Saturday, January 24, 2015

Sunday, January 24, 1915. The Battle of Dogger Bank.

The Royal Navy defeated the  Imperial German Navy's Kaiserliche Marine  in the North Sea, sinking the German armoured cruiser SMS Blücher with a loss of 792 sailors and disabling the German battleshp SMS Seyditz, with a loss of 159 men, in the Battle of Dogger Bank.


People like to claim that the German and British fleets basically did nothing during the Great War as to surface actions outside of the Battle of Jutland, but it simply isn't true.  The Battle of Dogger Bank was a major action in which the Royal Navy bested the Germans.

The SMS Blücher sinking.

More realistically, the Germans were simply bested by the British routinely until prudence demanded that it stay in safe harbors as to surface vessels.

The Germans, it might be noted, used Zeppelins in the battle, but without much effect.

Rebel leader and Baptist minister John Chilembwe split up his forces, sending one group to the towns of Blantyre and Limbe in hopes of capturing weapons from stores owned by the African Lakes Company.  The other group went to a plantation owned by the  A. L. Bruce Estates, also for weapons.

On the same day, Chilembwe requested German aid, a naive assumption about German goals in the war.

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