Temple Patterson, Jellicoe, quoting JET Harper
The truth is that if it had not been for the blowing up of the Indefatigable and the Queen Mary, which was due to superior German shell, not shooting, the first phase would have ended differently.
Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow
By the early afternoon of 31 May the two main arms of the British forces had steamed to their agreed rendezvous point in the Long Forties, close to the Scandinavian coastline.* Beatty’s battle-cruisers, protected by flotillas of fast scouting cruisers both ahead and astern, proceeded in two columns at around 25 knots on a southeasterly bearing. To Beatty’s northwest, and around five miles behind his two battle-cruiser squadrons, were the most powerful guns on the North Sea that day. They belonged to the four modern Queen Elizabeth-class dreadnoughts of Evan-Thomas’s 5th Battle Squadron. While enemy contact was expected to the southeast, Beatty had positioned the most powerful but slowest element of his force to his northwest.† He had split his forces.
In the fifteen minutes after quarter past two in the afternoon, everything changed. A lone neutral steamer, the Danish N J Fjord, was spotted by the German cruiser Elbing, scouting ahead of Hipper’s force. Two fast destroyers, B.110 and B.109, were sent ahead to search.
A stationary ship on the high seas was often of enough concern as an indication of possible submarine activity. As one of the two destroyers stood off, covering her, N J Fjord was ordered to let off steam so that a boarding party could carry out a search and, if necessary, impound her. This was commonly done by both sides but more so by the British (given their greater freedom of movement), who were trying to stop war materiel from getting through.
Scouting on the extreme eastern wing of the British battle-cruisers were two light cruisers, Phaeton and Galatea.1 Because Galatea had been late in receiving orders to turn north, so as to stay close to the main redeployment, she had continued to steam closer to NJ Fjord and, unknown to them, Hipper’s forward scouting elements. The British also spotted the steamer’s smoke, and Galatea and Phaeton headed off to investigate. When they saw the German destroyers, they radioed the information to Beatty on Lion. Eight minutes later they both opened fire with their 6in guns at 11,000yds (10,000m).2 The opening shots were the overture to what became known as the Battle of Jutland.
The German destroyers turned back to rejoin Elbing and then started to head north, with Galatea and Phaeton in pursuit. Elbing also signalled the contact back to Hipper, but mistakenly reported the British ships as ‘battle-cruisers’;3 later, one of her signals was further misread to suggest that ‘twenty-four to twenty-six battleships’ had been sighted. The muddled signals must have caused some consternation on the latest addition to the battle-cruiser Aufklärungsgruppe, Lützow, Hipper’s flagship. Elbing’s gunnery was better than her signalling: at almost seven miles she opened fire and one of her 5.9in shells hit Galatea under the bridge.4 It was very accurate shooting and the first hit of the battle, causing ‘a certain amount of damage but nothing to what it would have done if it had burst’.5 Falmouth, further down the line and out of range of the Elbing’s fire, was luckier.
As soon as Galatea spotted more funnel smoke to the northeast, Beatty was alerted.* Alexander-Sinclair confirmed that Hipper’s forces had turned to the north, adding much-needed detail about the composition of the enemy force. It was clear that this was an enemy sortie in strength.†
Beatty’s reaction was swift. He ordered air reconnaissance at 14:51 and then ordered his ships to turn southeast so that he could come between the enemy and their bases.6 The air reconnaissance was one of the first times seaplanes had been employed in this capacity. To that point, it had not been used in naval warfare. Engadine hoisted her only plane into the water a quarter of an hour later.7 This vessel did not look much like a warship – she had been converted from a cross-Channel ferry with a hangar rather crudely built on abaft her two funnels. She should have been supported by a second such ship which might have led to a very different outcome to the day – and a different outcome could have more clearly indicated the potential of air reconnaissance.‡
Just before 15:10, Flight Lieutenant Frederick J Rutland took off in a Short Type 184 floatplane, accompanied by his observer, Assistant Paymaster G S Trewin. The conditions were far from ideal and Beatty had been warned: ‘Sea suitable for getting off but not for landing. Impossible to distinguish where mist ends and water begins in coming down to sea. Will be all right if horizon clears.’
The bad visibility forced Rutland to fly dangerously close to the sea, within easy range of Hipper’s ships’ secondary armament. The small plane came under intense and accurate fire from three German light cruisers, Pillau, Frankfurt and Elbing, all in the van of the German battle-cruiser fleet. Extreme courage and honed skills were needed. Rutland certainly had both. After they spotted Hipper’s ships, Trewin tried to get a signal back at 15:30, but was unsuccessful. After around half an hour’s flight time, one of the oil pipes burst, but Rutland managed to coax the plane down.8 The Short had been hit seven times. Back on Engadine a signal with details of what they had seen was written up for Beatty, but even from Engadine nothing ever got through. The whole venture was a dismal failure: one carrier only, no successful signals contact. It was frustrating for Rutland after an exceptionally harrowing and brave flight that his efforts were for nought; more sadly, his Jutland exploits were to be completely over-shadowed by his activities with the Japanese and his later imprisonment on charges of espionage.9
Finally, the British battle-cruisers spotted the German line itself. New Zealand was the first. Ten minutes later Beatty’s Lion could also see the line of German battle-cruisers as well. They, in turn, were spotted by Lützow, on whose bridge Hipper was standing. Then, from Seydlitz, the telltale tripod masts of two specific ships, Indefatigable and New Zealand, were made out. From the air Rutland was able to see the German battle-cruiser turn and radioed back the information.10 Of the four detailed messages that he sent over fifteen minutes, three were received by the Engadine but, because of the fleet radio ban, attempts to pass the vital information to Evan-Thomas were made only by searchlight signals. It was an inauspicious beginning for such a promising new capability.
Hipper immediately understood that Beatty was going to try to cut him off from his home bases. He signalled his light cruisers in the north as he reversed onto a southeasterly track but, unlike Beatty’s actions with the 5th Battle Squadron, slowed his fleet down to 18 knots to allow his scouting and screening forces to catch up. At around 15:30 his forces turned 180 degrees and headed south, running along the same track they had used to go north.
Hipper wanted to make it look as though he had been caught off-guard and was in full retreat back to the Jade: the Germans could read Beatty’s character perhaps better than Beatty realised; they knew the character of a fox-hunting man. They knew that he would run into the chase and that this was their chance to lure a portion of the British naval forces into the waiting guns of Scheer, heading north not far behind with the main battle fleet.
Beatty sensed the opportunity and increased speed to close with his foe. The two battle-cruiser fleets – still fourteen miles apart – started to close the gap rapidly, Beatty at 25 knots, Hipper at 26. Beatty’s orders even called for the 5th Battle Squadron to increase speed to 25 knots to close the gap. This was easier said than done, because ‘his best speed was only 24 knots, and if the battle-cruisers increased to their own full speed they would have a four-knot advantage over the battleships’. It had always been assumed that the Queen Elizabeth class would have roughly a 4-knot advantage over the König class but it turned out to be untrue and by April 1915 Jellicoe had already realised that their speed had been over-rated. He told David Beatty: ‘Warspite is only good for about 23½ knots – no use to you.’11 Already, as the British forces headed east with Beatty leading the charge, this was the point at which he should have taken a clear decision about how he wanted to deploy the powerful guns of the 5th Ba
ttle Squadron.
One of Jellicoe’s biographers, Reginald Bacon, seized upon what he saw as Beatty’s first major error:12 failing to stop to think first, before dashing off at high speed. Even Hipper had just shown that he would wait for his further scouting forces. ‘Clearly the first thing for the admiral to do was to close up his capital ships. This he did not do. In twelve minutes, he could have repaired the original error of dispersion.’13 The distance between the 5th and Beatty’s 1st and 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadrons actually then increased from five to ten miles.
Beatty later laid the blame for what was about to happen at Admiral Evan-Thomas’s feet, saying that ‘an admiral commanding a squadron sighting, or in touch with, the enemy would anticipate that his supporting squadrons would close without further orders’.* Considering that Beatty had not conferred with, or even talked to Evan-Thomas during the eight days before the departure from Rosyth, it was a manifestly unfair judgement; it tried to shift the focus of attention after the battle from bad signalling and fleet management to lack of initiative – in effect, a ‘tilt of the hat’ to more defensible territory, to the memory of Nelson. But for many in the post-battle discussion, Evan-Thomas’s failure was being put forward as an example of the Edwardian Navy’s inability to do anything without direct orders.
Jellicoe later commented that after the Galatea had spotted the first signs of Hipper’s forces and had signalled the information back, there was more than enough time for Beatty to organise his forces before rushing south. ‘There was now an excellent opportunity to concentrate his forces. The enemy was streaking towards our battle fleet so that the loss of two or three miles by the battle-cruisers was immaterial. But the opportunity was not taken.’14
Jellicoe had not been at all keen on giving the 5th Battle Squadron to Beatty, but with Hood’s 3rd Battle Cruiser Squadron on gunnery training he had no alternative: ‘The stronger I make David Beatty, the greater is the temptation for him to get involved in an independent action’.15 Horace Hood felt the same: ‘This is a great mistake. If David Beatty has these ships with him, nothing will stop him from taking on the whole German fleet if he gets the chance.’16
If one is of the opinion that the failure to concentrate his forces was Beatty’s first major error of judgement, a second now occurred. When Beatty felt that the optimal spot had been reached, he sent a ‘general’ signal that the fleet should prepare to alter course to the southeast to form a battle line in preparation for the opening engagement of Jutland, the battle-cruiser duel. After seven minutes, Beatty’s signal was hauled down and made executive, meaning that ships that had been signalled had now to execute the command. Beatty’s signal ordered a ‘complicated manoeuvre whereby his ships would all turn together to form a compass line of bearing north-west while pursuing an east-south-east course’.17
As Lion turned, her signals were badly obscured by her thick, black funnel smoke, and the flags were impossible to read across five miles of grey water made worse by low-hanging cloud. Barham’s officer of the watch, Lieutenant Alfred Philips, knew that there was a signal, but he could not make out the message. Evan-Thomas is said to have assumed that Beatty’s other ships’ manoeuvres were just a continuation of anti-submarine zigzagging that had been in force while steaming east; and so, despite the muddled signals from Beatty, he slightly altered his course away to port, which in itself would exonerate Evan-Thomas from Beatty’s accusation that he did not respond.
Tiger was also responsible. She failed to pass the signal on to Barham by searchlight. With wireless telegraphy blacked out and flags clearly not working, this would have been the only option. Tiger would have understood the importance of the signals and should have acted on that knowledge. And every minute counted. Each minute that Evan-Thomas continued towards Jellicoe added another two-thirds of a mile of distance between himself and the rest of Beatty’s forces.18
There was disagreement on Barhams bridge about Evan-Thomas’s decision not to follow Beatty’s ships.19 Captain Arthur Craig and the flag commander, Wilfrid Egerton, both tried to persuade the rear admiral but to no avail.* Evan-Thomas was confused about his orders. He had seen the earlier one to turn, but not the ‘executive’ one. He saw the battle-cruisers turn off, but at this point was not sure whether he should not maintain his earlier orders and continue to look for Jellicoe’s forces from the north, thus forming a ‘bridge’ between the two fleets. At this – what turned out to be – critical moment, Rear Admiral Evan-Thomas did not know why Beatty was turning south.
Without clear orders from a superior officer, who had not up to this point been explicit in communicating his intentions, Evan-Thomas had to rely on inference. Beatty had, as will be recalled, not even met with Evan-Thomas. In his defence, Evan-Thomas said that there were other considerations on his mind and that it was not for him to assume what Beatty’s intentions were:
The only way I could account for no signal having been received by me was that the Vice-Admiral [Beatty] was going to signal another course to the Fifth Battle Squadron – possibly to get the enemy’s light cruisers between us. Anyway, if he wished us to turn, the searchlight would have done it in a moment. It was not until the Tiger asked Lion by wireless whether the signal to turn was to be made to the Barham that the Vice-Admiral seemed to realise the situation.20
Whoever was to blame, it meant that the powerful 15in guns of the 5th Battle Squadron would not be able to contribute broadside weight or any support to Beatty until twenty-three minutes after he had initially opened fire. Geoffrey Rawson continued to defend Beatty’s positioning of the 5th Battle Squadron, quoting Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet Battle Orders (GBFOs) which actually called for a ten-mile separation and pointing out that Beatty had already dropped that to five miles.21 Rawson suggested that had Beatty done more he would never have even joined action with Hipper. His reasoning was that since ‘Hipper was averse to meeting Beatty with five battle-cruisers to the British six; he would certainly decline action the moment he became aware that he was also in the presence of the 5th Battle Squadron’.22 It is not an unreasonable point but it must be remembered that Hipper’s objective in the action was to run – not to join action. To lure Beatty – generally a more powerful but smaller force at the end – into the awaiting guns of the High Seas Fleet. So in this instance, Rawsons argument does not hold much water. Bagging the 5th Battle Squadron as well might have been an even more welcome larger prize.
Signalling at the Time of Jutland
The ineffectiveness of existing signalling and how signalling was used in the battle – a mixture of flag (using the semaphore alphabet), searchlight and (the least used) wireless – is evident.
Wireless telegraphy (WT) could have freed the British from many of the disadvantages of visual signalling. But it also had its drawbacks. It could be jammed (the Germans did this quite successfully); it sometimes gave away vital information on an enemy’s strength and, indirectly, on the type of ship, as signal strength was different from small destroyer to battleship; it could be interrupted if the aerials were down (as happened on Lion in the initial battle-cruiser actions), or if electrical supplies were similarly interrupted. Lastly – the matter that most concerned Jellicoe – these signals could be read. It was also not that fast. Getting a signal out required many people’s intervention. At Jutland, WT was still pretty much an orphan. It was not even considered a part of signalling and was taught alongside electrical disciplines at the Torpedo School, HMS Vernon, until 1907. From July 1908, signals training incorporated a rudimentary knowledge of WT. It was only from 1914 that it was fully incorporated into the main signals curriculum.
Flags had been part of the navy’s core skill-set since the Napoleonic Wars and required no technology; they were obviously susceptible to visibility conditions, either natural or man-made, like cordite and funnel smoke. Because signals were a visual method, they had the effect of ‘bunching’ fleets, so keeping them from wider dispersal, particularly disadvantageous to scouting duties. Given that the visual di
stance between larger ships was around fourteen miles, this was a short reaction time for fleets converging at a combined rate of 50 knots, as was the case when the Grand Fleet met the High Seas Fleet before the Jutland deployment. This had a considerable impact on the flagship’s (hence the name) position in a line of battle. After the 1910 sea trials, the common assumption was that its best position was in the middle so that signals could travel, forward and aft, up and down a battle line. Lions signals went no further than Tiger. She should have passed them on but did not. Flags also took time to distribute commands: to pass a message back along twenty-four capital ships – the number that would be fighting at Jutland, creating a continuous line of ships almost eight miles long – could take, at worst, up to half an hour.
Bringing a dreadnought to a full stop took some distance. Shutting off the engines at 15 knots required a mile and a half. In many ways it was with the smaller, more mobile ships – the destroyers – that this problem of control was most keenly felt. Commodore Charles Le Mesurier, commander of the 4th Light Cruiser Squadron, put it like this: ‘you must leave things to individual initiative in these very highspeed little ships – there is no time to make signals’.23 Beatty hated the symbolic slavishness of the flag system: commanders losing their sense of initiative and needing a signal to tell them what to do. Consequently, Beatty used flag signals sparingly. Admiral Sims said that Beatty went considerably further: ‘that it was generally reported that he [Beatty] had ordered all torpedo flags – an emblem displayed to warn ships to change course, if torpedoes were seen – to be destroyed.’24
Searchlight signalling was as fast as flag signalling, and had the advantage of being more readable in low light and bad visibility, but like WT was subject to electrical failure and battle damage. Given the lack of initiative and of radar, and the slow speed of flag signalling, Jellicoe probably had no option other than to keep a tight rein on the fleet. His caution over signals security was perhaps imbalanced. He would have profited handsomely had he made the message clear: relaying enemy positions back to the commander during fast-moving actions essentially outweighed any idea of compromising the sender’s position.
Jutland_The Unfinished Battle Page 18