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Concept
Battle for Lake Tanganyika
Summary
The Battle for Lake Tanganyika was a series of naval engagements that took place between elements of the Royal Navy, Force Publique and the Kaiserliche Marine between December 1915 and July 1916, during the First World War. The intention was to secure control of the strategically important Lake Tanganyika, which had been dominated by German naval units since the beginning of the war. The British forces – consisting of two motor boats named HMS Mimi and Toutou – were under the command of the eccentric Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson. The boats were transported to South Africa and from there by railway, by river, and by being dragged through the African jungle, to the lake.
In two short engagements, the small motor boats attacked and defeated two of their German opponents. In the first action, on 26 December 1915 Kingani was damaged and captured, becoming . In the second, the small flotilla overwhelmed and sank Hedwig von Wissmann. The Germans maintained a third large and heavily armed craft on the lake, Graf von Götzen; this craft was attacked indecisively by Belgian aircraft and was subsequently scuttled. Developments in the land-based conflict caused the Germans to withdraw from the lake, and control of the surface of Lake Tanganyika passed to the British and Belgians.
Lake Tanganyika lies between what was then the Belgian Congo on the western side and German East Africa on the eastern side. By the start of the war, the Germans had two warships on Lake Tanganyika: the Hedwig von Wissmann, and the Kingani. Hedwig von Wissmann was quickly armed with four pom-pom guns taken from the scuttled survey ship Möwe and sailed out to the port of Lukuga on the Belgian side of the lake, where on 22 August she attacked the Belgian steamer Alexandre Del Commune, sinking her after two further raids.
This gave the Germans unchallenged superiority on the lake, with their position strengthened further with the sinking of the British African Lakes Corporation's steamer Cecil Rhodes in a raid in November 1914.
Official source
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