This new book covers the Austro-Italian Naval War (1866) a little-known part of late 19th century naval history. The Battle of Lissa took place on 20 July 1866, it was the first major sea battle between ironclads and one of the last to involve deliberate ramming. The background, operations, and outcomes are described in detail. All the ships involved, both Austrian and Italian, are described and illustrated with full technical specifications. This book is also profusely illustrated with scale drawings and photos.
Each of the innovations inspired by the Industrial Revolution encountered considerable resistance from conservative thinkers opposed to change, on technical, financial and political grounds; these included many well respected figures in the Navy, as well as leading politicians.
The Battle of Lissa or Battle of Vis (Croatian: Bitka kod Visa) took place on 20 July 1866 in the Adriatic Sea near the Dalmatian island of Vis (Lissa in Italian) and was a significant victory for a fleet of the Austrian Empire over a numerically superior Italian. One of the main reasons for this poor performance was the internal rivalry between the commanders of the Italian fleet and, as a consequence, the Italian admirals Albini and Vacca, with their ships, did not face the enemy during the entire battle. We understand that the Austrian maneuver was consistent and the best possible according to the available means, and also had luck in its favor and the failures of the Italian fleet. So let s test a hypothesis in which the latter will have its main tactical shortcomings corrected.
This is a translation of the 1867 work by Alexander Hold, Geschichte der Feldzugs in Italien 1866, which describes in detail the campaign of the previous year, fought between the armed forces of the Austrian empire and the kingdom of Italy in the Austrian province of Venetia and the southern Tyrol and on the Adriatic Sea. The author served in the Engineers during the Campaign of 1859, and during the Campaign of 1866 was a Captain present with the Austrian headquarters throughout the Custoza campaign. As such, he was ideally placed to provide a detailed account of his countrymen's efforts - he was a first-hand observer and would have taken part in discussions of Austrian strategic planning before and during it. Moreover, since he was on the staff he would have immediate knowledge of the other aspects of Austrian staff work of the period, the administration of the railways and telegraphs and the collection of intelligence. As a result, Hold's views about the forces of the participants, his comments on the terrain of the theatre of war and his assessment of the correct and incorrect decisions made by the Austrian and Italian high commands are of considerable interest. This is because they shed informed light on what is the often forgotten part of the 1866 war, and a close study of his figures and assessments will repay all students of this campaign. Naturally, Hold gives the Austrian point of view, one that occasionally is a bit partisan, but because of the subject, this is only natural. His own countrymen received the work well, and it has been called the first objective and learned treatment of the Italian campaign of 1866. This new translation by Stuart Sutherland, who also supplies extensive explanatory notes, is an important contribution to the literature available for this most interesting and important 19th Century campaign. This book provides a very detailed account not only of the principal Battle of Custoza, but also the Campaign in the Tyrol, and the naval war in the Adriatic that culminated in the Battle of Lissa.
This is a history of the Austro-Prussian-Italian War of 1866, which paved the way for German and Italian unification. It is based upon extensive new research in the state and military archives of Austria, Germany, and Italy. Geoffrey Wawro describes Prussia's successful invasion of Habsburg Venetia, and the wretched collapse of the Austrian army in July 1866. Although the book gives a thorough accounting of both the Prussian and Italian war efforts, it is most notable for the light it sheds on the Austrians. Through painstaking archival research, Wawro reconstructs the Austrian campaign, blow-by-blow, hour-by-hour. Blending military and social history, he describes the terror and panic that overtook Austria's regiments of the line in each clash with the Prussians. He reveals the unconscionable blundering of the Austrian commandant and his chief deputies who fumbled away key strategic advantages and ultimately lost a war - crucial to the fortunes of the Habsburg Monarchy - that most European pundits had predicted they would win.
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Called by some a "Mediterranean Jutland," the Battle of the Otranto Straits involved warships from Austria, Germany, Italy, Britain, and France. Although fought by light units with no dreadnoughts involved, Otranto was a battle in three dimensions -- engaging surface vessels, aircraft, and subsurface weapons (both submarines and mines). An attempt to halt the movement of submarines into the Adriatic using British drifters armed with nets and mines led to a raid by Austrian light cruisers. The Austrians inflicted heavy damage on the drifters, but Allied naval forces based at Brindisi cut off their withdrawal. The daylight hours saw a running battle, with the Austrians at considerable risk. Heavier Austrian units put out from Cattaro in support, and at the climactic moment the Allied light forces had to turn away, permitting the Austrians to escape. In the end, the Austrians had inflicted more damage than they suffered themselves. The Otranto action shows the difficulties of waging coalition warfare in which diplomatic and national jealousies override military efficiency.
The Austro-Hungarian navy warrants recognition because it functioned far better than most organs of the multinational Habsburg state. Ultimately, in the pre-World War I age of navalism, the fleet provided a unique common cause for a wide variety of nationalities and political parties. Dramatic funding increases fueled the expansion of the fleet, and lucrative naval contracts, judiciously distributed, reinforced and further broadened the navy's base of support. Though often criticized by its German ally, the Austro-Hungarian navy succeeded in defending the Adriatic throughout World War I, in the process requiring the constant attention of a significant share of enemy sea power; as late as the spring of 1918, an American admiral characterized the Adriatic as "an Austrian lake." The navy collapsed only when Austria-Hungary as a whole disintegrated, in the last days of the war. This detailed study charts the uneven growth of the Austro-Hungarian navy from its high point following Archduke Ferdinand Max's administration and the War of 1866 to its ultimate dissolution after World War I. In following this development, Sondhaus not only relates the operational aspects of the Habsburg navy but also traces the growth of popular navalism in Austria-Hungary, the role of naval expansion in stimulating industrial development, and the peculiar difficulties of navy commanders in dealing with the Habsburg nationality problem and the cumbersome politics of Austro-Hungarian dualism. Drawing on a vast variety of archival sources and government documents and protocols, Sondhaus analyzes economic factors carefully and shows how these tended to complicate, perhaps even to override, political divisions. He ably demonstrates how such varied factors as the wavering policy of Italy, French naval theory, the need for consensus within the Dual Monarchy, and the general European escalation in naval armaments influenced the fortunes of the fleet.
