Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service

by Hector C. Bywater

  These contradictory opinions do not appear to have had much effect on the average citizen. Unversed in the niceties of strategy and tactics, he has weighed the visible results and found them less than he expected. On the plain evidence before him he sees no grounds for claiming a victory. The Grand Fleet went into action with a margin of superiority in tonnage and gun power that could fairly be described as overwhelming. In the opening phase six British battlecruisers fought five German ships of similar type, the former having a decided preponderance in weight of gunfire. Yet within an hour two of our ships were destroyed and at least one other was severely damaged, while the German squadron remained intact, with all its ships still in fighting trim.

  In the second phase, the German battle fleet was engaged two hours with our main fleet under circumstances distinctly unfavourable to the enemy. Caught in what was, by all the rules of the game, a hopeless trap, and exposed to a concentrated fire of hundreds of the heaviest guns mounted afloat, Admiral Scheer contrived to extricate himself with comparatively trivial losses, and, eventually, to regain his base without being brought to action a second time. Such, baldly stated, were the results of the battle as the man in the street sees them. Whatever the conclusions to be drawn, the facts themselves are incontestable.

  It is not proposed to deal here with questions of leadership or strategy. We shall confine ourselves to an examination of certain material factors that played an extremely important part at Jutland and in other actions of the war, and that, we believe, will shed new light on many incidents that have long mystified the public.

  Save for certain characteristics in profile and rig, there was little outward difference between British and German capital ships before the war. But appearances were in this case deceptive.

  When Germany, following the example set by Great Britain, began to build dreadnoughts, she designed them chiefly for the purpose of operating at a relatively short distance from their home bases. They were, therefore, ships with a limited radius of action, not only with regard to fuel supply, but also in respect of accommodation for the personnel. Habitability was quite a minor consideration, for the ships were not intended to remain at sea for lengthy periods or to undertake long voyages. The crews, in fact, were meant to live ashore except when the fleet was exercising, and to this end enormous barracks were erected at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven.

  To put the matter in an expressive though exaggerated form, German battleships were floating batteries with emergency accommodation for the crew. British battleships, on the other hand, were built to sail and fight in any part of the globe where their presence might be required, and it was therefore essential to provide generous living quarters for the health and reasonable comfort of the personnel.

  This fundamental difference between German and British principles of construction goes far towards explaining the remarkable powers of enduring punishment, which German ships exhibited in action. Being free to dispense with the large berthing spaces, which were so necessary a feature of British ships, the German constructor was able to sub-divide his hull into numerous, small, watertight compartments that localised damage sustained below the waterline by shell fire, torpedo or gun.

  The value of this method of protection was demonstrated by the number of German capital ships that remained afloat, and in many cases still capable of fighting, after they had received underwater injuries. Particulars are as follows:

  Westfalen, 1 torpedo;

  Ostfriesland, 1 mine;

  Grosser Kurfürst, 1 mine;

  Markgraf, 2 mines;

  Kronprinz, 1 torpedo;

  Bayern, 1 mine;

  Moltke, 2 torpedoes;

  Goeben, 5 mines;

  Seydlitz, 1 mine and 1 torpedo.

  As we have stated elsewhere, the robust protection of the German ships was no secret to the British Admiralty. It was the theme of many secret service reports, often accompanied by drawings that showed the entire system of watertight compartments.

  The armour plating of these ships was also very extensive and massive. Every tonne saved by the mounting of relatively lightweight guns and by other economies of weight in construction and equipment was put into armour defence.

  As the ships spent little time at sea, the ventilation question was not of prime importance, and it was thus possible to plate up the sides of the hull where, in British vessels, lines of portholes (scuttles) were an absolute necessity. Germany, therefore, had a fleet of dreadnoughts, which were as unsinkable as human ingenuity could make them. That they were cramped, ill-ventilated, and uncomfortable mattered little in view of their clearly defined purpose, which was to fight in the North Sea, the Baltic, and perhaps in the Channel, but at no greater distance from the Heligoland Bight. Regarded purely as combative units, irrespective of radius and strategical mobility, they were undoubtedly superior to their British contemporaries.

  Now, although it would have been bad policy on our part to have built our dreadnoughts as ‘floating batteries’ on the German principle, having regard to our world-wide strategical commitments, it nevertheless lay within our power to counter by other means the tactical advantage that the Germans derived from the superior defensive properties of their ships.

  When, indeed, the two fleets were compared on paper, it looked as though we had taken the needful steps in that direction, for our ships carried much heavier guns. Against the German 11-inch and 12-inch, we matched 13.5-inch and 15-inch weapons. In theory, the latter were powerful enough to crush the German ships in spite of their thick armour, and in practice they would certainly have done so had we used the right kind of shell.

  Unfortunately, while we built great guns and neglected to provide them with efficient projectiles, Germany built smaller guns, but supplied them with shells of superlative quality.

  The consequence was that in actual destructive power the German medium-calibre weapons were equal, if not superior, to our heavier ordnance, and so, on balance, the German ships enjoyed a net advantage by virtue of their stronger protection.

  We know from the statements of von Tirpitz and other German authorities that they made a careful study of the protective features of British ships, and then designed their own guns and projectiles with a special view to attacking these prospective targets in the most effective manner. The principles that actuated the respective naval ordnance policies of Britain and Germany are much too technical to be examined in detail, but they may be briefly indicated in terms that need not affright the non-professional reader.

  Both powers had made an exhaustive study of the gunnery data provided by the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, but the inferences they drew were by no means parallel.

  In the opinion of British experts, the annihilation of the Russian fleet at Tsushima was due to the high-explosive shell used by the Japanese heavy guns. These projectiles had thin walls, an abnormally large bursting charge, and extremely sensitive fuses. Very few of them penetrated the armour of the Russian ships. The majority detonated against the sides, decks, and superstructure.

  A vivid picture of the havoc they wrought is given by Capt. Vladimir Semenoff in his narrative of the battle, together with some notes on the subject of projectiles, which are very pertinent to our present theme:

  It seemed as if these (the Japanese projectiles) were mines, not shells, which were striking the ship’s side and falling on the deck. They burst as soon as they touched anything – the moment they encountered the least impediment in their flight.

  Handrails, funnel guys, topping lifts of the boats’ derricks, were quite sufficient to cause a thoroughly efficient burst. The steel plates and superstructure on the upper deck were torn to pieces … Iron ladders were crumpled up into rings, and guns were literally hurled from their mountings. Such havoc would never be caused by the simple impact of a shell, still less by that of its splinters. It could only be caused by the force of the explosion.

  In a footnote he adds:

  For a great many years in naval gunnery two distinct idea
s have prevailed: one is to inflict on the enemy, although not necessarily much (in quantity), severe and heavy damage – i.e. to stop movement, to penetrate under the waterline, to get a burst in the hull below the waterline, briefly, to put the ship at once out of action; the other is to pour upon him the greatest volume of fire in the shortest time, though it be above water and the actual damage caused by each individual shot be immaterial, in the hope of paralysing the ship, trusting that if this were done it would not be difficult to destroy her completely – that she would, in fact, sink by herself.

  With modern guns, in order to secure the first of the above ideas, solid armour-penetrating projectiles must be employed – i.e. thick-coated shells (whose internal capacity and bursting charge are consequently diminished), and percussion fuses with retarded action, bursting the shell inside the target. To secure the second idea, shells need only be sufficiently solid to ensure their not bursting at the moment of being fired. The thickness of their walls may be reduced to the minimum, and their internal capacity and bursting charge increased to the utmost limits. The percussion fuses should be sensitive enough to detonate at the slightest touch.

  The first of the above views prevails chiefly in France, the second in England. In the late war we (Russia) held the first, and the Japanese the second.

  There is scarcely any room for doubt that Lord Fisher had what he conceived to be the true moral of Tsushima in mind when he initiated the dreadnought policy. He visualised a battleship with multiple big guns pouring a stream of highly explosive shells, with instant-impact fuses, into the target, blowing away all the unarmoured parts, and reducing it to a mere hulk without necessarily penetrating the belt armour. Such of the crew as escaped death or wounds would be demoralised by this hurricane of flame and splintered steel, and although the ship might still float, she would no longer exist as a fighting organism.

  Nor was this policy modified when we increased the calibre of our guns from 12-inch to 13.5-inch, and then to 15-inch. It is true that a certain proportion of the shells were armour-piercing ones, but reliance was placed chiefly on the high-explosive type that the Japanese had used with such terrible effect at Tsushima.

  Our policy would have been sound enough had the German battleships of 1914 resembled in construction and armour defence the ill-starred Russian vessels of 1905; but, in fact, they were built on entirely different lines.

  Unlike the Russian pre-dreadnoughts, with their thin belt of armour and vast area of thinly or non-protected sides, the German dreadnoughts were ‘stiff’ with armour on the waterline and well above it, the side plating being conjoined with thick steel decks and armoured bulkheads, running fore and aft and athwart ships. Every gun position, every control station, every place in the ship where a hit might cause serious injury, was sheathed in armour, against which shells might burst harmlessly as long as they did not penetrate.

  Clearly, therefore, the type of projectile that had turned the scale at Tsushima was quite unsuitable for attacking such ships as these. Possessing, as we did, almost complete details of the protection of every German dreadnought, it is difficult to understand why we failed to develop a thoroughly efficient armour-piercing shell – one, that is, that would perforate thick armour and burst inside with devastating violence.

  The qualities demanded of such a projectile are lucidly set forth in a later passage, descriptive of the shells that the Germans fired at Jutland.

  Here it may be asserted on the best authority that our leading armament firms were prepared, long before the war, to turn out armour-piercing shells that were fully equal to the German type. They were not invited to do so, and the result was that much of the work of our Grand Fleet gunners at Jutland was rendered abortive by the indifferent penetrative and explosive properties of the shells they had to use. Many of the 15-inch projectiles fired at the German ships were actually filled with ordinary gunpowder, which gave a comparatively feeble detonation. Had they been charged with lyddite, or, better still, with TNT, every hit we made would have been twice as destructive. In view of the number of hits scored during the battle by our heaviest guns, it may be confidently affirmed that only the inferior quality of our shells saved the German fleet from partial destruction.

  To attempt to fix the responsibility for this grave defect in our naval material would be futile. How easily it might have been remedied is made clear by Lord Jellicoe, who has related in his book on the Grand Fleet how, soon after Jutland, a committee was appointed to investigate the shell question. Owing to the recommendations of this committee, a new and thoroughly efficient type of armour-piercing projectile was developed, which would penetrate thick armour even when striking it at an oblique angle, pass through intact, and, thanks to a reliable delay-action fuse, detonate inside with most destructive results.

  The failure to provide such a shell before the war was probably due to want of practical experience of heavy gunfire against targets representing well-armoured ships. This could only be gained by experiments such as the Germans conducted. They spent large sums in building targets that reproduced sections of the armoured hull of a modern battleship, and attacked them at sea with various types of projectiles, fired under the most realistic conditions possible. By this method they secured data that enabled them to produce a shell that could be relied upon to function with maximum efficiency. There was no reason why we should not have carried out similar experiments. That we did not do so is a serious reflection on the pre-war Boards of Admiralty. This neglect almost certainly cost us a decisive victory at Jutland, and on other occasions largely neutralised our advantage in heavy artillery.

  The North Sea skirmish of 17 November 1917 furnished a glaring example. In a running fight with enemy light cruisers HMS Repulse scored a raking hit on the Königsberg. A 15-inch shell, weighing 1,920 lb, passed through the bases of all three funnels and burst in one of the forward coal bunkers. So feeble was the detonation that the shell fell apart in a few large fragments, and caused only local damage that in no wise impaired the efficiency of the ship. Had this projectile been filled with TNT it would probably have blown the bottom out of the Königsberg, or at least have disabled her.

  Apart from the material evidence furnished by the summary destruction of five large British ships, the efficacy of the German shells is attested by many witnesses. As a rule they passed through strong armour and burst with terrific violence, causing widespread damage and very severe casualties.

  By way of contrast we may cite a German witness on the behaviour of the British projectiles. Herr Betzhold, writing in ‘Die Technik im Weltkriege’, offers the following comment:

  The effects of heavy hits on the German ships showed clearly that the British ammunition was inferior. Their projectiles in part did not burst at all, and in part detonated outside the armour; while the German fuse did not produce an explosion until the shell had passed through the armour. The composition and stowage of the British powder charges, and their inadequate protection, constituted an ever-present source of danger to the whole ship. Both in disposition and thickness the British armour proved unequal to the attack of the medium-calibre German guns; on the other hand, the strength and quality of the German armour were such as to defeat attack by the heaviest British calibres. The 15-inch shell was unable to penetrate our thirteen and three quarter-inch armour even at ranges from 6 to 9.25 miles.

  Herr Betzhold’s claim as to the superiority of the German armour was not borne out by experiments made after the war. Plates taken from the surrendered battleship Baden were found, when subjected to tests, to be definitely inferior in resisting power to British armour of the same thickness; but these tests, it is to be assumed, were made with the post-Jutland type of British armour-piercing projectiles.

  Since the war full details have been released of the German type of shell used at Jutland. As the agency directly responsible for the sinking of our three battlecruisers – Queen Mary, Indefatigable, Invincible – not to mention the destruction of three armoured cruisers and
the heavy damage inflicted on other vessels, this deadly projectile deserves some notice. For the following particulars we are indebted to Commander Kinzel, an officer who served before the war in the ordnance department of the German Navy Office.

  Long before the war, he states, his department had realised the importance of improving armour-piercing projectiles, and had devoted endless thought and experiment to the subject. In collaboration with the Krupp firm, the work had gone on for many years, regardless of difficulties and disappointments, and was eventually crowned with such success that by the outbreak of war a comparatively perfect AP shell had been evolved.

  The body of the shell consisted of Krupp’s crucible, nickel-chrome steel, unsurpassed in toughness and hardness. The shell tapered at the nose to a long and fine point, which would have broken off when impacting on armour but for the protection afforded by the cap, made of softer material.

  The discovery of the most favourable form and the most suitable material for this cap was only made after numerous experiments that cost a great deal of money. At the base of the shell an opening was provided for the introduction of the bursting-charge, the weight of which was about 3 per cent of that of the entire projectile. To obtain the maximum effect from the burst it was necessary to employ a highly explosive aromatic composition; but since substances of this nature were liable to detonate immediately upon impact against armour, there arose for solution the difficult problem of so ‘phlegmatising’ the charge that it could be brought safely through the thickest armour, though without in any way impairing the violence of its disruption.

  ‘The severity of this problem,’ writes Commander Kinzel,

  May be adjudged by the fact that at the date of the Jutland action the British had not succeeded in solving it. In spite of prolonged experiments, they had been compelled to load their armour-piercing shell almost exclusively with black powder, which, although less sensitive, was far less efficient than the high-explosive compounds.’