Jutland_The Unfinished Battle

by Nicholas Jellicoe

  The story of the meeting of Nassau and Spitfire for the moment remains a shrouded mystery. It may never be solved.

  The turn away by the German van was not in line with Scheer’s strict orders. ‘Durchhalten’, he had time and again stressed. To break through the British line, the German van had to be single-minded. As soon as possible, the ships swung back around to port to head back. Now they were heading towards each other again.

  Around midnight, after the Nassau had dropped back along the port side of the line, Thüringen spotted another probable British target around 1,000yds (900m) off. A hailstorm of close-range shelling ensued and ‘every one of the twenty-seven medium-calibre and twenty-four light-calibre shells hit the target, raking the cruiser from after to forward as she was turning away’.78

  Out of the pitch-black night, the armoured cruiser Black Prince roared past the crippled Spitfire. She came so close that the guns of the former, which were pointing out on the beam, passed clean over the destroyer’s wake. ‘She tore past us with a roar, rather like a motor roaring uphill in low gear, and the very crackling and heat of the flames could be heard and felt. She was a mass of fire from foremast to mainmast, on deck and between decks. Flames were issuing out of her every corner.’79

  She had been heading south to rejoin the fleet after she had lost contact when Defence had blown up earlier. Steaming across the head of Beatty’s line, astern of Defence, she mistimed her pass and had to veer off. And later, in her search for her squadron companions, instead of joining the rear of the Grand Fleet, she ran right into the German battle fleet as they were cutting across the wake of Jellicoe’s ships. Stumbling into the very centre of Scheers battle line, she faced the guns of Thüringen, Ostfriesland and Friedrich der Große. After flashing the recognition signal, fire from Thüringen and Ostfriesland had rained down on her, knocking two of her funnels clean off. She was so close to the German ships that they could see crewmen ‘rushing backwards and forwards on the burning deck’.80 She drifted out of control down the enemy battleship line, taking more fire from each great ship in turn: from Thüringen and Ostfriesland, as well as Nassau and Friedrich der Große.81 ‘She presented a terrible and awe-inspiring spectacle as she drifted down the line, blazing furiously until, after several minor detonations, she disappeared below the surface with the whole of her crew in one tremendous explosion.’82 Fire had found its way to Black Prince’s magazines. When she blew up, she took the entire crew of 857 officers and men to their graves.

  Earlier, after Sparrowhawk and Broke had collided, part of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla took off to the east led by Hutchinson on Achates; Ambuscade, Ardent, Fortune, Porpoise and Garland joined. Contest could not keep up, and lost touch. Hutchinson’s group soon turned southward hoping to rejoin the British line, but in the run north, Ardent and Fortune had already become separated. Then Ardent’s captain, Lieutenant Commander Arthur Marsden, thought that he spotted Ambuscade. Instead, he had run into four German ships crossing from starboard to port. He fired a torpedo at the lead ship and was caught in the enemy’s searchlights. They flashed the usual German recognition signal. Immediately, Fortune, just astern of Ardent, was illuminated, and heavy German fire opened up.

  Returning fire against their larger aggressors, the two destroyers managed to cause havoc in the command of Oldenburg, where Kapitän zur See Wilhelm Höpfner, though badly wounded, was obliged to take over the wheel after the bridge staff were killed.83 Fritz Otto Busch, the searchlight officer on Oldenburg, described how a 4in shell fired by Fortune exploded on the battleship’s bridge. The hit caused wide-scale damage and death. Among the dead were Kapitänleutnant Rabius, the fire control officer, signals officers, the second searchlight officer, the officer of the watch, the helmsman and four other men. Kapitän Höpfner, along with a further three officers and nine men, were badly wounded, Höpfner critically. After he had come back to man the helm, just avoiding a collision with another ship, he collapsed from his two wounds. Busch was astonished by the small British ships’ will to fight: ‘It was the most gallant fight that I had ever seen. She [HMS Fortune] was literally riddled with shell; but clear in the glare of our searchlights, I could see a petty officer and two seamen leading and firing her after gun until she disappeared.’84

  Now it was Ardent’s turn. Within minutes she was a fiery wreck, riddled by ‘22 rounds of 5.9″ and 18 of 3.5″ fire’.85 Westfalen’s first salvo destroyed her bridge and in twenty-eight seconds, after fifteen shells of secondary battery fire, Fortune was completely ablaze.86 Ardent was badly shot up and unable to fire back on her attacker. After five minutes, during which time Marsden managed to dispose of the confidential documents, the Germans moved on. The boat was sinking; the life rafts were useless and the men, forty or fifty of them, lowered themselves into the freezing sea. One by one, they died. In Marsden’s words, ‘they just seemed to lie back and go to sleep’.87

  I spoke to many men and saw most of them die [continued Marsden] … Not a man of them showed any fear of death, and there was not a murmur, complaint or cry for help from a single soul. Their joy was – and they talked about it to the end – that they and the Ardent had ‘done their bit’ as they put it.88

  When Marsden was rescued – at around 06:00, by the Marksman – he was among three who had survived up to then. The other two were picked up by Obdurate, but one more died on board. Of a crew of four officers and seventy-eight men, these two were the only survivors.

  Turning off their searchlights, the German van continued, leaving behind the trail of wreckage. At around 00:10 the line passed a number of burning hulks. Kommodore Heinrich sent boats to rescue survivors. S.53 and G.88 found Tipperary, S.53 managing to bring in nine men who were still floating near the wreck in a raft. S.54 found and stayed by the crippled Rostock. On the way back, S.53 and G.88 found another ship, Elbing, but before they could help another British destroyer turned up: the Broke. Walter Allen had taken over the command with six ships in his line: Sparrowhawk, Ardent, Porpoise, Garland, Contest and Fortune. In total darkness, at around 00:40, they fell in silently beside the rear of the German line. Broke was in very bad shape: ‘forty-two of her crew had already been killed, six more were missing, and fourteen were seriously and twenty slightly wounded’.89 At 500yds (460m), the two German torpedo boats suddenly engaged her and she received two more hits, but then just as abruptly they broke off the action, deeming the mission to help Elbing more important. Broke turned north and made the Tyne on 3 June in the afternoon.

  The equally damaged Sparrowhawk was still slowly circling near the stranded Tipperary. Around 02:00 a lone German destroyer approached. It came in close, to around 100yds, then nothing. It sat there, watching; the ship moved off without firing. Maybe the Germans did not want to waste more ammunition on an enemy ship that they felt was already doomed.

  Three hours later at 06:10 a raft was seen from Sparrowhawk with twenty-three survivors from Tipperary. They were taken on board, but two had already died and five more would die before reaching England. An attempt was then made to tow Sparrowhawk by Marksman, the 12th Flotilla’s leader, but the hawsers could not hold her. Eventually, Marksman fired eighteen rounds to sink her. One of Tipperary’s officers, the surgeon, was picked up by the survivors of Elbing and transferred to a Dutch boat.

  The last action at night in which a 4th Flotilla destroyer participated took place at around 03:10, when a mixed group of fourteen destroyers made up from four different flotillas encountered the German van. Westfalen struck again and, having hit Petard, picked up the last ship in the line, Turbulent, almost under her bow: she was almost blown out of the water.

  In the night-time encounters, the 4th Flotilla suffered a 67 per cent casualty rate, but could show little for it. Sadly, especially given the night’s extraordinary heroism, not a single report of these encounters got back – at the time – to the bridge of Iron Duke. Doubly sad and frustrating was the fact that massive power was so close at hand, yet never intervened:

  At times
[the British] battleships had been so near to the engagements in which their own light forces were involved that the Vanguard, the rear ship of the 4th Battle Squadron, on one occasion thought that she could make out an attack on the 2nd Battle Squadron on her port side, while the Thunderer, the rear ship of the 2nd Battle Squadron, could actually have intervened with her guns several times had she not been afraid of disclosing the position of the battle fleet.90

  The fifth night encounter: death on Petard and the loss of Turbulent

  Just astern of the German battle fleet’s 6th Division, Captain Farie was leading the nine destroyers of the 13th Flotilla from his light cruiser Champion. On his port beam was Commander Malcolm L Goldsmith, leading the 9th/10th Flotillas on Lydiard, and behind Goldsmith’s group came Captain Stirling, with another flotilla leader and thirteen destroyers of the 12th Destroyer Flotilla. The 13th was around four miles northeast of Stirling’s group, which Tipperary was leading.91 All combined, it was a sizeable force. Farie had heard the sounds of battle coming from the earlier destroyer engagements taking place to his starboard:

  Heavy firing was opened on our starboard beam, apparently at some of our destroyers between the 13th Flotilla and the enemy. I hauled out to the eastward, as I was unable to attack with any of our flotilla, our own forces being between me and the enemy.92

  At around 23:30 salvos started falling around them. Nobody was quite certain whence they came – whether they were the enemy’s or from their own forces. Goldsmith thought them ‘to be our own’.93 Landrail, his third ship in line, thought the same.

  Champions reaction was to swerve violently eastward. It was such a sudden movement that only two destroyers, Obdurate and Moresby, were able to follow. Nicator, Termagant, Narborough, Pelican, Petard and Turbulent all stayed in line with Goldsmith’s destroyers. Nerissa, the last ship, became separated, and her place was taken by Unity, separated after the 4th Flotilla’s earlier actions. Farie cut straight across Faulknor’s bows and in doing so pushed her eastwards. Menace and Nonsuch also took evasive action, Nonsuch accelerating hard and heading off eastward. Faulknor and the 12th Flotilla ended up heading northeast. At that point, Stirling estimated that he was ten miles behind the Grand Fleet; in fact, it was closer to twenty-four.

  On Lydiard Goldsmith reassembled the forces he could find to form a makeshift group of twelve ships.94 The time was approximately 01:00. With the remnants of the 9th and 10th DF were five ships from the 13th Flotilla and Petard from the 4th. Goldsmith led his little force back southwest at 30 knots towards where he thought he would find the Germans. In his mind, he would first need to cross what he assumed were ships of the 5th Battle Squadron. Most of his line got across, but the last four did not. They had run in ‘head to head’ with the van of the German line, across the bows of Westfalen.

  Geoffrey Corlett’s destroyer Narborough spotted ‘a large vessel making a lot of smoke’. Thinking that she was British, he signalled her. The response was instantaneous. Searchlights flashed on. Small armament fire started hitting the rear of the line. Behind Corlett, Lieutenant Commander K A Beattie on Pelican spotted two ships and he too thought that they were British, until fire was opened. Second from last in line was Petard. At around 01:25 she spotted large battleship silhouettes 6 points of her starboard bow and practically on top of her at 500yds, but she had no more ordnance, not a single torpedo left after her earlier actions against Seydlitz and V.27. Lieutenant Commander Thompson, her captain, took the boat right across Westfalen’s bow. He cleared by 200yds, but was caught in the battleship’s searchlights. Before she could get away, Petard was hit six times on the stern. In these flashes of combat, two officers (Lieutenant Charles Sperling, who was manning the aft 4in gun, and the surgeon probationer, Hugh Dingle) and seven men were killed: one officer and five men were also wounded. Petard was able to get away, but after all the punishment he had taken and the significance of what had just happened, it did not occur to Thompson to send a report back to Jellicoe.

  The last destroyer was not as lucky as Petard. Turbulent’s path was blocked by two huge German dreadnoughts – Westfalen and Rheinland – and she could not get through. Westfalen steered slightly to starboard to get more guns to bear on Turbulent. The small destroyer had turned away and was trying to outrun the line in parallel. She took a massive broadside of secondary armament fire – twenty-nine 5.9in and sixteen 3.5in shells ripped through her. Turbulent was completely disabled and was then rammed by Rheinland and split in two. Of the British crew, the Germans only managed to rescue thirteen; five officers and eighty-five men, including her captain, Lieutenant Commander Dudley Stuart, died.

  Neither Goldsmith nor the 5th Battle Squadron, four miles to the north, made any report to Jellicoe.

  The sixth night encounter: the 12th Destroyer Flotilla attack and the loss of Pommern

  Earlier in the destroyer attacks, Captain Anselan Stirling’s 12th Flotilla had been forced northeast during the confused engagements. From the bridge of Faulknor, he decided to resume his search and started heading south looking for more German targets. To his north, two 13th Flotilla destroyers, Obdurate and Moresby, and the light cruiser Champion had started their run south just after midnight.

  Faulknor was with the two flotilla leaders and twelve M-class destroyers of the 12th Destroyer Flotilla running parallel to the German van at around 25 knots. At 01:43 Obedient caught sight of enemy battleships steering southeast. They were soon identified as Kaiser-class. Stirling saw one of the German ships flash the wrong recognition signal – the letter ‘K’ – and correctly guessed that German ships were trying to get around the back of the Grand Fleet’s destroyer screen. The ships were, in fact, a mixture of Mauve’s pre-dreadnoughts and Behncke’s super-dreadnoughts, attempting to do just that.

  At 01:45 Stirling attacked. With him he had the ships of the 1st Division – Mindful, Marvel, Onslaught, Faulknor and Obedient, the last a divisional leader, commanded by George William McOran Campbell. But almost immediately, as they swung round, the battleships disappeared behind layers of mist. Stirling realigned his destroyers and tried to radio-signal the valuable information to Jellicoe three times with the low-power destroyer transmitter:95 ‘Enemy battle fleet is steering south-east, approximate bearing south-west. My position is 10 miles astern of the 1st Battle Squadron.’96 The one commander who took the initiative to give Jellicoe ‘eyes’ was jammed by German Telefunken and no signal got through. Only Marksman received Stirling’s signal.

  Stirling was absolutely convinced that the German line would re-form on its original course and so held on for a while, pushing forward at 25 knots, then turning his small force around 16 points to starboard at 01:06. His adversary came back into view. But now he was caught on the wrong side of the German line, to the northwest, on the Germans’ port beam.

  At the same time as Faulknor, German torpedo boats from the 9th and 5th Flotillas were approaching the main battle line and, in the exchange of recognition signals, Faulknors second group of attackers were thought to be ‘friendlies’. Both Markgraf and Kronprinz held fire as they were unsure of their targets.97 It was 02:00. Not so the third ship in the line, the Großer Kurfürst. Her guns targeted the third, fourth and fifth boats at a range of around 1,500yds (1,400m). König and Deutschland also fired, but their targets were less easily made out.

  Faulknor fired at the second and third ships in line. Obedient fired two torpedoes, and Marvel and Onslaught four each. Mindful made the run several times, but her speed was limited (as one of her boilers was out of action), and in the end she was not able to launch. One torpedo crossed ahead of Großer Kurfürst, another about 100yds astern of Kronprinz. Markgraf turned to avoid two more, while Hessen was also successful as a torpedo passed harmlessly by. It was 02:07. But luck was not with Pommern.

  The pre-dreadnought was the third ship in line: right amidships in the Pommern appeared a dull red ball of fire. It spread fore and aft, and flared up in the masts in big red tongues of flames, uniting in a black cloud of
smoke and sparks. Then one saw the ends of the ship come up as though her back was broken before the mist shut her out of view.98

  It is thought that the explosion had set off one of Pommern’s 6.7in magazines.99 Huge pieces of debris fell near Deutschland, maybe a turret roof,100 and as Hannover, the next ship in line, passed, Pommern was going under, propellers high out of the water, still turning. An officer described her last moments: ‘We saw a huge pillar of fire shoot up to the sky. It looked to us like the trail of a gigantic rocket. The ship must have literally blown to atoms, for a few minutes later not the slightest trace of her could be seen.’101

  In the attack Onslaught was seriously hit. As she was turning away, her bridge was completely destroyed after a box of cordite ignited in the chart house. Lieutenant Commander Onslow, two officers, the coxswain, both quartermasters and both signalmen were either killed or mortally wounded. It was left to a junior sub lieutenant, Harry Kemmis, to take over command and get her back to port. Onslaught was the last British vessel to be attacked that day; none of the others in her group had been hit. Of Pommern, only the bows remained afloat. All 845 of her crew went down with her, but the other 5th Division ships – König, Großer Kurfürst, Kronprinz and Markgraf – escaped.

  The 2nd division’s destroyers could now only count on Maenad and Narwhal to attack. Three more torpedoes were fired: one from Maenad, two from Narwhal. Neither Noble nor Nessus fired.102 As the enemy steamed the other way, Maenad’s commander, John Pelham Champion, tried two last stern shots at ranges of between 4,000 and 5,000yds (3,700–4,600m). The effort was for naught.

  The High Seas Fleet was now only sixteen miles from the safety of the Horns Reef entrance. It was too late for Jellicoe to be able to do anything.