Read Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service Online

Authors: Hector C. Bywater,H. C. Ferraby

Tags: #Autobiography, #Military, #World War I, #Memoirs, #True Crime, #Espionage, #Engineering & Transportation, #Engineering, #History, #Intelligence & Espionage, #Naval, #Politics & Social Sciences, #Politics & Government, #Specific Topics, #Historical

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This particular agent had the distinction of becoming an object of special interest to no less a personage than Baron von Kühlmann, the German Chargé d’Affaires in London during the last two years before the war. Acting, no doubt, on instructions from Berlin, the Baron made extensive inquiries in certain circles where he hoped to find people who were personally acquainted with the agent, and who might be persuaded to disclose his whereabouts. These inquiries, however, were conducted with so little finesse that they led to nothing.

One illuminating example of Herr von Kühlmann’s diplomatic methods may be cited. He made the acquaintance of a well-known London journalist, invited him to dinner, and there introduced him to two German naval officers, who were visiting England.

‘These friends of mine,’ he told his guest, ‘are very anxious to meet “X” (mentioning the British agent’s name), who is believed to be living somewhere in Germany. He seems to be a most interesting person. Do you happen to know where he is to be found?’

This naive gambit immediately put the guest on his guard, and he was careful to give no information whatever. In view of Herr von Kühlmann’s reputation for diplomatic astuteness, this incident is worth putting on record.

In pre-war days the German press frequently made more or less overt attacks on members of the British diplomatic corps
in central Europe, hinting at illicit activities on their part in the domain of naval and military intelligence work. We have the best authority for declaring these charges to have been utterly baseless. Not only was the conduct of our naval and military attachés at all times scrupulously correct, but for reasons of policy they did not always take advantage of the official facilities for obtaining information that were open to them. They neither met nor corresponded with any intelligence agent, nor did they aid or abet such agents in any way whatsoever.

It would be interesting to know whether all the members of the German diplomatic suite in London during the last pre-war years had an equally impeccable record. There is, at least, strong evidence that not all of them were active in promoting good feeling between the two countries and allaying mutual suspicion. In his well-known book,
The Two White Nations
, Commander Georg von Hase records a conversation he had at Kiel, in July 1914, with the German naval attaché in London, Commander Erich von Müller. This gentleman took Commander von Hase aside, and said to him:

Be on your guard against the English: England is ready to fight. We are all on the brink of war. The sole object of this naval visit (of the British Second Battle Squadron) is to spy out the land. They want to get a clear picture of our fleet’s readiness for war. Above all, tell them nothing about our submarines.

Commander von Hase adds that, while this view coincided entirely with his own, he was nevertheless ‘astonished to hear it expressed so bluntly’.

It is an interesting fact, not previously divulged, that both
France and Russia maintained a number of naval intelligence agents in Germany. The Russians were the more numerous, and they are understood to have collected a good deal of useful information. There is more than hearsay evidence that several employees of the imperial dockyard at Danzig were Russian agents. If this be true, it would explain the copious and generally accurate data on German submarines that the Russian naval staff possessed on the outbreak of war, for up to that time Danzig was the principal centre for U-boat construction.

Russian agents are also known to have supplied minute details of the German coastal defences in the Baltic, particularly those that guarded the approaches to Königsberg and Danzig. Had the Tsarist fleet been stronger and better led, it might have made good use of this intelligence. But where the Russians really shone was at counter-espionage, some of their achievements in this sphere being noted in another chapter.

As an Irishman might say, the best Russian agents were Poles. Our own intelligence men in Germany sometimes employed Polish helpers, and, as a rule, found them useful and trustworthy. The work attracted them, less on account of the material rewards it brought than of the opportunity it gave them of doing an injury to the power that they regarded as the hereditary oppressor of their distressful country. German-born Poles were invariably the most bitter against their Prussian masters.

Photography, it need hardly be said, plays an important part in intelligence work. The camera often detects details that have escaped the keenest eye and, for this reason, our agents in Germany did their utmost to secure photographs of every new ship at the earliest possible moment. Sometimes as many as a dozen views were obtained, all taken from different angles. One of our
agents succeeded in getting snapshots of the battlecruiser
Derfflinger
as she lay on the building slip, and these revealed certain features of her underbody that had hitherto been unsuspected.

It is safe to say that we had detailed photographs of every German warship afloat in August 1914, the pictures being filed at ID headquarters in chronological sequence, so that the changes in rig and general appearances, due to dockyard refit, could be noted at a glance. In this way the admiralty draughtsmen were able to prepare meticulously accurate silhouettes of every German fighting craft, thereby facilitating their identification if met with at sea.

Not long before the war a solitary German ship, the
Blücher
, was fitted with a tripod foremast of British pattern. Within a week after emerging from dockyard with her new mast she had been photographed, and the existing silhouette of the ship corrected accordingly.

Incidentally this mast was responsible for the death of many German sailors in the Dogger Bank action, for when the
Blücher
was sinking she was mistaken by a Zeppelin for a British ship, and bombs were dropped. This attack compelled our destroyers engaged in rescue work to draw off, with the result that hundreds of Germans in the water had to be left to their fate.

Those who have been associated with intelligence work are the first to appreciate the profound psychology of Poe’s ‘Purloined Letter’. Alike in concealment and detection, the simpler the methods employed, the greater the probability of success. Elsewhere we have paid a tribute to the effectiveness of the censorship that Germany imposed on naval news as a retort to Lord Fisher’s ‘hush’ policy. But while it is true that this censorship kept us in the dark for several years, the elaborate secrecy in
which the Germans sought to cloak every naval development, important and otherwise, often had an effect the reverse of what was intended.

Time after time our intelligence agents were put on the track of some highly important event by the ostentatious measures taken to conceal it. Cases in point were the
Blücher-Elsass
gunnery experiment, and the building of the first German 15-inch gun. We got wind of the latter even before it had been tested on the Krupp proving grounds at Meppen, simply because of the almost theatrical precautions with which it was surrounded.

Precisely the same thing happened in connection with the engines for
U-19
, the first submarine to be fitted with Diesel machinery. Their construction at the Krupp-Germania works in Kiel would have remained unknown but for the fact that the particular shop where they were being assembled was barricaded off from the others and plastered with notices threatening trespassers with dire penalties. Inevitably, therefore, it was soon spread about the whole works that something of a highly secret nature was in progress, and as the firm employed 6,000 hands, the news quickly circulated throughout Kiel. Being thus provided with a definite clue, one of our secret service men followed it up, and eventually obtained full details of the new engine.

In February 1912 the Kaiser’s speech at the opening of the Reichstag clearly foreshadowed new legislation for increasing the navy. It was very important for this country to learn what was impending, for at that date British naval policy was necessarily governed to a great extent by developments across the North Sea. Although the new bill was not presented to the Reichstag until 14 June, its substance was communicated to British ID headquarters early in May. This was the work of an enterprising
agent who secured, by very simple means, a set of proofs from the establishment where copies of the bill were being printed for distribution to the Reichstag deputies.

It is not surprising that the disclosure caused a sensation in London, for the new legislative measure was designed to raise the German fleet to a level of strength far above anything previously anticipated. Provision was made for an eventual establishment of forty-one battleships, twenty battlecruisers, forty light cruisers, 144 destroyers, and seventy-two submarines, or more than twice as many modern fighting ships – barring destroyers – as Germany possessed in 1914. These figures, we may observe in parentheses, should leave no doubt as to the reality or the gravity of the German naval menace in the days of which we are writing. Looking back at that period, it is amazing that so many people in England, including some of our most intelligent public men, should have remained blind to the numerous and unmistakable portents of war that were crowding on the horizon. If Armageddon caught us partly unprepared it was not for lack of warning.

CHAPTER 7

WHY JUTLAND WAS INDECISIVE

I
T IS USELESS
to pretend that the British nation was wholly satisfied with the naval operations of the Great War. There still exists a widespread belief that the incomparable resources we possessed, both personal and material, for the conduct of sea warfare were neither sufficiently exploited nor always employed to the best advantage.

No doubt the great mass of the British public failed to appreciate the peculiar and, indeed, unique conditions that governed the naval campaign. Having unbounded confidence in the navy – a confidence that never stood higher than in August 1914, despite the ‘panics’ and the professional controversies within the service itself, which were so marked a feature of the decade preceding the war – it looked for a succession of brilliant victories at sea, worthy to rank with the most glorious achievements of the Nelsonic era.

Instead, there came reports of indecisive actions, and, more
than once, of actual defeats at the hands of an enemy who was known to be greatly inferior in strength. Almost the only major events of the war at sea that roused the nation to enthusiasm were the spirited raid on the Bight of Heligoland on 28 August 1914, the annihilation of Von Spee’s squadron off the Falklands a few months later, and the heroic attack on Zeebrugge on St George’s Day, 1918.

True, the Dogger Bank action in January 1915 was a victory so far as it went, but subsequent information left no doubt that a great opportunity had been missed.

Jutland was for the British public the crowning disappointment. Here, for the first time, the Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet came into contact and fought a pitched battle. Strategically it was indecisive, except in so far as it confirmed the command of the sea surface that Great Britain had exercised from the beginning of the war. A whole library has been written about this engagement. Scores of German authors have attempted to prove that Jutland was a signal triumph for their fleet. On the British side there has been endless controversy, some writers maintaining that we scored a victory more or less decisive, others that it was a drawn battle with honours evenly divided, and a few who refer to it as a ‘disaster’.

These contradictory opinions do not appear to have had much effect on the average citizen. Unversed in the niceties of strategy and tactics, he has weighed the visible results and found them less than he expected. On the plain evidence before him he sees no grounds for claiming a victory. The Grand Fleet went into action with a margin of superiority in tonnage and gun power that could fairly be described as overwhelming. In the opening phase six British battlecruisers fought five German
ships of similar type, the former having a decided preponderance in weight of gunfire. Yet within an hour two of our ships were destroyed and at least one other was severely damaged, while the German squadron remained intact, with all its ships still in fighting trim.

In the second phase, the German battle fleet was engaged two hours with our main fleet under circumstances distinctly unfavourable to the enemy. Caught in what was, by all the rules of the game, a hopeless trap, and exposed to a concentrated fire of hundreds of the heaviest guns mounted afloat, Admiral Scheer contrived to extricate himself with comparatively trivial losses, and, eventually, to regain his base without being brought to action a second time. Such, baldly stated, were the results of the battle as the man in the street sees them. Whatever the conclusions to be drawn, the facts themselves are incontestable.

It is not proposed to deal here with questions of leadership or strategy. We shall confine ourselves to an examination of certain material factors that played an extremely important part at Jutland and in other actions of the war, and that, we believe, will shed new light on many incidents that have long mystified the public.

Save for certain characteristics in profile and rig, there was little outward difference between British and German capital ships before the war. But appearances were in this case deceptive.

When Germany, following the example set by Great Britain, began to build dreadnoughts, she designed them chiefly for the purpose of operating at a relatively short distance from their home bases. They were, therefore, ships with a limited radius of action, not only with regard to fuel supply, but also in respect of accommodation for the personnel. Habitability was
quite a minor consideration, for the ships were not intended to remain at sea for lengthy periods or to undertake long voyages. The crews, in fact, were meant to live ashore except when the fleet was exercising, and to this end enormous barracks were erected at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven.

To put the matter in an expressive though exaggerated form, German battleships were floating batteries with emergency accommodation for the crew. British battleships, on the other hand, were built to sail and fight in any part of the globe where their presence might be required, and it was therefore essential to provide generous living quarters for the health and reasonable comfort of the personnel.

This fundamental difference between German and British principles of construction goes far towards explaining the remarkable powers of enduring punishment, which German ships exhibited in action. Being free to dispense with the large berthing spaces, which were so necessary a feature of British ships, the German constructor was able to sub-divide his hull into numerous, small, watertight compartments that localised damage sustained below the waterline by shell fire, torpedo or gun.

The value of this method of protection was demonstrated by the number of German capital ships that remained afloat, and in many cases still capable of fighting, after they had received underwater injuries. Particulars are as follows:

Westfalen
, 1 torpedo;

Ostfriesland
, 1 mine;

Grosser Kurfürst
, 1 mine;

Markgraf
, 2 mines;

Kronprinz
, 1 torpedo;

Bayern
, 1 mine;

Moltke
, 2 torpedoes;

Goeben
, 5 mines;

Seydlitz
, 1 mine and 1 torpedo.

As we have stated elsewhere, the robust protection of the German ships was no secret to the British Admiralty. It was the theme of many secret service reports, often accompanied by drawings that showed the entire system of watertight compartments.

The armour plating of these ships was also very extensive and massive. Every tonne saved by the mounting of relatively lightweight guns and by other economies of weight in construction and equipment was put into armour defence.

As the ships spent little time at sea, the ventilation question was not of prime importance, and it was thus possible to plate up the sides of the hull where, in British vessels, lines of portholes (scuttles) were an absolute necessity. Germany, therefore, had a fleet of dreadnoughts, which were as unsinkable as human ingenuity could make them. That they were cramped, ill-ventilated, and uncomfortable mattered little in view of their clearly defined purpose, which was to fight in the North Sea, the Baltic, and perhaps in the Channel, but at no greater distance from the Heligoland Bight. Regarded purely as combative units, irrespective of radius and strategical mobility, they were undoubtedly superior to their British contemporaries.

Now, although it would have been bad policy on our part to have built our dreadnoughts as ‘floating batteries’ on the German principle, having regard to our world-wide strategical commitments, it nevertheless lay within our power to counter by other
means the tactical advantage that the Germans derived from the superior defensive properties of their ships.

When, indeed, the two fleets were compared on paper, it looked as though we had taken the needful steps in that direction, for our ships carried much heavier guns. Against the German 11-inch and 12-inch, we matched 13.5-inch and 15-inch weapons. In theory, the latter were powerful enough to crush the German ships in spite of their thick armour, and in practice they would certainly have done so had we used the right kind of shell.

Unfortunately, while we built great guns and neglected to provide them with efficient projectiles, Germany built smaller guns, but supplied them with shells of superlative quality.

The consequence was that in actual destructive power the German medium-calibre weapons were equal, if not superior, to our heavier ordnance, and so, on balance, the German ships enjoyed a net advantage by virtue of their stronger protection.

We know from the statements of von Tirpitz and other German authorities that they made a careful study of the protective features of British ships, and then designed their own guns and projectiles with a special view to attacking these prospective targets in the most effective manner. The principles that actuated the respective naval ordnance policies of Britain and Germany are much too technical to be examined in detail, but they may be briefly indicated in terms that need not affright the non-professional reader.

Both powers had made an exhaustive study of the gunnery data provided by the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, but the inferences they drew were by no means parallel.

In the opinion of British experts, the annihilation of the Russian fleet at Tsushima was due to the high-explosive shell used
by the Japanese heavy guns. These projectiles had thin walls, an abnormally large bursting charge, and extremely sensitive fuses. Very few of them penetrated the armour of the Russian ships. The majority detonated against the sides, decks, and superstructure.

A vivid picture of the havoc they wrought is given by Capt. Vladimir Semenoff in his narrative of the battle, together with some notes on the subject of projectiles, which are very pertinent to our present theme:

It seemed as if these (the Japanese projectiles) were mines, not shells, which were striking the ship’s side and falling on the deck. They burst as soon as they touched anything – the moment they encountered the least impediment in their flight.

Handrails, funnel guys, topping lifts of the boats’ derricks, were quite sufficient to cause a thoroughly efficient burst. The steel plates and superstructure on the upper deck were torn to pieces … Iron ladders were crumpled up into rings, and guns were literally hurled from their mountings. Such havoc would never be caused by the simple impact of a shell, still less by that of its splinters. It could only be caused by the force of the explosion.

In a footnote he adds:

For a great many years in naval gunnery two distinct ideas have prevailed: one is to inflict on the enemy, although not necessarily much (in quantity), severe and heavy damage – i.e. to stop movement, to penetrate under the waterline, to get a burst in the hull below the waterline, briefly, to put the ship at once out of action; the other is to pour upon him the greatest volume of fire in the shortest
time, though it be above water and the actual damage caused by each individual shot be immaterial, in the hope of paralysing the ship, trusting that if this were done it would not be difficult to destroy her completely – that she would, in fact, sink by herself.

With modern guns, in order to secure the first of the above ideas, solid armour-penetrating projectiles must be employed – i.e. thick-coated shells (whose internal capacity and bursting charge are consequently diminished), and percussion fuses with retarded action, bursting the shell inside the target. To secure the second idea, shells need only be sufficiently solid to ensure their not bursting at the moment of being fired. The thickness of their walls may be reduced to the minimum, and their internal capacity and bursting charge increased to the utmost limits. The percussion fuses should be sensitive enough to detonate at the slightest touch.

The first of the above views prevails chiefly in France, the second in England. In the late war we (Russia) held the first, and the Japanese the second.

There is scarcely any room for doubt that Lord Fisher had what he conceived to be the true moral of Tsushima in mind when he initiated the dreadnought policy. He visualised a battleship with multiple big guns pouring a stream of highly explosive shells, with instant-impact fuses, into the target, blowing away all the unarmoured parts, and reducing it to a mere hulk without necessarily penetrating the belt armour. Such of the crew as escaped death or wounds would be demoralised by this hurricane of flame and splintered steel, and although the ship might still float, she would no longer exist as a fighting organism.

Nor was this policy modified when we increased the calibre of our guns from 12-inch to 13.5-inch, and then to 15-inch. It is
true that a certain proportion of the shells were armour-piercing ones, but reliance was placed chiefly on the high-explosive type that the Japanese had used with such terrible effect at Tsushima.

Our policy would have been sound enough had the German battleships of 1914 resembled in construction and armour defence the ill-starred Russian vessels of 1905; but, in fact, they were built on entirely different lines.

Unlike the Russian pre-dreadnoughts, with their thin belt of armour and vast area of thinly or non-protected sides, the German dreadnoughts were ‘stiff’ with armour on the waterline and well above it, the side plating being conjoined with thick steel decks and armoured bulkheads, running fore and aft and athwart ships. Every gun position, every control station, every place in the ship where a hit might cause serious injury, was sheathed in armour, against which shells might burst harmlessly as long as they did not penetrate.

Clearly, therefore, the type of projectile that had turned the scale at Tsushima was quite unsuitable for attacking such ships as these. Possessing, as we did, almost complete details of the protection of every German dreadnought, it is difficult to understand why we failed to develop a thoroughly efficient armour-piercing shell – one, that is, that would perforate thick armour and burst inside with devastating violence.

The qualities demanded of such a projectile are lucidly set forth in a later passage, descriptive of the shells that the Germans fired at Jutland.

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