Plan Z

by David Wragg

  Yet, despite these actions, with British defeat at Coronel being followed by victory in the Falklands, a major naval battle eluded both sides.

  NEW YEAR LOSSES

  For the Royal Navy, 1916 started badly, however, with the pre-Dreadnought King Edward VII striking a mine on 6 January, and sinking off Cape Wrath on the far north of Scotland. On 8 February, the British government formally sought naval assistance from Japan, which sent two destroyer flotillas to the Mediterranean during April. Looking at the monthly losses of merchant ships during the First World War shows fluctuations in the figures. This was due to the ‘on-off’ nature of the U-boat campaign. At first, operations were limited to attacking warships without notice, while merchant vessels had to be stopped and those aboard given a chance to take to the lifeboats before the ship was sunk. A combination of factors, including losses of U-boats to the Q-ships, merchantmen fitted with concealed guns and manned by naval personnel, which the Germans thought to be treacherous, and the sheer need to make an impact on the steady stream of ships carrying cargo for the British war effort, meant that unrestricted U-boat warfare followed. This was stopped in the North Atlantic after provoking protests from the United States, but continued in the Mediterranean where the U-boats were less likely to find ships carrying US citizens. Nevertheless, unrestricted U-boat attacks were authorised in British waters on 23 February 1916, although suspended again on 24 April following fresh American protests. Throughout this period, the Royal Navy attempted to keep the German fleet in its bases. On 7 March, the first British mine-laying submarine, E24, laid mines in the mouth of the River Elbe. By 1 May, the Germans not only returned to unrestricted U-boat warfare, they took the battle into the western Atlantic for the first time.

  The U-boat was not the only example of new weaponry that appeared in the war. On 1 April 1916, towns on the East Coast of England were bombed by German Zeppelin airships, but further south, over the Thames Estuary, another Zeppelin, L-15 became the first to be brought down by AA fire and crash-landed in the Thames Estuary, where its crew surrendered to a passing warship. Towns on the East Coast also suffered shelling from German battlecruisers, which bombarded Lowestoft and Yarmouth on 23 April. It was not just over England that the Zeppelins were at risk, for on 4 May, L-7 was brought down south of the Horn Reefs on the eastern side of the North Sea by fire from the light cruisers Galatea and Phaeton. These large craft were difficult to destroy completely, unless the hydrogen gas caught fire, and so L-7 was able to ditch in the North Sea where she was destroyed by the submarine E31, which also rescued seven survivors.

  When the long awaited clash between the two navies finally came at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May, the Royal Navy lost the battlecruisers Indefatigable, Invincible, one of the victors of the Falklands, and Queen Mary, as well as three armoured cruisers and five smaller warships, while many other ships were damaged. In all, 155,000 tons of British warships lost compared to 61,000 tons of German warships, while 6,090 British sailors and marines were lost compared with 2,550 Germans.

  The truth was that for all of their speed, the battlecruisers were vulnerable. Perhaps the losses could have been lower had the Royal Navy learnt the lessons about the dangers of flashback from the turrets and into the magazines, already discovered the hard way by the Germans, but this is pure speculation. The German battlecruisers were better armoured.

  AFTER JUTLAND

  The world could never be quite the same again after Jutland. Everyone in Great Britain had waited for this battle, assuming that the Royal Navy would be victorious and that victory would shorten the war. Even if there had been a British victory, it would not necessarily have been decisive. Nevertheless, Jutland did at least discourage the Germans from seeking another major battle, but only after a further excursion into the open sea. On 18 and 19 August, when Scheer took the High Seas Fleet out into the North Sea again, his reconnaissance force of eight Zeppelins mistakenly reported that the Grand Fleet was approaching, mistaking light cruisers and destroyers for battleships. Scheer took his ships south hoping for a major naval engagement, but in so doing he took them away from Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet, who were actually at sea again, but returned to base rather than risk his ships in the heavily mined southern waters of the North Sea. Both sides suffered losses, with the submarine E23 torpedoing the German battleship Westfalen north of Terschelling, forcing her to return to base, while the British lost the light cruiser Falmouth to a U-boat’s torpedo as she crossed the U-boat line. Not surprisingly, the light cruisers and destroyers spotted by the Zeppelins, were not allowed to attack the High Seas Fleet as it would have been suicidal.

  U-boats apart, the High Seas Fleet spent most of the rest of the war on hit and run operations. In October, two of these were mounted. The first was a second bombardment from the sea of Lowestoft on 26 October, while that night, German destroyers were sent against Dover. The latter operation was probably not worth the effort, as most of the seven vessels sunk by the destroyers were British fishing vessels, small drifters, adapted to handle the barrage. This type of operation was to continue in early 1917. The Germans did not always find themselves unopposed, and on the night of 23/24 January 1917, the German 6th Destroyer Flotilla found itself facing the two Harwich destroyer flotillas off the Schouwen light vessel. In the frantic battle that ensued, both sides lost a destroyer.

  GAINS AND LOSSES

  As far as the Royal Navy was concerned, another bad start to the year also came in 1917, with the pre-Dreadnought HMS Cornwallis was torpedoed and sunk 62 miles off Malta by U-32 on 9 January. Two days later, the seaplane carrier, Ben-my-Chree, a converted Isle of Man packet steamer, was sunk off Kastelorizo by fire from Turkish shore batteries.

  The first real good news came on 6 April, when the United States finally declared war on Germany. Within a month, on 4 May, the first USN destroyers arrived at the Royal Navy’s base at Queenstown, in Southern Ireland, ready for convoy escort duties. Nevertheless, two German light cruisers, Bremse and Brummer, found a British convoy between Bergen and Scotland and sank the two destroyer escorts and nine out of twelve merchant vessels. Two destroyers made an entirely unsatisfactory escort, but even if there had been twice the number, they would have been outgunned by the light cruisers.

  The submarine remained the main menace. It was probably exactly what the Admiralty wanted when UB-8 sank a dummy vessel designed to look like the battlecruiser HMS Tiger in the Aegean Sea, as such dummy ships were intended to deceive the Germans and even draw their fire, or their torpedoes. Far less welcome news was the sinking of the armoured cruiser Drake by U-79 in the North Channel off Rathlin Island, between Scotland and Ireland.

  On 17 November 1917, German battleships and light cruisers put to sea to protect minesweeping forces which were being harassed by British light cruisers and destroyers. Instead of frightening the crews of light cruisers and destroyers, however, they suddenly found themselves facing three battlecruisers, Courageous, Glorious and Repulse, off Heligoland Bight. The weather was worsening at the time and after an inconclusive initial exchange of fire, the Germans mistook the battlecruisers for the approach of British battleships and broke off the engagement. This was a case of poor ship recognition as Courageous and her sister Glorious were what were known as ‘light battlecruisers’. The following year, on 20 January 1918, the German-manned battle-cruiser Sultan Selim and light cruiser Midilli, ventured into the Aegean to attack British shipping, finding two British monitors, and in a one-sided engagement, sunk both of them. Nevertheless, it was a pyrrhic victory for, on their return to Constantinople, Midilli struck a mine and sank, while Sultan Selim ran aground.

  By this time, Karl Dönitz had left the Breslau, or Midilli, and after training had switched to the U-boat arm. His experience there was to influence his future opinions on naval warfare.

  On 15 February, German destroyers attacked the barrage between Folkestone and Cape Gris Nez, but to little effect, while a destroyer action on 21 March off Dunkirk saw eleven British destroy
ers and four French engage eighteen German destroyers, of which two were sunk by the Allies.

  Meanwhile, the long-feared Bolshevik Revolution was taking place in Russia. Nevertheless, with a successful naval blockade of Germany established, there was sufficient confidence to move the Grand Fleet from its forward wartime base at Scapa Flow in Orkney to the new naval base and dockyard at Rosyth on the Firth of Forth on 12 April. There was also a partially successful amphibious operation to block the entrances to the German-held naval bases at Zeebrugge and Ostend, to close the entrances to U-boat and torpedo-boats using blockships while harbour installations were also destroyed. Fisher would most definitely have approved, and might even have demanded such action much earlier.

  While the first offensive operation from an aircraft carrier, HMS Furious, a converted light battlecruiser, against Tondern on 19 July marked a change in naval warfare, the situation was changing in other ways as well. On 8 August, the Royal Navy laid the first magnetic mines off the French coast at Dunkirk. This was a bold step, not least because at the time, and for many years afterwards, no one knew how to sweep magnetic mines.

  Even so, the more traditional ways of stopping shipping also remained, and it was on 1 October that the net barrage across the Straits of Otranto was completed.

  As fuel supplies in Germany began to run low due to the blockade of Germany, the U-boats ceased commerce raiding on 21 October. There was just one last blow for the U-boats left at sea, looking for British warships, when on 9 November, the pre-Dreadnought Britannia was torpedoed and sunk by U-50, off Cape Trafalgar. This was not the way that everyone saw it. Faced with mutinies within the fleet and an overwhelming sense of looming defeat, many senior officers saw one last blow as a way of the Kaiserliche Marine going to a glorious ending, with many senior officers proposing that all available surface units should be sent to sea in a ‘death ride’ against the Royal Navy, now reinforced with US battleships.

  The Armistice on 11 November 1918 was no doubt a welcome relief to both the Kaiserliche Marine and the Royal Navy. The German fleet had suffered a series of mutinies starting in late 1917, and at Kiel the port admiral, none other than Souchon, the man who had given the British the slip in the Mediterranean and the Turks a battlecruiser and a light cruiser, surrendered his command when the 3rd Battle Squadron steamed into port flying the red flag. Nevertheless, order was regained and on 21 November, most modern German warships and all of the surviving U-boats obeyed the Allied order to proceed to Scapa Flow. Although a few also reached the United States, including the Dreadnought Ostfriesland, those at Scapa were all scuttled without warning on 21 June 1919.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Treaties – Versailles and Washington

  While the skeleton crews of the German warships effectively interned by the British at Scapa Flow remained aboard, those from other ships around the world became prisoners of war. Many found themselves aboard British warships which took them to Southampton, where they disembarked and went to a prisoner of war camp near Sheffield. This must have been an uncomfortable time for the Germans, and especially for those who had been U-boat commanders, such as Dönitz. They discovered that the British newspapers were calling them war criminals and demanding their execution, as well as that of their senior officers and the Kaiser himself.

  This was a traumatic period for Germany, and for a while it seemed that the revolution in Russia would spread to the country. Amongst the prisoners of war, disillusionment set in and many rejected the Kaiser, blaming him for the war and German defeat, and professed themselves republicans. Dönitz was not amongst them.

  Despite the fears over their future, repatriation of the naval prisoners started in early summer 1919, and Dönitz was amongst the first. He returned to Kiel to find the great naval base empty, while the only work in progress was the destruction under the Allied Control Commission of those U-boats that had not been sent to Scapa Flow.

  While post-First World War Germany was occupied by the Allies and there was even a British Army of the Rhine, as after the Second World War, and reparations were set in hand, the damage to the country was far less than in the later conflict. Not only had there not been the heavy bombing raids of the Second World War, for the technology was still in its infancy, but the Allies had not had to fight their way to the capital, a process which inevitably resulted in massive destruction in late 1944 and the first half of 1945. While many officers in the Navy and the Army planned to join the Socialists, others planned to bide their time until a reaction came against the Socialists and they could then topple the post-war government and reinstate the monarchy. Nevertheless, those senior officers still at their posts and not held as prisoners of war, had other plans, longer term plans. The officer corps was to remain in being ready to rebuild the armed forces.

  The thinking behind this was not so much an acceptance of defeat and of the new German state, but in fact a reaction to it and a definite rejection of the new order. For many senior officers, world power, or Weltpolitik, had not been rejected, but delayed. Even amongst the losses and the overwhelming sense of defeat, a powerful German Navy was being planned once again. There was a new head of the Navy, Admiral von Trotha, who had been one of those planning the all or nothing ‘death ride’ as the war drew to its weary end. Trotha was a strong proponent of the policies espoused by Tirpitz, and foresaw the resurrection of the German Navy as the primary instrument through which the German peoples would achieve the status of a world power with an empire to match.

  Yet, on 21 June 1919, the day that the Versailles Treaty was due to be signed, he gave the order to scuttle those units of the fleet anchored at Scapa Flow. This was a form of ritual suicide for the defeated Navy and one means of retaining some semblance of honour. The logic was simple enough, as he did not want to see the pride of the Kaiserliche Marine scrapped or, even worse, passing into the fleets of the victors. He probably did not foresee some ships being used for bombing practice by an American airman, William ‘Billy’ Mitchell. In defeat and without the best of his ships, Trotha saw his role as sowing the seeds of a new fleet, ‘so that when the time comes a useful tree will grow from it.’

  The seeds afforded him were poor material indeed. The Versailles Treaty banned Germany from manufacturing or operating aircraft or airships, while submarines were also banned. The restrictions applied to both services, with the Army limited to 100,000 men. Another condition was that the Rhineland was demilitarised. The Navy was allowed six elderly coastal battleships, often referred to as Panzerschiffe, armoured ships, with their eventual replacements limited to 10,000 tons displacement, as well as six cruisers, twelve destroyers and twelve torpedo-boats. This was not the navy of a maritime power, but of a continental power, a brown water navy restricted to the Baltic and the coasts of the North Sea. Yet, it was not the full disbandment that the German armed forces faced in 1945, and it meant that within a little more than eight months after the Armistice, the German armed forces were still operational. The Treaty terms also limited the Navy to 1,500 officers, so that Trotha immediately set about selecting the very best and most loyal as the core for his ‘new’ Navy.

  One of those handpicked and offered the opportunity to serve in the new post-war German Navy, the Reichsmarine, was Dönitz, although the young lieutenant hesitated at first because of his monarchist sympathies from enlisting in a republican force. Nevertheless, he did so on 14 August 1919. He was later to claim that another officer had promised him that, despite the Versailles Treaty, they would have U-boats again within two years. That didn’t happen, but there is no doubt that senior officers were again planning a submarine force within that timescale. In the meantime, the armed services supported the government-backed Freikorps in suppressing Bolshevik groups who attempted a number of localised insurrections across Germany.

  It is difficult to give an exact idea of the state of Germany at this time, shorn of its gains from the Franco-Prussian War and divided against itself. Increasingly, the monarchist groups became a bigger
problem than the insurrectionists. The crisis worsened when, in February 1920, the victorious Allies finally issued a list of some 900 ‘war criminals’ and demanded that they be handed over to stand trial. The list included the Kaiser and several chancellors, the generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff, and many naval officers, including Tirpitz, Trotha and Scheer, as well as individual U-boat commanding officers. This did at least have the effect of unifying much of the nation as a humiliation too far, but it unified it against the government. Wolfgang Kapp, a Prussian official, led a naval Freikorps that marched on Berlin shortly before midnight of 12 March, and without Army support, the government fled the city. The so-called Kapp putsch then added to the confusion, and while order was maintained at Kiel, at Wilhelmshaven officers were arrested by petty officers and men in a rerun of the 1918 mutinies. Even at Kiel, the local commander, Admiral von Levetzow, was unable to prevent workers from joining a general strike called by the deposed government from its temporary headquarters in Stuttgart. The situation was defused on 17 March, when Kapp stood down, having no plans for the future of the country other than protest. Nevertheless, the unrest and mutinies continued, while Dönitz, given temporary command of a torpedo-boat and ordered with the others to help maintain order, suffered sabotage aboard his craft when salt water was induced into the fresh-water feeding the boilers. The unrest and indiscipline in the Reichsmarine was by this time so great that many felt that the service must be disbanded.

  This grave situation continued until the end of May, when a Reichstag committee investigating the Kapp putsch reported, and its recommendations were quickly implemented, with almost 200 officers, including Trotha, discharged or retired, as well as the entire list of deck officers, who had joined the men in the mutinies. Those officers who had taken no part in the actual putsch were reinstated. This display of strength in fact showed a major weakness of the new republic, for the officer corps had shown that, as a whole, it had no sympathy with the government, which nevertheless needed them to suppress the uprisings that were continuing to afflict Germany. The officer corps in both armed services for their part realised that they could not take over the country without the support of the majority of the population, and this was not forthcoming. The lesson was learned for the future, that they were to remain away from and above politics.