Fur Kaiser und Konig!
At 1344 on the 17th June 1915, the British cruiser HMS Drake was steaming northeast in the Adriatic ahead of an Anglo-Italian battle squadron, when she spotted smoke to the West.
Twenty minutes later, both sets of battleships were within visual range, even though the weather was poor, with squalls and low cloud obscuring the horizon.
SMS Tegetthoff and Admiral Njegovan’s flagship Viribus Unitis were already returning to Pola, having unsuccessfully tried to evade Allied patrols and break through to Cattaro, where they would have stood a better chance of preventing reinforcements from entering the Adriatic.
The line of command for the allies was an awkward one, as the Italians had the largest number of ships. With the Austrian Fleet relatively weak, it had been decided to split the available forces into two squadrons, one Italian-led, one British-led.
When the Austrians were sighted, Admiral De Robeck was in command aboard his flagship HMS Queen Elizabeth. Just a mile ahead was the battlecruiser Inflexible, while behind him was the Dante Aligheiri, the fastest of Italy’s dreadnoughts. The mixed squadron caused De Robeck a problem, as the Dante’s performance was proving to be lower than expected. She could barely exceed 21 knots, and in an engagement he would therefore have to decide whether to leave her behind during the opening phase, or accept a slow rate of closure.
On sighting the Drake, the Austrian ships held course while the destroyer Tatra investigated. They soon hauled away to starboard and increased to maximum speed as the Drake opened fire on the destroyer with both her 9.2” and 6” guns, and heavier plumes of smoke were spotted behind the British cruiser. The Austrians could make only 20 knots, but they hoped to be able to avoid a fight, or at least fight a running action until they reached the relative safety of the islands closer inshore.
Unwilling to miss the chance to wipe out the naval threat in the Adriatic, De Robeck ordered Queen Elizabeth to catch up with Inflexible, and the two ships headed off at 24 knots, leaving the Aligheiri to slowly fall behind.
Both sides opened fire as soon as they could, although on a cloudy, misty day at ranges of up to 16,000 yards, there were no hits scored in the first few salvos. The British ships continued to close the range, allowing the Austrians to come close to crossing the ‘T’. Daft as it sounded, it could have been the right tactic; the British had the advantage of speed, and Inflexible’s guns could only reach out to 16,400yds, while shooting at maximum range in poor conditions was unlikely to produce a result. At 14,000 yards, the two British ships turned to port to expose their full broadside, while Aligheiri cut the corner to close as fast as she could. Over the next few minutes, both sides began to find the range, and Queen Elizabeth was hit, once ineffectively on the armour belt, and a near miss for’ard which only caused a few strained rivets.
After another few salvos, Unitis scored a hit on Queen Elizabeth’s X turret. The shot was kept out by the 13” faceplate, but splinters found their way into sighting hoods, killing the two gunlayers. The turret crew's training was good, and it was back in action within two minutes, taking replacements from the crew in the working space. Shots fell around Inflexible, and one punched a neat hole in her after funnel, but there was no real damage.
Queen Elizabeth's initial shooting was poor and she scored no hits for several minutes. By that time, Aligheiri had joined the battle from 17,000 yards, the weather having cleared slightly. She scored a lucky hit with her second salvo, although the shell struck Viribus Unitis's armour belt and did no damage.
The Austrian shooting continued to improve, and near misses caused small leaks near Queen Elizabeth’s bow and stern. With Aligheiri now in the fight, the two British ships concentrated on Tegetthoff, although the change of target and confusion over spotting meant slowed the battleship’s progress in finding the range. The Austrian ship suffered a few sprung rivets and dents to her armour, but the pair of 12” shells had done no serious damage. In return, Inflexible's belt caused an Austrian shell to fail on its way through, and she was peppered with splinters from near misses, but again there was little damage to her fighting ability.
At 1432, a 15” shell hit the face of Tegetthoff's X turret. It broke up as it penetrated the armour, but the explosion blew the roof off the turret, and charges in the hoist caught fire sending flames shooting up higher than the masts. Quick action by the magazine crew probably saved the ship from blowing up, but X and Y turrets were out of action with their magazines flooded. Y fired off 6 ready-use charges in the handling room but was then silenced.
Aboard Viribus Unitis, the bridge crew saw the stern of the Tegetthoff ahead covered in smoke and flame, but to their relief, the ship was still there when the smoke started to clear, and Tegetthoff's forward guns were seen to fire again a few seconds later. Clearly, she was not fatally injured. Just seconds later, they saw a puff of flame from the front of the leading British ship (the Inflexible). What just happened to the Tegetthoff now seemed to happen to their enemy, as a burst of flame shot from the area of the forward turret. The fire shot up higher than her masts and the ship was blanketed, but a few seconds later, she emerged from behind the pall of black smoke.
Their attention was distracted by a 12” hit from Aligheiri, but the Unitis's aft belt managed to keep it out with only minor damage to below-water plating.
What happened next changed the battle. Crews of the secondary guns on Queen Elizabeth’s disengaged side saw what one later described as; ‘a huge black jet; it looked like our main guns firing, but bigger and coming straight up out of the ship’.
Aboard the Unitis, Admiral Njegovan saw Inflexible once again covered in black smoke, which formed a towering cloud near the front of the ship. Her aft turret fired again and she continued to steam on, but was soon visibly slowing and was obviously in trouble.
Aboard Inflexible, the Gunnery Officer in the foretop felt the blast of heat as gas poured out in front and behind him. As later said, ‘the forefunnel [directly behind the top] was behaving as if it had a thousand boilers suddenly connected to it. Thick black smoke roared out of it, deafening all of us and scorching anything that was exposed. We dived for the deck, and even when the roaring stopped we could scarcely see a hand in front of our faces.’
On the bridge, men were a little scorched and stunned, but otherwise still in the fight. The voice-pipe to the Transmitting Station below had done a passable imitation of a firework, and thick black smoke continued to pour from it until the First Lieutenant kicked its cover shut. Below decks, the ship was ablaze from the forepeak back to No.1 Boiler Room, but water was gushing into the area around what was once ‘A’ magazine, and through cracked bulkheads into the Torpedo Flat, Boiler Room 1 and a dozen other compartments.