Heavy secondary fire from the German battle-cruisers, as well as from a single cruiser, possibly Wiesbaden, zeroed in on the three. At around 16:45 Nomad was badly hit.7 Her boilers were now out of action after the steam pipes were damaged. She hauled out to port and wheeled around the stern of Princess Royal and came to a complete stop behind the battle-cruiser, herself heavily under fire. Even though Captain Whitfield’s boat was starting to go down by the stern, two torpedoes ran right under her, but the boat’s sinking condition did not prevent Whitfield from launching two of his own torpedoes before the list became extreme. Then he weighed down the destroyer’s confidential documents in ammunition boxes and threw them overboard. Meanwhile, Nestor and Nicator continued, wheeling over to the east to line up an attack; the Nicator fired one torpedo, at 6,000yds (5,500m), and a second, slightly closer at 5,000yds (4,600m). These ships’ captains pressed home their attacks in the face of intense enemy fire.
Together the two destroyers made the high-speed dash and reached to within about 3,500yds of what turned out to be Lützow, ‘devilishly close’ in Hases words.8 Each fired two torpedoes, but after all their efforts, neither was lucky enough to score a single hit.9 They then made a second run, this time getting in as close as 3,500yds (3,200m). Bingham even managed to get off a third torpedo and the two boats turned 180 degrees and headed west back towards the British lines which had, at least for the battle-cruisers, made the 16-point turn and were steaming back north, making Hipper think that he had them on the run.10
Twelve British destroyers had gone out to attack the German lines: Nestor, Nicator, Petard, Nerissa, Nomad, Turbulent, Termagant, Obdurate, Moorsom, Morris, Narborough and Pelican. All except Pelican attacked and launched torpedoes, Nomad from a stationary position after being damaged. Together they had launched twenty-one torpedoes, ten each at the battleship and battle-cruiser lines, hitting Seydlitz and knocking out V.27.
With their flagship Lützow under direct attack, the German torpedo boats reacted fast: ‘Seeing the plight of their leader [ie Lützow] the German torpedo-boat flotilla commanders decided, on their own initiative, that they must go into the attack to relieve the situation.’11 Fifteen destroyers under the command of Regensburg were sent to meet the British attack, eleven from Commander Herbert Goehle’s 9th Flotilla and a further four from the 2nd Flotilla. Eighteen torpedoes were launched at the British line at the extremes of close range: between 1,000 and 1,500m (1,100–1,640yds). While not a single one hit, Scheer credited the attacks with forcing the 5th Battle Squadron to turn away. The battle squadron did, in fact, turn 2 points away and because of this it was not able to keep up with the speeding, northward-bound British battle. Evan-Thomas’s turn away was the first of a number of turns away during the day, intended to protect slow manoeuvring battleships from torpedo attack.
The Germans were not so lucky. They lost two of their boats, the 810-ton V.27 and V.29. The former, hit amidships, had received significant damage to her engine room. V.29 had had her bottom ripped off by one of Petard’s torpedoes, launched as the two passed each other at high speed. After Petard saw that she had crippled V.29, the former circled back to finish her off with 4in gunfire. At this point – it was about 17:00 – Nestor was hit twice from a range of around 3,000yds (2,700m), but it is not known whether this was from Regensburg or from one of the battle-cruisers in the van. Her boilers badly damaged, Nestor still managed to steam a further four miles, but half an hour later stopped not far from Nomad.
Mocatta on Nicator swung back to try to help Bingham and Nestor, but was bravely waved off by Bingham. ‘I was obliged to refuse,’ he wrote later, ‘for I could not see my way to involving a second destroyer in a danger which probably only applied to one, for at the time we were still under fire and able to steam slowly.’12 After he could not help Bingham, Mocatta acted on Beatty’s recall order and headed Nicator back to rejoin Champion.
On the way back, Nomad, which had also stopped between the lines like Nomad and Nicator, was also spotted by the enemy in whose direct path she now lay helplessly. The German battle fleet came into view, very close – at 3,000yds – smothering the two wounded British destroyers with a rain of heavy-calibre fire. Eventually, Whitfield’s luck ran out. His boat Nomad had been badly shot up by four battleships as they passed by. Along with another officer and seven ratings, Whitfield was critically wounded. He made the decision to abandon ship: Nomad’s signalling gear was smashed and there was no way that he could get any information, however vital, back to the commander-in-chief.
Nestor was in trouble too. She fired off her last torpedo while under heavy shellfire, about 10,000yds (9,100m) off from the approaching battleships. Of Bingham’s crew, two officers and four men were killed. Bingham was later awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions. Bingham himself had also tried to help one destroyer from the second wave, Petard, but had been waved off in much the same manner as he had done to Mocatta on Nicator. The German S.16 rescued the eighty surviving crew members from Nomad – who heroically but unsuccessfully tried to keep her afloat – and seventy-two men from Nestor. The gallant ship had also picked up her own, crews from V.27and V.29.*
Petard and Obdurate
Petard13 and Obdurate14 set out to attack the enemy’s battle-cruisers together, but they were joined by Nerissa, Termagant, Morris and Moorsom, a mix of 13th and 10th DF boats.† Nerissa and Termagant decided to go after Von der Tann. Petard and her group targeted Seydlitz. Before they could even get close, they were engaged by an incoming group of German destroyers and a light cruiser.
Petard had aimed one high-speed torpedo at the head of the line, set the running depth for 6ft and fired. It hit the German destroyer amidships and then Petard’s guns were also brought to bear as she swooped past her opponent, now stopped dead in the water, ‘her upper deck awash and obviously sinking’. While Obdurate could not get into a position to fire her torpedoes, Petard could. Having loosed off three at the ‘second or third’ ship in the battle-cruiser line from around 7,000yds (6,400m), the British destroyer turned northwards to rejoin her lines. On the way she stopped where Laurel had heaved to beside a large patch of oil. It was where Queen Mary had gone down. Passing by, Petard was able to spot and then pick up one lucky survivor, the turret officer, Petty Officer Ernest Francis. With Francis safely on board, she made her way up astern of the 5th Battle Squadron to rejoin Champion.15
Harry Oram, serving as a young sub lieutenant on Obdurate, described the scene. It was one of utter, deadly confusion:
By sheer coincidence the hounds on both sides had been unleashed simultaneously to steam at full speed into a fierce melee between the lines. The opposing forces were evenly matched and their combat was spectacular, highly exciting and chaotic – thirty ships at 30 knots weaving about in a restricted area striving to find a way through to a torpedo-firing position and hotly engaged in frustrating enemy craft. The approaching German torpedo boats with gushing funnels, high bow waves and sterns tucked down in foaming wakes looked sinister and menacing. I remember feeling that they were a pack of wolves that must, at all costs, be killed.16
It must have felt like hand-to-hand fighting, swift, deadly and merciless. ‘Events,’ Oram continued, ‘moved far too quickly for stereotyped gun-control procedure and we let fly at anything hostile that came within our arc of fire.’ Obdurate herself was damaged, hit twice by 4in fire, but none of her crew was wounded. Eventually she found herself too far off to use her torpedoes on the battle-cruisers and fell back.
The immense gallantry of the 13th and 10th Flotillas did not go unrecognised. While Bingham was responsible for two torpedo hits during the brief hours of the battle-cruiser action and himself received a VC, other destroyer captains received Distinguished Service Orders: Paul Whitfield (Nomad), ECO Thompson (Petard), John Coombe Hodgson (Moorsom), Cuthbert Blake (Termagant), Jack Tovey (Onslow), Roger Alison (Moresby), Jack Mocatta (Nicator) and Montague Legge (Nerissa).
Seydlitz is torpedoed
Originally, two
destroyers, Moresby and Onslow, had been sent to screen and protect Engadine.17 Once Rutland had completed his reconnaissance flight and had managed to bring his plane safely back down, Lieutenant Commander Tovey on Onslow could hold off no longer, now that he saw the battle-cruiser engagement going on. At 16:12 he signalled Engadine asking if he and Lieutenant Commander Alison’s Moresby could be released so that they could join the fray (he rather charmingly asked if Engadine could ‘dispense with [his] services’).18
By 16:55 the two destroyers were heading south-southeast at 30 knots. As Beatty had started coming north again following his 16:40 signal, they found themselves about three miles off on his engaged side (most of the other destroyers had re-formed to the disengaged side). From around 18,000yds (16,500m), they saw no cruiser or destroyer screen protecting the enemy battle-cruisers and they decided to make their run. Then four German light cruisers were spotted coming out, getting in between the two British destroyers and their targets. A ‘heavy and very accurate fire’ was opened on both before they decided to separate to present less of a target.
On Moresby Alison headed back around and took station astern of the 1st Battle Cruiser Squadron line, spotted the van of the German battle fleet, decided to head in, and between 17:05 and 17:10, at what he estimated was between a 6,000 and 8,000yds (5,500–7,300m) range, let loose a high-speed torpedo at the third dreadnought in the line. He missed and was severely straddled for his pains.19 As the torpedo attack was carried out, Seydlitz was under 15in fire, most probably from Valiant, and hits were being made on the forecastle. Just as he was moving off, Alison saw a commotion; a torpedo fired by someone else (it had been from Petard) had hit home somewhere on the line.20
Moresby and Onslow received a fair amount of fire. Lützow fired on both of them at 17:08 with her 5.9in guns and at 17:12 Von der Tann added fire from her main 11in armament. The German battle-cruiser fired six rounds in three minutes, but had to cease fire when her guns jammed. The shooting was so good that Alison said that ‘had they fired double salvos they would have hit’.21 He reported that German defensive fire was well organised and that ‘enemy ships appeared not to fire after a certain bearing, but the fresh ship starting seemed to straddle with almost the first salvo, though not again.22
Returning to the British line, Moresby was mistaken by Tiger for an enemy destroyer and fired upon. Diplomatically, no mention of it was made in Alison’s report to Captain Farie, though a young sub, de Salis, clearly recalled the event:
We must have been steaming nearly bows on to the Tiger who, taking us for a German destroyer attack under the famous smoke screen, opened a brisk fire upon us with her 6-inch guns …A piece of shell was picked up on the upper deck afterwards – unmistakable service yellow-brown and subsequently produced to taunt the control office of the Tigers starboard battery.23
Onboard Onslow, Tovey, who had taken up position behind the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron, saw a three-funnelled enemy cruiser and ‘decided to attack her to endeavour to frustrate her firing torpedoes at our battle-cruisers’.24 Attacking at a range that closed from 4,000 to 2,000yds (3,600 to 1,800m), Onslow fired fifty-eight rounds, many of which Tovey saw hit home on the German ship, but as he went in, the battle-cruisers were spotted and Tovey decided to target them instead. He had intended to fire all his remaining torpedoes but just as he gave the order to fire at 8,000yds, his destroyer was heavily hit starboard amidships.
Sub Lieutenant Moore found that only one torpedo had actually left the tubes. When the enemy light cruiser was seen again, apparently stopped, Tovey ordered another torpedo launch. The two men saw the hit below the conning tower. Before turning away, they fired the two remaining torpedoes, but they must have crossed harmlessly through the German lines. The damage sustained meant that the offer of a tow from Defender was readily accepted and the Onslow made her way back home at 10 knots, arriving in Aberdeen two days later at 13:00 on 2 June.
After she had successfully avoided Moresby’s torpedo, Seydlitz was badly hit below her forward turret by the third of the British torpedoes, launched in the earlier attack by Petard.
Our foretop reported first one, and then more torpedo tracks. We tried to avoid them by sharp turns, but finally one got us a bit forward of the bridge. The blow was much softer than gunnery hits or near misses, no loud report, but only a rattling noise in the rigging … The torpedo bulkhead held but it was seriously strained, as were parts of the armoured deck.25
The outer bottom of the forward barbette was destroyed over a length of 40ft and around 13ft high (12m x 4m).26 Parties of men worked to repair the damage. It turned out to be in almost the same area where the ship had been damaged by a mine weeks earlier.
Even if her speed was unimpaired, conditions on Seydlitz deteriorated quickly. A third of her electrical generating power was lost and stokers, electricians and engineers worked below decks in horrendous conditions, in the dark, to try and restore power. In the dynamo room temperatures reached 72°C and gas-masked crew members fainted from heat exhaustion. The flooding had spread to around 90ft (27m), probably, according to David Brown, because of poor repairs from the previous mine damage. Eventually they succeeded and steering was regained.
The stokers and coal trimmers deserved the highest praise, for they had to wield their shovels mostly in the dark, often up to their knees in water without knowing where it came from and how much it would rise. Unfortunately, we had verybad coal that formed so much slag that the fires had to be cleaned after half the usual time, and the grates burnt through and fell into the ash pits. The spare ones had to be altered in the thick ofbattle because even the beams supporting the grates were bent by the heat.*
Seydlitz continued being straddled and hit. In Bruno turret the starboard gun layer was killed and while the battery was back in action after three salvos, because visibility was so bad, Commander Richard Förster, Seydlitz’s gunnery officer, could only occasionally fire back.
Seydlitz’s helmsman stood his post for twenty-four long hours. It was his expert handling that would bring the wounded battle-cruiser back to safety. He was to be the only able seaman in the German fleet to later receive the Iron Cross, first class – and his stripes were restored (he had lost them because of being habitually drunk).
Before 17:30 British destroyers had launched between twenty-two and twenty-six torpedoes, but the verdict on torpedoes, at least at this stage of development, seems to have been that they had been over-rated. In Peter Kemp’s view, ‘They had, it is true, proved deadly against the thin plating of a destroyer but the armour and internal watertight subdivision of a capital ship had defeated their full destructive power. In the Seydlitz only one compartment had been flooded as a result of the Petard’s hit and she was still fully able to continue the fight.’27 However, Kemp does not mention the distraction that these attacks caused, often making commanders change course or dangerously forcing individual ships out of line. While the destroyer attacks might not have been able to claim what they hoped for – a battle-cruiser or at least a cruiser – the effect of the British torpedo strikes, in much the same way that Scheer himself claimed for the actions on the German side, persuaded Hipper to pull away and helped relieve the gunnery pressure on Beatty at a critical moment.
* The German destroyers V.26 and S.35 stopped to take their crews off: four officers and sixty-eight men. It is not quite known how many were killed on V.29. The estimates range from forty-three to thirty-three. It is not thought that there were men killed on V.25, despite heavy casualties.
† Hodgson in Moorsom had joined the destroyer actions, but when part of the group went hunting the battle-cruisers, he was unable to join and, instead, tried to make a run for the van of the High Seas Fleet itself. Moorsom was very heavily shelled and water got into one of the oil tanks, abruptly slowing her. Only a quick switch to an undamaged fuel line was able to get her out of harm’s way.
* In fact, the quality of coal could make substantial difference to the speed of a ship. Welsh coal was cons
idered some of the best available and was extensively used by the Royal Navy and stocked at the Navy’s worldwide bunkering points. If the coal was not pure – Australian coal supposedly contained 15 per cent earth – the boiler tubes would clog up which would require more docking for boiler cleaning.
9
The Deployment
The peak moment of the influence of sea power on history.
Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow
Converging fleets
The Grand Fleet was heading from two directions to the meeting point with Beatty’s battle-cruisers. From Scapa Flow came Jellicoe, with the main elements of the Grand Fleet, while Admiral Martyn Jerram brought further dreadnought strength from Cromarty.
Horace Hood had taken the three battle-cruisers of the 3rd Battle Cruiser Squadron – Inflexible, Indomitable and Invincible – twenty miles ahead of Jellicoe to act as a scout. Hood’s force was accompanied by the light cruisers Chester (to starboard) and Canterbury (on port), as well as by four boats from the 4th Destroyer Flotilla: Shark, Acasta, Christopher and Ophelia. The moment that Galatea’s signals indicating enemy presence were picked up, preparations for the meeting were put into gear in earnest. At 15:13 Hood increased speed to 22 knots and at 16:00 to 24 knots, bearing south to meet up with and support Beatty’s forces.
The 3rd Light Cruiser Squadron (commanded by Rear Admiral Trevylyan Napier on Falmouth) was scouting four miles ahead of Lion when lookouts spotted Black Prince to the northwest, herself scouting ahead of Jellicoe’s forces. It would have been an ideal opportunity to get significant information back to the commander-in-chief, but instead Napier simply signalled: ‘Battle-cruisers engaged to the south-south-west of me’.1 Black Prince misleadingly elaborated on Napier’s earlier signal and passed a message to Jellicoe: ‘enemy battle-cruisers bearing south five miles’. Thankfully, Jellicoe had already received other information by the time that he read this, so he knew that this was actually Beatty’s force and not Hipper’s.
Jutland_The Unfinished Battle Page 25
