Jutland 1916

But the battleship was still supreme. Nations built their fleets and their naval strategies around them. They were England’s first line of defense, and the nation’s very survival depended on them, just as it had in the struggle against Napoleon. But the modern battleship bore no resemblance to the ship of the line of Nelson’s time. It carried no sail. Its hull was built of steel, not wood. Its guns fired at ranges that called for corrections factoring in the curvature of the earth, rather than at point blank range or, at most, a few hundred yards, as in the days of Nelson and “Lucky” Jack Aubrey. So much had changed that there was very little actual experience, in battle, with these new ships and technologies. The opposing fleets would be learning as they fought.

What was thought not to have changed was the Nelsonian doctrine and spirit of the Royal Navy, which was to aggressively seek battle, with total destruction of the enemy’s fleet the objective. Once the enemy’s fleet was located, the Royal Navy would sail—steam, actually—toward it, intending to attack and to win conclusively.

Where the Royal Navy relied confidently on its traditions, the Germans had none. They were new to war at sea. Kaiser Wilhelm II had long chafed under the conditions that British seapower imposed on Germany. The nation, doubtless, shared his resentment though felt it not so keenly as the kaiser, who was Queen Victoria’s grandson and was tormented by darkly unique demons when it came to England. The purely military implications for Germany of British control of the sea were plain enough. In the event of war, Germany could be blockaded. And if the English decided to intervene in a land war in Europe, they could pick their spots, reinforcing or withdrawing as necessary. The Royal Navy provided freedom of action and thus restrained German territorial ambitions. This was cause enough for resentment at a time when Germany believed it was destined to rule Europe, if not the world.

So, inevitably and unwisely, the Germans went to work building a fleet capable of challenging the Royal Navy. The inevitability is clear in retrospect. The unwise part became plain quickly enough. If and when war broke out on the continent, England would align itself against Germany precisely because Germany had a fleet capable of challenging Britannia’s rule of the waves.

The kaiser saw it differently. In a 1901 speech to the North German Regatta Association, he said:

War, of course, did come. But for nearly two years, the great battle for control of the seas did not. There were naval engagements in waters as remote as those off the Falkland Islands. And, in the very early days of the war, in the North Sea off the coast of Denmark, came the Battle of Heligoland Bight. It was a clear-cut victory for the Royal Navy and Vice Admiral David Beatty, whose battle cruisers sank three German cruisers, damaged three more, and killed 712 German sailors. The British suffered insignificant damage to their ships and lost 35 sailors.

A few months later, a German force slipped out of port and bombarded the English coast, killing dozens of civilians. When the Germans attempted to repeat this in January 1915, their ships were taken under fire, again, by Beatty’s battle cruisers in what was called the Battle of Dogger Bank. The fight was another victory for the Royal Navy, though not quite so one-sided. Beatty’s flagship, HMS Lion, was badly damaged.

Still, the two engagements did much to persuade the kaiser that the safest, and therefore best, place for his splendid and expensive fleet was in port. Which is where it remained while the German effort at sea was conducted by a new type of vessel, as unimposing in appearance as the battleship was formidable. But the submarine didn’t need to look good because it was most effective when it was not visible but operating submerged, either firing torpedoes or laying mines. These two weapons drew the attention—to the point, almost, of obsession—of the Royal Navy’s high command. In the Dogger Bank battle, Beatty—an aggressive admiral in the style of Nelson—had nonetheless broken off pursuit of the German force, for fear of being drawn into either a minefield or an ambush by Germany’s U-boats.

This was a legitimate concern that rose to the level of doctrine and, in the great battle to come, may have cost the Royal Navy the Trafalgar-like victory it longed for when its battleships steamed out of Scapa Flow on May 31, 1916.

By this time, the German High Seas Fleet was under a new and aggressive commander, Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer, who pressured the kaiser for permission to take the initiative against the Royal Navy. Scheer believed that the fleet should sail and fight. As one of his captains had put it in a letter: “In this life and death struggle, I cannot understand how anyone can think of allowing any weapon which could be used against the enemy to rust in its sheath.”

Germany had recalled its U-boats from the Atlantic and the commerce raiding that threatened to bring neutrals, especially the United States, into the war. This was something Germany could not afford. But it could not survive a long blockade, either, and needed to do something to break the Royal Navy’s stranglehold.

So with Kaiser Wilhelm’s blessing, Scheer set out to use both the U-boats and the High Seas Fleet to bait the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet into actions where the advantage of surprise might present opportunities. An all-out engagement would not be to Scheer’s advantage. He would be outgunned. But elements of the British fleet might be drawn into an ambush by U-boats or into a fight where the odds would be favorable.

What Scheer did not know was that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for him to lay the kind of ambush he had in mind without the British knowing of it beforehand. The codes by which he communicated had been broken, so if and when he gave the order to weigh anchor, the Royal Navy would know and would be waiting for him with more ships and heavier guns, lusting for another Trafalgar.

When the High Seas Fleet left port on May 31, its lead element consisted of five battle cruisers under the command of Vice Admiral Franz von Hipper. These ships were hybrids. Their guns were smaller than those carried by the battleships. They were not so heavily armored. But they were faster than battleships, and the thinking was that this advantage in speed brought some safety. The plan was for these ships to engage whatever British element sailed out to meet them and draw them onto the guns of the German battleships, which would have also left port and would be some 50 miles behind the battle cruisers.

Beatty’s battle cruisers put to sea ahead of the main British fleet with the reciprocal purpose of engaging Hipper and leading him north, onto the waiting guns of the vastly superior Royal Navy Grand Fleet, under the command of Admiral John Jellicoe.

The Germans did not know the British battleships had left Scapa Flow. And because of an administrative error on his own side, Jellicoe was wrongly assured by the codebreakers that Scheer and his battleships were still in port. The rival navies, then, were operating on similar plans and similarly flawed assumptions, which might be said to have set the tone for the battle that followed.

Of those who fought in that battle, there was one who was, in Winston Churchill’s immortal formulation, “The only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.” Admiral Sir John Jellicoe was no doubt aware of this and had gone to extraordinary lengths to prepare himself and his fleet for decisive battle. His Grand Fleet battle orders were exhaustive and detailed in an attempt to cover every contingency, running to some 200 pages. In the area of signals, many of which were still sent by flag hoist, there were thousands of combinations. So many that the signal book was 500 pages long.

But on some of the challenges Jellicoe knew he would be facing there wasn’t much history to consult, and experience was thin. This was especially true when it came to weapons new to this war. Jellicoe could not consult Nelson on the maneuvers and tactics that would be necessary to defend the fleet against torpedoes and mines. Jellicoe was especially concerned by the danger of being drawn into a situation where these weapons might ruin his fleet. Earlier in the war, a single mine had sunk one of the Royal Navy’s newest battleships, HMS Audacious, so the danger was very real. If, during a fleet engagement, he were to be drawn into a minefield or a U-boat ambush, he might lose several more battleships and, with them, supremacy at sea and thus the war. So he established a doctrine to be followed in the case that his ships were engaged and the enemy turned away to entice them to follow into a trap where his magnificent battleships might be destroyed by these new and unglamorous weapons.

He put his intentions on paper and made them known to his superiors in the Admiralty (including Churchill, who was then First Lord):

A bit later in the letter, Jellicoe clearly declared his intentions, stating that if during an engagement “the enemy battle fleet were to turn away .  .  . I should assume that the intention was to lead us over mines and submarines, and should decline to be so drawn.”

Jellicoe then made plain that he realized what this meant in terms of his reputation, which he evidently valued less than he did his fleet and control of the sea.

The endorsement he requested was given by the leadership of the Admiralty. It is difficult, even with hindsight, to find fault with Jellicoe’s appraisal or that endorsement from his superiors. Armchair admirals have debated for 100 years the soundness of his proposed tactics. There is, however, no arguing over the fact that he got the part about “odium” exactly right. But before there could be recriminations and reappraisals (of which there have been a multitude), it was first necessary to fight the battle.

Action began the afternoon of May 31, when the battle cruiser formations came into contact, almost by chance. Indeed, scouts from both sides collided. Not long after this, the battle cruisers were in visual contact. The British ships could shoot further, but for some reason, Beatty did not press this advantage, one of several controversial decisions he made that day. Another was to put several miles of separation between his six battle cruisers and a formation of four of the Royal Navy’s newest and most capable battleships, whose guns were heavier and could shoot further than those carried by the battle cruisers. When the firing did commence, these battleships were still out of range. A signals foul-up was the cause of this missed opportunity and several more in the next several hours.

German guns quickly found the range. In this part of the battle, their gunnery was superior, owing, perhaps, to the light at this time of day. The British ships to the west were backlit by the sun. And, then, superior German optics gave their gunners an advantage. They soon began scoring hits. First on Lion, Beatty’s flagship, and then on Indefatigable, which took simultaneous hits from three shells out of a salvo of four. The explosion cooked off loosely stored powder, and flames traveled down decks to the ship’s magazine. Indefatigable blew up.

There were a mere 2 survivors from a crew of more than 1,000.

Less than half an hour later, the Queen Mary was similarly blown up and sunk with similar losses. There were 20 survivors from a crew of more than 1,200.

This was at about the point in the battle when Admiral Beatty was reported to have said to one of his subordinates, “Chatfield, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today. Turn two points to port.”

Toward the enemy, that is.

The quote, like just about everything about the battle, has been questioned. Especially the part about the turning of Beatty’s battered formation closer to the enemy. But the Nelsonian resonance is there.

Meanwhile, the battleships that would have given Beatty a considerable advantage in firepower were finally closing the gap. But it would be a short-term thing since the longer the battle went on and the opposing formations held course, the sooner the battleships of the German High Seas Fleet would join the action.

A scouting British cruiser spotted the German formation and sent the signal the Royal Navy had been waiting for since war had been declared almost two years earlier: Battleships in sight.

By this time, the four new, fast battleships of the Royal Navy were in the fight. But when the German battleships appeared, Beatty turned his formation and what followed is known in the literature as “The Run to the North.” The commander of the four new British battleships, however, continued steaming south toward the German formation. Another case of poor-to-nonexistent communication between formations and, also, something else—a reluctance of subordinate commanders to take the initiative.

The British battleships did finally turn. However, they did it in sequence, one after the other, at the same position on the sea, making the German gunners’ job that much easier. They scored several hits, but the heavily armored battleships were not put out of action.

The battle now moved into its next phase.

Hipper had led an unsuspecting Beatty onto the German battleships. Now he would pursue Beatty onto the battleships of the Grand Fleet. Things, which had begun badly for the Royal Navy, were now trending its way.

Except .  .  . there were more signaling breakdowns, and Jellicoe could not get the information he needed to make his dispositions. He was taking six parallel lines of four ships each toward the oncoming German fleet. Before he engaged, he would need to maneuver from this formation to a line of battle. That line would be almost six miles long with flag signals being passed along the line. This was a difficult and complex transition, a feat of expert seamanship. It had to be done properly, and the timing had to be right.

Jellicoe got it done by turning to port. Heading east, that is, which tended to increase the distance between his fleet and Scheer’s. The move was criticized as being insufficiently aggressive but as the years went on, opinion changed. The battle, it should be said, is one of the most exhaustively and minutely studied in the history of warfare. The controversies that attached to Jutland are alive and well, and may never be settled.

But give Jellicoe credit for forming the battle line smartly and avoiding collisions at sea while doing so. It was an intricate maneuver, conducted under stress, and it gave the Royal Navy an advantage that was the ne plus ultra of battleship combat: the positioning of one’s fleet that is known as “crossing the T.”

When accomplished, this brings your ships into a line across the long axis of the enemy’s formation. All your guns can bear and shoot down the line of his ships, while many of his guns are either masked by ships ahead in line or facing the wrong way. The advantage is decisive.

Jellicoe had accomplished this difficult feat. Furthermore, the German fleet was now to the west and silhouetted against a bright horizon and thus fine targets for his guns—not exactly the place in the sun that the kaiser had envisioned. It was the opportunity that the Royal Navy had been training for and dreaming of.

British fire found the range. Jellicoe’s gunnery was much better than Beatty’s had been. A German cruiser was sunk and a battle cruiser so badly damaged that it went down later that night. But the British were hit hard, too. Another battle cruiser, HMS Invincible, was hit and when fire reached its magazine, it blew up. It was the third such casualty of the day.

Outgunned and outmaneuvered, Scheer ordered his fleet to execute a 180-degree turn away from the British battle line and sent his destroyers to attack with torpedoes. Jellicoe turned away from the attack, as he had plainly written he intended to do. Still, one torpedo hit the HMS Marlborough. Other ships were spared by the turn away as the torpedoes “combed” the British formation. Validating, perhaps, Jellicoe’s caution.

But the enemy was now out of sight and out of range, and Jellicoe was receiving no reports of its position. Captains who could have told him failed to do so. The fog of war hung heavily over the North Sea.

Then, for reasons that remain unclear, Scheer executed another 180-degree turn, back toward the British battle line. Once again, Jellicoe crossed his T. British guns scored 37 quick hits on the German fleet, which managed only two on its enemy.

The situation was now so precarious for Scheer that he sent his remaining—and already heavily damaged—battle cruisers on a desperate attack against Jellicoe’s line. In the literature, the attack of the battle cruisers is called a “death ride.” The destroyers also attacked, as they had earlier. And Scheer’s battleships again executed a 180-degree turn.

This, in the exhaustive analysis and refighting of the battle, was the critical point. Faced with a fleeing and outgunned enemy, silhouetted for easy targeting in his sights, Jellicoe was obliged to decide, again, whether he would follow his own doctrine and turn away, in the name of prudence, or press an attack with Nelsonian aggressiveness.

He ordered his ships to turn away. Something, in the wonderfully restrained words of John Keegan, “for which he has ever afterwards been reproached.”

The great opportunity had slipped away and the rest of the battle was night action between escort ships. The battleships had seen their last action of this war. Their time was done, though this was not clear when the British fleet returned gloomily to Scapa Flow.

British losses were three battle cruisers, four armored cruisers, and eight destroyers. Several ships had survived damage and would be repaired. Over 6,000 of Jellicoe’s men had been killed.

The German fleet had lost fewer ships and fewer men and, for a navy with no tradition to speak of, had been the equal, at least, of the world’s mightiest and most storied navy. The kaiser boasted that “the spell of Trafalgar” had been broken.

Shortly after the battle, Jellicoe was kicked upstairs to become First Sea Lord. Beatty relieved Jellicoe as commander of the Grand Fleet. He made reforms based on the lessons of Jutland, to include simplifying the general orders and stressing the need for initiative by subordinate commanders.

Recriminations almost immediately followed the battle, with partisans of both Jellicoe and Beatty making their arguments in public and their slanders in private. Beatty was much the better at this kind of fight and gained temporary reputational advantage, though there was much to criticize in his conduct. That line imputed to Beatty about there being something wrong with the bloody ships, steer two points to port, seemed to strike the aggressive note that critics believed Jellicoe lacked. If he had just been more like Nelson .  .  .

As time went on, though, the lessons of the battle settled less on personalities than on doctrine and organization. In an odd and unremarked way, Jutland anticipated a battle that would come a month later and that truly was a disaster for British arms: the Somme. The British Army under Douglas Haig meant to control everything from the top and thus restrained initiative. It sent troops on line, distrusting their ability to maneuver under fire. Everything about its conduct of the battle was plodding and unimaginative and by the book.

In the end, Jutland was by far the more successful battle for Britain and its allies than for the Germans, whose fleet may have sustained fewer losses than the British but whose commanders concluded, after that battle, that they could not risk another. Even if it had to, the High Seas Fleet was not capable of leaving port again for several weeks. It would take that long to repair the damaged ships. Jellicoe, on the other hand, would have been able to leave Scapa Flow again a few hours after he returned. He still had the Germans bottled up. The blockade was still in place and still strangling Germany. Britannia still ruled the waves. Jellicoe, whether he had been overly cautious or not, had made it that much more likely that the war would, eventually, be won.

Forced to do something now to relieve the pressure of the blockade and unable to do it with battleships, Germany turned to unrestricted submarine warfare. Admiral Scheer wrote to the kaiser that “a victorious end to the war within a reasonable time can only be achieved through the defeat of British economic life—that is, by using the U-boats against British trade.” The resumption of unrestricted warfare instead brought the United States into the war, and this doomed Germany.

But not before the U-boats became a serious threat to the Allied cause, one that might have left Britain unable to continue. Countermeasures were instituted, many of them while Jellicoe was First Sea Lord. For complex reasons, he was opposed, however, to the convoy system, which may ultimately have been the most successful of the countermeasures. For this, he was abruptly relieved of his duties, on Christmas Eve 1917, by Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

He lost that fight and it is a good thing that he did. But it is Jutland for which he will be both remembered and reproached. What he accomplished in that battle can be simply put. He managed not to lose the war in an afternoon. It was not “Nelsonian,” but it was good enough.

Geoffrey Norman, a writer in Vermont, is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard.