A Naval History of World War I
Page 57
The Germans did not escape unscathed, losing the predreadnought Pommern, which blew up and sank with all hands after being torpedoed by British destroyers; the light cruisers Frauenlob, Elbing (rammed by the dreadnought Posen and subsequently scuttled), and Rostock (disabled by a torpedo hit and scuttled while under tow the next morning on the approach of the cruiser Dublin); and the destroyer V.4 (possibly due to a drifting mine). The effort to tow the crippled and sinking Lützow was abandoned during the night, her crew was taken off, and at 1:45 A.M. she was torpedoed by a German destroyer. The Lützow was the most powerful ship lost during the battle.
The night encounters produced a series of gun flashes in an easterly direction astern of the British fleet but, with that curious lack of initiative that continued to plague the British, the fact that heavy ships were apparently crossing to the east was never reported to Jellicoe. He would still not have sought a night engagement, but he would have had a positive indication that Scheer was making for Horns Reef and acted accordingly. Captain Roskill suggests that fatigue and the cumulative effect of the day’s strain and concussion from the blast of heavy guns and enemy shell fire may also have played a role in numbing and dulling the reactions of the senior officers of the Grand Fleet.94 He also finds the lack of initiative of senior officers understandable because of the whole system of training junior officers, which persisted up until the Second World War. It was: “based on unquestioning discipline and absolute subordination to authority. More gold braid, we were taught, necessarily meant more wisdom; and any signs of originality were frowned on if not actively suppressed.”95
The most tragic blunder, however, was once again due to the Admiralty. Room 40 had intercepted a signal from a German destroyer giving the position and course of the rearmost battleship of the German fleet. This was passed on to Jellicoe and received by him at 10:23. The position was obviously wrong, possibly due to an error in navigation on the part of the Germans, but it may well have induced Jellicoe, who had been told the High Sea Fleet was still in the Jade earlier in the day, to dismiss subsequent reports from the Admiralty. He therefore seems to have paid no attention to a later signal sent at 10:41 that reported the German fleet had been ordered home and gave a course and speed clearly indicating Scheer was heading for the Horns Reef channel. Room 40 reported incontrovertible evidence of this a few minutes later when they discovered Scheer had asked for a zeppelin reconnaissance of Horns Reef. Unfortunately, the Operations Division of the Admiralty did not pass on this information to Jellicoe, who did not learn of its existence until years after the war. Had Jellicoe received the information, it would have been possible for him to have taken up a position to resume the battle at daybreak against a very battered Scheer and possibly achieve another “Glorious First of June.”96 The following morning, once it became apparent Scheer had passed Horns Reef and was in the swept channel, Jellicoe could do nothing more and returned to port. The next night, at 9:45 on 2 June, he reported that the Grand Fleet was refueled and ready for sea at four hours’ notice.
The first Admiralty communique concerning the battle was sparse, and after listing losses created the impression of a distinct defeat leading to a great public outcry. The later reports after more was learned of German losses did much to offset this impression and erred in the opposite direction by overestimating German losses. The actual losses were as follows:
British
German
Battle cruisers
Queen Mary
Lützow
Indefatigable
Invincible
British
German
Predreadnoughts
Pommern
Armored cruisers
Defence, Warrior,
Black Prince
Light cruisers
Wiesbaden, Frauenlob
Elbing, Rostock
Flotilla leaders
Tipperary
Destroyers
Ardent, Nestor,
V.27, V.29, V.48,
Turbulent, Shark,
S.35, V.4
Nomad, Fortune,
Sparrowhawk
In terms of casualties this translated into:
British
German
Killed
6,094
2,551
Wounded
674
507
Prisoner
177
NA
Totals
6,945
3,05897
On the basis of these matériel losses the Germans very quickly claimed a victory. The kaiser visited Wilhelmshaven on 5 June and addressed the crew of the Friedrich der Grosse with what Admiral Müller considered “exaggerated epithets,” declaring: “The spell of Trafalgar has been broken,” and Scheer was promoted to the equivalent rank of Hindenburg. The kaiser wanted the battle to be called the “North Sea Battle of June First” in imitation of the “Glorious First of June”—Admiral Howe’s victory over the French in 1794. The navy had a difficult time getting him to accept what he considered the “unhistorical” name “Battle of the Skaggerak,” but henceforth the battle was known by this name and celebrated as a victory. This view is reflected together with the idea that the battle represented a vindication of Tirpitz’s shipbuilding policy in the German official history.98
The battle left a feeling of disappointment on the British side. It was not another Trafalgar. There was and would remain a sense of missed opportunity. The division between Jellicoe and Beatty supporters would be a very real one, although both men, at least publicly, tried to tone down the controversy. Nevertheless, as late as the Second World War, Churchill canceled plans to name two new battleships Jellicoe and Beatty in favor of the less controversial Anson and Howe.99 The battle would be ref ought repeatedly in the interwar period and eventually the detailed studies and track charts—corrected and uncorrected—can in themselves become misleading. Shortly after the battle, Jellicoe admitted to Beatty, “I never felt so ‘out of it’ as at the meeting [between their respective forces]. I could not make out the situa tion a bit.”100 It is well to remember the commonsense caution of John Campbell: “Endless speculation is possible as to what might have happened at Jutland if Jellicoe and Scheer, or their subordinate commanders, had acted differently, but for much of the battle lack of visibility had a more dominant influence than any of the Admirals.”101
There was certainly not the same controversy on the German side regarding Scheer’s tactical handling of the fleet. The German controversies seemed centered more on the strategic employment of the fleet or submarines, not the battle itself. The senior German officers seemed to close ranks around Scheer, although his chief of staff Trotha privately admitted, somewhat jokingly, that if an admiral had gotten himself in such a situation at maneuvers or in a war game as Scheer did at Jutland, he never would have been entrusted with another command again.102
There is no doubt the Germans inflicted the heavier matériel losses. Their own ships were exceedingly tough. The Seydlitz was drawing so much water forward that she grounded off Horns Reef and later in the Amrun Channel, and it was only with great difficulty that salvage ships managed to get her into port on 2 June. Her repairs were not completed until 16 September. The König was also drawing too much water to get over Amrun bank until 9:30 A.M. on 1 June. She remained in dockyard hands until 21 July. The repairs on the Derfflinger were not completed until 15 October. The Germans suffered another casualty before reaching port when the Ostfriesland was mined in a field laid by the Abdiel on 4 May. These factors mitigate the higher matériel losses suffered by the British, for the eight damaged ships of the Grand Fleet represented a much smaller proportion of its strength than the ten damaged capital ships of the High Sea Fleet. Immediately after the battle, the British could still send 24 capital ships against the 10 of the Germans. The damaged British ships were also repaired more quickly. For example, the Warspite rejoined the fleet on 22 July, and the Lion underwent successive short periods of re
pair, although it was not until 23 September that “Q” turret was replaced.
The British undertook a thorough investigation into the battle, and although there is no space to enter into details, the Grand Fleet that emerged was a much more formidable instrument. There have been voluminous discussions on the deficiencies of British ships, particularly the battle cruisers. There was little that could be done aside from some strengthening of armor plating at vulnerable points, but the true problem resided more in British powder than in inadequate protection. John Campbell states flatly: “The real cause of the disasters was that the precautions for preventing flash of ignited propellant reaching a magazine were not matched to the behavior of British charges, though if the British ships had German charges it is very unlikely that they would have blown up. This was not, however, clear at the time.”103
The problem was compounded by the unsafe nature of the British cordite quarter charges—the four bags of propellant that made a full charge—which had a gunpowder igniter at each end. The igniters were unprotected and twice as many as needed, presumably to spare the crew concern over which way to load the charges. The German system, in contrast, used only two charges, the front one protected in a light metal container consumed in the blast and the rear charge in a brass container ejected after firing. There is also evidence that the British in the understandable desire to increase the rate of fire had departed from safe handling practices by stacking charges at the bottom of hoists, keeping magazine doors open in action and even removing flash-tight scuttles that had originally been fitted.
There has also been considerable discussion on the inadequate performance of British shells, which broke up on striking armor at an oblique angle and which detonated from a concussion explosion in the lyddite burster before penetrating very far into the plate.104 British armor also was inferior to German armor, and like the shells suffered from inadequate inspection and testing with too much discretion apparently left to armaments firms. Even after the war, the British found rust-coated armor salvaged from scuttled German ships at Scapa Flow remarkably resistant to new 14-inch shells.105
A brief word should be added about fire control. The British undoubtedly paid a severe penalty for the failure to adopt before the war the system devised by Arthur Hungerford Pollen. The alternate system the Admiralty adopted, the Dreyer Table, was not able to cope with the high change of range rates experienced in the battle. Ironically, the ill-fated Queen Mary had Pollen’s Argo Clock Mark IV and before her destruction her shooting had been the best of the battle cruisers. The Pollen system would undoubtedly have enabled the British battle cruisers to hit before they were hit in return, thus offsetting their deficiencies in armor protection and unstable propellant.106
The Battle of Jutland was fought and refought in the war games of navies throughout the world in the period between the two world wars. One can become lost in the fascinating tactical and technical details. But what of strategy? One can state unequivocally that Jutland was a strategic defeat for the Germans. It changed nothing, and the pithy comment attributed to a journalist that the German fleet had assaulted its jailer and was back in jail was essentially true. Scheer had been lucky to escape, and British superiority in capital ships—with the exception of battle cruisers—was larger than ever. Certainly a great British tactical victory involving the destruction of a substantial portion of the High Sea Fleet would have freed many British resources, particularly the large number of destroyers that had to remain tied to the Grand Fleet and might have received alternate employment in the protection of trade and the antisubmarine campaign. But as to the strategic picture, the route to the open seas remained as closed to the Germans as ever. The blockade was still in force.
Scheer, perhaps unwittingly, delivered the true verdict on the strategic results of Jutland. In a report to the kaiser on 4 July 1916, he spoke of the success due to eagerness in attack, efficient leadership through subordinates, and admirable deeds of crews. He claimed that the battle had proven that the enlargement of the fleet and the development of the different types of ships had been guided by the right strategical and tactical ideas. He then went on to the main point of his argument:
With a favourable succession of operations the enemy may be made to suffer severely, although there can be no doubt that even the most successful result from a high sea battle will not compel England to make peace. The disadvantages of our geographical situation as compared with that of the Island Empire and the enemy’s vast matériel superiority cannot be coped with to such a degree as to make us masters of the blockade inflicted on us, or even of the Island Empire itself, not even were all the U-boats to be available for military purposes. A victorious end to the war at not too distant a date can only be looked for by the crushing of English economic life through U-boat action against English commerce.
Scheer went on to propose the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare.107 Even before Scheer’s memorandum, the chief of the Admiralstab, Holtzendorff, had asserted in a naval audience at the palace on 10 June that U-boat warfare with few restrictions should be increased starting 1 July to compensate for the reduced activities of the High Sea Fleet as a result of battle damage received at Jutland.108 This pressure for unrestricted submarine warfare grew.
RESUMPTION OF THE SUBMARINE CAMPAIGN
The assertion is sometimes made that the German fleet never came out again after Jutland. This is false. The Germans did sortie, because Scheer, however anxious to avoid a major encounter, still hoped to whittle down the British advantage with submarines. The German submarine traps so carefully prepared before the battle had proven to be a major disappointment. There were numerous reports of submarine sightings and attacks in the Grand Fleet during the battle, but they were all false. The Germans did have an unexpected dividend: one of the new long-range minelayers, U.75, laid a field off the northwest Orkneys—ironically in the wrong place—which sank the cruiser Hampshire after she had sailed from Scapa on 5 June carrying Lord Kitchener on a mission to Russia. The loss of Kitchener was a major disaster for the British public, but the circumstances that produced it were purely accidental.109
Scheer decided that a concentration of U-boats directly off the British bases was counterproductive, for the submarines would tend to get in each other’s way. He decided to try a variation, deploying the submarines in a movable base line across the probable line of approach of the British heavy forces. The German fleet would put to sea at night and advance toward the British coast. If there was no contact with British ships, and if reconnaissance indicated the British fleet was not out and attempting to cut off the German line of retreat, the First Scouting Group would push on to the British coast and bombard the town of Sunderland at sunset. They would then return to the Bight under cover of darkness while the U-boats shifted to secondary positions across the probable line of approach should the British come out as a result of the bombardment. Scheer had no intention of being surprised by Jellicoe the way he had been at Jutland, and his new plan placed great emphasis on zeppelin reconnaissance. There would be four zeppelins deployed on patrol lines across the North Sea from Scotland to Norway and another four between the Firth of Forth and the North Hinder light vessel, patrolling to the north and in front of the advancing Germans. No fewer than twenty-four submarines were employed in the operation. The High Sea Fleet submarines were deployed in lines of five boats each off Blyth, Flamborough Head, and the Dogger Bank, and nine U-boats from the Flanders Flotilla were deployed in two lines in the southern part of the North Sea.
Scheer sailed on the night of 18 August. The Moltke and Von der Tann were the only two battle cruisers then available for the First Scouting Group, and Scheer had to reinforce them with the dreadnoughts Grosser Kurfürst, Markgraf, and Bayern, the latter newly commissioned and the first German dreadnought with 38-cm guns. The First and Second scouting groups were 20 miles ahead of the High Sea Fleet, which numbered 18 dreadnoughts. The surviving predreadnoughts of the Second Squadron, which had been suc
h a hindrance at Jutland, were left behind.110
Room 40 was as alert as ever, and starting on the 15th had indications the Germans were preparing for sea by intercepting orders for minesweeping, instructions to light vessels, and information the Third Squadron would pass the outer Jade the night of the 18th. The result was that both Jellicoe and Beatty were at sea a few hours before Scheer. Tyrwhitt’s Harwich Force—5 light cruisers, a flotilla leader, and 19 destroyers—also was ordered to sail and be at a position approximately 50 miles east of Yarmouth at dawn. The author of the relevant volume of the German official history published in 1937 complained: “Unfortunately it has not been possible to clear up entirely what the intelligence was which made the Admiralty feel sure that the German fleet was about to leave harbour.”111
Despite this precious intelligence, there would be no fleet encounter on 19 August, a day Professor Marder terms “Blind Man’s Bluff.” At 5:05 A.M. E.23, one of the British patrol submarines, torpedoed the German battleship Westfalen approximately 60 miles north of Terschelling. The battleship was not seriously damaged but had to return to port, and the wireless message intercepted by British direction-finding stations provided the first firm intelligence the High Sea Fleet was at sea and gave its position as well. The information was immediately transmitted to Jellicoe, but he did not receive it until 7:00 A.M. By then Jellicoe had already been delayed. At 5:57 A.M. the light cruiser Nottingham of the Second Light Cruiser Squadron, part of Beatty’s screen, was torpedoed and sunk by U.52, one of the U-boats on Scheer’s northern submarine line. The battle cruisers were approximately 30 miles in advance of the Grand Fleet. There was no clear evidence as to whether the Nottingham had been torpedoed or mined, but Jellicoe, fearful he was being drawn into a minefield trap, turned north at 7:03 until the situation could be clarified. He thereby lost four hours.