Taken from “Warships and Sea Battles of World War I” (Bernard
Fitzsimons, Ed. London: BPC Publishing Ltd. 1973. ISBN 0-517-130912).
Edward Wittenberg
ewitten507@aol.com
British gunnery hampered
Nevertheless, the British gunnery was greatly hampered by smoke
drifting from Tyrwhitt’s squadron which had moved to the north-east.
The Tiger, a newly commissioned ship with an inefficient gunnery
officer, spotted Lion’s shells as her own in consequence of the smoke
and did not realise that she was in fact firing 3,000 yards over
Seydlitz. On the other side, however, the more efficient German gunners
were making themselves felt on board the Lion. Shortly before l 000
hours she was hit on the roof of her foremost turret and one of the
guns was disabled. A few minutes later an 11-inch shell from the
Seydlitz pierced the Lion’s armour, flooding the engineer’s workshop
and putting two dynamos, the after fire control and the secondary
armament circuits out of action.
At 1018 hours the Derfflinger, which was on fire herself from one
of Princess Royal’s shells, managed to land two 12-inch shells on
Beatty’s flagship. One of these flooded the port bunkers, the other
flooded the torpedo fiat and adjacent compartment. The Lion, with speed
gradually falling, was by then zig-zagging desperately while Beatty still
stood on the open bridge with his staff, all drenched by the
‘near-misses’.
As the German battle-cruisers continued to pour shells at the
Lion, the battered Blucher was burning fiercely and dropping even
further behind. At 1048 hours she sheered off to port, apparently out of
control, and came under a concentrated fire from the Harwich flotillas
and the Indomitable, which had at last caught up with the action. The
Blucher, to all eyes, was obviously finished.
Beatty’s overriding concern, however, was to catch the rest; of
Hipper’s squadron. The prospects for this looked bright with the slower
German battle-cruisers still over 100 miles from Heligoland and many
hours of daylight left, but a whole series of incidents altered the course
of the battle. The Lion, still under an intense bombardment, was hit at
about 1052 hours by a shell which penetrated the boiler-rooms and
flooded the feed tank, stopped the port engine and reduced speed to 15
knots. Moreover, as the ship listed 10 degrees to port, the remaining
dynamo suddenly failed and cut off lighting and power. Most important
of all was the fact that Beatty could henceforward only signal with
flags, since the wireless and signal lights were also put out of order.
Falling out of line, Beatty was forced to watch as the Tiger, Princess
Royal and New Zealand rushed past and Rear-Admiral Moore was left
with the command.
It was at this point that Beatty and others on board the Lion
thought they saw submarines on the starboard bow. In fact the nearest
German submarines were many miles away, but Beatty was not to know
that and anticipated a submarine trap. He therefore signalled for a
sharp turn to port, which would take Moore’s vessels away from the
danger – a manoeuvre which enabled the Indomitable, by cutting the
corner, to catch up with the squadron again. Since this new course also
took the British battle-cruisers away from Hipper’s at almost right
angles it meant that they would later have to cross the enemy’s wake
and run the risk of mines. As it happened the German ships carried no
mines on this occasion, but nevertheless Beatty soon changed his mind
and modified his ships’ course to the north-east.
This was not a great modification, however, and it carried Moore’s
vessels more towards the battered Blucher than towards the rest of
Hipper’s battle-cruisers just when they were beginning to turn back in
a gesture to help the Blucher, and their destroyers were rushing ahead
to launch torpedo attacks against the British squadron as it made its
swing to the north-east. With the distance between the two forces
rapidly widening, Hipper seized this chance to extricate the rest of his
force and ordered a resumption of the south-easterly course. Since
Seydlitz’s after turrets were out of action and her ammunition supplies
were running short, it would have been an expensive gesture in any
case to have tried to recover the shattered wreck of the Blucher.
This temporary breathing-space afforded to the German squadron
was now prolonged by confused communications on the British side.
Beatty, breathing fire at his ship’s disablement, was determined to make
it quite clear to Moore that Hipper’s main force was to be destroyed and
ordered the flag signal ‘Attack the rear of the enemy’. In confused
circumstances such as these this message was not the clearest
expression of the Admiral’s intentions, but it was made even less clear
when the flags for this signal were hauled down together with those for
the previous signal ‘Course NE’ thus combining two separate messages
with one executive order. As a result, the British battle-cruisers read
the message as ‘Attack the rear of the enemy, bearing NE’, which was
where the crippled Blucher lay. Moore, who was unaware of the reported
submarine threat and thought that the earlier turns to port had been to
get nearer to the Blucher, became convinced that this was Beatty’s
intention when he saw the German vessel bearing to the north-east. With
no thoughts of questioning such orders, the four battle-cruisers gave
up the pursuit of Hipper’s force and turned towards the Blucher.
Beatty had indeed tried to make his intentions clearer by later
hoisting Nelson’s famous signal ‘Engage the enemy more closely’ and
incidentally but perhaps symbolically found that this had been replaced
in the signal book by the less inspiring phrase ‘Keep nearer to the
enemy’. In any case the fast-disappearing British battle-cruisers could
no longer read the Lion’s signals. Shortly afterwards, being eager to
discover what was really happening and having ascertained that
immediate repairs to his ship were impossible, Beatty transferred to the
nearest destroyer, the Attack, and set off in pursuit. The Lion
meanwhile limped slowly away towards the north-west.
Over the horizon to the south-east the Blucher was suffering
in isolation as more and more British ships closed in upon her and as
the rest of Hipper’s force steamed hurriedly towards Wilhelmshaven.
Blucher continued to fight stubbornly against the overwhelming odds.
By this time she was on fire in many places and only two of her main
guns were in action, trying to keep her enemies at bay. By 1120 hours
the Arethusa and her ‘M’ class destroyers were also in the fray and the
Meteor went in close to launch torpedoes. She was then suddenly hit by
an 8.2-inch shell, which burst in the front boiler-room and put her out
of action. Blucher was still a danger to those impetuous enough to get
too close to her.
The other three ‘M’ class destroyers and the Arethusa were
by now closing in and firing torpedoes. Tyrwhitt steered his cruiser to
within 2,500 yards of the Blucher, blasting away at her continuously
with Arethusa’s 6-inch guns and finally let fly with two torpedoes, both
of which hit. Even now the Blucher was not only firing her guns at the
Arethusa but also launching torpedoes at the British battle-cruisers,
which were contributing to the destruction. Overhead the whole scene
was being watched by the helpless crew of a Zeppelin, who could do
nothing other than chronicle Blucher’s end.
This came shortly after noon, at about 1210 hours. Hit by seven
torpedoes and over 70 shells, Blucher had been a blazing wreck long
before that and had her last gun put out of order about 1145 hours.
Tyrwhitt again ordered the Arethusa to close the German ship but this
time only to rescue the survivors, who cheered at her coming. Turning
over completely, Blucher lay bottom upwards for a few minutes while
Arethusa’s small boats picked up the German seamen and then suddenly
she disappeared. The Arethusa and her destroyers managed to rescue
260 of these gallant men, who had been under more or less continuous
fire for three hours, before a German seaplane arrived and
unfortunately forced an end to this rescue operation by bombing the
small boats. In fact the pilot, an inexperienced flyer, was trying to
attack the destroyers, but his action was later criticised by the German
admiralty.
Moore’s battle-cruisers had turned north a short while before. The
Rear-Admiral knew that his squadron would probably be in sight of
Heligoland before they could catch up with Hipper again and that the
risks were therefore too great. Already Keyes had reported that the
High Seas Fleet was on the move. Moreover Moore knew nothing about
the condition of the Lion after seeing her limp away to the north-west
and greatly feared for her safety.
At 1220 hours they met the destroyer Attack coming south-wards
with Beatty on board. Hastily transferring his flag to the Princess
Royal, the Admiral rushed aboard the battle-cruiser and learnt for
himself the sad news. Bitterly disappointed, he impetuously signalled for
an immediate about-turn and set off after Hipper. After further enquiry,
however, he also realised that their task was by then impossible. Hipper
had slipped out of his net for the second time within six weeks and
could not be caught. It was, as his Flag Lieutenant Seymour put it, ‘like
trying to win the Derby after falling at Tattenham Corner’. The British
battle-cruisers therefore turned to find the Lion and to escort her
home.
The Lion had in fact to be towed to Rosyth. By 1530 hours with
her speed below 8 knots, she was forced to take a towline from the
Indomitable. Surrounded by a large force of destroyers and cruisers,
with the battle-cruisers and the Grand Fleet battleships providing a
more distant cover in case of a surprise German attack, these two
exposed vessels slowly edged their way home all that day and the next.
Early on January 26 the Lion, whose engines had by then completely
failed, was anchored in the Forth. On the other side of the North Sea,
with ideas of surprise attacks on the Grand Fleet very far from their
minds, Hipper’s very relieved squadron had been met at about 1430
hours on the 24th and escorted back to the Jade estuary.
On the face of it, the battle of the Dogger Bank was a clear-cut
British victory. They had chased Hipper’s squadron from the seas and
destroyed one of his larger vessels without losing so much as a
destroyer themselves. The Seydlitz had also been seriously damaged,
while both the Derfflinger and the Kolberg, suffered to some extent.
Against this, the Lion was to stay out of action for four months while
the Tiger had trifling damages. The destroyer Meteor had been damaged
by the Blucher, and the Aurora only scratched by the Kolberg. The
Germans lost almost 1,000 men killed, but fatal casualties on the British
side totalled only 15.