THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND
I. NORTH SEA STRATEGIES
The battle off Jutland Bank, which took place on May 31, 1916, was the
first and, at the time of writing, has been the only meeting between
the main naval forces of Great Britain and Germany. It was from the
first inevitable that we should have to wait long for a sea fight. It
was inevitable, because the probability of a smaller force being not
only decisively defeated, but altogether destroyed in a sea fight,
is far greater than in a land battle, and the consciousness of this
naturally makes it chary of the risk. Sea war in this respect preserves
the characteristic of ancient land fighting, for--as is luminously
explained in Commandant Colin’s incomparable “Transformations of
War”--it was a common characteristic of the older campaigns that the
main armies would remain almost in touch with each other month after
month before the battle took place. He sums up his generalization thus:
“From the highest antiquity,” he says, “till the time of Frederick II,
operations present the same character; not only Fabius or Turenne, but
also Cæsar, Condé, and Frederick, lead their armies in the same way.
Far from the enemy they force the pace, but as soon as they draw near
they move hither and thither in every direction, take days, weeks,
months in deciding to accept or to force battle. Whether the armies are
made up of hoplites or legionaries, or pikemen or musketeers, they
move as one whole and deploy very slowly. They cannot hurl themselves
upon the enemy as soon as they perceive him, because while they are
making ready for battle he disappears in another direction.
“In order to change this state of affairs we must somehow or another
be able to put into the fight big divisions, each deploying on its own
account, leaving gaps and irregularities along the front.
“This, as we have seen, is what happened in the eighteenth century.
“Up to the time of Frederick II, armies remained indivisible during
operations; they are like mathematical points on the huge theatres of
operations in Central Europe. It is not possible to grasp, to squeeze,
or even to push back on some obstacle, an enemy who refuses battle, and
retires laterally as well as backwards. There is no end to the pursuit.
It is the war of Cæsar, as it was that of Condé, Turenne, Montecuculi,
Villars, Eugène, Maurice de Saxe, and Frederick. It is the sort of
war that all more or less regular armies have made from the remotest
antiquity down to the middle of the eighteenth century.
“Battle only takes place by mutual consent, when both adversaries, as
at Rocroi, are equally sure of victory, and throw themselves at one
another in open country as if for a duel; or when one of them, as at
Laufeld, cannot retreat without abandoning the struggle; or when one is
surprised, as at Rossbach.
“And certainly to-day, as heretofore, a general may refuse battle; but
he cannot prolong his retreat for long--it is the only means that he
has for escaping the grip of the enemy--if the depth of the theatre
of operations is limited. On the other hand, an enemy formerly could
retire laterally, and disappear for months by perpetually running to
and fro, always taking cover behind every obstacle in order to avoid
attack.”
But at sea a fleet has to-day precisely the same power of avoiding
action that an army had in former days. It cannot disappear for months
by “running to and fro,” but it can disappear for years by burying
itself in inaccessible harbours. It can, in other words, take itself
out of the theatre of war altogether while yet retaining liberty at any
moment to re-enter it. How, in view of these potentialities, did the
rival fleets dispose their forces?
On April 25, 1916, some German cruisers made an attack on Lowestoft,
similar in character but far less considerable in result to those
made in the autumn of 1914, on the same small town, on Scarborough,
Whitby, and the Hartlepools. As in 1914, there was considerable
perturbation on the East Coast, and the Admiralty, urged to take steps
for the protection of the seaboard towns, made a somewhat startling
announcement. While this was going forward in England, the German
Admiralty put out an inspired commentary on the raid, which dwelt with
great exultation over the picture of “the Island Empire, once so proud,
now quivering with rage at its own impotence.” These two documents, the
First Lord’s and the German apology, led to a good deal of discussion,
which I dealt with at the time in terms that I quote textually, as
showing the general conception of naval strategy underlying the
dispositions of the British Fleet.
“The directly military employment of the British Fleet has during
the last week been made the subject of discussion. Mr. Balfour has
written a strange letter to the Mayors of the East Coast towns, which
foreshadows important developments; an inspired German apology for
the recent raid on Yarmouth and Lowestoft has been published, and both
have aroused comment. Mr. Balfour’s letter was inspired by a desire to
reassure the battered victims of the German bombardment. He realized
that the usual commonplace that these visits had little military value
no longer met the case, and proceeded to threaten the Germans with new
and more effective methods of meeting them, should these murderous
experiments be repeated. The new measures were to take two forms. The
towns themselves would be locally defended by monitors and submarines,
and, without disturbing naval preponderance elsewhere, new units would
be brought farther south, so that the interception of raiders would be
made more easy. But for one consideration the publication of such a
statement as this would be inexplicable. If the effective destruction
of German raiders really had been prepared, the last thing the
Admiralty would be expected to do would be to acquaint the enemy with
the disconcerting character of its future reception. Count Reventlow
indeed explains the publication by the fact that no such preparations
have indeed been made. But the thing is susceptible of a more probable
explanation.
“When Mr. Churchill, in the high tide of his optimism, addressed the
House of Commons at the beginning of last year--he had the Falkland
Islands and the Dogger Bank battles, the obliteration of the German
ocean cruising force, the extinction of the enemy merchant marine, the
security of English communications to his credit--he explained the
accumulated phenomena of our sea triumph by the splendid perfection
of his pre-war preparedness. The submarine campaign, the failure of
the Dardanelles, the revelation of the defenceless state of the
northeastern harbours, these things have somewhat modified the picture
that the ex-First Lord drew. And, not least of our disillusions, we
have all come to realize that in our neglect of the airship we have
allowed the enemy to develop, for his sole benefit, a method of naval
scouting that is entirely denied to us. That the British Admiralty and
the British Fleet perfectly realize this disadvantage is the meaning
of Mr. Balfour’s letter. He would not have told the enemy of our new
North Sea arrangements had he not known that he could not be kept in
ignorance of them for longer than a week or two, once they were made.
The letter is, in fact, an admission that our sea power has to a great
extent lost what was at one time its supreme prerogative, _the capacity
of strategical surprise_.
“But this does not materially alter the dynamics of the North Sea
position, although it greatly affects tactics. The German official
apologist will have it, however, that another factor has altered these
dynamics. Admiral Jellicoe, he says, may be secure enough with his
vast fleet in his ‘great bay in the Orkneys,’ and, between that and
the Norwegian coast, hold a perfectly effective blockade line, but
all British calculations of North Sea strategy have been upset by
the establishment of new enemy naval bases at Zeebrügge, Ostend, and
Antwerp. He speaks glibly, as if the co-operation of the forces based
on the Bight with those in the stolen Belgian ports had altered the
position fundamentally. This, of course, is the veriest rubbish. So
far no captured Belgian port has been made the base for anything more
important than submarines that can cross the North Sea under water, and
for the few destroyers that have made a dash through in the darkness.
Such balderdash as this, and that the German battle-cruisers did not
take to flight, but simply ‘returned to their bases’ without waiting
for the advent of ‘superior forces,’ imposes on nobody. It remains,
of course, perfectly manifest that our surface control of the North
Sea is as absolute as the character of modern weapons and the present
understanding of their use make possible.
“The principles behind our North Sea Strategy are simple. One hundred
years ago, had our main naval enemy been based on Cuxhaven and Kiel,
we should have held him there by as close a blockade as the number of
ships at our disposal, the weather conditions, and the seamanship of
our captains made possible. The development of the steam-driven ship
modified the theory of close blockade and, even without the torpedo,
would have made, with the speed now attainable, an exact continuation
of the old practice impossible. The under-water torpedo has simply
emphasized and added to difficulties that would, without it, have been
insuperable. But it has undoubtedly extended the range at which the
blockading force must hold itself in readiness. To reproduce, then,
in modern conditions the effect brought about by close blockade in
our previous wars, it is necessary to have a naval base at a suitable
distance from the enemy’s base. It must be one that is proof against
under-water or surface torpedo vessel attack, and it must be so
constituted that the force that normally maintains itself there is
capable of prompt and rapid sortie, and of pouncing upon any enemy
fleet that attempts to break out of the harbour in which it is intended
to confine it.
“The great bay in the Orkneys’ may, for all I know to the contrary,
supply at the present moment the Grand Fleet’s main base for such
blockade as we enforce. But there are a great many other ports, inlets,
and estuaries on the East Coast of Scotland and England which are
hardly likely to be entirely neglected. Not all, nor many, of these
would be suitable for fleet units of the greatest size and speed, but
some undoubtedly are suitable, and all those that are could be made to
satisfy the conditions of complete protection against secret attack.
Assuming the main battle fleet to be at an extremely northerly point,
any more southerly base which is kept either by battle cruisers, light
cruisers, or submarines may be regarded as an advance base, if for no
other reason than that it is so many miles nearer to the German base.
The Orkneys are 200 miles farther from Lowestoft than Lowestoft is from
Heligoland. An Orkney concentration while making the escape of the
Germans to the northward impossible, would leave them comparatively
free to harry the East Coast of England. If, approaching during the
night, they could arrive off that coast before the northern forces
had news of their leaving their harbours, they would have many hours’
start in the race home. It is not, then, a close blockade that was
maintained. This freedom had to be left the enemy--because no risk
could be taken in the main theatre. It is assumed on the one side
and admitted on the other, that Germany could gain nothing and would
risk everything by attempting to pass down the Channel. The Channel
is closed to the German Fleet precisely as the Sound is closed to the
British. It is not that it is physically impossible for either fleet
to get through, but that to force a passage would involve an operation
employing almost every kind of craft. Minefields would have to be
cleared, and battleships would have to be in attendance to protect the
mine-sweepers. The battleships in turn would have to be protected from
submarine attack, and as the operation of securing either channel
would take some time, there would be a virtual certainty of the force
employed being attacked in the greatest possible strength. In narrow
waters the fleet trying to force a passage would be compelled to engage
in the most disadvantageous possible circumstances. The Channel is
closed, then, for the Germans, as the Sound is closed to the British,
not by the under-water defences, but by the fact that to clear these
would involve an action in which the attacking party would be at too
great a disadvantage. The concentration, then, in the north of a
force adequate to deal with the _whole_ German Fleet--again I have
to say in the light of the way in which the use of modern weapons is
understood--remains our fundamental strategical principle.”
I then went on to reply to the critics who had said that the use of
monitors for coast defence was the most disturbing feature of a very
unwise series of departures from true policy, and then passed on to
what seemed to me the more serious criticism, as follows:
“The attack on this part of Mr. Balfour’s policy is vastly more
damaging. For it asserts that the policy of defensive offence, Great
Britain’s traditional sea strategy, has now been reversed. The East
Coast towns may expect comparative immunity, but only because the
strategic use of our forces has been altered. It is a modification
imposed upon the Admiralty by the action of the enemy. Its weakness
lies in the ‘substitution of squadrons _in fixed positions_ for
periodical sweeps in force through the length and breadth of the North
Sea.’ Were this indeed the meaning of Mr. Balfour’s letter and the
intention of his policy, nothing more deplorable could be imagined.
“But what ground is there for thinking that this is Mr. Balfour’s
meaning? He says nothing of the kind. He makes it quite clear that a
new arrangement is made possible by _additional units_ of the first
importance now being ready to use. The old provision of adequate
naval preponderance at the right point has not been disturbed. It is
merely proposed to establish new and advanced bases from which the new
available squadrons can strike. It stands to reason that the nearer
this base is to the shortest line between Heligoland and the East
Coast, the greater the chance of the force within it being able to
fall upon Germany’s cruising or raiding units if they venture within
the radius of its action. To establish a new or more southerly base,
then, is a development of, and not a departure from, our previous
strategy--it shortens the radius of German freedom. If there is nothing
to show that the old distribution is changed, certainly there is no
suggestion that the squadron destined for the new base will be ‘fixed’
there. If squadrons now based on the north are there only to pounce
upon the emerging German ships, why should squadrons based farther
south not be employed for a similar purpose?”
The foregoing will make it clear that the general idea of British
strategy was to maintain, to the extreme north of these islands,
an overwhelming force of capital ships. It was adopted because it
economized strength and secured the main object--viz. the paralysis of
our enemy, outside certain narrow limits.
The southern half of the North Sea--say, roughly from Peterhead to
the Skagerack, 400 miles; from the Skagerack to Heligoland, 250; from
Heligoland to Lowestoft, 300; and from Lowestoft to Peterhead, 350
miles--was left as a kind of no man’s land. If the Germans chose to
cruise about in this area, they took the chance of being cut off and
engaged by the British forces, whose policy it was to leave their
bases from time to time for what Sir John Jellicoe in the Jutland
despatch describes as “periodic sweeps through the North Sea.” But
the German Fleet being supplied with Zeppelins, could, in weather
in which Zeppelins could scout, get information so far afield as to
be able to choose the times for their own cruises in the North Sea,
and so make the procedure a perfectly safe one, so long as chance
encounters with submarines and straying into British mine-fields could
be avoided. Thus for the old policy of close blockade was substituted
a new one, that of leaving the enemy a large field in which he might
be tempted to manœuvre; and it had this value, that should he yield to
the temptation, an opportunity must sooner or later be afforded to the
British Fleet of cutting him off and bringing him to action. Meantime
he was cut off from any large adventure far afield. He would have to
fight for freedom. It gave, so to speak, the Germans the chance of
playing a new sort of “Tom Tiddler’s ground.” The point to bear in mind
is, that it left the Germans precisely the same freedom to seek or
avoid action as the armies of antiquity possessed. Thus no naval battle
could be expected unless--as Colin says--the weaker wished to fight, or
was cornered or surprised.
Now, against surprise, the German Fleet was seemingly protected
by Zeppelins. It could hardly be cornered unless, in weather in
which aerial scouting was impossible, it was tempted to some great
adventure--such as the despatch of a raiding force to invade--which
would enable a fast British division to get between this force and
its base. So that the chance of a fleet action really turned upon the
Germans being willing to fight one. And they could not be expected to
be anxious for this. “A war,” says Colin, “is always slow in which we
know that the battle will be decisive, and it is so important as to be
only accepted voluntarily.”
The state of relative strength in May, 1916, was not such as to afford
the Germans the slightest hope of a decisive victory if it brought the
whole British Fleet to action. Nor was the naval situation such that
there was any stroke that Germany could execute if it could hold the
command of some sea passage for twenty-four hours or so. There was
nothing it could expect to achieve if, by defeating or at any rate
standing off one section of the British Fleet, it could enjoy a brief
local ascendancy.
The argument, indeed, was all the other way. The professed main
naval policy of Germany, viz., the blockade of England by submarine,
though for the moment in abeyance, was being held in reserve until
the military and political situation made the stake worth the candle.
Now, deliberately to risk the High Seas Fleet in an action on the
grand scale, when the chances of decisive victory were remote and the
probability of annihilation extremely high, was to jeopardize not the
fleet alone but also the blockade. For, with the High Seas Fleet once
out of the way, the one stroke against the submarine which could alone
be perfectly effective, viz., the close under-water blockade by mines,
immediately outside the German harbours, would at once become feasible.
So far, then, as military considerations went, the arguments against
seeking action were far stronger than those in its favour.
But in war it is not always reasons which are purely military that
operate; and as this war got into its second year there were many
forces, each of which contributed something towards driving the
German Navy into action. First, and in all probability by far the
most powerful, would be the impatience of a large body of brave and
skilful seamen--in control of an enormous sea force--with the _rôle_
of idleness and impotence that had been imposed upon them. The German
apologist, when uttering his pæans of triumph over the bombardments of
Lowestoft, said, on May 7:
“It must not be assumed that this adventure was a mere question of
bombarding some fortified coast places. It would also be a mistake to
think that it was only an expression of the spirit of enterprise in our
young Navy. The spirit is indeed just as fresh as ever, and is simply
thirsting for deeds, and when one sees or talks to officers and men one
reads on their lips the desire ‘If only we could get out.’ The sitting
still during the spring and winter may also play their part in this.
Only a well-considered leadership knows when it will use this thirst
for action, and employ it in undertakings which keep the great whole in
view. Our Navy, thank God, does not need to pursue prestige policy; the
services which it has already rendered us are too considerable and too
important for that.”
There is no occasion to quarrel with a word in this passage. The German
admirals and captains in command of twenty-three or twenty-four of the
most powerful ships in the world must certainly have been straining at
the leash. This, then, would be a predisposing cause to a battle of
some kind being voluntarily sought by the weaker force.
And in May, 1916, there were other causes as well. The German Higher
Command, while ignorant perhaps of the exact points at which the
Allies would attack, must have been very perfectly aware that attacks
of the most formidable character, and on all fronts, were impending.
It also knew that the resources of the Central Empires were to this
extent relatively exhausted, that all the Allied attacks, when they
came, must result in a series of successes, not of course immediately
decisive, but such as no counter-attacks could balance or neutralize.
Austria and Germany, in short, would be shown to be on the defensive.
They would have to yield ground. It may not have seemed a situation
bound to lead to military defeat. For the superiority of the Allies--at
least so it may have appeared to the German command--in men and
ammunition and _moral_, would have to be overwhelming to bring this
about.
But the Higher Command had made the mistake of carrying the civil
population with them in the declaration and prosecution of the war,
first by the promise and then by the assertion of overwhelming victory.
But the victory that was claimed did not materialize in the way that is
normal to great victories. There was no submission of the enemy, and no
sign of a wish for an honourable peace. What was worse, the defeated
enemy had shown an almost unlimited capacity to starve and hamper
their conquerors. It was bad enough that they should not acknowledge
themselves beaten. It was worse that the flail of hunger should fall on
those who should be fattening on the fruits of victory. What would the
state of mind of the German people be if, on the top of all this, the
conquered Allies were to evince a capacity for winning a few battles
themselves? It was manifestly a position in which, at any cost, the
_moral_ of the German people should be braced for a new trial. Given a
fleet impatient to get out and a higher command anxious for news of a
victory, these are surely elements enough to explain the events that
led to the action of May 31.
But the most powerful motive of all was this: Not only was German
_moral_ badly in need of refreshment, it was especially that Germany’s
belief in her naval power needed to be confirmed. For, in the last week
in April, the Emperor and his counsellors had been compelled to submit
to a peremptory ultimatum despatched by President Wilson with the
endorsement of both houses of Congress behind him. Towards the end of
the winter 1915-16 the German people had been led to expect a decisive
stroke against England by the new U-boats which the Tirpitz building
programme of the previous year was reputed to be producing in large
and punctual numbers. The Grand Admiral himself, amid the vociferous
applause of the Jingoes and Junkers, announced that the campaign would
begin on a certain day in March. The story how more cautious counsels
prevailed, how the Grand Admiral was dismissed, how an agitation was
thereupon organized throughout Germany, and how, finally, the campaign
was begun, though its author was out of office, are well known. The
point is that the sinking of the passenger ship _Sussex_ led America
to define the position and to inflict a public humiliation, not only
on the German Government but on the German Navy. On the top of all the
other predisposing causes, then, here was a special reason why the
sea forces of the Fatherland should vindicate their existence by some
signal act of daring.
We must then, I think, in considering the Battle of Jutland, start
with the assumption that the German Fleet came out in obedience both
to policy and to its own desire. But we should be wrong if we supposed
that they came out with any hopes of achieving final and decisive
victory. It has never been a characteristic of German military thought
to build on the possibilities of an inferior force defeating its
superior.
On the other hand, it was very confident that it could not be
decisively beaten. Being an inferior force, the German Navy has been
driven to giving the utmost consideration to all the methods of
fighting that can add to the defensive in battle. It was not slow to
realize, as we have seen, the enormous advantage that the dirigible
airship offered in scouting, and from the first it has devoted itself
with special energy and care to the practice and development of the
defensive tactics which the long-range torpedo made possible. Nor is
this all. For though the Germany Navy was the last of all the great
navies to cultivate long-range gunnery, it very quickly appreciated the
fact that its efficiency depended upon the visibility of the target,
that it should be launched at periods when the rate of change was
constant. It consequently made it a first step in its war preparations
to supply itself with the finest optical instruments regardless of
cost, so as to get the range and the rate with utmost accuracy and
rapidity and to master all the means by which the enemy’s gunfire
could be made nugatory both by devices that would hide its own ships
from his view, and by imposing sudden manœuvres by torpedo attack. We
have already seen, in the story of the Dogger Bank engagement, how
the pursuing British battle-cruisers were hampered in their chase and
indeed deflected from their course by submarines skilfully stationed
for attack, and by the employment in action of destroyer flotillas.
And, again, how when _Bluecher_ was disabled, and two out of three
battle-cruisers were on fire and their batteries useless, they were
shielded in their final flight by the destroyers interposing themselves
on the British line of fire and then raising huge volumes of smoke
impenetrable to the eye.
Lastly, as German writers since the battle have never ceased to remind
us, the German Fleet had never been built with the idea of its being
able to fight and defeat the British Fleet, but with the idea of
creating a force so formidable that the British Fleet would not face
the risk to itself that would be involved in its destruction. That
there was some justification for such a belief will become apparent
when we consider the statements of various British naval authorities
made after the action was over. I draw attention to it here because it
was undoubtedly reliance on some hesitation of this kind that gave the
Germans such confidence in the methods of evasion which they adopted
when the two fleets met.
In asking ourselves why the Germans came out we must bear this
extremely significant truth in mind. They believed that they could
almost certainly avoid contact with the Grand Fleet, but they also
believed that if contact were made, what with torpedo attacks and
smoke screens, they could hold off their enemies long enough to make
evasion possible. To the Germans, then, it was very far from being an
irrational risk to come into the North Sea to look for the enemy, with
a view to fight on the principle of limited liability.