The Great War at Sea: 1914-1918
Page 27
The British sailor’s impatience about the Fleet’s inaction was mitigated by his knowledge that they ‘had the Hun bottled in’. While they thirsted for battle, they all knew that they were meanwhile fulfilling the time-honoured British tradition of ruling the waves. The average civilian, and especially the average newspaperman, had no conception of this truism nor of the meaning of sea power. He wanted action, and by the winter of 1915-16, was becoming more discontented and impatient than the sailors who were being held responsible for the lack of it. Nearly a year had passed since the Dogger Bank victory, and a blockade was a silent, invisible business. In peacetime the Navy, by frequent appearances of men o’war off ports and resorts and coasts, ensured that the people who paid for them saw value for their money, and felt pride in the Navy’s strength. In wartime all that show ceased, and the Navy’s role, except in victorious battles, became an increasingly negative one with every Allied merchantman and liner reported sunk, with every announced loss of a British warship, with every enemy claim of success. Even the Zeppelin raids on British towns and cities, which were particularly damaging and tiresome that winter, were blamed on the Admiralty, which was responsible for air raid defence until late in February 1916.
The same wartime hysteria which had driven Battenberg from the Admiralty in 1914 exaggerated the depredations caused by the German surface raider Moewe, which ranged the Atlantic with apparent impunity, laying a minefield which caught the battleship King Edward VII, and sinking or capturing a number of merchantmen.
Then there was great excitement about the rumour that the Germans had almost ready for action new battle-cruisers armed with 17-inch guns, outranging and outclassing the pride of the Grand Fleet, the Is-inch gunned Queen Elizabeth class. Even the solid Manchester Guardian gave credence to these mighty and terrible men o’war, obliging Balfour to deny their existence with authority and circumlocution: ‘I have seen in the Press mention of guns of 17-inch calibre’, he stated in the House of Commons on 26 January. ‘We have no evidence that such exist… The most diverse conjectures about German shipbuilding may be made by the ingenious; and speaking fix myself I am by no means sure that of these conjectures the one to which I have just referred is the most plausible.’
The rumble of discontent was rearoused by the thunder of enemy gunfire off the east coast early on the morning of 25 April 1916. The German battle-cruisers were at it again, destroying hundreds of houses and causing civilian casualties in Lowestoft and Yarmouth. Tyrwhitt with the Harwich light force was the only commander to make contact, and by valiant and brilliant manoeuvring caused first the battle-cruisers, then the main body of the High Seas Fleet backing them up, to turn tail. At the cost of two damaged light cruisers and a lost submarine, the commodore threw back the whole enemy Fleet before its scheduled time and before it could do much harm to Yarmouth.
In the course of this brief operation, the Germans lost two U-boats and the battle-cruiser Seydlitz was put out of action by a mine. The British public knew nothing of this, nor, thankfully, that the Admiralty through Room 40 knew the precise timing of the raid and its target. All they knew was that once again the Kriegsmarine had destroyed British property on British soil and killed and maimed British civilians. ‘Where was the Navy?’ the demand re-echoed.
The answer which was not publicly uttered was that the Navy was again too late, in spite of the early warning. Both the battle-cruisers from the Forth and Jellicoe’s squadrons from Scapa had been tipped off and had struggled south against mountainous seas. Beatty got within forty-five miles of the enemy, then, according to the official Naval Staff Monograph on the raid, ‘There was nothing in sight, all hope of cutting off the enemy had vanished, and the battle cruisers turned back at half-past twelve [p.m. 25 April].’ The Admiral was, rightly and predictably, furious at the OD’s gross mismanagement which had, once again, led to the enemy’s escape.
The raid was also unfortunate for the Navy because it suggested that only the Germans were possessed of the offensive spirit, with the Royal Navy on the defensive, and unsuccessfully on the defensive at that. Yet again, the problem of bases for the Grand Fleet was aired in the Admiralty and in the Fleet. The controversial subject had never been deeply submerged, but the Lowestoft raid brought it sharply to the surface again. The selection of east-coast bases was a political more than a strategic problem. From a strictly military point of view, the destruction of houses and the deaths of their occupants was of no consequence. When he had been in power, and impelled by political needs, Churchill had frequently pressed for Jellicoe to move his squadrons farther south to prevent these raids. Balfour faced now the same outcry as his predecessor had suffered, especially from the mayors of Yorkshire and Norfolk coastal towns.
Jellicoe hated, as much as anyone, the idea of the High Seas Fleet being able to move relatively freely if only for brief spells in the southern part of the North Sea. He did not much care for Scapa Flow either, even since it had been made safe. Ideally, the whole Grand Fleet should be based on the Forth, with Beatty. But for the present the dangers there were too great. At Rosyth, above the bridge, the battle-cruisers were safe, and there were berths for twenty big ships. But by early spring 1916 Jellicoe had some twenty-nine dreadnoughts in addition to Beatty’s growing force, which could not be berthed below the bridge until this outer anchorage was made safe against U-boats and destroyer raids.
Additional arguments against the Forth were first the sometimes crippling handicap of fogs, winter and summer. This applied to the Humber and other possible bases farther south, while at Scapa it was, except occasionally in the summer, too windy for fogs to form. Then while the Forth gave a fleet an approximate and theoretical four-hour advantage over Scapa Flow in the time required to reach the likely battle area, some of this time was lost in the technical handicap at the Forth created by overcrowding and inferior facilities for putting to sea swiftly. All the same, if Jellicoe had arrived three hours earlier on only one of several critical occasions, a great deal of damage to the enemy might have resulted.
In February 1916 Beatty suggested a compromise solution. Send the fast 15-inch gunned Queen Elizabeth class, the 5th Battle Squadron, to support him in the Forth in place of the pre-dreadnought 3rd Battle Squadron, which was too slow and old to be of any use in a fleet action anyway. Jellicoe turned this down because these prized big new ships had always been intended to form a fast special wing to work independently of the battle line and to intervene as required. Besides, as Jellicoe wrote to Jackson, ‘The stronger I make Beatty, the greater is the temptation for him to get involved in an independent action.’ It was a cornerstone of Jellicoe’s tactical policy that the Grand Fleet should be operated as one cohesive unit with Beatty’s squadrons as a powerful force intended to scout and destroy the enemy battle cruisers. This was sound reasoning. The fear of Beatty being separated, cut off, and destroyed piecemeal at too great a distance for the dreadnought squadrons to intervene was an abiding one, reinforced by Beatty’s near shave during the Scarborough raid.
After the Lowestoft outcry, Jellicoe proposed a compromise disposition, moving the old 3rd Battle Squadron with the Dreadnought as flagship to the Thames estuary under able and steady Vice Admiral Sir Edward Bradford. If not quite a ‘live bait’ squadron, this force of seven (eight before the King Edward VII was sunk) obsolete battleships and one obsolescent dreadnought was intended to draw on and hold a superior enemy force until Beatty and Jellicoe arrived, or deter it. At least, with Room 40’s accurate predictions, it could be off any east-coast town before Hipper arrived and no doubt would send him swiftly over the horizon before he could do any damage. With a total broadside of thirty-eight 12-inch guns, about the same weight as Hipper’s, they might even do him some damage.
It was not in the nature of Jellicoe, and less still in Beatty’s character, to allow defensive measures to preoccupy their calculations. They were in constant communication with one another, and offensive possibilities figured as prominently in their considerations as de
fensive activities. Two random examples, the second actually being the genesis of Jutland:
JELLICOE TO BEATTY
HMS Iron Duke
20th February 1916
I am proposing a movement for Saturday… I am proposing you should have the 1st Flotilla (I don’t mean to bring out the 3rd BS [Battle Squadron]). Incidentally you may of course stumble on some German patrols during the night. Saturday night is a favourite night for them to be out… The meeting will be useful even if we don’t pick up any Germans…’(15)
BEATTY TO JELLICOE
Lion
7th April 1916
In view therefore of your recent excursion [in the northern part of the North Sea] indicating that the enemy can now be drawn, and of the desirability of ascertaining whether they have taken the opportunity of having the North Sea under complete and undisturbed observation [by Zeppelin]… I submit that the moment is opportune for sweeping operations on a large scale strongly supported…’(16)
Since the earliest days of the war and the Ingenohl regime, every sort of ruse and stratagem had been considered that might lead to drawing out the High Seas Fleet or a substantial part of it. The chances of finding a solution fell further with Ingenohl’s replacement by the even less adventurous Pohl. Pohl was, moreover, a sick man who became so ill in the early days of 1916 that the new C.-in-C. took over. Scheer, fifty-two years old, had commanded the 2nd Battle Squadron at the outset of war. Reinhard Scheer was one of the ablest and fastest-thinking flag-officers in the Kriegsmarine, much admired by his subordinates and fellow flag-officers. His vigorous and offensive spirit was well known in the British Admiralty, and it was recognized that a bolder policy was now likely to be pursued in the North Sea.
This was soon confirmed by an increase in activity in Room 40 reflecting the movements of German ships and future plans. No one at the Admiralty expected Scheer’s appointment to lead to the sudden exodus of the entire High Seas Fleet seeking a decisive action with the Grand Fleet, as was indeed the case. But Scheer had the brief to apply ‘systematic and constant pressure’ on the British Fleet to provoke Jellicoe into greater activity in the hope of isolating and destroying units or squadrons of inferior strength.
Seventeen days after taking over, Scheer ordered a destroyer sweep cast of the Dogger Bank. This interrupted a British minesweeping exercise and led to the destruction of the new sloop Arabis after a gallant fight against hopeless odds. There was a further, more serious loss that night when Tyrwhitt was returning from the abortive rescue mission and his flagship struck a German mine in a newly laid field. The Arethusa, which had led such a bold and eventful war, was driven onto a shoal and broke in two. This German exercise was, according to Corbett, no more than ‘part of the method by which Admiral Scheer was tuning up his fleet for the part he was determined to see it play’.(17)
Three weeks later Scheer took out the entire High Seas Fleet and brought it further south towards the entrance to the English Channel than on any previous occasion in the hope of netting larger game. Two fishing smacks was all it picked up. But here was certain proof that the offensive spirit was being activated by Scheer as never before.
The appointment of Scheer was echoed in the Grand Fleet by a new intensification in the search for a break in the stalemate. After the war Churchill asked the rhetorical question, ‘What was there that we could do which would force the German Navy to fight us at our own selected moment and on our own terms?’ To which Jellicoe appended the marginal comment, ‘Plans were constantly carried out to tempt the [High Seas Fleet] out with portions of the Grand Fleet as a bait.’(18) A few days before the Lowestoft raid, Scheer’s next offensive exercise, Jellicoe wrote to Beatty that, ‘There is a feeling at the Admiralty which I think may lead to their trying to persuade me into what is called a ‘more active policy’. After reciting the difficulties of supporting, for example, a seaplane raid with the entire Grand Fleet, he told Beatty, ‘I am still trying to devise a means of drawing them further out.’(19)
Beatty agreed that an air raid was not the whole answer, though it might, at some risk, lead to a portion of the enemy force being ‘snapped up’. He then proceeded to define the problem with characteristic economy and precision: ‘I am not arguing against air raids. Anything that we can do to harass and annoy has great advantages. And there is always the possibility that they may be tempted to overstep themselves, go too far with an inferior force, etc., which could be punished severely before it got back; and such operations fairly frequently may produce something which will be worth the risks. They would also have the advantage of denying [the enemy’] the initiative, and so prevent him from bringing off any of his Set Pieces. But it is certain that he will not come out in Grand Force when we set the tune, i.e. to fight the Great Battle we are all waiting for.’(20)
This Great Battle could not be delayed for ever, and was in fact only some seven weeks away. Suddenly, after twenty-two months of war, it seemed as if the need had become so sharp and urgent that, allied with fate, fair weather, and coincident timing, it must lead to the massive clash so ardently prepared for.
In the early days of May 1916, Admiral Scheer and his Staff drew up a plan which would answer the demand for more positive action, one of ‘greater boldness than anything he had yet ventured’.(21) He intended to bombard Sunderland with Hipper’s battle-cruisers after placing sixteen of his U-boats, withdrawn from commerce warfare, off Cromarty, Rosyth, and Scapa Flow. To safeguard his own bases, more U-boats would be stationed in suitable defensive positions. Beatty would be bound to come out in pursuit of Hipper’s battle-cruisers and light cruisers, and any that escaped the U -boats’ torpedoes would be lured south-east onto Scheer’s battle squadrons and destroyed. The High Seas Fleet would then rapidly retire before Jellicoe’s squadrons – those that escaped the U-boat trap – could come within range. In order to ensure that Jellicoe did not surprise him on one of his frequent sweeps, Scheer’s Zeppelins were to scout ahead in search of the enemy battle fleet. The U-boats sailed on 15 May, initiating the long-drawn-out series of movements by some 274 men o’war that would culminate in the clash of arms sixteen days later.
Jellicoe’s plan, devised some three weeks after Scheer’s, was also, according to Corbett, ‘beyond anything we had yet hazarded’.(22) It called for two squadrons of light cruisers to arrive off the northernmost tip of Denmark, deep in the Skagerrak, by daylight on 2 June, and then sweep provocatively south down the Kattegat with a single squadron of dreadnoughts penetrating the Skagerrak in support. The seaplane-carrier Engadine, escorted by light cruisers and destroyers, would send up machines to scout ahead, while east of the Dogger Bank submarines would lie in wait to spring the trap. Beatty, and Jellicoe with his remaining battle squadrons, would station themselves close to the entrance to the Skagerrak ready to fall on the vanguard of the High Seas Fleet as it sped north.
The similarity between the two plans demonstrated the limited options open to commanders intent on doing as much damage to the enemy while taking as few risks as possible and avoiding a full-scale gun duel against the total enemy forces. They also reflected the new face of sea warfare, introducing the two elements of air power and submarine power for the first time. The last-ever battle with the gun totally and exclusively resolving the outcome had been on 8 December 1914, south of the Falkland Islands.
But war is not a tidy business, and sea warfare in the North Sea, as in the days of sail, was still partly governed by visibility and the vagaries of the wind. In Scheer, boldness was tempered by a reasonable caution, and he was not going to leave the Jade for the middle of the North Sea with his Fleet, both flanks exposed, until his Zeppelin commanders had reported all clear. The days passed, with the U-boats completing their reconnaissance patrols and heading for their stations off Rosyth and Scapa, with orders to remain on station until I June. After the Seydlitz had completed her repairs, poor visibility, and contrary winds especially for May, continued to prohibit the use of Zeppelins. The last practicable day on
which to sail was 30 May. When haze and low cloud and north-east winds still precluded the use of his Zeppelins, Scheer implemented his alternative plan.
Plan Two was a good deal less ambitious, and much safer. Hipper would proceed with his lull scouting force north to as far as the Norwegian southern coast, which would ensure his detection, while Scheer would follow some sixty miles behind and taking every precaution not to be detected. With the Danish coast protecting his starboard flank, his own light scouting forces could ensure that he was not taken by surprise from the west; and the first part of Plan One, the drawing of Beatty at Rosyth, Jerram at Cromarty, and Jellicoe at Scapa into the U-boat traps, would still operate.
Hipper sailed from the Jade at 1 a.m. on 31 May, his flag in the High Seas Fleet’s newest battle-cruiser, the Lützow. Never had the risks been greater, the hopes higher. This was no tip-and-run raid. It was an offensive operation that could hardly fail to bring out the enemy. If he met light forces, he was to destroy them. If he met equal or superior forces he was to use every endeavour to lure them south onto the main battle squadrons, which would never be far behind.
At the Admiralty Ewing and his men had interpreted signals relating to Scheer’s operation as early as 16-17 May, the night of the U-boats’ departure, and recognized that Jellicoe’s own offensive plan was likely to be pre-empted. Little more came in until the morning of 30 May when they read that the High Seas Fleet was ordered to assemble in the jade roadstead by 7 p.m. that evening. The deduction was clear enough for the Admiralty to warn Jellicoe at midday 30 May that a major operation was in the offing and that the High Seas Fleet was likely to sail during the early hours of the morning of 31 May.