The Austro-Hungarian navy is often times overlooked in history as a meager attempt of trying to
catch up to the rest of the European powers.
However this view isn’t entirely correct, as the Imperial navy was far from small, and
at one point was the 7th largest navy in the world.
Plus the technology used on its ships, like radios was far from outdated and the naval
structure based of off the british navy was on par with every other super power of the
early 20th century.
So with all this said, why people today don’t know much about the Austro-Hungarian navy
let alone know that Austria-Hungary even had a navy.
This is mostly due to the fact that even though the Austro-Hungarian navy was strong in its
own right it was always treated as an afterthought in the Empire.
This can be seen through the fact that the navy was part of the war ministry which was
controlled by the military, as such the naval budget was very small numbering only around
18 million crowns in 1899, this was 5 times less compared to the Italian naval budget
and 30 and a half times less compared to the British naval budget.
However this naval budget would slowly start to increase going in to World War 1, not only
because of the looming threat of war but also due to the fact that Archduke Franz Ferdinand
was very keen on having a large and strong navy as he saw the benefits such naval power
can bring to the country.
He heavily campaigned on the side of the navy and ironically it could be said that without
him the Imperial navy wouldn’t even be ready for world war 1.
But the lack of money was far from the only problem the Austro-Hungarian navy had to face.
For one the multicultural nature of the empire meant that you could hear 8 different languages
or more spoken on any given ship and officers were required to know at least 4 of these
languages.
Naturally such structure didn’t always result in the most smoothest of order executions.
When it came to the sailors them self, majority of them in the 19th century came from Croatia
and Italy as they were largely the only ethnicities in the empire that had any extensive sailing
experience.
However this started to change in the early 20th century when the involvement of minorities
became more prominent across the empire and the naval recruitment and training became
more standardized.
With this increased recruitment of different ethnic groups, to avoid any confusions on
a ship, people of the same/similar ethnicities where often times given similar roles so they
could communicate orders more easily.
I.E.
Germans (Austrian), Czechs, and Slovaks where gunners and machinists, Hungarians where anti-air
and machine-gun crew, Croats and Slovenes where deckhands and stokers, etc.
Lastly, probably the most major problem facing the Austro-Hungarian navy, was in the construction
of it’s ships.
At first the construction was limited due to the lack of Hungarian parliamentary support
who viewed the navy as a pointless expensive waist of money.
However as an all out war started be more and more inevitable they backed down with
their opposition.
But with that another major problem started to come to light, which was the fact that
the double nature of the monarchy meant that all governmental industrial spending had to
be divided between the Hungarian part and the Austrian part, 34.4% to 65.6% respectively.
With that said the 34.4% still proved problematic for the navy to spend in hungary as majority
of the Austro-Hungarian industry was in the Austrian half of the empire.
And whatever little industry was in the Hungarian part wasn’t up to date to be able to build
the high tech ships that the Imperial navy had designed.
So the ship designs had to be altered for the Hungarian industry to be able to build
the 34.4% of the ships.
Most notable of these changes was the use of less powered engines, different electrical
wiring, different boilers, the use of different screws and bolts, etc.
These ships would later on prove not as reliable as the ones build in the Austrian part of
the empire, however what was remarkable was that even due to all these changes the ships
build in the Hungarian part weren’t far behind in benchmarks compared to the Austrian
ships.
With all that said the limited government funding and the division of construction between
the two parts of the empire resulted in the fact that the Austro-Hungarian navy had to
very heavily budget its operations to remain relevant on the world stage.
Such budgeting included restricted use of high class ships, lower number of active operational
squadrents, building ships with a lower overall tonnage and mostly inclusive lower wages compared
to its rivals.
However this budgeting proved to be quite effective as at the break of World War 1 Austria-Hungary
had 110 ships and 5 submarines with 3 extra dreadnoughts in construction, in comparison
the italian navy which was viewed as the main rival of the Imperial navy, had only 149 ships
with 21 submarines and no boats in active construction.
And even though it may be more compared to what the Imperial navy had, considering how
much of a larger budget the Italian navy had to work with, it wasn’t that big of a difference.
Therefor going into world war one the Austro-Hungarian navy was far from being a pushover and the
Allies had to seriously consider the Imperial navy’s strength especially when it came
to planning mediterranean operations.
Speaking of which, when it came to the preparations for WW1 the Imperial navy had three battle
strategies in mind.
The first was conceived prior to the breakup of the triple alliance when Italy was still
considered a viable ally.
This plan involved the Austro-Hungarian navy and the Italian navy to use Italian bases
in Sicily to block the French but mainly the British from crossing the mediterranean and
consequently the suez canal.
This would mean that Britain would be cut off from its fast rout in to the Eastern colonies
and would have to use the long way around which would drastically diminish it’s fighting
power especially when it came to a drawn out war.
However this strategy was far from fool prove as both the Italian and Imperial navies had
their doubts about being able to keep the French and British navies from crossing the
mediterranean.
As such the back up plan was to use the bases in Sicily to heavily haras allied shipping
in the area so that it proved too costly for the Allies to use those shipping routes.
However this entire naval plan fell through when it became increasingly clear that Italy
wasn’t going to follow through on its promise to the triple alliance.
As such the second plan of the Austro-Hungarian navy was to do a preemptive strike on the
main Italian ports in the Adriatic.
Effectively cripeling the Italian ability to do naval operations in the area and anabeling
of the Imperial navy to take full control of that part of the mediterranean.
Third and also the most conservative plan of the Austro-Hungarian navy was to use its
vast number of torpedo boats to focus on the defence of their Adriatic coast line, protecting
valuable ports, towns and shipping, all while threatening to attack with the rest of its
navy at any moment.
This way they could keep the much larger french and italian mediterranean navis in check effectively
hindering their actions in other theaters of the war.
When the great war started in 1914 the initial neutrality of Italy meant that the Imperial
navy had to implement their defencive tactic as they couldn't execute their preemptive
bombardment of the Italian adriatic coastline.
When Italy finally joined the war in 1915 the imperial navy executed their second plan
however this proved ineffective as their “preemptive” strike proved not so preemptive as Italy had
ample time to prepare for it.
With that the Imperial navy went back to their defencive strategy, which proved effective,
because the Allied navies didn’t want to risk a full on naval battle with them, resorting
to small battle missions and the blockade of the Otranto Straits.
This meant that there were continues small skirmishes/battles throughout the adriatic,
like the battle of the Otranto straits where the Imperial navy manage to score a victory,
but that battle just as every other Imperial naval battle didn’t result any decisive
changes.
So the Austro Hungarian navy excluding its submarines was forced to operate only in the
adriatic.
This stagnation combined with a dwindling coal supply, meant that the Austro-Hungarian
navy didn’t go out with a bang but with fizzle.
Keeping the allied armies at bay in the adriatic but remaining largely stagnant till the end
of the war, after which it got divided between the Allies and the newly formed Yugoslavia
and then mostly disassembled for scrap.
And with that the Austro-Hungarian navy which was able to hold its own against the allied
navies got mostly forgotten.
Remaining today largely as a small footnote when talking about the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
This videos is part of a much larger youtube naval history collaboration code named Operation
Odysseus involving 17 different history youtube channels.
Out of these youtubers Potential History and Wartime History have videos set in the 20th
century just as mine was so check them out and if you want to see all the operation odysseus
videos there’s a link to a playlist down in the description.
Me and Cogito also have a youtube history podcast you can check out and my name is M.Laser,
see you next time.