Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen with men of Jasta 11.

Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen.

Australia’s First Great Naval Action

In the early months of the First World War, as major land campaigns developed in France and Flanders, East Africa and Mesopotamia , the much anticipated war at sea seemed to have taken a back seat. There were indeed significant actions - at Heligoland Bight in August, at Coronel in November and off the Falklands in December. But the expected clash of great navies never occurred.
 At a time when most of Germany’s warships and merchant fleets had been blockaded or bottled up, one naval tactic seemed to harken back to the old days of naval warfare. This was was the German use of ‘commerce raiders’ - the ‘sea wolves’ who acted alone and ranged the high seas striking at any and all enemy targets. They were good value for the money - single warships, re-supplied at sea, striking almost without warning in remote imperial outposts and attacking merchant shipping wherever they met. Their psychological and propaganda value was probably worth as much as their naval impact.
 About nine German warships served in this role in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, tying down over 70 Allied warships (including Russian and Japanese) at various times until hunted down one by one. One of the most famous was the German cruiser Königsburg. She ranged over the Indian Ocean in 1914, sinking British shipping (and even an aged warship, HMS Pegasus) until she was trapped in the Rufigi Delta in Tanganyka and destroyed in July o1915 by a force which included monitors Severn and Mersey.
 Undoubtedly the most famous and successful German commerce raider was the Dresden-class light-cruiser Emden, originally part of the German Easy Asia squadron under Admiral Graf Max von Spee. Launched in 1908, Emden displaced 4,200 tons and was fast and well armed, with ten 4.1” guns and a crew of 360 under command of Korvettekapitän Karl von Müller. Müller himself had suggested the idea of separating his ship from von Spee’s squadron and his tactics were simple - hit and run, avoiding serious engagements and without staying in place too long enough for the newly-installed wireless technology to enable the enemy to locate her and concentrate against her.
 Emden almost had the field to herself in the early days of the war, ranging around the vastness of the Indian Ocean and attacking, sinking or capturing a range of allied merchant ships around the coasts of India and the Dutch East Indies - over 20 merchant vessels British, Russian, and French, became her victims. Undoubtedly her most audacious action was to attack the the great port of Madras on the 22nd of September 1914. The physical damage she did at Madras was hardly significant, but the propaganda effect was huge - a major Indian port not capable of being defended by the Royal Navy. She achieved the another signal success when, disguised as a British warship, she audaciously attacked Penang Harbor in October 1914, sinking a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer.
 Clearly, something had to be done about the Emden, but the question was just how much naval harware should be diverted from more important duties to chase down one single warship whose whereabouts on the high seas at any time were something of a mystery.
  After weeks of freely attacking allied shipping, Emden was suddenly reported off the remote Cocos-Keeling Islands, 800 miles south of Sumatra. Here on the 9th of November 1914, she targeted the important Eastern Telegraph Company on Directional Island which linked Singapore, Australia and South Africa. Captain Müller put ashore a landing party which had no difficulty in destroying the undefended wireless installations but unfortunately for him, the wireless staff were quick off the mark as the Germans landed and sent out SOS messages and signaled the presence of an unidentified enemy warship.
 In a sense, since the areas they covered were so huge and the forces available to hunt them down were so huge and the forces available to hunt them down were so scattered, it had to be largely a matter of chance that the raiders would eventually meet their match. And so it happened with the Emden. Coincidentally a convoy carrying a part of the Australian Expeditionary Force to Europe was passing within 100 miles of the Cocos Island when the signal reached them.

Tranchée des Baionnettes

Two battalions of the 137th Infantry Regiment, deployed at the front since the 10th of June, were the object of appalling shelling and very soon found themselves cut off. The regiment’s third company had lost 94 of its 164 men by the night of the 11th. The remainder had been placed in row of exposed trenches directly observable by German artillery spotters. The artillery fire on the position increased in the early morning hours and the remainder of 137th Regiment was annihilated almost to a man. . Author Alistair Horne tells what subsequently transpired.

The history of the  Fallschirmjäger begins in the post World War I years of Germany, when Herman Wilhelm Göring having been a foreign observer during a training display by the Soviet paratroopers in 1935 and was greatly impressed. After which Göring who at the time was the newly appointed leader of the Luftwaffe* (German Air Service) set about making a Fallschirmjäger Lehrschule (Paratrooper training school.)

In January 1936, 600 men and officers  of whom were all volunteers from Regiment General Göring having formed the 1st Jäger Battalion/RGG, commanded by Major Bruno Bräuer, who helped set up training centers in Altengrabow and also Döberitz Germany respectively.

As a Major commanding this battalion, Bräuer was the first to make a student training jump as well as first to hold a Fallschirmschützenschein (paratroopers license.)  By 1938 he was in command of the first Fallschirmjäger regiment-Major Von Grazy succeeded him as commander of the 1st Battalion. 

The first major operation of the Fallschirmjäger during World War Two was during Operation Weserübung, the invasion of Denmark during the early hours of April 9th, 1940. Their role during this was to take an airfield located in Sola, near Stavanger, which formed a spring board for the Luftwaffe to invade Norway. During this operation they also secured bridges in Aalborg.

*Note: Unlike the American Army, and those of UK and the British Commonwealth the German paratroopers fell under command of their air force rather than the Heer (German Army.)