THE ACTIONS
The naval operations suggested and described in the following
chapters are the surprise attack that Germany did _not_ deliver, the
destruction of _Koenigsberg_, the capture of _Emden_, Cradock’s heroic
self-sacrifice off Coronel, the destruction of Von Spee’s squadron
off the Falkland Islands, the affair of the Heligoland Bight, the
pursuit of Von Hipper across the Dogger Bank, the battle of Jutland,
and finally, the operations carried out against Zeebrügge and Ostend
in the fourth year of the war. I have not in these chapters followed
strict chronological order, but have arranged them so as to present the
problems of sea fighting as they arise in a crescendo of interest and
complexity.
Modern war is fought in conditions to which history offers no parallel.
Both the British and German Governments have maintained the strictest
reserve in regard to every operation. When one reads the despatches it
is quite obvious to the least instructed student of war, that their
publication has been guided by the consciousness that within two or
three days of issue the text would be in the enemy’s hands. Every atom
of information, then, that could be of the slightest value to the
Germans has been ruthlessly excised, with results to a great extent
ruinous to lay comprehension of the events described. This being so,
I wish it clearly to be understood that every opinion or judgment
expressed in these chapters must obviously be subject to modification
and revision when further information becomes available. Generally
speaking, too, the plans I have included with the text have no pretence
whatever to be authentic, but are presented simply as diagrammatic ways
of making the text intelligible. No more can be claimed for them than
that they should not be inconsistent with the information officially
given. The plans of the Falkland Islands engagements are the only
exceptions. These I believe to be substantially correct.
In the destruction of _Koenigsberg_ the main interest is the solution
of a gunnery problem in itself not very intricate, if once the means of
carrying it out exist and the right method of procedure is recognized.
But in the actual operations the men on the spot had to do an immense
number of things before the problem could be tackled at all, and in the
solution of the gunnery problem they had to learn from the beginning
and so discover, from their failure at the first attempt, the method
which was so brilliantly successful on the second. In this respect
the story isolates a single and, as I have said, a simple problem in
gunnery and illustrates what is meant by right technique. Apart from
this, the story is full of human interest and exhibits the exceptional
advantages which naval training gives to those who have to extemporize
methods of dealing with circumstances and difficulties without the
guidance of experience.
In the _Sydney-Emden_ engagement we have a very good example of the
modern single ship action. Not the least of its points of interest
is that _Sydney_ seems to have lost her rangefinder a very few
minutes after the action began. At first sight it would seem to be an
absolutely disabling loss. In some quarters more emphasis has been
laid on the value of a good rangefinder to fire control than to any
other element of that highly debated branch of naval science. But in
this engagement, as in that of _Koenigsberg_, the enemy was destroyed
by a ship that did not use a rangefinder at all. The action thus not
only shows the place which the observation of fire takes in the art
of sea fighting, but illustrates in the highest degree the value of
long practice in gunnery. Since 1905 every commissioned ship in the
fleet has worked assiduously on this problem, and, whether the methods
in use have been good, bad, or indifferent, this practice produced a
race of officers extraordinarily well equipped for dealing with fire
control as a practical problem. It is highly probable, if the methods
and instruments they have been given have not always been of the best,
that this fact, by throwing them on their own resources, did much to
stimulate that singular capacity for extemporization which we shall see
illustrated in the _Koenigsberg_ business. Moreover, this is a faculty
in which our officers seem to excel the Germans greatly. In this fight,
as in so many others, it was the enemy who first opened fire, and it
was his opening salvoes that were the most accurate. But the enemy has
seldom kept this initial advantage, whereas we shall generally find the
British personnel improving as the action proceeds. It would appear,
then, that as the material suffers the Germans, who are most dependent
on it, have on the whole shown less resource than our own officers.
In the action off Coronel the heroic self-sacrifice of the British
force overlays the technical interest. In one respect it is altogether
unique, for it is the only action in this war in which the weaker
and faster squadron sought action with one of incalculably greater
fighting power but of inferior speed. Neither side seems to have
manœuvred in a way that would have added to the difficulties of fire
control, but as, apart from manœuvring, the shooting conditions were
extraordinarily difficult, one is forced to the conclusion that the
deciding factor was less the great superiority of the enemy’s force,
as measured by the weight of his broadsides, than the still more
marked superiority that arose from his having a more modern and more
homogeneous armament.
At the Falkland Islands the all-big-gun ship appeared for the first
time in a sea action and, although opposed by vessels whose armament
was no match for such heavy metal, it was actually employed according
to the tactics officially set out as the basis of the Dreadnought idea
in design; the tactics, that is to say, of keeping away from an enemy,
so as to maintain a range favourable to the more powerfully gunned
ship. The battle resolved itself into three separate actions, and it
was on this principle that Sir Doveton Sturdee fought the Graf von Spee
and his two battle-cruisers, and that the Captain of the _Cornwall_
engaged _Leipzig_. But, curiously enough, in the engagement between
_Kent_ and _Nürnberg_ a different principle is seen at work. Captain
Allen pursued at full speed until he had crippled the enemy’s engines,
and then, as his speed fell off, continued to close till he was able
to silence him altogether at a range of 3,000 yards. Thus on a single
day two diametrically opposed tactical doctrines were exemplified by
officers under a single command.
In each of these four actions the tactics of the gun escaped
complication by the distractions and difficulties which torpedo attack
imposes on long-range gunnery. In our next action, the affair off
Heligoland, the torpedo figures largely, because visibility was limited
to about 6,000 yards. The affair off Heligoland cannot be described
as an engagement. It was primarily a reconnaissance in force developed
into a series of skirmishes and single ship actions, which began at
seven in the morning and ended at mid-day. Submarines, destroyers,
cruisers of several types and, finally, battle-cruisers, were employed
on the British side. There were sharp artillery engagements between
destroyers, there were torpedo attacks made by destroyers on light
cruisers and by submarines on battle-cruisers. But they were not massed
attacks on ships in formation, but isolated efforts at marksmanship,
and they were all of them unsuccessful. This failure of the torpedo
as a weapon of precision is of considerable technical interest. The
light thrown on gunnery problems by the events of the day is less easy
to define. The chief interest of this raid into the Bight lies in the
strategical idea which prompted it and in its moral effects on the
British and German naval forces. That Sir David Beatty, in command of
four battle-cruisers, should coolly have challenged the German Fleet
to fight and that this challenge was not accepted, was extremely
significant. It was of special value to our side, for it showed the
British Navy to possess a naval leader who knew how to combine dash and
caution and marked by a talent for leadership as conspicuous as the
personal bravery which had won him his early promotions.
These qualities were still better displayed in the engagement off the
Dogger Bank. This action is remarkable in several respects. For the
first time destroyers were here employed to make massed torpedo attacks
on a squadron of capital ships. The particular defensive functions of
such torpedo attacks will be discussed in the proper place. Suffice it
to say here that no torpedo hit, but that the British were robbed of
victory by a chance shot which disabled Sir David Beatty’s flagship,
and deprived the squadron of its leader when bold leadership was most
needed. Why the action was broken off by Rear-Admiral Moore, who
succeeded to the command, has never been explained, and the unfortunate
wording of an Admiralty _communiqué_ gave the world for some time an
impression that Sir David Beatty--of all people--had retreated from the
threat of German submarines.
The battle of Jutland eclipses in technical interest all the other
engagements put together. It presents, of course on a far larger
scale, all the problems hitherto met separately. We are still far too
imperfectly informed as to many of the incidents of this battle for it
to be possible to attempt any complete analysis of its tactics, or to
indicate the line on which judgment will ultimately declare itself. We
are, for example, entirely without information either about the method
of deployment prescribed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet
at six o’clock, or of the theory on which the night attack by the
destroyer on the retreating German Fleet was ordered. We do not know
how it was that a misunderstanding[A] arose between the battle-cruiser
fleet and the battle fleet as to the time and place of junction, nor
the arrangements which resulted in contact with the German Fleet being
lost after the action was over. It is, therefore, only possible to
discuss those points on which light has been thrown by the despatch,
and the principles of action which the Commander-in-Chief has set out
in various speeches delivered after he had ceased to command at sea.
[A] The positions of the two fleets at six o’clock had
been estimated by dead reckoning, both in _Lion_ and
in _Iron Duke_. The two reckonings did not agree, and
the Commander-in-Chief said in the despatch that such a
discrepancy was inevitable. The word “misunderstanding” in
the text must not be taken to mean that the calculation in
either fleet was avoidable, still less reprehensibly, wrong.
In the engagement off the Falkland Islands, it will be remembered that
there was a marked contrast between the tactical methods followed in
the pursuit of Von Spee and those adopted by Captain Allen in his
pursuit of _Nürnberg_. In the battle of Jutland we shall find a still
more marked contrast between the strategic conceptions of the two
leaders of the British forces.
Admiral Beatty seems to have acted throughout as if the enemy should
be brought to battle and destroyed, almost regardless of risk. The
Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet seems to have been willing to
engage only if he could do so without jeopardizing the forces under his
command. The one was bent on victory, the other seemed satisfied--so
long as the enemy were thwarted in any ulterior purpose--if only the
British Fleet were saved from losses.
It followed from such very opposite views, that their tactical methods
differed also. At each stage of the action Sir David Beatty’s tactic
was to get his forces into action at the first possible moment and
to keep them in action as long as possible. Thus when the news first
reaches him that the enemy is to the northeast, he leads his whole
fleet at top speed straight for the Horn Reef to get between him and
his base. And this he does without waiting for any information about
the composition of the enemy’s force. Whether it is the battle-cruiser
and light forces only, or the whole German Fleet, his first idea is
to make sure that _he_ is in a position to engage if he wishes to. As
it was at 3:0 P.M., so it was at each stage after he got into action.
The reduction of his squadron by one third does not seem to have upset
the coolness of his judgment or the firmness of his determination in
the least degree. When he found himself opposed, no longer by five
battle-cruisers, but by sixteen Dreadnought battleships as well, he
reversed the course of the fleet, made Evan-Thomas fall in behind him,
and, during a holding action for the next hour, kept the Germans under
his guns, risking their fire, threatening the head of their line, and
half-cajoling, half-forcing Scheer northward to where the British
fleets would be united. The moment contact becomes imminent--knowing
that the light might at any moment fail--he forces the pace and
discounts risks incalculably greater than at any time during the day,
if only the enormous striking power of the Grand Fleet can be brought
for once into action as a whole. And so, regardless of the punishment
his fleet had received earlier in the day, he shortens the range from
14,000 yards to 12,000 and then from 12,000 to 8,000, in a last effort
to hold the enemy, while the Grand Fleet deploys and comes into action.
There is no foolhardiness in his tactics, for the speed that enables
him to head the German line is not only the best defence of his own
squadron against torpedo attack. He has made it almost impossible for
the German destroyers to enfilade the Grand Fleet, if only it deploys
at full speed on him. He knows, of course, that at 8,000 yards the side
armour of his ships will not keep out the enemy’s shells. But he has
demoralized the German gunfire by his own once before and, confident in
the superior coolness and nerve of his officers and crews, he relies on
this element again as the best defence of his squadron.
It is not till 6:50, when he realizes that his whole effort has
miscarried, that he makes the entry in his despatch which seems to me
one of the most tragic phrases ever used by a great master of fighting.
He had been baulked of victory at the Dogger Bank by a chance injury
to his ship, when his squadron came under the command of an Admiral
trained in the tenets of Whitehall. Now on May 31 he had executed a
master stroke of tactics. The armoured cruiser, designed to be a swift
bully over the weak, he had used to confound and paralyze the strong.
There had been many a discussion as to the tactical value of speed
when the Dreadnought type was first designed, but no thinker had had
the daring to forecast any such stroke as Sir David Beatty planned and
executed off the Jutland Reefs. But it was a stroke struck in vain. “By
6:50 the battle-cruisers were clear of our leading Battle Squadron,
then bearing about north northwest three miles and I ... reduced to 18
knots.”
There was no more to try for that day. When, a quarter of an hour
afterwards, the Grand Fleet starts south, he hunts for and heads the
German line again. But it is all to no purpose. Yet he does not give
up hope. At half-past nine darkness makes further pursuit impossible,
but at any rate “our strategical position was such as to make it
appear certain that we should locate the enemy at daylight under most
favourable circumstances.” It is plain, then, that he had a plan for
next day’s battle, just as he had had one for the hard and costly day
just passed. To the last the thought still preoccupies him that has
been his guide throughout. The enemy must be found and destroyed.
The Commander-in-Chief, however, whatever his anxiety for victory,
is plainly concerned throughout by the enormous responsibility that
weighs upon him as the guardian of the fleet under his command.
Only one of the ships was hit by gunfire and only one was struck by
torpedo! In summing up the story of the day, “the hardest fighting,”
he says, “fell to the lot of the Battle Cruiser Fleet ... the Fifth
Battle Squadron, the First Cruiser Squadron, the Fourth Light Cruiser
Squadron, and the flotillas.” But he must add a note, that the units
of the Battle Cruiser Fleet were _less heavily armoured_ than their
opponents! The obsession of the defensive idea is obvious. “The enemy
constantly turned away and opened the range under cover of destroyer
attacks and smoke screens.” “The German Fleet appeared to rely very
much on torpedo attacks, which were favoured by low visibility, and
by the fact that we had arrived in the position of a ‘following’ or
‘chasing’ fleet. A large number of torpedoes were apparently fired, but
only one took effect (on _Marlborough_), and even in this case the ship
was able to remain in the line and to continue the action.”
“The enemy opened the range under cover of destroyer attacks ... which
were favoured by the fact ... that we had arrived in the position
of a ‘following’ ... fleet.” Had Admiral Jerram’s squadron followed
full speed straight into the wake of the battle-cruisers, had the
whole Grand Fleet deployed on Sir David Beatty’s track, the enemy’s
business should have been finished, for Scheer never could have turned
under such a concentration of fire. But the form of the deployment
created the situation that Scheer needed. It exposed the fleet to the
torpedoes. And the risk was not faced. Speaking eight months afterwards
at the Fishmongers’ Hall, Admiral Jellicoe explained why. “The torpedo,
as fired from surface vessels, is effective certainly up to 10,000
yards range, and _this requires_ that a ship shall keep beyond this
distance to fight her guns. As conditions of visibility, in the North
Sea particularly, are frequently such as to make fighting difficult
beyond a range of 10,000 yards, and as modern fleets are invariably
accompanied by very large numbers of destroyers, whose main duty is
to attack with torpedoes the heavy ships of the enemy, it will be
recognized how great becomes the responsibility of the Admiral in
command of a fleet, particularly under the conditions of low visibility
to which I have referred. As soon as destroyers tumble upon a fleet
within torpedo range the _situation becomes critical for the heavy
ships_.”
At Jutland three British and one German battle-cruiser were sunk by
gunfire. At Dogger Bank _Lion_ was disabled by a chance shot. Ten
German battleships and one British were struck by torpedoes on May 31.
One of these, one only, and she in all probability hit simultaneously
by several, blew up. The other nine German ships and _Marlborough_
all reached port in safety. Surely, if the situation of heavy ships
is “critical” when within torpedo range, their situation when within
reach of heavy guns must be more critical still. Is it possible to
distinguish and say that one form of risk is _always_, and the other
_never_, to be run? Is not the issue identical with that raised by the
abandonment of the Dogger Bank pursuit--if it is true that pursuit was
abandoned, as the Admiralty told us, on account of the presence of
submarines?
At any rate, we see in this attitude one that stands in sharp contrast
to Sir David Beatty’s. He had faced torpedo attack in the Bight of
Heligoland, and submarine attack in the Dogger Bank affair, and
seemingly in the early fighting of May 31, without allowing the menace
to influence him to avoid action. He took the right precautions against
it. He had his cruisers and flotillas out as a screen, but having done
all that was humanly possible to parry the attack he then, with a
clear conscience, went for victory.
The same contrast is seen in the events of June 1. Sir John Jellicoe
was perfectly willing to fight if the Germans would come out and
fight on his conditions. At 4:0 A.M. an enemy Zeppelin flew over
the fleet, so that its position was known to Scheer. Yet says the
Commander-in-Chief, “the enemy made no sign.” His own pre-occupation
is not to find the enemy, but his own light forces. He thinks it worth
recording that he hung about the scene of the yesterday’s battle, “in
spite of the ... danger incurred in waters adjacent to enemy coasts
from submarine and torpedo craft.” Napoleon speaks bitterly of his
admirals, who acted as though they could win victory without taking
risks.
A strong case can, of course, be made for the doctrine on which Sir
John Jellicoe acted on these two days, a doctrine endorsed by the
Admiralty, so far at least as it was shown in action on the first and
only opportunity the British Fleet was given of utterly destroying
the enemy. The defence can hardly be put better than it was by Mr.
Churchill in his _London Magazine_ article. Nor am I concerned here to
argue the pros and cons on a point on which there can be little doubt
as to the judgment of posterity. I direct attention to the singular
fact that the British Fleet on May 31 fought as two separate units
until six o’clock, and that the leaders of the two sections were
animated by conflicting theories of war. One admiral represents the
fighting fervour of the fleet: the other the caution--perhaps the wise
caution--of the Higher Command.
There is no getting out of this dilemma. If Admiral Jellicoe was right
in refusing to face the risks inseparable from a resolute effort to
make the battle decisive, then Sir David Beatty must have been wrong
to have fought in a way which cannot be intelligently explained except
on the basis that from first to last he had decisive victory as his
object. If the tender care that brought the Grand Fleet through the
action with hardly a man killed and only two ships touched, was right
and wise, then the clear vision, all the more luminous for seeing
and counting the cost, which exposed _Indefatigable_, _Queen Mary_,
and _Invincible_ to destruction, was woefully wrong. Now it seems
extraordinary, if the strategy of waiting to fight till the Germans
attacked was right--if this was the Admiralty doctrine--that it was not
communicated to Sir David Beatty as well as to Sir John Jellicoe. If
it was axiomatic to avoid the risk of ships being destroyed, so that
Admiral Moore was right to break off the action at the Dogger Bank and
Admiral Jellicoe right in letting the enemy “open the range under the
cover of torpedo attacks,” why was not Admiral Beatty forbidden to
jeopardize his ships, and Admiral Arbuthnot warned against any pursuit
of the enemy’s cruisers or destroyers, that might possibly bring him
within range of the German gunfire? How are we to explain Bingham’s
attack on the head of the German line or Goodenough’s reconnaissance
which brought him under the salvoes of the German guns at 12,000
yards? Is the doctrine of caution and ship conservation to apply only
to battleships and not to battle-cruisers, armoured cruisers, light
cruisers, and destroyers? Is it only the battle fleet that is not to
fight except when it risks practically nothing by doing so? All these
questions are forced to the student’s attention when he reviews the
events here recorded.
Many defects in our preparations for war have been attributed to our
lack of staff machinery in the years preceding the war. The defenceless
state of the fleet’s bases, the absence of any policy for using mines,
or the means for carrying one out, the contrast between our pre-war
confidence in our gunnery methods and what they have achieved in
action, these and a score of other deficiencies have been attributed,
and probably rightly, to our failure to appreciate the fact that modern
war is so various and complicated a thing, and employs instruments and
weapons and methods, the full possibilities of which are so obscure
that only a long concerted effort could analyze and unravel them, that
no organ except a General Staff could possibly have laid down the right
doctrine of war or ensured the means of its application. But of all
the evidence of what we had lost by its absence, I know of none more
striking than that from the outbreak of war until Sir David Beatty took
command of the whole main forces of the navy, those forces should have
been divided, and the two divisions commanded by men whose views as to
the main purpose for which the force existed were utterly incompatible.
It is amazing that Whitehall either never knew that this divergency of
doctrine existed, or, knowing it, should not have secured that one or
the other doctrine should predominate.
No official despatches descriptive of the attacks on Zeebrügge and
Ostend have been published. For these extraordinary events, then, we
have to rely upon the stories officially given out by the Admiralty’s
descriptive writer and the interviews which the officers concerned were
allowed to give to different journalists.