Disunited Forces
Queen Elizabeth’s spotters had noted the severe damage to
Tegetthoff and she was continuing steady fire even as
Inflexible burst into flames ahead. Admiral Robeck’s flagship had the range, and a further hit wrecked
Tegethoff’s A turret. In return, the second Austrian ship, the
Viribus Unitis was firing at her, and a seam opened near
Queen Elizabeth’s steering gear as a shell exploded just short of the ship.
Unitis herself was under fire from
Dante Aligheiri, and her forward barbette defeated an Italian 12” shell (although crew messes beside it were burnt out), while another hit ruined damage control efforts aft, resulting in further flooding through splinter holes and damaged seams.
As
Inflexible’s firing had ceased and the British ship was blanketed in smoke, Admiral Njegovan signalled
Tegetthoff to switch targets towards the more powerful Italian dreadnought. However, he received no immediate reply, and there was little sign of any significant fire from
Tegetthoff, who by this stage had only two main guns left notionally operation, inside a smoke-filled turret. Njegovan’s flagship was still fighting, although with only eight guns still in action, each firing slower than before.
Queen Elizabeth's starboard forward secondary battery was destroyed at 1443 by a 12” shell which set fire to numerous charges and burned out adjacent messes. However the guns were only sporadically in action, and her fighting ability was therefore largely unaffected.
Almost simultaneously, something happened to
Tegetthoff's rudder. A shell explosion aft bent plating, flooding several small compartments around the steering gear. Although the rudder was amidships at the time, distortion or the shock of the explosion caused the ship to start to turn to port, towards the Allied ships. Astern, the flagship saw her starting to turn, but Njegovan’s signals went unanswered as smoke from
Tegetthoff’s fires obscured the view, and her command crew were preoccupied. The Austrian Admiral had a choice to try to protect the damaged ship by following her turn, or he could attempt to escape. Guessing that she was out of command, or had rudder damage, he made the ignoble, but correct, decision to pass behind her and head for the relative safety of the coast.
As
Tegetthoff turned out of control toward the British and cleared the smoke of her own fires,
Inflexible had slowed and was clearly down by the bow.
Queen Elizabeth had to turn to avoid her, and as she passed by on the engaged side,
Inflexible started to turn to port, away from the enemy.
As they passed, Admiral De Robeck and the observers on
Queen Elizabeth probably had a better idea of
Inflexible’s condition than her own crew. A signal was sent by lamp, telling her to break off action, but with no power to the bridge and the flag halliards burned to cinders, her Captain could make no reply. Smoke was pouring from everywhere along front of the ship, and efforts to re-establish command from aft were still underway. No-one could get below the upper deck anywhere forward of the second funnel, and a Stoker who had been ordered to make his way aft and up through the engine room vents reported that a stokehold fire in No.2 Boiler Room had been extinguished, but that there were leaks through the forward bulkhead.
Just after three o’clock, the battle entered its final deadly phase, as
Queen Elizabeth had closed the enemy (partly to avoid
Inflexible) and was pounding the slowing
Tegetthoff. She was soon hit twice astern, adding to the heavy damage from previous shells and the magazine fire. Bulkheads were riddled, and water started to leak forward into shaft passages and the port engine room. As her list increased and she continued to turn around, a 15” shell ripped open coal bunkers to starboard that were normally below the waterline (ironically, probably saving her from imminent capsize). Another hit finally jammed B turret and shrapnel went through more bulkheads aft, letting flooding slowly spread along the ship.
Viribus Unitis had been shooting at
Aligheiri with ever-diminishing effects. As she passed behind the clouds of smoke from her sister-ship, she had no choice but to cease fire as her targets were lost to view. She was down by the stern, but was still able to maintain 16 knots, and Admiral Njegovan hoped to slip away into a nearby squall and reach shelter behind one of the inshore islands.
However, De Robeck and
Queen Elizabeth’s Captain had other ideas. After signalling the
Aligheiri to finish off the
Tegetthoff, the British fast battleship accelerated to close the range, and as soon as she had a clearer view, she switched to firing at the Austrian flagship. Two of her 17-hundredweight shells exploded on
Unitis’ belt, driving plates inward but failing to penetrate, before a third punched through the forward belt and exploded just inside. Water flooded into the capstan engine compartment and the forward torpedo room. The ship had been down by the stern, but was soon back on an even keel; although much lower in the water than before.
To avoid certain destruction, Njegovan ordered his destroyers to attack the
Queen Elizabeth.
Tatra and
Dukla responded and soon passed ahead and behind the flagship, heading straight for the enemy.
Several miles astern, the demolition of
Tegetthoff was underway. Her armoured conning tower was penetrated by a 12” shell, and other hits by from
Aligheiri wrecked the few secondary guns she had left. She sank lower and heeled to port as fires raged across her battery deck. By 1515, her engines were still turning, but she was barely making way. All her turrets were out of action and most of the command officers were dead or wounded. She was helpless.
There was no formal order to abandon ship, although the increasing list and the silence from her own guns told her crew what they needed to know. At 1520, waves were washing onto her quarterdeck and she was ablaze ‘from stem to stern’, in the words of the British liaison officer aboard the
Aligheiri.
Ahead,
Queen Elizabeth had no choice but to turn away. Her secondary battery was damaged, and only two 6” guns could engage the enemy destroyers.
Since she first spotted the Austrians, the armoured cruiser HMS
Drake had been ordered to stay out of the way of the vastly more powerful battleships. However, with
Inflexible clearly in trouble, she had been attempting to close on the flagship during her pursuit of the
Unitis. The cruiser’s old engines hadn’t allowed her to catch up, but now she tried to assist by firing at the destroyers from near the maximum range of her 6” guns. Even so, only the upper four of her casemate guns could engage, as the lower four were washed out by the swell.
Faced with the imminent threat of torpedoes,
Queen Elizabeth had trained her main armament on the destroyers and had turned almost due west to avoid them. The two little Austrian ships charged on, until
Tatra was hit by a 6” shell that burst open plating near her bow. A second shell passed through the bridge and exploded just behind, killing half of the crew there. Her Torpedo Officer assumed command, but he could see it was hopeless to continue. The ship was slowing and now severely down by the bow, as vast columns of water thundered up around him; the results of 15” shells striking the sea close by.
Dukla fared a little better, as she made it into torpedo range and launched two of her 53cm weapons towards the British ship, before fire caught her as she turned, wrecking the aft 10cm gun and shattering her steam pipes amidships. Rapidly slowing, she tried to limp away, but was caught by
Drake’s fire and was reduced to a sinking wreck within minutes.
Nevertheless, the bravery of the destroyers’ crews had bought
Viribus Unitis the time she needed to open the range and disappear into the haze. Within half an hour, she had reached the safety of the inshore islands, but with flooding worsening and the threat of capsize growing worse, her Captain was ultimately forced to beach her just 20 miles short of Fiume. She was later salvaged, but would never fight again, and her guns were used in coastal fortifications.
As
Unitis was lost to poor visibility, her sister was finally losing her battle with the sea.
Dante Aligheiri had ceased fire shortly before 1530, when it was clear that she was finished. Nevertheless, she had not struck her colours, and a torpedo was fired to finish her off. Despite presenting a near-stationary target, it missed, but that was of little relevance as flooding continued to spread aboard the wrecked Austrian ship. At 1537, she rolled over, and the
Aligheiri later rescued 169 survivors from her crew.
Behind and further west, HMS
Inflexible’s Captain had resumed command from the aft conning tower shortly after three o’clock. Among his first orders were to slow down, turn away and signal the flagship as to his ship’s condition. P, Q and X turrets were undamaged, but there was no hydraulic power to work them until valves could be closed below, which soon proved to be impossible. Efforts moved towards trying to save the ship, but unfortunately, there was little that could be done. Some progress was made fighting the fires below, but every gallon pumped onto the flames only added to the water that the ship was taking on for’ard. The bow section was still cut off by fire, and there was nothing that could be done to stop the flooding there.
By 1600, many of the fires had been mastered, more by the sea than by the hoses. Smoke and steam still poured from the ship and waves were breaking over the foc’sle. Water was rising in No.2 Boiler room, and the Captain concluded that the boats should be launched. Floats were thrown overboard and dozens of men scrambled down ropes and swam away, as
Queen Elizabeth and
Drake closed on the stricken ship.
A series of cracking noises from within the hull were followed by lurches down by the bow and over to port. The blades of her propellers could be seen for a while, before at 1638, the stern of HMS
Inflexible rolled over to port and quickly disappeared beneath the waves.
-o-
The opening 11 months of the war had been difficult ones for the Royal Navy. There had been embarrassing setbacks, and victories too; but the sinking of a few enemy cruisers and a couple of indecisive skirmishes in the North Sea hadn’t been the ‘new Trafalgar’ that the public expected.
The Battle of Vieste was an indisputable victory; the press could report two enemy battleships sunk for the loss of the ‘armoured cruiser’
Inflexible, most of whose crew had been saved. Even the revelation that the
Unitis had survived to be beached did little to dispel the mood.
More importantly, with the threat of the Austrian fleet firmly contained, landings along the Dalmatian coast could begin.