A Naval History of World War I

by Paul G. Halpern

  The Grand Fleet without its destroyers, which could not keep up in the rough seas, and the Battle Cruiser Fleet did not even come close to intercepting the Germans. None of the British submarines on defensive patrol—nor another group sent with the destroyer Melampus to form a patrol line in the middle of the southern North Sea after the Germans were reported at sea—were ever in a position to attack. The Germans sank two armed trawlers, E.22 was torpedoed by UB.18 in the North Sea, and another of Tyrwhitt’s cruisers, the Penelope, was damaged by a torpedo during the pursuit. The Germans also destroyed about two hundred houses at Lowestoft; they did far less damage at Yarmouth. The Admiralty were worried about the vulnerability of the east coast and the seeming inability of the Grand Fleet based at Scapa Flow or the Battle Cruiser Fleet at Rosyth to prevent the raids or successfully intercept the Germans on their return. They decided to permanently detach the Third Battle Squadron, the Dreadnought (currently refitting) and the seven surviving King Edward VII-class battleships to the Swin, the northern channel of the Thames estuary. They were joined by the Third Cruiser Squadron (Devonshire-class armored cruisers). The great majority of the submarines formerly at Rosyth were shifted to Yarmouth.73

  The apparent weakening of the Grand Fleet was less serious than it might appear. Although the King Edwards—nicknamed the “wobbly eight” for their crabwise movement when steaming at full speed—were among the newest of the predreadnoughts, they were about three knots slower than the remainder of the Grand Fleet and their employment posed considerable tactical problems for Jellicoe. As for the Devonshire class, the experience of Jutland soon demonstrated that the armored cruisers were obsolete, their employment in a modern battle almost suicidal.

  The move of the Third Battle Squadron was also the preliminary to a major strategic decision. On 12 May the First Sea Lord Admiral Jackson met Jellicoe and Beatty in a conference at Rosyth where the decision was made to shift the Grand Fleet southward from Scapa to the Firth of Forth as soon as an anchorage below the Forth Bridge could be made secure against submarines. Although the project had priority, the defenses were not completed before 1917, and it was not until April 1918 that the Grand Fleet moved to its new base.74

  The British quickly followed up the Lowestoft raid with another seaplane raid, designed to lure Scheer out of his bases. On 4 May the seaplane carriers Vindex and Engadine, escorted by the First Light Cruiser Squadron and sixteen destroyers of the First Flotilla, moved to a position off Sylt to launch a raid against the zeppelin sheds at Tondern. The raid was only of secondary importance; the High Sea Fleet was the major objective. The preceding night the British had laid minefields off the outer ends of the German-swept channels, and submarines had been stationed off Terschelling bank and in the Horns Reef area. Jellicoe and Beatty were both at sea with their forces. The air raid was, like the earlier ones, a failure. Only three of the eleven seaplanes launched managed to take off. The remaining eight damaged their propellers in the rough sea and had to be hoisted in again. The three that took off had little luck. One promptly hit the mast of a destroyer and crashed, the second had to turn back with engine trouble, and the third, which bombed Tondern, missed the zeppelin shed. The Germans launched two zeppelins to search for the force; one, L.7, found it only to be shot down. Jellicoe waited in position for more than six hours without the High Sea Fleet coming out, and, with some concern over the fuel situation, finally turned for home. The High Sea Fleet did sortie later in the day, but the British were gone. Once again there was no encounter.75

  It is against this background of raid and counter-raid with both sides baiting traps—Jellicoe to catch the High Sea Fleet away from its coast and Scheer to catch an isolated portion of the Grand Fleet—that the great naval battle of the war occurred almost by accident. At the end of May, Jellicoe decided to send two light cruiser squadrons around the Skaw into the Kattegat on 2 June to sweep as far south as the Great Belt and the Sound. There would be a battle squadron in the Skaggerak in support, and Jellicoe and Beatty would be to the northwest with all their forces ready to intervene if the High Sea Fleet moved north out of the Bight. British submarines would also be off the Dogger Bank and south of the Horns Reef, and the minelayer Abdiel would extend the minefields laid on 3–4 May. The seaplane carrier Engadine, escorted by a light cruiser squadron and destroyers, would be off Horns Reef to watch for zeppelins.

  Scheer had his own plans for a bombardment of Sunderland by cruisers in order to draw out British forces. This time the High Sea Fleet would be to the south of Dogger Bank, and eighteen U-boats (three of them large minelayers) made available by the cessation of the war on commerce would be concentrated off the British naval bases. The submarines would inflict losses on Beatty’s forces, which Scheer expected to hurry out in pursuit of Hipper’s battle cruisers. Hipper would then lead the surviving British battle cruisers to the High Sea Fleet and destruction. The plan presupposed extensive reconnaissance by zeppelins to ensure that Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet would not be at sea. Scheer was forced to postpone his operation until the end of May because of condenser troubles in the battleships of his Third Squadron—the newest dreadnoughts—and until repairs on the Seydlitz were completed. He then found weather conditions unfavorable for zeppelin reconnaissance, and the endurance of the U-boats deployed off the British ports set limits on the time within which the operation could be carried out. Scheer therefore altered his plans and dropped the bombardment of Sunderland in favor of a sweep against British patrols and merchant shipping outside and inside the Skaggerak. The German cruisers were ordered to deliberately show themselves off the Norwegian coast so that they might be reported and draw the British.76

  Hipper and his battle cruisers sailed from the Jade at 1 A.M. on the 31st, and Scheer and the main portion of the High Sea Fleet sailed from the Jade and the Elbe shortly afterward. The British were already at sea. Room 40 had been able to warn the Admiralty that the Germans were preparing to put to sea, and at 5:40 on the afternoon of 30 May, the Admiralty ordered Jellicoe, who along with Beatty had already been alerted, to concentrate in the Long Forties. By 10:30 the Grand Fleet had sailed from Scapa Flow and the Moray Firth, and Beatty sailed from the Firth of Forth at 11:00. Jellicoe (in the Iron Duke) had a total of 24 dreadnoughts, 3 battle cruisers (Rear Admiral Hood’s Third Battle Cruiser Squadron), 12 light cruisers, 8 armored cruisers, 5 flotilla leaders, 46 destroyers, and a minelayer. Beatty (in the Lion) had a total of 6 battle cruisers (the Lion, Princess Royal, Queen Mary, Tiger, New Zealand, and Indefatigable), 4 dreadnoughts, 14 light cruisers, 27 destroyers, and the seaplane carrier Engadine. Beatty’s 4 dreadnoughts (the Barham, Valiant, Warspite, and Malaya) were the powerful (15-inch guns) and fast Queen Elizabeth class of Vice Admiral Evan-Thomas’s Fifth Battle Squadron, which had been temporarily attached to Rosyth to compensate for the absence of Hood’s Third Battle Cruiser Squadron which was carrying out gunnery exercises at Scapa.

  On the German side, Hipper (in the Lützow) had the First Scouting Group (5 battle cruisers), the Second Scouting Group (4 light cruisers), and 30 destroyers led by the light cruiser Regensburg. Scheer (in the Friedrich der Grosse) was approximately 50 miles astern with a total of 16 dreadnoughts, 6 predreadnoughts of the Deutschland class, 5 light cruisers, and 31 destroyers led by the light cruiser Rostock. Scheer had included the Deutschlands of the Second Squadron largely for sentimental reasons: it was his old squadron, and its commander, Rear Admiral Mauve, made an “eloquent intercession” not to be left behind. One senses it was probably against Scheer’s better judgment, for they were older, slower, and less well armed or protected than the other German capital ships.

  The total of the combined forces showed a clear British predominance: dreadnoughts, 28 to 16 (plus 6 predreadnoughts); battle cruisers, 9 to 5; armored cruisers, 8 to 0; light cruisers, 26 to 11; and destroyers, 78 to 61. The approximately 250 ships involved made this by far the biggest naval battle of the First World War, and as submarines played no role and aircraft only a minimal one, it w
as essentially a one-dimensional combat between surface ships. Jutland is likely to remain, therefore, the largest encounter between surface ships of modern times.

  The work of Room 40 had given the British a priceless advantage in enabling them to get to sea even before what was assumed to be a German raiding force. However, that advantage was diminished by a series of mistakes by the Admiralty in actually interpreting and disseminating the precious information. Part of the problem stemmed from the fact the officers of the Admiralty’s Operations Division tended to distrust the civilian “amateurs” of Room 40 and confided in them as little as possible. Admiral Oliver, the chief of staff, ran what has been described as “a one man show” and zealously kept Room 40’s information in his own hands. Consequently, Captain Thomas Jackson, director of the Operations Division, entered Room 40 just before noon on the 31st and inquired where the directional finding stations placed the German call sign “DK,” which was normally the call sign of the flagship. He did not explain why he wanted this information and was told, correctly, that the location was Wilhelmshaven. On the basis of this information, Oliver sent a signal to Jellicoe at 12:30 P.M. that the German flagship was still in the Jade. A few hours later, Jellicoe encountered the entire High Sea Fleet. What had happened?

  The Germans made a practice of transferring the commander in chief’s call sign to a wireless station on shore whenever the flagship put to sea. The flagship then took another call sign. The object was obviously to conceal the fact that the fleet was at sea, and before Jutland the Germans had transferred not only Scheer’s usual call sign but also his usual wireless operator, so that the British would not detect any difference in the actual method or “touch” with which the signal was sent. The Germans were still not aware their code was compromised and that their messages could be read; the move was presumably to frustrate the British direction-finding stations. The men of Room 40 were aware of the German practice, and if Captain Jackson had only said why he wanted the information about call sign “DK,” they could have provided a correct evaluation. The mistake had important consequences, for Jellicoe assumed he had plenty of time and steamed at an economical speed in order to conserve fuel. He also wasted time examining neutral ships. Had he arrived at the rendezvous with Beatty with an extra hour or two of daylight, the Germans might have suffered far heavier losses than they escaped with. Moreover, the error made Jellicoe very suspicious of further intelligence from the Admiralty, and this affected his decisions later in the battle.77 Oliver, who was not certain until later in the day the older German battleships were with Scheer, also held Tyrwhitt’s Harwich Force in the south in case the older German ships attempted to raid the Thames or block the French channel ports.78

  Jellicoe ordered Beatty to reach a position (latitude 56°40’N, longitude 5°E) approximately 69 miles south-southeast of his own estimated position at 2:00 P.M. on the 31st, which was 240 miles from Scapa. If he had no intelligence of the enemy, Beatty was to turn north for the rendezvous with Jellicoe, and their combined forces would steam toward Horns Reef. Beatty, whose forces were converging on the Germans at a right angle, turned north as planned at 2:15, still unaware Hipper was only about 45 miles to the east, with perhaps 16 miles between the nearest cruisers of their respective screens. Beatty’s dispositions were considered by some to be faulty in that he stationed the powerful dreadnoughts of the Fifth Battle Squadron 5 miles from his forces where they could not provide close support in the early stages of a battle. He may have done so out of an ardent desire that his battle cruisers, and not the Fifth Battle Squadron from the Grand Fleet, should be the ones to bag Hipper to make up for the lost opportunity at Dogger Bank the year before. The dominant idea was that the Germans must not be allowed to escape again.79

  The actual contact between the forces was almost accidental, although the British and Germans were on converging courses and contact eventually would have been made, but probably much later and closer to Jellicoe. At approximately 2:00 P.M. the cruiser Elbing of Hipper’s screen spotted a small Danish steamer, the N.J. Fjord, and sent two destroyers to investigate. The steamer had stopped and was blowing off steam when she was spotted by the light cruiser Galatea of Beatty’s screen. The Galatea and Phaeton also closed to investigate, spotted and reported the Germans, and at 2:28 opened fire. Two of Beatty’s light cruiser squadrons steered toward the Galatea, although Beatty himself appears to have waited twelve minutes before altering course to the southeast and increasing speed in order to cut off the enemy from returning to the Bight. Unfortunately, Evan-Thomas missed the flag signal to alter course and did not turn until after it was repeated by searchlight, which should have been used together with the signal flags in the first place. The result was that a 10-mile gap opened between Beatty and the Fifth Battle Squadron, which did not come into action until twenty minutes after Beatty joined battle. The consequences of this were costly.

  The Lion spotted Hipper’s force at 3:30 at a distance of about 14 miles. Beatty immediately altered course to the east to cut them off from the Bight and increased to full speed. He had, of course, no idea the entire High Sea Fleet was at sea. The seaplane carrier Engadine managed to launch one of her four aircraft at 3:08, but low clouds kept the aircraft at an altitude where vision was limited, and when sighting reports were sent by the pilot to the Engadine, the seaplane carrier failed in her attempt to relay the information by searchlight. The sea became too rough to launch other aircraft, and a burst petrol pipe finally forced the sole plane aloft to land at 3:47. The Engadine lacked the speed to keep up with battle cruisers and dropped out of the action, thereby ending the very limited role aircraft played in the battle. Nevertheless it was the first time ship-borne aircraft had participated in a fleet action. Jellicoe might have had the seaplane carrier Campania with him, but the converted Cunard liner for some reason had never received the signal to sail from Scapa, and when the error was discovered she was two hours behind the fleet. Jellicoe, perhaps erroneously, believed she lacked the speed to catch up, and, worried over the submarine danger to the unescorted ship, ordered her back to port.

  Hipper on sighting Beatty’s force had immediately altered course 16 points to starboard, that is 180°, in order to draw the British to Scheer’s High Sea Fleet. This phase of the battle is accordingly usually known as “the run to the south.” The British and Germans opened fire almost simultaneously at 3:48, both sides overestimating the range, which was probably approximately 16,000 yards. At this moment Evan-Thomas was about 7½ miles from the Lion, too far to play any role in the action. Jellicoe in the Iron Duke was about 53 miles from the Lion, and the van of the High Sea Fleet was about 46 miles from Hipper’s flagship Lützow.

  The Germans corrected their initial error in estimating the range more quickly than the British, and they were assisted by an error in fire distribution on the British side. There were six British ships to five German, and Beatty had intended for each of the British to engage their opposite number with the two lead ships, the Lion and Princess Royal, concentrating on the Lützow, the leading German ship. Unfortunately, the Queen Mary, the third British ship, fired on the Seydlitz, the third German ship, leaving the second German ship Derfflinger undisturbed for approximately ten minutes. The Tiger (which also had missed the distribution signal) and New Zealand concentrated on the Moltke while the two rearmost ships, the Indefatigable and Von der Tann, engaged each other. In the controversy following Jutland, much was often made of this error in fire distribution. However, a recent close analysis of the battle by John Campbell points out that it has probably been overrated, for the first German ships to hit were the Lützow and Moltke, the two ships that were receiving concentrated fire, and the Derfflinger’s initial shooting was not effective. This may have been due in part to the fact that in concentration of fire it was difficult to distinguish between the splashes of each ship’s shot, and the results were correspondingly less effective than imagined.80

  All accounts agree that in this first phase of the battle Germ
an gunnery was both faster and more accurate. The conditions of light and visibility favored the Germans, although it has also been pointed out they were not always bad for the British. The British ships, darker in color, tended to be silhouetted against the western sky, while the German ships, lighter gray in color, were less visible against the overcast sky to the east. Moreover, the wind was from the west, carrying smoke between the British and the Germans and hampering gunnery. At 4:00 the Lion’s “Q” turret (midships) was hit by the Lützow and put out of action. Everyone in the gunhouse was killed, and it was fortunate that the order to flood the “Q” magazine was given, because less than a half-hour later, possibly when the Lion had altered course sufficiently to create a strong draft, a smoldering fire in the gunhouse spread to the working chamber below the turret and ignited the charges there. There was a tremendous explosion with flames shooting as high as the mastheads, and had the magazine not already been flooded, the entire ship might have been destroyed.81

  The Indefatigable was not so lucky. At 4:02 she was hit by at least four 11-inch shells in two salvoes fired by the Von der Tann and blew up and sank after a magazine explosion with a loss of 1,017 officers and men. A German destroyer picked up only two survivors a few hours later. The loss was partially offset by the fact that Evan-Thomas’s squadron had by now been able to draw close enough for his flagship Barham to open fire on the Von der Tan n at 4:08, and within a few minutes all four of his battleships were firing. The gunnery of the Fifth Battle Squadron was more effective than that of the battle cruisers, owing to, among other factors, their being fitted with much better range finders. Nevertheless the British suffered their most serious loss at 4:26 when the Queen Mary, after being hit within a few minutes by two or three 12-inch shells from the Derfflinger, blew up and sank with a loss of 1,266 officers and men. There were twenty survivors. Beatty coolly remarked to his flag captain: “There is something wrong with our bloody ships today.” With the Fifth Battle Squadron in action, it was actually Hipper who was feeling the pressure. Both commanders ordered flotilla attacks, and at about 4:30 a fierce destroyer action took place for 10–15 minutes. The Germans and British each lost two destroyers, the Nestor and Nomad on the British side, V.27 and V.29 on the German. The British fired 19 to 20 torpedoes of which only two hit. The Petard hit V.29, and either the Petard or Turbulent hit the Seydlitz. The Seydlitz was not seriously damaged; her torpedo bulkhead held and she took on only a slight list and was able to maintain full speed. None of the British ships were hit by German torpedoes.