Castles of Steel (110 page)

On April 22, another British thrust toward the Skagerrak cost Beatty and Jellicoe even more heavily. The battle cruisers, steaming off the Danish coast, ran into a sudden bank of dense fog and
Australia
and
New Zealand,
zigzagging at 19 knots, collided and were badly damaged. Then the dreadnought
Neptune
collided with a neutral merchant ship and, later that night, three British destroyers ran into one another. On April 24, Jellicoe was back at Scapa Flow coaling his ships; at 4:00 that afternoon, he learned of the Easter Rebellion in Ireland and that the High Seas Fleet had put to sea. At dawn the next day, German battle cruisers were bombarding the English towns of Lowestoft and Yarmouth.

Before this happened, physical disability had temporarily removed from command the most active German North Sea admiral, Franz Hipper. As commander of the battle cruisers and other ships of the Scouting Groups and also as the officer responsible for the defense of the Heligoland Bight, Hipper was bending under the weight of his duties. Fatigue was compounded by sciatica. He had difficulty sleeping, and when he managed to doze off, every sound—a step on the deck above his cabin, the slapping of halyards in the wind—reawakened him. Hipper knew he needed a rest, but once Scheer had replaced Pohl, he decided not to ask for leave just as a new Commander-in-Chief was taking over. Two months later, on March 26, Hipper, feeling “terrible pain and exhaustion,” applied for sick leave. The following day, Scheer visited him on board
Seydlitz
and approved the request.

Before leaving
Seydlitz,
Hipper summoned Erich Raeder, his Chief of Staff, and described one of his worries about turning over the command to Rear Admiral Friedrich Bödicker:

“
You know I am very fond of music, I mean good and refined music,” Hipper began. “I’m particularly fond of Richard Wagner, particularly
Lohengrin
! Our band . . . is at the top of its form just now.”

“
Indeed it is, Your Excellency. We will take the greatest care to see that it remains so—”

“
I certainly hope so, for music is perhaps the best form of relaxation I get on board. What’s worrying me is that there might be a change for the worse during my absence—”

Hipper lapsed into silence. . . . After a time Raeder ventured: “Why should there be any change?”

Hipper jumped from his chair, strode up and down and blurted out: “Bödicker knows nothing about music. His taste runs to nothing but Prussian marches, treacly waltzes and bits out of
Fledermaus.
I’m sure he’ll end by mucking up my whole band—mucking it up, I tell you!”

. . . [But] he ended up by bursting out laughing. “After all, I’ll soon get them right again. I’ve often had to show them myself when the fiddles were going wrong!”

Hipper took a five-week cure at Bad Neundorf, then visited a nerve specialist who listened to his complaints, examined him carefully, and announced a complete absence of any damage to Hipper’s central nervous system. The admiral’s symptoms, the doctor declared, were caused by stress. Relieved, Hipper returned to his new flagship, the recently commissioned
Lützow,
on May 13 and resumed command.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Hipper, he had survived another kind of crisis. Scheer’s promotion to command had pleased him; he looked forward to the promise of more vigorous North Sea action. Nevertheless, when Hipper asked for sick leave, Scheer telephoned Holtzendorff and asked that Hipper be retired. Scheer felt that “Vice Admiral Hipper no longer possesses the qualities of robustness and elasticity which . . . [command of the Scouting Groups] demands and it is also his view that the end of the leave will not effect a complete restoration of his abilities.” Holtzendorff rejected the proposal because it seemed inappropriate for Scheer to be “coming forward with such radical suggestions so soon after his assumption of command.” Müller wrote on this memorandum, “I agree.” There is evidence that Scheer had a certain envy of Hipper’s fame and sometimes belittled him in service records, but the two men worked together for another two years—at which point Hipper succeeded Scheer as Commander-in-Chief of the High Seas Fleet and Scheer became Chief of the Naval Staff in Berlin.

Conceived and executed in Hipper’s absence, Scheer’s Lowestoft plan was to deliver a hit-and-run raid on the English southeast coast timed to coincide with the rising of the German-supported Irish nationalists on Easter Sunday. The German battle cruisers, screened by six light cruisers and two destroyer flotillas, would bombard, and then retreat before the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow could intervene. But his own battle fleet would be at sea, and if—as he hoped—either Beatty or Tyrwhitt came out to intercept, these separate elements of the British fleet would be overwhelmed. In this operation, the German battle cruisers were to be commanded by Rear Admiral Friedrich Bödicker.

Early on the afternoon of March 24, 1915, Bödicker, sailing for England, was northwest of Norderney when
Seydlitz,
still the battle cruiser flagship, struck a British mine. An explosion on the starboard side below the waterline tore a hole in the ship’s hull plating fifty feet long. Eleven men were killed, 1,400 tons of water flooded in, and the ship settled four and a half feet deeper into the water. With her speed reduced to 15 knots, the battle cruiser turned back to the Jade. Bödicker shifted his flag to the new
Lützow
and continued forward. Meanwhile, Tyrwhitt with three light cruisers and eighteen destroyers of the Harwich Force was steering to intercept this overwhelmingly superior German force. Around 4:00 a.m., with the first light in the eastern sky, he saw them: six light cruisers, many destroyers—and then four battle cruisers. Too weak to attack, he turned away to the south, hoping that the German force would follow. Bödicker, however, refused to be diverted from his objective, and a few minutes later the four German battle cruisers opened fire on Lowestoft at a range of 14,000 yards. Within nine minutes, they destroyed two 6-inch shore batteries and 200 houses, killed three civilians and wounded twelve. Then Bödicker swung north to attack Yarmouth. There, visibility was so poor that, after the first salvo from all four ships, only
Derfflinger
continued firing. At this point, the German light cruisers reported that they were in action with Tyrwhitt, and Bödicker decided to go to their support.

Tyrwhitt, seeing that he was not being followed, had turned back and found himself engaging the six German light cruisers. This ended when the four German battle cruisers suddenly loomed out of the mist and opened fire at him from 13,000 yards. Again, Tyrwhitt turned to escape to the south, but this time his flagship,
Conquest,
was hit by a 12-inch shell, which killed or wounded forty men and reduced the light cruiser’s speed to 20 knots. Bödicker now had an opportunity to overtake and annihilate a weaker British force, the supposed object of Scheer’s offensive. Unfortunately, he failed to grasp what was offered. Satisfied with having flung a few shells into England and chasing Tyrwhitt away, he now himself reversed course and steamed east to join Scheer, only fifty miles away. Scheer, however, had had enough; suspecting that the Grand Fleet was coming south (Neumünster Radio had warned him that the British battle squadrons had sailed from northern harbors), he turned his whole fleet around and headed for home. In fact, Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet, pushing south, were handicapped by seas so heavy that Jellicoe had been forced to leave all his destroyers behind. When Scheer turned back, Beatty was still more than 200 miles away and Jellicoe was 300. There was no chance of intercepting the German fleet; both Jellicoe and Beatty were ordered home.

Scheer was disappointed. A strong German force had failed to take advantage of its superiority over a much weaker British force. In addition,
Seyd-litz
had been severely damaged and would require at least a month in dry dock. In Britain, the Admiralty moved the 3rd Battle Squadron—the seven remaining
King Edward
s—from Rosyth to the Thames, permitting First Lord Arthur Balfour to reassure the distressed mayors of Lowestoft and Yarmouth that “another raid on the coast of Norfolk will be henceforth far more perilous to the aggressors . . . and, if our enemy be wise is therefore far less likely.” HMS
Dreadnought
was dispatched from Scapa Flow to the Thames to add her ten 12-inch guns to the twenty-eight 12-inch guns carried by the seven
King Edward
s. It was for this reason that the ten-year-old grandparent of all the dreadnought battleships in the world missed the Battle of Jutland.

On the morning of April 25, when Scheer was still at sea on
Friedrich der Grosse,
returning from the Lowestoft Raid, he received a wireless message from Holtzendorff in Berlin telling him that the German government had bowed to the American president’s threat to sever diplomatic relations. Until further orders, Scheer was informed, unrestricted submarine warfare would be abandoned and U-boats were to conduct commerce warfare only in accordance with prize regulations: surfacing, visiting, and searching. Scheer was enraged. Before his flagship was back in the Jade, he decided that, under these conditions, the entire U-boat offensive against merchant shipping must be abandoned. Without consulting Berlin, he recalled all High Seas Fleet U-boats then at sea.

Scheer was angry not only because the sharp sword of unrestricted submarine warfare—which he fervently believed must be used—was being laid aside, but also because the German government had been compelled to take this step by President Wilson. In the early spring of 1916, the German people had been led to expect that the U-boats would deliver a decisive stroke against England. Now, on America’s demand, this campaign had been prematurely terminated. To Scheer, and to many of his admirals and captains, this submission came as a public humiliation, inflicted not only on the German government but specifically on the German navy. Something must be done about this; some new stroke must wash away this stain and justify the faith of the German people in their naval power. Scheer’s solution was obvious: the High Seas Fleet must go back to sea.

Scheer’s decision to recall the submarines opened new tactical possibilities. At his disposal now were a large number of modern, efficient submarines released from commerce warfare and available for use in cooperation with the surface fleet against enemy warships. Scheer had always liked the idea of submarine ambush—of U-boats, stationed off the Grand Fleet’s bases, attacking British ships as they came out. What Scheer needed was a lure sufficient to draw the British to sea. The best way to bring the British out, Scheer judged, would be a German battle cruiser raid on a place
near
a major British base. He knew that Beatty’s battle cruisers and other heavy ships were based on the Firth of Forth. He also knew that
Seydlitz
was scheduled to be out of dry dock by the middle of May. Accordingly, he decided that on May 17, Hipper should bombard the town of Sunderland, near Newcastle upon Tyne, 100 miles south of the entrance to the Forth. Such a challenge directly under Beatty’s nose could not fail to bring the British admiral out—and into the waiting submarine ambush that Scheer intended to prepare. As
Lion
and her sisters steamed into the crosshairs of U-boat periscopes, Scheer hoped that Beatty might lose two or three of his battle cruisers to torpedoes. Meanwhile, Scheer himself with the whole High Seas Fleet would be in the North Sea only fifty miles away, ready to meet and destroy any British battle cruisers that evaded the U-boats and were pursuing Hipper. Although he knew that the Grand Fleet would come south to Beatty’s support, Scheer, unaware of Room 40, assumed that he would have six or seven hours to bring Beatty to action before Jellicoe’s battle squadrons could appear.

The grim possibility that the entire Grand Fleet might intervene to disrupt Scheer’s operation called forth another key element of his plan. Air reconnaissance must be available to give the High Seas Fleet ample warning of the approach and composition of any British force. Scheer had no intention of becoming involved with Jellicoe’s massed dreadnoughts. To prevent any possibility of this, the operation must take place in clear weather, when zeppelins could be aloft to scout. As Hipper moved across the North Sea toward Sunderland, zeppelins would patrol the area from the Skagerrak to the Forth and along the English coast down to the Channel. But zeppelins could not leave their sheds in bad weather or high wind. Further, out over the sea, they were subject to the hindrance of mist and fog covering the surface. Calm, clear weather, therefore, was essential to the Sunderland plan.

Even before Scheer’s planning was complete, the operation was postponed. On May 9, it was discovered that several of the new
König
-class battleships of the 3rd Battle Squadron had developed condenser problems and the Sunderland plan was delayed until May 23. The additional time permitted Scheer to expand the operation, embracing a larger area than simply the Firth of Forth. Now sixteen High Seas Fleet U-boats and a half-dozen boats from the Flanders Flotilla were to be stationed off a number of British harbors with orders to remain on patrol from May 23 to June 1, reporting any movements of British ships and seizing any opportunity to attack. In addition, the exits from British bases were to be mined.

With the bombardment now set for May 23, Scheer dispatched his U-boats on May 17. From this moment on, a clock was ticking: the timing of the whole operation was subject to the oil supply of the submarines. By May 30, their fuel would be almost exhausted; the surface fleet operation, therefore, must be concluded on or around that date. By May 23, the U-boats were in their positions off British harbors: seven off the Firth of Forth, waiting for Beatty; one farther north, off the coast of Scotland; two in Pentland Firth, to attack the Grand Fleet when it sortied from Scapa Flow. In addition,
UB-27
had specific orders to force her way into the Firth of Forth to attack warships there. Four minelaying submarines were sent to lay twenty-two mines each off the Firth of Forth, off Moray Firth, and to the west of Pentland Firth in the Orkneys. In addition, Flanders Flotilla U-boats sailed to attack the Harwich Force. All of these submarines had been ordered to remain on station until June 1 and to avoid being discovered prematurely. Wireless reports were to be made only in urgent situations: on sighting the enemy’s main body putting to sea, and then only after all possibilities of attack had been exhausted.