part0009

I n late May 1916, anyone who climbed the hills in the Scottish Orkney Islands could've seen through the mist and witnessed one of the most magnificent sites in naval history. This was the home of the grand British fleet. As far as the eye could see, there were rows of battleships, battlecruisers, destroyers—and dozens of lesser vessels transporting messages and supplies between these deadly ships.

The ships were spaced at perfect intervals and exactly at the same angle to each other—a visible representation of the discipline and tradition of the British fighting forces. The power of the British Navy didn’t end here with this collection of ships. There were other bases along the eastern coast of Scotland, each containing a formidable battle squadron of warships.

By the time the first world war started, Britain had the largest and most powerful fleet in the entire world. Our Island empire stretched from the Arctic to the Antarctic circles. Our warships protected the fleet of cargo ships that carried goods and raw materials to and from our colonies. In wartime, our warships also prevented cargo ships from delivering supplies to our enemies. But most important of all, our fleet ensured that troops and supplies from England could safely sail across the channel to the Western Front in northern France.

Only Germany had a fleet powerful enough to threaten us. Kaiser Wilhelm II was the head of state of an up-and-coming superpower. He wanted to build a rival Navy to complement Germany's growing importance in the world. But the Kaiser's policy was a double-edged sword. His insistence on building a powerful navy had soured the previously good Anglo-German relations. It was one of the main reasons Britain decided to join France and Russia against Germany when war broke out.

At the start of the first world war, the battleship was considered the superweapon of the day. The largest and most heavily armed battleships were known as dreadnoughts—named after the HMS Dreadnought, the first of its kind launched in 1906.

The dreadnought weighed nearly 18 tons and packed a mighty punch with ten 12-inch guns. They could fire a shell that weighed over 1,400 pounds, nearly 13 miles. These guns were housed in pairs in large turrets. Usually at the front and rear of the ship. This type of weaponry gave the battleship its ferocious bite. Each of the gun turrets had a crew of around 70 men, split into teams who performed different tasks such as bringing up shells and propulsive charges from the ship's magazine. Then they loaded and accurately fired them. Working in a turret-like that is dangerous. If an enemy shell hits the turret, the entire mechanism would be engulfed in a massive explosion, killing everyone inside. The HMS Dreadnought overshadowed every other warship on the water .

Not only was it so powerfully armed, it was fast, and it had a thick metal protective covering as a shield. The ship carried a crew of over a thousand men and was nearly 700 feet from bow to stern. The arrival of the HMS Dreadnought started an expensive arms race between Germany and Britain. By the time the war broke out, we had built 28 ships and Germany had 16.

The revolutionary dreadnoughts were also joined by a new kind of warship, the battlecruiser, the first of their kind was called the HMS Invincible. It was launched in April 1907. Battlecruisers were as heavily armed as dreadnoughts but were smaller. They had eight 12-inch guns. They were faster than battleships and had a top speed of around twenty-five knots. Compared to a battleship twenty-one knots.

This speed was gained at the expense of having a lighter armor. When the war began in August 1914, a full-scale confrontation between the British and the German fleets seemed inevitable. Both countries built up their massive navies to face this upcoming fight. The German fleet was smaller than the British, but its ships were better designed. The Germans made very effective use of their U-boats; they sank countless cargo ships bound for Britain that the country was often in danger of starvation. The British never lost control of the sea. The Royal Navy blockaded German waters and prevented vital goods from entering. This caused great difficulty for the war industries of Germany and ensured that there was never enough food for her population.

Just six months into the war, a German battlecruiser was sunk in the North Sea, with great loss of life. For the first two years of the war, each Navy tested the strength of its opponents by pushing and probing and engaging in small- scale skirmishes. The carnage on the Western front continued with no visible benefit to either side. Pressure mounted on the German Navy's high command to force the British into a do or die battle that could tip the balance of the war in Germany's favor.

German high command decided to try and lure the British into the North Sea for a grand confrontation. If Germany succeeded, the war would be as good as won. With its fleet destroyed, we’d be completely helpless to prevent the German naval blockade around our coastal waters. Our food supplies will quickly run out and Britain would starve. Our troops and supplies would no longer be able to safely travel across the channel. The German plan was simple enough. They would send a bait battle cruiser squadron into the North Sea and would follow at a distance with the High Seas Fleet.

The British, it was hoped, would send out the wrong battle cruisers to intercept these German ships. They would almost certainly come from the base at Rosyth, nearest to the outgoing German ships. When the British were sighted on the horizon, the Germans would change course and lead the enemy back to the main battle fleet. Where they’d be outnumbered and destroyed.

The plan also assumed that the main British naval force—called the Grand Fleet—would take to the sea as well, from more northerly of the base. Here the Germans placed U-boats to pick them off as they sailed to intercept. The Germans intended to use zeppelins to keep watch on the British Navy and radio information on the movements of her ships.

But just like many simple plans, there were unforeseen problems.

On May 31st, 1916, the Germans put their plan in motion. From bases on the northern coast to Germany, the High Seas Fleet took to sea. The Germans had five battlecruisers and another thirty-five smaller ships to trying to lure the British Navy into a battle. Another German fleet followed closely behind with sixty more battleships, battlecruisers, destroyers, and cruisers. By 1 o'clock that afternoon, two German Squadrons were out in the North Sea over 50 miles apart.

As they hoped, the German squadron was soon sighted by British reconnaissance ships that patrolled the coast of Germany. British intelligence picked up and decoded German radio signals, which indicated that there was a buildup of German ships in the North Sea. The British immediately ordered their battle cruiser squadron under Adm. Beatty to take to sea. Unknown to the Germans, the British were already at sea with the Grand Fleet, patrolling an area of the North Sea known as the long 40s a hundred and ten miles east of Aberdeen. The Grand Fleet was ordered to head south and follow Adm. Beatty. Between them, the British had a hundred and forty-nine ships under their command.

This set the stage for an epic battle. To this day, no greater naval battle has ever taken place. The opposing admirals perched high in their respective command posts on the decks of their ships. They began the game that was a strange combination of chess and hide and go seek. At stake were the lives of over 100,000 sailors and the fate of nearly 250 ships and quite possibly the outcome of the first world war. The British were hoping for a victory to match Trafalgar. (Wherein 1805 the Royal Navy under Adm. Nelson destroyed the French and Spanish fleets and gained undisputed control of the sea for the next century.)

Right from the start, the German plan had problems. The U-boats stationed outside the bases on the Scottish coast failed to attack the British ships as they emerged to patrol the North Sea. Due to a technical problem, the wireless orders permitting them to engage their enemy was never received. The Germans' use of zeppelins as reconnaissance aircraft was also a failure, due to poor visibility and bad weather. The zeppelins could see nothing through the cloud and foggy haze. This was a major setback. In 1916, naval guns and ships were more sophisticated and powerful than those used by Adm. Nelson in Trafalgar. Still, the communication and detection technology was much the same. The Germans might've had guns that could fire a heavy shell over 14 miles, but they still looked for their enemy with the telescope and the naked eye.

Also, due to the danger of wireless communications being intercepted by the enemy in battle, they still preferred to communicate with their ships using signal flags.

Earlier that afternoon, neither navy knew the size of the enemy fleet that was fast approaching. We thought the German squadron was at sea, and the Germans had no idea they were about to face the entire British Grand Fleet.

Adm. Beatty's fleet first sighted the German ships at around 2 o'clock when they were 75 miles off the Danish coast. This started in an epic naval confrontation that would forever be known as the battle of Jutland.

The first shots fired off 15 minutes later, between small scouting ships that sailed ahead of the main fleets. It was a hazy day. The sun hid behind the German ships giving them a better view of the approaching enemy. We sailed forward to engage the German forces. By then, it was already 3:30. We knew the British Grand Fleet was coming up behind us, and we’d be on our own for several hours .

The Germans knew they had to lure Adm. Betty’s ships into the jaws of the High Seas Fleet behind them. As they had done in the days of Adm. Nelson in Trafalgar. Both fleets sailed in line, one after the other, in tight formation.

At 4 o'clock, the battlecruisers began to fire at each other. The odds seemed to be on our side. We had six battlecruisers, the Germans only five. The firing was so constant that each squadron navigated its way through the thick forest of towering shell splashes. In the no man's land between the fleet, a small sailboat sat motionless. Its sails hung limp as deadly shells whistled and screamed over the heads of the hapless sailors on board.

The superiority of the German guns and ships were obvious. Only twelve minutes into the fighting, one of our battlecruisers became the first major casualty of the day. The Germans landed three shells on her simultaneously. The HMS Indefatigable disappeared into a vast cloud of black smoke, twice the height of her mast. She fell out of line as two more shells exploded on her deck. Something terrible was happening, I watched as the searing flames gnawed at her ammunition. Thirty seconds after the second shells hit, the entire ship exploded, sending huge fragments of metal high into the air.

She rolled over and sank a moment later.

Several other British ships were hit, including Adm. Beatty's own battle cruiser, The HMS Lion. A shell exploded on the central turret and blew half the roof into the air, killing the entire gun crew. The guns roared and shells whistled as they approached, it was enough to distract anyone from what was happening around them. We barely noticed the loss of HMS Indefatigable. We had enough troubles of our own. Six more shells from the Germans hit our ship within four minutes of each other, and fires raged on deck and below. Thirty minutes later, another explosion caused by the slow-burning fires shot up as high as the masthead. But still, we survived to fight on.

Other British ships in the fighting had to contend with similar problems. In less than an hour, the battlecruiser Queen Mary blew up, breaking in half and sinking in less than two minutes. The ammunition supplies exploded. The huge gun turrets were blown 100 feet into the air. Only eight men survived from the entire ship.

I watched the Queen Mary sink, and I knew deep down in my bones, I had to get away. I dove into the freezing, oily water and swam as fast as I could away from the ship. A minute later, there was a huge explosion, and chunks of metal filled the air around me. I dove deep beneath the waves to avoid the flying fragments. I reached the surface and gasped for breath. I was drug under the water again from the suction of the ship as it sank.

Underneath the water, I felt helpless and resigned to my own fate. But something made me strike out for the surface. Just as I felt I was about to lose consciousness, I broke through the waves. I saw a piece of floating debris and wrapped my wrist around the rope trailing from it before I lost consciousness. I was eventually rescued, but not before an earlier ship picked up other survivors and left me for dead.

Afterward, Adm. Beatty commented on the destruction of the Queen Mary. In the pretentious manner of the British upper class at war, he said:

There was something wrong with the British ships. They were poorly designed. German warships had solid bulkheads passable by going to the upper deck and then down into the next section. British ships had bulkheads with doors that permitted passage between them. This was far more convenient, but a serious weakness when a massive explosion ripped through the ship. The British also had a much more careless attitude about their ammunition.

The Germans kept their ammunition and shells locked away and blast-proof containers until they were ready to be fired. While British gunners piled the shells next to the guns. This made it far easier to accidentally set off if the ship was hit.

Just moments after the Queen Mary sank, the German High Seas Fleet was spotted on the horizon, steaming toward us to join the battlecruiser squadron. The rest of our British Grand Fleet was still a good 12 miles away. Now was time to test Adm. Betty's composure to the limit. He faced the full might of the German Navy and had already lost two battleship cruisers. Adm. Beatty gave the signal for a full hundred-and eighty-degree turn.

The German plan was to entice the British into the jaws of their full might. The German ships pursued. Adm. Beatty had lured them into the mass firepower of the British Grand Fleet. Just after 5 o'clock, the Germans had come close enough to Beatty's retreating ships to begin attacking the stragglers. But an hour later, the British Grand Fleet of twenty-four battleships steamed over the horizon.

No matter how good the German ships were, they were heavily outnumbered. The Germans were in serious trouble, and they sent the order to retreat North. Were the Germans trying to lead us into a trap, hoping that the British would blunder into a minefield or right into the arms of waiting submarines? There was too much at stake. The British decided not to follow. Instead, they ordered their ships South hoping to again make contact with the German fleet.

Another British ship, the HMS invincible, became the third major victim of the day. A shell hit one of her turrets, causing a huge explosion which broke the ship in two. Only six men survived on the crew of over a thousand. For a while, the bow and stern of this huge battlecruiser stood motionless in the water; it looks like two church spires in a sunken village. Then, the stern sunk to the bottom of the sea. The bow stayed upright until almost the next day when it also sank. Those trapped inside must've spent an agonizing night, wondering what on earth was happening to them in their topsy-turvy world. They surely expected to be swallowed by the sea when the ship went vertical in the water. Their inevitable death would be drawn out for a few more miserable hours.

As the evening wore on, the British intuition that the German ships would head south proved correct. Just after 7 o'clock, the two fleets sighted each other again. The Germans made several moves to try and gain an advantage over the British fleet. Both sides followed a tactic known as crossing the T. This idea was to line up your fleet of warships at a right angle to your opponents, as they approached you in a straight line. So, your fleet made the top of the T and the enemy fleet made the descending stroke. That way, the captain could fire all guns aboard ships on both the bow and the stern, while the enemy would only be able to use his front guns.

But the Germans failed and disastrously found their ships scattered at an angle to the approaching British fleet. Worse, the sun was now behind the British and it was only possible to see them by the flash of their guns. At this point in the battle, it was the British shells that were falling with greater accuracy and the German ships were faltering.

It was at precisely this moment the Germans made the most ruthless decision of the day. To avoid their entire fleet being reduced to wreckage by the much larger British force, the Germans took four of their battlecruisers and sailed straight at the British fleet. Their signal read, battlecruisers at the enemy. Give it everything. There is a cruel logic to this decision. The Germans used their older and less powerful warships. This action has become known as the death ride. The Germans intended the British fleet to concentrate their fire on this attacking squadron while allowing the rest of the High Seas Fleet to turn around and escape.

These four German ships had been in the thick of action since the battle began. They’d all sustained serious damage. As they headed out into the fading light, each ship's captain was convinced he would not live to see the coming night. But in warfare, nothing is predictable. Ahead of them, the British Grand Fleet stretched in a curve as far as they could see. Every one of these British ships fired at the approaching German battlecruisers. The first battlecruiser suffered direct hits on its rear turrets, exploding with horrific consequences for those inside. Due to good design, the rest of the ship survived. The other German battlecruisers suffered similar blows. Although they took many hits from British shells, the ships were not blown to pieces.

The German commander was brave, but he had no intention of committing suicide. Once he was sure the rest of the German fleet had escaped, he turned his ships away to rejoin the rear of the departing squadron. The British became suspicious. Rather than following the German ships directly, they decided to head south and raced to catch them in more of an indirect route. As the sun sank on the horizon, the German squadron was caught again by the British. This time they weren't so lucky. One German battlecruiser sustained more damage and sank later that night. While the other three battlecruisers were severely damaged.

In the dark, the opposing navies exchanged fire, but the main action was over. Another German battleship was sunk. Torpedoes from British destroyers caught her close to home, and all 866 men on board were killed.

Dawn broke around 3 o'clock in the morning on June 1. The British hoped to resume contact with the German fleet at first light, but the lookouts strained their eyes over an empty sea. The German ships were in sight of their homeport. This battle was over.

The two greatest navies in the world took part in one great sea battle of the First World War. It was also to be the last great sea battle in history. Battleships would never again meet in such numbers. As the century wore on, there would be Naval weapons even deadlier than the great ones that the battleships carried–submarines, dive bombers, etc. The technological advances made battleships too vulnerable to be useful weapons.

The German gamble failed. The events of the day show that they had every right to be confident. Germany’s ships were better than Britain's and they proved this by sinking more of the enemy's fleet. The British had lost 14 ships and over 6,000 men. The Germans lost 11 ships and over 1500 men. The day after the battle, it looked like a German victory.

But in the end, the might of the Royal Navy had prevailed again. We still controlled the sea. Like the other grand battles of 1916 at Verdun and the Somme, this clash of huge opposing forces had taken place, and nothing changed. The British hadn’t lost the war in an afternoon after all. We hadn’t won it either, but we ensured that Germany would not win it.

After the battle, the tactics employed by the British were discussed and dissected in clinical detail. The communication between British ships had been abysmal and Adm. Beatty was criticized for not attacking the German fleet with more enthusiasm. In hindsight, the British still came out of it in a much better position than the Germans. It only took us a day to recover from the battle, before we were able to announce that our fleet was once again ready for whatever threat it might face.

The German High Seas Fleet never put to sea again.

The outcome of the battle of Jutland had far-reaching consequences. As the High Seas Fleet proved unable to undermine British control of the seas, the German high command decided to adopt the policy of unrestricted U-boat warfare instead. Their submarines were given permission to attack any ship, including neutral ones, that came into British waters.

This change of tactics led to the sinking of American ships, which was one of the main reasons the US entered the war against Germany—a move that sealed her fate.

The German High Seas Fleet remained in port for the rest of the war. Boredom and poor rations led to mutinies at the end of the war, and ultimately revolutionary insurrection. After the armistice of November 1918, the fleet was ordered to sea, while peace terms were discussed in Paris.

Just before the peace treaty was signed in the summer of 1919, it was ordered that the High Seas Fleet would be split up, and it ships given to the victorious nations. But this was too much to bear for the skeleton crews of the German sailors left aboard the ships. They scuttled and deliberately sank their Navy. Most of these vast, magnificent warships were eventually raised from the sea bottom and towed away for scrap.