United States Navy operations during World War I
United States Navy operations during World War I | |||||||
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Part of the War at Sea of World War I | |||||||
The Sinking of USS San Diego, Francis Muller | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
United States |
Germany Austria-Hungary | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Reinhard Scheer Franz von Hipper Maximilian Njegovan |
United States Navy operations during World War I began on April 6, 1917, after the formal declaration of war on the German Empire. The United States Navy focused on countering enemy U-boats in the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea while convoying men and supplies to France and Italy. Because of United States's late entry into the war, her capital ships never engaged the German fleet and few decisive submarine actions occurred.[1]
Operations
Atlantic Ocean
The main theater of World War I was the
Congress declared war on April 6, 1917, which meant the United States Coast Guard automatically became a part of the Department of the Navy.[Note 1] Destroyers and similar escort warships were considered the most effective means of sinking enemy submarines and protecting merchantmen. Therefore, destroyer squadrons were based in the British Isles at major ports, including Queenston, Ireland. The capital ships took up positions with the British Royal Navy in the North Sea for an uneventful blockade of the German High Seas Fleet that would last even after the armistice into 1919.[3]
The first
On November 17, 1917, two destroyers became the first U.S. Navy ships to sink an enemy submarine.
Four United States Navy ships were lost during World War I, only two by enemy action, though six merchant ships with armed guards aboard were also destroyed. The first combat loss was USS Jacob Jones, a destroyer, which was sailing to Ireland in a zig-zag pattern with five other warships from Brest. On December 17, Kapitänleutnant Hans Rose of U-53 sighted the destroyer and attacked with a spread of torpedoes. One was sighted by the Americans, but despite taking evasive action, she was fatally damaged. Commander David W. Bagley ordered his crew to abandon ship, and as she sank the armed depth charges aboard began to detonate, adding to the already heavy casualties. Sixty-six of her crew were killed, and more injured; only thirty-eight survived. Jacob Jones was the first U.S. destroyer ever lost in battle, and she went down within eight minutes.[6][7]
The largest loss of life for the U.S. Navy during the war was on the
Three United States Army and navy transports, USAT Henry R. Mallory, USAT Tenadores and USS Mercury, received credit for defeating a U-boat on April 4, 1918. Sailing back to the United States from France, a U-boat surfaced at 11:45 and fired her torpedoes at the Mallory. Lookouts spotted the tracks, and the ship was able to evade the torpedo. The submarine was then spotted, and all three ships opened fire with their main guns, hitting the U-boat as it submerged. The Americans began dropping depth charges, but the unknown U-boat was not seen again.[8]
The
On June 6
U-156, under Richard Feldt, raided the port of Orleans, Massachusetts, on the morning of July 18. Feldt surfaced in the dark and positioned his boat off Nauset Beach. He then began shelling the civilian tugboat Perth Amboy and four wooden barges with his deck gun. All five targets were destroyed. A few shells missed and struck shore, becoming the first enemy shells on the continental United States since the 1846 Siege of Fort Texas at the beginning of the Mexican War. Nine Coast Guard Curtiss HS seaplanes spotted the U-boat and dropped bombs on her, but all failed to detonate.[12]
The following day,
The only
The survivors were rescued, and LV-71's captain, Master Walter Barnett, sent out a warning to friendly that a U-boat was in the area."U-140" intercepted the message and returned. Upon arrival, she surfaced and Commander Waldemar Kophamel demanded the Americans abandon the lightship. As LV-71 was unarmed, her crew had no choice but to row ashore in their boat, while the U-boat destroyed ship with its deck gun. There were no casualties on either side.[14][15][16]
USS Mount Vernon was a German ocean liner that was seized and armed by the United States Navy. On the morning of September 5, 1918, Mount Vernon was off the coast of France accompanied by four destroyers, when the periscope of U-82 was sighted. The auxiliary cruiser immediately opened fire with her main guns, damaging the submarine. However, U-82 managed to fire a torpedo. Mount Vernon tried to dodge the torpedo, but was unsuccessful. Thirtysix sailors were killed and thirteen wounded, but the ship was saved. USS Winslow, Conner, Wainwright and Nicholson all dropped depth charges, but the U-boat got away.[17]
Operating as part of the U.S. Navy on 26 September 1918, USCGC Tampa parted company with convoy HG-107, which she had just escorted into the Irish Sea from Gibraltar. Ordered to put into Milford Haven, Wales, she proceeded independently toward her destination.[19] At 1930 that evening, as she transited the Bristol Channel, the warship was spotted by UB-91. According to the submarine war diary entry, the U-boat dived and maneuvered into an attack position, firing one torpedo out of the stern tube at 2015 from a range of about 550 meters (600 yd). Minutes later, the torpedo hit Tampa and exploded portside amidships, throwing up a huge, luminous column of water.[20] The cutter sank with all hands: 111 U.S Coast Guardsmen, 4 U.S. Navy sailors, and 16 passengers consisting of 11 British Navy personnel and 5 civilians.[21] She sank in the Bristol Channel at roughly 50°40′N 6°19′W / 50.667°N 6.317°W. Alerted by the convoy flagship, whose radio operator reported having felt the shock of an underwater explosion at about 2045, search and rescue efforts over the succeeding three days turned up only some wreckage, clearly identified as coming from Tampa, and a single unidentified body. Three bodies were later recovered, two from a beach near Lamphey, Wales, and the other at sea by a British patrol boat. Tampa was identified as the largest loss of life suffered by a combatant ship during World War I.[22]
North Sea
To support the North Sea Mine Barrage, the United States manufactured 100,000 naval mines to prevent U-boats from reaching Atlantic shipping lanes. The Barrage was implemented with the encouragement of then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt.[23] Rear Admiral Joseph Strauss commanded a United States North Sea Mine Force mission of 10 minelayers to lay the mines. Over the next five months the US Navy laid 56,571 mines of the total 70,177 planted during the Barrage.[24]
Rear Admiral Lewis Clinton-Baker, commanding the Royal Navy minelaying force at the time, described the barrage as the "biggest mine planting stunt in the world's history." The official statistics on lost German submarines compiled on March 1, 1919 credited the North Sea mine barrage with the certain destruction of four U-boats, probable destruction of two more, and possible destruction of another two.[25]
Four battleships of Battleship Division 9 (designated 6th Battle Squadron in the Grand Fleet) under Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman, namely New York, Delaware, Wyoming and Florida, arrived at Rosyth on December 7, 1917, to reinforce the British blockade of the German fleet. Texas joined in February 1918, and Arkansas replaced Delaware in July.[26]
Mediterranean Sea
U.S. naval operations in the Mediterranean took the form of escorting convoys and delivering supplies. In the Mediterranean, Austro-Hungarian forces in northern Italy and the Ottoman Empire were two major threats, though by 1917 their navies were mostly defeated or blockaded by ships of the Otranto Barrage. Other than the land Battle of Vittorio Veneto, the Americans engaged in only two memorable battles in the Mediterranean theater.[27]
The first was when USS Lydonia and HMS Basilisk sank a U-boat off Algiers on May 8, 1918. Lydonia and Basilisk were steaming with a convoy from Bizerte to Gibraltar when they came across the German submarine UB-70. A coordinated depth charge attack ensued but the Germans were able to torpedo the British merchant ship Ingleside, which sank. After a fifteen-minute running battle, the depth charging was stopped and survivors of Ingleside were rescued. Heavy seas prevented an immediate assessment of possible damage to the submarine but later evaluations credited USS Lydonia and HMS Basilisk with sinking UB-70 when she failed to show up at any port.[28]
Twelve U.S.
Coast Guard Captain Leroy Reinburg of USS Druid engaged enemy submarines near the Strait of Gibraltar in November 1918. The Druid was operating as part of the Gibraltar Barrage, a squadron of U.S. and British ships assigned to keeping enemy U-boats from passing from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic. On November 8, 1918, men aboard USS Druid sighted three surfaced submarines going through the strait. The weather was foul and the seas rough but the barrage squadron attacked anyway, first with gunfire and then with depth charges. HMS Privet reported that she shot a hole through one of the submarines' conning towers with a 4-inch (100 mm) gun but other than that no other damage was thought to have occurred. USS Druid and her compatriots were successful in defending the strait and on the following day the Americans helped rescue the British crew of the battleship HMS Britannia which had been torpedoed by UB-50 while passing through Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. The war ended three days later on November 11.[31]
Pacific Ocean
U.S. naval forces in the Pacific Theater of World War I were far removed from the conflict with Germany and the other Central Powers. Although Imperial Germany possessed Pacific colonies at the beginning of the war, all of the isolated colonies had easily been conquered by the Allies by 1915. The only significant United States naval presence in the Pacific was a cruiser squadron under Admiral Austin M. Knight.[32]
There was only one engagement in the theater involving the United States, and it took place just one day after the United States declared war. In December 1914 the German
Gallery
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"Damn the torpedoes, go ahead!" Admiral David Farragut at Mobile Bay, August 5, 1864.
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"The Navy Needs You! Don't READ American History, MAKE IT!"
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"Gee!! I Wish I Were A Man"
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"Help your country! Enlist in the Navy"
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"I Want You for the Navy"
See also
References
- Footnotes
- ^ Under the January 28, 1915 act creating the Coast Guard from the merger of the United States Revenue Cutter Service and the United States Life-Saving Service the Coast Guard comes under orders of the Secretary of the Navy when Congress declares war or when the President directs such an action to be taken. (U.S. Congress, "Act to Create the Coast Guard", Congressional Record, 63rd Congress, 3rd session, 1915, volume 2, part 2.)[2]
- Notes
- ^ Morison, pp. 861–865.
- ^ Larzelere, pp 7–8
- ^ Morison, pp. 863–865.
- ^ "Cassin", DANFS, U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command
- ^ "TELLS WHOLE STORY OF SINKING U-BOAT; Destroyers Fanning and Nicholson Dropped Depth Charges, Bringing Submarine to Surface SANK IN A FEW MINUTES Four Officers and 35 sailors Surrender and Receive Chivalrous Treatment—British Praise. Overboard to Succor Prisoner. Praised by British Commander". The New York Times. December 30, 1917.
- ^ Feuer, p. 21.
- ^ "Jacob Jones", DANFS, U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command
- ^ Gleaves, p. 168.
- ^ "Christabel", DANFS, U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command
- ^ Lieutenant Commander Daniel A.J. Sullivan, USNRF, (1884–1941)", Online Library – People, U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command
- ^ "Von Steuben I". Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Navy Department, Naval History and Heritage Command.
- ^ Larzelere, p 135
- ^ "California II". Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Navy Department, Naval History and Heritage Command.
- ^ "Diamond Shoals Lightships". North Carolina's Outer Banks. Archived from the original on October 30, 2013.
- ^ "SS Merak (+1918)". Wrecksite.eu. Retrieved March 19, 2016.
- ^ Messimer, p. 124.
- ^ "Mount Vernon III". Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Navy Department, Naval History and Heritage Command.
- ^ Tampa, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, U.S. Navy Naval History & Heritage Command
- ^ Larzelere, p. 47
- ^ Johnson, p. 55
- ^ Larzelere, p 49
- ^ Larzelere, p 50
- ^ "Early Political Career". Roosevelt Institute. Archived from the original on January 15, 2015. Retrieved May 2, 2012.
- ^ "The North Sea Mine Barrage". The Great War Society. Retrieved May 1, 2012.
- ^ Belknap, Reginald Rowan The Yankee mining squadron; or, Laying the North Sea mining barrage (1920) United States Naval Institute pp.5,15,18-22,27-36,43-47,56,82-83,101&108
- ^ Faulknor, Marcus The Great War at Sea:A Naval Atlas 1914-1919, Seaforth Publishing 2015, p.143
- ^ Morison, p. 863.
- ^ "Lydonia". Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Navy Department, Naval History and Heritage Command.
- ^ "Nelson DD-623". Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Navy Department, Naval History and Heritage Command.
- ^ Morison, pp. 863-864.
- ^ Larzelere, p 117
- ^ Reynolds[page needed]
- ^ "Supply II". Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Navy Department, Naval History and Heritage Command.
- Bibliography
This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
- "Cassin". DANFS. U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command. Retrieved August 17, 2014.
- "Casualties: U. S. Navy and Marine Corps". NHHC Frequently Asked Questions. U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command. Archived from the original on June 5, 2007. Retrieved August 17, 2014.
- "Christabel". DANFS. U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command. Retrieved August 17, 2014.
- "Jacob Jones". DANFS. U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command. Retrieved August 17, 2014.
- "Lieutenant Commander Daniel A.J. Sullivan, USNRF, (1884–1941)". Online Library – People. U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command. Retrieved August 17, 2014.
- Feuer, A. B. (1999). The U.S. Navy in World War I. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishing. OCLC 40595325.
- Gleaves, Albert (1921). A history of the transport service: adventures and experiences of United States transports and cruisers in the World War. New York: George H. Doran Company.
- Johnson, Robert Irwin (1987). Guardians of the Sea, History of the United States Coast Guard, 1915 to the Present. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland. ISBN 978-0-87021-720-3.
- Larzelere, Alex (2003). The Coast Guard in World War I: An Untold Story. Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-55750-476-0.
- Messimer, Dwight R. (2002). Verschollen: World War I U-boat Losses. Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-475-X.
- Morison, Samuel E. (1965). The Oxford History of the American People. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Niblack, Albert P. (2018). Putting Cargoes Through: The U.S. Navy at Gibraltar during the First World War, edited with an Introduction by John B. Hattendorf. Gibraltar: Calpe Press. ISBN 978-1-919665-10-8.
- Reynolds, Clark G. (1978). Famous American Admirals. Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press.
- Symonds, Craig L. (2016). The U.S. Navy: A Concise History. New York: ISBN 978-0199394944.