Product Description

Called by some a 'Mediterranean Jutland,' the Battle of the Otranto Straits involved warships from Austria, Germany, Italy, Britain, and France. Although fought by light units with no dreadnoughts involved, Otranto was a battle in three dimensions - engaging surface vessels, aircraft, and subsurface weapons (both submarines and mines). An attempt to halt the movement of submarines into the Adriatic using British drifters armed with nets and mines led to a raid by Austrian light cruisers.The Austrians inflicted heavy damage on the drifters, but Allied naval forces based at Brindisi cut off their withdrawal. The daylight hours saw a running battle, with the Austrians at considerable risk. Heavier Austrian units put out from Cattaro in support, and at the climactic moment the Allied light forces had to turn away, permitting the Austrians to escape. In the end, the Austrians had inflicted more damage than they suffered themselves. The Otranto action shows the difficulties of waging coalition warfare in which diplomatic and national jealousies override military efficiency.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #441441 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

Customer Reviews

A window into an overlooked battleground of WWI
In most histories of the naval conflicts of the First World War, the emphasis has primarily - if not exclusively - been on the maneuverings and battles in the North Sea and the Atlantic. While this area was indeed the site of many of the important maritime struggles of the war, such a focus overlooks the many other areas in which the war at sea was fought. One of those areas was the Adriatic, where the Austro-Hungarian navy battled the combined naval forces of the British, the French, and the Italian. In this book, Paul Halpern, the preeminent naval historian of the war, illuminates this often-overlooked front by focusing on the key battle waged there, the battle of the Otranto Straits.

Halpern begins his book by providing the background to the battle. He notes that many people often overlook the proud naval history of the Austrians, who triumphed in the battle of Lissa in 1866. While primarily a costal and regional force, the Austro-Hungarian fleet was involved in the naval armaments races at the beginning of the 20th century, and had a number of battleships at the start of the war. Their use was restricted by the geography of the region however, which favored conflict by smaller craft. As a result, the most effective and oft-utilized weapon was the submarine, and the ports of the Austro-Hungarian empire played a key role in basing German and Austrian submarines that attacked Allied supply lines in the Mediterranean.

Though the British and the French easily outmatched the Austro-Hungarian fleet on paper, the demands of the conflict meant that their superior forces were usually deployed elsewhere in the war. While the Italians added to this superiority upon joining the conflict, their reluctance to risk their capital warships - a risk illustrated by the sinking of two armored cruisers early in the war - meant that a rough stalemate existed in the Adriatic. Halpern is especially good at describing the challenges faced by the multinational Allied force, with political tensions often defining plans and operations inhibited by the difficulties in communicating across three languages.

Nowhere was this better illustrated than with the barrage the Allies tried to establish across the Otranto Straits, an effort that was often hindered by disputes over contributions from the various sides. Halpern is dismissive of the efficacy of the barrage in stopping submarine transits through the straits, yet it provided a useful target for the Austro-Hungarian navy to attack. On 15 May 1917, three cruisers attacked the drifters manning the barrage, sinking fourteen of them before heading back to base. The Allies attempted to intercept the cruisers, prompting a midday engagement from which the Austrians escaped with some damage. Though Halpern credits the Austro-Hungarian force with the greater success in the battle, the success proved difficult to replicate, and in the end could not prevent the empire from going down to defeat the following year.

Halpern does an excellent job of reconstructing this engagement, an effort complicated by the conflicting accounts of the battle. Yet the greatest strength of the book is to use the clash as a window into this often-overlooked theater of the war, demonstrating how it embodied many of the elements the various sides faced while fighting in the Adriatic. Though marred slightly by occasional repetition within the text, this is a great account of an often neglected battleground of the First World War and a must-read for anyone interested in the war at sea.