* On 6 August 1914, two days after Britain declared war on Germany over the German invasion of Belgium, ten German U-boats left their base in Heligoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea. They were effectively all the blue-water submarines the Germans had. It was the first submarine war patrol in history. It was also a fiasco. One of the U-boats was sunk in a minefield; another, the "U-15", fired torpedoes at several British warships and missed each time. The U-15 was later rammed and sunk by the Royal Navy cruiser BIRMINGHAM while the U-boat was trapped on the surface by mechanical troubles.
The U-boats went on following war patrols in small numbers, however, and they finally got lucky on 5 September 1914, when a U-boat commanded by Lieutenant Otto Hersing torpedoed the Royal Navy light cruiser PATHFINDER. The cruiser's magazine exploded and the ship sank in four minutes, taking 259 of her crew with her. It was the first combat victory of the modern submarine.
The German U-boats were to get even luckier on 22 September. Early in the morning of that day, a lookout on the conning tower of the "U-9", commanded by Lieutenant Otto Weddigen, spotted a vessel on the horizon. Weddigen ordered the U-boat to submerge immediately, and the submarine went forward to investigate. At closer range, Weddigen discovered three old Royal Navy light cruisers, the ABOUKIR, the CRESSY, and the HOGUE. These three vessels were antiquated, staffed mostly by reservists, and were so clearly vulnerable that a decision to withdraw them was already filtering up through the bureaucracy of the Admiralty. The order didn't come soon enough.
Weddigen sent one torpedo into the ABOUKIR. The captains of the HOGUE and CRESSY assumed the ABOUKIR had struck a mine and came up to assist. The U-9 put two torpedoes into the HOGUE, and then hit the CRESSY with two more torpedoes as the cruiser tried to flee. It was like shooting fish in a barrel: the U-9 sank three British cruisers in less than a hour, killing 1,460 British sailors. Three weeks later, on 15 October, Weddigen also sank the old cruiser HAWKE. The crew of the U-9 became national heroes. Each was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class, except for Weddigen, who received the Iron Cross First Class.
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