Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  Ingenohl hesitated. With Scheer’s new dreadnoughts in the Baltic, the dreadnought battleship force of the High Seas Fleet was understrength. Hipper’s Scouting Groups were also depleted. During the bad weather, Ingenohl had sent the battle cruiser Von der Tann into dry dock for a routine twelve-day overhaul; when Hipper and Eckermann urged that the Dogger Bank operation immediately be launched, it was too late for Von der Tann to be refloated. Several light cruisers were also unavailable, and a number of destroyers, damaged by the winter storms, were under repair. Nevertheless, because the operation was to have a limited scope, the Commander-in-Chief gave his consent. At 10:25 the following morning, January 23, he sent a coded wireless signal to Hipper: “Scouting Forces are to reconnoiter Dogger Bank. Leave tonight at twilight; return tomorrow evening at darkness.” During the day, Hipper was summoned on board Friedrich der Grosse to meet and discuss the operation with Ingenohl. Hipper asked that the High Seas Fleet come out to support him, but the Commander-in-Chief, with the kaiser’s latest command fresh in his mind, refused. Because the main fleet would not be out, Hipper promised that if there was the slightest chance of his being cut off from the Bight by a stronger British force, he would turn quickly and run for home. Returning to Seydlitz, Hipper summoned his captains and explained the plan: they were to set out in darkness that evening, reconnoiter the Dogger Bank at daybreak, destroy any enemy light forces discovered there, and be back the following evening. On the way out, no fishing boats would be stopped because Hipper did not want to slow the advance or detach any destroyers for this purpose. On the homeward run, however, all fishing trawlers encountered would be stopped and rigorously examined.

  At 5:45 p.m. on January 23, Hipper sailed from the Jade with the battle cruisers Seydlitz, Moltke, and Derfflinger, the large armored cruiser Blücher, the light cruisers Rostock, Stralsund, Kolberg, and Graudenz, and two destroyer flotillas comprising nineteen ships. The mood in the Scouting Groups was confident. Even without Von der Tann, Hipper commanded a powerful force, although the inclusion of the armored cruiser Blücher diminished rather than enhanced its effective strength. Blücher had been designed and built in a period of technological change so rapid that she was obsolete even before she was commissioned. She had been laid down at a time (1907) when Fisher’s revolutionary battle cruiser project was not fully known and understood in Germany. As a result, Tirpitz went ahead and built her at 15,500 tons, with twelve 8.2-inch guns—almost a battle cruiser, but not quite. Blücher would have been successful in dealing with British armored cruisers, but she could not stand up to—or keep up with—real battle cruisers. Speed was essential in Hipper’s Scouting Groups; his battle cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers could all make between 25 and 30 knots. Blücher’s maximum design speed was 24 knots. Ultimately, her presence was to frustrate Hipper’s plan to make a lightning thrust and a high-speed withdrawal. And it would doom Blücher.

  The greatest threat to Hipper’s success was the fact that, before his ships left harbor, the British knew he was coming. For days, Room 40 had been decoding German messages. The Admiralty knew about the dry-docking of Von der Tann. It was aware of the dispatch of Scheer’s dreadnoughts to the Baltic. It had read Ingenohl’s coded wireless message, ordering the Dogger Bank raid, listing the squadrons involved, and giving the time the operation would be launched. The result was that as Hipper’s ships departed the Jade, British warships were weighing anchor and heading for the Dogger Bank.

  On Saturday, January 23, the Admiralty’s day began quietly. Fisher was in bed with a heavy cold in his apartment at Archway House, adjoining the Admiralty Building. Because the First Sea Lord was too ill to move, Churchill went over to see him and the two men talked for two hours. It was noon when the First Lord returned to his room in the Admiralty. He had just sat down when the door opened and Sir Arthur Wilson walked in. “He looked at me intently and there was a glow in his eye,” Churchill recalled. “Behind him came Oliver with charts and compasses.

  “ ‘First Lord, those fellows are coming out again.’

  “ ‘When?’

  “ ‘Tonight. We have just got time to get Beatty there.’ ”

  Wilson explained what he had learned from the intercepted German message. The German battle cruisers were putting to sea that evening, he said, and, although the German signal stated only that there would be a reconnaissance in force as far as the Dogger Bank, another raid on the English coast was possible. Wilson and Oliver immediately began to calculate a rendezvous point for the British squadrons to be deployed. The two admirals drew a line on the chart, which afterward proved to be almost the exact line of the German advance. The charts and the clock showed that there was just enough time for Beatty, coming from the Forth, and Tyrwhitt, coming from Harwich, to join forces at daylight near the Dogger Bank and intercept Hipper, this time before he could strike. The British rendezvous was set for 7:00 the following morning, January 24, at a position 180 miles west of Heligoland and thirty miles north of the Dogger Bank.

  [After the war, Oliver claimed sole credit for successfully fixing the rendezvous point. “Wilson wanted a rendezvous about thirty miles to the south of mine,” he said, “but our battle cruisers had hardly time to reach it. I knew it was hopeless to argue and we had no time to spare, so I agreed and he went away and I telegraphed my rendezvous to Beatty and Tyrwhitt and they met the Germans and each other there next morning.”]

  This discussion lasted an hour; then Churchill asked Wilson and Oliver to carry the decoded message and the marked chart over to Archway House to get Fisher’s approval. The First Sea Lord agreed to everything and soon after 1:00 p.m. telegrams went to Jellicoe at Scapa Flow, Beatty at Rosyth, and Commodore Tyrwhitt at Harwich:

  FOUR GERMAN BATTLE CRUISERS, SIX LIGHT CRUISERS AND TWENTY-TWO DESTROYERS WILL SAIL THIS EVENING TO SCOUT ON DOGGER BANK, PROBABLY RETURNING TOMORROW EVENING. ALL AVAILABLE BATTLE CRUISERS, LIGHT CRUISERS AND DESTROYERS FROM ROSYTH SHOULD PROCEED TO RENDEZVOUS, ARRIVING AT 7 A.M. TOMORROW. COMMODORE T [TYRWHITT] IS TO PROCEED WITH ALL AVAILABLE DESTROYERS AND LIGHT CRUISERS FROM HARWICH TO JOIN VICE ADMIRAL LION [BEATTY] AT 7 A.M. AT ABOVE RENDEZVOUS. IF ENEMY IS SIGHTED BY COMMODORE T WHILE CROSSING THEIR LINE OF ADVANCE, THEY SHOULD BE ATTACKED. WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY IS NOT TO BE USED UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.

  The Admiralty plan was set: Beatty’s five battle cruisers and Good-enough’s four light cruisers coming down from the north would rendezvous at dawn with Tyrwhitt’s three light cruisers and thirty-five destroyers coming up from the south. The slower ships—Vice Admiral Bradford’s 20-knot predreadnought King Edwards, popularly known as the Wobbly Eight, and Rear Admiral Pakenham’s three armored cruisers—would position themselves forty miles northwest of Beatty to intercept Hipper if he turned north. Jellicoe was to bring the Grand Fleet from Scapa Flow and cruise still farther north, ready to intervene if the High Seas Fleet was discovered coming out. Keyes’s submarines were to take up intercepting positions between and attempt to torpedo any German ships emerging from the Jade. Once these orders were sent, there was nothing the War Group at the Admiralty could do but wait. “Through the long hours of the afternoon and evening . . . we shared our secret with no one,” Churchill wrote. “That evening I attended a dinner the French ambassador was giving. . . . One felt separated from the distinguished company . . . by a film of isolated knowledge and overwhelming inward preoccupation . . . only one thought could reign—battle at dawn! Battle for the first time in history between mighty super-dreadnought ships. And there was added a thrilling sense of a Beast of Prey moving stealthily forward hour by hour towards the Trap.”

  On Saturday, January 23, “the morning being fairly fine,” Lieutenant Filson Young persuaded a friend to go ashore and spend the afternoon in Edinburgh, across the Firth of Forth from the anchorage at Rosyth. “The day was not a success,” Young recorded. “I led him up and down Princes Street and we pressed our noses against the shop windows. . . . We climbed to the ramparts of . . . [Edinburgh] Castle where we shiver
ed in the east wind and looked down under a black sky on the celebrated view of the Forth. But all my companion noticed was . . . an undue amount of smoke coming from the funnels of the battle cruisers. . . . There was a frantic commotion at the . . . [quay] where the . . . [ships’] boats were waiting and much panic on the part of individual officers lest their respective boats depart without them. In half an hour, the pier was empty and the boats were being hoisted aboard the battle cruisers. We came on board at half past five. . . . There was an orgy of ciphering and deciphering going on in the Intelligence Office. We were to sail at once.”

  As the battle cruisers were raising steam, a problem of protocol was resolved. Prince Louis of Battenberg, the former First Sea Lord, was on board New Zealand, visiting his son Prince George, one of the ship’s officers. In his heart, Prince Louis wanted to sail with the battle cruisers; and both Rear Admiral Sir Archibald Moore, the squadron commander, and New Zealand’s Captain Halsey urged him to stay. Battenberg decided, however, that his remaining might mean protocol trouble later and he went ashore.

  At six o’clock in the winter darkness, Beatty’s five battle cruisers and Goodenough’s four light cruisers steamed down the Forth toward the open sea. Bradford’s Wobbly Eight, along with Pakenham’s three armored cruisers, followed at 8:30 p.m. Meanwhile, Tyrwhitt with the light cruisers Arethusa, Aurora, and Dauntless and thirty-five destroyers had begun leaving Harwich at 5:30 p.m. Their departure was hindered by the arrival of dense fog just as Tyrwhitt was leading Arethusa and seven new M-class destroyers out of the harbor. These eight ships made it to sea, but the departure of the other thirty Harwich vessels was delayed. Tyrwhitt, determined to reach the morning rendezvous on time, decided to thrust ahead with the ships he had, leaving the bulk of his force to follow as soon as possible. Finally, at 6:30 p.m., the twenty-two dreadnought battleships of the Grand Fleet cleared Scapa Flow to rendezvous the next morning at 9:30 a.m., 150 miles northwest of Beatty.

  Beatty, on Lion, was in high spirits. Hipper was coming and this time there was neither a Warrender from whom he must take orders, nor a group of 20-knot battleships to slow him down. Bradford with the Wobbly Eight was senior in rank, but the Admiralty had specifically told him not to interfere with Beatty’s command. Dining with his staff, Beatty was relaxed and cheerful. He trusted his Flag Captain, Ernle Chatfield, and left to him the task of navigating the squadron through the night. Soon after dinner, Beatty went to bed. Later, Filson Young recalled:

  I had the first watch, very quiet as wireless was practically unused while we were at sea on an operation of this kind. . . . As his custom was, the admiral looked in upon his way to his windy sea cabin and we talked over the chart and the possibilities of tomorrow. For some curious reason, we were confident . . . in a way we had never been before. . . . There was an air of suppressed excitement which was very exhilarating. . . . The ship drove on calmly and stiffly through the dark surges. Midnight came and with it the brief commotion incident on changes of the watch; a slight aroma of cocoa was added to the other perfumes below deck, and I departed to turn in. In my cabin I stowed everything moveable and breakable, saw that the door was hooked back, that my . . . [life vest] was on the bed, looked at my watch . . . and fell asleep.

  In the darkness, with a gentle northeasterly breeze and a calm sea, Beatty and Tyrwhitt converged on Hipper. In numbers and offensive power, the British had an overwhelming advantage. A significant measure was the weight of the opposing broadsides: if all the British heavy guns fired simultaneously, they would deliver 40,640 pounds of shells. A corresponding broadside by Hipper’s force would deliver only 20,288 pounds. Overall, the design of the battle cruisers on each side reflected the technological convictions of the creators of the opposing fleets. The British battle cruisers embodied Fisher’s belief in high speed and heavy gun power at the cost of armor protection. Their German counterparts had evolved from Tirpitz’s maxim that a ship’s primary mission is to remain afloat. Hipper’s ships, therefore, were more lightly armed and not greatly deficient in speed, but they were shielded by superior armor.

  The four big German ships at the Dogger Bank represented a steady evolution. Blücher was the supreme embodiment of the armored cruiser. After Blücher, the Germans, by then aware that Fisher was building Invincibles, themselves built battle cruisers. Von der Tann, the first German ship of this class, was completed in 1910, weighed 19,400 tons, and had eight 11-inch guns, up to 11-inch armor, and a speed of 27 knots. Moltke, commissioned the year after Von der Tann (her sister was Goeben), weighed 22,640 tons, carried ten 11-inch guns and 11-inch armor, and had a speed of 28 knots. Seydlitz, Hipper’s flagship, completed in 1913, weighed 24,640 tons; she too had ten 11-inch guns and 11-inch armor. The additional 2,000 tons had gone into boiler and engine-room machinery that boosted her maximum speed to 29 knots. Derfflinger, Germany’s newest battle cruiser, was 28,000 tons, had eight 12-inch guns and 12-inch armor, and a speed of 28 knots.

  The oldest of the British battle cruisers present that day was Indomitable, the third of the original Invincible class. Completed in 1908, she displaced 17,250 tons, only 2,000 tons more than Blücher. She was marginally faster (26 knots), but the significant difference lay in the offensive power of her eight 12-inch guns. On the other hand, Indomitable’s 7-inch armor was scarcely thicker than that of an armored cruiser. New Zealand, completed in 1912, was an improved Invincible-class vessel: 18,800 tons, eight 12-inch guns, slightly thicker armor—8 inches instead of 7—and she could make 27 knots. Beatty’s first two Cats, Lion and Princess Royal, both completed in 1912, commenced a new generation of battle cruisers. They were, at 26,350 tons, far bigger than the Invincibles. The additional 9,000 tons had gone into eight 13.5-inch guns, yet thicker armor—9 inches—and an increase in speed to 28 knots. Tiger, Britain’s newest Cat, completed after the war began, was bigger still at 28,000 tons. She had eight 13.5-inch guns, 9 inches of armor, and 28 knots of speed. Tiger also possessed an improved secondary armament of 6-inch guns instead of the 4-inch of earlier British battle cruisers; this, it was hoped, would enable her to deal more effectively with charging enemy light cruisers and destroyers.

  As it was, Beatty, with five battle cruisers, was understrength that day. Queen Mary, one of his four Cats, with 13.5-inch guns, had just sailed for Portsmouth to go into dry dock. This was particularly unlucky for Beatty because Queen Mary was considered the best gunnery ship in the fleet. Tiger, on the other hand, was one of the worst. Commissioned in October 1914, she had joined the battle cruiser force on November 6. Although she was with Beatty on December 16 during the Scarborough Raid, she received only intermittent training in late December and early January. Moreover, her crew included a number of captured deserters, and consequently morale was low. Why this newest and most formidable battle cruiser was assigned such a motley crew was a puzzle even to Beatty. “The same efficiency could not be expected from the Tiger as from the other ships,” he wrote after the battle. “It is not time to complain but to do the best one can with the material available. I was assured that the ship’s company would have been better if it had been possible to make it so.”

  At dawn, Beatty appeared on Lion’s bridge with Lieutenant Commander Seymour, his Flag Lieutenant and signal officer. Looking over the stern, he could make out the four darkened battle cruisers steaming in line behind his flagship: Tiger in Lion’s wake, followed by Princess Royal, New Zealand, and Indomitable. Filson Young came on the bridge: “The eastern horizon showed light . . . but it was still dark night about us. . . . At 6:45 signals were beginning to come in from the Harwich flotilla indicating that the rendezvous chosen by the Admiralty had been hit exactly. At ten minutes to seven I went down to breakfast and when I returned fifteen minutes later, the daylight was beginning to spread and the cloud banks to roll away. It promised to be an ideal morning with a light breeze from the north-northeast and a slight swell on the sea. At seven, the bugles sounded ‘Action.’ ”

  Just after 7:00 Beatty and Goodenough arrive
d at the rendezvous point. Ten minutes later, Beatty sighted Arethusa, Tyrwhitt’s flagship, and the seven fast M-class destroyers he had brought from Harwich. The early light of a winter morning was shining on a calm, gently undulating sea. “The day was so clear,” Goodenough remembered, “that only the shape of the earth prevented one from seeing everything on it.” As Tyrwhitt was taking his position three miles ahead of the battle cruisers, Beatty saw gun flashes on the southeastern horizon. Almost immediately (at 7:20 a.m.), a signal from the light cruiser Aurora, leading one of Tyrwhitt’s fog-delayed destroyer flotillas up from Harwich, announced, “Am in action with the High Seas Fleet.” The men on Lion’s bridge smiled at the exaggeration. Beatty told Chatfield to turn in the direction of the gun flashes and the battle cruisers steamed southeast at 22 knots.

  Aurora’s actual antagonist was the German light cruiser Kolberg, the port wing ship of Hipper’s cruiser screen. What had happened was this: the light cruisers Aurora and Undaunted and twenty-eight destroyers had spent the night trying to catch up with their commodore. At dawn, when Tyrwhitt met Beatty, they were still twelve miles astern. Arethusa, out in front with Tyrwhitt aboard, had passed ahead of the German force, sighting nothing; Aurora, half an hour behind, was luckier. At 7:05, against the dawn horizon to the east, Aurora sighted a three-funneled cruiser and four destroyers. Her captain, thinking the ship was probably Arethusa, closed to 8,000 yards before giving the prescribed challenge. When he did so, the unknown ship, Kolberg, noted the British code and then opened fire. Aurora was hit three times, suffered minor damage, and began to hit back. The German ship turned away. Aurora sent her “Am in action with the High Seas Fleet” signal to Lion, then continued toward the rendezvous. At about the same time, Goodenough on Southampton, five miles ahead of Beatty, sighted one group of ships to the south and another to the east. Those to the south were Aurora and the Harwich Force; Goodenough then looked harder to the east. Visibility was improving and in the distance he made out two German light cruisers, Stralsund and Graudenz, which were in the van of Hipper’s force. Then, a few minutes later, at 7:30 a.m., Goodenough sighted the German battle cruisers.