Читать книгу The Battleship Book - Robert M. Farley - Страница 16

SMS Ostfriesland

Laid Down: 1908

Launched: 1909

Completed: August, 1911

Displacement: 22,400 tons

Main Armament: twelve 12” guns, six twin turrets

Secondary Armament: fourteen 6” guns (single mounts)

Speed: 21 knots

Major Actions: Battle of Jutland

Treaty: Pre-Washington Naval Treaty

Fate: Sunk as target by US Army aircraft, July 21, 1921

SMS Ostfriesland was the second ship of the Helgoland class, the second group of German dreadnoughts. Germany had been taken aback by the appearance of HMS Dreadnought and HMS Invincible. The Kiel Canal, which provided for quick, safe transit between the Baltic and the North Sea, could not accommodate vessels of Dreadnought’s girth. The Germans dawdled a bit before finally deciding to enlarge the canal, and in 1907 laid down their first modern battleships. The construction of HMS Dreadnought turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because while the Germans trailed badly in naval strength in 1906, Dreadnought reset the race; everybody went back to zero, and the Germans were well-positioned to make a game of it.

Ostfriesland in American service

German warship naming practice of the time used states and regions for battleships. Accordingly, Ostfriesland was named after East Frisia, a region along Germany’s North Sea coast. Like her predecessors in the Nassau class, Ostfriesland’s main armament was arranged in hexagon fashion, with turrets fore and aft and four wing turrets. This meant that Ostfriesland only had a broadside of eight 12” guns, the same as the much smaller USS Michigan. The Brazilian São Paulo and the Argentinian Rivadavia each had ten-gun broadsides, and the Hungarian Szent Istvan and Italian Dante Alighieri each managed a twelve-gun broadside on a smaller displacement than the German ship. However, like all German ships, Ostfriesland was very well armored, and capable of sustaining a great deal of damage.

Ostfriesland’s career mirrored that of the rest of the High Seas Fleet. It was thought at the time that encounters at sea were particularly susceptible to what became known as the Lanchester Equations, in which numerical advantage has exponential, rather than additive, effect. A naval battle, unlike a land battle, suffers from relatively few natural impediments. Thus, it was thought that any encounter would quickly become a match of competing battle lines. In such a match, the side with more heavy guns would cause damage above ratio to the other fleet. A small numerical advantage would mean a large victory; if sixteen ships met thirteen, the ships would not simply cancel each other out, and the smaller side would be devastated at a relatively light cost to the larger. Because the High Seas Fleet could never match the Grand Fleet in numbers, its admirals were loath to sortie.

The only major clash between the dreadnoughts of the two fleets came at the end of May, 1916, at the Battle of Jutland. Ostfriesland played a relatively small part in the battle, taking no damage but probably scoring a hit on HMS Warspite. On the way back to port, Ostfriesland hit a mine, but did not suffer crippling damage. The High Seas Fleet made only a couple more minor sorties, and mutinied when ordered on a near-suicide mission in late 1918.

A fairly old ship, Ostfriesland escaped internment at Scapa Flow at the end of the war. The surviving German fleet was parceled out among the great powers, with Ostfriesland going to the United States. A forty-two-year-old US Army aviator, Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell, had been arguing since the end of the war that aircraft could destroy surface naval units. In July of 1921, US military authorities allowed him to put this to the test. Along with a number of other naval units, including the pre-dreadnoughts Alabama and Iowa, Ostfriesland was attacked by successive waves of US Army Air Force bombers.

Ostfriesland sinking

How realistic were the tests? Ostfriesland was older than most of the American battleships of the day, but not all, and not much older. If bombers could sink her, then they could likely sink all but the most modern of the American standard type battleships. Three other issues made the exercise problematic, however. First, Ostfriesland was stationary, considerably simplifying the problem of bombing. Although Mitchell insisted that bombing a moving ship would be easier than a stationary target, no one took this claim seriously.

Second, Ostfriesland was in poor shape, and lacked a crew. German battleships were well-known for their thorough compartmentalization and their watertight integrity, but looters and poor maintenance had made sealing Ostfriesland impossible. The battleship was already taking on water before the bombing began. More importantly, with no damage control teams on board, even relatively minor damage could prove lethal. Finally (and in the only point that supports Mitchell) Ostfriesland had no munitions aboard. This rendered the battleship effectively immune to loss through catastrophic explosion, although the bombs used by the Army Air Service probably couldn’t have penetrated the magazines anyway.

Ostfriesland in American service

The first attacks by the bombers caused relatively light damage, but later attacks by heavier aircraft caused extensive flooding, eventually causing Ostfriesland to roll over and sink. Reportedly, several USN admirals wept at the sight of her destruction.

Mitchell violated the rules of the exercise, but not to the extent that it made much of a difference to the outcome. The Army Air Service sank Ostfriesland and a variety of other old American and German vessels, helping both services to learn a great deal about targeting and bomb damage. Mitchell’s interest was in propaganda, however; he used the sinking of the old battleship to argue that surface vessels of any kind were effectively obsolete in the face of determined air attack. It bears note that Mitchell was not predicting that surface ships would become vulnerable at some point in the future. He made clear his belief that the USN was already obsolete as of the early 1920s.

Ostfriesland in American service

The US Navy rejected this, arguing that the German ship was old, small relative to new US ships, carried no anti-aircraft armament, and could not maneuver. A fleet under steam, the admirals argued, could not be so destroyed. But both services took the tests seriously. In battleship refits after 1921, the US Navy substantially increased the anti-aircraft weaponry of its main units. Mitchell was surely correct that aircraft would eventually take a devastating toll on battleships; aircraft would sink at least fourteen battleships in World War II, the largest single cause of loss.

Author’s Note

SMS Ostfriesland has become a footnote in the history of American naval aviation. Sailors, soldiers, and airmen bitterly debated the rules and process of her sinking, as well as precisely what could be learned from her loss. Mitchell’s career ended in recrimination and disgrace, although he helped set the terms on which the Air Force would win its independence after World War II.

As a battleship, she was an effective but not particularly inspired unit. The Japanese also adopted the hexagon turret distribution patter for a time, despite its inefficiency. Even had the Washington Naval Treaty not intervened, it’s not likely that Ostfriesland would have survived long beyond 1921.

Related Entries:

Preceded… SMS Friederich der Grosse

Contemporary of… USS Utah

Fought at… Jutland