Above the two fleets in the North Sea on that night a wireless battle took place, controlled by the W/T operators in every one of those blind warships, and by the transmitting and D/F stations in Germany and Britain. It was not only the British who had relined the art of direction-finding from ships’ transmissions. The Germans, too, were good at it, and moreover had set up a special department devoted exclusively to jamming enemy signals. Time and again the Germans succeeded in frustrating the passage of important messages to Jellicoe’s flagship, especially from the lower-powered and relatively primitive destroyers’ transmitters. The Germans’ ‘Room 40’ was able to part-read British coded messages, just as Ewing and his men were able to intercept, decode and pass to OD German coded messages, and more comprehensively and efficiently than the Germans could.
Jellicoe was not, therefore, kept entirely in the dark about German movements in spite of the failure of some of his ships to pass on sighting intelligence and in others the failure to get the message through. As early as 10.41 p.m. the Admiralty transmitted this vital piece of news, which if acted upon even an hour or two later could have brought the Grand Fleet round to meet the High Seas Fleet off Horns Reef at dawn: ‘German Battle Fleet ordered home at 9.14 p.m. Battle Cruisers in rear. Course SSE, 3/4 E. Speed 16 knots.’
Plotted from Scheer’s presumed (and at that time correctly presumed) position at 9 p.m., this order could only mean that the High Seas Fleet was heading for Horns Reef, bearing across the rear of the Grand Fleet in order to do so. But this absolutely vital piece of intelligence was ignored by Jellicoe. Why? The C.-in-C. had good reason for doing so. By this time any signal from the Admiralty was suspect in his mind. Not only had he earlier been told that Scheer was still in harbour when he had been at sea for eight or nine hours. More recently, in a signal transmitted from London at 9.58 p.m., and read by Jellicoe at 10.45 p.m., he had been given the position of the rear ship of the German battle fleet many miles from where he knew it to be, based on his own cruiser sightings. ‘Which should I trust?’ Jellicoe asked later. ‘Reports from my own ships which had actually seen the enemy, or a report from the Admiralty?’(32)
By the time he heard from the Admiralty again on the not unimportant subject of the enemy’s position and course, it was too late. At 3.30 a.m., with misty daylight flooding across the North Sea, Jellicoe was informed that the High Seas Fleet, an hour earlier, had been thirty miles north-east of the Iron Duke on a south-east by south course, 16 knots, and just one hour’s steaming from Horns Reef at this speed.
So, the elusive German battle fleet, which had been glimpsed only twice for a few minutes the previous day, and then only three or four battleships at a time, had slipped through Jellicoe’s grasp; had outwitted and outmanoeuvred him by steering behind him. ‘This signal made it evident that by no possibility could I catch the enemy before he reached port, even if I disregarded the danger of following him through the minefields…’(33)
Jellicoe failed to pass on to Beatty this crushing news, and consequently the battle-cruiser commander proposed at 4.04 a.m. that he should make a sweep to the south-west to locate the enemy whose proximity was suggested by a scouting Zeppelin. Shortly before 5 a.m. Beatty learned the worst. Chalmers was in the chart-house when his Admiral entered. ‘Tired and depressed, he sat down on the settee and settling himself in a corner he closed his eyes. Unable to hide his disappointment at the result of the battle, he repeated in a weary voice, “There is something wrong with our ships”, then opening his eyes and looking at the writer, he added, “And something wrong with our system.”’(34)
What, if anything, was ‘wrong with our ships’ will be considered later. As to the system, the failure here was evident to many commanders and their officers, most clearly perhaps to Commodore Tyrwhitt of the Harwich Force with its fast modern cruisers and destroyers. Its role in a fleet action had been clearly defined in an Admiralty letter of 14 November 1914 It would join Jellicoe if a fleet action was imminent. Naturally enough, Jellicoe and Tyrwhitt had based their tactics on this assumption ever since. Accordingly, at 6.20 p.m. on 30 May Tyrwhitt was ordered to be ready to sail at daylight.
When he was not ordered to sea, Tyrwhitt sent an urgent telegram to the Admiralty. He was told to remain at one hour’s notice. All that morning, Tyrwhitt was straining at the leash. In the afternoon he could bear it no longer. Intercepted W/T signals told him that a fleet action was taking place. At 5.12 p.m. he proceeded to sea and informed the Admiralty, only to be ordered immediately back to harbour.
Tyrwhitt’s temper scarcely improved when he was at length allowed to join Jellicoe at 2.52 a.m. on 1 June when it was all over bar the tidying up. His five light cruisers, two flotilla leaders, and sixteen destroyers, all superbly trained for day and night action, were reduced to escorting damaged men o’war back to their bases.
This last-minute reversal of long-established policy by OD was explained afterwards, in answer to complaints from Jellicoe and Tyrwhitt, by the sudden fear that Scheer’s old pre-dreadnoughts, supported by light forces, might make a raid on the Channel and the Channel ports, even cutting off communications with France by sinking themselves as blockships at the entrance to Calais, Dover and other ports. The Admiralty did not learn, according to Oliver, that the pre-dreadnoughts were accompanying Scheer until ‘very late on the night after the battle’. But it was for this very contingency that the 3rd Cruiser Squadron and 3rd Battle Squadron of pre-dreadnoughts were brought down from Rosyth on 29 April. If according to Jellicoe, it was a ‘sufficiently strong covering force to encounter enemy battle cruisers’, it was certainly capable on its own of dealing with Admiral Mauve’s ‘five-minute’ ships. ‘I’ll never forgive that old figurehead Oliver, who was at the bottom of it all’,(35) Tyrwhitt complained, with some reason, to Keyes.
At noon on 1 June, a funeral service was held in the Lion. The Chaplain was among those killed, and it was left to Chatfield to officiate. Beatty stood behind him on the poop ‘while ninety-nine bodies of the flagship’s company were committed to the deep, in the traditional manner of seamen’.(36)
The same ceremony was followed on board other ships of the Grand Fleet with totalities as they swept north-west through waters thick with wreckage and, here and there, the bodies of German sailors. The mood was solemn among some of the men, elated among others. Like the passing of any experience long anticipated, feared or hoped for, the battle left in its wake for all to savour the satisfaction of achievement. The mystery had faded with the last sound of gunfire, and for those who had felt it, fear had been overcome. There was not a man, from stoker to admiral who did not feel matured by the ordeal. Now they could say, ‘I was at the Battle’, and no one could take that away from them.
And the last, rare slice of luck was, after all, for the British. Due to a German signalling failure, the U -boats from which so much had been expected, did not learn that they were to remain on patrol off the British coast for a further twenty-four hours to attack the Grand Fleet as it returned. Chance sightings led to the firing of a few torpedoes, but none found a target, and every ship was anchored safely in its base by 2 June. Forty-eight hours after the Indomitable fired her last salvo of 12-inch shells, Jellicoe reported to the Admiralty that the Grand Fleet was ready for sea.
The passage home of the High Seas Fleet south down the Danish coast in the channel swept for this purpose had its alarms and excursions. Admiral Behncke’s flagship König, badly holed forward, had taken in so much water that she had to wait three hours for the tide before she could cross the Amrum Bank. The Seydlitz was in an even worse condition, and lagged far behind looking more like some giant half-submerged submarine than a battle-cruiser. She did eventually manage to crawl back to the Jade, but it took her thirty-six hours, and then she had to beach herself at the entrance. At 5.30 a.m. there was a colossal explosion in the battleship Ostfriesland, which convinced the fleet that the area was swarming with British submarines. There was some firing at these phantom submarines, and the sens
e of alarm was heightened by the weary condition of officers and men after their long ordeal. The Ostfriesland managed to keep her place in the line.
In fact there were British submarines in the vicinity but all three of them had orders to remain submerged and resting on the seabed in order to conserve their batteries until 2 June and neither saw nor heard the entire High Seas Fleet passing above them. The fast British minelayer Abdiel, commanded by the intrepid Commander Berwick Curtis, had penetrated this enemy territory ahead of the German Fleet and laid eighty mines so cleverly that it was scarcely possible for the German Fleet to pass through them unscathed. With the good fortune that had blessed Scheer since he had left harbour, his ships escaped them all, and it was a mine that the Abdiel had laid almost a month earlier in these supposedly clear waters which caught the German battleship. That field caught no other German man o’war, however, and by 6.30 a.m. the bulk of the High Seas Fleet was anchored safely in the Jade.
JUTLAND: A RETROSPECTION
The need for GFBO’s, but their needlessly detailed, restrictive and defensive nature – Jellicoe’s unwillingness to consider alterations to them – Contrasting, qualities of British and German men o’war – The ‘flash’ clue to battle-cruiser losses and the attribution of blame – British shell and the reasons for its poor quality – Gunnery records examined – British weakness in reporting and signalling, and its cause Admiralty failure to inform Jellicoe of intercepted German signals – The absence of the Campania possibly a grave loss to the Grand Fleet – Post-engagement speculations and the acrimonious aftermath to the battle – The performance of individual commanders
Any consideration of the Battle of Jutland from the British view must begin with the Grand Fleet Battle Orders around which Jellicoe’s tactical policy was built. They were, for better or for worse, every officer’s guide, a decision manual as sacred in the Grand Fleet as a written constitution to a statesman, or the laws of cricket to players in a test match, It was inevitable that with the matériel advances since Trafalgar greater and more formal guidance should be available to officers, It was all very well in the Napoleonic wars to state that you could do no better than lay close alongside your enemy, This was adequate for 1805 when the ships and weapons had changed little for centuries, As Chatfield put it: ‘What would happen [in Nelson’s time] when two ships met and engaged was, as far as material was concerned, known within definite limits from handed-down experience and from a hundred sea-fights. [Nelson] knew exactly the risks he ran and accurately allowed for them. He had clear knowledge, from long-considered fighting experiences, how long his ships could endure the temporary gunnery disadvantage necessary in order to gain the dominant tactical position he aimed at for a great victory… We had to buy that experience, for our weapons were untried, The risks could not be accurately measured without that experience… Dreadnoughts had never engaged; modern massed destroyer attack had never taken place.’(1)
At Trafalgar Nelson’s approach was at 13 knots and some five hours passed between sighting at dawn and opening fire. At the conclusion of four and a half hours of cannon fire, at ranges down to ten yards, not a ship had been sunk. It was ships boarded and captured that counted. At Jutland Beatty’s speed frequently exceeded 26 knots, eighteen minutes passed between his sighting of Hipper and the opening of fire, In less than an hour a third of his battle-cruisers had been blown up. The cannon and carronade with their effective range of about 1,000 yards had become the dreadnought’s gun and the destroyer’s torpedo with a range of around 20,000 yards. Mines added to the hazards a C.-in-C. had to face. The lowliest powder monkey had a good idea what he was in for at the Battle of the Nile. No one really knew what a modern battle would be like. Even the lessons of Tsu-Shima were now out of date. With such complex, expensive, vulnerable, and untested men o’war, no wonder their movements and conduct had to be placed under some sort of control. But how much?
By definition rules restrict, and they restrict initiative as much as they define conduct and lead to centralization and leader-dependence. This is what Jellicoe wanted and what he achieved by the GFBOs, which poured from the flagship in a steady stream, so that in the first year of his command he had issued 200 close-printed pages covering every contingency the Fleet was likely to encounter, and covering it moreover in sometimes completely inflexible detail. For example:
Method Attack No. 1
The Vice-Admiral leading the ‘D’ line is not to circle the enemy’s rear unless ordered to do so (Signal ‘94’), nor alter course inwards more than two points beyond the direction of deployment.
The GFBOs reveal in almost every line the subordination of the offensive spirit to the defensive spirit, and by consequence to the likely non-decisiveness of any engagement. Although it was the big gun that dominated naval thinking in the construction of the Grand Fleet’s dreadnoughts, it was the underwater weapons and the threat that they posed that dominated much of the GFBOs, and the tactics employed when these dreadnoughts first went into action. The precautionary turn-away accepted as sacred doctrine in the face of a torpedo attack was also a gesture of genuflection to alternative underwater weapons. What could be more restricting of initiative and movement and more likely to lead to disengagement and an indecisive conclusion than Paragraph 14?
Caution as to enemy’s mines in a fleet action
When engaging the enemy’s battle fleet it must be borne in mind that all German destroyers carry mines, and that it is therefore highly dangerous to cross a locality that has been occupied by these vessels.
This is indeed a far cry from ‘something must be left to chance’ in Nelson’s Trafalgar Memorandum.
A further factor which tended towards caution was surprise. So swift had been matériel development (the torpedo increasing its range twentyfold in a decade for example) that the possibility that the enemy had made surprise advances in weaponry had to be taken into consideration. Jellicoe was absolutely convinced that German submarines would work with the Fleet – ‘certain to get among the battleships’ – when they were still quite incapable of the high speeds, submerged or surfaced, of a modern engagement. German destroyers did not in fact carry mines at Jutland. Not long before the battle, Jellicoe got wind of the Germans supposedly refitting their battleships with 17-inch guns, and the Admiralty had the greatest difficulty in disabusing him of this belief. Beyond the construction of such giant weapons, it would have taken prodigious measures to carry out the modifications to the turrets, barbettes, hoists, loading; chambers, magazines, etc. etc. All would have had to be changed, quite apart from the strengthening of the ships’ hulls to take account of the new recoil stresses. But Jellicoe reckoned that he had to be prepared for any surprise.
Surprise in matériel contrasted with predictability in tactical thought, the one element (besides the spirit of the men) which remained unchanged since Nelson’s day. The single line of battle was sacred, because it was safe and proven and no one could think of anything better. This is not quite true as a few Young Turks like Richmond and Dewar favoured a manoeuvre battle. Sturdee might not have possessed a very incisive brain but he was a good tactician and favoured divisional tactics as opposed to monolithic fleet tactics. He was the only squadron commander at Jutland who favoured a deployment to starboard towards Scheer and was shocked when Jellicoe deployed to port.
Although the GFBOs presupposed a slugging match in a single line of battle, the detached activities of the Battle Cruiser Fleet and the existence of the ‘free wing’ 5th Battle Squadron pointed towards greater flexibility than the written word suggested; and so it turned out.
Nevertheless the GFBOs provided a stifling influence on independent thinking and action, which can be seen from the outset to the conclusion of the battle. They also included a paragraph which might have been written prophetically for Jutland, and confirms how rigidly Jellicoe stuck to his own self-imposed rules:
If the Action has been indecisive
It may be necessary, however, to force or accept action so
late in the day that a decisive stage will not be reached before darkness necessitates breaking off the main engagement, and retiring the Fleet clear of the enemy so as to move to a flank unobserved before turning to renew the attack at daylight…
While the GFBOs laid down a complex defensive policy against the underwater threat, they also defined precisely the conduct of gunnery. The 13.5-inch gun was to open fire at 15,000 yards (increased to 18,000 after Dogger Bank), the 12-inch gun at 13,000 yards. ‘At extreme range fire should be by deliberate salvoes until the enemy is hit or straddled.’ Even after Dogger Bank had showed up the folly of slow opening fire, the GFBOs continued to instruct firing every fifty seconds in order to allow the fall of salvoes to be spotted: ‘A ship’s outfit of ammunition will not last long if fire is continuous, and it must therefore be used with discretion.’ 15,000 yards was also beyond the estimated maximum range of German torpedoes and had the advantage of scoring hits with plunging fire on a steep trajectory against the relatively thinly armoured enemy decks in preference to the 12-inch-thick armoured sides. Beatty with his much lighter side armour was a strong advocate of long-range firing, but also (after Dogger Bank) favoured a faster opening rate of fire. His ideal was 16,000 yards, well within the – maximum range of 18,500 yards for his 12-inch-gunned ships. At this range the shell took just twenty-six seconds to reach its target, and this he found was perfect for controlling double salvoes and attaining a high rate of fire.
The deposed Callaghan had favoured decentralization of command. Jellicoe was shocked to discover that his predecessor’s ‘Instructions for the Conduct of a Fleet in Action’ covered only two or three pages and laid down that ‘In carrying out the intentions of the Admiral, Commanders of Squadrons, divisions or sub-divisions should be given a wide discretion as to the conduct of the ships under their immediate control.’ Within two weeks Jellicoe began to change all that, and the first G FBOs arrived in his ships on 18 August 1914. King George V did not enjoy an over-abundance of brains, but his sailor’s instinct was as sound as anyone’s. He was right to fear the worst if Fisher was brought back. And he may have been right to have preferred Callaghan to remain as C.-in-C. If that admiral had been allowed to exceed his retirement age, the King’s son and future George VI who served as a midshipman at Jutland might have been present at the twentieth-century’s Trafalgar instead of an indecisive engagement. Callaghan was also very fit and never complained about his health and how exhausting it was to command a fleet.
The Great War at Sea: 1914-1918 Page 35