Jutland_The Unfinished Battle

by Nicholas Jellicoe

  22 Rawson, p176.

  23 Bacherach, p43.

  24 Rawson, p242.

  25 Tarrant, Battle-cruiser Invincible, p98, 14:33 GMT. The power of transmitters was normally related to the size of a warship. ‘Battleships and battle-cruisers normally carried a 14kW set with a range of approximately 500 miles, cruisers a 1.5kW set with a 100 mile range, destroyers a 1kW set with half the range and submarines a set with approximately thirty miles range.’ (Kent, p35).

  26 Time 15:11.

  27 Turn to the SSE, timed 16:06.

  28 Signal timed 16:56.

  29 A good description of the steps taken during an ‘action stations’ is given on p170 of Steel and Hart, described by a lieutenant on HMS Agincourt.

  30 Yates, p133.

  31 Steel and Hart, p79; also Chalmers, pp229–30.

  32 Hase, p81.

  33 King-Hall, p130. Note: this is the ‘Etienne’ version.

  34 Kemp, p70.

  35 Staff, p280

  36 Official Dispatches, p132.

  37 Paschen became an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime and was eventually executed. He came from a strong naval background as his father was chief of staff of the Baltic Naval Station and a vice admiral. His mother was also a rear admiral’s daughter. Paschen married an English woman and so it was more likely, when the second war came again in 1939, that he might have had some misgivings about the Nazi party. After a show trial he was sentenced to death by the notorious Nazi judge, Roland Freisler. His wife was not even allowed to take his body back to Flensberg, his birthplace, to be buried.

  38 Steel and Hart, p80, based on Campbell’s The Fighting at Jutland, The calculation of 167hm seems too far.

  39 Moltke was as close as 141hm, while Von der Tann reported firing at 162hm.

  40 Sumida, ‘A Matter of Timing: The Royal Navy and the Matter of Tactics of the Decisive Battle 1912–1916’, Journal of Military History, 67:1, January 2003.

  41 Brooks, p241.

  42 Fawcett and Hooper, p34.

  43 Private correspondence, Byron Angel, translating Mahrholtz’s diaries (Von der Tanns gunnery officer).

  44 Steel and Hart, p86.

  45 Double fire on Lützow, as the enemy flagship, was intentional while this was not the case for Moltke (Hawkins, p75).

  46 Campbell, p39. Time of straddling 15:52.

  47 The signal was based on Nelson’s famous signal at Trafalgar, signal no. 16.

  48 Born in 1887, after leaving school and joining the Navy, Seymour eventually came to David Beatty’s attention, who helped his career, appointing him signals officer on Lion. After the war Seymour became engaged to the admiral’s niece, Gwendolyn, an engagement to which Beatty’s wife, Ethel, strongly objected. Seymour had to break off the engagement and eventually committed suicide in 1922. While Beatty praised his actions at the time in the Jutland battle-cruiser despatches (‘In conclusion, I desire to record and bring to your notice … my Flag Lieutenant, Commander R F Seymour, who maintained efficient communications under the most difficult circumstances, despite the fact that his signalling appliances were continually shot away.’) and also worked to get him promoted to commander, he blamed his faulty signals for mistakes made at the Scarborough Raid, the Dogger Bank action and Jutland.

  49 Massie, p590. This seems to be slightly misquoted, see Steel and Hart, p80, quoting Lions flag captain, Ernie Chatfield.

  50 Campbell, p39.

  51 Moltke was steaming 30 degrees off her port side at around 15:50.

  52 A number of different approaches were used by navies at this time for identifying turrets. On British ships these would be letters: to paraphrase from Wikipedia, A and B were for the turrets from the front of the ship backwards, and letters near the end of the alphabet (ie X and Y, etc) were for turrets in the rear of the ship. Mountings in the middle of the ship would be P, Q and R etc. Secondary mountings were named P and S (port and starboard), and numbered from fore to aft; eg PI was the forward port gun. Obviously, there were exceptions. For example, Agincourt had, unusually, seven turrets that were named after the days of the week, ‘Monday’ up to ‘Sunday’. On a German ship, if all turrets were on the centre line, turrets were generally A, B, C, D, and E, going backwards from stem to stern. Usually the radio alphabet was used on naming the turrets, eg Anton, Bruno, Berta, Caesar, Dora. If there were six turrets, as on Helgoland and Nassau, they were named alphabetically in a circle around the ship, starting at the bow and going counter-clockwise. Similar exceptions applied to ships with staggered wing turrets or super-firing aft turrets, There were also phonetic alphabets that were adopted to suit a ship more: on Blücher, Alsen, Bautzen, Cezille, Düppel, Eylau and Fehrbellin; on Von der Tann, Alsen, Bautzen, Culm and Düppel; on Seydlitz, Anna, Berta, Caesar, Dora and Emil; on Lützow, Alsen, Bautzen, Culm and Düppel.

  53 Hayward, pp102–3.

  54 Hayward, p103.

  55 Yates, p134.

  56 Yates, p134.

  57 Fawcett and Hooper, p35.

  58 Grove, p86.

  59 Steel and Hart, p89, quoting Kapitän zur See Moritz von Egidy from Seydlitz: ‘This time, only one cartridge caught fire, the flash did not reach the magazines, and so we lost only 20 dead or severely burned, and only one turret was put out of action’.

  60 Signal time 15:55.

  61 Quoting Captain Walter Cowan’s dispatch. Official Dispatches, p151.

  62 Steel and Hart, p85, quoting Sub Lieutenant Harry Oram, HMS Obdurate, 13th Flotilla.

  63 Snelling, p113.

  64 Massie, p593.

  65 Steel and Hart, p91, quoting Commander Alan Mackenzie-Grieve, HMS Birmingham, 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron.

  66 Snelling, p113.

  67 Ibid, p114

  68 Steel and Hart, p92.

  69 Campbell quotes the time as 15:58 (Jutland, Analysis of the Fighting, p69). The shell from Derfflinger ‘hit 6’ belt in line with the centre of ‘B’ barbette, and a little below the main deck’ of Princess Royal (see diagram, p71).

  70 Steel and Hart, pp92–3.

  71 Private correspondence, Byron Angel, translating Mahrholtz’s diaries.

  72 Fawcett and Hooper, pp38–9, navigating officer, HMS New Zealand.

  73 Imperial War Museum, interview with Signalman Falmer (CAT No 4096. BBC. C Falmer, recorded 1963).

  74 Falmer insisted that he was picked up at around 02:30, not 20:00. It is hard to believe that he could have survived that long in the water, but his memory about the event was very distinct. He said that the captain came down and said in broken English, ‘German navy, alles kaputt’, at which point, Falmer said, he ‘laughed actually. And I asked him for water. He sent a man up and he came back with a bottle of whisky and on the bottle was McAllister of Dundee.’

  75 Signalman Falmer, Imperial War Museum, podcast No 22, Jutland.

  76 Imperial War Museum, interview with Signalman Falmer (CAT No 4096. BBC. C Falmer, recorded 1963).

  77 Between 16:02 and 16:05, Lion lost her radio equipment after a hit (one of around six) from Lützow at around 20,000yds (182hm).

  78 Private correspondence, Byron Angel, translating Mahrholtz’s diaries.

  79 Between 15:48 and 16:07, Lion fired around twenty-three salvos, Lützow thirty-one (Campbell); the one regret that Kommodore Paschen had was that he did not use PAC rather than uncapped AP.

  80 Steel and Hart, p98.

  81 Warspite at 16:00, Warspite at 16:02, Valiant at 16:01, Barham at 16:11 (Narrative, p17). Harper in The Truth states specifically that Barham opened at 16:06. Campbell put the timing at 16:08 – Barham on Von der Tann. At 16:10 Barham and Valiant open up on Moltke while Warspite and Malaya opened up on Von der Tann. Infact, Valiant and Warspite had joined in the fight a few minutes earlier, at 15:59, but at this point firing at nearer targets, Pillau, for example.

  82 Warspite had one refit in 1928 when her twin funnels were streamlined into one joint stack, Then, after the 1937 reconstruction, her ordnance was upgraded to fire the Mk II 1,9381b shell
and her guns given 30-degree elevation. By this point she was able to add another 10,000yds range, her shells hitting at 32,500yds with a 4321b propellant. The shell would take a whole minute to arrive on target.

  83 Steel and Hart, p98, quoting Seaman Carl Meims, Von der Tann, 1st Scouting Group.

  84 Private correspondence, Byron Angel, translating Mahrholtz’s diaries.

  85 See Defence Viewpoints. Notes by MP Oliver Colville on his grandfather, Charles Neate, who served on Valiant.

  86 Ranft, TBP, vol 2, p429, written 4 June 1916, HMS Lion.

  87 Steel and Hart, p102, quoting Midshipman Arthur Lewis, HMS Lion.

  88 Tarrant, Jutland: The German Perspective, p88. Tarrant reports in German time (GMT +1)

  89 Hase, p87.

  90 Steel and Hart, pp103–4.

  91 In his report to his senior officer, Francis, despite the value of the information on his experience within Queen Mary’s X turret that he had shared, wrote deprecatingly of himself: ‘I am asking that whoever reads this at any time will please remember that the writer is much handier behind a pair of 13.5″ turret guns than behind a pen’. His description of the event brought to life much of the horror of being trapped in one of the turrets.

  92 Steel and Hart, p104, quoting Petty Officer Ernest Francis, HMS Queen Mary, 1st Battle Cruiser Squadron.

  93 I was touched to see that the book from which this story was taken (Harold Felix Baker-Wheeler, Stirring Deeds of Britain’s Sea-dogs in the Great War) was dedicated to my father’s remaining sisters, Lucy, Norah, Myrtle and Prudence. Betty had already died seven years earlier of a mastoid infection. Brooks Rowlett, a friend, kindly passed the dedication from the book on to me.

  94 Hase, p91. The same description appeared in The Times (9 June 1916). Harold Felix Baker-Wheeler, Stirring Deeds of Britain’s Sea-dogs in the Great War, Eld and Blackham Ltd (1917), pp340-l, identified the Daily Telegraph as being the source.

  95 Massie, p 595, quoting Hase.

  96 Steel and Hart, p106, quoting from Victor Hayward. Fawcett & Hooper, p42 seen from the conning tower of HMS Tiger, 1st Battle Cruiser Squadron.

  97 Massie, p595, quoting an eyewitness from HMS Tiger.

  98 On other Royal Navy ships there were other Japanese observers: Commander Suetsugu Nobumasa aboard Colossus, Lt Commander Imamura Shinjiro aboard a light cruiser. Nobumasa (1880–1944) later became an admiral and was the Japanese Minister of the Interior in 1937–9. He declared in 1934 that for the navy even war with the US was acceptable ‘if it will get us a budget’. Vice Admiral Imamura Shinjiro (1880–1969) became the Chancellor, House of Chichibujn 1936. Hase (p162) substantiates the claim coming from captured prisoners: ‘In the course of the day our destroyers picked up two survivors of the Queen Mary, a midshipman and a seaman, and brought them as prisoners of war to Wilhelmshaven. According to their account there were more than 1,400 men on the Queen Mary, among whom was a Japanese prince, the Naval Attache in London.’

  99 Harper, The Truth, p62.

  100 Taffrail, pp138–9.

  101 Steel and Hart, p113, quoting Flag Captain Alfred Chatfield, HMS Lion. Steel and Hart, pp113–14. Boy Telegraphist Arthur Lewis and Leading Signalman Alec Tempest HMS Lion, who were both close at hand each remember a slightly different phrasing: ‘What’s the matter with our bloody ships today?’

  102 Captain Alexander Grant, CBE, DSC, trough the Hawse Pipe, unpublished memos held by the Imperial War Museum, which can also be accessed online. Chapter 14 is the relevant chapter on flash protection.

  103 Steel and Hart, p114, quoting Private H Willons, Royal Marines Light Infantry, HMS Lion.

  104 ‘SMS Seydlitz at Jutland’ (extract from the book Warships and Sea Battles of World War I, edited by Bernard Fitzsimons, BPC Publishing Ltd, 1973), being an account of the Battle of Jutland written by the captain of the German battle-cruiser SMS Seydlitz, Kapitän zur See von Egidy.

  105 Plivier, p217.

  106 Harper, The Truth, pp69–70.

  107 McCallum, quoting Dreyer, ‘Riddle of the Shells: The Approach to War’, p18.

  108 Ibid.

  109 McCallum, part 2, p12.

  110 Inflexible’s gunnery officer, Commander Vener even wrote ‘although our shots were obviously falling all over the Scharnhorst… wecould not stop her firing … (and) I remember asking my Rate Officer “what the devil shall we do?”’ (McCallum, part 2, pll).

  111 Massie, p668.

  112 Hough, Great War at Sea, p227.

  113 Tarrant, Jutland: The German Perspective, p97. Yates, p142, quotes Campbell, Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting: ‘The Germans scored a total of forty-four direct hits by heavy shells in the first hour of the action to only seventeen by the enemy. Six of the British hits were made by the 5th Battle Squadron, so that Hipper’s battle-cruisers had outhit Beatty’s by a margin of four to one’. Moltke alone scored thirteen hits.

  114 ‘The Narrative’, p21.

  115 Scheer commented on the weather conditions at the time of the sighting: ‘The weather was extremely clear, the sky cloudless, a light breeze from the northwest and a calm sea. At 6:30 PM the fighting lines were sighted’, Scheer, p147. (Note that 6:30 German time is 4:30 GMT).

  116 Massie, p599.

  117 Yates, p140.

  118 Massie, p598.

  119 Etienne, p133 (King-Hall).

  120 Yates, p141.

  121 Etienne, p137; also Hooper & Fawcett, pp83–4; Extract from A Naval Lieutenant 1914–1918 (Commander Stephen King-Hall serving on HMS Southampton and writing under the nom de plume Etienne).

  122 Fawcett and Hooper, p84.

  123 This is, by Ralph Seymour, a repeat performance of the signals muddle at the start of the run to the south, The times stated for the signals seem to differ in places. Bacon states that ‘at 16:40, when Admiral Beatty swung around from the German battle fleet the signal made by flags could not be seen by Admiral Evan-Thomas, who was eight miles off’. The result was that the 5th BS continued south for a further eight minutes sustaining ‘considerable damage’. Bacon likens this episode to the earlier Phase One incident when Tiger had reported back that the 14:32 signal had not been passed through to Barham.

  124 Bacon, Scandal, p167.

  125 Gordon, pp139–140.

  126 ‘Is it an unacceptable slur on David Beatty to suggest’, Gordon asked, ‘that the loss of the primary record of the Lions outgoing flag signals might have been assisted?… The truth about the Rough Signal Log’s fate will probably never be known’ (Gordon, p140).

  127 Massie, pp600-l.

  128 Waldeyer-Hartz, p220.

  129 Ibid, p208.

  130 Scheer, p149.

  131 Fawcett and Hooper, p80, Extract from Naval Lieutenant on HMS Southampton (Etienne); also King-Hall, p120.

  132 Beatty also signalled back intelligence. (Jellicoe 16:45). ‘Urgent Priority. Have sighted Enemy’s battle fleet bearing S.E. My position Lat 56° 36′ N Long. 6° 04′ E.’ (Received by C-in-C as ‘26–30 Battleships, probably hostile, bearing S.S.E. steering S.E’.). How it could have come through as ‘probably hostile’ is a mystery!

  133 Massie, p599. Ten German battleships were firing at the Southampton at this point.

  134 Steel and Hart, p150, Lt Stephen King-Hall (Etienne).

  135 Gordon, pp407–8, ‘half drowned by spray from shots falling in the water alongside the ship. The spray rises about 80 or 100 feet and then we steam through the column of falling water. We seemed to have a charmed life.’

  136 Steel and Hart, p149, quoting Lt Commander Stephen Tillard, HMS Barham.

  137 Massie, p602.

  138 Fawcett and Hooper, p79, narrative of an officer on the forebridge of HMS Southampton.

  139 Steel and Hart, p154, quoting Lieutenant Desmond Duffy, HMS Valiant, 5th Battle Squadron.

  140 Fawcett and Hooper, p120, report from HMS Malaya.

  141 Massie, p602, quoted the rate only; also Fawcett and Hooper, p120, report from HMS Malaya.

  142 Steel and
Hart, pp156–7, quoting Private John Harris, Royal Marines Light Infantry, HMS Malaya.

  143 Massie, p602.

  144 Steel and Hart, p155, quoting Sub Lieutenant Clifford Carlson, HMS Malaya.

  145 Tarrant, Jutland: The German Perpective, p107.

  146 Gordon, p407.

  147 Ibid, p406.

  148 Ibid, p406.

  149 Ibid, p407.

  150 Ibid, pp406–7.

  151 Comment by Admiral Sir Charles Madden in 1923 (Madden was married to Jellicoe’s wife’s sister).

  152 Gordon, p408; also Steel and Hart, p150, quoting an officer from the 2nd LCS.

  153 Ibid, p409, quoting Sub Lieutenant Haworth-Booth.

  154 Massie, p604, quoting the Hipper Nachlaß, 31 May, pp5–14.

  155 Hase, p97.

  156 Cruitwell, p336.

  157 Harper, The Truth about Jutland, pp69–70; ‘Disastrous’, p52.

  158 Fawcett and Hooper, p36.

  159 Wallace, p241.

  160 Wallace, pp241–2. Wallace quotes Le Jutland by Jaques Amet, suggesting that this must have been just after Jellicoe asked Beatty for the enemy’s position. Wallace suggested that this now put the battle-cruisers between the Grand Fleet and the Germans, but that ‘in order, I supposed, to get out of the way, the Lion changed course 16 points and took them off to the west. Which bore little relation to reality as Beatty went east to take up his position at the van of the Grand Fleet. Jellicoe slowed to make the transition faster.

  161 Ibid, p646, quoting Captain Algernon Boyle, HMS Malaya.

  162 Bacon, Scandal, pp97–8.

  163 Hase, p99.

  164 Harper, pp69–70. In 1950 Harper left copies of his papers both with the Jellicoe family as well as a set revised in 1928 with the United Services institution and the original with the Historical Section of the Committee for Imperial Defence.

  165 Quoted in Temple Patterson, Jellicoe, pp230–1.

  8 The First Destroyer Melee

  1 See Taffrail, p132, showing the situation between 16:30 and 17:00 on 31.5.16 with the approximate tracks of Nestor and other destroyers during initial destroyer attacks.

  2 The Narrative, p21.

  3 By 17:30 British destroyers had fired ‘twenty two or possibly twenty six, the exact number being uncertain, because the Turbulent, which attacked with the Nerissa, was sunk in action during the night’ (Taffrail, p137), but only two ‘went home, and both were fired by the Petard’. One hit V.27, the other Seydlitz.