Naval battle off Texel (1914)
Artist's impression of the battle
| date | October 17, 1914 |
|---|---|
| place | in front of Texel , Netherlands |
| output | British victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
Capt. Cecil Henry Fox |
KKpt. Georg Thiele |
| Troop strength | |
| 1 light cruiser 4 destroyers |
4 large torpedo boats |
| losses | |
|
5 wounded |
all ships sunk |
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Helgoland (1914) - September 22, 1914 - Texel - Yarmouth - Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby - Cuxhaven - Doggerbank (1915) - Noordhinder Bank - Doggerbank (1916) - February 29, 1916 - Yarmouth and Lowestoft - Skagerrak - August 19, 1916 - Canal (1916) - Canal (1917) - Shetland Islands - Heligoland (1917) - Bergen - Zeebrugge and Ostend - Tønder
The naval battle off Texel on October 17, 1914 was a minor naval battle in the early stages of World War I off the Dutch island of Texel , which ended in a clear victory for superior forces of the Royal Navy over a German torpedo boat semi-flotilla.
prehistory
After the lost first major naval battle near Heligoland on August 28, the German fleet command prohibited its commanders from confronting superior enemy naval forces in order to prevent avoidable losses and not endanger the morale of the crews. Advances from the German Bight into the North Sea, which should dispute the control of the sea with the Royal Navy, were mostly carried out by light forces. In guerrilla warfare at sea, the Imperial Navy was able to achieve successes due to advantages such as better sea mines , which in the long term should at least reduce the superiority of the British in capital ships .
The British were heavily involved in the land war in Belgium at the time. Here the siege of Antwerp had just ended and the Belgian army, supported by Royal Marines , withdrew to the Yser to build a new front line. Against this background, the sea flank of the western front gained special importance, as a German breakthrough on the Yser would have directly endangered the supply ports of the British Expeditionary Force on the English Channel . On October 11, the post of Rear Adm. Commanding the Dover Patrol and Senior Naval Officer, Dover was established and Rear Adm . Horace Hood was given command. He was assigned several monitors for bombarding land targets.
On October 16, the German fleet chief, Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl , received news of the capture of Ostend and Bruges by German troops. This meant that two ports of refuge became available for German ships, which would be cut off from returning to the German Bight during operations in the Hoofden . He decided to carry out a mine-laying operation against the Downs , which had already been planned for October 11, but was then postponed . The mines were intended on the one hand to hinder trade from the canal into the Thames estuary, on the other hand to disrupt ship movements that were directed against the Belgian coast. In particular, the British monitors, whose base was suspected on the German side in Harwich , should be attacked by the minefield.
course
In the early morning of October 17, 1914, the 7th torpedo boat semi-flotilla under Korvettenkapitän Georg Thiele with the four torpedo boats S 115, S 117, S 118 and S 119 (lead ship) set out from Emden to get in front of the Downs and possibly the Thames estuary To lay mines. The boats of the type 1898 were of older year of construction (1903) and originally designed for a maximum speed of 26 knots. In 1914 they were among the slowest in the deep-sea fleet . With their three 5 cm L / 40 torpedo boat cannons and three torpedo tubes each , they were hopelessly inferior to newer destroyers of the Royal Navy. The ships were chosen because their loss or failure would have been easiest to deal with. They were loaded with twelve sea mines each for the company. The operation was deemed so dangerous that their crews were left free to choose whether to participate.
To fend off such ventures, the British had set up a patrol off the Dutch island of Terschelling , which on that day included the submarine HMS E8 and other Harwich Force ships . At around 9 a.m. the submarine sighted the German boats, but at first it was believed that a Dutch patrol was taking place and the sighting was not reported. At around 10 a.m., the ships that had been patrolling Terschelling for two days were relieved. The replacement involved the light cruiser Undaunted and the four new destroyers of the 1st Division of the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla ( Lance , Lennox , Legion and Loyal ), which had left Harwich at 6 o'clock. The group was commanded by Captain Cecil Henry Fox .
At around 1:40 p.m. the German boats were sighted by the British ahead on the opposite course when the patrol was heading northeast at position 52'40 N, 3'38 O. Within 10 minutes, the ships could be identified as German torpedo boats. Although the German boats turned around immediately, they were unable to escape the faster British ships because, due to their age, they could only accelerate to 18 knots. After half an hour of pursuit, they were within range of the Undaunted's 6-inch guns , which opened fire at 8,000 yards. The fire ceased after a few volleys, as the German boats zigzagged courses to avoid the shells. When they threw their mines overboard to clear the decks, it was misinterpreted by the British as a torpedo attack.
By 3:00 p.m. the distance had dropped to 2,500 yards and the British split up to cut off the Germans from the west with the Legion and the Loyal and the Lance and Lennox from the east. The two outer German boats, S 115 and S 117, were quickly put out of action by the 4-inch guns of the British destroyers. Apparently the engine of the S 118, which was in the center with the S 119, was also damaged, which then turned to face the British ships and sell itself as dearly as possible. Thiele on S 119 noticed this and also turned because he saw no hope of escape and wanted to carry out at least one torpedo attack on the British cruiser before his ship sank. Fox on the Undaunted wisely stayed out of torpedo range and left the prey to the destroyers. Several torpedoes were shot down on the German side, but all of them missed their target or - as in the case of a torpedo from S 119 that hit the Lance amidships - did not explode. The British did not use torpedoes. Even after the German boats had been put out of action and abandoned by their crews, it still took a while and required considerable amounts of ammunition to sink them once and for all. At around 4 p.m. only the S 115 that had stayed behind stayed afloat, which was sunk by the Undaunted after half an hour after a boarding team from the Lennox had found only one surviving German.
Losses and consequences
The losses on the British side were slight: only one officer and four men were wounded, and the damage to the ships was negligible. On the German side, the entire semi-flotilla was destroyed, and 222 sailors were killed. 34 were picked up by the British and two more were rescued the next day from a Dutch fishing boat. A captive commander of one of the boats succumbed to his injuries after a short time.
The loss of an entire German semi-flotilla led to a considerable reduction in German activities against the British coast. After that, almost only heavy units were used.
It is believed that it was the traffic book of one of the sunk torpedo boats that was recovered from the sea on November 30, 1914 in a box by a British trawler. This was forwarded to the British naval secret service, where it served Room 40 well in decoding German radio messages.
Others
The Navy of the Armed Forces designated one of their destroyer according to the fallen Georg Thiele, Z 2 Georg Thiele .
literature
- Naval Staff Monographs (Historical), Vol. XI: Home Waters, Part 2 - September and October 1914. Naval Staff, Training and Staff Duties Division, 1924.
