…U.S. Shot Fired in the First World War.
"strange as it may seem, the very first shot fired by the United States in the First World War did not occur anywhere near the battlefields of Europe. Instead, as Commander Owen Bartlett, USN related in the following excerpts from his August, 1931 Proceedings article, the shot was made nearly half a world away in the harbor of Guam.
"The first violent hostile act of the war between the United States and Germany probably was the destruction of the S.M.S. Cormoran by her own commander in Apra Harbor, Guam. To those actively participating, the episode loomed large in interest, and in tragedy, owing chiefly to the unique situation which, over a long period of time, had permitted the friendly intercourse between the personnel of the ship and the colony ashore. In a large community, this friendly interest between the ship's company of an interned vessel and the authorities of the neutral nation could not have been feasible; but in Guam, no one could get away, and the addition of cultured foreign officers was a distinct boon to the small group that formed the local society. A number of the German officers and several of the chief petty officers lived ashore. Moreover the enlisted men were granted regular liberty, more or less restricted to certain localities.
"S.M.S. Cormoran that figures in this yarn had originally been a Russian liner, captured by the German gunboat of that name. The gunboat had been cruising the South Seas when war broke in 1914. She picked up the officers and crew of a German survey and scientific ship; scuttled the ship; captured the Russian; and took the latter into Tsingtao, where she was reconditioned along with the Emden, Prinz Eitel Ereidrich and others, and, as the "new" S.M.S. Cormoran, started out on a career of commerce destruction. Luck was not with her and she ran short of coal…"
Full article here
link
Amicalement
Armand
goes to sea with the Terrain Mat.
