Jutland_The Unfinished Battle

by Nicholas Jellicoe

  As she sank, her propellers were still turning.

  The officers and men lost numbered 1,258; only a handful survived. Among the eight who did were clerk Lloyd Owen, Petty Officer Francis and a midshipman, Storey, who even in the water nearly did not make it as enemy shells were landing short. As he recounted, the worst part for him was seeing many of his friends and fellow sailors giving up as British destroyers raced past and were not able to stop. All officers, except for four midshipmen, were lost. Hase wrote that a Japanese prince, Commander Chiusuke Shimomura, an IJN observer and naval attache in London was among the dead.98 A very small group of survivors who had somehow managed to stay alive were picked up by Laurel, the one destroyer that did stop.

  Tiger and New Zealand steamed past the wreck to continue battle. Princess Royal continued to be heavily straddled. The captain of Tiger, Henry Pelly, reported that as she passed through the cloud of smoke, ‘there was a heavy fall of debris on her decks!99 As Tiger was only 400yds behind, she passed Queen Marys stern within a few feet, ‘but so thick was the pall that most of them were completely blinded’.100

  At this moment, Vice Admiral Beatty turned to his captain, Ernie Chatfield, on the bridge of Lion and made his now famous comment: ‘There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today!’101

  Protecting a Ship’s Magazines

  The dangerous practices of stacking ammunition outside protective magazines and leaving anti-flash doors open during battle were a direct result of an obsession with gunnery speed. It is probably no coincidence that the fastest gunners in the British navy were on Invincible and Queen Mary, both ripped apart by magazine explosions and each going down with almost all hands. Of the 6,094 British sailors who lost their lives at Jutland, 38 per cent were from these two ships alone. Add in the 1,017 deaths from the sinking of Indefatigable and more than half the deaths at Jutland resulted, in part at least, from this tragic belief in gunnery speed and also, possibly, from the over-confidence in British battleship design.

  It has now been confirmed by inspections of the wrecks of Queen Mary, Invincible and Indefatigable that the silk cordite bags had been brought up from the magazines and stacked in the passageways below the guns. British cordite was not stable and actually became even less so with age. The silk bags in which it was packed caught fire easily.

  German charges, by contrast, were quite different. For a start, they were stored in machined brass tubes. The Germans had learnt lessons from Dogger Bank and quickly applied them. After the disastrous experience on Seydlitz, where 120 men had been killed in a turret explosion, but where magazine detonation had luckily been avoided, the Germans immediately tightened up. Stacking propellant in the turret was limited and anti-flash doors were redesigned.

  Magazine protection was largely ignored on many British ships, especially in the Battle Cruiser Fleet. Later, Beatty wrote little about this as a possible factor in the brutal battle-cruiser losses, but his Battle Cruiser Battle Orders (BCBOs) were changed. His own near-death experience on Lion no doubt added a new perspective and, ironically, Beatty owes much to his chief gunnery officer, A C Grant, who had been brought up in the practices of the Grand Fleet and had actively limited the open stacking of cordite against considerable opposition. When Grant arrived on Lion, it did not take long for him ‘to realise what a pitiful mess’ the cordite was in. When cordite was introduced, he maintained, handling explosive charges ‘became unconsciously considerably relaxed, even I regret to say, to a dangerous degree’. Dress regulations (against wearing hobnail boots that could spark on metal) were relaxed, as was access to the locked magazine. Cases were opened in preparation for action as this made the handling faster, but also created a large hazard. Cordite was stacked both in turrets and in passages in excessive quantity, for the same reasons.102

  After Jutland, investigations into what went wrong started in the fleet and at the Admiralty. Ernie Chatfield headed the fleet committee. The Admiralty one set up to investigate and recommend on ‘the causes of explosions in British warships when hit by heavy shell’ included 3SL, Admiral Sir Frederick Tudor, the DNO Rear Admiral Morgan Singer and the DNC, Tennyson d’Eyncourt. They corroborated what Grant had found, that cordite was often stacked within turrets, so that ‘each turret became its own magazine’ (Nicholas Lambert, Our Bloody Ships). The BCF took action immediately. Beatty wrote to Jellicoe about the dangers of ‘open magazine doors in turrets’, saying that it was ‘imperative to maintain a small stock of cordite in handling room for magazine (and) doors being kept closed with one clip and opened only for replenishment of handling room’. On 5 June a circular went around the BCF saying that only four rounds were allowed outside the magazines at any one time (including the two in the breech).

  The report was sent to the Admiralty. When Jackson resigned and was replaced by Jellicoe, the report was suppressed by the new 1SL, along with Beatty, ‘anxious not to damage the morale of the fleet any further’, as this would have clearly placed the blame in the hands of officers who condoned such a practice. Jellicoe even sent a letter of apology to Beatty at the implied criticism of his men’s conduct during the battle. The ensuing actions were more to do with armour correction than magazine practice – the new Howe class (HMS Hood was actually just being laid down) would add another 3,000 tons of armour protection.

  It was clear that the practice had been condoned. Dannreuther says this of Invincible. Lt Victor Shepherd said the same of Agincourt, able to shoot off 144 shells in the short battleship engagement, probably as a direct result of this stacking of cordite in passageways. New Zealand must have done the same. She shot a record of 422 shells during the battle.

  At 16:28, nearly a full half-hour since Lion had been hit on her Q turret, a huge flame roared up. ‘Doubtless some burning clothing fell from one of the ramming numbers into the open cage and caught the cordite afire. Owing to the fact that the top of the turret was partially blown off, there was no explosion, but the flames travelled right through the turret and the adjacent compartments.’103

  Four minutes before, as Derfflinger and Seydlitz carried on their grim destruction of Queen Mary, Lützow had also very effectively barraged Lion, hitting her three times in thirty seconds at 16:24, covering the ship entirely in smoke. Lützow then shifted her fire to Princess Royal. That small respite may have saved Lion. On Lützow, there was ‘a moment of complete silence, then the calm voice of the gunnery observer announced, ‘Queen Mary blowing up’, at once followed by the order, ‘Shift target to the right’, given by the gunnery officer in the same matter-of-fact tone as at normal gunnery practice’.104 Hase also turned Derfflinger’s guns (as did Seydlitz’s gunnery officer) onto Princess Royal, which had – in the same momentous episode of gunnery – just been hit by Lützow. After sixty-five seconds the first salvo struck home. By any standards, it was remarkable shooting. Barham was then hit by Von der Tann, but this salvo put her starboard waist turret out of action. The guns had overheated and would not slide back into firing position. The heat was terrific: as the barrels got hotter and hotter, the grey paint darkened and turned brown.105

  At this point Hipper’s position was mixed. He knew that the High Seas Fleet was close at hand, to the south. He faced Beatty’s four remaining ships and Evan-Thomas’s powerful 5th Battle Squadron was still some way off. Things so far had not gone well for the British.

  It is unpalatable – extremely unpalatable – but nevertheless an indisputable fact that, in this first phase of the battle, a British squadron, greatly superior in numbers and gun-power, not only failed to defeat a weaker enemy who made no effort to avoid action, but in the open space of fifty minutes, suffered what can only be described as partial defeat.106

  The reasons were a failure to concentrate the available forces, poor gunnery, lamentable signalling, and a failure, too, to use the advantages of speed and range. But, in defence, the light was strongly in the German favour. Many years after the Harper record, Ernie Chatfield countered the inferred superiority of German
gunnery by saying that the ‘partial defeat’ here was due more to the inferiority of British projectiles than a poor performance in the battle-cruisers’ gunnery. This was a sideways swipe at Jellicoe – once briefly DNO – but it also omitted his own consternation at the time that Beatty had not used the advantages in range that he evidently had.

  The Problem with British Shells

  Much of the ‘failure’ at Jutland can be found in the poor quality of British ordnance, the shells used. Certain types of shell tended to explode outside the armour shield rather than penetrate and burst within the target ship. Most British testing was done at long range with shells ‘plunging’, hitting deck armour rather than the belt armour of a ship’s hull. The effects of hitting belt armour at an acute angle was not highlighted. It is also worth making a cautionary note: blaming ordnance took much of the focus away from gunnery and training, so unbalancing any debate there was.

  The problem of British cordite, usually packed in four ‘quarter-charge’ silk bags as the propellant for armour piercing (AP) charges – already dangerously unstable – was compounded by the lyddite used in the AP rounds as a ‘burster’. On surface impact these tended to detonate prematurely, rather than within an enemy ship and at angles greater than 20 degrees to the horizontal the result was even worse. Even range performance could significantly differ depending on the particular production batch.

  On the back of disturbingly unsuccessful gunnery trials using HMS Edinburgh as target, Jellicoe requested the Ordnance Board in October 1910, to ‘produce designs of AP shells for guns 12 inches and above which at oblique angle would perforate thick armour plate in a fit state for bursting’.107 His lobbying for realistic trials was also unsuccessful. Jellicoe was not able to finish the job. He was transferred back to sea duties. Two months later, in December 1910 Jellicoe was posted to the Atlantic Fleet on Prince of Wales. His successor as DNO, Admiral Sir Charles Briggs (Fisher dubbed him ‘the old sheep farmer’) did not pursue the issue with any great sense of urgency.108 Meanwhile, reports from French gunnery trials were showing that their nickel-chrome steel AP shell was successfully breaking through the armour layer and bursting inside.

  The debate on shell quality that Jellicoe had supported was stifled by politicians like Churchill who spoke in Parliament, saying, ‘Although the German shell is a most formidable instrument of destruction, the bursting, smashing power of the British projectile is decidedly greater’.109 Even in July 1914, a mere few weeks before the outbreak of war, Jellicoe had delivered another pessimistic report to Churchill, much to the latter’s displeasure.

  In the end, argues Iain McCallum, it was the Ordnance Board’s decision to stay with lyddite rather than use TNT that meant that a superior shell solution was impossible; furthermore, orders for lyddite high-explosive (HE) and AP had already been placed. With the likely cost of AP being three times that of ‘common’ (a designation used for shell with a low-explosive mixture), the board was even more inclined to try to improve the existing shell rather than design a completely new one.

  Before Jutland, there were several incidents which should have persuaded the British to revisit the issue: (a) In the Falklands the Germans ran out of ammunition. It still took three hours to sink Scharnhorst while Gneisenau did not sink as a result of gunfire, even though she had received more than fifty hits. She sank because she was scuttled by her crew, (b) At the Dogger Bank Blücher, hit with sixty heavy shells, did not sink till torpedoed. Even the damage from Seydlitzs turret hit explosion was limited. Later, captured enemy officers openly spoke of the poor performance of British ordnance: ‘Twelve-inch shell seemed to go right through the ship without exploding in most cases’.110

  After Jutland, Beatty is said to have discovered how laughable the Germans supposedly thought British munitions were, through the dinner remarks of a Swedish naval officer in August 1916.111 Even Dreyer said that, with a better shell, the British could have expected to claim considerably more sinkings between 17:00 and 17:30: ‘three or four battle-cruisers and four or five battleships’.112

  German shells used a more stable substance, trotyl (TNT), which also had a fuse system with better time-delay characteristics, resulting in more internal explosions on British ships. The closer grouping of salvos might also indicate this more stable and consistent characteristic. The British AP shell known as a ‘Green’ finally replaced the old shell (called a ‘Yellow’) that had been the cause of so much heated debate. But it was not introduced into the fleets till 1918, too late to make an impact.

  Between 15:48 and 16:36 – between fire being opened by the Germans, and fire being checked and action temporarily halted – the Germans scored forty-four hits (forty-two on the battle-cruisers and two on Barham), while in return they received only seventeen hits (eleven from the battle-cruisers and six from the 5th Battle Squadron).113

  German and British Hits in the Run to the South

  British (hits sustained)

  German (hits sustained)

  Lion

  9

  Lützow

  4

  Princess Royal

  6

  Derfflinger

  0

  Queen Mary

  7

  Seydlitz

  5

  Tiger

  14

  Moltke

  5

  New Zealand

  1

  Von der Tann

  3

  Indefatigable

  5

  Barham

  2

  Valiant

  0

  Warspite

  0

  Malaya

  0

  TOTAL

  44

  17

  Source: Tarrant, Jutland: The German Perspective.

  The Dewar brothers would, at first, pen a vitriolic account published internally as the Naval Staff Appreciation. That account, in its only slightly watered-down version, concluded that ‘the damage done to the German battle-cruisers in this phase of the action was considerable’;114 this seems very far-fetched or, more as I feel, an out and out distortion of the opening actions of the battle of Jutland given the facts. Better call a spade a spade: these fifty minutes had, for the British, seen one disaster and one error after another.

  Beatty’s revenge: the run to the north

  At this point of the day, visibility for the main German fleet coming north was good: a cloudless sky, a calm sea and a light breeze115 and at 16:28 König, the leading dreadnought of the High Seas Fleet, sighted vessels in action to the north-northwest. A few minutes later, at 16:35, lookouts on Southampton, part of a scouting force running ahead of Beatty, spotted the advancing German battleships.

  Along with three other light cruisers, Commodore Goodenough took Southampton further south and to 13,000yds, well within range of the enemy’s line.116 Surprisingly, the Germans did not fire, but it was because they assumed that, since Goodenough’s forces were steaming so close, he must be one of their own. He stared at the German fleet laid out before him. One of his officers commented at the time: ‘Look, sir, this is the day of a light cruiser’s lifetime. The whole High Seas Fleet is before you.’117 While Goodenough knew that he quickly needed to inform Jellicoe, before he did so he consciously did not respond to Beatty’s recall so that he could get closer – and thus gain a better idea of the German line’s strength.

  We saw ahead of us first smoke, then masts, then ships … sixteen battleships with destroyers around them on each bow. We hung on a few minutes to make sure before confirming the message. Then my commander, efficient and cool, said, ‘If you’re going to make that signal, you’d better make it now, sir. You may never make another.’118

  Goodenough signalled back the vital intelligence at 16:38: ‘Have sighted enemy battle fleet south-east. Enemy’s course north. My position is 56 degrees 34 minutes north 6 degrees 20 minutes east.’

  In his book North Sea Diary, Stephen King-Hall (then a young lieutenant on Southampton) specifically note
d the details of what they had sighted and it seems curious that this intelligence was not included in the signal: ‘As we got closer, I counted 16 or 17 battleships with the four König class in the van and the six older pre-dreadnoughts in the rear’.119 At the very least this would have given Jellicoe an indication for future reference of the effect that Rear Admiral Mauve’s pre-dreadnoughts – the ‘five-minute wonders’ – would be having on slowing the German line in order to keep the 17-knot ships with them.

  For five minutes Beatty held his course and then, once he had confirmed for himself what had been received from Goodenough, signalled his intention to turn his fleet sixteen points to starboard and made a 180-degree turn starting the ‘run to the north’. The time was 16:40.

  Jellicoe and Beatty were both taken totally by surprise. Neither expected Scheer to be at sea. The arrival of Scheers dreadnoughts was the last thing either anticipated and it destroyed their confidence in the Admiralty intelligence they had received to that point. ‘What am I to think of OD [Operations Division] when I get that telegram and in three hours’ time meet the whole of the German High Seas Fleet well out at sea?’120 Beatty had to get away, but he very much needed his run to the north to be seen by both Scheer and Hipper as a desperate turn-tail escape away from the certain defeat that the arrival of the German battle fleet would bring. It was his big chance to lure his foe back up towards Jellicoe’s guns. Beatty had to do now what Hipper had himself just done, so convincing Hipper that this was a real run would no doubt have been a major concern of Beatty’s.