To Arms

by Hew Strachan

  However, during the course of October and November British redeployment helped support Ingenohl’s case for offensive action, and gave a fitful clarity to Germany’s maritime strategy.

  By the beginning of October 1914 there were, in addition to the Territorial Force, only four regular battalions left in the United Kingdom. British security from invasion was fundamental to the maritime strategy of the Entente; defensively, its land mass provided the basis of the blockade; and offensively, it was the logistic base for the armies on the continent, supporting through sea-power the trench lines of the western front. The navy before the war had insisted, at a meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1908, that it could stop any German invasion mounted by upwards of 70,000 troops. The army’s responsibility was to deal with raids by smaller bodies, the detection of whose preparations would be harder, and whose advent could be swifter. Between 1908 and 1913 the fear of invasion had shaped much of the rhetoric, if little of the substance, of Britain’s defence debates. The navy, having announced that Britain would not be invaded, modified its position in 1913 in order to tie the regular army to home defence and so block its continentalism; the War Office used the invasion threat to popularize the Territorial Army, and it also became an important tool of the advocates of conscription; in addition it formed the stuff of popular novels. Thus, in autumn 1914 the exposure of Britain’s east coast, with the withdrawal of the Grand Fleet to Irish waters and the abandonment of cruiser patrols in the face of U-boat threats, locked into a set of existing anxieties. Kitchener was the most affected. Germany’s establishment of defensive positions on its western front created a disposable land force which could be directed as well against Britain as to its eastern front. The Committee of Imperial Defence in April 1914 had stipulated that two regular divisions and the Territorial Force would be enough to check a German invasion; Kitchener no longer had two regular divisions, and he did not trust the Territorials. The Admiralty was therefore constrained to cover the east coast. On 12 November it ordered a battle squadron and a cruiser squadron to Rosyth; ships were stationed on the Tyne, the Humber, and the Wash; a squadron of pre-Dreadnoughts was established at Sheerness; the fleet was therefore scattered from the Pentland Firth to the Thames. The price of home defence (and indeed of the army’s continentalism) was the navy’s dispersion.98 Ingenohl now had the opportunity to engage fractions of the Grand Fleet.

  German naval intelligence was poor. The pre-war network of German naval spies in Britain was very small, a total of twenty-two, and they were successfully identified by the secret service bureau of the British War Office (established in 1909 and the predecessor of MI5). The ring was smashed beyond repair immediately on the war’s outbreak.99 Since the British were far more restrained in their use of wireless than the Germans, signals traffic did not provide the lucrative source it proved for the Admiralty. Increased traffic did, of course, indicate probable movements by the Grand Fleet, but not until March 1916 was the German intercept station at Neumunster regularly receiving and deciphering British messages.100 Ingenohl therefore did not, apparently, realize the opportunity thus afforded him. However, he did know that the defeat of Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock’s squadron at Coronel, in the Pacific, on 1 November 1914 had prompted the Admiralty to dispatch three battle cruisers from home waters to reinforce the efforts to seek Cradock’s conqueror, Graf von Spee. Never again could the balance of forces be so favourable to the Germans. For a brief period the Grand Fleet’s margin of superiority in the North Sea rested on seventeen Dreadnoughts to Germany’s fifteen, and an equal number of battle cruisers (four each). However exaggerated the fear of mines and U-boats, the consequences for the Royal Navy of a single miscalculation seemed likely to be grave.

  On 3 November Ingenohl mounted a raid on Yarmouth with Hipper’s battle cruisers as a cover for minelaying operations off Lowestoft. The Admiralty was slow to respond, and the local patrols were hampered by the weather. The lack of accident reinforced Hipper’s pressure for further raids, and in mid-November Ingenohl settled on the bombardment of Hartlepool and Scarborough. As before, the raid would cover minelaying in the hope that the Grand Fleet might be stung by the raid back into the North Sea and so be drawn across the new field. In defiance of the Kaiser’s orders, Ingenohl decided he would take out the High Seas Fleet in support. The news that von Spee’s squadron had been destroyed at the Falklands on 8 December promised the return of the detached British battle cruisers before long, but Ingenohl was anxious to wait until mid-December when the repairs to Von der Tann would be completed.

  Thus, the night of 8 December, when there was no moon and the tides were right, passed—to Jellicoe’s surprise—without incident. But on 14 December Room 40 warned that Hipper’s battle cruisers were coming out the following day. Since the High Seas Fleet observed radio silence, the intelligence said nothing about German battleships and its collectors were not consulted on the point; given an incomplete picture, Oliver assumed that the High Seas Fleet would stay in harbour. Jellicoe wanted the whole Grand Fleet at sea, but he was overruled by the Admiralty. The latter’s plan was to use Beatty’s battle cruisers, Goodenough’s 1st light cruiser squadron, and the 2nd battle squadron under Sir George Warrender, to cut off Hipper after he had completed his raid; the whole force was to rendezvous at a position only 30 miles south of the station taken up by the High Seas Fleet. The Harwich Force was to shadow Hipper.

  At 5.15 a.m. on 16 December Warrender’s destroyers made contact with escorts of the High Seas Fleet. Ingenohl was worried: he could only reckon that the destroyers were the van of a larger formation, in all probability the Grand Fleet, and in addition their torpedoes represented an immediate danger to his capital ships, particularly in the dark. Given the Kaiser’s orders of 6 October he had no option but to turn away to the south-east, a move he executed at 5.42. In doing so he forfeited Germany’s only major opportunity for a decisive naval victory in the entire war.

  The reporting of Warrender’s destroyers was patchy, incomplete, and on occasion inaccurate. Thus, fortunately for the British, Beatty’s pursuit of Ingenohl was delayed and ill-directed. At 9.03 a.m. he abandoned the chase. Reports of Hipper’s action, which had begun at 8 a.m., had been reaching him, and it was to deal with the German battle cruisers that Beatty now turned. When Hipper withdrew homewards at 9.30 a.m. his prospects were poor. He knew from a signals intercept the previous day that the British had been alerted to his sortie. He therefore expected action, but he did not know that four British battle cruisers and six Dreadnoughts lay between him and safety. Nor did he know that Ingenohl, who had been due to stay on his station until the operation was completed, was no longer in support. Tyrwhitt’s Harwich Force began to move northwards at 8.40 a.m. At 10 a.m. the 3rd battle squadron was under way from Rosyth in case Hipper should follow the coast northwards in order to skirt the mines off the coast, and by noon most of the Grand Fleet had left Scapa Flow. The British concentration, although delayed, still seemed sufficient.

  Hipper’s possible route back across the North Sea was complicated by minefields and the shallows round the Dogger Bank. Jellicoe correctly anticipated that he would aim for a gap in the mines due east of Whitby, and warned Beatty and Warrender accordingly. By 11 a.m. the weather, and with it the visibility, were worsening, but at 11.25 a.m. Goodenough in Southampton reported contact with an enemy light cruiser and some destroyers. In fact Goodenough’s engagement was with the three light cruisers of the 2nd German scouting group, and concentration on the Southampton would have brought Beatty onto the 2nd scouting group of Hipper’s main force, astern and to the west. Instead, Southampton broke contact. Beatty’s ill-phrased signal, ‘Light cruisers—resume your position for look-out’, was intended for two only of Goodenough’s four light cruisers, to get them to spread out in the search for the rest of Hipper’s force. It was not meant for Southampton or Birmingham, but with no indication to the contrary Goodenough assumed it applied to his entire squadron. Hipper, having been alerted
to Goodenough’s presence, turned south-east at 11.39, hoping to draw the British away from the light cruisers of the 1st scouting group. At 12.15 Warrender’s battleships also saw the German light cruisers, but did not open fire as Warrender himself did not issue an order to that effect. At 12.32 the German light cruisers signalled that they could see no British forces and that they were out of danger. Hipper then turned north, with the purpose this time of drawing off Warrender’s battle squadron. A mixture of chance, poor visibility, and bad signalling had enabled Hipper to wend his way through the British screen. Not even Keyes’s flotilla off Terschelling was able to intercept the Germans; wireless communications between his destroyer and the Admiralty were delayed by their operating on different wavelengths, and thus he was not in position off Heligoland until too late.

  Both sides berated themselves for the missed opportunities of the Scarborough raid. The Germans had least cause; they had effected their purpose, conducting the first successful attack on English shores since 1667 and doing so without loss. Ingenohl was unfairly blamed for missing an opportunity that was only created thanks to his own attacking spirit. British recriminations were somewhat better founded. The navy—apparently surprised but in reality forewarned—had allowed the raids to go ahead, with the loss of 122 killed and 443 wounded (most of them civilians), on the grounds that it would finish with Hipper’s scouting groups on the latter’s return journey. It had failed. The official historian’s conclusions were swingeing:

  Two of the most efficient and powerful British squadrons, with an adequate force of scouting vessels, knowing approximately what to expect, and operating in an area strictly limited by the possibilities of the situation, had failed to bring to action an enemy who was acting in close conformity with our appreciation and with whose advanced screen contact had been established.101

  What was culpable in the Royal Navy’s behaviour was less the failure per se; after all, it was lucky to have escaped major defeat in the early hours of the morning, and the result of any engagement between Beatty and Hipper (given Hipper’s ability to outdistance Warrender’s battleships) would not have been a foregone conclusion. The major omission was the inability to learn for next time. Room 40’s intelligence, which had proved vital in creating the opportunity, had been poorly integrated with the battle’s operational direction; its intercepts in the course of the action had been passed to Jellicoe with a delay of up to two hours, by which time the information it contained was out of date or even potentially misleading. The news that the German fleet was out was relayed so late that Jellicoe and Beatty assumed Ingenohl was advancing when in fact he was already retreating. On the high seas themselves, Beatty’s signals had been ambiguous and individual commanders—both Goodenough and the captains of Warrender’s squadron—had failed to use their initiative. The staff and command failings were manifest. On 30 December Jellicoe decided that officers in contact with the enemy were to treat orders from those ignorant of the immediate conditions as instructions only: but at the same time both he and Beatty opposed the Admiralty’s suggestion that they loosen their battle formations, so ensuring that tight control remained the order of the day. The only real response was to address the problem of concentration at a strategic level: on 20 December Beatty’s battle cruisers were moved down to Rosyth.

  The outcome of the Scarborough raid did nothing to diminish Ingenohl’s case for more offensive operations. Furthermore, the frustrations of simply waiting for the British to come into the Bight were multiplied on Christmas Day, when a small force under Tyrwhitt penetrated far enough in to launch a seaplane attack against the Zeppelin base at Cuxhaven. Four of the seven seaplanes were lost, but not a single British serviceman was killed; one of the seaplane carriers successfully eluded the attentions of a Zeppelin, and in the ensuing stramash Von der Tann ran into another German cruiser. Two days later a report by Pohl’s own chief of staff, Hans Zenker, commissioned as a result of a suggestion made to the Kaiser by Müller, convinced the chief of the Admiralty Staff that he could no longer oppose Ingenohl’s arguments. Zenker said that the current strategy, Kleinkrieg, was not working; the British were not attacking and the blockade was still holding. The High Seas Fleet must be prepared to go to sea and to stay there for longer periods; its aim should still be to seek fractions of the enemy force, and to this end both U-boats and Zeppelins should be employed as scouts, but the fleet should not shun the possibility of confrontation with the entire Grand Fleet.

  The substance of Zenker’s proposals was discussed at an audience with the Kaiser on 9 January 1915. Significantly, Tirpitz was not present, but nor was Ingenohl. Pohl took Ingenohl’s part, asking, albeit ‘with more pathos than skill’,102 that Ingenohl be allowed greater operational freedom. The Kaiser conceded to the extent that the High Seas Fleet was authorized to make thrusts into the North Sea, but it was still to recoil in the face of superior forces. In the balance between the political value of the fleet and its operational functions, the weight still lay with the former.

  Early January was a poor time for the German navy to decide to go on the attack: the weather was unfavourable, and the repair problems of the fleet were accumulating. However, worries about the activities of British fishing boats— which were not used so much for intelligence purposes, as the Germans imagined, as for patrols to protect the east coast—provided the basis for a fresh thrust by Hipper’s battle cruisers. Hipper suggested another minelaying raid, this time on the Forth, combined with an attack on the fishing boats on the Dogger Bank, fortuitously both a favourite fishing ground and on the direct route between the German bases and the British coast. Hipper hoped for the High Seas Fleet’s support, but Ingenohl refused. The repair needs of the fleet had reduced its strength, and he could see little prospect of it being required. He wrongly assumed that Beatty’s battle cruisers were at Scapa Flow, and that therefore Hipper was likely to meet only light forces, or at worst battleships from Rosyth which he could outdistance. At 5.45 p.m. on 23 January the two scouting groups, a combined force of four battle cruisers, four light cruisers, and eighteen torpedo boats, put out to sea.

  However, a signal from Ingenohl’s chief of staff, aboard SMS Deutschland, to Hipper’s flagship Seydlitz while both vessels were still in the Jade, alerted Room 40. The intelligence led Oliver to make two assumptions—one right (this time), that the High Seas Fleet was not coming out, and one wrong, that Hipper’s purpose was to raid the east coast again. His subsequent orders were therefore better adapted to screening the coast than they were to cutting Hipper off from his base. Beatty and Tyrwhitt were to rendezvous at daylight near the Dogger Bank, which meant that the former’s course was almost due east towards Hipper and not behind him. The 3rd battle squadron and 3rd cruiser squadron were to block escape to the north. The Grand Fleet set out from Scapa through the North Sea on a sweep which could have placed it beyond Hipper, but it did not sail until 9 p.m. and proceeded without urgency; Keyes’s submarines were once again posted off the German estuaries. None of the Admiralty’s instructions revealed to the commanders at sea the assumptions on which they rested. Their implications were that the Grand Fleet would take no part in the action, and that Hipper’s escape to the east would not be closed.

  The thrust of the Admiralty’s orders was confirmed by the course steered by Hipper. In order to ease the progress of his torpedo boats in the heavy seas, he proceeded more to the north and less to the west than he had intended. Therefore at 7.05 a.m. on 24 January, when HMS Aurora began the action by encountering SMS Kolberg, Hipper was not so far to the west as to be isolated. Once again the reporting of the British destroyers proved unhelpful: Aurora signalled to Beatty, ‘Am in action with German Fleet’.103 Beatty, rightly, ignored this report. The High Seas Fleet took no part in the action. Although Hipper informed Ingenohl of the situation at 7.47 a.m., and reported at regular intervals thereafter, he did not specifically request the Fleet’s support until 9.23. Ingenohl argued that it would take three hours for the High Seas Fleet to assembl
e, and that Hipper’s escape to the south-east was clear. Hipper assumed from the British call-signs that his opponents were the 2nd battle squadron, and that his battle cruisers would have the legs to outdistance the battleships. Not only was the assumption false, but also his ships—deprived of sustained sea trials—developed problems with their condensers and steam turbines: the maximum speed they could maintain was 23 knots.

  Beatty enjoyed two initial advantages; the sun, as it rose, silhouetted the German ships to the east, and the wind, a north-easterly, blew the smoke clear of his line of sight. By 8.23 he had built up his speed to 26 knots, and at 8.34, just after the chase changed course from south to south-east, he ordered 27 knots. In the next twenty minutes the speed was raised again to 29 knots. Despite the furious efforts of his stokers, none of Beatty’s five battle cruisers actually attained this speed, and two of them, New Zealand and Indomitable, were now lagging. Shortly after 9.00 a.m. fire was opened at 20,000 yards. It would be another forty-three minutes before New Zealand was in the fight, and nearly two hours before Indomitable was. The German shooting was reserved until the range was 18,000 yards and was then concentrated on the leading British vessel, Beatty’s flagship Lion. Their aim was obstructed by their own thick smoke belching out astern. But both sides had to deal with the problems of spray. To the breaking of waves were added waterspouts a hundred feet high caused by near misses. The Germans’ practice of finding their targets by increasing the range probably did more to upset Beatty’s view than the British practice of straddling their targets disrupted Hipper’s. The harassing attacks of the German torpedo boats and the misplaced fear that the German cruisers would lay mines in their wake also prevented the British battle cruisers from steering too straight a course.