/his/ - History

>>29370

Once in the North Sea Rozhestvensky almost brought about a war between Russia and Great Britain. Identifying the Hull tawler fleet as Japanese torpedo boats, the Russians let fly with everything they had. Pandemonium broke loose. The tawlers, known as the Gamecock Fleet, were tiny 100-ton vessels out of Hull, carrying a crew of eight and fishing on the Dogger Bank. How the Russians could have identified them as Japanese warships is beyond comprehension. Some Russian ships claimed they had actually been hit by torpedoes though in the light of dawn there were no signs of any damage. It was another case of mass hysteria. Some sailors on the battleship Borodino actually donned lifebelts and jumped overboard; others lay prone on the decks with their hands over their ears. Some even ran around the decks wielding cutlasses and shouting that the Japanese were boarding them. Meanwhile, the big guns of the battleshps kept firing at the trawlers, damaging four and sinking one, as well as inflicting hits on eachother - the cruiser Aurora had four hits below the waterline and the ship's chalain was cut in half by a shell. As soon as he realized his mistake Rozhestvensky was like a man possessed, throwing overboard one of his own gunners who was continuing to fire at a damaged trawler. The truth dawned with the coming light. It had been a night of madness, with seven battleships in line firing at the cruisers Aurora and Donskoy. Fortunately the gunnery had been deplorable - the Oryol fired over 500 shells without scoring a hit. But how would the British react to this unprovoked assault on their fishermen? The British press worked themselves into a fury of jingoistic hatred for Russia and demanded war, while the German newspaper Berliner Tageblatt wrote that the Russian commander must have lost his mind.

Although the Russian government made an official apology Britain was slow to forgive. Twenty-eight British battleships raised steam and prepared for action, while swarms of British cruisers shadowed Rozhestvensky's fleet as it moved fearfully across the Bay of Biscay and down the coast of Portugal. The diplomatic storm caught up with Rozhestvensky at Vigo, where he was ordered to leave behind those of his officers who had been responsible for the attack on the trawlers. The admiral took the opportunity of leaving behind his most bitter enemy, Captain Klado. As Klado left the Suvoroff, another officer was heard to say 'I see the rats are leaving the sinking ship'. But Klado was to get his revenge on Rozhestvensky when he returned to St Petersburg to organize reinforcements for the Second Pacific Squadron. Anything would do, however unfit and derelict it might be. After all, it would increase the number of targets the Japanese would have to fire at. Klada knew that Rozhestvensky had previously condemned thse 'old tubs' as worthless nad nothing more than a millstone, which would hold back the rest of the fleet. Jokingly he had called them the 'sink-by-themselves' squadron. But, like it or not, he was going to get them.

>>29377

>Some even ran around the decks wielding cutlasses and shouting that the Japanese were boarding them

So like, no one actually knew where Japan even was to begin with?

>>29456

See the earlier passage about the spies - the fleet was being fed so much misinformation they thought the Japanese knew everything they were doing and so were able to ambush them at every turn.

>>29377

When the fleet reached Tangier the Kamchatka, which had been detached for some days, caught up and excitedly reported to Rozhestvensky that she had survived the battle in the North Sea, having fired 300 shells in a tussle with three Japanese ships, and vehemently denying that these had in fact been a Swedish merchantman, a German trawler and a French schooner. Before leaving Tangier one of the Russian vessels fouled the underwater telegraph cable with her anchor and cut off communication between the city and Europe for four days.

At Dakar, in West Africa, ten German colliers awaited Rozhestvensky's fleet. Double loads of coal were taken on board each ship; this had to be stored on the decks and the dust spread everywhere. In the heat of the Equator, life became hell for the crews of the Russian ships. The atmosphere resembled a mine shaft and men died, choking in the filthy air. During a storm off the coast of Angola, presumably to keep up the spirits of the fleet, the Kamchatka signalled to the flagship 'Do you see torpedo boats?'. A general alarm was sounded throughout the fleet until the repair ship admitted it had used the wrong code and had simply meant, 'We are all right now.'

At Cape Town Rozhestvensky recieved news that Klado was sending the 'sink-by-themselves' squadron to join him and so he decided to do everything in his power to avoid a rendezvous with them. He was furious: 'If they are so old that they can't steam then they may go to the devil. We have no use for rubbish here.'. Meanwhile, discipline among the men of the squadron reached an all-time low. Certain by now that they were sailing to destruction, the Russian sailors tried to take their minds off the future by indulging in all kinds of exotic pursuits, most popular of which was bringing pets back with them from shore visits. Unfortunately some of the pets were unsuited to long sea voyages - like the crocodile brought back aboard one battleship, and the poisonous snake which bit and nearly killed one of the engineers. On another ship monkeys and dogs, first primed with champagne, were set to fight each other. The whole fleet resounded to a curious babel of farmyard noises, as pigs, cows, sheep - not to mention the parrots, procupines, chameleons, frogs and so forth - rushed around the decks, squealing, mooing, barking and squawking, turning the Second Pacific Squadron into a floating zoo. One pet goat lived only on paper, with a predilection for visiting cards. On a shore visit it refused an offer of hay and instead ate a Frenchman's newspaper.

Rotting meat had to be thrown overboard when the refridgeration shp Espérance broke down, with the result that the fleet was surrounded by swarms of sharks. For two weeks at Madagascar Admiral Rozhestvensky stayed in his cabin suffering from acute neuralgia, while his Chief of Staff had a brain haemorrhage and was partly paralyzed. Nobody really commanded the fleet and the Russians spent increasing amounts of time ashore at a makeshift city - known as Hellville - which sprang up to cater for their needs. Saloons, gambling houses and brothels flourished, Meanwhile, barnacles smothered the hulls of the ships and their speed was cut by the sea grass which grew there and trailed behind them as they sailed.

Disease was rife in the fleet. Malaria, dysentery, and typhoid took their toll and funeral services were a daily event. The Kamchatka did what she could to relieve the gloom of these occasions. A shell she fired to honour one of her dead turned out to be live and ricocheted off the unfortunate and long-suffering cruiser Aurora, which seemed to be the butt of all the fleet's jokes. Lunatics abounded, overcome by the long period at sea. Some men roamed the decks in a kind of religious fervour, believing they saw the Day of Judgement at hand; others merely muttering things like 'Do you fear death?'. A young officer wrote to his wife in Russia, 'If, by God's grace, I ever see you again, I shall have things to tell you past belief or imagining'. The worst cases - along with mutineers and revolutionaries from the Admiral Nakhimov- were sent back to Russia on the Malay.

>>29484

Rozhestvensky's greatest problem was to maintain the fleet in tip-top fighting condition. Yet his officers were frequently drugged or drunk. One who had bought 2,000 cigarettes in Nossi-Bé found that they were filled with opium. The admiral needed to be resupplied with shells because so many had been expended in the battle with the trawlers. Expectations were high, therefore, when the supply ship Irtysh arrived, supposedly carrying shells from the battleships' main armaments. In the sweltering African heat the sailors had to unload the cargo which turned out to be 12,000 pairs of fur-lined boots and a similar number of Russian winter coats.

At gunnery practice Rozhestvensky, who had been renowned for his gunnery as a young officer, watched while his destroyers scored not one single hit on a stationary target. When the battleships joined in, his flagship managed just one hit, which was on the ship towing the target. The gunner hoist of one battleship jammed because there was a cobra wrapped around the rope. A formaion of destroyers, ordered to form line abreast, scattered in every direction because they had not been issued with the new code books. The torpedoes were even worse: of seven that were fired, one jammed, while twwo swung at right angles to port, one at right angles to starboard, two chugged slowly ahead but missed the target, and the last went round in circles causing all the ships to scatter in panic. The Kamchatka, robbed of her chance to join in these capers, signalled instead that she was sinking. Further investigation revealed a cracked pipe in the engine room.

Meanwhile, Klado's reinforcements had sailed from Reval under the gentle and frail Admiral Nebogatoff. How this old man felt about his mission is not recorded but his whole perfomance in the weeks to come breathed a refreshing air of humanity and common sense into the affair. All the Admiralty could tell him was that Rozhestvensky was currently at Madagascar; further than that they knew nothing. They were aware that the commander of the Second Pacific Squadron had no intention of rendezvousing with Nebogatoff's 'archaeological collection of naval architecture'. Few admirals can ever have set sail with such vague instructions as, 'You are to join up with Rozhestvensky, whose route is unknown to us…'. For Nebogatoff it became an exercise in detective work, in which he had to enquire at neutral ports for news of the main fleet and plot his course accordingly. For Rozhestvensky it was as if nemesis followed him in the shape of these 'ghost ships'.

Rozhestvensky suffered the final insult when he read in a newspaper that St Petersburg had ordered him to destroy the Japanese Fleet, sail on to Vladivostok, and there hand over the command to Admiral Biriloff, who was travelling to the Russian pacific port by the Trans-Siberian Railway. Biriloff, known as 'the fighting Admiral', had never even been in action.

>>29494

After crossing the Indian Ocean the fleet was met by one of their transports, the Gortchakoff, which it was hoped would be bringing letters from home. The mood aboard the Russian shis lifted at the thought of hearing from their loved ones. But it was sooned dashed when it was found the transport was still carrying the letters the sailors ad sent home from Madagascar a month before. This was too much. The Russians felt completely abandoned and nobody more than their commander. But help was coming - even though it was as unwelcome as an attack by Japanese torpedo boats - the Third Pacific Squadron, the floating dead, were about to join them. On 11 May, off the coast of Indo-China, the two fleets met. Although Rozhestvensky did not welcome the new arrivals, at least they brought news from home: of unrest, mutiny and revolution.

Rozhestvensky was nearing the end of his voyage. In many ways he had achieved a miracle in getting this far and it was not his fault that the ships and crew that were being sent against the Japanese were not adequate to their task. He had known this from early on but had stuck at his job like an admiral going down with his ship. In a sense the whole voyage resembled a protracted sinking, and only through his iron personality had the Russian commander managed to stave off the final cataclysm. But the stress of command had worn away his health, and by the time he met the ebullent and immensely confident Japanese Admiral Togo at Tsushima - the island aptly named the 'Donkey's Ears' - he had accepted fate's decree that he should be the victim. The destruction of the Russian fleet that followed was a one-sided encounter in which the Japanese achieved one of the most crushing victories in naval history. Rozhestvensky was even denied the chance to perish with his flagship, being plucked wounded from the see and taken to a Japanese hospital where he was later visited by Togo himself. On his return to Russia he found himself - as he had expected - to be the scapegoat. Witnesses had reported that during the battle Rozhestvensky had been delirious, but he was long past that stage. It was fatalism that commanded the RUssian fleet at Tsushima. And fate had not quite finished laughing at Rozhestvensky. While staying at a hotel in St Petersburg in 1908, he recieved a telegram giving details of a requiem service in his memory to be held in the city. Apparently he was dead - and nobody had bothered to tell him.

—

So ends the tale of the Russian Baltic Fleet.

What category should I draw from next?

>Lunatic Admirals

>Tub Tales

>The Price of Admiralty

>A Life on the Ocean Wave

>Above Us the Waves

>That Sinking Feeling

>Naval Case Studies

Or I could go straight to the introduction to Military Blunders, the Battle of Tanga (1914).

The Battle of Tanga (1914)

From the outset the British regarded the campaign against the Germans in East Africa in 1914 as a minor operation. It could, they felt, be safely left to their Indian Army. Regrettably the Secretary of State for India was to take this attitude of insouciance a stage further: in his opinion such a trifling venture could quite happily be assigned to second-rate troops. In choosing a commander, however, the British slipped badly from the second-rate standards they had set themselves, appointing a bungler - Major-General Aitken - whom few would have rated so highly. Aitken was a soldier more suited in style and appearance to the colonial campaigns of the nineteenth century. He had a supreme confidence in his own ability and that of his troops. Thirty-five years in India had convinced him that Indian soldiers would soon make mincemeat of a 'lot of Niggers'. He preferred to base his campaigns on prejudice rather than reasoned argument, stressing the weaknesses of 'Blacks' and 'Huns', and refusing advice from anyone professing local knowledge or intelligence.

In fact, no one in the expeditionary force sent from India knew anything of their destination, which was the port of Tanga. During their brief stay at Mombasa, Aitken was offered the help of Lieutenant-Colonel B. R. Graham of the King's African Rifles, but refused, preferring to stick to his Indian troops. When Graham warned Aitken that the German native troops (Askaris) should not be underestimated, the General disagreed, saying they were untrained and that he would thrash them all well before Christmas.

Aitkens description of his troops as 'magnificent' was touching if hardly accurate. Of the 8,000 men under his command, only the North Lancashire Regiment and the Gurkhas were anything other than mediocre. The Indian troops were some of the worst in the Indian Army, being untrained, ill-equipped and poorly led. Some had only recently been issued with modern Lee-Enfield rifles and did not understand how to use them properly. There were soldiers from all parts of India, speaking twelve different languages, following different faiths and commanded by men who, in some cases, had never even seen their units before the embarkation at Bombay. Aitken's Intelligence Officer, Captain Meinertzhagen - d espite his name an Englishman - described the Indian troops as, 'the worst in India… I tremble to think what may happen if we meet with serious opposition. The senior officers are nearer to fossils than active energetic leaders.'

>>29543

The soldiers may have been of poor quality, but the treatment they received during the voyage from Bombay to Mombasa served to reduce morale to rock bottom. Because of a delay in sailing, the soldiers spent sixteen unnecessary days aboard the transports in crowded conditions and appalling heat. When they finally embarked no consideration was given to the differences in cast, religion or dietary needs. Most of them spent the voyage either seasick in their bunks, or suffering from diarrhoea brought on by eating food to which they were unaccustomed. When it was suggested to Aitken at Mombasa that he should allow his men ashore to recuperate from the effects of the voyage he pooh-poohed the idea and said that it might alert the Germans. It was safer to take his men straight on to Tanga.

Although the expedition was supposed to be secret, the Germans had every possible warning that it was coming. The labels on the crates in Bombay dockyards announced, 'Indian Expeditionary Force "B", Mombasa, East Africa', and headlines in the British and East African press heralded the imminent arrival of the force. In addition, there were the plain radio messages between the convoy and Mombasa and the letters from German residents in British East Africa to their friends in Tanga. The German commander, Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck, had a lot to thank the British for. The fleet even travelled down the African coast in sight of land, just in case any Germans might have missed it.

Sailing ahead of the main force, the cruiser HMS Fox under Captain F.W. Cauldfield entered Tanga harbour to discuss the status of the town with the German Governor, von Schnee. Von Schnee had been in the habit of arranging truces with the Royal Navy in order to save Tanga from bombardment. But with Aitken's convoy not far behind, Cauldfield had come to tell the Germans that all truces were cancelled. Von Schnee was missing, but the local commissioner, Herr Auracher, told the captain that he would need time to consult higher authorities. The ingenuous Cauldfield then asked Auracher if the harbour was mined and, not surprisingly, the German relied that it was full of mines. Leaving the trusting naval officer waiting Auracher rushed off to send a message to Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck that the British had arrived. He then donned an army uniform, raised the German flag, and went off to join his military unit. After a while Cauldfield began to suspect that Auracher was not coming back so, returning to the Fox, he ordered a tug to begin the laborious task of minesweeping. When the rest of the convoy arrived they had to endure the frustration of waiting while a variety of logs, oil cans and, for all we know, old boots, were swept from the harbour. There were, in fact, no mines, but Auracher had won valuable time for von Lettow-Vorbeck to begin entraining his troops for Tanga.

Lettow-Vorbeck was fucking based

>>30734

I'm about an hour away from Bath.

Could go drinking or summat some time.

>>31681

Yep, sorry for the wait, I've got a lot on plate academically speaking, makes it hard to find time for this.

—

I've split up the entries at the start here… Doing it in one take will contain (more) slip ups, but it's easier for me.

The sound is rather quiet for me despite being really rather loud IRL, and the background noise remains persistent (PC fans). Everything's up to maximum on my end…

Preface: http://vocaroo.com/i/s1ATTbr7BnhP

Para. 1: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0sD6iu5bvUl

Para.2,qu.2: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0BfpkLoyKwl

Para. 3: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0LhFvB5nxJL

Para. 4: http://vocaroo.com/i/s1EWLcBuyGAq

para. 5: http://vocaroo.com/i/s13PBui43BTA

para.6&7: http://vocaroo.com/i/s1LrsxBK9HQa

The rest will follow shortly.

>>32346

>>32347

good shit anon

>>30699

Just finished listening to this.

Lettow-Vorbeck is an inspiration for all Doctor Bees.

Also, the abandoned equipment must've made the afterbattle feel like Christmas Morning.

>>32390

That… I feel both anger and sadness in response. Did you ever ask her why?

Something to do with de-colonialism propaganda?

>LA

Well this should be fun.

>>32480

Here's the next segment of Lunatic Admirals;

Admiral Pierre and the case of the Drugged Wine:

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0IREg9KH1vD

A noncontent update I'm afraid, but how is everyone finding the long format? I think the latest is 20 minutes, not sure if this is good for /his/ or not, but not sure how else to do it.

Additionally, I'd like to ask if anyone would be interested in my dumping some original essays here (the quality of writing and sourcing may constitute a blunder) or in another thread; I'm writing (in my opinion) some pretty controversial stuff (bringing /pol/itically incorrect opinions to a typically rabidly leftist university, a recipe for keks regardless of personal opinion).

Finally, when I get time, should I continue reading Lunatic Admirals over a cuppa, or start a different chapter?