so many were not yet fighting fit. 

Prelude: 17–22 August Rennenkampf’s First Army crossed the frontier on 17 August 1914, moving westward slowly. This was sooner than the Germans anticipated, because the Russian mobilization, including the Baltic and Warsaw districts, had begun secretly on 25 July, not with the Tsar’s proclamation on 30 July.

They were attacked at Stallupönen by a division of the German I Corps under Lt. Gen. Hermann von François. The Russians were driven back and lost 3,000 men as prisoners, but I Corps was ordered by Prittwitz, who had not authorized the attack, to pull back to Gumbinnen to concentrate his forces. The Russian advance continued on the afternoon of 18 August and on the following day.

Prittwitz attacked near Gumbinnen on 20 August, when he knew from intercepted wireless messages that Rennenkampf’s infantry was resting.

German I Corps was on their left, XVII Corps commanded by Lt. Gen.
August von Mackensen in the center and I Reserve Corps led by Gen. Otto von Below on the right. A night march enabled one of François’ divisions to hit the Russian XX Corps’ right flank at 04:00. Rennenkampf’s men rallied to stoutly resist the attack. 

Their artillery was devastating until they ran out of ammunition, then the Russians retired. I Corps attacks were halted at 16:00 to rest men sapped by the torrid summer heat.

François was sure they could win the next day. On his left, Mackensen’s XVII Corps launched a vigorous frontal attack but the Russian infantry held firm. That afternoon the Russian heavy artillery struck back—the German infantry fled in panic, their artillery limbered up and joined the stampede. Prittwitz ordered I Corps and I Reserve Corps to break off the action and retreat also.

At noon he had telephoned Field Marshal von Moltke at OHL (Oberste Heeresleitung, Supreme Headquarters) to report that all was going well; that evening he telephoned again to report disaster. 

His problems were compounded because an intercepted wireless message disclosed that the Russian II Army included five Corps and a cavalry division, and aerial scouts saw their columns marching across the frontier.

They were opposed by a single reinforced German Corps, the XX, commanded by Lt. Gen. Friedrich von Scholtz. Prittwitz excitedly but inconclusively and repeatedly discussed the dreadful news with Moltke that evening on the telephone, shouting back and forth. 

At 20:23 Eighth Army telegraphed OHL that they would withdraw to West Prussia.

An old photograph of a man with a mustache in military uniform.

Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg However, by the next morning, 21 August, Eighth Army staff realized that because Samsonov’s II Army was closer to the Vistula crossings they must relocate most of their forces to join with XX Corps to block Samsonov before they could withdraw further.

Now Moltke was told that they would only retreat a short way; François protested directly to the Kaiser about his panicking superiors.

That evening Prittwitz reported that the German 1st Cavalry Division had disappeared.

His next call disclosed that they had ridden in with 500 prisoners. Probably Moltke had already decided to replace both Prittwitz and his highly regarded chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Alfred von Waldersee.

On the morning of 22 August their replacements, Col. Gen. Paul von Hindenburg and Maj. Gen. Erich Ludendorff was notified of their new assignments.

The Eighth Army issued orders to move toward Samsonov’s Second Army. I Corps was closest to the railway, so it would move by train to support the right of XX Corps, while the other two German corps would march the shorter distance to XX Corps’ left.

The First Cavalry Division with some older garrison troops would remain to screen Rennenkampf.

On the afternoon of 22 August, the head of the Eighth Army field railways was informed by telegraph that new commanders were coming by special train.

The telegram relieving their former commanders came later. I Corps was moving over more than 150 km (93 miles) of rail, day and night, one train every 30 minutes, with 25 minutes to unload instead of the customary hour or two.

After the battle at Gumbinnen, Rennenkampf decided to keep his First Army in position to resupply and to be in good positions if the Germans attacked again.

Both Russian armies were having serious supply problems; everything had to be carted up from the railheads because they could not use the East Prussian railway track, and many units were hampered by lack of field bakeries, ammunition carts, and the like.

The Second Army also was hampered by incompetent staff work and poor communications. 

Poor staff work not only exacerbated supply problems but, more importantly, caused Samsonov during the fighting to lose operational control over all but the two corps in his immediate vicinity (XIII & XV Corps).

TANNENBERG;: THE FIRST THIRTY DAYS IN EAST PRUSSIA,

Battle of Dogger Bank

The Battle of Dogger Bank

The Battle of Dogger Bank was a naval engagement on 24 January 1915, near the Dogger Bank in the North Sea, during the First World War, between squadrons of the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet.

The British had intercepted and decoded German wireless transmissions, gaining advance knowledge that a German raiding squadron was heading for Dogger Bank and ships of the Grand Fleet sailed to intercept the raiders.

The British surprised the smaller and slower German squadron, which fled for home. During a stern chase lasting several hours, the British caught up with the Germans and engaged them with long-range gunfire.

The British disabled Blücher, the rearmost German ship, and the Germans put the British flagship, HMS Lion, out of action.

Due to inadequate signalling, the remaining British ships stopped the pursuit to sink Blücher; by the time the ship had been sunk, the rest of the German squadron had escaped.

The German squadron returned to the harbour, with some ships in need of extensive repairs.
Lion made it back to port but was out of action for several months.

The British had lost no ships and suffered few casualties; the Germans had lost Blücher and most of its crew, so the action was considered a British victory.

Both navies replaced officers who were thought to have shown poor judgement and made changes to equipment and procedures, to remedy failings observed during the battle.

Before 1914, international communication was conducted via undersea cables laid along shipping lanes, most of which were under British control.

Hours after the British ultimatum to Germany in August 1914, they cut German cables. German messages could be passed only by wireless, using cyphers to disguise their content.
The Signalbuch der Kaiserlichen Marine (SKM) was captured from the German light cruiser SMS Magdeburg after it ran aground in the Baltic on 26 August 1914.

The German-Australian steamer Hobart was seized near Melbourne, Australia on 11 August and the Handelsverkehrsbuch (HVB) codebook, used by the German navy to communicate with merchant ships and within the High Seas Fleet, was captured. A copy of the book was sent to England by the fastest steamer, arriving at the end of October.

During the Battle off Texel (17 October), the commander of the German destroyer SMS S119 threw overboard his secret papers in a lead-lined chest as the ship sank but on 30 November, a British trawler dragged up the chest. Room 40 gained a copy of the Verkehrsbuch (VB) codebook, normally used by Flag officers of the Kaiserliche Marine.

The Director of the Intelligence Division of the Admiralty, Rear-Admiral Henry Oliver, established a code-breaking organisation to decipher German signals, using cryptographers from academic backgrounds and making use of the windfalls taken from the German ships.

At first, the inexperience of the cryptanalysts in naval matters led to errors in the understanding of the material and this lack of naval experience caused Oliver to make personal decisions about the information to be passed to other departments, many of which, particularly the Operations Department, had reservations about the value of Room 40.

The transfer of an experienced naval officer, Commander W. W. Hope, remedied most of the deficiencies of the civilians’ understanding.

On 14 October, Oliver became Chief of the Naval War Staff but continued to treat Room 40 more like a fiefdom and a source for the informal group of officers around the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, which received decoded messages but had the insufficient authority to use them to best advantage.

German ships had to report their position every night by wireless and British listening posts along the east coast took cross-bearings to find the positions of the ships when they transmitted.

This signals intelligence meant that the British did not need wasteful defensive standing patrols and sweeps of the North Sea but could economise on fuel and use the time for training and maintenance.

The Admiralty also uncovered the German order of battle and tracked the deployment of ships, which gave them an offensive advantage.
The lack of a proper war staff at the Admiralty and poor liaison between Room 40, Oliver and the operations staff, meant that the advantage was poorly exploited in 1915. (It was not until 1917 that this was remedied.)

When German ships sailed, information from Room 40 needed to be passed on quickly but Oliver found it hard to delegate and would not routinely supply all decrypts; commanders at sea were supplied only with what the Admiralty thought they needed.

Information could reach the Grand Fleet late, incomplete or mistakenly interpreted. When Jellicoe asked for a decryption section to take to the sea, he was refused on security grounds.

German raid Main article: Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby With the German High Seas Fleet (HSF) confined to port after the British success at the Battle of Heligoland Bight in 1914, Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, the Commander-in-Chief of the HSF planned a raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby on the east coast of England, with the I Scouting Group (Admiral Franz von Hipper), a battlecruiser squadron of three battlecruisers and a large armoured cruiser, supported by light cruisers and destroyers.

Hipper opened fire at 08:00 on 16 December 1914, eventually killing 108 and wounding 525 civilians.

The British public and political opinion were outraged that German warships could sail so close to the British coast, shelling coastal towns with impunity; British naval forces had failed to prevent the attacks and also failed to intercept the raiding squadron.

The British fleet had sailed but the German ships escaped in stormy seas and low visibility, assisted by British communication failures.

The Germans had made the first successful attack on Britain since the 17th century and suffered no losses but Ingenohl was unjustly blamed for missing an opportunity to inflict a defeat on the Royal Navy, despite him creating the chance by his offensive-mindedness.

British counter-action The British had let the raid occur and appeared to the public to have been surprised (having been forewarned by decoded wireless messages) and then to have failed to sink the German raiding force on its way back to Germany. 

In 1921, the official historian Julian Corbett wrote, Two of the most efficient and powerful British squadrons…knowing approximately what to expect…had failed to bring to action an enemy who was acting in close conformity with our appreciation and with whose advanced screen contact had been established. — Strachan

The British had escaped a potential disaster because the British 1st Battlecruiser Squadron (Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty) was unsupported by the 2nd Battle Squadron (Vice-Admiral Sir George Warrender) when it failed to make contact with the raiding force.

The worst British failure was in the exploitation of the intelligence provided by the code-breakers at Room 40 (Sir Alfred Ewing), that had given the British notice of the raid.

Some intercepts decoded during the action had taken two hours to reach British commanders at sea, by when they were out of date or misleading.

News of the sailing of the HSF was delivered so late that the British commanders thought that the Germans were on the way when they were returning. At sea, Beatty had sent ambiguous signals and some commanders had not used their initiative.

On 30 December, the commander of the Home Fleet, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, gave orders that when in contact with German ships, officers were to treat orders from those ignorant of local conditions as instructions only but he refused Admiralty suggestions to loosen ship formations, for fear of decentralising tactical command too far.

Battle of Dogger Bank: The First Dreadnought Engagement, January 1915 (Twentieth-Century Battles)

First Battle of the Atlantic

The Battle of the Atlantic during World War 1

The Atlantic U-boat campaign of World War I (sometimes called the “First Battle of the Atlantic”, in reference to the World War II campaign of that name) was the prolonged naval conflict between German submarines and the Allied navies in Atlantic waters—the seas around the British Isles, the North Sea and the coast of France.

Initially, the U-boat campaign was directed against the British Grand Fleet.

Later U-boat fleet action was extended to include action against the trade routes of the Allied powers. This campaign was highly destructive and resulted in the loss of nearly half of Britain’s merchant marine fleet during the course of the war.

To counter the German submarines, the Allies moved shipping into convoys guarded by destroyers, blockades such as the Dover Barrage and minefields were laid, and aircraft patrols monitored the U-boat bases.

The U-boat campaign was not able to cut off supplies before the US entered the war in 1917 and in later 1918, the U-boat bases were abandoned in the face of the Allied advance.

The tactical successes and failures of the Atlantic U-boat Campaign would later be used as a set of available tactics in World War II in a similar U-boat war against the British Empire.

On 6 August 1914, two days after Britain had declared war on Germany, the German U-boats U-5, U-7, U-8, U-9, U-13, U-14, U-15, U-16, U-17, and U-18 sailed from their base in Heligoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea in the first submarine war patrols in history.

The U-boats sailed north, hoping to encounter Royal Navy squadrons between Shetland and Bergen.

On 8 August, one of U-9’s engines broke down and she was forced to return to base. On the same day, off Fair Isle, U-15 sighted the British battleships HMS Ajax, HMS Monarch, and HMS Orion on maneuvers and fired a torpedo at Monarch.
This failed to hit and succeeded only in putting the battleships on their guard.

At dawn the next morning, the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron, which was screening the battleships, came into contact with the U-boats, HMS Birmingham sighting U-15, which was lying on the surface.

There was no sign of any lookouts on the U-boat and sounds of hammering could be heard, as though her crew was performing repairs.

Birmingham immediately altered course and rammed U-15 just behind her conning tower. The submarine was cut in two and sank with all hands.

On 12 August, seven U-boats returned to Heligoland; U-13 was also missing, and it was thought she had been mined. While the operation was a failure, it caused the Royal Navy some uneasiness, disproving earlier estimates as to U-boats’ radius of action and leaving the security of the Grand Fleet’s unprotected anchorage at Scapa Flow open to question.

On the other hand, the ease with which U-15 had been destroyed by Birmingham encouraged the false belief that submarines were no great danger to surface warships.

First successes On 5 September 1914, U-21 commanded by Lieutenant Otto Hersing made history when he torpedoed the Royal Navy light cruiser HMS Pathfinder. The cruiser’s magazine exploded, and the ship sank in four minutes, taking 259 of her crew with her.

It was the first combat victory of the modern submarine. The German U-boats were to get even luckier on 22 September. Early in the morning of that day, a lookout on the bridge of U-9, commanded by Lieutenant Otto Weddigen, spotted a vessel on the horizon. Weddigen ordered the U-boat to submerge immediately, and the submarine went forward to investigate.

At closer range, Weddigen discovered three old Royal Navy armoured cruisers, HMS Aboukir, HMS Cressy, and HMS Hogue. These three vessels were not merely antiquated, but were staffed mostly by reservists, and were so clearly vulnerable that a decision to withdraw them was already filtering up through the bureaucracy of the Admiralty.

The order did not come soon enough for the ships.

Weddigen sent one torpedo into Aboukir.

The captains of Hogue and Cressy assumed Aboukir had struck a mine and came up to assist. U-9 put two torpedoes into Hogue and then hit Cressy with two more torpedoes as the cruiser tried to flee.

The three cruisers sank in less than an hour, killing 1,460 British sailors.

Three weeks later, on 15 October, Weddigen also sank the old cruiser HMS Hawke, and the crew of U-9 became national heroes. Each was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class, except for Weddigen, who received the Iron Cross First Class.

The sinkings caused alarm within the British Admiralty,[ which was increasingly nervous about the security of the Scapa Flow anchorage, and the fleet was sent to ports in Ireland and the west coast of Scotland until adequate defenses were installed at Scapa Flow.
This, in a sense, was a more significant victory than sinking a few old cruisers; the world’s most powerful fleet had been forced to abandon its home base. End of the first campaign These concerns were well-founded.

On 23 November U-18 penetrated Scapa Flow via Hoxa Sound, following a steamer through the boom and entering the anchorage with little difficulty. However, the fleet was absent, being dispersed in anchorages on the west coast of Scotland and Ireland.

As U-18 was making her way back out to the open sea, her periscope was spotted by a guard boat. The trawler Dorothy Gray altered course and rammed the periscope, rendering it unserviceable. 

U-18 then suffered a failure of her diving plane motor and the boat became unable to maintain her depth, at one point even impacting the seabed.

Eventually, her captain was forced to surface and scuttle his command, and all but one crew-member were picked up by British boats.

The last success of the year came on 31 December.

U-24 sighted the British battleship HMS Formidable on maneuvers in the English Channel and torpedoed her. Formidable sank with the loss of 547 of her crew.

The C-in-C Channel Fleet, Adm. Sir Lewis Bayly, was criticized for not taking proper precautions during the exercises but was cleared of the charge of negligence.

Bayly later served with distinction as commander of the anti-submarine warfare forces at Queenstown.

Battle of Jutland: History s Greatest Sea Battle Told Through Newspaper Reports, Official Documents and the Accounts of Those Who Were There (Voices from the Past)

Meuse Argonne offensive

The Meuse–Argonne offensive of World War 1

The Meuse–Argonne offensive (also known as the Meuse River–Argonne Forest offensive, the Battles of the Meuse–Argonne, and the Meuse–Argonne campaign) was a major part of the final Allied offensive of World War I that stretched along the entire Western Front.
It was fought from September 26, 1918, until the Armistice of November 11, 1918, a total of 47 days.

The Meuse–Argonne offensive was the largest in United States military history, involving 1.2 million American soldiers.

It is the second deadliest battle in American history, resulting in over 350,000 casualties including 28,000 German lives, 26,277 American lives, and an unknown number of French lives.
U.S. losses were worsened by the inexperience of many of the troops, the tactics used during the early phases of the operation and the widespread onset of the global influenza outbreak called the “Spanish Flu”.

Meuse–Argonne was the principal engagement of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) during World War I.

It was one of a series of Allied attacks known as the Hundred Days Offensive, which brought the war to an end.

It was the largest and bloodiest operation of World War I for the AEF even if, given the scale of other battles on the Western Front, its size was limited and the operation itself secondary as it was far from the main offensive axis.

The logistic prelude to the Meuse attack was planned by then Colonel George Marshall who managed to move American units to the front after the Battle of Saint-Mihiel (Saint-Mihiel is a town on the river Meuse, the most important water obstacle on the Western Front.

The September/October Allied breakthroughs (north, center, and east) across the length of the Hindenburg Line – including the Battle of the Argonne Forest – are now lumped together as part of what is generally remembered as the Grand Offensive (also known as the Hundred Days Offensive) by the Allies on the Western Front.

The Meuse–Argonne offensive also involved troops from France, while the rest of the Allies, including France, Britain and its dominion and imperial armies (mainly Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), and Belgium contributed to major battles in other sectors across the whole front.
German soldiers drawing water After the main 1918 German offensive that began well for them but ended with the disaster of Reims in front of the French army, The French and British armies launched “The Grand Offensive” or the “100 days offensive”, systematically pushing back a German army whose efficiency was decreasing rapidly.

British, French, and Belgian advances in the north, along with the French–American advances around the Argonne forest, is in turn credited for leading directly to the Armistice of November 11, 1918.

On September 26, the Americans began their strike north towards Sedan.

The next day, British and Belgian divisions drove towards Ghent (Belgium).

British and French armies attacked across northern France on September 28.

The scale of the overall offensive, bolstered by the fresh and eager, but largely untried and inexperienced, U.S. troops, signaled renewed vigor among the Allies and sharply dimmed German hopes for victory.

The Meuse–Argonne battle was the largest frontline commitment of troops by the U.S. Army in World War I, and also its deadliest.

Command was coordinated, with some U.S. troops (e.g. the Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd Division and the 93rd Division) attached and serving under French command (e.g. XVII Corps during the second phase).

The main U.S. effort of the Meuse–Argonne offensive took place in the Verdun Sector, immediately north and northwest of the town of Verdun, between September 26 and November 11, 1918.

Far to the north, U.S. troops of the 27th and 30th divisions of the II Corps AEF fought under British command in a spearhead attack on the Hindenburg Line with 12 British and Australian divisions, and directly alongside the exhausted veteran divisions of the Australian Corps of the First Australian Imperial Force (1st AIF).

With artillery and British tanks, the combined three-nation force, despite some early setbacks, attacked and captured their objectives (including Montbrehain village) along a six-kilometer section of the Line between Bellicourt and Vendhuille, which was centered around an underground section of the St. Quentin Canal and came to be known as the Battle of St. Quentin Canal.

Although the capture of the heights above the Beaurevoir Line by October 10, marking a complete breach in the Hindenburg Line, was arguable of greater immediate significance,] the important U.S. contribution to the victory at the St. Quentin Canal is less well remembered in the United States than the Meuse–Argonne.

The Hundred Days Offensive: The Allies' Push to Win World War I (Snapshots in History)

The Brusilov Offensive

The Brusilov Offensive of World World 1

The Brusilov Offensive (Russian: Брусиловский прорыв Brusilovskiĭ proryv, literally: “Brusilov’s breakthrough”), also known as the “June Advance”, of June to September 1916 was the Russian Empire’s greatest feat of arms during World War I, and among the most lethal offensives in world history.

Historian Graydon Tunstall called the Brusilov Offensive the worst crisis of World War I for Austria-Hungary and the Triple Entente’s greatest victory, but it came at a tremendous loss of life.

The offensive involved a major Russian attack against the armies of the Central Powers on the Eastern Front. Launched on 4 June 1916, it lasted until late September.

It took place in an area of present-day western Ukraine, in the general vicinity of the towns of Lviv, Kovel, and Lutsk. The offensive takes its name after the commander in charge of the Southwestern Front of the Imperial Russian Army, General Aleksei Brusilov.

The Brusilov Offensive (Twentieth- Century Battles)

Spring Offensive

The Spring Offensive

The 1918 Spring Offensive, or Kaiserschlacht (“Kaiser’s Battle”), also known as the Ludendorff Offensive, was a series of German attacks along the Western Front during the First World War, beginning on 21 March 1918.
The Germans had realised that their only remaining chance of victory was to defeat the Allies before the United States could fully deploy their resources.

The German Army had gained a temporary advantage in numbers as nearly 50 divisions had been freed by the Russian withdrawal from the war with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

There were four German offensives, codenamed Michael, Georgette, Gneisenau, and Blücher-Yorck. Michael was the main attack, which was intended to break through the Allied lines, outflank the British forces (which held the front from the Somme River to the English Channel) and defeat the British Army.

Once that was achieved, it was hoped that the French would seek armistice terms.

The other offensives were subsidiary to Michael and were designed to divert Allied forces from the main offensive effort on the Somme.

No clear objective was established before the start of the offensives and once the operations were underway, the targets of the attacks were constantly changed according to the battlefield (tactical) situation.

Once they began advancing, the Germans struggled to maintain the momentum, partly due to logistical issues. The fast-moving stormtrooper units could not carry enough food and ammunition to sustain themselves for long, and the army could not move in supplies and reinforcements fast enough to assist them.

The Allies concentrated their main forces in the essential areas (the approaches to the Channel Ports and the rail junction of Amiens).

Strategically worthless ground, which had been devastated by years of conflict, was left lightly defended. Within a few weeks, the danger of a German breakthrough had passed, though related fighting continued until July.

The German Army made the deepest advances either side had made on the Western Front since 1914. They re-took much ground that they had lost in 1916-17 and took some ground that they had not yet controlled.

Despite these apparent successes, they suffered heavy casualties in return for land that was of little strategic value and hard to defend.

The offensive failed to deliver a blow that could save Germany from defeat, which has led some historians to describe it as a pyrrhic victory. In July 1918, the Allies regained their numerical advantage with the arrival of American troops.

In August, they used this and improved tactics to launch a counteroffensive.

The ensuing Hundred Days Offensive resulted in the Germans losing all of the ground that they had taken in the Spring Offensive, the collapse of the Hindenburg Line, and the capitulation of the German Empire that November.

A Forlorn Hope: The Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the Kaiser's Battle 1918