The SMS Goeben
-Jason
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The history and exploits of the German battlecruiser SMS Goeben are some of the most fascinating nautical tales of World War I. The captain and crew of the battlecruiser were involved in unusual situations that helped to shape the early twentieth century.
The SMS Goeben was launched in 1911 as the second of the Moltke-class battlecruisers. She was one of the newest warships in the Imperial German High Seas Fleet. Battlecruisers were a class of warship that had the main armament of a battleship but because they lacked heavy armor, they had the speed of a cruiser. These ships were designed to act as scouts for the heavier battleships on their way to engage an enemy fleet. They were not supposed to get involved in conflict with heavier ships. A battlecruiser could also operate as a commerce raider due to its speed and firepower.
Squadrons of battlecruisers were present in the major navies at the outbreak of World War I. The British Royal Navy and German High Seas Fleet each had multiple groups of ships spread throughout various theaters. Austria-Hungary had several naval bases located along its Adriatic Sea coast where its own fleet was stationed and where the Germans placed a squadron. Upon its completion, the High Seas Fleet decided that the Goeben, and the light cruiser Breslau, would serve as the core a German fleet operating in the Mediterranean Sea. The presence of these two ships was not a serious threat to the opposing British and French naval formations, but they could disrupt the transfer of colonial forces between Africa and Europe if war erupted.
The assassination of the Austria heir to the throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the spark that ignited World War I. Initially, Germany and Austria-Hungary were at war against France, Russia, and Serbia. As hostilities erupted, the German warships in the Mediterranean sailed for French North Africa. Their mission was to bombard the ports and ships that would supplement the transfer of French colonial forces reinforcing Metropolitan France. German Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon received the notification of declaration of war, on the 3 August, while his squadron was at sea; his warships bombarded the ports of Philippeville and Bone in Algeria before the day was over.
After this brief bombardment, Admiral Souchon received orders to abandon this raiding and head for Istanbul. The Germans were grossly outnumbered by the French in the Mediterranean and would not survive a direct engagement. In addition, Germany had offered to sell the warships of Souchon’s squadron to the Ottoman Empire. While sailing towards Sicily to refuel, two British battlecruisers sailed past the Germans before the official declaration of war between Britain and Germany. By the time their commander was made aware of war being declared, the British warships were too far away to intercept the Goeben and the Breslau. Italian port officials agreed to supply the two German warships with coal, despite their declaration of neutrality, to allow them to reach the Dardanelles. Souchon slipped past the growing number of Entente ships sent to engage him and arrived in Istanbul on 16 August. On the 23 September, the Goeben was renamed the Yavuz Sultan Selim and the Breslau was renamed the Midilli; Souchon and became head of the Ottoman Navy. The German sailors were outfitted with fezzes as an indication as their new allegiance.
The Ottoman Empire and Germans solidified their alliance by planning a surprise attack on Russian Black Sea ports and warships. This was scheduled to begin on 29 October 1914. The Goeben, Breslau, and other Turkish ships bombarded Sevastopol before the declaration of war had been announced. Despite being only one ship, the Geoben represented a serious threat to older ships of the Russia Black Sea Fleet, because of this the Russians decided to keep all their ships operating together instead of letting them attack Turkish targets individually. On 1 November, the Entente belatedly declared war on the Ottoman Empire though there was no way for the British or French to send naval units to reinforce their Russian allies. The Goeben and Brselau effectively shut down the entirety of the opposing Black Sea Fleet by their presence alone.
The Goeben was an important asset for the Ottomans, but they could not effectively service the ship: none of their shipyards and drydocks were big enough to accommodate their newest ship. Any time the Goeben was damaged, she received emergency repairs in the form of concrete being poured into damaged compartments. The damage and additional weight of the concrete slowed the Goeben’s maximum speed and threatened her stability. During the early phases of the British bombardment of the Turkish forts in the Bosporus in February 1915, the Goeben was briefly sent into the region to engage the Entente bombardment force. The Germans were heavily outgunned and retreated after being spotted. The Goeben was damaged by a Russian submarine in August 1915 and again given concrete in lieu of actual repairs.
The launch of two additional Russian battleships ensured that the days of Goeben raiding the Black Sea were ended. The new Russian warships were more heavily armed and armored and could almost match Goeben’s reduced maximum speed. The Goeben barely escaped a brief engagement with one of the new Russian battleships. A coal shortage further hampered Souchon’s ability to operate his ships: the Goeben consumed too much fuel and spent most of 1917 in dock. 1918 proved to be even more disastrous for the German/Turkish squadron. Goeben and Breslau tried to break out of the Dardanelles to attack Entente warships and merchantmen in early January. Both ships ran into a previously unknown British minefield which resulted in the light cruiser Breslau sinking and the battlecruiser suffering severe damage. The Goeben limped back to Istanbul to receive yet another round of concrete to fill its gaping wounds.
When the Ottoman Empire surrendered to the Entente in November 1918, the drama of the Goeben was not over. As part of the Treaty of Sevres, the Goeben was supposed to be turned over to the British as a war prize. Before that could happen, however, the Turkish War of Independence erupted when Greece invaded western Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal Pasha, later known as Ataturk, was successful in repulsing the Greeks and founded the Republic of Turkey. He negotiated the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 which negated the surrender of the Goeben as well as some of the territory that the Turks had lost in the earlier treaty. The Goeben was properly repaired in the late 1920s and served in the Turkish Navy into the 1950s. She was decommissioned in in 1954. Turkey offered to sell the ship to West Germany as a museum ship, but this deal never materialized. By 1976, one of the last dreadnoughts in the world was reduced to nothing. The legacy and strange adventures of the Goeben ended in a scrapyard.