Wednesday, January 28, 2015

The Explorers' Club, № CDXXVIII

Operation AXIOM: The World War
24 January 1915: The Battle of Dogger Bank—the successful interception by the British Grand Fleet of a raiding squadron of the German High Seas Fleet, thanks to decoded German naval radio traffic; the German armored cruiser S.M.S. Blücher was lost with nearly a thousand souls aboard.









Commentary: One particularly lamentable feature of the Battle of Dogger Bank is that a German zeppelin bombed—not inflicting any damage, but chasing away—the British destroyers that were attempting to rescue the survivors of the Blücher, the zeppelin's crew apparently mistaking the Blücher for a British ship & thus thinking the destroyers were trying to rescue British instead of German sailors. Despicable behavior by the airship men in either case, & arguably treasonous in that they condemned their own countrymen to watery graves.

Lest we forget.

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