Draft Incomplete
The Run to the North
For this part of the discussion I shall lean heavily on Andrew Gordon's
Rules of the Game.
We've left the action with Hipper and Beatty locked in a running duel while all the time heading inexorably south - straight into the arms of Admiral Scheer, hurriedly steaming north. If all goes to plan, this will allow the German admiral to bag the remaining ships of Beatty's BCF. However, as we know, Beatty is playing his own game of cat and mouse.....
We shall however, briefly leave the duelling battlecruisers and turn our attention to the southeast. Following the sighting of the enemy by Galatea, all three British LCS's headed east to assist Galatea. However Commodore Goodenough, in his flagship Southampton, was the furthest west of the three squadrons and had not had an opportunity to assist before Beatty made the turn to SSE - and Goodenough went with him and then used his ships speed to race ahead of Beatty's ship so as to be able to provide a scouting and screening role for the BCF. It appears that it was Goodenough's decision as to whether he would either take on the former role or support the destroyers and fellow cruiser squadrons in their attacks.
HMS Southampton. The flagship of Commodore William Goodenough and his 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron. Goodenough has had a largely excellent press in accounts of the battle, thanks to his diligent and frequent reporting of events. Ignoring failings closer to home, Beatty, unfairly, tried to get Goodenough sacked after the Scarborough raid but wiser heads prevailed and this experienced officer remained in situ for Jutland
Enter Admiral Scheer and the Hochseesflotte
At this time - 1630hrs - four battlecruisers with varying degrees of damage, and four largely untouched battleships, are heading straight for Scheer's battleships which number 16 dreadnoughts and 6 pre-dreadnoughts. Light cruisers are roughly even but the Germans have considerably more destroyers. The testimony from German sailors aboard the battlecruisers, buoyed no doubt by their early success, talk of confidence and morale being high, as Scheer comes into view. This is the opportunity that Scheer had been waiting for. Little does he realise that the "cat" is, in a short space of time, about to become the "mouse".....
There is perhaps also another point worthy of consideration here. For reasons that we have seen - and will see additional examples of in posts to come - the British get most of the brickbats here. But what of Scheer and Hipper? The purpose of this German operation was to trap and destroy a portion of the British force. But there appears to be little commentary on the plan put into operation and the communications between Scheer and his subordinate.
Hipper had done a great job in luring Beatty south and, as a bonus, destroying Indefatigable and Queen Mary. But surely, all that would be achieved if the fleets remained on their present course, was for Beatty to simply turn around when he was informed by his cruiser screen, that he had the whole German fleet heading towards him. At that point Beatty would turn east and head for home as quickly as possible.
So why did Hipper (and Scheer) not use some imagination and try and trap the British ships? Surely had Hipper sailed in an ESE direction, Beatty would have followed. The advantage of course for the Germans is that Beatty could quickly find himself caught between Hipper and the rapidly advancing Scheer and not free to simply run off. It seems strange that the Germans have not (from the accounts I've read) been picked up on this.... Well in the absence of any comment to the contrary as to why such a move was impossible (or at least difficult) I think this reflects poorly on the German tactical nous.
Gary Staff's
Skagerrak is particularly disappointing in this regard as it is supposed to view the battle from the German side. At least Andrew Gordon makes mention of if - albeit briefly - and to no real purpose. In
Rules of the Game he states that:
....At first the plan was to get to the west of Beatty's expected line of advance, to block his retreat; but excitement became tinged with alarm when the British 2nd Battle Squadron (the 5th really) was reported as joining in, and the commander-in-chief turned his cumbersome fleet onto a direct course towards Hipper, informing his junior of his position, course and speed.....
Sadly this does not really answer the question....but anyway, back to the next British hiccup.....
5. The order to 5BS to turn north
The next talking point once again involves Beatty, the 5th Battle Squadron and signals..... haven't we been here before?
At around the time that Queen Mary blew up, her magnificent structure replaced by nothing more a massive cloud of smoke, Goodenough and the 2LCS were about two miles ahead of the now, significantly diminished, BCF, with two cruisers on each flank of Beatty’s flagship. Goodenough sent the following W/T signal to Jellicoe and Beatty at 16:30:
“Enemy cruiser bearing SE steering NE (together with the 2LCS position)”.
The cruiser was Rostock, and it was not long before the unmistakeable sight of Scheer’s HSF came into view. At 16:37 Goodenough sent another signal – again followed by his own position:
“Urgent priority. Have sighted enemy battlefleet bearing approximately SE. Course of enemy N”
The bridge of HMS Lion must have been a picture at the moment the message was received. What was Beatty (and his fellow officers) truly thinking? Well whatever thoughts Beatty had, there was only one thing to be done. Having finally, for the first time, actually sited the HSF, he now had to make damn sure he could lure it onto the guns of Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet.
At 16:40 the signal was raised from Lion’s mast – and then hauled down, thus making the order executive:
“Alter course in succession, 16 points to starboard”
Lion swung around, followed one at a time by Princess Royal, Tiger and New Zealand, so that they came out of the turn in the same position.
The range between the BCF and Scheer’s 3rd Squadron was about 20,000 yards at that time. The German ships opened up against the BCF but the range meant that Beatty’s ships were largely untroubled by the German salvoes and Beatty could concentrate on Hipper's battlecruisers once more.
After Beatty turned, Goodenough and the 2nd LCS remained in situ, acting as reconnaissance for the fleet. Goodenough’s executive officer reminded his commander that if he did not make his next signal shortly, he may well never send another! At 16:48 Goodenough sent a further signal to the fleet:
“Urgent. Priority. Course of enemy’s battlefleet in single line ahead. Composition of van Kaiser class. Bearing of centre E. Destroyers on both wings and ahead. Enemy battlecruisers joining battlefleet from northward (together with the 2LCS position)”.
However, despite the XO’s understandable prompting, all this time the 2LCS remained free from attack as Scheer was uncertain whether the cruisers (head-on to Scheer’s ships) were friend or foe. Only when the four cruisers turned away did their silhouette make it clear to the Germans that they were of the latter type – and the German guns then responded accordingly.
At this point we switch back to the 5BS, which was still 8 miles astern of the BCF at the time Beatty made his turn, and were heavily engaged with the German battlecruisers. I won’t go into too much detail here on the initial orders given to the 5BS to turn north – because the case Gordon makes is convincing in suggesting there wasn’t any. In some other works (Marder and Harper for example) it is suggested that Beatty’s order to turn 16 points to starboard was meant for the 5BS as well – and Marder uses this to further condemn Seymour.
However, Gordon makes three points as to why this is unfair on Seymour and that Beatty had no reason to extend this order to the 5BS:
1. Remember that the 5BS was north of the BCF and only in contact with Hipper. Why would Beatty want to keep the 5BS that distance away and leave his own battlecruisers to take on both Hipper and Scheer.
2. At 8 miles apart, any signal by flags would have to be backed up with searchlight - but this was not done. Gordon states that "even Beatty's hapless flag-lieutenant could not have expected Barham to read a flag signal from that distance.
3. Beatty was shortly to make another alteration to course which would not have been necessary if the 5BS was subject to the earlier order.
However, the story of the turn to the north does not end there....
So, with the BCF having completed their volte-face, the situation was that the BCF and 5BS were separated by about 7 miles and heading straight for one another. Beatty ordered a 4-point adjustment. The effect of this is that the two fleets would pass each other with the 5BS on the BCF’s disengaged side. A few minutes later Evan-Thomas ordered a small alteration of course for the 5BS too. It is not known what prompted this but likely to have been either in response to Beatty's move, or perhaps to avoid a torpedo scare.
What was the motivation for Beatty wanting the 5BS to pass on his (Beatty's) disengaged side? Gordon suggests this may have been a product of his personal, fighting, warrior-like qualities. Possibly. Or maybe - and I may be being harsh here - he just didn't give it enough thought and charged into a decision without thinking.... either way Gordon believes his decision making was faulty for more practical reasons:
- By passing on the engaged side i.e. coming between the 5BS and Hipper, Beatty was asking for more gunfire to be rained down on his already depleted and damaged fleet
- It would have allowed Beatty some respite to enable him to concentrate for a while on the 3C's - Command, Control and Communication
- It would have enabled Beatty to continue in the direction he wanted to go without de-tour (see below)
- It would have avoided a manoeuvring problem for the 5BS that was about to take shape.
As said above, in order for Beatty to continue on his previous NW course, he made a turn to port which would take the BCF across the rear of the 5BS and he would now need to order Evan-Thomas to "alter course in succession 16 points to starboard" (i.e. turning away from the on-coming HSF and then coming out of the turn behind HMS New Zealand). Provided this message was delivered, received and acted upon at the right time, then there would be little to no problem..... but Jutland wasn't like that.
The 'accepted' version of events (which just happens to stem from the time that Beatty was 1st Sea Lord) appears to be that the signal to turn 16 points to starboard was hoisted when the ships were still minutes apart and that the signal was hauled down (remember this is what makes a signal executive) at 16:48. Evan Thomas aboard Barham is then supposed to have ignored this signal for 9 minutes before turning at 16:57.
Gordon argues that this would have been impossible as that would mean (given the speed of travel of both the south bound British ships and the north bound German ships, that the 5BS would be only about 12,000 from the HSF when they started to turn!
Why is this subject important? Well not least because the timing of the signal given to the southbound 5BS was vital in ensuring that a) they were able to take up station where required, in support of the BCF, and b) because if the call was made too late, the 5BS was going to face the fury of the German battlefleet....
Without going into minute detail on this, what is interesting is that while Gordon does not seek to absolve Beatty and Seymour of any blame for the almost certain bungling of the signals (although he does make the point that this was a very 'busy' time in the battle for Seymour) he once again - as per the earlier problem with 5BS at the commencement of the battle - chooses to blame Evan-Thomas for being too inflexible in having to follow orders to the letter and not taking action on his own initiative.
The caption states taken from HMS Barham 1916. With Queen Elizabeth in the dockyard it fell to her sisters to form the 5BS. They sailed and fought in the order Barham (Flagship) Valiant, Warspite and Malaya. Their arrival in the nick of time almost certainly saved the survivors of Beatty's two battlecruiser squadrons, but their absence at the start of the battle almost certainly saved Hipper
