A Naval History of World War I

by Paul G. Halpern

  One of Jellicoe’s first actions after he became First Sea Lord at the beginning of December 1916 was to form the Anti-Submarine Division at the Admiralty. While still commander in chief of the Grand Fleet he had advocated that “a Flag Officer of authority” should preside at the Admiralty over a committee or department charged with the exclusive purpose of developing antisubmarine measures and empowered “to follow through suggestions with all speed and press their execution.”26 Rear Admiral Sir Alexander Duff was its first head, succeeded when he became assistant chief of the naval staff in May 1917 by Captain William W. Fisher.

  The question of what should be done to counter the submarines became the major issue of the naval war by the spring of 1917. For a long time the majority of naval officers, and certainly the prevailing opinion at the Admiralty, was in favor of the system of hunting patrols as opposed to escort or convoy work. The latter was considered “defensive,” as opposed to “offensive” hunting patrols in areas where submarines were known to be operating. Hunting patrols were generally considered the proper role for men-of-war and naval officers. The traffic lanes close inshore were patrolled by the auxiliary patrol, converted vessels that entered service in large numbers during the war. Farther out, the approach routes were patrolled by sloops or Q-ships. The general idea was that no merchant vessel attacked by gunfire ought to have far to steam before a patrol vessel arrived to assist. The fitting of merchantmen with defensive armament had also offered hope earlier in the war when statistics indicated they had less chance of being sunk and a greater chance of escape if attacked. The German switch to ruthless underwater attack without warning canceled that advantage. The initial effectiveness of Q-ships also declined once the surprise factor had been lost and the Germans routinely attacked without warning. There is some evidence the Germans made a deliberate effort to destroy Q-ships in 1917, sinking those that were recognized before they had the slightest chance of defending themselves. U-boat commanders became much more proficient at recognizing through periscopes characteristics such as seams for collapsible plates, which betrayed the nature of the ship. No fewer than sixteen Q-ships were lost to submarine attack in 1917.27

  The idea of hunting patrols with destroyers or sloops patrolling areas where submarines were known to be operating was also attractive, but the results were disappointing. Naval officers who rode to the hounds ashore sometimes even used the metaphors of fox hunting to describe their goals. But they lacked the “hounds” or tools to pick up the “scent.” Science and technology raised some hopes for defeating the submarine when hydrophones of various sorts were introduced. The hydrophones were first developed by Commander C. P. Ryan, who founded the Admiralty Experimental Station at Hawkcraig, which remained the most important hydrophone research center throughout the war. It was not the only one; there were ultimately no fewer than twenty-nine antisubmarine research centers of various sorts in the British Isles and another two run by the British in the Mediterranean. The British established hydrophone stations on shore and eventually fitted with various types of listening devices all sorts of craft, ranging from motor launches to P-boats,28 trawlers, and destroyers. Special hydrophone hunting units were formed to try to trap a submarine by triangulation. The listening devices generally failed to fulfill the great hopes placed in them. Without entering into the technical details, they were on the whole too primitive to be a serious menace to the submarine. The hydrophone hunting groups might also necessitate all vessels in the area stopping their engines so as to avoid masking the sound of the submarine. Stopping a ship in waters where submarines were known to be operating was hardly an attractive activity for most skippers. After they entered the war, the Americans also lavished a great deal of effort on hydrophones. The results were equally disappointing.29 Success in the effort to render the oceans transparent was as elusive then as it remains today. The real counter to the submarine offensive was the system of convoys to which the British belatedly turned. Before discussing this, however, it would be well to examine methods on which the British lavished considerable effort with only limited success.

  BRITISH MINELAYING

  The policy of minelaying to prevent German submarines from leaving or returning to their North Sea bases was an attractive one, because the minefields laid deep in enemy waters could be seen as “offensive.” British policy on minelaying had changed course since the beginning of the war when the Admiralty had been reluctant to lay mines that might hamper the movements of British warships. The first minefield off Amrun was not laid until 8 January 1915. In May 1915 large fields were laid in the Helgoland Bight, but the British proceeded in spurts followed by periods of inactivity. By the end of 1915, they had laid a total of 4,538 mines in the Bight, followed by 17 fields and a mere 1,782 mines in 1916. The Royal Navy was hampered at first by a shortage of suitable mines and then by defects in the British Elia mine, and “an enormous amount of time and ingenuity was wasted in trying to improve what was later recognized as an unsuitable design.”30 In 1916 minelayers and mines also were fully occupied on the Belgian coast. The 13 September conference between Jellicoe and Oliver in the Iron Duke (see chapter 10) had among its strategic decisions an extensive policy of mining in the Bight for 1917. The lack of mines crippled the policy, although the British managed to lay 712 mines in January.

  Beatty, who had succeeded Jellicoe as commander in chief of the Grand Fleet when the latter became First Sea Lord in December 1916, favored mining. On 10 January he urged the Admiralty to form a special mining organization capable of carrying out an extensive program. Beatty considered 80,000 mines necessary to close the Bight and bar the passage to German submarines. The barrage would be watched by destroyer and light cruiser sweeps at varying intervals as well as submarine patrols. The major problem was a shortage of mines. Although Beatty scaled down his mine requirements to 54,000 moored mines and 5,700 ground mines laid in a 155-mile barrage roughly 50 miles from the Jade, the navy actually expected to have only 34,000 mines available in the near future, and a mere 300 of them would be ready for service at the end of January.31 Jellicoe was far less enthusiastic about mining and disagreed with Beatty’s proposal to lay mines close in. He favored laying them farther out, where German minesweepers would face greater risk. The First Sea Lord also thought Beatty had an exaggerated view of their effectiveness against submarines, citing the ease with which German submarines were apparently passing the Dover barrage. Moreover, he considered Beatty’s ideas in regard to the facility with which mines or anything else could presently be produced in Britain “far too optimistic.”32

  Regardless of the quantities available, British mines were still notoriously unreliable. In April 1917 only 1,500 of the 20,000 mines supposedly on hand were considered fit for laying. In the spring of 1917, the Admiralty finally adopted the desperate expedient of copying the well-proven German contact E mine. The First Sea Lord (H. B. Jackson) had actually ordered this done in the spring of 1916, but the Admiralty departments wasted almost a year trying to improve on the design. Consequently it was not until late 1917 that the reliable Mark H-2 mine was available in quantity.33

  Beatty still complained in April that British minefields were being laid “in driblets,” although 2,560 mines had been laid in seven fields in March and 2,997 mines in twelve fields in April. In the first half of 1917, British mines in the Bight accounted for a few small minesweeping craft but only one U-boat in April (UC.30), and the Germans lost U.59 to their own mines. Minelaying tapered off in the summer months, owing to the short nights, and submarines were used for a portion of the mining. It is somewhat misleading to talk merely of quantities of mines and numbers of fields. Intelligence, that is the knowledge of where and when to lay mines to the most effect, was as important as mere quantities, and here the British improved throughout the year. The Germans made use of a limited number of swept channels for U-boats, which were given color code names; notably, Weg Gelb, Weg Grün, and the coastal Weg Schwarz near the Frisian Islands in the south; Weg Blau an
d Weg Rot, the northerly routes west of Horns Reef; and the centrally located Weg Braun. The British, who gave the routes the names of streets, such as “Kingsway” and “Mall,” developed very good intelligence about the extent of German sweeping and the location of the swept channels. They relied on reports from their own submarines on patrols, and, perhaps most important of all, on intercepted and deciphered German wireless messages. British minelaying in 1917 therefore achieved a certain measure of success, compared to the loss of only two destroyers to German mines off Horns Reef at the beginning of August.

  British submarines sank six U-boats between 31 August and 13 December.34 However, mines were more effective, and the Germans lost another seven U-boats to mines in British waters and four to mines off the Flanders coast. These statistics led two leading authorities to point out that the much-derided British mines were actually the most effective single antisubmarine weapon in 1917.35 This may be true, but it in no way alters the fact that if some additional means had not been found of countering the U-boat in the spring of 1917, Great Britain would not have been able to remain in the war.

  THE DOVER BARRAGES

  The Straits of Dover and the minefields off the German submarine bases in Flanders were other focal points in the antisubmarine struggle, particularly after U-boats resumed their passage through the Strait. The periodic transfers of German destroyer flotillas from the High Sea Fleet to the Flanders bases made British and French antisubmarine activities much more dangerous. The vital lines of communication of the British armies in France also ran through these waters, and their protection was of paramount importance. In April 1916 Vice Admiral Bacon, commanding the Dover Patrol, had laid a barrage of deep mines and moored mine nets off the Belgian coast, the whole being known as the “Belgian coast barrage.” In September the Admiralty began to lay a similar barrage of mine nets—called the cross-Channel barrage—from the southern end of the Goodwin Sands to the southwestern end of the Outer Ruytingen Shoals, the whole lying just to the east of the line Dover-Calais. The mine nets were supplemented by a line of deep mines laid a half mile to the west, which unfortunately dragged into the nets and threatened the drifters patrolling the barrage. The barrage was not finished until December and was unsuccessful in stopping the passage of submarines.

  The German flotillas in Flanders struck even before the barrage was completed. Captain Andreas Michelsen, commodore of flotillas in the High Sea Fleet, brought the Third and Ninth Flotillas (twenty-four destroyers) from the Bight to Zeebrugge under cover of darkness. The two flotillas were placed under the command of Admiral von Schröder, commander of the Marinekorps Flandern, who up to now had been frustrated in his desire to achieve anything substantial against the Belgian coast barrage because of the handful of weak surface craft under his command. The Germans had resumed the restricted U-boat campaign against commerce, and their immediate objective was to attack the guardships on the Dover barrage in order to obtain a freer passage for U-boats leaving Zeebrugge and Ostend or passing through the Strait. Even though the barrage had not prevented German submarines from passing, it had been a considerable inconvenience.36

  On the night of 26 October, Michelsen’s two flotillas reinforced by the half-flotilla of Flanders destroyers attacked the British lines of communication. The Germans, aided by an extremely dark night with overcast sky, succeeded in sinking the destroyer Flirt, six drifters, and the empty transport Queen. They also torpedoed the destroyer Nubian, which, however, remained afloat. The Germans escaped without loss, but there had been no fewer than fifty-seven steamers at sea in the Strait that night that escaped harm, shielded by the same darkness that aided the German raiders.37 The raid shocked British public opinion and led to attacks on the Admiralty. There was also no assurance it would not happen again. Bacon described the situation: “It is as easy to stop a raid of express engines with all lights out at night, at Clapham Junction, as to stop a raid of 33-knot destroyers on a night as black as Erebus, in waters as wide as the Channel.”38

  The operations during the German raid had also demonstrated to the Admiralty that the cross-Channel barrage was less effective than they imagined, for fourteen British destroyers had crossed over it without suffering damage. The Admiralty agreed that Bacon needed more destroyers, but faced the problem of where to obtain them. The destroyer under the changed conditions of warfare was rapidly becoming even more important than the dreadnought. Bacon was finally reinforced from Tyrwhitt’s Harwich Force and the Humber. But this forced the Admiralty to detach a division of destroyers from the Grand Fleet to bolster the Humber, which meant there might not be enough destroyers to screen the Grand Fleet when it put to sea, and a portion of the Fourth Battle Squadron would have to be left behind.39 Once again the demands of Kleinkrieg were impinging on the requirements of what had been the premier instrument at the beginning of the war.

  The Germans found certain disadvantages in keeping a large number of destroyers in Flanders. They could not lie alongside the mole at Zeebrugge because of the danger of air attack and had to be sent up the canal to Bruges. This meant a time-consuming trip through the canal locks, and Scheer claimed it took two and a half hours for four destroyers to make the passage. Furthermore, they were usually spotted by the Allies after leaving Bruges. British aerial reconnaissance of Zeebrugge increased after the October raid, and the Germans were forced to cancel a raid planned for the night of 1 November because they feared the British had been forewarned. The Third Flotilla was ordered back to Wilhemshaven. The ten destroyers of the Ninth Flotilla that remained in Flanders were joined on the night of 23–24 November by three destroyers of the Flanders Half-Flotilla in a raid on the northern entrance of the Downs. The Germans clashed with the British patrols, escaped unscathed, but accomplished little beyond damaging a drifter and lobbing a few shells into Margate. They had been dangerously close to the shipping in the Downs, and the German escape contributed to the agitation against the Admiralty.40

  The pattern of temporary reinforcement of the Flanders flotillas by destroyers from the High Sea Fleet continued in 1917 when on the night of 22–23 January the Sixth Flotilla (destroyer leader V.69 and ten destroyers) proceeded from the Bight to Zeebrugge. Room 40 provided advanced intelligence of the move to Tyrwhitt’s Harwich Force. Tyrwhitt was reinforced by six destroyers from Bacon’s Dover Patrol and attempted to intercept the German destroyers between the Schouwen Bank and the Maas. He was able to deploy no fewer than six light cruisers, two destroyer leaders, and sixteen destroyers, but in the confusion of the night action the Germans were able to reach Zeebrugge. V.69 was damaged, her helm jammed, and she was rammed by another German destroyer, G.41. Both Germans survived. The British destroyer Simoom was torpedoed and sunk by S.50, a German straggler that blundered unexpectedly into the British patrols. V.69 was later discovered and pounded by the cruisers Penelope, Cleopatra, and Undaunted, but the British switched off their lights prematurely on the assumption she was sinking and the destroyer was able to limp into Ymuiden. The Dutch did not intern her as the British could not actually prove she had run into port to escape pursuit. Given the British had advance intelligence of the move and were in superior strength, it was a thoroughly unsatisfactory affair. Part of the problem probably lay in the recent reinforcement of Tyrwhitt’s force from the Grand Fleet. The new captains had been used to less independence than Tyrwhitt was accustomed to granting and were less likely to exercise their own initiative. The Harwich Force was therefore far from homogeneous, and this had been cruelly exposed. Tyrwhitt was criticized for not providing proper guidance as to when an officer should remain on station and await further orders or act independently.41 The Germans had been lucky, but the problems of command and control were inherent in fast night action typical of these destroyer clashes in the Dover Strait, North Sea, or Adriatic. The episode demonstrated Jellicoe’s wisdom in seeking to avoid a night action at Jutland the preceding year.

  The Sixth Flotilla and the two Zeebrugge half-flotillas made a three-pronged but
widely dispersed attack on the night of 25–26 February, another dark night when the moon was hidden by clouds. The Second Zeebrugge Half-Flotilla raided the route between England and the Hook of Holland near the Maas light vessel, while the First Zeebrugge Half-Flotilla (5 destroyers) attacked the Downs and the Sixth Flotilla (6 destroyers) attacked the barrage patrols. Room 40 did not detect the movements in advance, but the Germans failed to inflict any damage, and the Sixth Flotilla turned back after clashing with the Laverock, one of the destroyers patrolling the barrage. The Laverock was lucky and suffered little damage, although later she was found to have been hit by a torpedo that did not explode. The attack on the Downs was equally ineffective, beyond killing a few civilians when the Germans shelled the North Foreland wireless station. There was no Dutch traffic at sea that night, and the Second Zeebrugge Half-Flotilla’s operation off the Maas—the third prong of the German attack—was also futile.42

  The Germans made a much more concentrated attack on the night of 17–18 March when the Sixth Flotilla (7 destroyers) and First Zeebrugge Half-Flotilla (5 destroyers) raided the barrage and the Second Zeebrugge Half-Flotilla (4 destroyers) attacked shipping in the Downs. The German commander, Korvettenkapitän Tillessen of the Sixth Flotilla, was very careful in his preliminary dispositions to give each group a distinct line of approach and zone of operations. They would then be able to assume anything they met was hostile and could open fire without challenging. Room 40 provided at least some advance warning that something was up, but once again the Germans were able to inflict loss and escape unscathed. Two of the destroyers patrolling the barrage were torpedoed, the Paragon blew up and sank, and the Llewellyn was hit in her fore part but was able to steam stern first. The Germans also sank a steamer forced by engine trouble to anchor just outside of the Downs and shelled Ramsgate and Broadstairs. Bacon complained anew of the advantage the Germans had in being able to choose their moment and then fire a torpedo at anything they saw before escaping.43