Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  As British bugles sounded “Action stations” and German mess compartments thundered to the roll of drums, ships reverberated with swarming men and slamming hatch covers. Groups mustered at their stations where gas masks, goggles, and life preservers were issued. Damage control parties went through the ship wetting the decks and closing and dogging steel doors. In Queen Mary, a gunner’s mate checked to make certain his turret was ready with “urinal buckets, biscuits and corned beef, drinking water and plenty of first aid dressings.” Medical parties in dressing stations laid out surgical instruments, dressings, morphia, syringes, and stretchers. Fire hoses were laid out, glass windscreens on the bridges were removed, Union Jacks soared to the peaks of the mainmasts, and White Ensigns whipped from the yardarms and gaffs. Then came a stillness. Decks were deserted. No sounds came but the throb of the engines, the roar of ventilator fans, and, on deck, the splash of the sea against the hull. Most men were closed up in small steel compartments; in turret gun rooms, magazines, secondary batteries, conning towers, engine rooms, and bunkers. Out in the air on the bridges, admirals and captains, muffled in scarves and greatcoats, squinted through binoculars and walked in and out of the chart houses to study their positions on tactical compass plots. One captain wore irregular dress. New Zealand’s John Green had a green stone tiki pendant around his neck, and his waist was wrapped in a black-and-white flax Maori kilt called a piu-piu, both gifts presented to the ship by a tribal chief during the battle cruiser’s visit to the Dominion in 1913. Along with the gifts came the chief’s request that they be worn by the captain whenever New Zealand went into action; if this ritual was faithfully observed, he promised, the battle cruiser would not be seriously harmed. On this day, the news that the captain was wearing his necklace and his kilt spread reassurance among the crew. And when the Battle of Jutland was over, New Zealand, hit only once by a heavy shell, was the only one of Beatty’s six battle cruisers to suffer no significant damage and escape all casualties.

  Sixty-five miles to the north, on the bridge of Iron Duke, there was a stir as Galatea’s first signal came in and positions were marked on the chart. A moment later, the short, brisk figure of the Commander-in-Chief appeared and Jellicoe bent over the chart. Only light cruisers were mentioned in this report. It could mean anything, but with the Admiralty’s assurance that Scheer’s flagship was still at anchor in the Jade, the Germans could only be light forces, and Beatty’s squadrons were more than strong enough to take care of them. Then, at 2:39, came a further signal from Galatea: “Have sighted large amount of smoke as though from a fleet, bearing east northeast.” Iron Duke immediately hoisted the signal for 17 knots. A few minutes later, another message followed: “Smoke seems to be seven vessels besides cruisers and destroyers. They have turned north.” Seven vessels besides cruisers and destroyers suggested battle cruisers. So Hipper was at sea! Jellicoe signaled for 18 knots and then for 19.

  Galatea’s report “Smoke seems to be seven vessels besides cruisers and destroyers” suggested battle cruisers to Beatty, too, and at 2:47 p.m., he ordered Engadine to send up a seaplane to find out exactly what lay over the horizon. Already that morning, Engadine had advised Beatty of the limitations imposed by that day’s weather on aerial reconnaissance: “Sea suitable for getting off but not for landing. Impossible to distinguish where mist ends and water begins in coming down to sea. Will be all right if horizon clears.” Now, on receiving the admiral’s signal, the carrier came to a halt and a two-seat Short seaplane was pulled from her hangar and hoisted into the sea. At 3:08 p.m., only twenty-one minutes after Engadine received Beatty’s command, Flight Lieutenant Frederick Rutland (thereafter known as Rutland of Jutland) was airborne. Low clouds forced him to remain under a thousand feet in order to see anything on the surface, and visibility varied between one and four miles. Ten minutes later, flying northeast at 900 feet, he came to within a mile and a half of the German light cruisers Elbing, Frankfurt, and Pillau. They fired at him and the seaplane was surrounded by shrapnel, some of it bursting only 200 feet away. At 3:31, Rutland’s observer was able to wireless Engadine that he had seen enemy cruisers and several destroyers headed northwest. Then, at 3:30, while he was watching, the German force reversed course and headed southeast. Although the observer had to encode his messages before sending them, he managed to wireless Engadine four times over the next fifteen minutes. Three of these messages were received; Engadine, observing the ban on ship-to-ship wireless transmission, attempted to pass this news to Beatty and Evan-Thomas by searchlight, but failed. After a thirty-nine-minute flight, a fuel pipe ruptured and Rutland was forced to land. While sitting on the surface waiting to be picked up, the little floatplane was passed by a British light cruiser; from his back seat the observer tried desperately to semaphore the new direction in which the enemy force was steering. Soon, Engadine arrived, and at 4:00 p.m. the seaplane was hoisted aboard. This flight was the sum total of the part played by aerial reconnaissance on either side on the first day of Jutland.

  [By late morning, the wind along the German coast had moderated sufficiently to allow airships to take off, and five zeppelins had gone up. Once airborne, however, they discovered that misty weather and low cloud cover over the North Sea precluded observation. They spotted neither of the two fleets and late in the afternoon, all zeppelins were recalled.]

  The navies of the world’s first and second sea powers were now approaching collision. To the east were Hipper’s battle cruisers, the modern Lützow, Derfflinger, and Seydlitz, followed by the older Moltke and Von der Tann. To the west were Beatty’s four giant Cats, Lion, Princess Royal, Queen Mary, and Tiger, along with the earlier New Zealand and Indefatigable. Ten miles behind, Evan-Thomas’s Barham, Valiant, Warspite, and Malaya were straining to catch up. Less than seventy miles to the north, 100 ships of the Grand Fleet accelerated their progress south while, fifty miles to the south, Scheer’s main fleet, slowed by the presence of Mauve’s old predreadnoughts, moved steadily north.

  Hipper, aided by the position of the sun, saw his enemy first. With the sun in the west, there, starkly silhouetted against the bright blue horizon, were two columns of large dark gray ships with tripod masts: Beatty’s famous battle cruisers. Meanwhile, his own pale gray ships remained indistinct against the hazy, overcast sky and misty horizon to the east. Calmly smoking his cigar, he immediately but erroneously signaled Scheer that the British battle fleet was in sight. A minute later, he correctly identified his enemy and, noting Beatty’s alteration to the east, understood that the British admiral meant to cut across his wake and block his homeward path. Recalling his light cruisers from the north at 3:28 p.m., Hipper reversed onto a southerly course, slowing to 18 knots to allow the smaller ships to catch up. In fact, Hipper’s intention in swinging around had a larger purpose than simply to prevent himself being cut off from his base. He meant to engage the British battle cruisers in a running fight, all the while drawing them down onto the High Seas Fleet coming up from the south. Thus, at this moment, both admirals keenly sought action: Beatty, who believed that he had caught Hipper alone and that his own six battle cruisers and four fast battleships powerfully outnumbered his enemy, meant at last to destroy this old antagonist. Hipper, believing that Beatty was alone, meant to tempt him into a running engagement, all the while drawing him down into the jaws of the High Seas Fleet coming up from the south. In the interim, as Beatty’s 13.5-inch guns outranged Hipper’s 12-inch and 11-inch, the German admiral knew that he must close the range as quickly as possible. Beatty, charging down at maximum speed with what he was certain was superior strength, seemed happy to oblige and the two lines, both steaming south at full speed, were gradually converging. In most histories of the Battle of Jutland, what happened during the next fifty-five minutes—3:45 to 4:40—is known as the Run to the South.

  Lieutenant W. S. Chalmers on the bridge of Lion remembered that “it was one of those typical North Sea summer days with a thin white mist varying in intensity and having too much humidity for the
sun to break up.” As the two forces drew nearer, officers on both sides admired one another. In the gunnery control tower of Derfflinger, Georg von Hase, the ship’s gunnery officer, adjusted his optical instruments to maximum power: “Suddenly my periscope revealed some big ships. Black monsters. Six tall, broad-beamed giants steaming in two columns. Even at this great distance, they looked powerful, massive. . . . How menacing they appeared, magnified fifteen times. I could now recognize them as the six most modern enemy battle cruisers. Six battle cruisers were opposed to our five. It was a stimulating, majestic spectacle as the dark grey giants approached like fate itself.” To the British, their enemies revealed themselves gradually: first smoke, then masts and funnels and upper works, then stern waves, white and high; finally large, light gray hulls, pale against the gray eastern sky. On board Tiger, an officer remembered “how splendid the enemy battle cruisers looked . . . their last ship in particular showing up wonderfully.”

  At 3:45, 16,500 yards from the enemy, Beatty swung his ships into a line of battle. Lion, at 26 knots, was in the lead, followed at 500-yard intervals by Princess Royal, Queen Mary, Tiger, New Zealand, and Indefatigable. The four massive battleships, Barham, Valiant, Warspite, and Malaya, coming up at maximum speed, were closing the gap, down from ten to seven miles. Beatty now was certain that his own particular adversaries were going to be brought to action. His four Cats were several knots faster than Hipper’s fastest ships; the two older British battle cruisers and the four Queen Elizabeths—all capable of 25 knots—could almost match the older Germans. This day would be no repetition of the Dogger Bank, when Hipper began his race for home with a long head start. This time, ten fast British dreadnoughts, racing for a position to cut off Hipper from his base, could not fail to annihilate the five isolated Germans.

  And yet, at that moment and afterward, even Beatty’s friends wondered why he took so long to begin his work. The 13.5-inch guns of his Cats outranged Hipper’s 12-inch and 11-inch guns by several thousand yards and he could have opened fire long before Hipper was able to reply. By waiting until the range had closed, Beatty denied himself a number of opening, unopposed, and possibly significant salvos. Ultimately, it was not Beatty, but his admirer Ernle Chatfield, Lion’s captain, who gave the order to open fire. “The enemy battle cruisers were rapidly closing us,” Chatfield wrote later. “The range receiver on the bridge showed twenty thousand yards. I was on the compass platform. . . . Beatty . . . was on his own bridge below me with his staff. . . . I wanted him to come on the compass platform and sent a mes-sage . . . [to him] that the range was closing rapidly and that we ought almost at once to be opening fire. . . . But I could get no reply; the Vice Admiral was engaged in an important message to the Commander-in-Chief. Eighteen thousand yards. I told Longhurst [Lion’s gunnery officer] to be ready to open fire immediately. The turrets were already loaded and trained on the leading enemy ship, Lützow. At 3.45 p.m., the range was sixteen thousand yards. I could wait no longer and told Longhurst to open fire. At the same time the enemy did so. The firing of the ship’s main armament of 13.5-inch guns was by double salvos of four guns each. . . . [Then] Beatty came on the compass platform.”

  Meanwhile, on the admiral’s bridge of Lützow, Hipper stood and watched, his cigar clamped between his teeth. Commander Erich Raeder, his Chief of Staff, remembered “a moment of supreme tension as the great turrets rotated and the gray gun muzzles elevated.” In their turrets and control towers, the German range takers and gun layers watched the approaching British ships, sharp and clear against the sun. “The six ships, which had been proceeding in two columns, formed a single line ahead,” said Hase on Derfflinger. “Like a herd of prehistoric monsters, they closed on one another with slow movements, specter-like, irresistible.” Hase identified Derfflinger’s target as the Princess Royal, but he could not open fire without a signal from the flagship. “At last, there was a dull roar. . . . The Lützow is firing her first salvo and immediately the signal ‘Open fire’ is hoisted. In the same second, I shout ‘Salvos: Fire!’ and the thunder of our first salvo crashes out.”

  The opposing battle cruiser squadrons, traveling on parallel southeastern courses, opened fire almost simultaneously. The Germans’ firing, coming in continuous ripples down their line, won immediate admiration from their enemies. The first salvos, bunched in groups of four projectiles, were only about 200 yards short. The next straddled Tiger, one shot short, two hits and one over, the two hits bursting with a tremendous crash of tearing metal. The German shooting was this good despite the fact, as Hase recorded, that his gunners had to contend with “dense masses of smoke accumulated around the muzzles of the guns, growing into clouds as high as houses which stood for a second in front of us like an impenetrable wall until they were driven away by the wind.” Eight miles away, Beatty’s ships also were driving through continuous curtains of spray and smoke that made it difficult for their gunnery personnel to see the enemy at all, let alone get his range. Because of this, for the first ten minutes every British shell sailed far over the German line, some even as much as three miles beyond. In addition, mistaken assignments added to British difficulties. Queen Mary and Tiger had missed Beatty’s signal for the distribution of fire and were shooting at the wrong ships. Correctly, Lion and Princess Royal were engaging Lützow, but Queen Mary, third in line, instead of aiming at Derfflinger, which was second in Hipper’s line, fired at Seydlitz, third in the German line. The result was that for ten minutes nobody troubled Derfflinger, a crack gunnery ship, which steamed happily along, her guns thundering salvos every twenty seconds as if she were at target practice. Meanwhile, Tiger and New Zealand both fired at Moltke, while at the rear of the two lines, Indefatigable and Von der Tann, the two oldest, smallest, and slowest of the battle cruisers, carried on a private duel, undisturbed.

  The Germans, who had the advantage of better light, also possessed better range finders and gun sights. “The Zeiss lenses of our periscopes were excellent,” Hase reported. “At the longest distances, I could make out all details of the enemy ships; for instance, movements of turrets and individual guns which were lowered almost to the horizontal for loading.” Hipper’s ships found the range quickly. Four minutes after opening fire, Lützow hit Lion twice, while Derfflinger placed three 12-inch shells on Princess Royal. Tiger was hit once by Moltke, which then went to rapid fire and hit her again, then twice more. At the rear of the line, Von der Tann hammered Indefatigable. No one followed this more closely than Hipper on Lützow’s bridge. “His unruffled calm communicated itself . . . to all those on the bridge,” said one of his officers. “Work was carried on exactly as it had been in peacetime maneuvers.” Another officer reported that Hipper “could not be separated from the telescope. There was nothing which escaped him, nothing he forgot, and he personally issued orders even on matters of detail. Just before fire opened, the First Staff Officer and the Gunnery Officer were discussing the unfavorable fire distribution. Hipper intervened with the remark that this was his business. No one need worry about it.” Subsequently, he interrupted a conversation about the advisability of warning the squadron about the presence of British destroyers. “Hipper left his telescope for a second or two, turned around and said somewhat sharply, ‘I’ve seen everything, gentlemen, and will give the order when the signal is to be given.’ ”

  War at sea was Franz Hipper’s “business,” and “unruffled calm” his natural state, but for a sixteen-year-old Malaya midshipman, at sea for only four months and now in his ship’s torpedo control tower, the battle was a unique and terrible experience. A turret only a few feet away began to fire, and “from this time on, my thoughts were really more like a nightmare than the thoughts of a wide-awake human being. I don’t think I felt fright, simply because what was going on around me was so unfamiliar that my brain was incapable of grasping it. Even now I can only think of the beginning of the action as through a dim haze. I remember seeing the enemy lines on the horizon with red specks coming out of them, which I tried to reali
ze were the cause of projectiles landing around us, continually covering us with spray, but the fact refused to sink into my brain.” The midshipman could see the enemy, but, with a northwesterly wind blowing their own funnel and gun smoke back into their eyes, the range finders in the British ships were having a difficult time. To add to this, two flotillas of British destroyers, which had been astern, were racing to get into their proper place ahead of the large ships, and their funnel smoke added to the murk. Nevertheless, the 13.5-inch shells of Beatty’s Cats began to creep closer to their targets. “With each salvo fired by the enemy,” said Hase of Derfflinger, “I was able to see distinctly four or five shells coming through the air. They looked like elongated black spots. Gradually, they grew bigger and then—crash—they were here! They exploded on striking the water or the ship with a terrific roar. Each salvo fired by the enemy raised colossal splashes. Some of these columns of water were of a poisonous yellow-green tinge . . . these would be lyddite shells. The columns stood up for five to ten seconds before they completely collapsed.”

  [Lyddite is an explosive made largely of picric acid, which is yellow.]

  Eventually, at 3:55 p.m., when the range was down to 13,000 yards, Queen Mary scored two hits on Seydlitz, putting one of the waist 11-inch gun turrets permanently out of action. Four minutes later, Lion hit Lützow. Then Derfflinger was hit, the shell piercing a door with a glass window behind which a petty officer was standing and watching the battle. “His curiosity was severely punished,” observed Hase, “the shot severing his head clean from his body.”