The Battle of Tanga ends

On 5 November 1914 Indian Expeditionary Force “B” finished re-embarking on the transports lying off Tanga. So ended the expedition that had sailed from Bombay on 16 October to conquer the whole of German East Africa. Major-General Arthur Aitken’s roughly 8,000 soldiers had been defeated by about a thousand askaris under Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.

After the defeat of 4 November

The day before, the main attack on the town had ended in a rout. Two battalions did break into Tanga, but the weaker Indian units on the left wing collapsed under fire, attacked in addition by swarms of wild bees enraged by the shooting. A German bayonet counter-attack turned the retreat into flight. In the evening the remnants of the force gathered by the beaches where they had landed.

During the night of 4–5 November the town was almost undefended for several hours, because through a misunderstanding some of the German units had withdrawn from it. The British did not know this. Aitken decided that his troops were unfit for further fighting and ordered them back to the ships.

The evacuation

The re-embarkation was carried out in haste. Most of what had been unloaded earlier was left on the shore: rifles, machine guns, hundreds of thousands of rounds, field telephones, clothing and stores. On the morning of 5 November the force’s intelligence officer, Captain Richard Meinertzhagen, went under a white flag to the German positions. He handed over medicines for the wounded and Aitken’s apology for the British warships having shelled the German hospital. The question of the wounded was also settled. Wounded British officers who had been captured were released on parole, on their word of honour not to fight again in this war.

According to British figures the force’s losses amounted to more than 800 killed and wounded, including about 360 killed, as well as about 150 missing. The Germans lost about 150 men. Lettow-Vorbeck captured so many weapons and so much ammunition that he could arm several new companies. For a colony cut off from Germany by the British blockade it was an invaluable haul.

Consequences

The subsidiary attack had also failed. Two days earlier General James Stewart’s troops had been repulsed at Longido, north-west of Kilimanjaro. The British plan for a quick conquest of the German colony had collapsed. Direction of operations in East Africa passed from the Government of India to the War Office in London, which decided for the time being to confine itself to the defence of British East Africa.

Aitken paid for the defeat with his career. He was recalled, and command in East Africa passed to General Richard Wapshare. In 1915 Aitken was reduced to the rank of colonel. In Britain little was written about the battle for a long time, and the official history of the war later called it one of the most notable failures in the history of the British Army.

For Lettow-Vorbeck Tanga was his first great victory. It strengthened his position towards the governor of the colony, Heinrich Schnee, who would have preferred to avoid war, and gave his askaris self-confidence. From then on the German commander waged a four-year campaign in which he tied down in East Africa Allied forces many times larger than his own.