Читать книгу Deeper into the Darkness онлайн

27 страница из 184

The two cruisers Hogue and Cressy, initially believing that Aboukir had struck a mine, closed the stricken ship to rescue survivors. U 9 then fired two torpedoes at Hogue from a distance of about 300 metres. Both torpedoes were hits – she was mortally wounded, and capsized and sank within 10 minutes.

Shortly after, U 9 fired two torpedoes at Cressy from her stern tubes at a range of just under 1,000 metres. One torpedo missed – but the other hit the cruiser on her starboard side. U 9 then came about and fired her remaining bow torpedo at Cressy, striking her in the port beam. Cressy heeled over and capsized.

In this one action, three valuable 12,000-ton British armoured cruisers had been sent to the bottom of the North Sea, with the loss of 1,459 officers and men. Coming so soon after Pathfinder, it was another stunning success for the German submarine campaign.

The following month, on 15 October, the same submarine, U 9, sank the 7,770-ton protected cruiser HMS Hawke in the North Sea whilst on patrol off Aberdeen. Then the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Formidable was torpedoed and sunk in the English Channel on 1 January 1915 by U 24. In all nine Royal Navy vessels had been sunk in the opening months of the war for the loss of five German submarines. If the German submarine threat had not been fully understood and feared by the Royal Navy at the beginning of the war, it certainly was now.