The Great War at Sea: 1914-1918

by Richard Hough

  Churchill should have gone with Battenberg at the outset of war. For quite different reasons, his term of office should have been limited to peacetime. His leadership in war had very few redeeming features. He failed to draw on the advice of his Board because he either knew the answers or did not want to hear them if they were contrary to his own. He was divisive and impatient, and, as so many complained, ran the show, from top to bottom. He took advantage of his superiority in rank to abuse his powers; this shrank the inspiration and initiative of his Board members just as much as his personal and insistent control of distant commanders reduced their instinct for initiative. For this reason he failed to gain the confidence of the commanders at sea as completely as he failed with his advisers. Mistakes that can be traced to others were numerous, but in many cases they would not have occurred if Churchill had not been there, fussing over everyone and everything, causing dismay and resentment. The system had enough faults already; it was no better for being abused by him.

  Before his youthful self-confidence and arrogance had matured and mellowed, Churchill was an almost impossible leader for sailors to work with. The influence with which Churchill invigorated the Navy before the fighting began was almost wholly baleful after August 1914. The difficulty that Asquith faced in May 1915, among the multitudinous problems demanding his attention, was to find a successor. There was as grave a dearth of candidates for the office of First Lord of the Admiralty to succeed Churchill as there was for a First Sea Lord to succeed Fisher.

  THE UNDERSEA WAR

  The opening of U-boat warfare – Strong internal division in Germany on the breaking of international law and the pursuit of unrestricted U-boat warfare against merchantmen – The ‘hawks’ prevail – The Lusitania torpedoing and hostile American reaction – Early German U-boat losses – Fisher and the founding of the British submarine force – Hazardous and productive operations in the Baltic – The Dardanelles campaign and the equal daring and skill of British submarine crews in the Straits and Sea of Marmora – The development of the RNAS and early operations at Gallipoli

  On 20 October 1914, fourteen miles off the coast of Norway, the 866-ton British steamer, SS Glitra was apprehended by U-17, Lieutenant-Commander Feldkircher. The crew were given time to lower and board their boats, the Glitra’s sea cocks were opened and she at once went to the bottom. It was a very correct and non-violent overture to a bloody campaign, even though the boarding party tore up the ship’s flag. The operation was carried out in accordance with international law governing commerce warfare which held that everyone on board must be ‘placed in safety, with their goods and chattels if possible’. The commonplace little Glitra had only one distinction: she was the first merchantman ever to be sunk by a submarine.

  This relatively trivial incident was formally noted by the Admiralty but aroused no comment. Four months later, the commander of the Fourth Battle Squadron, Rear-Admiral Alexander Duff wrote in his diary: ‘With submarines alone she [Germany] cannot hope to inflict any serious damage on our merchant shipping.’(1) Most authorities would have agreed with Admiral Duff one of the most respected ‘brains’ in the service. In the first six months of war ten merchantmen totalling 20,000 tons were sent to the bottom as a result of U-boat attack, mostly in a gentlemanly manner and at trivial cost to the Germans who did not at that stage of the war waste torpedoes.

  When the subject came up for discussion in 1901, Tirpitz had told the Reichstag that the new Navy had no need for submersibles. ‘We have no money to waste on experimental vessels. We must leave such luxuries to wealthier states like France and England.’

  The German U-boat branch had, ironically, come into being as a result of Russian encouragement during; the Russo-Japanese War.

  The Russians ordered from Krupps three submarines propelled by a combination of internal combustion engines, dynamos, and electric motors for use when submerged. The little boats were designed with a double hull, the fuel being stowed between. There was a single torpedo tube set into the bows, and three 17.7-inch torpedoes were carried. The crew, who suffered the most cramped and unhealthy conditions numbered about fifteen. The boats, the Karp, Karas, and Kambala, worked successfully and were delivered to the Russian port of Libau under their own power. What happened to them after that no one knows. But these Russian boats caused Tirpitz to change his mind, and in the 1905-6 naval estimates, some £70,000 was set aside ‘for experiments connected with submarines’. U-1 was a qualified success on its sea trials in July 1908. She was all right for coastal operations but, ran the report, ‘her employment in the high seas is attended with danger’.

  By this time, France had already completed sixty submarines, and Britain rather more. German progress remained cautious, especially after the accidental sinking of U-3 in Kiel harbour. But between May 1908 and May 1910 the first serious, non-experimental boats were put in hand, fourteen in all, with a surface displacement of 500 tons, armed with four torpedo tubes, six mines and a single small gun. They were supposed to manage 15 knots on the surface but never achieved that speed. Suitable engines were the limiting factor, and the answer lay in the diesel engine. The diesel, an all-German invention, had been in production since 1893. The Wright brothers had experienced the problem of inadequate power/weight ratio with their flying machines and had not solved it until they produced their own engine in 1903. Krupps experienced the same problem with the diesel. It was the rival firm of MAN (Maschinen-fabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg AG) that produced the power units for the first Krupps-built submarine, the U-19, in 1913. Krupps followed up with an engine of their own, and by the outbreak of war all the most modern craft were diesel powered, a form of propulsion which endured in all navies until the advent of nuclear power. The diesel engine produced no ‘spark’, the heavy oil was far safer than petroleum, and it was a reliable, long-lasting unit. The newest German submarines, the U-23 to U-30, were armed with two 12-pounders and a pair of light anti-aircraft guns, a pointer to the potential threat of another new weapon. But the most significant item in the specification was their endurance, which ran up to 5,000 miles. Clearly they were ocean-going men o’war intended for operation in the Atlantic. Their numbers were still small, but seen with the advantage of hindsight, the destructive potential of these modern U-boats was formidable – much more formidable than the German Navy appreciated.

  While the main body of the High Seas Fleet, which had been off the Norwegian coast in late July, returned to the Elbe and the Jade, the U-boat flotillas were in operation from almost the first day of war, and remained so until the last day, the most active as well as the most destructive of all classes of warship. At this early stage, the U-boats’ task was to reconnoitre the North Sea to discover what blockade patrols were being set up by the British and to discover the whereabouts of enemy squadrons and fleets. It was the U-boats which brought back the first evidence of the unexpected absence of a close blockade.

  The activities of Commander H. Bauer, who was later to become Commodore of the High Seas Fleet submarines, were typical of these early days, which included no specific orders to attack merchant shipping. Bauer commanded ten U-boats, U-5, 7, 8, 9 and U-13 to 18, which left their base at Heligoland early on the morning of 6 August and proceeded northwards widely spread out and expecting shortly to meet the first British patrols. But it was not until the 9th that U-18 sighted the first British warship, a cruiser. A destroyer was reported a few minutes later. The flotilla had spotted not a patrol hut the outer screen of the Grand Fleet, and very quickly paid the – price for it. The light cruiser Birmingham, Captain Arthur Dun; spotted a periscope and turned so swiftly and accurately that he succeeded in ramming and sinking U-15 with all hands. It was an achievement which gave the Fleet great encouragement, although unfortunately this all too rapidly turned to ‘periscopeitis’ and Jellicoe jitters.

  The U-boats took their revenge for weeks later when Lieutenant Commander Otto Hersing, later to become one of the great ‘aces’, spotted the British flotilla leader Pathfinder af
ter he had ventured as far as St Abb’s Head. Hersing took aim at just short of one mile range, considered a great distance. His accuracy was as good with the torpedo as Spee’s with the gun. He struck the ship fair and square, and the Pathfinder went clown with almost all hands.

  Although she was a new ship the effect of her loss was out of all proportion to her value. After 5 September 1914 fear of the submarine was no longer theoretical. Jellicoe’s ‘First Battle of Scapa’ and the pursuit of the seal, was followed by the Battle Cruiser Squadron’s ‘Battle of Jemimaville’. As Beatty’s battle-cruisers steamed slowly into the main anchorage at Cromarty, a destroyer’s bow wave was misidentified as the wake of a U-boat’s periscope. Fire was at once opened on it, causing damage to the roofs of the nearby village of Jemimaville, where a baby was also slightly hurt. One of the ship’s doctors was summoned, and the flag-lieutenant, Ralph Seymour, who accompanied the surgeon, assured the parents that two if not three U-boats had been sunk, and there were no survivors.

  The loss of the Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy froze any laughter at these diversions. But while the U-boat service was delighted with its early successes, the German command had no idea of the serious effect it was having on the dispositions and strategy of the Grand Fleet. One British admiral exclaimed in chagrin, ‘It is the German Fleet that now controls the North Sea!’ Admiral Sir Percy Scott later recalled saying good-night to Jellicoe at Scapa before the base’s protection was complete, the C.-in-C. laconically replying, ‘I wonder.’(2) Scott puzzled over the continuing failure of the German command to take advantage of the situation brought about by the U-boat flotillas. Was it that the German submarine commanders ‘lacked pluck’, or as Jellicoe later surmised, ‘the German mind could not believe that we would be such fools as to place our Fleet in a position where it was open to submarine or destroyer attack… If the Germans had had half a dozen men of the stamp of our submarine commanders, we should now be a German colony.’(3)

  Although the submarine had a profound effect on the conduct of the surface fleet, it did not in fact sink a great number of warships on either side. It was the merchant fleets that were to suffer. This was due to a decision reached in Germany at about the time Admiral Duff was making his prediction. Influenced by the destruction of von Spec’s squadron, the disappointing performance of the other surface raiders, and especially of their fast armed merchantmen of which much had been expected, the German high command began to press for an unrestricted U-boat campaign against Allied shipping. This flouted international law and the traditional code of conduct at sea honoured few centuries by all but pirates. On 4 February 1915, Germany declared a war zone round the British Isles in which ships would be sunk without warning. All the old formalities of ‘visit and search’ were to be dispensed with, and neutrals were warned that their shipping was equally at risk.

  When this had first been proposed, Bethmann Hollweg opposed the plan, not out of any fastidious feelings but because of the bad effect it would have on neutrals, especially the United States and Italy. The Chancellor eventually gave way under the pressure of the admirals and the Kaiser showed no hesitation in approving. The German pretext was that Britain had already broken international law by abolishing the distinction between conditional and absolute contraband in her blockade. The German plan was for an up-to-date version of the old guerre de course operated by men o’war which, if obliged to abide by the rules and operate on the surface giving fair warning, sacrificed their one advantage, their raison d’être, their invisibility.

  In order to blunt the effects of international calumny after the war and provide an alibi for the Kriegsmarine, German historians put it about that no peacetime plans had been prepared for a U-boat campaign against Allied shipping, and it was resorted to only after illegalities in the Allied blockade of Germany became evident. ‘The thought of cutting England off from her sea supply by means of submarines’, wrote Admiral Hermann Bauer, ‘had in no manner been considered, since such a submarine war against English sea trade would not have been in conformity with the [1909] London Declaration.’(4) Statements like this had the desired effect of temporarily distorting the record. But a Staff study had been prepared by Kapitänleutenant Ulrich-Eberhard Blum on a U-boat campaign against British shipping on behalf of the Submarine Inspectorate at Kiel in May 1914.(5) It envisaged a fleet of 222 U-boats, and was sent for approval to Tirpitz the following month. Then again, Kapitän A. Gayer wrote, ‘Before the outbreak of the war one of the best technical experts in this weapon, Lieutenant-Commander Blum, had calculated the number of submarines necessary to conduct cruiser warfare against England, and had placed this number at 200.’(6)

  By early October 1914, Bauer himself was already pressing for an all-out submarine war against British shipping. There is evidence that he was strongly influenced by reports from his commanders who were searching for warships of the volume of merchant shipping entering British west-coast ports. Another favourable factor was evident British anxiety about the depredations the suymarine could create, including a widely-read article by Arthur Conan Doyle in the Strand Magazine, and the more violent outbursts of Jacky Fisher: as long before as 1903, Fisher had written an eulogy of the submarine and its power to revolutionize war at sea: ‘Death near – momentarily – sudden – awful -invisible – unavoidable! Nothing concievably more demoralising!’(7) Lord Esher was among those who were influenced by the more carefully reasoned passages from Fisher’s paper. ‘If he is right,’ Esher wrote, ‘and his argument appears unanswerable, it is difficult to exaggerate the vast impending revolution in naval warfare and naval strategy that the submarine will accomplish.’(8)

  Ten years later, out of office, Fisher was still energetically proclaiming the cause of the submarine, and pressing Churchill, ‘Build more submarines!’ Still unsatisfied with progress, he wrote to Churchill, 13 Decmber 19l3, ‘I note by examining – the Navy List there have been no less than 21 removals of Submarines since I was First Sea ord and only 12 additions. Do you think this is satisfactory?’ and the remainder of “A” and “B” classes are now approaching – 10 years of age and there are 19 of them which figure in our totals. We are falling behind Germany in large submarines.’(9)

  Fisher held strongly to the view that the Germans in war would confirm his often-expressed belief that ‘War has no amenities’ and that as far as rules were concerned ‘You might as well talk of humanizing Hell!’ In 1913 he greatly shocked Battenberg and Churchill with a paper on submarines, which Churchill thought was ‘brilliant and most valuable’. But there were ‘a few points on which I am not convinced’. He continued: ‘Of these the greatest is the question of the use of submarines to sink merchant vessels. I do not believe this would ever be done by a civilized Power.’(10)

  Fisher later came in for heavy criticism for indirectly drawing the attention of the Kriegsmarine to the merits of the submarine, and thus helping to create the U-boat flotillas.

  At the outset of the unrestricted war against enemy shipping the German Navy could call on only about twenty U-boats or one tenth the number called for in the Staff Study. A number of these were small and obsolescent, fit only for coastal work (‘U. B.’) and minelaying boats (‘U.C.’). Moreover they could work only in three relays owing to the need for proper maintenance and rest for the crews. Allowing for the long and time-consuming voyage to the rich hunting-grounds of the Western Approaches, Irish Sea, and the western end of the English Channel, only two or three U-boats were operating at any one time in the west while another handful of smaller craft combed the cast coast and eastern Channel approaches.

  In less than two and a half months this tiny and inexperienced force had accounted for thirty-nine ships. almost all destroyed without warning and often with heavy loss of life. The worst of Fisher’s fears seemed to be well founded. More than this number were lost in the single month of August 1915. There was a special significance to the attack on a large American oil tanker in April. Although the ship was towed into Scilly the captain was k
illed. The United States was outraged, and those who had fought against Fisher’s conversion of the Fleet to oil instead of home-produced coal nodded sagely.

  The one ship whose name signified the barbarity and revulsion felt for this new form of warfare was the Lusitania. She was the largest and fastest liner on the Atlantic run, and had completed live round trips, relying on her speed as the best protection against U-boat attack. The Lusitania was almost home safely when at 2.15 p.m. on 7 May 1915 Lieutenant-Commander Schweiger in U-20 held this massive target in his sights. A single torpedo was enough, although some survivors spoke of a second explosion. The liner took on a sharp list, and in twenty minutes was at the bottom with 1,198 of her passengers (many children) and crew, including 128 Americans.

  Germany brushed aside American protests, justifying the attacks because full published warnings had been given in New York and the liner was carrying arms, and when the U-boat captain had seen how many people there were on board he had forborn from firing a second torpedo. The second explosion, claimed Schweiger, came from the ammunition. The authorities had been unwise enough to stow 173 tons of rifle cartridges and shrapnel before she sailed from New York. ‘Never had there been such a war loss at sea,’ wrote the official historian, ‘never one which so violently outraged the laws of war and dictates of humanity.’(11)