Impressionant, cet épisode de la première guerre mondiale m'était complètement étrangeru-boat.net a écrit :The Austrians had already demonstrated their combat readiness, when on 27th April 1915, SM U-V (Kptlt. Georg Ritter von Trapp) hit the French armoured cruiser Léon Gambetta (12,500 tons) at the mouth of the Adriatic in a submerged night attack with two torpedoes - the first time a submarine attacked submerged at night. The cruiser sank within 20 minutes, taking 648 men of its crew of 821 to the bottom of the Otranto Strait. On 5th August 1915, SM U-V very narrowly escaped destruction in a torpedo duel with the Italian submarine Nereide off the Adriatic island of Pelagosa. The Italians fired first but missed, and then one more carefully aimed Austrian torpedo hit its mark, sinking the Italian submarine with all of its crew. Ritter von Trapp, who was to become Austria's leading ace, was then promoted to Korvettenkapitän and in October 1915 took over the captured and converted French submarine Curie ** as SM U-XIV which was very successful in the tonnage war under his command. The small Austrian submarine force proved to be a true elite with an outstanding record: They conducted 79 torpedo attacks with a hit rate of above 90%. At the end of the war though, SM U-XIV along with the rest of Austria-Hungary's Navy had to be handed over to the Yugoslavs and the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Navy ceased to exist.
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P.S. : c'est moi qui ai mis en gras
