In the view of the German Admiralty the foreign criticism of the raids on Scarborough, Whitby and the Hartlepools was something for the diplomats to deal with while the Imperial Navy got on with the war. During the first weeks of January 1915 Rear Admiral Eckermann, the High Seas Fleet’s Chief of Staff, believed that British light forces were carrying out an increased level of patrolling in the area of Dogger Bank. Encouraged by the successful outcome of the previous month’s operation, he urged Ingenohl to disrupt these using the fast battle cruisers. The fleet commander, however, was less than enthusiastic about the idea as Hipper’s fighting strength had been considerably reduced by the decision to dock Von de Tann for refitting. Nevertheless, Eckermann was importunate in pressing his idea until Ingernohl finally gave way, instructing Hipper by radio to examine the Dogger Bank area at dawn on 24 January, assess the nature of the enemy’s operations and engage the British presence.
At 17:45 on 23 January, therefore, Hipper emerged from the Jade anchorage with Seyditz, Moltke, Derfflinger and Blücher, the light cruisers Graudenz, Rostock, Stralsund and Kolberg, the heavy weather damage sustained by the last during the December operation having been repaired. Also present was a screening force of nineteen destroyers. Unknown to Hipper, Beatty’s 1st Battle Cruiser Squadron, consisting of Lion, Tiger and Princess Royal, Rear Admiral Moore’s 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadron with the slower New Zealand and Indomitable, and Commodore Goodenough’s 1st Light Cruiser Squadron weighed anchor only minutes later and sailed for a rendezvous, timed for 08:00 near Dogger Bank, with a force of cruisers and destroyers based at Harwich under Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt. Unfortunately for the Germans, the Admiralty’s radio intercept operators in Room 40 has listened with interest to the most recent exchange between Ingenohl and Hipper, with the result that the latter was actually sailing into a trap. The wisdom of Beatty’s moving his battle cruisers south to Rosyth now became apparent as they rapidly closed the gap separating them from their opponents.
At first light next morning Kolberg, steaming to port of the main body of the battle cruiser fleet, spotted a strange cruiser coming up from the south. The stranger was the light cruiser Aurora, part of the Harwich force. She flashed an unfamiliar recognition signal, to which Kolberg replied by opening fire, scoring two hits. Aurora responded at once and also began scoring hits. Aboard Seydlitz, his flagship, Hipper ordered a general turn toward the firing in the belief that he had found the British light forces that Eckermann had reported to Ingernohl. Hardly had the turn been completed than Stralsund, to starboard of the battle cruisers, reported a large quantity of smoke approaching from the north-north-west. Believing that its origin was British battleships, Hipper was not unduly concerned as he knew he could outrun them, but it continued to approach at speed and was closing fast. By the time the range had closed to 25,000 yards he suddenly realised that he had Beatty’s much faster battle cruisers on his hands. At 07:35 he gave the order to head for home.
What followed was a stern chase in which the Germans were at an immediate disadvantage. Hipper’s slowest ship was the Blücher, capable of 23 knots, and some of his coalfired destroyers were no better. The three ships in Beatty’s squadron worked up to 27 knots and although Moore’s squadron was a little slower the Germans were being steadily overhauled. The British battle cruisers were echeloned to the left rear with Lion leading, then Tiger, then Princess Royal, then New Zealand and finally Indomitable, so that they did not obscure each other’s targets during the pursuit. Likewise, Beatty ordered his lighter ships not to penetrate the space between the opposing battle cruisers because their smoke would obscure the target. Even in 1915, using the wind was as important as it had been in Nelson’s time. As Hipper’s line was to port of Beatty’s, the north-easterly wind would blow the Germans’ funnel and gub smoke in the direction of their target, and an intervening screen laid by destroyers was quickly dispersed. Conversely, the British smoke would be blown clear to starboard, leaving the enemy ships in full view. At 08:52 Lion opened fire at 20,000 yards, followed by the rest of Beatty’s battle cruisers as they closed the range. Hipper’s ships were running in the order Seydlitz, Moltke, Derfflinge and Blücher. After several salvos had been fired, Blücher was straddled at 09:00 and received repeated hits as she was overtaken by the leading ships in Beatty’s line, but it was not until 09:11 that the German guns, with their shorter range, could begin to reply.
At this point, with the British steadily drawing level with their opponents, Beatty’s command and control of the battle began to fall apart. He ordered his ships to engage their opposite numbers in the enemy line, intending this to be interpreted from the front with New Zealand and Indomitable both engaging Blücher at the rear. Unfortunately, Captain H.B. Pelly, commanding Tiger, interpreted the instruction in precisely the opposite way. This meant that Lion and Tiger were both firing at Seydlitz, no one was firing at Moltke, Princess Royal was firing first at Blücher and then at Derfflinger, and New Zealand and Indomitable were both firing at Blücher as they came up. What made matters worse was that the recently commissioned Tiger had not completed her gunnery trials, a process sorely needed as her gunnery officer was so bad that he treated Lion’s shell splashes as his own, which were three miles beyond their intended target. Tiger’s contribution to the battle, therefore, amounted to very little.
Nevertheless, at 09:40 a shell from Lion penetrated the barbette of Seydlitz’s D turret and exploded, setting fire to propellant charges waiting to be loaded. The flames not only roared up into the turret and down into the magazine, but also through a connecting door to C turret that should have been closed. Only prompt flooding of both magazines saved the ship from being blown apart, but 165 men died a horrible death in the inferno.
Lion was herself taking steady punishment from the concentrated fire directed at her and at 09:40 received several hits from a salvo fired by Derfflinger. The worst of these contaminated her port feed tank with sea water and she began to take a list to port. The port engine had to be stopped and as her speed fell away to 15 knots she was overtaken by Tiger and Princess Royal. In total, Lion sustained 14 hits one of which penetrated A turret and caused an ammunition fire which was fortunately extinguished before it could spread. Lion’s generators were also put out of action, leaving her signal lamps without power, and her radio antennae had been shot away, as had all but two of her flag hoists, which now remained Beatty’s sole remaining means of communicating with his command.
At 10:54 there occurred one of those unexpected incidents that can affect the course of battles. Beatty thought he saw a submarine periscope off Lion’s starboard bow and ordered a 90 degree turn to port to avoid entering a U-boat trap. This may have been a torpedo that had run its course and surfaced when its fuel was exhausted, having been launched by a German destroyer earlier in the engagement. Whatever the truth, Beatty now realised that the turn ordered would increase the range between his ships and the enemy. He therefore decided to halve the turn to 45 degrees by signalling ‘Course NE.’ By now, Lion was trailing well behind his other ships and to clarify his intentions he decided to repeat Nelson’s signal, ‘Engage the enemy more closely.’ This had been deleted from the signal book and replaced with ‘Attack the rear of the enemy.’ Both signals went up at the same time reading, ‘Attack the rear of the enemy course NE.’ In the present circumstances, this was gibberish and could only have referred to the Blücher, which Hipper had abandoned to her fate and was being steadily battered into a wreck.
It was now up to Beatty’s Second-in-Command, Rear Admiral Moore, to recognise the fact and use his initiative by maintaining the pursuit of the enemy. Instead, he decided to stick to the Navy’s code of strict obedience to orders and concentrated all his efforts into sending Blücher to the bottom. The lowest estimate of hits sustained by the cruiser was 50, the highest 70. Blücher fought to the bitter end, scoring two hits with her main armament on the British battle cruisers and damaging the destroyer Meteor so badly that she had to be taken in tow. The coup de grace was administered by Aurora with two torpedoes. Reducing to a blazing wreck, Blücher turned over on her beam ends and finally sank at 12:07. Of her 792-strong crew, only 237 were picked up by British destroyers. The number would have been greater had not a patrolling Zeppelin, L5, and a German seaplane attacked the rescuers with their bombs and machine guns, forcing them to abandon their efforts.
Beatty had transferred his flag to the destroyer Attack but by the time he caught up with the battle Hipper’s remaining ships had increased their lead so much that any further pursuit had become pointless. He turned for home with the heavily damaged Lion under tow by the Indomitable. He had scored an undoubted success in which the enemy had lost a major unit and sustained over 1,000 casualties, whereas no British ships had been lost and casualties amounted to only 15 killed and 32 wounded.
Naturally, both sides held an inquest into what had taken place. The Kaiser’s fury knew no bounds as he raged against admirals who committed his ships to action before his soldiers had won the war, a prospect that seemed well within the bounds of possibility for a while. Ingernohl and Eckermann were sacked immediately, the former being replaced by Admiral Hugo von Pohl, an unpopular, arrogant individual in poor health who strongly advocated submarine warfare and in particular a U-boat blockade of the United Kingdom in preference to surface operations involving the High Seas Fleet. Such a change of policy outraged Tirpitz, who objected strongly to his creation being sidelined, but he lacked experience of active command and people were becoming very tired of his plotting, so he was sidelined himself. For the Imperial Navy, the one good thing to come out of Dogger Bank was that when Seydlitz was repaired the open trunking between turrets and magazines was equipped with doors that closed automatically once the shell and charge had passed upwards from the magazine. The same modification was applied to the rest of the battle cruisers and some battleships. Likewise, dangerous ammunition-handling procedures were eliminated. These defects also existed in similar British ships and would become horribly apparent the following year. The German operational analysis also accepted that Beatty’s regular appearance whenever Hipper put to sea was no accident, but remained unaware that their wireless codes were in British hands. After some discussion, it was decided that a British agent was active in the area of Jade Bay and possessed the means to transmit his findings to England.
On the British side, Beatty believed that he had been robbed of a major victory. He could not blame Moore openly as his Second-in-Command had simply carried out his own specific orders, although a display of initiative on Moore’s part might have produced results. On the other hand, it might not. Leaving the destruction of Blücher aside, German main armament gunnery had scored 22 hits with heavy calibre shells, including 16 on Lion, whereas the British battle cruisers had scored only seven, albeit that these had produced devastating results. The possibility existed, therefore, that if the engagement had continued the British could have sustained further serious damage and even lost a ship or two, given Tiger’s wretched performance. Against this, Hipper was running short of ammunition and was not interested in prolonging the engagement. A difficult situation was resolved when Moore was posted away from the Grand Fleet to less exacting duties, without loss of rank. Further operational analysis resulted in a better target allocation system and the issue of emergency radios to replace those that might be damaged in action.
These matters apart, a new dimension had entered the battle for the North Sea. The senior officers of the Imperial Navy’s air arm believed that the bombs dropped by their Zeppelin airships on targets in England would inflict more damage on civilian morale than periodic raids by the High Seas Fleet, and in the week prior to Dogger Bank had carried out a raid against Sherringham, Kings Lynn and Yarmouth with Zeppelins L3 and L4. Four people were killed, 13 were injured and several houses were damaged. It was known that the Germans used their airships for naval reconnaissance, but deliberately targeting civilians from the air was regarded as just another example of the enemy’s ‘fright-fulness.’ The ability to shock had been lost during the attacks on Scarborough, Whitby and the Harlepools, and attitudes to the enemy had hardened even further. What did cause concern was the apparent lack of defence against this form of attack, a deficiency which had to be remedied quickly.