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The Island War of 1894-95 Part II
The Island War of 1894-95, Part Two
Over the course of December and January there was a low in the fighting. The only fighting at this time was merchant raiding by both Germany and the United States in the Atlantic. Even through most expected this surprise war that came out of nowhere to take place mostly in the Pacific, neither had the ships in place to perform merchant raiding in the Pacific. However, both sides were taking this low in the fighting to plan for the future. For the US this was a twofold mission. First they were planning for a defense of the Eastern Seaboard and their Caribbean territories. They knew there was a chance that Germany might tried to perform an invasion of the US or more likely their Caribbean territories. It was why Admiral Dewey wasn’t expecting reinforcements from the much larger Atlantic Fleet to take on the Germans in the Pacific.
The second plan the US was working on in December 1894 was the invasion of German Togoland. Even through the US had no interest in holding any territory on the Dark Continent it was viewed as something they could possibly take and use a bargaining chip at peace talks when those were held in the future. Lt General William Shafter who was the senior army officer and the de facto chief of staff was looking at the possibly of this African Campaign seriously viewed this plan as a plan of last resort. It was believed that Germany would come to the table if they were defeated in the Pacific. However, in the event Germany refused to come to the table after such a defeat this was viewed as the next step in the war. It was also viewed as a way to regain a status quo peace should Dewey and MacArthur lose in the Pacific.
Germany for its part was working on its own plans as well. The problem was there where two schools of thought in Germany and neither were view as possible by the majority of the General Staff. The first was invasion of the American Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Once in their hands they would use it as a springboard for an invasion of Cuba. Once that and the matters had been decided in the Pacific had been decided in Germany’s favor they would seek peace terms with the US. The other school of thought was invasion of the Eastern Seaboard that ran from New York City to Boston. Then march on Washington DC and force the US to agree to its terms with their capital in their hands. Yet outside the Kaiser no one viewed these plans as achievable. The USN Atlantic Fleet simply had more ships than Germany and were operating far closer to their ports. Yet because the Kaiser wanted it they slowly worked on the plans and hoped for victory in the Pacific in the meantime.
Admiral Dewey and his fleet was the first in the race to reinforce the SW Pacific even though they left two weeks after the German fleet had left Wilhelmshaven. Instead of heading for Apia, Dewey and his fleet head had headed to Pago Pago after recoiling in Hawaii. The soldiers and Marines who landed at Pago Pago on February 9th only met light resistance and that was from local pro-German groups who had been armed with cast offs or captured American weapons. With Pago Pago in his hands, Dewey when about recoiling his ships again and turning the harbor into his base of operations in the region.
Dewey and his fleet wasn’t at Pago Pago long through. Leaving behind the USS Boston and USS McCulloch a cutter that had been in the service of the US Revenue Cutter Service before the war Dewey made his way to Apia. This would lead to the Battle of the Apolima Strait on February 16th. Dewey’s seven strong fleet caught the SMS Irene as she was returning from Simpsonhafen. At the time Dewey was screening the ships that were being used by MacArthur’s troops to take Apia itself from the small German Garrison that held the harbor. The Irene was in a poor positioned as she was badly outnumbered, outgunned by all of Dewey’s ships had eight inch guns where the Irene largest guns were 15 cm. Worse yet three of the seven ships in Dewey’s fleet were quicker than the Irene. The Irene’s captain did what any captain would have done. She did hard over on the rudder and when to flank speed to try and out run the Americans. Only with the USS Olympia [1], USS Baltimore, and USS Raleigh all closing the gap at an alarming speed the four ships opened fire. The Irene was having to fight three ships at once where three ships were all firing on her. As she was being racked from the more powerful eight inch shells of the Americans her gunners were proving that they were just as good as they had been back in November, but they couldn’t fight their ways out of this one. With his ship listing and taking on water the captain of the Irene ordered his crew to abandon ship and scuttle her.
Fighting in Apia itself was over fairly quickly. The German garrison was a platoon size unit with German officers and NCOs and locals filling out the ranks. Being outgunned and outnumbered they put up a defense that was more for the shake of honor than anything else. After fighting for about ten minutes the commander surrendered to the Americans and with his surrender fighting on Samoa came to an end. The US suffered some 17 dead and 78 wounded in taking Apia along with minor damage to all three cruisers of the Olympia class. For Germany they had suffered 45 dead, with another 387 sailors and soldiers taken prisoner in fighting over Samoa.
With Apia in his hands Dewey took a few days to perform repairs to the Olympia class cruisers before he made his way to Simpsonhafen. Dewey knew that the German fleet had set sail for the SW Pacific two weeks prior him leaving San Diego. He wanted to catch that fleet before it reached Simpsonhafen and had the chance to recoal and recover from this journey. He lost the race when he reached Simpsonhafen on March the 23rd, three days after the Germans did under Konteradmiral Otto von Diederichs and his five ship fleet had reached the port.
Konteradmiral von Diederichs fleet was made up of the two Kaiser class ironclads, the SMS Oldenburg, and a pair of aviso. Germany simply didn’t have more modern ships to send to the Southwest Pacific and sent these older ironclads. With Dewey having missed his shot at an open battle instead started to blockade Simpsonhafen as the ships carrying MacArthur’s troops moved into a position to land on New Pomerania.
MacArthur oped for a double envelopment landing system land troops in both Open Bay and Wide Bay[2] on the 24th. His foe von Bernhardi knew that a landing in his rear was likely. So he ordered his troops to start digging in. His force was armed with some of the most advance equipment that Germany had to offer at the moment. The two big items were the Gewehr 1888 rifle and the Maxim Machine Gun both of which were better to what the American troops had to use in the Simpsonhafen campaign. The US Army was using Gatling Guns a design that dated from the Civil War and the Marines using a newer machine gun in the form of the M1894 Colt-Browning Machine Gun[3]. The rifles used by both the army and marines through fell let short of what the Mauser could do.
The Battle of Simpsonhafen started on March 25th. The Americans fighting on New Pomerania came to quickly understand that the Germans simply had better guns then they did. The only trump card they had to play was their five 1.65 inch Hotchkiss Guns. This light artillery help the US to start to gain the upper hand in the battle. The Germans had their own artillery, a battery of Krupp FK 73s. The Hotchkiss Guns used by the US were lighter and able to move better in the rough terrain of New Pomerania. This gave the Americans the edge in artillery on land. An edge they badly needed.
After three days of brutal fighting, Dewey and the Navy seeing that MacArthur was taking a beating, decided to charge into the battle instead of simply blockading the Germans. This caught the Germans under von Diederichs by surprise. Most of the crews had dismounted to fight as naval infantry units to help hold the line against MacArthur’s larger force. This meant they couldn’t leave the docks where they were tied up to. The gun crews of the ships were still there and started to return fire, but being unable to move made them a sitting target. However, in von Diederichs defense if von Bernhardi and his force would had been overran he would been dead anyways as he understood he wasn’t about to get away from Dewey’s fleet. One by one the ships of the fleet of von Diederichs was disabled and knocked out of the fight and scuttled in port.
With von Diederichs fleet knocked out, Dewey opened fire on von Bernhardi’s force. The heavy firepower brought things to a speedy end. Von Bernhardi would surrender his force just before sundown on the 28th. The US had paid a heavy price for having the crappier end of the small arms fight at Simpsonhafen. They suffered 2,592 dead in the two days of fighting to take Simpsonhafen with a further 4,317 wounded. The Germans under von Bernhardi suffered numbers well under MacArthur with 1,293 dead and 1,908 wounded in the two days of fighting to hold the port.
The only other ship the Germans had in the area the SMS Prinzess Wilhelm had been patrolling near Bougainville Island at this time only to return to Simpsonhafen on April 1st to recoal only to find part of Dewey’s fleet there. Not wanting to fight she left the area and was able to get away. She docked at Port Moresby and was able to take on more coal and then try to affect the US movements in the area who was moving to take over all German outpost in the area. Only she was interned by the British after spending 72 hours in port and still not done with resuppling the ship.
After learning of the defeat at Simpsonhafen Kaiser Wilhelm became upset and ordered an invasion of the US Caribbean that day. However, his general staff both in the army and navy viewed this operation as a suicide mission. They use slow orders to keep the fleet from sailing to the Caribbean and destroying key naval and army units needed to defend Germany with. A few days after learning of the defeat of Simpsonhafen, Wilhelm calmed down and agree to see reason and cancelled the planned invasion of the American Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. He then ordered peace feelers to be send out to the United States.
The US was more than willing to start peace talks and agreed to a cease fire on April 30th. Peace talks started at The Hague six weeks later. Negotiations were hard fought but with the US being clear winner of the war put them in the driver seat. The Germans under the terms of the Treaty of The Hague surrendered all rights to Samoan Island Group. Germany also lost German New Guinea[4], Nauru, the Marshall Islands, and the German North Solomon Island Protectorate[5] which were taken by the United States in the Treaty of the Hague. This effectively drove Germany out of the Pacific, with the German Empire only retaining the rights to the Tonga Archipelago. The US could had taken the rights of the Tonga Archipelago but the British also had the rights to the Tonga Archipelago. It was viewed as not worth the headache to strip Germany of these rights. Germany further admitted fault for the Battle of Caracas. In return the United States agreed to pay Germany 4.5 million dollars for all the infrastructure in the territories it was taking control over. The US wasn’t annexing any of these lands at the moment as they wanted to use some of them as a barging chip with the British in the outstanding duel claims they had across the Pacific with the British. Once those claims were dealt with they would annex the remaining lands.
For Germany the Island War was nothing short of a disaster. They had all but been pushed out of the Pacific by this war. It was a humiliation to be defeated and further it derailed plans that had been starting to come together just before the start of the war. Spain was effectively broke in 1894 and had been looking to sell the Philippines which was in revolt at the time with its few remaining island colonies in the Pacific. Only Germany had been willing to talk turkey. However, in the after of the Island War these plans were shelfed. Yet the most important thing that came out of this war was the fact Kaiser Wilhelm II had been humbled and showed that bull strong reactions in International Politics don’t work.
[1] More or less OTL, but it was a class run of three.
[2] I’m using Google Maps, and I shit you not that is their name.
[3] With butterflies the M1895 came into service about a year earlier.
[4] Ok a little clearing up here. At this point in history German New Guinea didn’t cover all of German held Pacific Outpost at this point that didn’t happen till after the turn of the century OTL. I don’t see that changing ITL either. So German New Guinea under the terms of this treaty is German held New Guinea, New Britain, New Island, and other islands that are part of OTL Papua New Guinea that are to the east and north of those three main islands along with islands that are near these islands.
[5] These are made up of Bougainville, Choiseul Island, Santa Isabel Island, the Shortland Islands, and Ontong Java Atoll.
Over the course of December and January there was a low in the fighting. The only fighting at this time was merchant raiding by both Germany and the United States in the Atlantic. Even through most expected this surprise war that came out of nowhere to take place mostly in the Pacific, neither had the ships in place to perform merchant raiding in the Pacific. However, both sides were taking this low in the fighting to plan for the future. For the US this was a twofold mission. First they were planning for a defense of the Eastern Seaboard and their Caribbean territories. They knew there was a chance that Germany might tried to perform an invasion of the US or more likely their Caribbean territories. It was why Admiral Dewey wasn’t expecting reinforcements from the much larger Atlantic Fleet to take on the Germans in the Pacific.
The second plan the US was working on in December 1894 was the invasion of German Togoland. Even through the US had no interest in holding any territory on the Dark Continent it was viewed as something they could possibly take and use a bargaining chip at peace talks when those were held in the future. Lt General William Shafter who was the senior army officer and the de facto chief of staff was looking at the possibly of this African Campaign seriously viewed this plan as a plan of last resort. It was believed that Germany would come to the table if they were defeated in the Pacific. However, in the event Germany refused to come to the table after such a defeat this was viewed as the next step in the war. It was also viewed as a way to regain a status quo peace should Dewey and MacArthur lose in the Pacific.
Germany for its part was working on its own plans as well. The problem was there where two schools of thought in Germany and neither were view as possible by the majority of the General Staff. The first was invasion of the American Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Once in their hands they would use it as a springboard for an invasion of Cuba. Once that and the matters had been decided in the Pacific had been decided in Germany’s favor they would seek peace terms with the US. The other school of thought was invasion of the Eastern Seaboard that ran from New York City to Boston. Then march on Washington DC and force the US to agree to its terms with their capital in their hands. Yet outside the Kaiser no one viewed these plans as achievable. The USN Atlantic Fleet simply had more ships than Germany and were operating far closer to their ports. Yet because the Kaiser wanted it they slowly worked on the plans and hoped for victory in the Pacific in the meantime.
Admiral Dewey and his fleet was the first in the race to reinforce the SW Pacific even though they left two weeks after the German fleet had left Wilhelmshaven. Instead of heading for Apia, Dewey and his fleet head had headed to Pago Pago after recoiling in Hawaii. The soldiers and Marines who landed at Pago Pago on February 9th only met light resistance and that was from local pro-German groups who had been armed with cast offs or captured American weapons. With Pago Pago in his hands, Dewey when about recoiling his ships again and turning the harbor into his base of operations in the region.
Dewey and his fleet wasn’t at Pago Pago long through. Leaving behind the USS Boston and USS McCulloch a cutter that had been in the service of the US Revenue Cutter Service before the war Dewey made his way to Apia. This would lead to the Battle of the Apolima Strait on February 16th. Dewey’s seven strong fleet caught the SMS Irene as she was returning from Simpsonhafen. At the time Dewey was screening the ships that were being used by MacArthur’s troops to take Apia itself from the small German Garrison that held the harbor. The Irene was in a poor positioned as she was badly outnumbered, outgunned by all of Dewey’s ships had eight inch guns where the Irene largest guns were 15 cm. Worse yet three of the seven ships in Dewey’s fleet were quicker than the Irene. The Irene’s captain did what any captain would have done. She did hard over on the rudder and when to flank speed to try and out run the Americans. Only with the USS Olympia [1], USS Baltimore, and USS Raleigh all closing the gap at an alarming speed the four ships opened fire. The Irene was having to fight three ships at once where three ships were all firing on her. As she was being racked from the more powerful eight inch shells of the Americans her gunners were proving that they were just as good as they had been back in November, but they couldn’t fight their ways out of this one. With his ship listing and taking on water the captain of the Irene ordered his crew to abandon ship and scuttle her.
Fighting in Apia itself was over fairly quickly. The German garrison was a platoon size unit with German officers and NCOs and locals filling out the ranks. Being outgunned and outnumbered they put up a defense that was more for the shake of honor than anything else. After fighting for about ten minutes the commander surrendered to the Americans and with his surrender fighting on Samoa came to an end. The US suffered some 17 dead and 78 wounded in taking Apia along with minor damage to all three cruisers of the Olympia class. For Germany they had suffered 45 dead, with another 387 sailors and soldiers taken prisoner in fighting over Samoa.
With Apia in his hands Dewey took a few days to perform repairs to the Olympia class cruisers before he made his way to Simpsonhafen. Dewey knew that the German fleet had set sail for the SW Pacific two weeks prior him leaving San Diego. He wanted to catch that fleet before it reached Simpsonhafen and had the chance to recoal and recover from this journey. He lost the race when he reached Simpsonhafen on March the 23rd, three days after the Germans did under Konteradmiral Otto von Diederichs and his five ship fleet had reached the port.
Konteradmiral von Diederichs fleet was made up of the two Kaiser class ironclads, the SMS Oldenburg, and a pair of aviso. Germany simply didn’t have more modern ships to send to the Southwest Pacific and sent these older ironclads. With Dewey having missed his shot at an open battle instead started to blockade Simpsonhafen as the ships carrying MacArthur’s troops moved into a position to land on New Pomerania.
MacArthur oped for a double envelopment landing system land troops in both Open Bay and Wide Bay[2] on the 24th. His foe von Bernhardi knew that a landing in his rear was likely. So he ordered his troops to start digging in. His force was armed with some of the most advance equipment that Germany had to offer at the moment. The two big items were the Gewehr 1888 rifle and the Maxim Machine Gun both of which were better to what the American troops had to use in the Simpsonhafen campaign. The US Army was using Gatling Guns a design that dated from the Civil War and the Marines using a newer machine gun in the form of the M1894 Colt-Browning Machine Gun[3]. The rifles used by both the army and marines through fell let short of what the Mauser could do.
The Battle of Simpsonhafen started on March 25th. The Americans fighting on New Pomerania came to quickly understand that the Germans simply had better guns then they did. The only trump card they had to play was their five 1.65 inch Hotchkiss Guns. This light artillery help the US to start to gain the upper hand in the battle. The Germans had their own artillery, a battery of Krupp FK 73s. The Hotchkiss Guns used by the US were lighter and able to move better in the rough terrain of New Pomerania. This gave the Americans the edge in artillery on land. An edge they badly needed.
After three days of brutal fighting, Dewey and the Navy seeing that MacArthur was taking a beating, decided to charge into the battle instead of simply blockading the Germans. This caught the Germans under von Diederichs by surprise. Most of the crews had dismounted to fight as naval infantry units to help hold the line against MacArthur’s larger force. This meant they couldn’t leave the docks where they were tied up to. The gun crews of the ships were still there and started to return fire, but being unable to move made them a sitting target. However, in von Diederichs defense if von Bernhardi and his force would had been overran he would been dead anyways as he understood he wasn’t about to get away from Dewey’s fleet. One by one the ships of the fleet of von Diederichs was disabled and knocked out of the fight and scuttled in port.
With von Diederichs fleet knocked out, Dewey opened fire on von Bernhardi’s force. The heavy firepower brought things to a speedy end. Von Bernhardi would surrender his force just before sundown on the 28th. The US had paid a heavy price for having the crappier end of the small arms fight at Simpsonhafen. They suffered 2,592 dead in the two days of fighting to take Simpsonhafen with a further 4,317 wounded. The Germans under von Bernhardi suffered numbers well under MacArthur with 1,293 dead and 1,908 wounded in the two days of fighting to hold the port.
The only other ship the Germans had in the area the SMS Prinzess Wilhelm had been patrolling near Bougainville Island at this time only to return to Simpsonhafen on April 1st to recoal only to find part of Dewey’s fleet there. Not wanting to fight she left the area and was able to get away. She docked at Port Moresby and was able to take on more coal and then try to affect the US movements in the area who was moving to take over all German outpost in the area. Only she was interned by the British after spending 72 hours in port and still not done with resuppling the ship.
After learning of the defeat at Simpsonhafen Kaiser Wilhelm became upset and ordered an invasion of the US Caribbean that day. However, his general staff both in the army and navy viewed this operation as a suicide mission. They use slow orders to keep the fleet from sailing to the Caribbean and destroying key naval and army units needed to defend Germany with. A few days after learning of the defeat of Simpsonhafen, Wilhelm calmed down and agree to see reason and cancelled the planned invasion of the American Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. He then ordered peace feelers to be send out to the United States.
The US was more than willing to start peace talks and agreed to a cease fire on April 30th. Peace talks started at The Hague six weeks later. Negotiations were hard fought but with the US being clear winner of the war put them in the driver seat. The Germans under the terms of the Treaty of The Hague surrendered all rights to Samoan Island Group. Germany also lost German New Guinea[4], Nauru, the Marshall Islands, and the German North Solomon Island Protectorate[5] which were taken by the United States in the Treaty of the Hague. This effectively drove Germany out of the Pacific, with the German Empire only retaining the rights to the Tonga Archipelago. The US could had taken the rights of the Tonga Archipelago but the British also had the rights to the Tonga Archipelago. It was viewed as not worth the headache to strip Germany of these rights. Germany further admitted fault for the Battle of Caracas. In return the United States agreed to pay Germany 4.5 million dollars for all the infrastructure in the territories it was taking control over. The US wasn’t annexing any of these lands at the moment as they wanted to use some of them as a barging chip with the British in the outstanding duel claims they had across the Pacific with the British. Once those claims were dealt with they would annex the remaining lands.
For Germany the Island War was nothing short of a disaster. They had all but been pushed out of the Pacific by this war. It was a humiliation to be defeated and further it derailed plans that had been starting to come together just before the start of the war. Spain was effectively broke in 1894 and had been looking to sell the Philippines which was in revolt at the time with its few remaining island colonies in the Pacific. Only Germany had been willing to talk turkey. However, in the after of the Island War these plans were shelfed. Yet the most important thing that came out of this war was the fact Kaiser Wilhelm II had been humbled and showed that bull strong reactions in International Politics don’t work.
[1] More or less OTL, but it was a class run of three.
[2] I’m using Google Maps, and I shit you not that is their name.
[3] With butterflies the M1895 came into service about a year earlier.
[4] Ok a little clearing up here. At this point in history German New Guinea didn’t cover all of German held Pacific Outpost at this point that didn’t happen till after the turn of the century OTL. I don’t see that changing ITL either. So German New Guinea under the terms of this treaty is German held New Guinea, New Britain, New Island, and other islands that are part of OTL Papua New Guinea that are to the east and north of those three main islands along with islands that are near these islands.
[5] These are made up of Bougainville, Choiseul Island, Santa Isabel Island, the Shortland Islands, and Ontong Java Atoll.
- Jim Smitty
- Word Count: 2.4k