Bulgarian Mutiny in July 1918

[Rockdoc]

In July 1918, AA Subsections on the Doiran Front are reporting a significant drop in enemy flights over Allied lines but are also noting that there were groups of between 3 and 7 Albatros D.IIIs flying daily patrols 10,000 yards behind enemy lines. Immediately facing the British along this part of the line was the Bulgarian 9th Division, which is said to have been a crack unit whose loyalty never wavered but I can't find anything about the state of the troops in the reserve areas.

Under the Devil's Eye says there had been quite a number of desertions on the Struma Front in early July. The first men said that there was to be an attack but later men said that this had been abandoned due to a mutiny. There is some evidence that enemy aircraft were also patrolling over their own lines on this Front, too. Overall, flights here had increased - possibly in association with the planned attack - but perhaps also to prevent a large-scale defection by Bulgarian troops.

How extensive was the mutiny and how much did it contribute to the rapid collapse of resistance when the Allies went onto the offensive a couple of months later?

Keith

[David B]

Keith,

Not sure whether this article will be of any help, but it's a good read of the situation anyway.

http://memorabilia.homestead.com/files/Sal...nia_1916_18.htm

Cheers David

[Rockdoc]

Thanks, David. I'd come across the site before and it does make good reading. I'm trying to put the records from the Diaries into some kind of context. It's not always easy because they don't reference infantry movements, as you'd expect as they had no connection to them, but that is how most histories of any war are written. I'm trying not to add two and two and get seventy-five....!

If there was a planned attack on the Struma Front then the marked increase in flights would make sense as the enemy attempted coordinated reconnaissance of our territory. The threat was clear enough to move three more AA guns into the XVIth Corps area in mid-May 1918. Fine, All ducks present and correct and in a row.

What doesn't make obvious sense is why there would be a need to waste fuel, which Peter Hart said at the Convention was in very short supply for the Germans by 1918, on daily patrols by not just one but flights of aircraft 10,000 yards behind their lines on the Doiran Front. When you add to it that these planes never crossed their lines or even came into range of the AA guns it's so bizarre that there has to have been a very good reason.

Keith

[David B]

I wouldn't have thought that reconnaissance would have needed flights of aircraft, surely one or maybe two would have been enough for that pursuit, so there

must have been another reason. I could think of a few, many laughable but how about training, familiarization, even fuel wasting if thats what they wanted, but

the real reason escapes me.

Cheers David

[Rockdoc]

They might have been rehearsing something, I suppose, but to spend a month at it seems excessive. Albatros D.IIIs (Centurion is sure they were actually D.Vs) were Scouts so their capabilities for serious reconnaissance would have been limited, compared to the C-series two-seaters from Albatros, Rumpler and Aviatik that were also flying in Salonika.

To quote Churchill: It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.....

Keith

[David B]

Do you think that they were trying to get allied airforce aircraft to react, although nearly 6 miles inside their own lines shows a certain timidness. My other point

is that I don't think that flights of aircraft would be necessary for recce, one or two would be quite sufficient for the purpose.

David

[Rockdoc]

I genuinely have no idea, David. The D.III was a single-seat fighter so it would more likely be used to escort a C-series plane during a reconnaissance mission than undertake one. In any case, why would you need to take aerial photos of your own rear area on a daily basis?

I've now reached August 1918 in the transcriptions and there are flights on the Doiran Front again but now a number are coming across between midnight and 3 AM, where flights much before 5 AM were unusual before. They're single planes with nothing being recorded about bombs being dropped so you have to assume they're reconnaissance missions. Not many are coming as far as Salonika. Most seem to get as far as Janes and Kukus before turning back. Further west, planes are being regularly recorded as flying over the Serbian Sector and the Italian Expeditionary Force from Kanatlarci airfield. There's clearly been another change of emphasis.

Keith

[David B]

Keith,

I wonder if these patrols may have had something to do with the safety of the aircraft. That is, if rebellion is brewing, get them into the air to keep the a/c

out of harms way, and of course if the airbase is under threat of attack they then could be used in defence of the base. PM follows

David

[Rockdoc]

David, you make a very valid point and one I hadn't considered. I had the idea that they might have been used as a threat to cow the Bulgarians back into line with a clear "Behave or else!"

Keith

[Steven Broomfield]

As an addition, the South Wales Borderers history (C T Atkinson) - the 7th and 8th SWB were both out there with 22nd Division - comments (page 483): following the withdrawal of almost all German troops after the Allied attack at Rheims in July 1918 ... "Bulgarian deserters had been coming over with increasing frequency. From them and from other sources ample information was received of the despondency now spreading through Bulgaria. Her peasant soldiery were weary of their long absence from their homes: men returning from leave brought back bad accounts of conditions at home, and Bulgaria had no intention of sacrificing herself for Germany ... Bulgarian war-weariness helped to induce the Allies to attempt another offensive in Macedonia"

When the offensive started (in the case of 22nd Div, on the 17th September), resistance was at first quite fierce and effective, but the front collapsed very swiftly, and within 10 days the Bulgarians were in swift retreat. the two SWB battalions, for example, saw no action at all after the 26th of the month.

I might add that Atkinson believes that, had the Serbs been willing to accommodate the Bulgarians a bit over claims to Macedonia, the war would have wound up sooner.

[Rockdoc]

I think this is the same source used in UtDE, Steven. What's very interesting, though, is that the SWB were in XIIth Corps so the deserters would have been coming from the same part of the line that the Albatroses were seen regularly flying over.

Keith