Gordon also explains the danger of deploying on the closest wing to an advancing enemy line. It would present a convex line of targetable ships, while on the wing further away the unravelling line would present itself as a concave one. The former would present itself as a ‘T’ to be crossed by the enemy, the latter as an arc that would be able to cross the enemy’s ‘T’. This is what Admiral Sturdee had proposed, saying he would have done it had he been in Jellicoe’s shoes. Churchill approved of this approach because it meant closing with the enemy faster, even if he might not have considered that the enemy battle line would have been in the advantageous position.
If Windy Corner was confusing for many British captains, on the bridge of Friedrich der Große, the sensation must have been closer to terror. Scheer, apparently, did not have ‘the foggiest idea of what was happening’.45 His straggling, stretched-out line of dreadnoughts and pre-dreadnoughts had suddenly and decisively been caught in a trap. They had steamed into the Grand Fleet’s ‘T’ and were now facing an arc of massed guns from twenty-four British dreadnoughts, tightly deployed in a six-mile line, his own line, by some accounts, stretching out nearly four times the length to seventeen miles.
All the histories talk of Lion heading off eastwards after Defence blew up. Beatty was trying to get to the van of the battle fleet once contact with the Grand Fleet had been made. This would account for the official explanation by Corbett that Lion and the battle-cruisers actually later, inadvertently, blocked the Grand Fleet’s fire, but Major Wallace was absolutely adamant – even if he seems to be the only one who believed it – that after Defence blew up the battle-cruisers made a 16-point turn and went west.46 Wallace even cited the testimony of an observer, Reginald Foort, ex-lieutenant of Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, from Temeraire:
I was the Dumaresq worker in the foretop of the Temeraire throughout the action, so I had a grand circle view of everything that took place, and I do not remember seeing the battle-cruisers between the enemy ships and the Grand Fleet at any time during the action. They were certainly not there when the Defence blew up practically on our starboard beam, nor were they there while we were firing at a three-funnelled enemy ship of the Wiesbaden type, nor when we fired salvos of 12-inch into the enemy destroyer flotilla.47
The fact is that during an action like this, even people from the same ship at different vantage points often disagreed with one another. During the later night actions, this would become even more so.
The loss of Warrior and Warspite’s escape
Warspite now faced a new threat. She had been sitting at the rear of Evan-Thomas’s 5th Battle Squadron’s line when she suddenly developed severe steering problems. The rudder began to give trouble after the bearings ran hot, and after some over-zealous manoeuvring finally jammed, stuck fast in a tight 10-degree starboard turn. She could not be steered in a direction other than right into the firing zone, passing just astern of the Valiant, and heading directly towards the enemy. She might have taken the heat off the smaller British targets and allowed them to get away but she herself paid a high price.
The whole leading enemy division concentrated on us during this circling, and we got very heavily hit, and everybody thought that we had gone. The Huns thought so too, and ceased firing, luckily for us, but they could no doubt not see us for splashes, spray and smoke. There was a heavy pall of smoke everywhere.48
Warspite’s captain, Edward Phillpotts, did what was best, given the inevitability of where his ship was heading. He kept her in the turn rather than trying to fight it and regain control. It was better to increase speed rather than stall. Warspite had been shipping water because of the damage sustained from the roughly twenty-seven shell hits she had taken, thirteen of which had been received during the two turns. Whenever she went faster than 16 knots, she increased the damage to the bearings and the intake of water.
Warrior also came under intense fire. A contemporary account by Engineer Commander Henry Kitching described how unnerving it was below decks:
I heard a tremendous explosion at the after end, a heavy jar went through the whole fabric and most of the lights went out. Immediately afterwards there was a heavy roar of water and steam and my impression was that we had been torpedoed. Several men came running forward from that end, one of them with blood streaming down his face … At first the men didn’t know what to do, as the ladders at the after end were inaccessible … but I shouted to them to go up the midship ladder and hustled all towards it in front of me. As soon as it appeared that they had all gone up, I followed them myself, but by that time all the lights had gone out and it was pitch dark. When I got to the top, knowing it was hopeless to go aft, I turned forward and felt my way by the handrails along the platform at the tops of the cylinders towards the door at the fore end, which communicated with the port engine room and with the mess deck. When I got there, however, a stoker told me that we could not get through there, as the mess deck was on fire, and when I tried to do so I was met with a rush of thick smoke and blinding fumes that drove me back. At this moment with this in front and the roar of steam behind me I felt like a trapped rat, for there seemed to be no possibility oflifting the heavy armoured hatches overhead, and a spasm of sheer terror came over me; but just then I realised that the man was calling my attention to a glimmer of light above, and the next minute I found myself climbing out through a torn rent in the deck.49
Warrior got away from Wiesbaden’s fire and was saved by Warspite’s giddy high-speed turn. Both ships now managed to escape the area, but only one survived the battle: Warspite, though she was now severely damaged. Her crew managed to get her steering back under control and she retreated northwards and later on at 21:07 was ordered back to port by Evan-Thomas.
Warrior also headed back west but sank at 08:25 the next day, 1 June, just 160 miles from Aberdeen after she had been towed by the Engadine. Her crew was taken off after the gallant effort to save her failed; 675 officers and men were transferred safely to the carrier, but when the seriously wounded were being taken over another mortal accident almost happened. A severely wounded man rolled off his stretcher between the two ships and very nearly drowned. Rutland – the pilot who had had to land his shot-up plane after nearly changing the course of the start of the battle with the information that he had carried – saved the drowning man. He jumped in and pulled him out. Rutland was awarded the Albert Medal, 1st Class, for this act of bravery, after he had already won the DSO for the courage of his earlier reconnaissance. So it was all the more surprising that this same man, soon to become famous as ‘Rutland of Jutland’, was to be later imprisoned, accused of spying for the Japanese.
The battle fleets engage
But, after all the planning, it was the ships of the 6th Division, the rear division of the battle line that were the first to come into action.50 With Marlborough the first of the line to open fire at 18:17, closely followed by Revenge, the division still represented around 49,000lbs (22,000kg) of broadside. The leading German ships were around 12,000yds (11,000m) off, but the line, while it had closed up a little, stretched back nearly nine miles.51 This actually meant that the only ships within range were Rear Admiral Behncke’s 5th and 6th Divisions. Fire was returned by Behncke’s guns, straddling Hercules as she was deploying, as well as bringing Vanguard and Revenge under fire. Gradually the British line uncoiled.
At 18:23 Iron Duke, from where Jellicoe was watching, opened fire. Initially, she targeted the unfortunate Wiesbaden at which every passing British ship was hurling steel. She was even mistakenly being hit by her own side.52 Then, after seven minutes, Iron Duke transferred her fire to a more important target, König. Within minutes the former scored seven hits, and was said to have started hitting from her third salvo. The fire was so intense that even Behncke in König’s armoured conning tower was severely wounded.53 Iron Duke’s fire was supported by Benbow, Colossus, Orion, Monarch and Thunderer, but by few others in the vast line of dreadnoughts because visibility was so poor. Torpedoes were also la
unched from the light cruisers Falmouth and Yarmouth, as well as from the destroyer Ophelia.
Below decks was different. There was little connection with, or comprehension of, what was going on above. Their own guns were only the indication that huge salvos were being hurled at the van of the German line. On Thunderer, for example, despite her firing over forty 13.5in shells, this disconnected sense of being in another world seemed to be permeating. ‘Of course, like so many of the ship’s company, we could see nothing and hear nothing beyond the thump of our own guns.’54
The German battle fleet had steamed straight into the ‘T’ without even realising that Jellicoe’s fleet was there: ‘The shock to Scheer was stupendous.’55 Marder’s words are probably an understatement. Otto Groos talked of ‘the belching guns of an interminable line of heavy ships, [and] salvo followed salvo almost without intermission, an impression which gained in power from the almost complete inability of the German ships to reply, as not one of the British dreadnoughts could be made out through the smoke and fumes’.56 The paintings by Claus Bergen57 give this visual feeling well. You feel yourself in the centre of a firestorm and all you can see on an indiscernible horizon are gun flashes: nothing else, no shape of any ship at all.
At 18:29 Jellicoe signalled a change in course to south-southeast, although this was cancelled as there was so much bunching up at the rear of the line (caused by Beatty’s battle-cruisers heading across to the front in an effort to take up their agreed position in the van).
This passage across the front of the battle fleet, to which Beatty was unavoidably committed, marred to some extent a very promising opening of the general action, and prevented full advantage being taken by Jellicoe of his position. At the moment of the deployment, when the rear divisions were nearest the enemy, they were being masked by the battle-cruisers, and later on, as the head of our line came into a suitable position to inflict damage, it was prevented from doing so.58
Right ahead of Marlborough, St Vincent (leading the 5th Division) was getting straddled by German fire – falling in the gap between her, Marlborough and Neptune. By the time that St Vincent was able to return fire, they had closed in to only 9,500yds (8,700m).59 By 18:30 all the divisions except the 1st were engaged. There, King George V, in the 2nd Battle Squadron of the 1st Division, found the targets completely obscured by the mist. Nevertheless, it was a formidable concentration of fire: 266,000lbs (121,000kg) of broadside launched from over 230 guns, half of which were the heavier 13.5in calibre. In the next ten minutes, collectively they managed to land a dozen heavy shells on the leading German battleships and battle-cruisers. It was not long before the German line was reeling from the repeated blows. Lützow herself had taken twenty heavy-calibre hits and König was listing 4½ degrees.
The loss of Shark and the fate of Acasta
After Jellicoe’s orders to Hood on Invincible at 16:00, sending his group forward to support Beatty, the latter hauled off at 16:12 at 25 knots. As he raced south, the weather became far worse – extremely variable and patchy: ‘On some bearings we could see 16,000 yards, while on other bearings visibility was down to 2,000 yards’.60 On his port side were the four destroyers of the 4th Flotilla: Shark, her sister ship Acasta, Ophelia* and Christopher, acting together as an anti-submarine screen. Canterbury was out ahead, leading the small force, with Chester even further off.
After Chester had engaged with some of Hipper’s scouts, she had been able to get away because Invincible arrived in the nick of time. Hood’s flagship had seen the flashes of the engagement at 17:40. The destroyers of the German 2nd Scouting Group were also spotted by his accompanying 4th Flotilla destroyers, which passed from port to starboard to make an attack and protect the battle-cruiser squadron and ten minutes later at 17:50, at a range of 5,000yds (4,600m), Shark fired her torpedoes. Shortly afterwards, around 18:00 Shark and Acasta opened fire at a cruiser and battle-cruiser.
Trying to load a torpedo, Shark was hit by a shell that had detonated the last torpedo while still in the tube. Instantly, 440lbs (200kg) of amatol exploded, wreaking havoc on the small destroyer. Shark’s torpedo coxswain, Petty Officer William Griffin, himself severely wounded in the head, was one of the survivors and later related what had happened. He recounted how the fore 4in gun had been blown clean off the deck but, manning the midship 4in gun, its crew had carried on the fight against the German destroyers that had come out to aid other damaged vessels. The Germans had closed in to 600yds (550m), all the while keeping Shark trapped within a withering fire. At one point he was about to order the sinking of his own ship, but saw that he still had one serviceable gun. At the gun were a midshipman and two able seamen. Charles Howell, the gunlayer, was soon hit in the leg and Loftus Jones, the ship’s commanding officer, had his right leg blown off.
Despite Shark being heavily damaged, her commander refused help from Acasta. He fought on until he was brought down by two torpedoes launched by S.54 and his ship started to sink. Jones ordered the survivors from the thirty-man crew to abandon ship. Fifteen clambered onto the two Carley floats (small life rafts named after their American inventor, Horace Carley) but many of them soon died of exhaustion and exposure. The next morning seven survivors were picked up by a Danish freighter, Vidar. One who had survived till that point, Chief Stoker Newcombe, died on Vidar’s deck.61
Jones’s injury was fatal. Before dying and going down with his ship he had asked Charles Hope to replace the torn and tattered ensign on the gaff (the diagonal spar that projects aft from the crosstree on a mast). Hope and Charles Smith carried out his last wish. Loftus Jones was awarded a posthumous VC for his heroism that night, but only after his family had lobbied hard for the very deserved recognition.† His body was not found until a few weeks later, having washed up on the Swedish coast and he was given a traditional Viking burial and a memorial erected to his honour in Fiskebackskil.62
Acasta continued on her way. Lützow was spotted on the port quarter and Lieutenant Commander John Barron turned Acasta to attack Coming in close, he launched his torpedoes at 4,500yds (4,100m). He thought that he had hit with the first torpedo, but it was more likely a random shell exploding. At this close range, however, German fire was formidable and, inevitably, Acasta was hit in the engine room, killing or wounding the engineering officer and four crew members. She started to drift dangerously and ended up in the dreadnought lanes of the Grand Fleet, the great leviathans passing on either side. From Valiant her commanding officer was seen on deck: ‘On her bridge was Sinclair with a pipe stuck in his face, roaming up and down his bridge as though he was on shore waiting for a tram or something’. Bravely, a signal flag was fluttering.63
St Vincent passed Invincible and then, on her starboard, Acasta:
She was so near to us that I could distinguish clearly the faces of the sailors, who, as we passed, raised a rousing cheer. It was such a demonstration of pluck and grit as fired every one of us on board the St Vincent with a fiercer desire than ever to get to real grips with the enemy.
Iron Duke also passed by and was cheered on particularly heartily by the small but courageous crew of Acasta as she passed the flagship.64 From her yardarm flew a blue and yellow flag: the number ‘6’ let others know that she was no longer under control.65
Galatea and Fearless stayed a moment with Acasta but then needed to move on, southwestward, into the night. Twice a burning German cruiser was spotted: nothing else. On the morning of 1 June the crew of Acasta was finally picked up by a destroyer, Nonsuch who, after taking her in tow around noon, arrived in Aberdeen on the evening of 2 June. The third of the four destroyers, Ophelia, was taken south by her captain, Commander Lewis G E Crabbe, and made a torpedo run at 8,000yds (7,300m) that, though abortive, kept up pressure on the enemy’s battle-cruiser line.
Peter Kemp credits these two attacks with more significance than one might have at first thought appropriate: ‘It had been the attack of the Acasta and the Ophelia that had led [Scheer] into that costly error, by giving him the belief that
Jellicoe was much further advanced to the southward than, in fact, was the case’.66 Even with the death of Shark, the remaining three British destroyers had managed to even up the score and had taken out one of their opposite number, a destroyer, V.48.
Hoods 3rd Battle Cruiser Squadron kept pushing forward. It had come with Jellicoe’s force from Scapa Flow and was fresh from gunnery practice, having arrived from Rosyth a week before on 22 May in temporary exchange for the 5th Battle Squadron, which joined Beatty’s forces. The sun was in its favour and soon both Derfflinger and Lützow were targeted by the squadron’s 12in guns. Their shooting was first-class.67 Indomitable hit Derfflinger three times and the otherwise largely undamaged Seydlitz once. Scheer and Hipper now believed that the 3rd BCS was, in fact, the van of the battle fleet itself because they could not see the extent of the line stretched out towards the northwest. One report even came in ‘counting four dreadnoughts of the Queen Elizabeth or Iron Duke class’.
After the threat that Wiesbaden and her three companions had posed came another danger: thirty-one destroyers of the German 9th, 2nd and 12th Flotillas. Starting at 17:55, they launched an attack on Invincible’s squadron. Hood’s four destroyers and Canterbury fought wildly to disrupt the German destroyers. The German attack, which could have been decisive, became disorganised. While the five destroyers of the 12th Half-Flotilla were able to launch at a range of 6,500yds (5,900m) and got six torpedoes into the water, the other attacks did not go well. Another ten destroyers from the 9th Flotilla also prepared to fire, but then got mixed up with the 12th Half-Flotilla boats as they were coming back. They only managed to fire three torpedoes. The 2nd Flotilla action was the worst. Its four destroyers could launch only one torpedo between them, at a range of roughly 7,000yds (6,400m). At 18:18 Scheer recalled his battle-cruisers.
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