It was not long before they vanished from our view in the mist and smoke … After [their] gradual disappearance we were still faced with the four powerful ships of the 5th Battle Squadron: Malaya, Valiant, Barham and Warspite … this part of the action, fought against a numerically inferior but more powerfully armed enemy who kept us under fire at ranges at which we were helpless, was highly depressing, nerve-wracking and exasperating.*
Such a statement would not make sense had the 5th Battle Squadron fallen in behind the port wing of Beatty’s ships. Indeed, even the account by New Zealand’s gunnery officer supports Evan-Thomas’s picture of events, saying that the 5th Battle Squadron ‘held on southwards longer than the battle-cruisers, [and] finally turned up on our starboard [my italics] quarter, where they now took the brunt of the action, coming under very heavy fire from German battle-cruisers and battle fleet’.148 In the action, according to Hase, the four battleships of Evan-Thomas’ gallant 5th BS was under fire from ‘at least nine German ships, five battle-cruisers and from four to five battleships’.149 This was a far braver action than was reported in Beatty’s commentary, in which Evan-Thomas’s ships were merely placed ‘astern’.150
With shell falling all around them, at 17:14 the 5th Battle Squadron turned north-northwest to line up with the heading of Beatty’s own Battle Cruiser Fleet. Beatty had lost sight of the German battle-cruisers while the 5th Battle Squadron continued to bear the brunt of the fire. The speed of Beatty’s northward haul prompted strong and, maybe, rather unfair comments, such as: ‘The battle-cruisers ran out of the action’.151 But for the men of the 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron, following much further astern to the south, the attack up to 18:00 was pretty terrifying.
Then followed an hour in which I can truthfully say that I thought each succeeding minute would be our last. For a solid weary hour, we were under persistent 11-inch shell-fire from the rear of the German battle fleet, that is to say from all the German battleships who could not quite get [ie hit] the 5th Battle Squadron and therefore thought they might as well while away the time by knocking us out.152
Sub Lieutenant Haworth-Booth, the officer mentioned earlier whose watch timed the shells coming in every twenty-three seconds from sighted muzzle flash to target, summed it up: ‘I would say (and this is a carefully reasoned and considered estimate) that 40 large shells fell within 75 yards of us within the hour’.153
Hipper started turning northwest at around 17:27 and soon after Derfflinger and Lützow started receiving hits again. With Beatty now edging to starboard towards him, Hipper feared that his van would be crossed and he had little alternative other than to also swing away to starboard. On Von der Tann the last turret was now declared out of action due to a mechanical failure.
The British had been lucky. It was through a combination of their own speed and the bad visibility the Germans now had to contend with, that Beatty was able to come out of the engagement with Hipper without any further loss. The conditions were now turning against the German battle-cruiser commander and becoming too dangerous for his line. He temporarily pulled his ships out of the pursuit.
I had to work against a blinding sunset in the western sky and devastating enemy artillery. The sun stood deep and the horizon was hazy and I had to fire directly into the sun. I saw absolutely nothing of the enemy, who was behind a dense cloud of smoke – the gunnery officers could find no target although we made a superb one ourselves. There was nothing else to do but take the ships out of the battle for a while.154
But Beatty’s accomplishment was a very significant one. He had managed to obscure the Grand Fleet coming south from behind him on his port beam. The bending of his line starboard in turn threatened Hipper’s own so that he was forced to ‘follow suit’. Hase was very complimentary:
He [Beatty] accomplished the famous ‘crossing the T’ compelled us to alter course, and finally brought us into such a position that we were completely enveloped by the English fleet and the English battle-cruisers.155
The big prize that Hipper and Scheer had wanted was a stern chase that ended with the annihilation of a smaller force. Now the boot was on the other foot.
But, in summing up, ‘If the cruiser action had stood alone’, wrote Charles Cruttwell in 1934, ‘it would have been beyond dispute one of the severest defeats recorded in the annals of the British navy’.156 Harper went further than calling the outcome a ‘partial defeat’. He pointed the finger at Beatty’s failure to concentrate his line and the poor gunnery performance of his ships, saying that this combination led to ‘regrettable results’ – results which could only be termed ‘disastrous’.157 He might have been correct on the first, but it has become more clear that gunnery was terribly – and sequentially for each side – adversely affected by the haze.
Beatty accomplished what he understood his mission to be – to bring the German battle fleet to Jellicoe – but at a very high cost and having sent virtually no communications back to the C-in-C, who continued to be in the dark until the very last moments.
At around 17:40 Derfflinger and the battle-cruisers turned eastwards by 6 points as a heavy attack was launched against them by destroyers and light cruisers. Fifteen minutes later they were heading almost directly eastwards as Beatty succeeded in bending the line. As Hipper pulled off to the east, Beatty temporarily lost contact but when Lützow re-sighted Beatty’s ships, Jellicoe’s battle-cruiser commander was not able to report the sighting back to his commander-in-chief, as his radio had been blown away.
The British spring the trap
At 17:43 firing from the British battle-cruiser line was recommenced. In the next quarter of an hour, a large amount of damage was inflicted on their opponents: seven hits within nine minutes. At 17:46 Lützow was hit by Princess Royal; Markgraf was hit at 17:51, Seydlitz twice at 17:53 and again two minutes later at 17:55 by 15in shells. The hits that she received came in around her forecastle and, from the British line, she appeared done for. Derfflinger was hit twice at 17:55, also by 15in shells. One hit landed just above her torpedo room and the damage caused heavy flooding.
The range between the parallel battle-cruiser lines was now around seven miles, 14,000yds. Even in the midst of the carnage and death, there were lighter moments. Before the meeting of the battle fleets, the paymaster on New Zealand came up on deck to take some fresh air. As he stretched and breathed in, he was suddenly surprised to find himself standing on deck with no trousers – they had been pulled off by the immense effect of the guns being fired. ‘He was standing on the fore superstructure when P turret opened fire, and deprived him by its blast of his very necessary garment. Decency demanded an immediate retreat.’158
Hipper started to see groups of other ships, destroyers and light cruisers. At 17:45 the Grand Fleet was spotted from Lion – she seemed to be almost on a parallel course.
The four battle-cruisers were being heavily shelled by an invisible foe to their starboard, and I could see the numerous columns of water made by the falling shells. They continued on their easterly course for six or seven minutes, and during this time the Lion was heavily hit forward, amidships, and aft: fires seemed to break out on board.159
Beatty’s line was obscured from Hipper while the latter also could not see the Grand Fleet, which was hidden by Beatty’s line. It was a masterly manoeuvre.160 Hipper was forced to turn his line to starboard or risk having his ‘T crossed’.
On the bridge of Iron Duke, Jellicoe found himself decidedly uninformed about the events of the past few hours. Apart from commanders such as Good-enough, most did not feel that it was their duty or even their responsibility to relay information to the commander-in-chief. On Malaya Captain Algernon Boyle was in a position to see what was happening. He gave his point of view as to why this kind of information was not being sent back to Jellicoe on Iron Duke:
[I doubt] whether the various observations of enemy ships made by ships of our battle fleet ought to have been reported to the Commander-in-Chief. I was on the bridge all night with my adm
iral and we came to the conclusion that the situation was well known to the Commander-in-Chief and that the attacks were according to plan. A stream of wireless reports from ships in company with the Commander-in-Chief seemed superfluous and uncalled for. The unnecessary use of wireless was severely discouraged as being likely to disclose our position to the enemy … This may have been an error in judgement but cannot be termed ‘amazing neglect’.161
Maybe, then, an ‘amazingly’ bad error in judgement, especially for a commander! Mistakes happen. That was clear. Even Goodenough had confused the situation by giving a wrong bearing by mistake when he signalled at 17:40 that the enemy battle-cruisers bore southwest of the enemy battle fleet when actually they were northeast.
Jellicoe’s biographer Reginald Bacon was also exceptionally critical of Beatty’s deficiency in the basics of fleet command, such as the almost total lack of signalled instructions to his force during this phase: ‘except for a signal to the battleships at 15:35 to alter course to the east (three minutes after the same signal had been made to the battle-cruisers), not a single signal was made specially to the battleships until after the turn to the north had been carried out by the battle-cruisers; nor was a single signal made especially to the light cruisers between 15:00 and 17:47; their existence was practically ignored.’162
Shortly after 18:00 another British torpedo attack drove the German battle-cruisers south. Hase described what confronted him and the German line when the cruisers came back north twelve minutes later: ‘a terrific struggle began. Within a short time the din of battle reached a climax. It was perfectly clear to us that we were faced with the whole English fleet. I could see from her gigantic hull that I had engaged a giant battleship.’163 At this point, nothing much was visible from Derfflinger apart from the burning wreck of Wiesbaden.
The outcome – bringing the German fleet to the Grand Fleet – was the desired one but the cost had been extremely high. ‘The results cannot be other than unpalatable,’ wrote Jellicoe. A British squadron, ‘greatly superior in numbers and gun power’, had succumbed to ‘a weaker enemy’ to produce what Bacon called ‘a partial defeat’.164 Captain JET Harper, whose report was the Navy’s first official attempt to analyse the battle, came to the following unpalatable – and therefore highly controversial – conclusion:
The disturbing feature of the battle-cruiser action is the fact that five German battle-cruisers engaging six British vessels of this class, supported after the first twenty minutes, although at great range, by the fire of four battleships of the Queen Elizabeth class, were yet able to sink the Queen Mary and the Indefatigable. It is true that the enemy suffered heavily later and that one vessel, the Lützow, was undoubtedly destroyed, but even so the result cannot be other than unpalatable. The facts which contributed to the British losses were, first, the indifferent armour protection of battle-cruisers and deck plating, and second the disadvantage under which our vessels laboured as regards to light… But it is also undoubted that the gunnery of the German battle-cruisers in the early stages was of a very high standard. They appeared to get on to their target and establish hitting within two or three minutes in almost every case, and this at very long ranges of 18,000 yards. Once we commenced hitting, the German gunnery fell off, but – as was shown by the rapidity with which the Invincible was sunk at a later stage – their ships were still able to fire with great accuracy even when they had received severe punishment. The fact that the gunnery of the German battle fleet when engaged with our battle fleet did not show the same accuracy must not, I think, be taken as showing that the standard was not so high as with their battle-cruisers, as I am inclined to the opinion that we then had something of an advantage in the way of light, although it was very bad for both sides.165
* The Long Forties is an area of deep water, around 40 fathoms (73m), that runs across the North Sea from just above Aberdeen to the southern tip of Norway.
† Ahead of the battle-cruisers, on their port, was the 9th Flotilla with Dublin and Nottingham further east. On the starboard bow steamed the 13th Flotilla headed by Champion. Slightly to their south were Southampton and Birmingham.
* Signal time 14:39. ‘Urgent. Have sighted large amount of smoke as though from a fleet bearing E.N.E. My position Lat. 56° 50′ N., Long. 5° 19′ E. (Received in Iron Duke 14:35.)’
† ‘Urgent. My 14:35. Smoke seems to be seven vessels besides Destroyers and Cruisers. They have turned North. My position Lat. 56° 52′ N., Long. 5° 33′ E. (Received in Iron Duke 14:41)’.
‡ Jellicoe had ordered the second carrier available with the fleet, Campania, back to harbour at 16:41 because she had misunderstood the sailing time orders and her delayed departure would have needed additional destroyer protection.
* It is ironic that Beatty blamed Sir Hugh Evan-Thomas for the mix-up over signals, as the latter was always regarded as a signals expert and had commanded the Signals School in Portsmouth. In Andrew Gordon’s words, ‘he was one of the Royal Navy’s high priests of signalling with all the punctilious, pedantic regard endemic in that abstruse craft’ (Gordon, The Rules of the Game, p38).
* Craig and Egerton ‘endeavoured to persuade our admiral to turn and follow Beatty’ (Gordon, p82).
* The ‘action stations’ alarms are sounded by a bugler leaving out the beginning G notes that denote an exercise.
* Some commentators put the range of the British response fire at far nearer than 18,000yds. Chalmers said that ‘Beatty, as advised by his gunnery officers, believed he had opened fire at 18,000 yards, when in point of fact the range was only 15,500 yards’. Ernie Chatfield, Beatty’s flag captain on the bridge of Lion, maintained that it was closer to 16,000yds. Others put it even less.
* Hektometer, or hectometre in English; 1hm is 100m (320ft).
† A compass point is equivalent to approximately 11½ degrees. A full circle has 32 points so a 16-point turn – 184 degrees – is a course-reversal.
‡ Surprisingly, no mention is made, in either the text or the footnotes of the infamous ‘Narrative of the Battle of Jutland’, of the fact that the initial fire allocation left Derfflinger unfired on for ten minutes (Narrative, pp151–61).
* A ‘short’ was more useful for spotting purposes than a ‘long’, as it could be more clearly seen – if the deflection was correct – against the intended target, while a ‘long’ was usually hidden by the target itself and difficult to use as an indication of range adjustment needed.
* The broadside weight is simply calculated by taking the weight of each shell and multiplying it by the number of guns being brought to bear. Broadside weight per minute based on the rate of fire can then also be calculated.
* Evan-Thomas in 1923 in an explanation to the Director of Training and Staff Duties when he said that changes in the course were ‘necessary to get on the enemy side of Lion (quoted Gordon, p406).
8
The First Destroyer Melee
In the Naval Staff Appreciation, the Dewar brothers put great emphasis on the massed torpedo attacks launched from the opposing battle lines by both Beatty and Hipper in the middle of the run to the south,1 saying that the British vice admiral’s actions ‘exercised considerable influence on the battle’.2 It was a very fast, violent affair. The waters separating the fleets became a boiling inferno, the sea churned by the speeding destroyers, trailing cockerel plumes of foam, along with the bubbling wakes from the forty-odd torpedoes let loose during this short but extremely aggressive and lightning-fast conflict.3
Anticipating the need by around twenty minutes, Lion had already sent a WT to Champion, the 13th Flotilla leader, at 15:55 to warn her to get ready for an attack: ‘Opportunity appears favourable for attacking’. The enemy battle-cruisers were around eight miles off on the port beam, but little more could be made out except for the flash of their guns. A minute later Beatty let his destroyers off their leash: ‘Proceed at your utmost speed’. Maybe it was because he saw no obvious reaction that at 16:09 he signalled again: ‘Attack the enemy
with torpedoes’, the message being received by Champion through Princess Royal, presumably because Lions WT was out of operation.
But the disposition of Beatty’s destroyers made it difficult to field the forces he wanted to. The 13th Flotilla was way off to the starboard, disengaged side of the battle-cruiser line. Six 9th Flotilla destroyers – Moorsom, Morris, Liberty, Landrail, Lydiard and Laurel (along with one straggler from the 13th, the Obdurate) were on Beatty’s engaged side. They were receiving ‘shorts’ but they did at least protect his line from potential German torpedo. A minute later, Beatty ordered them to clear his line of sight which they were obscuring with their smoke. Only Moorsom and Morris held position.
At around 16:15, just as Lion scored a hit on Lützow, Captain James Farie, the 13th Flotilla commander, relayed the orders from Champion to the group under the command of Nestor’s captain, Barry Bingham. Out in front were Nestor, Nicator, Nomad, Narborough and Pelican. First, Bingham ran southwards to gain a better position, then raced across the gap between the opposing battle lines. But almost immediately Nestor, Nomad and Nicator were cut off from the rest of the group when one of the 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron, Nottingham, cut through the destroyer line, obliging Petard to take immediate and violent evasive action, and breaking up the attack. The leading group of five went on; eventually Narborough and Pelican doubled back to join Champion.4
Nestor, Nicator and Nomad
At 16:40 the three destroyers of the first group (Bingham on Nestor, Jack Mocatta on Nicator and Paul Whitfield on Nomad)5 turned and raced back north at a fast 35 knots to head into a kind of no-man’s-land towards the German battle-cruiser line. Following them were Petard, Nerissa, Termagant, Moorsom and Morris.6 Most of this group chased other German destroyers that had been sighted five minutes after setting off from the British line, about 7,000yds (6,400m) off. Nestor, Nicator and Nomad stuck to their plan to go after the battle-cruisers themselves.
Jutland_The Unfinished Battle Page 24
