Coronel and the Falkland Islands – part 2
January 2nd, 2009 From
>Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 23:43:14 EST
>From: EDWARD WITTENBERG
>To: MARHST-L@POST.QUEENSU.CA, WWI-L@RAVEN.CC.UKANS.EDU,
> MAHAN@MICROWRKS.COM, MILHST-L@UKANVM.CC.UKANS.EDU
>CC: wew@papa.uncp.edu
>Subject: Coronel and the Falkland Islands – part 2
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>Taken from _Sea Battles of the 20th Century_ (London: The Hamlyn
>Publishing Group Limited, 1975) by George Bruce.
>
>Edward Wittenberg
>wew@papa.uncp.edu
>
>
> Not long after altering course to identify the smoke to starboard,
> the Glasgow sighted three ships-one three-funnelled light cruiser and
> two four-funnelled armoured cruisers. Admiral von Spee’s squadron
> immediately turned in her direction and the Glasgow closed at full speed
> towards the Good Hope, signalling at the same time, ‘Enemy armoured
> cruisers in sight’. Soon another cruiser with three funnels joined the
> enemy ships, which were steaming south in line ahead nearer to the
> South American coast, which was about twelve miles distant.
>
> During Cradock’s search to the north, the Good Hope had steamed
> northwest by north and the other ships northeast by east, so that by
> 4.20pm, when the enemy was sighted, Admiral Cradock’s flagship was
> considerably westward of them. At 4.47pm, after the Glasgow had
> identified the enemy, the Glasgow, Monmouth and Otranto turned west at
> full speed with the intention of forming line of battle in the following
> order: Good Hope, Monmouth, Glasgow and Otranto.
>
> Inevitably, having regard to the distance, this took time, so the
> chance was lost of forcing an early action before the enemy squadron
> was concentrated. It also allowed von Spee more than an hour to get up
> the necessary steam, for earlier the Gneisenau had started to clean two
> of her boilers and could not approach the 22 knots at which the
> Scharnhorst chased the Glasgow.
>
> An hour later, at 5.57pm, with the enemy approaching about ten
> miles to the north, Cradock attempted to cross in front of the enemy,
> but finding this impossible, owing to the low speed of fifteen knots
> imposed by the Otranto, gave this up and altered course in succession
> to south, with the enemy eastward, on a parallel course.
>
> Lieutenant Hirst, on board the Glasgow, noted: ‘We then tried by
> altering slightly towards them to force an immediate action, the
> conditions being then in our favour, as the setting sun was strong in
> the enemy’s eyes. They declined action, however, by edging away and
> thus maintained their distance at about 15,000 yards.’
>
> Having failed to win this decisive tactical advantage, Cradock
> could still avoid action and steam some 250 miles south while awaiting
> reinforcement by the Canopus. In doing so, however, he would run the
> risk of the enemy escaping him during the darkness or subsequently
> outstripping the slower, but by now more evenly matched British
> squadron.
>
> In the light of his orders he chose to engage at once, and at
> 6.18pm he signalled Canopus: ‘I am now going to attack the enemy.’
> Cradock faced a double handicap, for in these heavy seas his crew of
> RNR reservists and recruits would encounter special problems in
> gunlaying, while many of the 6-inch guns on the Good Hope’s and
> Monmouth’s main decks would not be fought because their casemates,
> constructed too near the waterline, could not be opened in this heavy
> weather.
>
> Shortly before 7pm the sun dipped below the horizon. Admiral von
> Spee had succeeded in snatching the tactical advantage from the
> British. ‘We were now silhouetted against the afterglow, with a clear
> horizon behind to show up splashes from falling shells’, Hirst observed,
> ‘while their ships to us were smudged into low black shapes scarcely
> discernible against the background of gathering night clouds’.
>
> While this significant change was taking place, von Spee gradually
> closed the range. A minute or two after 7 pm, his squadron-Scharnhorst,
> Gneisenau, Leipzig and Dresden-opened fire at a range of 12,000 yards;
> Nurnberg was still some miles away. All that Cradock had feared, but
> had felt himself in honour bound not to avoid, now overwhelmed him.
> From the outset he was faced by twelve of the enemy’s 8.2-inch guns,
> against which he could at this range pit only the Good Hope’s two
> 9.2-inch guns.
>
> The Scharnhorst’s first salvo fell short; her second salvo
> overshot; but her third knocked out the Good Hope’s forward 9.2-inch
> gun before it had fired a single shell, while at the same time the
> Gneisenau hit the Monmouth and set her fore turret afire, which burned
> furiously despite the waves breaking over her bows. Good Hope and
> Monmouth both scored hits on the two heavy enemy cruisers, but none
> of them caused serious damage.
>
> By now the battle was raging furiously. Good Hope was hit
> amidships time after time, shells twice struck her after turret, and soon
> flames raging below were licking out through the portholes. More than
> 30 shells struck the Monmouth, too, and suddenly a great column of fire
> rocketed up on her starboard side. The armed merchant cruiser Otranto,
> whose 4-inch guns were ineffective, had moved out of the action, while
> the Glasgow was dealing effectively with both the Leipzig and Dresden
> with her 6-inch guns.
>
> At 7.45pm Lieutenant Hirst noted that both Good Hope and
> Monmouth were in distress. ‘Frequently either ship flashed into a vivid
> orange as a lyddite shell detonated against her upperworks. Ears had
> become deafened by the roar of our guns and almost insensible to the
> shriek of fragments flying over head from the shells which burst short.’
>
> Monmouth, by now blazing furiously and listing, moved out of line to
> starboard and slowed, forcing the Glasgow, which was behind her, to
> slow down to avoid overtaking her and receiving the stream of shells
> the Gneisenau hurled at her. The flames from the Good Hope, now a
> battered hulk, increased in brilliance, but those few gunners alive still
> fired as and when they could.
>
> The end of the Good Hope came suddenly. ‘At 7.50pm’, noted Hirst,
> ‘there was a terrific explosion on board between her mainmast and her
> after-most funnel, and the gush of flames, reaching a height of over 200
> feet, lighted up a cloud of debris that was flung still higher in the air .
> . . Her fire then ceased, as did also that of the Scharnhorst upon her,
> and she lay between the lines, a low black hull, gutted of her
> upperworks, and only lighted by a dull red glare which shortly
> disappeared’.
>
> The Glasgow, firing upon the dim outline of an enemy light cruiser
> in the half darkness, now received her first hit, on her waterline above
> the port outer propeller, which made a big dent in her plating but
> caused no real damage. But now that the Monmouth had turned away to
> the west, where she was busy trying to put out her fires, the Glasgow
> became the new target for both the enemy heavy cruisers. At 8.15pm
> she stopped firing, so as to avoid drawing the enemy’s fire by the flash
> of her guns.
>
> The enemy vessels now lost contact with both the Glasgow and the
> Monmouth in the darkness, with the moon obscured by clouds most of
> the time. Glasgow, recalled Hirst, closed to Monmouth’s port quarter and
> signalled by lamp: ‘Are you all right ?’ Monmouth replied: ‘I want to get
> stern to sea. I am making water badly forward.’ She was listing to port,
> down by the bows, and fire glowed from her.
>
> In a flash of moonlight, Captain Luce, on the Glasgow, briefly saw
> the enemy ships approaching some distance away in line abreast. ‘Can
> you steer northwest ?’ he signalled. ‘The enemy are following us astern.’
>
> There was no answer. ‘The moon was now clear of the clouds’,
> Hirst observed, ‘and it was obvious that Monmouth could neither fight
> nor fly; so our Captain had to decide whether to share her fate, without
> being able to render any adequate assistance, or to attempt to escape
> the enemy’. Since it was considered essential that the Canopus,
> approaching the area alone, should be warned, Captain Luce reluctantly
> turned away at full speed and lost sight of the enemy at about 8.50pm.
> Afterwards he counted 75 flashes of enemy gunfire upon Monmouth
> before silence, except for wind and sea, returned.
>
> The Nurnberg, approaching the scene of the action at high speed,
> had been ordered to make a torpedo attack. She came upon the
> fireswept Monmouth in the darkness, fired a torpedo which failed to
> strike home, then opened fire at point-blank range. Monmouth seemingly
> had neither her guns working nor gunners living with which to reply,
> but she turned as if to ram. ‘The Nurnberg let loose a hail of shells and
> at 9.28pm the Monmouth capsized and went down.
>
> So ended the Battle of Coronel. It had lasted 61 minutes. Admiral
> von Spee steered north and signalled his squadron: ‘With God’s help a
> glorious victory, for which I express my recognition and congratulations
> to the crews.’ His gunners had fired salvoes at fifteen-second intervals,
> knocking the Good Hope’s forward turret out before she had fired a
> shot. Von Spee noted that the Germans had scored 35 hits on Good Hope
> and that the British ships, handicapped in the heavy sea, were firing
> one salvo to every three from his squadron.
>
> The Admiralty Staff had sent Good Hope and Monmouth to an area
> known for its heavy seas, despite the knowledge that their main deck
> guns could not be fought in these conditions. Both this and the
> inexperience of the gunners resulted in the Good Hope hitting the
> Scharnhorst only twice; the Monmouth hit Gneisenau three times, and the
> Glasgow hit her once. As at Heligoland, the poor design of British shells
> was evident, for the two that struck Scharnhorst both failed to explode.
> In all respects the battle was a disaster for both Britain and her Allies.
> The prestige of the Royal Navy was questioned as never before and
> immediate orders were given for a decisive counter-blow.
>
> Admiral Lord Fisher, ‘Jacky’, the ruthless fighting admiral who
> had re-fashioned the Royal Navy in the pre-war years, had returned to
> his post as First Sea Lord on 30 October 1914, two days before the
> battle, succeeding Prince Louis Battenberg, who was forced to resign
> owing to his German origin. Winston Churchill recalls in The World Crisis
> how on 3 November the Admiralty received the first certain report that
> Spee’s squadron had been located off the west coast of South America
> and how in the evening he, Lord Fisher and Admiral Sturdee, Chief of
> Naval Staff, in a recognition of the realities of Cradock’s situation,
> signalled Admiral Stoddart: ‘Defence to proceed with all possible dispatch
> to join Admiral Cradock on west coast of America.’
>
> At last, posthumously, Admiral Cradock had been granted decisive
> reinforcements. But Churchill discovered that no reinforcements could
> help him now, early on 4 November, when he received a telegram from
> the British Consul General in Valparaiso telling of the disaster at
> Coronel. The news was confirmed a few hours later by a message
> dispatched from Port Stanley by Captain Luce of the Glasgow. Occurring
> as it had done on the same day, 1 November 1914, as the entry of
> Turkey into the war on Germany’s side, it seemed, at the time, an almost
> equal calamity. Lord Fisher acted at once with a bold and comprehensive
> strategical move which totally overshadowed Churchill’s tentative
> proposals. Less than six hours after receiving the news Fisher, risking
> the narrow supremacy of Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet over the German High
> Seas Fleet, ordered Jellicoe to detach two battlecruisers, Invincible and
> Inflexible, for urgent service elsewhere. Admiral Sturdee, whom
> Fisher had replaced by Admiral Oliver as Chief-of-Staff, was appointed
> C-in-C South Atlantic and Pacific, a station covering one half of the
> world’s oceans, and the two ships were ordered to coal at once and
> proceed forthwith to Plymouth to make ready ‘with the utmost despatch’.
> They sailed on their vital mission on 11 November.
>
> Admiral Sturdee’s secret instructions were to steam southwards at
> the maximum economical speed with the Invincible and the Inflexible, coal
> at St Vincent, Cape Verde, and rendezvous with Rear-Admiral Stoddart
> at Abrolhos Rocks, off the coast of Brazil, with the cruisers Carnarvon,
> Cornwall and Kent, which had steamed southwest from Sierra Leone, as
> well as the Glasgow, the Bristol and the armed merchant cruisers
> Macedonia and Otranto.
>
> His task was to seek out and destroy Admiral von Spee’s entire
> squadron. Numerous other dispositions, amounting to 30 vessels, 21 of
> them armoured cruisers, were made to cover the possible appearance of
> Spee in the Pacific, or off the west coast of South America or the Cape
> of Good Hope or, in case he should try to make for home across the
> South Atlantic, the Cape Verde Islands.
>
> Captain Grant, on the Canopus, still beset by boiler troubles, was
> ordered by Lord Fisher to moor his ship so that the entrance of Stanley
> Harbour, Falkland Isles-a very likely target for von Spee-was
> commanded by his guns, if necessary grounding his ship to do so. He
> was also instructed to turn his ship into a fort, stimulate the Governor
> to organize local defence and put guns ashore to help him.
>
> The tabulated list on the next page gives the tonnage, speed,
> armament and completion date of the British vessels under Admiral
> Sturdee which were to take part in the intended battle against Admiral
> von Spee’s squadron:
>
> Ships Classification Completed Displacement Speed Armament
> ————————————————————————–
> Inflexible Battlecruiser 1908 17.250 26.5 8 12-in
> 16 4 in
> Invincible Battlecruiser 1908 17.250 26.5 8 12-in
> 16 4 in
> Carnarvon Cruiser 1904 10.850 22.1 4 7.5-in
> 6 6 in
> Cornwall Cruiser 1904 9.800 24.0 14 6 in
> Kent Cruiser 1903 9.800 24.1 14 6-in
> Glasgow Light Cruiser 1911 4.800 26.0 10 4-in
>
>
> Meanwhile von Spee, putting into Valparaiso with his two heavy
> cruisers and the Nurnberg, had received from the German ambassador
> there a message that the German Admiralty did not believe cruiser
> warfare in the Pacific promised good results-despite the Emden’s and
> Konigsberg’s successes-and that he should try to make his way home.
> This, apparently, was his ultimate intention. Leaving Valparaiso the next
> day, he joined up with the rest of his squadron at Mas-a-Fuera, on the
> same latitude in the South Atlantic, about 350 miles west.
>
> He left a single supply ship with orders to give the impression,
> by constant signalling, that the entire squadron was still there, then
> steamed south and stayed coaling and carrying out repairs in the
> hidden anchorage of St Quentin Bay from 21 to 26 November. Then he
> went south and rounded the Horn on 2 December.
>
> Four days later, at a council of captains, Admiral von Spee
> decided on a plan to destroy Britain’s base in the Falklands, thus
> disrupting her naval operations in the South Atlantic. Captain
> Pochhammer of the Gneisenau wrote later:
>
> We knew to our cost what it meant to
> traverse the seas without a refuge, to cruise
> along interminable coasts without a shelter from
> the wind, the sea or the enemy, with no other
> assistance than that of the cargo steamers we
> had brought with us.
>
> If we succeeded, even temporarily, in
> rendering useless Stanley Harbour, the chief
> port, as a revictualing station for the British
> Fleet, in destroying stocks of coal and
> provisions and the plant installed for refitting
> ships, and finally in paralysing the big wireless
> station which formed part of the network of
> communications of our enemies, we might acquire
> by this feat complete freedom of action for our
> subsequent operations.
>
> A report that the base was undefended because the British
> warships there had sailed for South Africa was decisive. But von Spee
> still intended to make for Germany. One of the German Admiralty
> telegrams which reached him after Coronel asked what his future plans
> were, and Spee replied, ‘A breakthrough by the cruisers to Germany is
> intended’.
>
> Thus he made a fatal error of judgement in deciding to launch the
> Falkland attack. First, because the secrecy of his movements would be
> lost by warning messages by the Falklands wireless station before its
> destruction. Secondly, because German occupation of the base would
> inevitably be of the shortest duration. Third, because the ruse he had
> successfully used of sending out signals at Mas-a-Fuera to give the
> impression that he was still on the west coast of South America would
> be jeopardized, just when it could have been of most use to him in his
> voyage across the Atlantic from south to north.
>
> National and personal pride had marred Spee’s judgement. Having
> had one great success he now yearned for another, evidently not
> realizing that to bring his ships safely home across the world would be
> the greatest triumph, not only because of the new strength it would
> give the High Seas Fleet, but also because of the problems that seeking
> him far and wide all that time would mean for the Allies.
>
> Forgetting all secrecy now, von Spee sailed his squadron along
> the southern coast of Tierra del Fuego, past the straggling coastline of
> Staaten Island, then 300 miles northeast for the Falklands, whose dark
> land masses emerged on the northern horizon just before dawn on 8
> December 1914. At 5am Gneisenau and Nurnberg, with the landing
> parties, went on fifteen miles ahead so as to reach Cape Pembroke at
> 8am, ready for the job of destruction which von Spee had given them.
> Clearly, his arriving so long after daylight with landing parties, instead
> of launching a surprise artillery attack at dawn by the whole squadron
> prior to landing, shows beyond doubt that von Spee was sure he would
> find the base undefended.
>
> Sturdee, steaming down towards the Falklands, had no precise
> information as to von Spee’s whereabouts. He might be anywhere in the
> South Atlantic or Pacific. It was, in the words of Lieutenant-Commander
> Barry Bingham, a gunnery specialist on the Inflexible, like ‘looking for
> a needle in five bundles of hay, if the ships had dispersed and were
> acting independently’.
>
> Lord Fisher’s orders of 24 November were that having joined
> forces with those of Stoddart, Sturdee should ‘move south to the
> Falklands, use this as his base, and then to proceed to the coast of
> Chile, search the channels and inlets of Tierra del Fuego, while keeping
> his big ships out of sight.’ A message Sturdee had received on 4
> December, that the supply ship Prinz Eitel Friedrich-which von
> Spee had left behind on the west coast as a subterfuge-had been
> sighted off Valparaiso, persuaded him that the whole squadron was
> likely to be somewhere off the west coast.
>
> Von Spee now departed from his agreed plan to make a dash for
> home mainly on the strength of an unconfirmed rumour put out by
> British seamen that the base was undefended. Sturdee, led mainly by
> the success of von Spee’s ruse off the coast of Chile with his supply
> ship, forgot his earlier uncertainty and put his entire squadron in at
> the Falklands for coaling before steaming on to the west coast.
> Misjudgment on both sides thus led to the Battle of the Falkland Isles;
> and the main source of illusion, which led to the end of von Spee and
> his squadron, was the presence of the Prinz Eitel Friedrich, signalling
> on the west coast.