German East Asia Squadron
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The East Asia Squadron (in the rear, under steam) leaving Valparaiso harbour in Chile, with Chilean cruisers in the foreground

The German East Asia Squadron was a German Kaiserliche Marine (naval) cruiser squadron which operated mainly in the Pacific Ocean between the 1870s and 1914.

The squadron initially had no base. Admiral Tirpitz had visited the Chinese coast in 1896 and selected the existing harbour at Kiautschou as a likely site. German offers to buy the site were refused, but the deaths of two German missionaries on 1 November 1897 provided an excuse for a cruiser squadron led by Rear Admiral Otto von Diederich to land troops on 14 November 1897. China was militarily weak: a 99 year lease on the port was granted in March 1899 and colonisation of the territory began. A naval base with a supporting, neighboring infrastructure was then built at the fishing village of Tsingtao (now Qingdao) to create the Ostasiatische Station (East Asia Station) of the Imperial Navy.^[1]

At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the East Asia Squadron under the command of Vice Admiral Count von Spee was at sea, outnumbered by Allied navies in the region. Spee was especially wary of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Royal Australian Navy — in fact he described the latter's flagship, the battlecruiser HMAS Australia as being superior to his entire force by itself. The German squadron, consisting of the armored cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the light cruisers Nürnberg, Leipzig and Dresden headed towards the eastern Pacific; the light cruiser Emden, was to engage in a raiding campaign in the Indian Ocean.

Raids by Emden

Main article: SMS Emden (1906)

The Emden disrupted trade throughout the Indian Ocean, intercepting 29 ships and sinking those belonging to Britain or its allies. At the Battle of Penang she sank the Russian protected cruiser Zhemchug and the French destroyer Mousquet, catching the Russian ship by surprise while in harbour. At Madras she destroyed oil storage facilities by shelling. The ship finally met its end on 9 November 1914 after a prolonged struggle with HMAS Sydney at the Battle of Cocos.

Flight of the squadron from Tsingtao

Map of Tsigngtao in 1906

The main body of the squadron engaged the British West Indies Squadron on 1 November 1914 at the Battle of Coronel, sinking HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth. It was while attempting to return home via the Atlantic that the squadron was destroyed on 8 December 1914 in the Battle of the Falkland Islands by a superior British force of battlecruisers and cruisers .

The four small gunboats Iltis, Jaguar, Tiger and Luchs of the East Asia Squadron that had been left at Tsingtao were scuttled by their crews just prior to the capture of the base by Japan in September 1914 during the Siege of Tsingtao.

References

• Robert Massie (2004). Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the winning of the Great War. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0224 040928. 
• Arthur Marder (1961-1970). From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow (5 Vols). London: Oxford University Press. 

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