Neither of them at first wanted a direct confrontation: the British were chiefly concerned with the protection of their trade routes; the Germans hoped that mines and submarine attacks would gradually destroy Great Britains numerical superiority, so that confrontation could eventually take place on equal terms. Patrick J. Kiger has written for GQ, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, PBS NewsHour and Military History Quarterly. The first significant encounter between the two navies was that of the Helgoland Bight, on August 28, 1914, when a British force under Admiral Sir David Beatty, having entered German home waters, sank or damaged several German light cruisers and killed or captured 1,000 men at a cost of one British ship damaged and 35 deaths. On 4 February 1915, Germany declared a war zone around Britain, within which merchant ships were sunk without warning. Sunken battleships are the wrecks of large capital ships built from the 1880s to the mid-20th century that were either destroyed in battle, mined, deliberately destroyed in a weapons test, or scuttled. Sailing withBeatty'sBattle Cruiser Fleet,Southamptonwas the first British ship to sight the German High Seas Fleet. In April 1917, 430 Allied and neutral ships totaling 852,000 tons were sunk, and it seemed likely that the German gamble would succeed. Reported to have been heavily salvaged. At the. The records of the Trade Division of the Naval Staff, contain much material on the losses of individual merchant ships. It was used in combination with tactics such as zig-zagging and traveling in convoys, in which the most vulnerable ships were kept in the center of the formation, surrounded by faster, more dangerous ships capable of destroying submarines. The synergy of those measures was wonderfully effective, he says. With torpedoes, there wasnt much margin for error, so if the dazzle camouflage threw off the calculations by only a few degrees, that might be enough to cause a miss and save a British ship. At Jutland,Sharkwas part of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron, a force of three battlecruisers, the light cruisersChesterandCanterbury, and three other destroyers. The loss of Royal Navy ships usually resulted in an inquiry with the Captain or surviving officers court martialled, though these trials often did not take place where ships were lost to enemy action or where none of the officers survived. Nevertheless, our records can contain useful information and should be considered among the range of different sources. Apart from its lack of positive success, the U-boat arm was continuously harried by Great Britains extensive antisubmarine measures, which included nets, specially armed merchant ships, hydrophones for locating the noise of a submarines engines, and depth bombs for destroying it underwater. The naval combat of World War II saw many battleships belonging to the various nations destroyed as air power began to be realized as being crucial to naval warfare, rather than massive capital ships. The majority of British loss of life came from Vice-Admiral, This page was last edited on 11 October 2022, at 00:04. When the German light cruiser Dresden was caught and sunk off the Juan Fernndez Islands on March 14, 1915, commerce raiding by German surface ships on the high seas was at an end. Following a new U.S. protest, the Germans undertook to ensure the safety of passengers before sinking liners henceforth; but only after the torpedoing of yet another liner, the Hesperia, did Germany, on September 18, decide to suspend its submarine campaign in the English Channel and west of the British Isles, for fear of provoking the United States further. Otto Steinbrinck in UC-65 did the same between March and July 1917. By the end of March, Germany had sunk several more passenger ships with Americans aboard and Wilson went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war on April 2, which was made four days.
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