Jutland_The Unfinished Battle

by Nicholas Jellicoe

  Cox took considerable risks and only just managed to break even on the operations.22 Raising Hindenburg, for example, cost him around £30,000. Seydlitz was an equally difficult and expensive operation, and was actually raised twice: the first time, while Cox was away on holiday, unsuccessfully; he immediately ordered her re-sunk to await his return.

  Nine German sailors were killed during the scuttling and around sixteen wounded. These nine German sailors were the last fatalities of the First World War.

  * The ‘fishing boat sail’ later actually turned out to be a cleverly camouflaged German submarine, U.52, whose commander, Leutnant Hans, had used the disguise as a way of secretly watching the British movements.

  * Reichpietsch and Köbis were the two mutineers who were executed. Sachse, Weber and Beckers all had their sentences commuted to fifteen years’ penal servitude (see Horn, p163).

  * 4,000 sailors returned to Germany on 3 December, 6,000 on 6 December and 5,000 on 12 December, leaving 4,815, of whom approximately 100 continued to be repatriated each month (see Massie, p784 and p786).

  13

  Counting Up After the Battle

  It seems to me that the criticism of Jellicoe’s tactics, even when a prima facie case can be made (notably with regard to Jellicoe’s turn-away in the face of flotilla attack), ignores the basic principle of war, namely, that tactics are governed by strategy. That is, battles are ancillary to the main strategy of war. Jellicoe’s primary object was the retention of command of the sea, and this was accomplished. His secondary object was the destruction of the High Seas Fleet; it was highly desirable, but not essential.

  Arthur Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow

  The Battle of Jutland should not have become as controversial as it did. The Navy’s limited and controlled objectives of blockade were greatly overshadowed by the nation’s unrealistic desire, fuelled by the press, for another Trafalgar. The German fleet was not annihilated. It came away with serious damage and the realisation that it could not achieve its ends in a fleet-to-fleet engagement, but politicians answer to the public, and the hunt for scapegoats began early.

  The comparisons with Trafalgar were inevitable, yet the contrast between 1916 and 1805 cannot be more stark. Nelson’s enemy at Trafalgar was not a single nation’s navy. It was actually two fleets: a French force with a Spanish component. They shared neither common language nor signals, and they had little experience in operating together. Their morale and fitness for battle was questionable; the French and Spanish sailors had been holed up in Cadiz for the long, hot summer of 1805 on poor rations. The harvest of 1804 had failed. Morale in the British fleet, after a decade of victories – notably Cape St Vincent, the Nile and Copenhagen – was exceptionally high.

  The fleets that fought at Trafalgar were significantly smaller in absolute numbers and as a ratio to the total naval forces available at the time.* While only around a quarter of the Royal Navy’s ships of the line were engaged at Trafalgar, Jellicoe’s fleet comprised all the modern capital ships that the Navy could muster to maintain the critical dreadnought margin on the North Sea. A defeat for the British in 1916 would have had dire consequences. Jellicoe knew this, hence his aversion to unnecessary risk. Beatty’s Battle Cruiser Fleet had run the gauntlet at around 26 knots; Abdiel was sent off at 31 knots. Nelson took five hours in bright sunshine, approaching his opponents at speeds of around 1–3 knots. At Jutland, with the antagonists’ fleets approaching each other at about thirty-five miles an hour, eighteen minutes passed between initial sighting and battle-cruiser action. At Trafalgar, while the French opened fire at around 1,000yds (900m), most of the most destructive fighting was within 10–50yds (9–45m).

  Tactically, Jutland was a bad blow for British prestige, the nation’s morale and, most importantly, for the standing of the Royal Navy. The British came off worse in terms of lives and tonnage lost. British losses of life – including three admirals – was three times that of their enemy. Tonnage was twice as much. In the post-war tally, the Germans focused on the sinking of ships and the thousands of dead. In terms of materiel and human loss they rightly claimed victory, but numbers rarely tell the complete story.

  Almost 200,000 tons of ships were sunk in less than a day. The two really significant losses were those of Queen Mary and Lützow. The German battle-cruiser was fresh out of the shipyard and Hipper had just transferred his flag to her. Most of the other British and German ships – Invincible, Indefatigable, Black Prince, Warrior, Defence and Pommern – were outdated, even if the British battle-cruisers’ sister ships continued to serve until the end of the war.

  British and German Losses

  Ship Type

  British

  German

  Battle-cruisers

  Three (Invincible, Queen Mary, Indefatigable)

  One (Lützow)

  Pre-dreadnoughts

  One (Pommern)

  Armoured cruisers

  Three (Defence, Warrior, Black Prince)

  Light cruisers

  Four (Elbing, Frauenlob, Rostock, Wiesbaden)

  Destroyers

  Eight (Ardent, Fortune, Nestor, Nomad, Shark, Sparrowhawk, Tipperary, Turbulent)

  Five (S.35, V.4, V.27, V.29, V.48)

  Self-Inflicted Sinkings and Damage

  SMS Elbing

  Hit and sunk by SMS Posen

  HMS Broke

  Rammed by HMS Sparrowhawk

  HMS Sparrowhawk

  Rammed by HMS Contest

  Mistakes in fleet composition were clearly made by both sides and these errors of judgement produced easy casualties once the fighting started. Neither Frauenlob nor Rear Admiral Mauve’s 2nd Squadron of 17-knot predreadnoughts should have been there. Indefatigable’s and New Zealand’s slower speed (by 5 knots) and shorter range (by around 5,000yds) made their inclusion in the Battle Cruiser Fleet a risk. Both sides paid for these misjudgements with the death of thousands on the day.

  Returning to their ports, the British had eight capital ships damaged, the Germans fifteen; and at the end of the action Jellicoe still had twenty-six undamaged capital ships against Scheers five. At home Jellicoe had another five in reserve, while Scheer had just two. Jellicoe’s fleet was ready to sail again on the day that it got back to Scapa Flow – at 22:30 on 2 June. Scheers dry-dock repairs immobilised the High Seas Fleet for considerably longer than the British. The number of dry-dock repair days* needed to get both fleets back fully operational was in the German case almost 50 per cent higher: 550 days against 367 for the British. Derfflinger needed 135 days in dock, the Seydlitz, 106. The only British ship that required such lengthy repairs was Lion – 103 days. Otherwise fewer British ships needed major repairs.

  Comparative Dry-Dock Repair Days

  There was also a question with the amount of out-of-action tonnage.1 For the Germans, with a much smaller fleet, the amount was 30 per cent higher than that of the British: 14.5 million tonnage days against 11.3 million. A disproportionate amount of damage had been suffered by the Germans and could not be absorbed. The British had lost three battle-cruisers, but six remained. The Germans were left with the same number of battle-cruisers as they had when the war started. Jellicoe also still had twenty-six dreadnought battleships at his disposal.

  Beatty’s failure to concentrate his forces caused the greatest losses at the start of the run to the south. Even though Evan-Thomas had to manage a fighting rearguard action in the run to the north, his four battleships holding off nine German capital ships, the damage was heavy. The loss of life resulting from the battle-cruiser sinkings was horrendous. On these three ships alone – Invincible, Indefatigable and Queen Mary – 3,309 men died, 2,283 in the run to the south. This was not primarily caused by bad design – for example, a lack of armour where needed or of better compartmentalisation – but more directly by faulty and dangerous ammunition-handling practices.

  Jellicoe never underrated German shipbuilding qualities: ship design reflects the planned role a fleet is envisioned to
play. One of the British fleet’s primary tasks was to defend her empire’s sea trade routes. The German fleet was optimised for short-distance operations, a close action in the North Sea. Jellicoe had seen the extensive facilities that allowed the Germans, unlike the British, to build broader-beamed battleships. Jellicoe was well aware of these qualities:

  … if in ships of equal displacement British guns were of greater calibre than German guns, more weight being thus expended in gun armament, it was obvious that in some other direction the German ships possessed advantages; and the advantage they did possess was that of far greater protection both in the way of armour above and below water, and in more complete watertight subdivision below water as protection against torpedo or mine attack. This more complete subdivision and underwater protection in German capital ships was facilitated by the greater beam of the ships as compared with that of our own, our vessels being limited in beam by the width of existing docks and the difficulty of persuading our government to construct new and wider docks. Any naval officer who inspected the German ships salvaged from Scapa Flow, when in dock at Rosyth (as I did), could see clearly the immense under-water protection of these ships due to their great beam and wonderfully complete watertight subdivision. I certainly – as Second Sea Lord before the War – pointed out to Mr Churchill the fallacy of his argument …2

  Nor did Jellicoe underrate German naval professionalism:

  I had, ever since my experiences of the German navy in China during the Boxer troubles, conceived a decided admiration and considerable liking for German naval officers and men. I had taken every opportunity of meeting them, and personally knew a great many of the senior officers, including those obviously destined for high command. I felt, too, a great respect for the efficiency of the German navy.3

  Before he died in 1935, Jellicoe was planning to visit Germany to inspect the new navy.

  Beatty’s contribution to Jellicoe’s battlefield intelligence was, as we have seen, poor. Air and/or submarine reconnaissance could have played a significant role, but Engadine’s four messages from Rutland were never passed to Jellicoe (or, for that matter, even to Beatty).4 Nor could Scheer employ Zeppelins. None of his carefully placed U-boats passed back any significant intelligence (as neither did Jellicoe’s submarines at the Amrum minefield). By 1917 British dreadnoughts would not only tow kite balloons that gave them a 1,000ft high vantage point above sea level; so would many platform-launched aircraft that perched on the main armament turrets.

  Jellicoe assumed that the Germans would not be able to break through his forces without his knowledge. He was wrong. The battleships Malaya and Valiant, the cruiser Champion and five smaller warships all failed to pass on information that they had sighted major German elements. Only Faulknor tried, but her signals were jammed. The escape of both Seydlitz and Derfflinger was a startling blunder by the British.

  After signalling Jellicoe that the Germans would take the Horns Reef route, Jellicoe was given no subsequent signals intelligence that would have restored his confidence in the information coming from the Admiralty. He was not told that Kommodore Michelsens destroyers were to rally there, nor that Scheer had ordered Zeppelin reconnaissance. Scheer, by contrast, knew that the sixty-four British destroyers had been placed at the Grand Fleet’s rear and running into them confirmed that he was breaking through at the weakest point of the British line. In later years, the Admiralty was keen to protect its own. Not until 1940 (when the relevant Naval Operations volumes were completed by Sir Henry Newbolt, who was given access by the Admiralty to all the signals) was the series of errors in not relaying important intelligence from Room 40 raised – a quarter of a century after the battle.

  German signals and communications within the fleet were exemplary, while those of the British were lamentable – with some exceptions, of course. The difficulties for British signalling – a mixture of flag, semaphore, searchlight and, the least used, wireless telegraphy – were evident. The two flag failures that led to the misuse of the 5th Battle Squadron at the start of the action and to the near-fatal lack of co-ordination at the beginning of the run to the north clearly demonstrated this. Having endlessly lobbied to have the powerful 15in guns of the 5th Battle Squadron under his command, Beatty failed to use them properly in the very first action.

  Jellicoe was criticised for his over-use of signals. Scheer, more like Hipper and Beatty, believed in his officers being imbued with strong guiding principles with minimum distracting detail. But belief in principles is one thing; training in, and the communication of them, quite another. At a capital-ship level, Jellicoe did not supportindividual initiative, forthe simplereasonthatthe large numberofships would have risked chaos under battle conditions. The Royal Navy that fought at Jutland still bore the vestiges of its Victorian past. While Jacky Fisher’s reforms had dramatically pulled it out of its deepest slumbers, the lack of initiative without orders, the poor performance under battle conditions and the lingeringsocial system that limited advancement to the officer class all continued to hold it back.5

  Given the slow speed of flag signalling (and maybe also the lack of initiative), Jellicoe no doubt felt that he had no other option but to keep a tight rein on the fleet. His tactics were to make the Grand Fleet fight as a tightly co-ordinated and centralised force. In 1914 he had held a rather different point of view, which left more room for independent squadron initiative and manoeuvre, but he had changed his thinking when he realised how little initiative there really was in the fleet.* And his experiences on pre-war manoeuvres with Callaghan, his predecessor as C-in-C, definitely showed a different Jellicoe. On the other hand, Beatty lost tactical control of the small number of ships that he commanded and made little effort to use the skills of experienced officers, preferring younger men, often with strong social connections.

  The myth survives that the Grand Fleet was not really engaged at Jutland and that Jellicoe’s timidity lost the battle. The gunnery record gives a very different picture. Records have probably been distorted by both adversaries but probably also by the increasingly ill-tempered battle-cruiser/battleship rivalry. The Germans certainly felt that they had a better record and presented copious statistics to prove their case. The Admiralstab accounts state that the accuracy of their gunners far exceeded that of the British: a hit rate of 3.3 per cent against 2.17 per cent.6 Yet the logic is faulty at best. As with all statistics, it depends on definitions. Much smaller-calibre hits, for example, were included in the German assessment, which grossly distorted the final impression.

  In the last hour before sunset on 31 May 1916, when the Grand Fleet was engaged, the British landed forty-nine heavy calibre hits against three from enemy gunners. The Grand Fleet’s performance was – during its limited (and much closer-range) engagement – demonstrably better than that of the 1st or 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadrons, but this was successfully buried at the time. The elements of the Grand Fleet that did open fire were able to concentrate twice on the enemy ‘T’. Beatty’s battle-cruisers fired 1,469 rounds. Excluding the 15in guns of Evan-Thomas’s 5th Battle Squadron (technically part of Beatty’s Battle Cruiser Fleet), the Grand Fleet fired 1,593. The Grand Fleet suffered amazingly few casualties but managed to score fifty-seven hits; by contrast, some of the battle-cruisers’ performance was woeful.7 The 1st and 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadrons expended an average of seventy shells per hit; the 1st, 2nd and 4th Battle Squadrons twenty-seven. For the Germans it was similar: the 1st Scouting Group twenty-six, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Battle Squadrons thirty-four. In both cases, however, the visibility conditions had a major impact on the gunnery performance of both sides.

  The quality of British ordnance might have left much to be desired but it was also easy to turn this discussion against Jellicoe, as he had – briefly – been Controller. Blaming the poor quality of shells took much of the focus away from gunnery skill and training. The fact is that Jellicoe had lobbied strongly but ineffectively – the cost was deemed too high – for more realistic trials of ammunition in Oc
tober 1910. Most British testing was done at long range, with plunging shells hitting deck armour rather than at side-belt armour, so the effect of hitting at the oblique was not highlighted. As Jellicoe put it:

  In order to determine the effectiveness against armoured ships of the shell supplied for the various guns I arranged for extensive firing trials to be carried out in 1910 against the old battleship Edinburgh, which had been specially prepared by the addition of modern armour plates. As a result of these trials, before the end of my Office as Controller, the Ordnance Board were asked on the 18th October 1910 to endeavour to produce an armour-piercing shell which would perforate armour at oblique impact and go on in a fit state for bursting.

  I left the Admiralty in December 1910, to take command of the Atlantic Fleet; and unfortunately the production of such efficient armour-piercing shell was not sufficiently pressed and our shell continued to be proved only at normal impact to the plate. As a result, during the War, in the various actions in which the shell naturally struck at oblique impact, due inter alia to the angle of descent, our armour-piercing shell did not achieve the results they ought to have against the well-armoured German capital ships. Our shell, though in many cases they knocked holes in the enemy’s armour by their momentum, broke up at oblique impact instead of going on and bursting in the vitals of the enemy ships.

  We thus lost the advantage we ought to have enjoyed in offensive power due to the greater weight of our projectiles, while suffering the accepted disadvantage in the protection of our ships due to the heavy weights of our guns and ammunition which reduced the total weight available for armour plating.8