Page - 400 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

400 The Third Front reassuring news : the British and French had been so caught up with operations in the Dardanelles near Gallipoli that they were incapable of unexpectedly appearing in the Adriatic. And the Italians failed to move. The large ships of the Imperial and Royal Fleet were put under steam and just a few hours after the declaration of war had been issued, the naval detachments left Pula (Pola) on the evening of 23 May. The ‘Tegetthof’ class battleships, six ‘Archduke’ and ‘Habsburg’ class battleships, one ‘Radetzky’ class battleship, four destroyers and twenty torpedo boats headed towards the opposite coast in the Ancona area. A second detachment was directed towards the coasts in the upper Adriatic area. In the early hours of the morning of the 24th, the detachments arrived in the waters off Ancona, Rimini, Ravenna, Senigallia and the estuary of the Potenza River, and began to fire at previously specified targets. This was made all the easier since the towns and cities in question were still illuminated as though it were still peacetime. This also helped the Imperial and Royal Naval Air Service to find its destinations more easily. The Italian Fleet command ordered that the fleet make ready to leave port im- mediately when the Imperial and Royal squadron was reported off the coast of Ancona. However, before the departure manoeuvre could even be completed in Brindisi and Taranto, the Imperial and Royal Fleet had already begun to turn back. The units had fired at port facilities, bridges, railway stations, coastal batteries and units of the Italian Navy, almost without any counter-action. There was some destruction, but overall, the effect on morale was greater than the material damage. However, no-one could have anticipated that this action would in numerical terms remain the most significant of the Imperial and Royal Navy during the entire course of the war, since subsequently  – with only a few rare exceptions  – only the submarines and small units would be active. However, Italy’s entry into the war appeared to change the entire Austro-Hungarian style of naval warfare in the Adriatic. Cruisers, destroyers and torpedo boats made re- peated forays against the Italian coast. In so doing, they also risked incurring their own losses. The Imperial and Royal Navy represented a constant threat to the Italian ship- ping lanes and ports. Now at the latest, the demand, which had been rejected by Italy’s allies as being impossible to implement, for a British-French attack on the Imperial and Royal Navy, accompanied by a landing operation on the Dalmatian coast, appeared to have been only too well-justified. Instead, the Imperial and Royal Navy dominated large parts of the Adriatic and enabled the cargo vessels to travel along the east coast of the Adriatic more or less unhindered. For the Commander of the Fleet, Admiral Haus, there was nevertheless cause for concern, since he anticipated that the Italian land forces would sooner or later suc- ceed in pushing through to Trieste. This would put the main naval base in the upper Adriatic, Pula, at extremely high risk. It therefore appeared to make sense to move to Kotor. However, there the fleet was again within range of the Allied naval forces, and was exposed for quite a different reason. Even so, Haus decided to relocate the most