Castles of Steel (119 page)

Briefly, at the start of the Run to the North,
Von der Tann
had made herself useful; firing at
Barham,
she had scored one hit, but then she had to give up. Her fore and aft turrets were already out of action and now her starboard waist turret, the only one that would bear on the enemy, gave out as well. The guns had become so hot that they jammed in their slides and would not return to firing positions. Captain Hans Zenker realized that his ship was no longer a fighting unit, but he kept on with Hipper to prevent concentration of enemy fire on the other ships of the squadron. At 5:30 p.m.,
Lützow
and
Derfflinger
were hit again, and the fire of the German battle cruisers began to slacken. German gunners now had a setting sun glaring in their eyes, making ranging and spotting difficult.

Nevertheless, to Scheer it looked at this moment as if Beatty and Evan-Thomas were beaten. Hipper already had sunk two British battle cruisers;
Lion,
the enemy flagship, had been streaming smoke from a gaping wound for more than an hour; and Beatty’s movement looked very much like flight. If Scheer could severely damage another battle cruiser or one of the
Queen Elizabeth
s and then overtake and sink it, the victory he had planned would be won. Thus, Scheer vigorously urged his ships forward. At 5:20 p.m., confident that he faced no more than two isolated British squadrons and believing that a beaten opponent was escaping, he signaled “Give chase” and his whole fleet strained forward in pursuit. The four leading ships—
König, Grosser Kurfürst, Kronprinz Wilhelm,
and
Markgraf
—under Rear Admiral Paul Behncke began to draw ahead as the engine-room staffs strove for more and more speed. The slower dreadnoughts followed as well as they could, while the six predreadnoughts of the 2nd Squadron fell farther and farther astern. The long line of the High Seas Fleet straggled over twenty-five miles of sea. It did no good. Hipper’s battle cruisers could not maintain more than 25 knots for any length of time, while Beatty’s Cats, with their 28-knot speed, left them behind and drew out of sight.

When Beatty ended his battle cruisers’ respite and signaled “Prepare to renew the action,” he swung his ships from north to northeast and Hipper saw again in the mist on his port bow the distinct shapes of his old enemies. The German admiral was profoundly frustrated.
Lützow
’s wireless had been destroyed and now, when he wanted to report Beatty’s reappearance, he could not; Scheer in
Friedrich der Grosse
was ten miles astern, beyond visual signal distance. The best he could do was send a man up into an exposed position to make wigwag semaphore signals to
Derfflinger
astern, to pass the news along. Meanwhile, Beatty, 14,000 yards away, was relentlessly crossing in front of him, bending back the German van to starboard. Hipper, unwilling to permit Beatty to cross his bow, had no choice but to give ground, swinging his own ships also to starboard, toward the east. This time visibility as well as firepower favored the British. “I had to work against a blinding sunset in the western sky and devastating enemy artillery,” Hipper said later. “The sun stood deep and the horizon was hazy and I had to fire directly into the sun. I saw absolutely nothing of the enemy, who was behind a dense cloud of smoke—the gunnery officers could find no target although we made a superb one ourselves. There was nothing else to do but take the ships out of the battle for a while.” As Hipper continually gave more ground, turning farther to the east, the whole of the German fleet now stretched out behind him in a vast, shallow curve. In the rear, more than twenty miles behind, Mauve’s old predreadnoughts still steamed northwest; in the van, Hipper in
Lützow,
six miles in advance of
König,
kept swinging east as Beatty relentlessly bore down on his van.

The second round of the battle—the Run to the North—came to a close around 5:45 p.m., when one of Beatty’s lookouts and then Beatty himself caught sight of the advance guard of the Grand Fleet in the distant form of the armored cruiser
Black Prince
operating on the far right wing—the southwestern edge—of Jellicoe’s forward cruiser screen. Now Beatty knew that Jellicoe was close over the horizon; he knew also that Scheer, straining to catch him, was unaware of this peril. Possessing this knowledge, Beatty grimly altered course again to starboard, pressing even more heavily down on Hipper in order to deflect him from seeing the oncoming threat.

By now, the deteriorating weather had begun to exercise a dominant influence on the battle. Ironically, because of the weather, Hipper, whose mission was to scout and warn the High Seas Fleet of peril ahead, learned the next piece of dreadful news—the worst that either German admiral would hear all day—after Scheer had heard it. The smoke pouring out of funnels and gun barrels, mixing with the blowing wet mist, formed a heavy surface cloud, which moved across the battlefield creating patches of dense, sometimes nearly impenetrable haze. Hipper, steering east, was in one of these patches and therefore knew nothing of any hostile ships other than Beatty’s four battle cruisers and Evan-Thomas’s four superdreadnoughts. For the moment, as he swung to starboard, he and his own battle cruisers were hidden from Beatty. Three miles ahead of him to the east were Bödicker’s four light cruisers; at 5:50 p.m., Hipper received a signal that they were in action with a single enemy cruiser. Five minutes later, Bödicker gave Hipper a shock: his light cruisers, he reported, now were in action with a group of British dreadnoughts to the east. Dreadnoughts? To the east? This could not be Beatty or Evan-Thomas. This was somebody else.

Moments later on
König
’s bridge, Rear Admiral Behncke, at the head of the German battleship line, suffered a shock greater than Hipper’s. At 5:50 p.m.,
König
and her sisters, still believing that they were in pursuit of the fleeing Beatty, raced into a large patch of thick mist. At 5:59 p.m., they emerged from it to behold a terrible sight: the Grand Fleet spread before them across the northern horizon. Twenty-four British dreadnoughts and a host of cruisers and destroyers were 16,000 yards away, racing toward them at 20 knots.

CHAPTER 32
Jutland: Jellicoe vs. Scheer

For Jellicoe, as for Scheer, the appearance of the enemy battle fleet in this part of the North Sea was a surprise. That morning, the Admiralty had advised the British Commander-in-Chief that Admiral Scheer’s flagship remained anchored in the Jade. Therefore, when
Galatea
’s first contact report came in at 2:20 p.m., announcing that German ships had been sighted sixty-five miles to the south, Jellicoe supposed that there might be a skirmish brewing between opposing light cruisers and destroyers. Of course, if Beatty could come up and catch them, he would make quick work of these unlucky Germans. And if Hipper was out, Beatty, with a two-to-one advantage—six battle cruisers and four
Queen Elizabeth
s to Hipper’s five battle cruisers—should manage nicely. For the Grand Fleet, however, the day probably would drag on as part of another routine, uneventful sweep. At two o’clock, most captains in the battle fleet, sharing their admiral’s gloomy assessment, began sending their men to tea.

Then, contrary indications began to appear. At 2:28 p.m.,
St. Vincent
reported to
Iron Duke
that she was picking up strong, nearby wireless signals from ships on the wavelength used by the High Seas Fleet. At 2:35 p.m., as Beatty was turning his battle cruisers toward Hipper and leaving Evan-Thomas behind, Jellicoe signaled the battle fleet to raise steam for full speed. Zigzagging ceased. At 2:39,
Galatea
was back, reporting a “large amount of smoke as though from a fleet.” And at 2:51, another
Galatea
message arrived: “Smoke seems to be seven vessels besides destroyers and cruisers.” Then
St. Vincent
signaled that she had picked up more wireless intercepts; Jellicoe increased battle fleet speed to 18 knots. At 3:00 p.m., the Commander-in-Chief ordered the Grand Fleet to prepare for action, and officers and men put down their tea cups and mugs. On
Collingwood,
Prince Albert, the future King George VI, ill following an excessively convivial visit with friends on the battle cruiser
Invincible
two nights before, rose from his sickbed and went to his post in A turret. A midshipman in
Neptune
’s foretop noticed that “several ships were flying, instead of their customary one White Ensign, three or four ensigns from various parts of the rigging. . . . In about ten minutes the air seemed to be thick with white ensigns, large and small, silk and bunting, hoisted wherever halyards could be found.” In an independent mode, the light cruiser
Blanche
flew four Union Jacks, one from each funnel.

At 3:40 p.m., Beatty reported to Jellicoe that he had sighted five German battle cruisers and many destroyers. Five minutes later, he declared that the enemy was running southeast toward home. This was followed at 3:55 p.m. by a third Beatty signal: “Am engaging enemy.” Now Jellicoe knew that, forty or fifty miles to the south, Beatty and Hipper were fighting on a course that carried them directly away from him at speeds beyond the ability of his slower battleships to overtake. There was little he could do with the battle fleet except to increase speed to its maximum of 20 knots. But there was one way he might help Beatty: by sending him Hood, whose three
Invincible
s, already twenty-five miles ahead of the battle fleet, were capable of 25 knots. At 4:05 p.m., the Commander-in-Chief signaled Hood: “Proceed immediately to support Battle Cruiser Force.”

Invincible, Inflexible,
and
Indomitable
of Rear Admiral Horace Hood’s 3rd Battle Cruiser Squadron were Britain’s first battle cruisers, the eldest children of Jacky Fisher’s revolution in warship design. All had performed important service:
Invincible
in the Battle of the Bight and at the Falklands;
Inflexible
and
Indomitable
had pursued
Goeben
across the Mediterranean;
Inflexible
had gone on to the Falklands and afterward returned to the Dardanelles, where she had been heavily damaged by a Turkish mine;
Indomitable
was with Beatty at the Scarborough Raid and the Dogger Bank. Now, because of the temporary switch in assignments with the five
Queen Elizabeth
s, the three old battle cruisers were with Jellicoe rather than with Beatty at Jutland. Hood’s force was screened by the newly commissioned light cruisers
Chester
and
Canterbury,
and by four destroyers,
Shark, Acasta, Ophelia,
and
Christopher.

When Beatty reported that Hipper, once sighted, had turned and bolted back to the southeast—thus beginning the Run to the South—Jellicoe signaled Hood to hurry to Beatty’s support. The
Invincible
s belched black smoke and dashed away, but locating the fight turned out to be difficult; ninety minutes later, Hood was still looking. At 5:30 p.m., however, the
Invincible
s had reached a point east of the German battle cruisers, which were beginning their turn to the east. Five miles ahead of Hipper were the four light cruisers of Bödicker’s 2nd Scouting Group,
Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Pillau,
and
Elbing.
At 5:35 p.m., one British and several German ships caught sight of one another. To both sides, the dim shapes were unclear in the haze; the Germans were the first to make the correct identification. The British ship, steaming six miles west of
Invincible
’s starboard beam, was the light cruiser
Chester,
in commission less than a month and having had little opportunity for gunnery practice. Nevertheless, when her lookouts saw smoke to the west, her captain turned to investigate. Because, in the haze, Bödicker’s light cruisers resembled the ships of the British 1st Light Cruiser Squadron,
Chester
came closer to take a better look. To encourage the deception, one of the German ships flashed a British identification signal, tempting
Chester
to come still closer. She was 6,000 yards away and had just recognized the three-funnel ships as hostile when the four German cruisers simultaneously opened fire. A storm of shells swept over
Chester
and within five minutes she was hit seventeen times. Her gun crews and bridge and signals personnel were ravaged, her range finder and its crew were blown overboard, all voice-pipe and electrical communications were smashed, and three of her four 6-inch guns were destroyed. But her engines remained intact and, when, a moment later, her assailants suddenly found the tables turned and themselves in terrible danger,
Chester
was able to slip away to the north.

Hood, not far away, saw the orange flashes illuminating the murk and turned toward them. He recognized
Chester
surrounded by shell splashes and then he saw the shadowy outlines of her assailants. At 25 knots, his three battle cruisers raced out of the mist, steering between
Chester
and her pursuers. Heavy battle cruiser guns opened fire at close range, catching Bödicker’s surprised light cruisers in a blizzard of 12-inch shells. For
Invincible,
these were the first shells fired at an enemy since the Falklands; for
Inflexible,
since the Dardanelles. These totally unexpected main battery salvos sent the German light cruisers flying, screaming to Hipper by wireless that they were “under fire from enemy battleships.” Within a few minutes, the Germans had vanished.
Elbing
escaped unhurt, but
Frankfurt
and
Pillau
had been hit and
Wiesbaden
was fatally wounded. A 12-inch shell from
Invincible
had burst in her engine room, piercing main steam pipes and putting both engines out of action. The crippled ship stopped and lay drifting in “a great cloud of steam and smoke.”

To rescue the German light cruisers, Hipper sent
Regensburg
and thirty-one destroyers to charge the
Invincible
s, but before most could launch their torpedoes, they were met by a countercharge from Hood’s second light cruiser,
Canterbury,
and four British destroyers. In a free-swinging brawl at close quarters, the Germans somehow got the impression that many more British ships were present than was the fact. As a result, the Germans fired only twelve torpedoes, after which the thirty-one destroyers turned back. In this action,
Shark
was hit and lay immobile in the water.
Acasta
came up and her captain asked
Shark
’s captain, Commander Loftus Jones, how he could help. Loftus Jones sent him away, saying, “Look after yourself and don’t get sunk over us.”
Acasta
turned and followed in
Inflexible
’s wake as she steamed north into the haze. With
Shark
sinking and many in her crew killed or wounded, Loftus Jones took a place at one gun; as he did so, “a shell took off his right leg above the knee.” German destroyers were approaching and he gave the order to abandon ship. His men got him overboard onto a raft where he died just as German torpedoes were sending
Shark
to the bottom. Only six of
Shark
’s crew survived, rescued that night by a Danish steamer. Posthumously, Loftus Jones was awarded the Victoria Cross.