The Great War at Sea: 1914-1918

by Richard Hough

  By 5 p.m. 30 May, Hall knew that Scheer had issued an operational signal at 3.40 p.m. Two hours later, Jellicoe learned that the ‘Germans intend some operations commencing tomorrow’. By 11 o’clock that evening, two hours before Hipper sailed, the full might of the Grand Fleet was at sea and already heading for a rendezvous with Beatty’s Battle Cruiser Fleet that would lead to a meeting with the enemy.

  It was a dark and relatively warm night with no more than a slight swell in the North Sea. Sunrise was 4.50 a.m. but in this high latitude within three weeks of midsummer there would be light in the east long before then. Fine weather was forecast for the last day of May with some low cloud and the likelihood of mist. The wind, which had so persistently been from the east and north had backed north-west, and would later back further to the south-west, one of the numerous factors the commanders on both sides noted for the smoke factor in any gunnery action. Not that many officers or men on either side felt that there was any greater likelihood of a clash now than on any earlier operation. Hopes had, by May 1916, been so often dashed that most men had adjusted to a fatalistic expectation of disappointment. Only a favoured few at the top recognized that there was a greater chance of action than ever before.

  There was no precedent in all the centuries of sea warfare for this titanic, half-blind race in the darkness of the ocean, trailing unseen clouds of black smoke as the Grand Fleet steered east; the Germans, thundering north, a new Navy without experience or tradition in fighting but rich and enthusiastic in technology. Sixty-four great battleships and battle-cruisers in all, manned by some 70,000 men, the population of a fair-sized town, everyone with his specialized skill, age ranging from fourteen to the mid-fifties, from new recruits to men who had served a lifetime and boasted of roots in the Navy going back for generations.

  Of the thirty-seven British dreadnoughts, six mounted 15-inch guns, one 14-inch, fifteen 13.5-inch and fifteen 12-inch. Although the 15-inch gun was already in use in the Kriegsmarine, the new battleship armed with eight of them was not yet worked up, and Scheer could bring to bear only 12-inch and 11-inch guns. Of his twenty-seven battleships and battle-cruisers fourteen were armed with 12-inch and thirteen with 11-inch guns. On the other hand, the German big ships were equipped with heavier secondary armament, all of them mounting between ten and fourteen 5.9-inch guns, while only the most recently completed British dreadnoughts were armed with 6-inch guns. None of these secondary guns would count seriously against armoured ships but might be important in countering destroyer attacks.

  Because of the larger average calibre of Jellicoe’s heavy guns, the total weight of broadside of his fleet was very considerably higher than Scheer’s, 332,000 pounds against 134,000 pounds, discounting secondary armament. The Germans consoled themselves with the belief that the rate of fire of their guns was higher than the British, giving less of a disparity in pounds fired per minute, but this did not work out in practice. At maximum rate, the big guns on either side, whether 11-inch or 15-inch, could be fired every 20 to 50 seconds approximately, but this was not sustained for more than about 15 minutes as the physical effort involved was very considerable.

  All but two of the British dreadnoughts were equipped for director firing for their main armament. German dreadnoughts were similarly equipped although the system was somewhat different. A periscope, electrically linked with every turret and operated from the conning tower, was kept on the target and electrically indicated the lateral movements of the target on a Director Pointer, or Richtungsweiser, to each heavy gun. Zeiss range-finders operated on the steroscopic principle in preference to the British coincidence principle. In the Derfflinger, one of the newest German battle-cruisers, there were seven large range-finders, and the average reading was electrically transmitted to each gun and indicated by a Range-Pointer.

  ‘All the guns are kept dead on the enemy without anyone working the guns needing to see the target at all!’ wrote the Derfflinger’s chief gunnery officer. ‘The enemy may be near or distant. He may be far ahead or far astern. The ships may be travelling in parallel or on opposite courses. As long as the periscope is on the target, and as long as the proper range from the enemy has been established, every gun is aiming dead at that part of the hostile ship at which the periscope is pointing.’(23)

  The German range-finder’s stereoscopic principle demanded exceptional eyesight in the operator, with identical power for both eyes. The disadvantage of the British coincidence range-finder was that it was more light-absorbing and was markedly less efficient in poor visibility.

  For their bigger guns and heavier broadsides, the British dreadnoughts paid the price of lighter protection. This was well known throughout both Fleets, and recognized (with some pride) by the British sailor as deliberate risk-taking. It was not only the weight of the gun that had to be provided for, but also the turret and its mounting and all the associated equipment and machinery. The four turrets and eight guns of the Warspite, for example, weighed about the same as the five turrets and ten 13.5-inch guns of her immediate predecessors. As well, the Warspite’s 15-inch shells in her magazines weighed almost three times that of, say, the von der Tann’s 11-inch shell.

  As far as the comparable weight of armour is concerned, Jellicoe’s figures in his account in The Grand Fleet tell their own story:

  Battleships

  HMS Monarch

  Displacement 22,500

  Wt. armour tons 4,560

  Wt. deck protection tons 2,010

  Total tons 6,570

  SMS Kaiser 24,410

  Wt. armour tons 5,430

  Wt. deck protection tons 3,130

  Total tons 8,560

  Battle Cruisers

  HMS Queen Mary 27,000

  Wt. armour tons 3,900

  Wt. deck protection tons 2,300

  Total tons 6,200

  SMS Seydlitz 24,610

  Wt. armour tons 5,200

  Wt. deck protection tons 2,400

  Total tons 7,600

  These figures show a German advantage of 33 per cent in the case of the battleships, and 25 percent for the battle-cruisers; and that German battle-cruisers were as strong and well protected as British battleships while possessing a speed advantage of around 6 knots (except over the 5th Battle Squadron). On the other hand the British ships’ superiority in weight of broadside was roughly comparable to the German ships’ superiority in weight of protection. Given gunnery of equal quality, then, there would appear to be no doubt of the outcome of a ship-to-ship gunnery duel if the quality of shell had also been equal. But the quality of shell was not equal. As Jellicoe himself ruefully noted, ‘We thus lost the advantage we ought to have enjoyed in offensive power due to the greater weight of our projectiles, while suffering the accepted disadvantage in the protection of our ships due to the heavy weight available for armour plating.’(24)

  Paradoxically, German and British flotillas reflected reverse philosophies. The Kriegsmarine’s torpedo boats were smaller than their British counterparts, fitted with more torpedo tubes and smaller guns. The British boats were called torpedo boat destroyers, carried a heavier armament and fewer torpedoes, the emphasis of their function being to defend the battle line, i.e. the big gun, against German torpedoes, and to attack the German line as a secondary role.

  For both Jellicoe and Scheer their constant concern was for the flotillas’ ability to keep up with the fleet in heavy weather, and with their endurance which perforce was much more limited than that of the bigger vessels.

  Jellicoe put to sea with twenty-six light cruisers, Scheer with thirteen. There was little to choose between them, although the newer British cruisers boasted 6-inch against German 4.1-inch main armament. All in all, they were fine modern vessels.

  There were anomalies on both sides. Jellicoe incomprehensibly included no fewer than eight relatively old, armoured cruisers which, in accordance with a Fisher aphorism, had ‘neither the guns to fight nor the speed to run away’. Armoured cruisers’ guns had shown their ineffec
tiveness at the Falkland Islands, where the German 8.2-inch shells were little more effective than bricks against the battle-cruisers’ armour, and at the Dogger Bank engagement where the Blücher was helpless in the face of 12-inch British shells. As to their ability to stand up to underwater attack, the Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy had told their own melancholy story.

  Even more surprising – at least to Jellicoe who in his Grand Fleet Battle Orders (GFBOs) wrote that ‘it is doubtful whether these ships could take part in action… owing to their inferior speed’ – Scheer brought his pre-dreadnoughts with him. There were six of them, the earliest laid down in 1902, armed with four 11-inch guns and capable of 18 knots when new, probably no more than 15 knots after twelve years’ or so service, which would restrict the whole battle fleet to that speed. They were dubbed ‘the five-minute ships’ in the High Seas Fleet for the likely time they would last against British dreadnoughts. Scheer claimed later that he agreed to take them with him at the last moment because of the pleas of the 2nd Battle Squadron’s flag-officer, Rear-Admiral Franz Mauve. But there is also evidence that he had in mind a contingency suicide role for them in an emergency.

  Because of the virtual dissolution of the German Navy and dispersal of its personnel following the 1918 mutinies and the subsequent surrender and scuttling at Scapa Flow, relatively little is known of the true quality of the officers. The Versailles Treaty ensured that the Kriegsmarine returned to the size and strength it had been before the Kaiser/Tirpitz expansion of the early years of the century. All that is known, of a general nature, is that in its heyday the quality and esprit de corps of the High Seas Fleet’s officers was extremely high and that ships’ captains were less hide-bound and less concerned with tradition and protocol than their British opposite numbers.

  Reinhard Scheer was a very different man to John Jellicoe. All that they had in common was a swift brain. But while Jellicoe was also a non-delegating, detail-obsessed plodder when haste was not urgently required, Scheer liked everything done in a hurry. ‘He was impatient and always had to act quickly’, said his Chief of Stall; Admiral Adolf von Trotha. ‘He would expect his stall to have the plans and orders for an operation or manoeuvre worked out exactly to the last detail, and he would then come on the bridge and turn everything upside down. He was a commander of instinct and instant decision who liked to have all options presented to him, and then as often as not chose a course of action no one had previously considered.’ In action ‘he was absolutely cool and clear’, von Trotha added, ‘Jutland showed his great gifts, and a man like that must be allowed to drive his subordinates mad.’(25)

  Scheer was fortunate as a C.-in-C. to have inherited the Navy’s greatest admiral as battle-cruiser commander – by the Kriegsmarine’s definition, ‘The Commander-in-Chief Scouting Forces’. Hipper’s appointment dated from before the war; he knew the job inside out, knew his men, knew his ships and their capabilities. His men had complete confidence in him and he was admired by them quite as much as Beatty by his men of the Battle Cruiser Fleet. Hipper possessed an element of the buccaneer which was unusual in a senior German officer. He never took a Staff College course. He disliked paperwork and theoretical speculation; was a man of action, ‘an energetic and impulsive individual, with quick perception and a keen “seaman’s eye”’,(26) according to his Chief of Staff

  Both Hipper and Beatty were, in both temperament and appearance, marvellously matched to their commands. Beatty was the more flamboyant, but he affected his sharp-tilted cap and non-regulation three-button monkey jacket as the distinctive and readily recognizable marks of his leadership and not as a cover for an inadequate brain. One of his staff officers, who later became his biographer, wrote that he had a ‘phenomenallv quick brain and he can take in all he wants to know in one glance’.(27) He spoke with the patrician voice fashionable at the time and in short, staccato sentences without a wasted word. This same officer also revelled in Beatty’s sense of humour and the way he got ‘a great deal of fun out of his staff officers, especially when they take themselves too seriously’.

  Beatty’s sureness of judgement is shown in his writing, especially in his frequent communications with Jellicoe, for whom at this time he had nothing but admiration and affection. What debarred him from being a great commander was his lack of imagination. He was acute and swift at anticipating what the enemy was likely to do and what he should do in reply: but he was less capable of imagining how others viewed what was happening. An admiral on his bridge should know what is likely to be going through the minds of other commanders who might be viewing and interpreting events quite differently. If Beatty had tried to understand the dilemma of his subordinates at the Dogger Bank engagement when the Lion was knocked out instead of condemning them for inaction, he would have been better equipped to face the next major action against the High Seas Fleet.

  Beatty not only had the cream command in the Grand Fleet, he also had the cream of the flag-officers. The Hon. Horace Hood, his flag in the Invincible, was highly competent and renowned for his intellect. Sir William Pakenham (2nd BCS) possessed a high reputation as a wit, eccentric, and dandy. As an observer with the Japanese Navy in the war with Russia he had taken notes in action from a deck chair on the exposed quarterdeck of the flagship, evincing wonder among his hosts. When he descended below, to their delayed satisfaction, it was only to reappear in a fresh uniform after being spattered with blood from a nearby casualty. Flying his flag in the Princess Royal was Osmond de Beauvoir Brock, another of the Navy’s few ‘brains’, as steady as he was clever.

  Of Beatty’s four light-cruiser commanders, two were exceptional. They were William Goodenough, the epitome of the bluff and intrepid mariner, and Edwyn Alexander-Sinclair, a red-haired Scot who could have fought at Bannockburn. All in all, the light-cruiser and destroyer officers were a fine bunch, by contrast with the battleship squadron commanders and ships’ captains who, with certain exceptions, were sterile of intellect and imagination and lacking in initiative. On the other hand, the Royal Navy had always laid great emphasis on ship-handling, and where it counted most - – among the flotillas – it was matchless.

  JUTLAND: BATTLE-CRUISER ACTION

  Dearth of intelligence in British and German Fleets – Misleading Admiralty signals to Jellicoe – And his failure to bring his aircraft-carrier – The importance. and belated arrival, of the 15-inch-gunned battleships – ‘Enemy in sight’ – More signalling failures in the Battle Cruiser Fleet – Germans open fire with singular light advantage – The fierce artillery duel in ‘the run to the south’ – The first British catastrophes – The flotillas go in Commodore Goodenough’s brilliant scouting – The appearance of the High Seas Fleet Beatty reverses course – 5th Battle Squadron takes a beating but gives as good as it receives

  Equipped as they were with such technically advanced equipment and machinery, it seems anachronistic that these men o’war of the Grand and High Seas Fleets knew so little about each other’s whereabouts as they steamed silently through the night to their involuntary rendezvous. For all the computer-like director systems that enabled them, at a range of fourteen miles, to land a ton projectile squarely onto a 100-foot wide deck constantly moving laterally and forward; for all their hydraulic and electric power systems, their brilliantly engineered turbines, their wireless telegraphy and long range searchlights; for all these, and countless more modern wonders of their age, neither side knew for sure that the other’s scouting forces were out, nor their strength nor heading. And neither side had any idea that the other’s main battle fleet was even at sea.

  Radar was scarcely a generation away, efficient aerial reconnaissance closer still in time. But on the night of 30-31 May 1916 only speculation and contingency planning governed the calculations of the commanders, and ignorance was as dark as the night outside the chart-room, the ether undisturbed by a single note of information. And yet, had it not been for the wonders of wireless telegraphy and electronics, the British Fleet would still be in its bases, Admira
l Hipper leading Admiral Scheer northwards into an empty sea instead of a Nordsee already occupied by an enemy of almost twice his own strength. What had gone right, and what had gone wrong to bring about this extraordinary overture of a twentieth-century naval battle?

  As part of the German moves against the unnerving way in which the British Admiralty seemed to keep track of German movements, intelligence had devised a simple ruse. When Scheer put to sea in his flagship he changed his call-sign from DK, the code letters for Wilhelmshaven itself Room 40 had rumbled this long ago but the OD remained unaware. Relations between the two departments had never been cordial, communication minimal. OD suspected that Room 40, with all its brainy fellows, some of them mere civilians, and with all its special hush-hush privileges, was encroaching on their territory.

  For reasons never explained, at 12.30 p.m. on 31 May, when Jellicoe was already far out to sea, Rear-Admiral Thomas Jackson, the DOD, asked Room 40 where it placed the German call sign DK. The short answer: in Wilhelmshaven. Acting without the knowledge of Room 40, the DOD proceeded to transmit a telegram to Jellicoe informing him that the German flagship was still in the Jade at 11.10 a.m. ‘Apparently they have been unable to carry out air reconnaissance which has delayed them.’

  The message was all the more dangerous for being half true. The air reconnaissance for which Scheer had patiently waited for so many days, and was finally denied, depended upon the speed of the wind outside the Zeppelin sheds. Without mooring masts, the giant machines could not be manhandled out into the open if it was above 12 m.p.h., and for at least a week it had been blowing too strongly. But Scheer had in fact proceeded to sea without air reconnaissance.