Prior to the 20th century, Austria-Hungary had let its navy lapse. The main reason was a lack of funding for a big navy and the other was a lack of interest by the leaders of the two kingdoms. Their long time rival, Italy, had signed a treaty with the Empire and with that threat thought to be gone, even less emphasis was placed on having big ships. This changed with Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne took power. He was very much pro-navy and realized that Austria-Hungary needed to project power in order to protect its merchant fleet and trade in the Adriatic and Mediterranean, especially its trade with the Levant.

So in the 1890s, plans were put to produce their first battleships. These were not large ships, and eventually would be little more than coastal defense ships, but their guns made them superb shore bombardment ships and it is in this role that they served during WWI. But I am getting ahead of myself. As time progressed, larger and larger ships were designed and built. All the time, the designers had to keep in mind that there was not a lot of money to be had and so these could not be as well armed, as well armored or as large as the naval planners would have hoped. But they were enough.

When Austria-Hungary became involved in WWI, the admirals of the fleet knew that their ships would be at a disadvantage against British, and later Italian ships, so were very careful about when and where they sortied. There never was a ship to ship battle with these ships. Aside from the very early ships being used for shore bombardment, the rest of the fleet took up much of the opposition's fleets as a 'fleet in being'. They were very successful in this regard, forcing to the Allies to keep ships in the area that they would have much rather used elsewhere, 'just in case'.

In this latest edition of Osprey's New Vanguard series, author Ryan Noppen tells us the story of the big ships of the Austro-Hungarian navy. From their inception through the building of all five classes of ships, we can see how each subsequent design was an improvement over the ones before it. Half of the book is devoted to the operational record of these ships and the various battles in which they were involved. True, most of these actions were against high value shore targets, but they performed their missions as expected. A couple were destroyed by Italian torpedo boats, both occasions being ones where the laxity of security was the cause for loss.

Included in this book are some superlative period photographs of the men and ships. This is additionally enhanced by the excellent art work of Paul Wright. It is a well done addition to the series and tells the story of the interesting, and rarely covered capital ships. 

October 2012

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