The Theater of the Absurd (naval extension)
262. The Theater of the Absurd (naval extension)
General situation. The first sea-going ironclad was the French “Gloire” followed by the British “Warrior” and others. Everybody started building the ironclads but so far they were never used in war and experience of the ACW was not too helpful because the armored ships involved had very specific constructions limiting their usage to the coastal areas and, anyway, their duel did not produce any decisive results.
So the European naval powers had been building (or ordering) the armored ships based upon the extent of their fantasy and finances: the armored versions of the “classic” sail warships, ships with the gun turrets or barbets, ships with a ram or without a ram. So far even effectiveness of the old and new naval artillery against the armor was unclear.
Actually, the Brits tested the naval version of Armstrong gun against “Warrior”-style armor (4.5 inches of steel and 20-25 inches of oak) in 1861 with the results rather disappointing. Well, the Admiralty called them a success but at least some members of the House of Commons disagreed. Mr.OSBORNE said:
“This gun was, I believe, fired on the 9th with a charge of 40 pounds of powder at a part of the Warrior, which had been battered all through the Winter and Spring, and damaged by the shot of a 68 smooth-bore. Well, at this target two shots were fired, at 200 yards, under the most favorable circumstances for the gun, and, hitting the damaged part, they penetrated the 4 1/2-inch-plate and lodged in what is technically called the skin of the ship. They did not go through, and are still sticking where they lodged, notwithstanding that the experiment was represented by the Secretary for the Admiralty as perfectly successful. Again, the gun was fired with a charge of 50 pounds of powder, and most extraordinary accounts appeared of the noble lord and others who were present climbing up the side of the target and congratulating each other on the circumstance that the shot had gone quite through it; but the fact is that it is still sticking in the skin of the ship… I now come to those which took place two or three days ago. One shot was fired last Tuesday. Did it go through the target? Not a bit of it, and with these facts before us it seems to me the public are justified in entertaining some doubt with regard to the great merits of this Armstrong gun. [Hear, hear.] Now it is a somewhat singular fact in the history of naval warfare that, notwithstanding 3,000,000 of money have been spent on these Armstrong guns, the best gun you have at the present moment is your old 68 smooth-bore. … On a very recent occasion -- Tuesday last, he thought -- there was another experiment tried, in the presence \of a large number of spectators, including several members of that and to other House of Parliament. A portion of the target about two feet square, which had not hitherto been hit, was fired at with a shot of 150 pounds, thrown with great velocity, the charge of powder being 50 pounds. The effect was perfectly clear. The armor plate was totally damaged; a great orifice was made in it, and the fragments were driven into the wooden backing and absorbed by it. And he might say that the internal skin was bulged out, but the interior itself resisted the shot. [Hear.] A person leaning against the inside would have received a severe blow, but a person standing a short distance from the inside of the section would not have received any injury. [Hear, hear.] What he deduced from this was, that as at 200 yards they could not penetrate a ship like the Warrior, it was impossible that with such a gun as the one used in these experiments they could penetrate such a ship at 1,200 yards…. The gun in question was a very large one, constructed on the Armstrong principle, and as good a one as they were likely to have produced. It consisted of a series of coils, and at the fifth or sixth of these was the chamber in which the powder and shot were placed. A strengthening coil was placed at that part of the gun.” [1]
An aspect overlooked by the speaker was that the tested guns had been making only 2-3 shots per day. How they would behave in the case of a rapid fire was a completely different question [2] but obviously even the main point was serious enough without any other considerations.
Everybody was waiting for the first serious trial by fire to analyze the results and make conclusions. How correct these conclusions were going to be is a completely different story.
Italian navy. Italy was actively building its navy assigning to this purpose 300,000,000 francs and concentrating upon construction of the armored ships. To get the new fleet fast the ships had been ordered in France, Britain, and the US with the resulting wide variety of the constructions and armaments. In total, 12 battleships of various sizes and types were built: 7 frigates (4100-5700 tons, 22-36 guns from 6 to 8 inches caliber), 2 corvettes (2700 tons, 20 guns 6-8 inch caliber), 2 gunboats (2000 tons, 4 guns 7.5 inch cal.) and 1 ram ship (4100 tons, 2 guns 10.5 inch cal.). All these vessels were protected by armor from 4.5 to 6 inches, and the artillery placed on them was part rifled, loaded from the muzzle, and partly smoothbore. In addition, the already existing wooden fleets of individual states, united now, were a significant force consisting of frigates (3200-4000 tons, 50 guns), corvettes (2000 tons, 20 guns), gunboats (250 tons, 4 guns), avisoes, etc. - a total of about 60 vessels.
The ram ship, “Affondatore”, was a rather unique piece of work. It was an ironclad built in Britain and initially designed to rely on her ram as her only weapon, but during construction she was also equipped with two 300-pounder Armstrong guns in the turrets. Its most remarkable feature was a 2.5 meters long ram [3]. It joined the fleet shortly before the battle sailing all the way from Britain.
As far as the number and parameters of the ships were involved, the Italian fleet was grossly superior to the Austrian but its crews were not trained. In addition, the fleet suffered from contradictions and envy between officers arising from the recent merger of two groups - officers of Sardinia and Naples. But the public was not aware of all these issues: construction of the navy cost enormous amount of money, the ships were there and they had to sail against the Austrians to get Venice back.
By the time war was declared only 56 out of 69 steamships and 75 sail ships were ready to sail. The last moment alterations were carried out in Taranto, from where the fleet came out on June 21 - a day after the declaration of war - to Ancona, located on the Adriatic coast. Due to the fact that several low-speed ships were included in the squadron, and the squadron speed did not exceed 4-5 knots, Ancona was reached only on June 25. Here the squadron stopped waiting for supplies and new orders.
The fleet commander, admiral Carlo Pellion di Persano, was 60 years old and while before the war he accomplished an important task pf switching from wood to armor, he hardly was an energetic commander of a battle fleet.
Austrian navy. Strictly speaking, Austrian navy was in a deep s—t. A prevailing opinion was that Austria does not need the ironclads and by the start of war the navy had only 7 of them (2800—4800 tons, 16—30 guns pf 6—10 inches) plus 45 wooden ships. One of the ironclads was not yet fully armored and two were lacking artillery: the ordered Krupp guns became unavailable and had to be replaced with the old smoothbore cannons. But it had a huge asset, Rear Admiral Tegetthoff, who was energetically training his crews paying special attention to the ability to concentrate fire, as he considered it the only way to damage armor by his weak smoothbore artillery. Since June 6, when a sufficient number of vessels were collected, he vigorously began to train his squadron in maneuvering.
Tegetthoff also was improving protection of his old wooden ships by all means possible from adding the new layers of the thick wooden planks and to fixing the rails and anchor chains on their sides.
By the time of the battle the Italians had 34 ships with 695 guns (of which 276 rifled) and a salvo weight of 53,200 pounds against 27 Austrian ships with 525 guns (of which 121 rifled) and a salvo weight of 23,500 pounds.
The battle at Lissa (on the schema below the Austrians are reddish with the ironclads solid red and Italians - the same schema in green).
The Austrian admiral built his squadron in three detachments, in the form of blunt wedges, following one after the other. At the head of the first "wedge" consisting of the ironclads, there was "Ferdinand Max" under the flag of Admiral Tegethoff. They were tasked with cutting through the enemy formation and at the same time ramming enemy ships if possible. The battleships were followed by a second wedge, whose ships had no armor, but had numerous artillery; their task was to finish off the damaged enemy ships. The last were gunboats moving, which, if necessary, had to support the main forces with the fire of their artillery. Such a combat order made it possible to nullify the superiority of the Italians in ships and artillery and deal a strong blow to them with the strongest ships.
And then the most interesting thing began. As soon as Admiral Persano received a message about the enemy, he immediately began to command and transmit so many signals to his ships that they simply did not have time to decipher them on other ships. As a result, Vice Admiral Giovanni Albini, who commanded a detachment consisting of unarmored ships - frigates and corvettes, contrary to Persano's orders, stepped aside with them and therefore did not participate in the battle! Two battleships "Terribile" and "Varez" did not have time to approach the squadron, and "Formidabile" raised the signal that it was incapable, and therefore began to withdraw. The rest of the ironclads started forming the line of bearing but the recently arrived “Affondatore” was not included into the formation. After the ships took their positions Persano suddenly ordered to form a single line ahead and while his ships were reforming the Austrians attacked. To add to everybody’s confusion Persano in the last moment went from his flag ship “Re’d Italia” to “Affondatore” which remained outside the formation. The vanguard ships of the line 13 miles long simply did not notice the signal to slow down (to give the admiral time to get from one ship to another) and kept moving away from the center. By the reason unknown Persano did not send a signal about transferring of his flag and everybody still expected directions from “Re’d Italia”.
Meanwhile, while watching the enemy, Admiral Tegetthoff saw a gap in the line of Italian ships and decided that he had every chance to repeat Admiral Nelson's maneuver at Trafalgar. He ordered to increase the move to the full and rushed into the formed gap. Italian ships met his avant-garde detachment with cruel fire, but at 11 o'clock in the morning he cut the Italian squadron just between its vanguard and the center. The first collision ended to no avail for both sides. The fire of Italian ships was inaccurate, and if their shells hit Austrian ships, the armor did not penetrate at a distance. But the Austrians also failed to ram any of the Italian battleships.
Then Rear Admiral Vacchi, who commanded the Italian vanguard, decided to take the initiative, gained momentum and tried to bypass the Austrian battleships from the east to hit the enemy's armless wooden ships behind them. But the Austrian gunboats managed to evade this attack and began to retreat, as a result of which the three battleships of Vacchi, who rushed after them in pursuit, were essentially withdrawn from the battle.
In the center 7 Austrian ironclads attacked 3 Italian ironclads and all order was lost, thanks to the dense smoke. Meanwhile, Admiral Tegetthoff , very determined, rammed Re d'Italia twice on his Ferdinand Max, but both times unsuccessfully, as the blows he struck turned out to be sliding and the ship's armor did not break through. But the hour of the Italian ironclad has already struck and nothing could save it. Now it was rammed by the battleship Kaiser Maximilian, who broke the steering wheel of the former flagship. Realizing that it was no longer possible to control a single-screw ship, Re d'Italia commander Faa di Bruno tried to withdraw his ship from the battle and headed towards the Ancona, battleship of Admiral Vacchi, counting on help. The path was cut by some Austrian battleship. And then di Bruni, instead of taking the opportunity and ramming the enemy ship, for some reason gave an order to reverse. And it was his fatal mistake, because Ferdinand Max was moving in the smoke to his left. When Tegetthoff recognized in the midst of a smoke the Italian ironclad he ordered “Full speed ahead!” and his ship hit Re’d Italia just in the middle breaking the armor and underlying wood and leaving a hole of 16 sq. meters. Re’d Italia was sinking. Its captain shot himself but the crew kept firing at the enemy till the last moment.
In the middle of a general melee the wooden Austian Kaiser first tried to ram Affondatore and then rammed the Italian ironclad Re de Portigallo (below, Kaiser after the ramming). Of course, the ironclad was only slightly damaged but Kaiser had to leave the battle.
At that point Affondatore steamed at full speed to ram Kaiser, which would be fatal for already damaged wooden ship, but in the last moment Affondatore missed it and Kaiser safely reached harbor of Lissa.
The messy encounter continued for quite a while with all ramming attempts on both sides failing and artillery fire being generally ineffective even if there were fires on two or three Italian ships. At noon the sides disengaged.
The Italian ironclad Palestro caught fire early in a battle and all the time its crew was trying to extinguish it but at 14:30 the fire got to the ammunition and the ship was blown to pieces. The Italians lost their nerve and began disorderly retreat. Tegetthoff immediately gave an order: "Start chasing the enemy!" The Austrian ships quickly reform and began to pursue in three columns. But their battleships, less fast than Italian ones, could not catch up with them. Seeing the aimlessness of the chase, Tegetthoff canceled his order in the evening. After that, at 10 a.m., Admiral Persano went with his ships to Anconu, and Tegetthoff led his squadron to the base in Paul.
Aftermath. The battle of Lissa became iconic and was included in all textbooks on naval tactics, in all manuals for naval commanders and textbooks for midshipmen, in instructions to artillerymen and shipbuilders. Needless to say that most of the conclusions made by the professionals proved to be dead wrong but for the next three decades, until China-Japanese War, Lissa was an etalon of the naval battle.
The consensus was that the ram was the only productive way to go (out of all attempt at Lissa only one was successful but this one was made into a legend). As a result, the stress was on increasing the armor protection and artillery as a winning factor remained underestimated. The main tactics of sea battle began to be considered the ramming strike, which turned the battle into a "dog dump" of individual ships. The design of the ship also began to obey its main combat purpose - a ramming strike! Which brought to live a specific type of a ship, a turreted ramming ironclad. Kind of ironic because the only ship of that type at Lissa, Affondatore, demonstrably failed. Many ships had been built with the rams and they proved to be quite dangerous … for their squadron mates: there were numerous incidents of the “friendly ramming”.
Here Tegethoff controlled the ships, standing on the bridge of his ship, ignoring the shells and fragments - "that's courage and an example for sailors," "and Persano never left the armored wheelhouse of "Affondatore" and ... "that's why he didn't have the courage to ram." In 1904 admiral Witgeft followed this “code of conduct” and was blown to pieces with all his staff leaving Russian squadron leaderless.
_______
[1] New York Times, June 6, 1862
[2] Actually, there were quite serious issues related to the construction of the breach locking mechanism.
[3] Some sources are saying that it was 26 feet long but with the overall length of 308 feet, isn’t it a little bit too much? OTOH, I’m not a specialist and perhaps a lot depends upon what you are counting as a “ram”. I only remember that in some old description of the battle this ram is mentioned as something huge and negatively impacting operations of the ship. Not that this ship accomplished anything worth mentioning so probably it did not matter one way or another.
“Ahoy! Ahoy!
The balls whistle free
Ahoy! Ahoy!O'er the bright blue sea,
We stand to our guns, to our guns all day.”
‘HMS Pinafore’
“Hold on until the fleet comes to you!”
Tegetthoff to the garrison of Lissa
The balls whistle free
Ahoy! Ahoy!O'er the bright blue sea,
We stand to our guns, to our guns all day.”
‘HMS Pinafore’
“Hold on until the fleet comes to you!”
Tegetthoff to the garrison of Lissa
General situation. The first sea-going ironclad was the French “Gloire” followed by the British “Warrior” and others. Everybody started building the ironclads but so far they were never used in war and experience of the ACW was not too helpful because the armored ships involved had very specific constructions limiting their usage to the coastal areas and, anyway, their duel did not produce any decisive results.
So the European naval powers had been building (or ordering) the armored ships based upon the extent of their fantasy and finances: the armored versions of the “classic” sail warships, ships with the gun turrets or barbets, ships with a ram or without a ram. So far even effectiveness of the old and new naval artillery against the armor was unclear.
Actually, the Brits tested the naval version of Armstrong gun against “Warrior”-style armor (4.5 inches of steel and 20-25 inches of oak) in 1861 with the results rather disappointing. Well, the Admiralty called them a success but at least some members of the House of Commons disagreed. Mr.OSBORNE said:
“This gun was, I believe, fired on the 9th with a charge of 40 pounds of powder at a part of the Warrior, which had been battered all through the Winter and Spring, and damaged by the shot of a 68 smooth-bore. Well, at this target two shots were fired, at 200 yards, under the most favorable circumstances for the gun, and, hitting the damaged part, they penetrated the 4 1/2-inch-plate and lodged in what is technically called the skin of the ship. They did not go through, and are still sticking where they lodged, notwithstanding that the experiment was represented by the Secretary for the Admiralty as perfectly successful. Again, the gun was fired with a charge of 50 pounds of powder, and most extraordinary accounts appeared of the noble lord and others who were present climbing up the side of the target and congratulating each other on the circumstance that the shot had gone quite through it; but the fact is that it is still sticking in the skin of the ship… I now come to those which took place two or three days ago. One shot was fired last Tuesday. Did it go through the target? Not a bit of it, and with these facts before us it seems to me the public are justified in entertaining some doubt with regard to the great merits of this Armstrong gun. [Hear, hear.] Now it is a somewhat singular fact in the history of naval warfare that, notwithstanding 3,000,000 of money have been spent on these Armstrong guns, the best gun you have at the present moment is your old 68 smooth-bore. … On a very recent occasion -- Tuesday last, he thought -- there was another experiment tried, in the presence \of a large number of spectators, including several members of that and to other House of Parliament. A portion of the target about two feet square, which had not hitherto been hit, was fired at with a shot of 150 pounds, thrown with great velocity, the charge of powder being 50 pounds. The effect was perfectly clear. The armor plate was totally damaged; a great orifice was made in it, and the fragments were driven into the wooden backing and absorbed by it. And he might say that the internal skin was bulged out, but the interior itself resisted the shot. [Hear.] A person leaning against the inside would have received a severe blow, but a person standing a short distance from the inside of the section would not have received any injury. [Hear, hear.] What he deduced from this was, that as at 200 yards they could not penetrate a ship like the Warrior, it was impossible that with such a gun as the one used in these experiments they could penetrate such a ship at 1,200 yards…. The gun in question was a very large one, constructed on the Armstrong principle, and as good a one as they were likely to have produced. It consisted of a series of coils, and at the fifth or sixth of these was the chamber in which the powder and shot were placed. A strengthening coil was placed at that part of the gun.” [1]
An aspect overlooked by the speaker was that the tested guns had been making only 2-3 shots per day. How they would behave in the case of a rapid fire was a completely different question [2] but obviously even the main point was serious enough without any other considerations.
Everybody was waiting for the first serious trial by fire to analyze the results and make conclusions. How correct these conclusions were going to be is a completely different story.
Italian navy. Italy was actively building its navy assigning to this purpose 300,000,000 francs and concentrating upon construction of the armored ships. To get the new fleet fast the ships had been ordered in France, Britain, and the US with the resulting wide variety of the constructions and armaments. In total, 12 battleships of various sizes and types were built: 7 frigates (4100-5700 tons, 22-36 guns from 6 to 8 inches caliber), 2 corvettes (2700 tons, 20 guns 6-8 inch caliber), 2 gunboats (2000 tons, 4 guns 7.5 inch cal.) and 1 ram ship (4100 tons, 2 guns 10.5 inch cal.). All these vessels were protected by armor from 4.5 to 6 inches, and the artillery placed on them was part rifled, loaded from the muzzle, and partly smoothbore. In addition, the already existing wooden fleets of individual states, united now, were a significant force consisting of frigates (3200-4000 tons, 50 guns), corvettes (2000 tons, 20 guns), gunboats (250 tons, 4 guns), avisoes, etc. - a total of about 60 vessels.
The ram ship, “Affondatore”, was a rather unique piece of work. It was an ironclad built in Britain and initially designed to rely on her ram as her only weapon, but during construction she was also equipped with two 300-pounder Armstrong guns in the turrets. Its most remarkable feature was a 2.5 meters long ram [3]. It joined the fleet shortly before the battle sailing all the way from Britain.
As far as the number and parameters of the ships were involved, the Italian fleet was grossly superior to the Austrian but its crews were not trained. In addition, the fleet suffered from contradictions and envy between officers arising from the recent merger of two groups - officers of Sardinia and Naples. But the public was not aware of all these issues: construction of the navy cost enormous amount of money, the ships were there and they had to sail against the Austrians to get Venice back.
By the time war was declared only 56 out of 69 steamships and 75 sail ships were ready to sail. The last moment alterations were carried out in Taranto, from where the fleet came out on June 21 - a day after the declaration of war - to Ancona, located on the Adriatic coast. Due to the fact that several low-speed ships were included in the squadron, and the squadron speed did not exceed 4-5 knots, Ancona was reached only on June 25. Here the squadron stopped waiting for supplies and new orders.
The fleet commander, admiral Carlo Pellion di Persano, was 60 years old and while before the war he accomplished an important task pf switching from wood to armor, he hardly was an energetic commander of a battle fleet.
Austrian navy. Strictly speaking, Austrian navy was in a deep s—t. A prevailing opinion was that Austria does not need the ironclads and by the start of war the navy had only 7 of them (2800—4800 tons, 16—30 guns pf 6—10 inches) plus 45 wooden ships. One of the ironclads was not yet fully armored and two were lacking artillery: the ordered Krupp guns became unavailable and had to be replaced with the old smoothbore cannons. But it had a huge asset, Rear Admiral Tegetthoff, who was energetically training his crews paying special attention to the ability to concentrate fire, as he considered it the only way to damage armor by his weak smoothbore artillery. Since June 6, when a sufficient number of vessels were collected, he vigorously began to train his squadron in maneuvering.
Tegetthoff also was improving protection of his old wooden ships by all means possible from adding the new layers of the thick wooden planks and to fixing the rails and anchor chains on their sides.
By the time of the battle the Italians had 34 ships with 695 guns (of which 276 rifled) and a salvo weight of 53,200 pounds against 27 Austrian ships with 525 guns (of which 121 rifled) and a salvo weight of 23,500 pounds.
The battle at Lissa (on the schema below the Austrians are reddish with the ironclads solid red and Italians - the same schema in green).
The Austrian admiral built his squadron in three detachments, in the form of blunt wedges, following one after the other. At the head of the first "wedge" consisting of the ironclads, there was "Ferdinand Max" under the flag of Admiral Tegethoff. They were tasked with cutting through the enemy formation and at the same time ramming enemy ships if possible. The battleships were followed by a second wedge, whose ships had no armor, but had numerous artillery; their task was to finish off the damaged enemy ships. The last were gunboats moving, which, if necessary, had to support the main forces with the fire of their artillery. Such a combat order made it possible to nullify the superiority of the Italians in ships and artillery and deal a strong blow to them with the strongest ships.
And then the most interesting thing began. As soon as Admiral Persano received a message about the enemy, he immediately began to command and transmit so many signals to his ships that they simply did not have time to decipher them on other ships. As a result, Vice Admiral Giovanni Albini, who commanded a detachment consisting of unarmored ships - frigates and corvettes, contrary to Persano's orders, stepped aside with them and therefore did not participate in the battle! Two battleships "Terribile" and "Varez" did not have time to approach the squadron, and "Formidabile" raised the signal that it was incapable, and therefore began to withdraw. The rest of the ironclads started forming the line of bearing but the recently arrived “Affondatore” was not included into the formation. After the ships took their positions Persano suddenly ordered to form a single line ahead and while his ships were reforming the Austrians attacked. To add to everybody’s confusion Persano in the last moment went from his flag ship “Re’d Italia” to “Affondatore” which remained outside the formation. The vanguard ships of the line 13 miles long simply did not notice the signal to slow down (to give the admiral time to get from one ship to another) and kept moving away from the center. By the reason unknown Persano did not send a signal about transferring of his flag and everybody still expected directions from “Re’d Italia”.
Meanwhile, while watching the enemy, Admiral Tegetthoff saw a gap in the line of Italian ships and decided that he had every chance to repeat Admiral Nelson's maneuver at Trafalgar. He ordered to increase the move to the full and rushed into the formed gap. Italian ships met his avant-garde detachment with cruel fire, but at 11 o'clock in the morning he cut the Italian squadron just between its vanguard and the center. The first collision ended to no avail for both sides. The fire of Italian ships was inaccurate, and if their shells hit Austrian ships, the armor did not penetrate at a distance. But the Austrians also failed to ram any of the Italian battleships.
Then Rear Admiral Vacchi, who commanded the Italian vanguard, decided to take the initiative, gained momentum and tried to bypass the Austrian battleships from the east to hit the enemy's armless wooden ships behind them. But the Austrian gunboats managed to evade this attack and began to retreat, as a result of which the three battleships of Vacchi, who rushed after them in pursuit, were essentially withdrawn from the battle.
In the center 7 Austrian ironclads attacked 3 Italian ironclads and all order was lost, thanks to the dense smoke. Meanwhile, Admiral Tegetthoff , very determined, rammed Re d'Italia twice on his Ferdinand Max, but both times unsuccessfully, as the blows he struck turned out to be sliding and the ship's armor did not break through. But the hour of the Italian ironclad has already struck and nothing could save it. Now it was rammed by the battleship Kaiser Maximilian, who broke the steering wheel of the former flagship. Realizing that it was no longer possible to control a single-screw ship, Re d'Italia commander Faa di Bruno tried to withdraw his ship from the battle and headed towards the Ancona, battleship of Admiral Vacchi, counting on help. The path was cut by some Austrian battleship. And then di Bruni, instead of taking the opportunity and ramming the enemy ship, for some reason gave an order to reverse. And it was his fatal mistake, because Ferdinand Max was moving in the smoke to his left. When Tegetthoff recognized in the midst of a smoke the Italian ironclad he ordered “Full speed ahead!” and his ship hit Re’d Italia just in the middle breaking the armor and underlying wood and leaving a hole of 16 sq. meters. Re’d Italia was sinking. Its captain shot himself but the crew kept firing at the enemy till the last moment.
In the middle of a general melee the wooden Austian Kaiser first tried to ram Affondatore and then rammed the Italian ironclad Re de Portigallo (below, Kaiser after the ramming). Of course, the ironclad was only slightly damaged but Kaiser had to leave the battle.
At that point Affondatore steamed at full speed to ram Kaiser, which would be fatal for already damaged wooden ship, but in the last moment Affondatore missed it and Kaiser safely reached harbor of Lissa.
The messy encounter continued for quite a while with all ramming attempts on both sides failing and artillery fire being generally ineffective even if there were fires on two or three Italian ships. At noon the sides disengaged.
The Italian ironclad Palestro caught fire early in a battle and all the time its crew was trying to extinguish it but at 14:30 the fire got to the ammunition and the ship was blown to pieces. The Italians lost their nerve and began disorderly retreat. Tegetthoff immediately gave an order: "Start chasing the enemy!" The Austrian ships quickly reform and began to pursue in three columns. But their battleships, less fast than Italian ones, could not catch up with them. Seeing the aimlessness of the chase, Tegetthoff canceled his order in the evening. After that, at 10 a.m., Admiral Persano went with his ships to Anconu, and Tegetthoff led his squadron to the base in Paul.
Aftermath. The battle of Lissa became iconic and was included in all textbooks on naval tactics, in all manuals for naval commanders and textbooks for midshipmen, in instructions to artillerymen and shipbuilders. Needless to say that most of the conclusions made by the professionals proved to be dead wrong but for the next three decades, until China-Japanese War, Lissa was an etalon of the naval battle.
The consensus was that the ram was the only productive way to go (out of all attempt at Lissa only one was successful but this one was made into a legend). As a result, the stress was on increasing the armor protection and artillery as a winning factor remained underestimated. The main tactics of sea battle began to be considered the ramming strike, which turned the battle into a "dog dump" of individual ships. The design of the ship also began to obey its main combat purpose - a ramming strike! Which brought to live a specific type of a ship, a turreted ramming ironclad. Kind of ironic because the only ship of that type at Lissa, Affondatore, demonstrably failed. Many ships had been built with the rams and they proved to be quite dangerous … for their squadron mates: there were numerous incidents of the “friendly ramming”.
Here Tegethoff controlled the ships, standing on the bridge of his ship, ignoring the shells and fragments - "that's courage and an example for sailors," "and Persano never left the armored wheelhouse of "Affondatore" and ... "that's why he didn't have the courage to ram." In 1904 admiral Witgeft followed this “code of conduct” and was blown to pieces with all his staff leaving Russian squadron leaderless.
_______
[1] New York Times, June 6, 1862
[2] Actually, there were quite serious issues related to the construction of the breach locking mechanism.
[3] Some sources are saying that it was 26 feet long but with the overall length of 308 feet, isn’t it a little bit too much? OTOH, I’m not a specialist and perhaps a lot depends upon what you are counting as a “ram”. I only remember that in some old description of the battle this ram is mentioned as something huge and negatively impacting operations of the ship. Not that this ship accomplished anything worth mentioning so probably it did not matter one way or another.
Last edited:
