Sinking of the Szent István

At dawn on 10 June 1918 in the Adriatic, near the island of Premuda north of Zadar, two small Italian MAS torpedo boats attacked a squadron of Austro-Hungarian dreadnoughts that was sailing south. Two torpedoes from MAS 15, which carried Lieutenant Commander Luigi Rizzo, struck the battleship Szent István. The ship fought for her life for almost three hours, then capsized and sank. 89 men were killed. The battleship’s last minutes were filmed from the deck of her sister ship Tegetthoff. The fleet commander, Rear Admiral Miklós Horthy, concluded that he had lost the element of surprise and called off a large operation against the barrage in the Strait of Otranto. It was the last attempt to bring the Austro-Hungarian battle fleet out to fight.

Horthy’s plan

Szent István was the youngest of the four Austro-Hungarian dreadnoughts of the Tegetthoff class. She was built at the Ganz-Danubius yard in Fiume, the only one of the four built in the Hungarian part of the monarchy, which was the price of Budapest’s consent to the naval budgets. She displaced about 20,000 tons, had twelve 305 mm guns and a crew of over a thousand men. She entered service at the end of 1915, but like the other big ships of the fleet she spent almost all her time at Pola. The Austro-Hungarian command kept the battleships in harbour as a “fleet in being”, which by its mere existence tied down Italian and French forces.

The situation changed after the mutiny at Cattaro. At the turn of February and March 1918 command of the fleet was taken over by Horthy, previously captain of the dreadnought Prinz Eugen and hero of the action in the Strait of Otranto in May 1917. He resolved to restore the sailors’ sense of purpose and at the same time to make it easier for German and Austro-Hungarian submarines to get out of the Adriatic into the Mediterranean. The target was again to be the barrage of drifters and nets in the strait, but this time with almost the whole fleet taking part. The light cruisers Novara and Helgoland with destroyers were to strike the barrage, the cruisers Admiral Spaun and Saida were to bombard Otranto, and submarines were to lie in wait off Brindisi and Valona. All four dreadnoughts and three older battleships of the Erzherzog Karl class were to wait in reserve to destroy the Allied cruisers that would set off in pursuit. A film crew from the War Press Office was embarked on Tegetthoff to record the victory.

On the evening of 8 June Viribus Unitis, with Horthy on board, and Prinz Eugen left Pola. A day later Szent István and Tegetthoff sailed under the command of Captain Heinrich Seitz, escorted only by a destroyer and six torpedo boats. Because of confusion at the harbour boom they left more than an hour later than planned, so they tried to make up time. The crew of Szent István, which had spent most of her service in harbour, had no experience at sea. An overheating shaft bearing forced the ship to reduce speed, and attempts to raise steam pressure in the boilers produced thick smoke, visible from afar in the short June night.

The torpedo boats attack

That same night two Italian boats, MAS 15 and MAS 21, were patrolling the waters between the islands around Premuda. They had left Ancona on 9 June to check whether the Austrians were laying mines there. The whole group was commanded by Rizzo, the same man who in December 1917 had sunk the battleship Wien at Trieste. MAS 15 was steered by Chief Coxswain Armando Gori, and MAS 21 by the young guardiamarina, that is, a midshipman of the lowest officer rank, Giuseppe Aonzo. The patrol had found nothing and the boats were returning to their rendezvous with the torpedo boats escorting them. At about 3.15 a.m., in the first light of dawn, Rizzo spotted a great cloud of smoke on the horizon. He soon made out two large ships with an escort. Instead of withdrawing, he decided to use the half-light and attack.

At low speed both boats slipped in between the escorting torpedo boats. At about 3.30 a.m. MAS 15 fired both torpedoes at Szent István from very close range: according to Italian accounts at most 300 metres, according to Austrian ones about 600. Both hit the starboard side abreast the boiler rooms. MAS 21 attacked Tegetthoff. According to the Austrians its torpedoes missed; according to the Italians one hit but did not explode. Torpedo boat 76 went after Rizzo’s boat and opened fire at close range, but Rizzo dropped two depth charges astern and the pursuit ended. Both boats returned to Ancona without loss. On Tegetthoff it was thought to be a submarine attack, and the battleship began to zigzag, firing at supposed periscopes.

Death of a battleship

Water quickly flooded the after boiler room and then seeped into the forward one. The ship heeled to starboard. The crew flooded the tanks on the port side, tried to plug the holes with collision mats, turned the gun turrets to port and threw ammunition overboard. Szent István crawled along at a few knots towards the nearby island of Molat, but one boiler after another went out and the pumps lost power. Tegetthoff tried several times to take her in tow, but submarine alarms interrupted these attempts, and when a line was finally passed, the list was already so great that it had to be cut. The sailors gathered on deck on the high side. The chaplain gave them a last blessing.

At about 6.05 a.m. the battleship turned turtle, and a few minutes later disappeared beneath the water. According to Austrian figures four officers and 85 sailors were killed or missing, and 29 men were wounded. There would have been more victims if the ship had not taken so long to sink and if the sailors of the Austro-Hungarian navy had not been required to be able to swim. Seitz wanted to go down with his ship, but as she capsized he was thrown from the bridge into the water and survived. The War Press Office cameraman and one of Tegetthoff’s officers filmed the ship’s last half-hour. Their footage, showing a crowd of sailors on the listing hull, is among the best-known images of the war at sea. Szent István was the only battleship of this war whose sinking was captured on film.

Consequences

Horthy was convinced that the Italians had learned of his plan, and that same morning he called off the whole operation. The ships turned back to Pola. In fact Rizzo’s boats had come upon the Austrian squadron by chance, and the Italians learned that the fleet had left Pola only later that day, from aerial reconnaissance. The loss of one of the four dreadnoughts and the collapse of morale meant that the Austro-Hungarian battle fleet did not go out on any major operation again before the end of the war.

In Italy the news was received with enthusiasm. Rizzo received his second Gold Medal of Military Valour, and Aonzo was decorated in the same way. After the war MAS 15 went to a museum in Rome, and the anniversary of 10 June later became the Italian Navy’s day, which it remains to this day. The wreck of Szent István, found in the 1970s, lies upside down at a depth of about 66 metres.