[A] bright sheet of flame shot out of the turret roof and expanded along the entire aft section. Debris whirled through the air, possibly fragments from the turret’s roof. A monstrous black cloud of smoke rose into the air, to twice the height of the top mast… apparently we had hit an oil tank.
More fire was unnecessary. Indefatigable ‘slipped below the waves’. Looking back from New Zealand, around 150yds (140m) from her when it happened, the sinking Indefatigable could be seen by British sailors to shudder from the repeated hits that she sustained.
She was about 500 yards on our starboard quarter, in full view of the conning tower. While he [the admiral’s secretary] was still looking at her through his glasses she was hit by two shells, one on the fo’c’sle and one on the fore turret. The shells appeared to explode on impact.
Then, there was an interval of about thirty seconds during which there was absolutely no sign of fire or flame or smoke, except the very little actually formed by the burst of the two shells, which was not inconsiderable. At the end of the interval of about 30 seconds the ship completely blew up, commencing apparently from forward. The main explosion started with sheets of flame followed immediately afterwards by a dense, dark smoke which obscured the ship from view. All sorts of stuff was blown high into the air, one fifty-foot steam picket boat, for example, being blown up about 200 feet, apparently intact, though upside down.72
One thousand and fifteen officers and men went down with Indefatigable but since she was the last ship in the line, most British sailors did not know what had happened. The officers and crew on Lion were certainly not aware.
There were only two survivors from the massive explosion, Able Seaman Elliot and Leading Signalman Falmer.73 Both were picked up by a German destroyer, either S.68 or S.16, later that evening just before eight.74 The two sailors had not been able to keep the only other survivor, the ship’s captain, Charles Sowerby, alive. He died before rescue came. Falmer was atop the mast:
A message came through that the flags were entangled round the mast – somebody must go up. So I took my sea boots off, climbed out the port-top, went up the Jacob’s ladder right to the very top. I unfolded the flag and I sat on the wireless yard, looking around. I could see all the German fleet and I made out roughly forty ships. There were six of us, and I suppose we’d been in action about an hour and a half or so when a shell or something hit the magazines. There was a terrific explosion, the guns went up in the air just like matchsticks – 12-inch guns they were – and she began to settle down, and within half a minute she was gone. I was thrown I suppose, well, I was 180 foot up, you understand, and I was thrown well clear of the ship, otherwise I would have been sucked under.75
In an interview in 1963, Falmer described how he had somehow managed to survive:
I see the guns go up, bodies and everything. Within half a minute the ship turned right over. Threw me in the water. Luckily I was top of the mast otherwise I would have been sucked under … turning over … Nothing to be seen … German battle-cruisers started coming along. German shells which was dropping short I could feel myself in the water.76
Beatty’s second course correction again widened the gap between the fleets, this time to between 20,000 and 21,000 yards (18,300–19,200m). The Germans were, with the loss of Indefatigable, getting an impression of the British line starting to lose battle cohesion. In fact, what seems to have happened was that some of Beatty’s ships thought that they had spotted a submarine and started rapid course changes. It was more likely jitters. This widening of the gap between the lines – maybe wider than Beatty planned, as his radio had been destroyed – gave the British ships some welcome respite from German shells,77 although Lion continued to receive intermittent fire from 16:10 to 16:16 during which, at 16:14, Lützow hit her again.
After Indefatigable sank, Von der Tann wasted no time and switched her fire onto a new target: New Zealand. For Von der Tann, in Mahrholtz’s words, ‘the ensuing battle was far more challenging’ (than the duel with Indefatigable).78 Beatty’s numerical superiority had now been equalised by Hipper and he now held the upper hand. Beatty had been engaged since 14:48; he had lost one of his capital ships with a horrendous loss of life, but he had also, more crucially, lost the advantage. Hipper now outgunned him in terms of turrets – twenty-one to fifteen. On his own flagship Beatty had narrowly escaped a similar fate by one man’s sacrifice. By 16:07 Lützow had hit Lion at least six times.79
Beatty, entering with a superior force, had been mauled. He had fought this action with 56,000lbs (25,000kg) of broadside weight.* With Evan-Thomas’s 15in guns – the most powerful in the British Navy – Beatty would have doubled his firepower by adding a further 61,000lbs (28,000kg). Hipper would not have stood a chance.
To the north, Evan-Thomas had somehow managed to coax the maximum 24½ knots out of his squadron and was starting to close the gap with his commander. At around eight miles, the trailing ships of Hipper’s line finally became visible to the naked eye. At the start of the action, when Hipper had made his initial 180-degree turn, starting the battle-cruiser action that would become known as the ‘run to the south’, one thing that he should have done was to place his light cruisers on the German line’s engaged starboard side. He did the opposite and consequently they were not best placed to act either as scouts or more importantly as attackers.
Then Evan-Thomas’s arrival came as a shock. The range between the steadily closing van of the 5th Battle Squadron and the rear of Hipper’s line was now around 19,000yds or almost eleven miles (17km). Sub Lieutenant Eric Brand of Valiant was on the Dumaresq when he finally caught sight of the German line:
I saw a German ship and exclaimed, ‘My God, it’s the Von der Tann!’, and got busy estimating her ‘inclination’ and speed. As soon as we could, we opened fire at a range of 22,000 yards, or at any rate the time of flight was around 45 seconds. In those days we only fired one four-gun salvo and waited to see the splash before making any corrections to the range and firing the next salvo. Nobody had thought of double salvos separated by a definite amount of range in those days. That was one of the lessons we learnt that day.80
In the two minutes between 16:08 and 16:10, the 15in guns of the 5th Battle Squadron opened fire on the rear of the German line where Von der Tann and Moltke had taken up position.81 The danger of the squadron’s arrival for Hipper was immediately obvious. At 16:09 one of Barhams 15in shells hit near Von der Tann s water line and smashed through a number of decks. With the amount of water flooding in – almost 600 tons rushed through the holed stern – her engines began to run hot and she started to list badly, although she courageously remained in the line to draw fire away from her still lightly-damaged sister ships.
The effect of a 1,9201b (870kg) 15in shell in a gunnery duel was devastating. The guns of the Queen Elizabeths could hurl a massive, one-ton projectile (0.9 tons to be exact) across 24,400yds (22,300m) of open sea against an enemy target with an initial muzzle velocity of nearly 2,500ft (760m) per second.82 After the hit, which seriously damaged Von der Tann’s steering system, Seaman Carl Meims was sent to investigate and reported back:
There was lots of damage and a few dead. Lots of blood everywhere. A young sailor crouched on the floor looking very bad, losing a lot of blood, he had been hit in the arm. He was trying to bandage his own arm. I tried to help him but he said ‘No’ in a very weak voice. ‘Go upstairs and fight.’83
Almost six minutes after the destruction of Indefatigable, the first shell hit Von der Tann and penetrated the armoured belt below the water line close to Section No. 1. The impact was felt throughout the ship: it ‘made the hull vibrate like a tuning fork, five to six times the ship’s end swayed back and forth, and the bending of the ship damaged the radio antennae between the masts’.84 Now the visibility was also ‘degrading and the initially clear horizon getting hazy’. Von der Tann was being massively straddled by the arrival of 15in shells from the powerful Queen Elizabeths finally joining the action. A neighbouring torp
edo boat said that the ship was ‘scarcely visible among the shell splashes’. Two more hits landed: ‘Turret Alsen does not reply’; then, ‘Turret Culm does not reply’. A messenger reported that they were full of smoke and gas, and that the magazine had been flooded as a precaution.
At 16:10, as the Queen Elizabeths closed in on their quarry, Evan-Thomas allocated fire on the two German vessels to two British ships in pairs: Barham and Valiant to concentrate on Moltke, Warspite and Malaya on Von der Tann. The 5th Battle Squadron’s fire was almost immediately accurate although, even with the larger Barr and Stroud range-finders, visibility was bad and very difficult for the gunners:
To realise our difficulties you must try and visualise the light and position. The range was about ten to eleven miles. Behind the enemy were blue-black clouds and a low-lying mist and behind us was the sun and a sharp clear horizon with no mist. The actual sun was behind clouds high in the sky so they had no glare in their glasses. Thus you will see that the Germans were almost invisible and we were silhouetted against a bright clear background so they could get good readings from their range finders and also mark their fall of shot. Neither of these things could we do.85
Moltke was hit at around 16:16 on her side armour. There was an explosion in a coal-bunker that set the coal dust afire. A 5.9in gun had also been put out of action and a number of the gun crew killed.
Three minutes later, there was another case of submarine jitters. Princess Royal thought that she had spotted a torpedo track passing from her disengaged starboard side, which led to the (erroneous) conclusion that German submarines were also operating along with their surface fleet. Scheer later confirmed that there were no German submarines operating in the area; they had been deployed around the British port exit points. But, while nobody actually saw a German submarine, the effect was to push Beatty to steer off more to port and so close with the German battle-cruisers once again.
Evan-Thomas’s ships had saved the day. Three days after the battle, Beatty wrote effusively about the 5th Battle Squadron’s performance:
Just a line to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your gallant and effective support on Wednesday … Your coming down in support and poor Hood’s magnificent handling of his squadron will remain in my mind forever.86
Sadly, it did not remain long. After the battle, Evan-Thomas later became the brunt of Beatty’s criticism when the dust had settled, and Beatty was feeling the frustration of having been robbed of the victory and recognition that he felt should have rightfully been his.
The loss of Queen Mary
The loss of Lions main aerials was making the job of maintaining control over his two squadrons considerably more difficult for Beatty. It was imperative to get communications back. A young telegraphist, Arthur Lewis, was sent up the rigging to put something together to re-establish basic wireless telegraphy (WT). It was a hazardous task:
It was a particularly bad time, shrapnel bursting all around, shells whistling overhead; our speed, approximately 26 knots, did not make the task any easier. My hat was whisked away and landed in one of the picket boats; it was then that I felt really scared and prayed that I might be spared to be able to get down into the ‘comparative safety’ of ‘below decks’.87
In the first twenty-five minutes of the encounter, from the moment the German line opened up at 15:48 to around 16:20, the British had managed to land only three hits: two from Queen Mary and one from Lion. It was a particularly poor record.
But for a short while the British seemed to regain the upper hand. At 16:15 Lion and Princess Royal, firing on Lützow, achieved some hits. Princess Royal’s shooting was creditable, her first shot hitting between the forward turrets, the second the armour belt. Lion continued to suffer problems with her range-finding and over-shooting, her ‘longs’ landing as far out as 23,000yds (21,000m). The next minute, fire from the 5th Battle Squadron hit Moltke and put one of her 5.9in guns out of action.
More importantly, the far-off Barham had joined the fray, and at around 16:12 a 15in shell had critically damaged Von der Tann’s steering gear. In the German official history, Otto Groos wrote of the significance of Barham’s intervention: ‘the greatest calamity of a complete breakdown of the steering gear was averted, otherwise the Von der Tann would have been delivered into the hands of the oncoming battleships as in the case of the Blücher during the Dogger Bank action’.88
New Zealand prematurely shifted her fire to Moltke, thinking that Von der Tann, enveloped in a cloud of smoke, was in a critical condition and Moltke was hit twice. Despite this she managed to hit back at Tiger. Now Von der Tann sought and had her vengeance, hitting New Zealand at around 16:20 after the latter had clearly taken her eye off the ball.
At 16:17 Queen Mary hit Seydlitz, putting a 5.9in casemate out of action, but instead of staying trained on the same ship, she moved her fire to Derfflinger. Meanwhile, Derfflinger and Seydlitz concentrated fire on her, even though Hase was initially under the impression that he was still firing against her sister ship, Princess Royal.89 After Lion had been hit earlier and moved out of the head of the line, Hase had confused his targets. During the melee Lion was hit again and completely shrouded in smoke.
Things now started to go badly for Queen Mary, considered the best gunnery ship of the Royal Navy. Derfflinger landed a shell but this would prove minor to what would come later:
Everything was going beautifully until 4.21, when Q turret was hit by a heavy shell and the right gun put out of action. We continued firing with the left gun for two or three minutes and then a most awful explosion took place, which broke the ship in half by the foremast. Our left gun broke off outside the turret and the rear-end fell into the working chamber; the right gun also slid down. The turret was filled with flying metal and several men were killed. A lot of cordite caught fire below me and blazed up and several people were gassed.90
At 16:25 or 16:26, Queen Mary was hit again, by salvos. In the magazine of one of the forward turrets, the cordite detonated. Petty Officer Ernest Francis, one of the survivors, later recalled what he remembered happening:91
Then came the big explosion, which shook us a bit, and on looking at the pressure gauge, I saw the pressure had failed. Immediately after that came what I call the ‘big smash’ and I was dangling in the air on a bowline which saved me from being thrown on the floor of the turret.92
Francis got out to see what had happened. There was no panic, just consternation and confusion. As soon as he put his head up he saw that the 4in battery was completely smashed and that the ship was listing badly. Donning a respirator, Francis got as many men as he could out of the turret as the ship’s bows began to go down rapidly.
For Midshipman John Lloyd Owen, trapped in X turret, it was the same: getting permission from the turret officer, Lieutenant Ewart, he scrambled out at as fast as he could. The ship had already developed a heavy 45-degree list to port, but Francis was prevented from sliding down by two of his turret crew, who came to help him: turret trainer AB Long and left-gun number 4, AB Lane. Derfflinger started to rapidly increase her rate of fire and, at 15,000yds (137hm), managed to straddle the listing Queen. One salvo was fired every twenty seconds and the range closed to around 14,400yds (132hm): six complete salvos in three minutes.
The awful and complete suddenness of the death of Queen Mary was captured in the words of a gunlayer from Tiger:93
Every shell that the Germans threw seemed suddenly to strike the battle-cruiser at once. It was as if a whirlwind was smashing a forest down, and reminded me very much of the rending that is heard when a big vessel is launched and the stays are being smashed … The Queen Mary seemed to roll slowly to starboard, her masts and funnels gone, and with a huge hole in her side. She listed again, the hole disappeared beneath the water, which rushed over her and turned her completely over. A minute and a half, and all that could be seen of the Queen Mary was her keel, and then that disappeared.94
Hase was stunned by the suddenness of the change of fortune:
>
The Queen Mary was firing less rapidly than we were but usually full salvos. I could see the shells coming and I had to admit that they were shooting superbly. As a rule, all eight shells fell together, but they were almost always over or short… but the poor Queen Mary was having a bad time. In addition to the Derfflinger, she was being engaged by the Seydlitz … At 4.26 she met her doom … First, a vivid red flame shot up from her forepart. Then came an explosion forward, followed by a much heavier explosion amidships. Black debris flew into the air and immediately afterwards the whole ship blew up with a terrific explosion. A gigantic cloud of smoke rose, the masts collapsed inwards, the smoke cloud hid everything and rose higher and higher. Finally nothing but a thick, black cloud of smoke remained where the ship had been. At its base, the smoke column covered only a small area, but it widened towards the summit like a monstrous pine tree.95
Tiger was following closely astern. Able Seaman Victor Hayward talked of the curious scene as paper started to unravel and flutter in the North Sea air.
Rolls and rolls of white paper came streaming out of her aft hatch situated on her quarter deck. These must have been the spare rolls of Dreyer’s chart paper, because her gunnery office was situated close to her after hatch. It went trailing over the boiling sea like a shaking toilet roll. When quite a few men were already in the water, the second explosion occurred.96
This explosion reached a thousand feet above her and the hull split into two. An officer from Tiger’s bridge had a grandstand view:
I saw one salvo straddle her. Three shells out of four hit … The next salvo straddled her and two more shells hit her. As they hit, I saw a dull red glow amidships and then the ship seemed to open out like a puffball or one of those toadstool things when one squeezes it. Then there was another dull red glow somewhere forward, and the whole ship seemed to collapse inwards. The funnels and masts fell into the middle, and the hull was blown outwards. The roofs of the turrets were blown 100 feet high, then everything was smoke, and a bit of the stern was the only part of the ship left above water. The Tiger put her helm hard-a-starboard, and we just cleared the remains of the Queen Mary’s stern by a few feet.97
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