| Battle of Kibata | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of East African Campaign | |||||||
  Kibata Battle of Kibata (Tanzania) | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
 Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck | |||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| Unknown | Unknown | ||||||
The Battle of Kibata was fought north-west from Kilwa during the East African Campaign of World War I. The British theatre commander, South African General Jan Smuts, planned to seize Kibata and prevent German forces from withdrawing southwards.
On 14 October 1916, Kibata was reached and the empty fort seized; Germans had withdrawn to the hills. On 6 December 1916, main German troops led by Lettow-Vorbeck advanced on Kibata. British forces were driven out from they outposts to two redoubts on Picquet hill, north of Kibata. The German guns (One recovered from the sunken light cruiser SMS Königsberg ) opened up a bombardment against the two British held redoubts. Later German field companies attacked the redoubts but they were repulsed by the British defenders.
One of the German companies dug itself in on the western slope of Picquet Hill. This German position was named the Lodgement. By then the British forces, Baluchis from India and KAR from Nyasaland (modern-day Malawi),were well dug-in on a series of low hills near Kibata, but German troops with heavy artillery were occupying a surrounding ring of higher hills. The recent recruits became used to the shelling and they quickly adapted to trench warfare. The battle was raging which was more akin to the battlefield in Europe than in the African bush.
On the night of 15 December 1916, British forces attacked the Lodgement German position near British redoubts. The British soldiers in this attack used Mills bombs for the first time in East Africa. The Germans fell back and the Lodgement was occupied by soldiers from the King's African Rifles, supported by a section of Loyal North Lancashire machine gunners. [2]
On 1 January 1917, two 5-inch howitzers of the 14th Howitzer Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery, had arrived at Kibata, [3] [4] which signalled the end of German hopes of destroying the British garrison.
A few days later, Germans withdrew six of nine field companies from the Kibata area to the north to meet General Smuts main British troops which were fighting for crossings over the Rufiji River. On 6 January 1917, Brigadier General O'Grady ordered a general advance and the KAR Askari quickly took the hill crests previously occupied by the Germans.
The Battle of Thiepval Ridge was the first large offensive of the Reserve Army, during the Battle of the Somme on the Western Front during the First World War. The attack was intended to benefit from the Fourth Army attack in the Battle of Morval, by starting 24 hours afterwards. The battle was fought on a front from Courcelette in the east, near the Albert–Bapaume road, to Thiepval and the Schwaben Redoubt in the west, which overlooked the German defences further north in the Ancre valley, the rising ground towards Beaumont-Hamel and Serre beyond.
The Capture of Schwaben Redoubt was a tactical incident in the Battle of the Somme, 1916 during the First World War. The redoubt was a German strong point 500–600 yd (460–550 m) long and 200 yd (180 m) wide, built in stages since 1915, near the village of Thiepval and overlooking the River Ancre. It formed part of the German defensive system in the Somme sector of the Western Front during the First World War and consisting of a mass of machine-gun emplacements, trenches and dug-outs. The redoubt was defended by the 26th Reserve Division, from Swabia in south-west Germany, which had arrived in the area during the First Battle of Albert in 1914. Troops of the 36th (Ulster) Division captured the redoubt on 1 July 1916, until forced out by German artillery-fire and counter-attacks after dark.
The Actions of the Hohenzollern Redoubt took place on the Western Front in World War I from 13 to 19 October 1915, at the Hohenzollern Redoubt near Auchy-les-Mines in France. In the aftermath of the Battle of Loos, the 9th (Scottish) Division captured the strongpoint and then lost it to a German counter-attack. The British attack on 13 October failed and resulted in 3,643 casualties, mostly in the first few minutes. In the History of the Great War, James Edmonds wrote that "The fighting [from 13 to 14 October] had not improved the general situation in any way and had brought nothing but useless slaughter of infantry".
The South African Overseas Expeditionary Force (SAOEF) was a volunteer military organisation in World War I.
The Battle of Latema Nek took place during the East African Campaign in World War I.
The Ordnance QF 4.5-inch howitzer was the standard British Empire field howitzer of the First World War era. It replaced the BL 5-inch howitzer and equipped some 25% of the field artillery. It entered service in 1910 and remained in service through the interwar period and was last used in the field by British forces in early 1942. It was generally horse drawn until mechanisation in the 1930s.
The Ordnance BL 5.4-inch howitzer was a version of the British 5-inch howitzer designed for British Indian Army use, especially on the Northwest Frontier.
The Leipzig Salient was the British term for a German defensive position built in 1915 on the Somme in France, during the First World War, opposite the village of Authuille which contained the Leipzig Redoubt on its west face. The position was to the south-west of the site of the later Thiepval Memorial, north-east of the La Boisselle–Authuille and Thiepval–Aveluy crossroads. The German front line bulged around a quarry which the Germans fortified and enclosed with Hindenburg Trench, across the chord of the salient. A redoubt named the Wundtwerk lay beyond, on a reverse slope. Nab Valley lay on the east side, Thiepval was to the north, with the fortified Mouquet Farm and the village of Pozières to the north-west.
The Capture of Montauban, took place on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, between the British Fourth Army and the French Sixth Army against the German 2nd Army, on the Western Front, during the First World War. Montauban is a commune in the Somme department in Picardy in northern France and lies on the D 64, between Guillemont to the east and Mametz to the west. To the north are Bazentin-le-Petit and Bazentin-le-Grand. Bernafay and Trônes woods are to the north-east and Maricourt lies to the south.
The Capture of La Boisselle was a tactical incident during the Battle of Albert, the name given by the British to the first two weeks of the Battle of the Somme. The village of La Boisselle forms part of the small commune of Ovillers-la-Boisselle about 22 mi (35 km) north-east of Amiens in the Somme department in Picardie in northern France. To the north-east of La Boisselle lies Ovillers; by 1916, the village was called Ovillers by the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to avoid confusion with La Boisselle, south of the road.
The Hohenzollern Redoubt action, 2–18 March 1916 was fought on the Western Front during the First World War. The Hohenzollern Redoubt was a German defensive position north of Loos-en-Gohelle (Loos), a mining town north-west of Lens in France. The Redoubt was fought over by the British and German armies from the Battle of Loos to the beginning of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916. Over the winter of 1915–1916, the 170th Tunnelling Company RE dug several galleries under the German lines in the area of the redoubt, which had changed hands several times since September 1915. In March 1916, the west side was held by the British and the east side was occupied by the Germans, with the front near a new German trench known as The Chord. No man's land had become a crater field and the Germans had an unobstructed view of the British positions from the Fosse 8 slag heap. The British front line was held by outposts to reduce the number of troops vulnerable to mine explosions and the strain of knowing that the ground could erupt at any moment.
The 1st Cornwall Artillery Volunteers were formed in 1860 as a response to a French invasion threat. They served as a Coast Artillery unit during both World Wars, and also manned batteries serving overseas. The unit continued in existence until the dissolution of Coast Artillery in the UK in 1956.
The East Riding Royal Garrison Artillery (ERRGA) was a part-time unit of Britain's Royal Artillery based at Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It provided coastal defence artillery along the Humber Estuary from 1908 to 1956, manned siege batteries on the Western Front during World War I at the Somme and Ypres and played a role in the pursuit of the German army during the Hundred Days Offensive. It served as infantry in Allied-occupied Germany after World War II. Its successor units in the Territorial Army included anti-aircraft artillery and field engineers.
The 1st Hull Heavy Battery was a unit of the British Army in World War I recruited from Kingston upon Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It was the first unit of the Royal Garrison Artillery raised for 'Kitchener's Army' and it went on to serve as a howitzer battery in the East African Campaign and as a siege battery on the Western Front.
The 1st Ayrshire and Galloway Artillery Volunteer Corps was formed in 1859 as a response to a French invasion threat. It transferred to the Territorial Force (TF) in 1908 and its successor units fought with the 52nd (Lowland) Infantry Division in Palestine during World War I, and in North West Europe and Burma during World War II. It continued in the Territorial Army (TA) until amalgamation in 1967.
The IV (4th) Lowland (Howitzer) Brigade, Royal Field Artillery was a new unit formed when Britain's Territorial Force was created in 1908. Its origins lay in the 1st Lanarkshire Artillery Volunteers formed in Glasgow, Scotland, in the 1860s. During World War I the brigade served at Gallipoli and in Egypt. It was broken up in 1916, but its individual batteries served on with other Scottish artillery units for the rest of the war and into World War II.
70th Siege Battery, was a heavy howitzer unit of the Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA) formed during World War I. It saw active service on the Western Front at the Somme, Vimy Ridge and Cambrai, against the German spring offensive, and in the final Hundred Days Offensive.
The 134th (Cornwall) Heavy Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery, was a howitzer battery of the Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA) formed during World War I from a coast defence unit of the Territorial Force in Cornwall. It served in the East African Campaign in 1916–17.
The II Wessex Brigade was a howitzer unit of the Royal Field Artillery in Britain's Territorial Force (TF) that was formed on the Isle of Wight in 1908. It served in India and the Middle East during World War I, one of its batteries being captured at the Siege of Kut in Mesopotamia in 1916, and another seeing active service in the Third Afghan War of 1919. Although reformed after the war, the unit was broken up in 1927.
The 1st Lancashire Artillery Volunteers, popularly known as 'Brown's Corps', was an auxiliary unit of the British Army raised in Liverpool in 1859. As the Lancashire & Cheshire Royal Garrison Artillery in the Territorial Force it was responsible for defending the Mersey Estuary and the coastline of North West England. It was one of the few coast defence units to fire a shot during World War I but also provided personnel for a number of siege batteries that saw action on the Western Front. It continued in the coast defence role during World War II, at the end of which it sent troops to work in the rear areas in Europe. It was reformed postwar but was broken up when the coast artillery branch was abolished in 1956.
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