page_title: Battle for Lake Tanganyika
section_title: Götzen is scuttled
hierarchical_section_title: Battle for Lake Tanganyika / Battle / Götzen is scuttled
caption_attribution_description: English: Waterairplanes on lake Tanganyika during the East African Campaign, First World war, at M'Toa (DRC), c. 1916.
context_page_description: 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 HMS Fifi. 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.
context_section_description: The flotilla returned to shore with their prisoners, and the following day Götzen appeared offshore, steaming slowly past in search of the missing Hedwig. Alerted, the crews rushed to man their boats, but Spicer-Simson forbade an attack. Shortly afterward, Spicer-Simson left the lake for Stanleyville, in search of a boat to rival Götzen. He found one such vessel—St George, a steel boat belonging to the British consul at Banana—and had her dismantled, dragged to Lake Tanganyika and reassembled. By the time he returned in May, the German position on the lake had deteriorated further. The Belgians were about to capture Kigoma and a British force was pushing north toward Bismarckburg. The expedition was to support land operations from the lake, and the flotilla, consisting of Mimi, Toutou, Fifi and Vengeur arrived off Bismarckburg on 5 June. Finding the harbour defended by a fort, Spicer-Simson decided not to attack, and withdrew to Kituta. 
   This allowed the German forces to escape in a fleet of dhows, an act which provoked the anger of the army commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Murray. The naval expeditionary force remained at Bismarckburg, where Spicer-Simson was chastened to learn that the fort's guns were in fact wooden dummies.
  Meanwhile, the British had provided the Belgians with four Short Type 827 floatplanes to attack Götzen at Kigoma. Several bombing runs were made, but unbeknownst to either the British or the Belgians, Zimmer had been ordered by his commanding officer—Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck—to remove most of Götzen′s armament, including the 105 mm (4.1 in) autocannon taken from Königsberg, and send them to be used by the army in the field. Wooden dummies were mounted to maintain the illusion of a heavily armed ship. Kigoma fell to General Charles Tombeur′s forces on 28 July, during the Tabora Offensive, but Götzen was already gone. The Germans had sailed the ship to the south of Kigoma Bay and,  after having her engines thoroughly greased in case there should be need to make use of her again, filled her with sand and carefully scuttled her on 26 July in a depth of 20 m near the banks of the Katabe Bay (Belgian designation: Baie de l’éléphant; British designation: Bangwe Bay) at the Position 04° 54' 05" S; 029° 36' 12" E.
caption: Thowing a hydroplane afloat near the lake, c. 1916.
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