CHAPTER XIV
THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS: SOME IMPRESSIONS
AND REFLECTIONS
Part II
At the close of my previous Chapter I took a mean advantage of my readers. For I broke off at the most interesting and baffling phase in the whole Battle of the Giants. It was easy to write of the first two phases—the battle-cruiser action up to the turn where theQueen MaryandIndefatigablewere lost, and the phase during which Beatty, though sorely weakened, gallantly headed off the German line, and Evan-Thomas, with his Fifth Battle Squadron, stalled off the Main High Seas Fleet in order to allow Beatty the time necessary for the execution of his manœuvre, and Jellicoe the time to bring up the Grand Fleet. This second phase of the battle was perfectly planned and perfectly executed. It will always stand out in the pages of English Naval History as a classical example of English battle tactics. I could have described these two phases with much more of intimate detail had the Censor permitted, but perhaps I gave enough to make clear what was sought to be done and what was, in fact, achieved.
When Jellicoe had deployed his potent squadrons, fitting them in between Evan-Thomas and Beatty and curving round the head of the German line, which by then had turned back upon itself and taken the form of a closely knit spiral, the Germans appeared to be doomed. They were not enveloped in the strict sense of being surrounded—we were twice as strong as they were in numbers of modern ships and nearly three times as strong in effective gun power, yet we had not nearly sufficient numbers actually to surround them. A complete envelopment of an enemy fleet rarely, if ever, occurs at sea. But though Admiral Scheer was not surrounded he was in the most imminent peril of destruction. Jellicoe and Beatty were between his ships and the Jutland Coast, and as they pressed towards the south and west were pushing him away from the Wet Triangle and the security of his home bases. We had him outmanœuvred and beaten, but we did not destroy him. Why was that?
No question is more difficult to answer fairly and truthfully. I have discussed this third critical phase of the battle with a great many officers who were present—and in a position to see what happened—and with a great many who, though not present, had means of informing themselves upon essential details. I have studied line by line the English and German dispatches and have paid more regard to what they do not tell than to what they do tell. It is stupid to reject Admiral Scheer’s dispatch as fiction; it is not, but it is coloured with the purpose of making the least of his tactical defeat and the most of his very skilful escape. Jellicoe’s dispatch is also coloured. I do not doubt that the statements contained in it are strictly true, but there are obvious omissions. By a process of examination and inquiry I have arrived at an answer to my question. I put it forward in all deference, for though I am of the Navy in blood and spirit, and have studied it all my life, yet I am a layman without sea training in the Service.
The first point essential to an understanding is that Jellicoe’s deployment was not complete until late in the afternoon, 6.17 p.m. G.M.T., that the evening was misty, and the “visibility” poor. Had the encounter between Beatty’s and Hipper’s battle cruisers occurred two hours earlier, and had Jellicoe come into action at 4.15 instead of 6.15, one may feel confident that there would not now be any High Seas German Fleet, that we could, since May 31st, 1916, have maintained a close blockade with fast light craft of the German North Sea and Baltic bases, and that the U-boat activity, which still threatens our sea communications and has had a profound influence on the progress of the war, would never have been allowed by us to develop. Upon so little, two hours of a day in late spring, sometimes hangs the fate of nations.
The afternoon was drawing towards evening; the light was poor, the German lines had curved away seeking safety in flight. But there remained confronting us Hipper’s battle cruisers and Scheer’s faster battleships, supported by swarms of torpedo craft. We also had our destroyers, many of them, and light cruisers. There was one chance of safety open to Scheer, and he took it with a judgment in design and a skill in execution which marks him out as a great sea captain. His one chance was so to fend off and delay Jellicoe and Beatty by repeated torpedo attacks driven home, that the big English ships would not be able to close in upon the main German Fleet and destroy it by gun-fire while light remained to give a mark to the gunners. And so Scheer decided to “attack,” and did attack. In his dispatch he deliberately gives the impression—for the comfort and gratification of German readers—that he successfully attacked our Grand Fleet with his main High Seas Fleet. He was no fool of that sort. He attacked, but it was with torpedo craft supported by Hipper’s battle cruisers.
The range of a modern torpedo, the range at which it may occasionally be effective, is not far short of 12,000 yards, about seven land miles. This, when the visibility is low, is about the extreme effective range for heavy guns. The guns can shoot much farther, twice as far, when the gunners or the fire directors up aloft can see; but gunnery without proper light is a highly wasteful and ineffective business. At the range—usually about 12,000 yards, though sometimes coming down to 9,000 yards—to which the German torpedo attacks forced Jellicoe and Beatty to keep out, only some four or five enemy ships in the van could be seen at once; more of the rear squadron could be seen, though never more than eight or twelve. Our marks were usually not the hulls of the enemy’s ships but the elusive flashes of his guns. Scheer used his torpedo craft in exactly the same way as a skilful land General—in the old days of open fighting—used his cavalry during a retreat. He used them to cover by repeated charges, sometimes of single flotillas, at other times of heavily massed squadrons, the retirement of his main forces.
If, therefore, we combine the factor of low visibility and the approach of sunset, with the other factor of the long range of the modern torpedo, we begin to understand why Jellicoe and Beatty were not able to close in upon their enemy and wipe him off the seas. From the English point of view the third phase—that critical third phase to which the first and second phases had led up and which, under favourable circumstances, would have ended with the destruction of the German Fleet—found us in the position of a “following” or “chasing” fleet. But from the German point of view the same phase found their fleet in the position of “attackers.” I have shown how these points of view can be reconciled, for while the main German Fleet was intent upon getting away and our main fleet was intent upon following it up and engaging it, the German battle cruisers, supported by swarms of torpedo craft, were fighting a spirited rearguard action and attacking us continually. The visibility was poor and mist troubled both sides. But the escape of the Germans was not wholly due to the difficulty of seeing them distinctly. If we could have closed in we should have seen his ships all right; we did not close in because the persistence and boldness of his torpedo attacks prevented us.
The third phase, which lasted from 6.17 p.m. until 8.20 p.m., was fought generally at about 12,000 yards, though now and then the range came down to 9,000 yards. The Germans, fending us off with torpedo onslaughts, did their utmost to open out the ranges and used smoke screens to lessen what visibility the atmosphere permitted. Their gun-fire was so poor and ineffective that Jellicoe’s Main Fleet was barely scratched and three men only were wounded. But we cannot escape from the conclusion that Scheer’s rearguard tactics were successful, he did fend Jellicoe off and kept him from closing, and he did withdraw the bulk of his fleet from the jaws which during two hours were seeking to close upon it. He made two heavy destroyer attacks, during one of which the battleshipMarlboroughwas hit but was able to get back to dock under her own steam. The third phase of the Jutland Battle was exactly like a contest between two boxers—one heavy and the other light—being fought in an open field without ropes. The little man, continually side-stepping and retreating, kept the big man off; the big man could not close for fear of a sudden jab in his vital parts, and there were no corners to the ring into which the evasive light weight could be driven.
If one applies this key to the English and German descriptions of the third phase in the Jutland Battle one becomes able to reconcile them, and becomes able to understand why the immensely relieved Germans claim their skilful escape as a gift from Heaven. They do not in their dispatches claim to have defeated Jellicoe, except in the restricted sense of having foiled his purpose of compassing their destruction. They got out of the battle very cheaply, whatever may have been their actual losses. This they realise as plainly as we do. Relief shines out of every line of their official story and is compressed, without reserve, into its concluding sentence. “Whoever had the fortune to take part in the battle will joyfully recognise with a thankful heart that the protection of the Most High was with us. It is an old historical truth that fortune favours the brave.”
I am afraid that I can do little to elucidate the fourth phase of the Battle of the Giants—the night scrimmage (one cannot call it a battle) during which our destroyers were seeking out the enemy ships in the darkness and plugging holes into them at every opportunity. And that dawn upon June 1st, of which so much was hoped and from which nothing was realised? Who can describe that? Nothing that I can write would approach in sublimity the German dispatch. Consider what the situation was. Jellicoe and Beatty had worked far down the Jutland coast and had partially edged their way between Scheer and the German bases. Their destroyers had sought out the German ships, found them and loosed mouldies at them, lost them again and found them again; finally had lost them altogether. At dawn the visibility was even lower than during the previous evening—only three to four miles—our destroyers were out of sight and touch and did not rejoin till 9 o’clock. No enemy was in sight, and after cruising about until 11 o’clock Jellicoe was forced to the conclusion that Scheer had got away round his far-stretching horns and was even then threading the mine fields which protected his ports of refuge. There was no more to be done, and the English squadrons, robbed of the prey upon which they had set their clutches, steamed off towards their northern fastnesses. There the fleet fuelled and replenished with ammunition, and 9.30 a.m. on June 2nd was reported ready for action. The German description of that dawn is a masterpiece in the art of verbal camouflage: “As the sun rose upon the morning of the historic First of June in the eastern sky, each one of us expected that the awakening sun would illumine the British line advancing to renew the battle. This expectation was not realized. The sea all round, so far as the eye could see, was empty. One of our airships which had been sent up reported, later in the morning, having seen twelve ships of a line-of-battle squadron coming from the southern part of the North Sea holding a northerly course at great speed. To the great regret of all it was then too late for our fleet to intercept and attack them.” The British Fleet, which the writer regretted not to see upon the dawn of a long day in late spring, was of more than twice the strength of his own. It would have had sixteen hours of daylight within which to devour him; yet he regretted its absence! The Germans must be a very simple people, abysmally ignorant of the sea if this sort of guff stimulates their vanity.
In war the moral is far greater than the material, the psychological than the mechanical. One cannot begin to understand the simplest of actions unless one knows something of the spirit of the men who fight them. In sea battles, more than in contests upon land, events revolve round the personalities of the leaders and results depend upon the skill with which these leaders have gauged the problem set them, and dispose their forces to meet those varying phases which lead up to a conclusion. It is borne in upon us by hard experience that the southern part of the North Sea is not big enough and not deep enough to afford space for a first-class naval battle to be fought out to the finish. The enemy is too near his home bases, he can break off an action and get away before being overwhelmed. Yet even in the southern North Sea there is room in which to dispose great naval forces and in which to manœuvre them. Fleets are not tucked up by space as are modern armies. Jutland was a battle of encounter and manœuvre, not of heavy destructive fighting. There was a dainty deftness about the first two phases which is eminently pleasing to our national sea pride, and however we may growl at the tactical incompleteness of the battle we cannot but admit that, taken as a whole, it was as strategically decisive an action as has ever been fought by the English Navy throughout its long history. It re-established the old doctrine, which the course of the Sea War has tended to thrust out of sight, that Command of the Sea rests as completely as it always has done in the past upon the big fighting ships of the main battle line. Upon them everything else depends; the operations of destroyers and light cruisers, of patrols and even of submarines. For upon big ships depends the security of home bases. Surface ships alone can occupy the wide spaces of the sea and can hold securely the ports in one’s own country and the ports which are ravished from an enemy. Submarines are essentially raiders, their office is the obstruction of sea communications, but submarines are useless, even for their special work of obstruction, unless they can retire, refit, and replenish stores at bases made secure by the existence in effective being of a strong force of big fighting ships. Had Jutland been as great a tactical success as it was a strategical success, had it ended with the wiping out of the German High Seas Fleet, then, as I have already stated, the U-boat menace would have been scotched by the destruction of the protecting screen behind which the U-boats are built, refitted, and replenished. No small part of the German relief at the issue of Jutland is due to their realisation of this naval truth. They express that realisation in a sentence which contains the whole doctrine of the efficacy of the big ship as the final determinant in naval warfare. Admiral Scheer in his dispatch declared that the Battle of May 31st, 1916, “confirmed the old truth that the large fighting ship, the ship which combines the maximum of strength in attack and defence, rules the seas.” They do not claim that the English superiority in strength—which they place at “roughly two to one”—was sensibly reduced by our losses in the battle, nor that the large English fighting ships—admittedly larger, more numerous, and more powerfully gunned than their own—ceased after Jutland to rule the seas. The German claim, critically considered, is simply that in the circumstances it was a very lucky escape for the German ships. And so indeed it was. It left them with the means of securing their bases from which could be carried on the U-boat warfare against our mercantile communications at sea.
When the day arrives for the veil which at present enshrouds naval operations to be lifted, and details can be discussed freely and frankly, a whole literature will grow up around the Battle of the Giants. Strategically, I repeat—even at the risk of becoming tedious—it was a great success, both in its inception and in its practical results. Tactically its success was not complete. The Falkland Islands and Coronel actions were by comparison simple affairs of which all essential details are known. Jutland, from six o’clock in the evening of May 31st until dawn upon June 1st, when the opposing fleets had completely lost touch, the one with the other, is a puzzling confusing business which will take years of discussion and of elucidation wholly to resolve—if ever it be fully resolved. If any one be permitted to describe the three actions in a few words apiece one would say that Coronel was both strategically and tactically a brilliant success for the Germans. Von Spee concentrated his squadron outside the range of our observation, placed himself in a position of overwhelming tactical advantage, and won a shattering victory. At the Falkland Islands action we did to von Spee exactly what he had done to us at Coronel. This time it was the English concentration which was effected outside the German observation, and it was the German squadron which was wiped out when the tactical clash came. The first two phases of Jutland were, in spite of our serious losses in ships, notable tactical successes; they ended with Beatty round the head of the German Fleet and Jellicoe deployed in masterly fashion between Beatty and Evan-Thomas. Then we get the exasperating third phase, in which the honours of skilful evasion rest with the Germans, and the fourth or night phase, during which confusion became worse confounded until all touch was lost. And yet, in spite of the tactical failure of the third and fourth phases, the battle as a whole was so great a success that it left us with an unchallengeable command of the sea—a more complete command than even after Trafalgar. The Germans learned that they could not fight us in the open with the smallest hope of success. One of the direct fruits of Jutland was the intensified U-boat warfare against merchant shipping. The Germans had learned in the early part of the war that they could not wear down our battleship strength by under-water attacks; they learned at Jutland that they could not place their battleships in line against ours and hope to survive; nothing was left to them except to prey upon our lines of sea communication. And being a people in whose eyes everything is fair in war—their national industry—they proceeded to make the utmost of the form of attack which remained to them. Viewed, therefore, in its influence upon the progress of the war, the Battle of Jutland was among the most momentous in our long sea history.
I have discussed the Battle of the Giants so often, and so remorselessly, with many officers who were present and many others who though not present were in a position to know much which is hidden from onlookers, that I fear lest I may have worn out their beautiful patience. There are two outstanding figures, Beatty and Jellicoe, about whose personalities all discussion of Jutland must revolve. They are men of very different types. Beatty is essentially a fighter; Jellicoe is essentially a student. In power of intellect and in knowledge of his profession Jellicoe is a dozen planes above Beatty. And yet when it comes to fighting, in small things and in great, Beatty has an instinct for the right stroke at the right moment, which in war is beyond price. Whether in peace or in war, Jellicoe would always be conspicuous among contemporaries; Beatty, unless war has given him the stage upon which to develop his flair for battle, would not have stood out. He got early chances, in the Soudan and in China; he seized them both and rushed up the ladder of promotion. He was promoted so quickly that he outstripped his technical education. As a naval strategist and tactician Jellicoe is the first man in his profession; Beatty is by professional training neither a strategist nor a tactician—he was a commander at twenty-seven and a captain at twenty-nine—but give him a fighting problem to be solved out in the open with the guns firing, and he will solve it by sheer instinctive genius. In the Battle of Jutland both Beatty and Jellicoe played their parts with consummate skill; Beatty was in the limelight all through, while Jellicoe was off the stage during the first two acts. Yet Jellicoe’s part was incomparably the more difficult, for upon him, though absent, the whole issue of the battle depended. His deployment by judgment and instinct—sight was withheld from him by the weather—was perfect in its timing and precision. He should have been crowned with the bays of a complete Victor, but the Fates were unkind. He was robbed of his prey when it was almost within his jaws. Do not be so blind and foolish as to depreciate the splendid skill and services of Lord Jellicoe.
I find the writing of this second Chapter upon the Battle of the Giants a very difficult job. Twice I have tried and failed; this is the result of the third effort. My failures have been used to light the fires of my house. Even now I am deeply conscious of the inadequacy of my tentative reflections. Upon so many points one has not the data; upon so many others one is not allowed—no doubt properly—yet still not allowed to say what one knows. Though sometimes I write grave articles, many of my readers know that by instinct I am a story-teller, and to me narrative by dialogue comes more readily than a disquisition. Therefore, if you will permit me, I will cast the remaining portion of this chapter into the form of dialogue and make of it a discussion between two Admirals, a Captain, and myself. One of these Admirals I will call a Salt Horse, a man who has seen service during half a century but who has not specialised in a technical branch such as gunnery, or navigation, or torpedoes. A Salt Horse is an all-round sailor. The other Admiral I will call a Maker, and regard him as a highly competent technical officer in the design and construction of ships of war, of their guns, and of their armour. The Captain, a younger man, I will call a Gunner, one who has specialised in naval gunnery in all its branches, and one who knows the old methods and those which now are new and secret. These officers have not been drawn by me from among my own friends. They are not individuals but are types. Any attempts which may be made at identifying them will fail and justly fail—for they do not exist as individuals. Let this be clearly understood. They are creations of my own; I use them to give a sense of vividness to a narrative which tends to become tedious, and to bring out features in the Battle of Jutland which cannot without impertinence be presented directly by one, like myself, who is not himself a naval officer.
Bennet Copplestone, an intrusive and persistent fellow, begins the conference by inquiring whether Beatty had, in the professional judgment of his brother officers, deserved Admiral Jellicoe’s praise of his “fine qualities of gallant leadership, firm determination, and correct strategic insight.” Was he as good as his public reputation? I knew, I said, a good deal too much of the making of newspaper reputations and had come to distrust them.
“Beatty is a real good man,” declared the Maker. “He sticks his cap on one side and loves to be photographed looking like a Western American ‘tough.’ But under all this he conceals a fine naval head and the sturdiest of hearts. He is a first-class leader of men. I had my own private doubts of him until this Jutland Battle, but now I will take off my hat in his presence though he is my junior.”
The Maker’s colleagues nodded approval.
“There was nothing much in the first part,” went on the Maker. “Any of us could have done it. His pursuit of the German battle cruisers up to their junction with the High Seas Fleet was a reconnaissance in force, which he was able to carry through without undue risk, because he had behind him the Fifth Battle Squadron. His change of course then through sixteen points was the only possible manœuvre in order to bring his fleet back towards Jellicoe and to lead the Germans into the trap prepared for them. So far Beatty had done nothing to distinguish him from any competent fleet leader. Where he showed greatness was in not diverging by a hair’s breadth from his plans after the loss of theIndefatigableand theQueen Mary. Mind you, these losses were wholly unexpected, and staggering in their suddenness. He had lost these fine ships while fighting battle cruisers fewer in numbers and less powerful in guns than his own squadrons. A weaker man might have been shaken in nerve and lost confidence in himself and his ships. But Beatty did not hesitate. Although he was reduced in strength from six battle cruisers to four only he dashed away to head off the Germans as serenely as if he had suffered no losses at all. And his splendid dash had nothing in it of recklessness. All the while he was heading off the Germans he was manœuvring to give himself the advantage of light and to avoid the dropping shots which had killed his lost cruisers. All the while he kept between the Germans and Jellicoe and within touch of his supporting squadron of four Queen Elizabeths. Had he lost more ships he could at any moment have broken off the action and, sheltered by the massive Fifth B.S., have saved what remained. As a mixture of dash and caution I regard his envelopment of the German line, after losing theQueen MaryandIndefatigable, as a superb exhibition of sound battle tactics and of sublime confidence in himself and his men. But I wish that he would not wear his cap on one side or talk so much. He has modified both these ill-practices since he became Commander-in-Chief. That is one comfort.”
“Nelson was a poseur,” said I, “and as theatrical as an elderly and ugly prima donna. He posed to the gallery in every action, and died, as it were, to the accompaniment of slow music. It was an amiable weakness.”
“Jellicoe doesn’t pose,” growled the Maker.
“Jellicoe hates advertisement,” I observed. “Whenever he used to talk to the gangs of newspaper men who infested the Grand Fleet, he always implored them to spare his own shrinking personality. It is a matter of temperament. Jellicoe is a genuinely modest man; Beatty is a vain one. They form a most interesting contrast. Life would be duller without such contrasts. One could give a score of examples from military and naval history of high merit allied both to modesty and vanity.”
“That is true,” said the Maker, “but the Great Silent Sea Service loathes advertisement like the very devil, and it is right. The Service would be ruined if senior officers tried to bid against one another for newspaper puffs.”
“Yet I have known them do it,” said I drily, and then slid away from the delicate topic. “Let us return to the first part of the action, and examine the division of the Fleet between Jellicoe and Beatty. Was this division, admittedly hazardous, a sound method of bringing the Germans to action?”
The Gunner took upon himself to reply.
“It is not, and never has been, possible to bring the Germans to action in the southern part of the North Sea except with their own consent. There is no room. They can always break off and retire within their protected waters. Steam fleets of the modern size and speed cannot force an action and compel it to be fought out to a finish in a smaller space than a real ocean. You must always think of this when criticising the division of our fleets. Beatty was separated from Jellicoe by nearly sixty miles, and strengthened by four fast Queen Elizabeth battleships to enable him to fight an action with a superior German Fleet. He was made just strong enough to fight and not too strong to scare the Germans away. In theory, the division of our forces within striking distance of the enemy was all wrong; in practice, it was the only way of persuading him into an action. Both sides at the end of May, 1916, wanted to bring off a fight at sea. Fritz wanted something which he could claim as a success in order to cheer up his blockaded grumblers at home, who were getting restive. We wanted to stop the projected German naval and military onslaught upon Russia in the Baltic. The wonderful thing about the Jutland Battle is that it appears to have achieved both objects. Fritz, by sinking three of our battle cruisers, has been able to delude a nation of landsmen into accepting a highly coloured version of a great naval success; and we, by making a sorry mess of his main fleet, did in fact clear the northern Russian flank of a grave peril. The later Russian successes in the South were the direct result of Jutland, and without those successes the subsequent Italian, French, and British advances could not have been pushed with anything like the effect secured. Regarded in this broad international way, the division of our fleets justified by its results the risks which it involved. What I don’t understand is why we suffered so much in the first part of the action when Beatty had six battle cruisers and four battleships against five battle cruisers of the enemy. He lost theIndefatigableandQueen Marywhile he was in great superiority both of numbers and of guns. Then, when the German main fleet had come in, and he was carrying out an infinitely more hazardous operation in the face of a greater superior force, he lost nothing. If theIndefatigableandQueen Maryhad been lost during the second hour before Jellicoe arrived I should have felt no surprise—we were then deliberately risking big losses—but during the first hour of fighting, when we had ten ships against five—and five much weaker individually than our ten—we lost two fine battle cruisers. I confess that I am beaten. It almost looks as if at the beginning the German gunners were better than ours, but that they went to pieces later. What do you think?” He turned to the Salt Horse, who spoke little, but very forcibly when he could be persuaded to open his lips.
“Everyone with Beatty, to whom I have spoken,” declared the Salt Horse, “agrees that the German gunnery was excellent at the beginning. We were straddled immediately and hit again and again while coming into action. Our gunners must have been a bit over-anxious until they settled down. We ought to have done something solid in a whole hour against five battle cruisers with our thirty-two 13.5-inch guns and thirty-two 15-inch. And yet no one claims more than one enemy ship on fire. That means nothing. The burning gas from one big shell will make the deuce of a blaze. There is no explanation of our losses in the first part, and of Fritz’s comparative immunity, except the one which you, my dear Gunner, are very unwilling to accept. Fritz hit us much more often than we hit him. There you have it. I have spoken.” Admiral Salt Horse, a most abstemious man, rang the bell of the club of which we were members, and ordered a whisky and soda. “Just to take the taste of that admission out of my mouth,” he explained.
The Maker of Ships and Guns smiled ruefully. “I have reckoned,” said he, “that the Cats fired twenty rounds per gun during the first hour and the Queen Elizabeths ten. That makes 640 rounds of 13.5-inch shell and 320 rounds of 15-inch. Three per cent. of fair hits at the ranges, and in the conditions of light, would have been quite good. But did we score twenty-eight hits of big shell, or anything like it? If we had there would have been much more damage done than one battle cruiser on fire. The Salt Horse has spoken, and so have I. I also will wash the taste of it out of my mouth.”
“You will admit,” muttered the Gunner, “that in the second part, after Beatty and the Queen Elizabeths had turned, our control officers and long-service gunners came into their own?”
“Willingly,” cried Admiral Salt Horse. “Nothing could have been finer than the hammering which Evan-Thomas gave to the whole High Seas Fleet. And Beatty crumpled up his opposite numbers in first-class style. Our individual system, then, justified itself utterly. Fritz’s mechanical control went to bits when the shells began to burst about his fat ears, but it was painfully good while it lasted. Give Fritz his due, Master Gunner, it’s no use shutting our eyes to his merits.”
I had listened with the keenest interest to this interchange, for though I should not myself have ventured to comment upon so technical a subject as naval gunnery, I had subconsciously felt what the old Salt Horse had so bluntly and almost brutally expressed.
“We have arrived, then, at this,” observed I, slowly, “that during the first hour, up to the turn when the main High Seas Fleet joined up with Hipper’s battle cruisers, our squadrons got the worst of it, though they were of twice Fritz’s numbers and of far more than twice his strength. It is a beastly thing for an Englishman to say, but really you leave me no choice. Though I hate whisky, I must follow the example set by my betters.”
The Master Gunner laughed. “In the Service,” said he, “we learn from our mistakes. At the beginning we did badly on May 31st, but afterwards we profited by the lesson. What more could you ask? . . . Civilians,” said he, aside to his colleagues, “seem to think that only English ships should be allowed to have guns or to learn how to use them.”
“Now we have given Fritz his due,” said I, “let us get on to the second part of the battle, Act Two of the naval drama. You will agree that the handling of our damaged squadrons by Beatty and Evan-Thomas was magnificent, and that the execution done by us was fully up to the best English standards?”
“Yes,” replied the grim Salt Horse, to whom I had specially appealed. “We will allow both. Beatty’s combination of dash and caution was beyond praise and the gunnery was excellent.”
“None of our ships were sunk, none were seriously hit,” put in the Gunner. “On the other hand we certainly sank one German battle cruiser and one battleship, and very heavily damaged others. I don’t know how many. I think that we must accept as proved that not many German ships of the battle line were sunk in any part of the action. When badly hit they fell out and retired towards home, which they could always do. During the second part both fleets were steaming away from the German bases, so that a damaged enemy ship had only to stop to be left behind in safety. A good many ships were claimed by our officers as sunk when they were known to have been damaged and had disappeared; but I feel sure that most of them had fallen out, not been sunk.”
“The outstanding feature,” cried the Maker of Guns, “was the superiority of our gunnery. We have always encouraged individuality in gun laying, and have never allowed Fire Control to supersede the eyes and hands of the skilled gun-layers in the turrets. Control and individual laying are with us complementary, not mutually exclusive. With the Germans an intensely mechanical control is of the essence of their system. They are very good up to a point, but have not elasticity enough to deal with the perpetual variations of range and direction when fighting ships are moving fast and receiving heavy punishment. Fritz beat us in the first part, but we, as emphatically, beat him in the second.”
We then passed to a technical discussion upon naval gunnery, which cannot be given here in detail. I developed my thesis, aggravating to expert gunners, that when one passes from the one dimension—distance—of land shooting from a fixed gun at a fixed object, to the two dimensions—distance and direction—of moving guns on board ship firing at moving objects, the drop in accuracy is so enormous as to make ship gunnery frightfully ineffective and wasteful. I readily admitted that when one passed still further to three dimensions—distance, direction, and height—and essayed air gunnery, the wastefulness and ineffectiveness of shooting at sea were multiplied an hundredfold. But, as I pointed out, we were not at the moment discussing anti-aircraft gunnery, but the shooting of naval guns at sea in the Jutland Battle.
Of course I brought down a storm upon my head. But my main thesis was not contested. It was, however, pointed out that I had not allowed sufficient weight to the inherent difficulties of shooting from a moving ship at a moving ship ten or a dozen miles away, and that instead of calling naval gunnery “wasteful and ineffective” I ought to be dumb with wonder that hits were ever brought off at all. I enjoyed myself thoroughly.
“Don’t be hard on the poor man,” at last interposed the kindly Salt Horse. “He means well and can be useful to the Service sometimes though he has not had a naval training. The truth is,” he went on confidentially, “we feel rather wild about the small damage that we did to Fritz on May 31st: small, that is, in comparison with our opportunities. Our gunnery officers and gun-layers are the best in the world, our guns, range-finders and other instruments are unapproachable for precision, our system of fire direction is the best that naval brains can devise and is constantly being improved, and yet all through the war the result in effective hits has been most disappointing—don’t interrupt, you people, I am speaking the truth for once. Fritz’s shooting, except occasionally, has been even worse than ours, which indicates, I think, that the real inner problems of naval gunnery are not yet in sight of solution. You see, it is quite a new science. In the old days one usually fired point blank just as one might plug at a haystack, and the extreme range was not more than a mile and a half; but now that every fighting ship carries torpedo tubes we must keep out a very long way. I admit the apparent absurdity of the situation. Here on May 31st, two fleets were engaged off and on for six hours—most of the time more off than on—and the bag for Fritz was three big ships, and for us possibly four, by gun-fire. The torpedo practice was no better except when our destroyers got in really close. During all the third part of the action, when Scheer was fending us off with torpedo attacks he hit only one battleship, theMarlborough, and she was able to continue in action afterwards and to go home under her own steam. Yet upon a measured range at a fixed mark a torpedo is good up to 11,000 yards, nearly six miles. In action, against moving ships, one cannot depend upon a mouldy hitting at over 500 yards, a quarter of a mile. If gunnery is wasteful and inefficient, what about torpedo practice in battle?”
“What is the solution?” I asked, greatly interested.
“Don’t ask me!” replied the Salt Horse. “I knew something of gunnery once, but now I’m on the shelf. I myself would risk the mouldies and fight at close quarters—we have the legs of Fritz and could choose our own range—but in-fighting means tremendous risks, and the dear stupid old public would howl for my head if the corresponding losses followed. The tendency at present is towards longer and longer ranges, up to the extreme visible limits, and the longer the range the greater the waste and inefficiency. Ask the Gunner there, he is more up-to-date than I am.”
The Master Gunner growled. He had listened to Admiral Salt Horse’s homily with the gravest disapproval. He was a simple loyal soul; any criticism which seemed to question the supreme competence of his beloved Service was to him rank treachery. Yet he knew that the Salt Horse was as loyal a seaman as he was himself. It was not what was said which caused his troubled feelings—he would talk as freely himself before his colleagues—but that such things should be poured into the ears of a civilian! It was horrible!
“After the first hour, when our gunners had settled down,” said he gruffly, “their practice was exceedingly good. They hit when they could see, which was seldom. If the light had been even tolerable no German ship would have got back to port.”
“I agree,” cried the Maker of Guns and Ships. “We did as well as the light allowed. Fritz was all to pieces. The bad torpedo practice was Fritz’s, not ours. The worst of the gunnery was his, too. We have lots to learn still—as you rightly say, naval gunnery is still in its infancy—but we have learned a lot more than anyone else has. That is the one thing which matters to me.”
“Have we not reached another conclusion,” I put in, diffidently, “namely, that big-ship actions must be indecisive unless the light be good and the sea space wide enough to allow of a fight to a finish? We can’t bring Fritz to a final action in the lower part of the North Sea unless we can cut him off entirely from his avenues of escape. In the Atlantic, a thousand miles from land, we could destroy him to the last ship—if our magazines held enough of shell—but as he can choose the battle ground, and will not fight except near to his bases, we can shatter him and drive him helpless into port, but we cannot wipe him off the seas. Is that proved?”
“Yes,” said the Gunner, who had recovered his usual serenity. “In my opinion that is proved absolutely.”
“One talks rather loosely of envelopment,” explained the Maker, “as if it were total instead of partial. The German Fleet was never enveloped or anything like it. What happened was this: As the Germans curved away in a spiral to the south-west our line curved in with them, roughly parallel, also to the south-west, keeping always between Fritz and the land. We were partly between him and his bases, but he could and did escape by getting round the horn which threatened to cut him off.”
“Could not Jellicoe,” I asked, “have worked right round so as to draw a line across the mouths of the Elbe and Weser, and to cut Scheer completely off from the approaches to Wilhelmshaven?”
“Not without immense risk. He would have had to pass into mine fields and penetrate them all through the hours of darkness. He might have lost half his fleet. Our trouble has always been the extravagant risk involved by a close pursuit. When the Germans retire to their protected waters we must let them go. The Grand Fleet is too vital a force to be needlessly risked. When Jellicoe’s final stroke failed, owing to the bad light and the German retirement, the battle was really over. Jellicoe’s blow had spent itself on the air. The Germans were almost safe except from our torpedo attacks, which were delivered during the night with splendid dash and with considerable success. But that night battle was the queerest business. When the sun rose the enemy had vanished. Fritz says that we had vanished. I suppose, strictly speaking, that we had. At least we were out of his sight, though unintentionally. Touch had been lost and the enemy had got safely home, taking most of his damaged ships with him. Nothing remained for us to do except to return to our northern bases, recoal, and refit. The Jutland Battle was indecisive in one sense, crushingly decisive in another. It left the German Fleet undestroyed, but left it impotent as a fighting force. Thereafter it sank into a mere guard for Fritz’s submarine bases.”
“And the gunnery in the third part?” I asked with a sly glance towards the Gunner. He rose at the bait.
“I do not doubt that, measured by the percentage of hits to rounds fired, Copplestone would call it wasteful and inefficient. But the Navy regards the gunnery in the third part as even better than in the second, as proving our superiority over the Germans. They were then at their worst while we were at our best; we rapidly improved under the test of battle, they as rapidly deteriorated. The facts are certain. The enemy ships were hit repeatedly both by our battleships and battle cruisers, several were seen to haul out of the line on fire, and at least one battleship was observed to sink. Throughout all the time—two hours—during which Jellicoe’s main fleet was engaged his ships were scarcely touched; not a single man was killed, and three only were wounded. Is that not good enough for you?”
“You have forgotten theInvincible,” remarked that candid critic whom I have called Salt Horse. “She took station at the head of Beatty’s line at 6.21. Her distance from the enemy was then 8,000 yards. It was a gallant service, for Beatty needed support very badly, but by 6.55 theInvinciblehad been destroyed. TheIron Dukepassed her floating bottom up. She must have been caught by the concentrated fire of several enemy ships. It was a piece of luck for Fritz; the last that he had. Apart from the downing of theInvincible, I agree that the third part of the battle showed our gunnery to be highly effective, and that of the Germans to be almost wholly innocuous. It was his torpedoes we had then to fear, not his guns.”
“During the third part,” said the Maker, “the ranges were comparatively low, from 9,000 to 12,000 yards, but the visibility was so bad that damaged ships could always betake themselves out of sight and danger. I am disposed to think that most of Fritz’s sorely damaged ships did get home—in the absence of evidence that they did not—for we never really closed in during the whole of the third part of the battle. Fritz was continually coming and going, appearing and disappearing. His destroyer attacks were well delivered, and though one battleship only was hit, our friend theMarlborough, we were kept pretty busy looking after ourselves. Jellicoe was like a heavy-weight boxer trying to get home upon a little man, skipping about just beyond his reach. We had the speed and the guns and the superiority of position, but we couldn’t see. That is the explanation of the indecisiveness of the third part of the Jutland battle, that part which, with decent luck, would have ended Fritz’s business. Our gunnery was then top-hole. Take the typical case of the flagshipIron Duke. She got a sight of aKoenigat 12,000 yards (seven miles), straddled her at once, and began to hit at the second salvo. That is real gunnery, not much waste about it either of time or shell. Then towards sunset theLion,Princess Royal, andNew Zealandengaged two battleships and two battle cruisers at 10,000 yards. Within eighteen minutes three of the Germans had been set on fire, two were listing heavily, and the three burning ones were only saved by becoming hidden in smoke and mist. That is the way to get on to a target and to hold on. I agree with our old friend Salt Horse that the long ranges during the first part of the action, 18,000 to 20,000 yards—and even more for theQueen Elizabeth—are altogether too long for accuracy unless the conditions are perfect. The distances are well within the power of the big-calibre guns which we mount, but are out of harmony with the English naval spirit. We like to see our enemy distinctly and to get within real punishing distance of him. Compare our harmless performance during the first part with the beautiful whacking which we gave Fritz in the third whenever we could see him. The nearer we get to Fritz the better our gunners become and the more completely his system goes to bits. Which is just what one would expect. Our long-service gunners can lay by sight against any ships in the world and beat them to rags, but when it comes to blind laying directed from the spotting tops much of the advantage of individual nerve and training is lost. Like Salt Horse, I am all for in-fighting, at 10,000 yards or less, and believe that our gun-layers can simply smother Fritz if they are allowed to get him plainly on the wires of their sighting telescopes.”
“There is not a petty officer gunlayer who wouldn’t agree with you,” remarked the Gunner thoughtfully, “but the young scientific Gunnery Lieutenants would shake their heads. For what would become of the beautiful fire-direction system which they have been building up for years past if we are to run in close and pound in the good old fashion? Ten thousand yards to a modern 15-inch gun is almost point blank.”
“Our business is to sink the enemy in the shortest possible time,” cried Admiral Salt Horse, “and to fight in the fashion best suited to what Copplestone here rightly calls the Soul of the Navy. Long-range fighting is all very well when one can’t do anything else—during a chase, for example—but when one can close in to a really effective distance, then, I say, close in and take the risks. In the Jutland Battle we lost two battle cruisers at long range and one only after the ranges had shortened. Fritz shot well at long range, but got worse and worse as we drew nearer to him, until at the end his gunnery simply did not count. Our ancestors had a similar problem to solve, and solved it at the Battle of the Saints in brutal fashion by breaking the French line and fighting at close quarters. There is a lot to be learned from the Jutland Battle, though it is not for an old dog like me to draw the lessons. But what does seem to shout at one is that the way to fight a German is to close in upon him and to knock the moral stuffing out of him. The destroyers always do it and so do our submarines. I am told that the way the destroyers charged battleships by night, and rounded up the enemy’s light stuff by day, was a liberal education in naval psychology. We are at our best when the risks are greatest—it is the sporting instinct of the race that sustains us. But Fritz, who is no sportsman, and has a good deal more of imagination than our lower deck, cracks when the strain upon his nerves passes the critical point. Our young officers and men have no nerves; Fritz has more than is good for him; let us take advantage of his moral weakness and hustle him beyond the point when he cracks. He is a landsman artificially made into a seaman; our men are seamen born. In a battleship action the personal factor tends to be over-borne by the immensity of the fighting instruments, but it is there all the time and is the one thing which really counts. We give it full scope in the destroyers, submarines, and light cruisers; let us give it full scope in the big ships of the battle line. Let ourMenget at Fritz; don’t seek to convert them into mere parts of a machine, give their individuality the fullest play; you need then have no fear lest their work should prove wasteful or ineffective.”
The Master Gunner, a man ten years younger than old Salt Horse, smiled and said, “I am afraid that the gunnery problem has become too complicated to yield to your pleasing solution. A few years ago it would have been considered a futile waste of shell to fight at over 10,000 yards, but the growth in the size of our guns and in our methods of using them have made us at least as accurate at 20,000 yards as we used to be at 10,000. At from 9,000 to 12,000 in good light we are now terrific. All my sympathies are on your side; the Navy has always loved to draw more closely to the enemy, and maybe our instincts should be our guide. I can’t say. If we could have a big-ship action every month the problem would soon be solved. Our trouble is that we don’t get enough of the Real Thing. You may be very sure that if our officers and men were told to run in upon Fritz and to smash him, at the ranges which are now short, they would welcome the order with enthusiasm. The quality and training of our sea personnel is glorious, incomparable. I live in wonder at it.”
“And so do I,” cried the Maker, a man not ready to display enthusiasm. “One has lived with the professional Navy so long that one comes to take its superb qualities for granted; one needs to see the English Navy in action to be aroused to its merits. On May 31st very few of those in Evan-Thomas’s or Jellicoe’s squadrons had been under fire—Beatty’s men had, of course, more than once. If they showed any defect it was due to some slight over-eagerness. But this soon passed. In a big-ship action not one man in a hundred has any opportunity of personal distinction—which is an uncommonly good thing for the Navy. We have no use for pot-hunters and advertisers. We want every man to do his little bit, devotedly, perfectly, without any thought of attracting attention. Ours is team work. If men are saturated through and through with this spirit of common devotion to duty they sacrifice themselves as a matter of course when the call comes. More than once fire penetrated to the magazines of ships. The men who instantly rolled upon the blazing bags of cordite, and extinguished the flames with their bodies, did not wait for orders nor did they expect to be mentioned in dispatches. It was just their job. But what I did like was Jellicoe’s special mention of his engineers. These men, upon whose faithful efficiency everything depends, who, buried in the bowels of ships, carry us into action and maintain us there, who are the first to die when a ship sinks and the last to be remembered in Honours lists, these men are of more real account than almost all those others of us who prance in our decorations upon the public stage. If the conning tower is the brain of a ship, the engine-room is its heart. When Jellicoe was speeding up to join Beatty and Evan-Thomas his whole fleet maintained a speed in excess of the trial speeds of some of the older vessels. Think what skilful devotion this simple fact reveals, what minute attention day in day out for months and years, so that in the hour of need no mechanical gadget may fail of its duty. And as with Jellicoe’s Fleet so all through the war. Whenever the engine-rooms have been tested up to breaking strain they have always, always, stood up to the test. I think less of the splendid work done by destroyer flotillas, by combatant officers and men in the big ships, by all those who have manned and directed the light cruisers. Their work was done within sight; that of the engine-rooms was hidden.”
“I wish that the big public could hear you,” I said, “the big public whose heart is always in the right place though its head is always damned ignorant and often damned silly.”
The Maker of Guns and Ships turned on me, this calm, cold man whom I had thought a stranger to emotion. “And whose fault is that? You are a bit of an ass, Copplestone, and inconveniently inquisitive. But you can be useful sometimes. When you come to write of the war at sea, do not wrap yourself up in a tangle of strategy and tactics of which you know very little. Stick to the broad human issues. Reveal the men who fight rather than the ships which are fought with. Think of the Navy as a Service of flesh and blood and soul, no less than of brains and heart. If you will do this, and write as well as you know how to do, the public will not remain either damned ignorant or damned silly.”
“I will do my best,” said I, humbly.