Castles of Steel (71 page)

Fisher, raging, rejected all excuses. “They were all actually in our grasp! . . . In the very jaws of death! . . . All concerned had made a hash of it:—and heads must roll,” he proclaimed. Goodenough, he announced, had been
“a fool,”
and Fisher wanted the commodore relieved. But Fisher was a minority of one: Jellicoe was tepid about removing Goodenough, Beatty decided that he did not really desire a change, and Churchill was adamant that Goodenough must be saved. Goodenough therefore remained in command. Fisher’s list of heads to be rolled also included Warrender’s and Bradford’s. Even before the raid, he had written to Jellicoe, “I suppose you must have a very high opinion of Warrender and Bradford or you would not cling to them. I have no reason for making this remark beyond that they both seem somewhat stupid! . . . I can’t stand a fool however amiable and I don’t believe that in war that it is anything short of criminal to keep the wrong men in any appointment high or low. ‘Changing horses while crossing the stream’ is an overdone saying! It’s all rot (and much worse) having regard to anyone’s feelings when the safety of our Empire is at stake. OLD WOMEN MUST GO!”

In the end, none of the British naval officers in command that day was relieved. Warrender retired at the end of 1915 because of ill health. Arbuthnot, who had a reputation for aggressiveness and eagerness, remained. He never explained, nor was he ever asked to explain, why he had failed to open fire on the German light cruisers, even without the permission of his senior officer. Beatty escaped all censure and reaped only praise, his failure to intercept being blamed entirely on Goodenough.

This battle cruiser engagement did not take place, but if it had—if Beatty had continued west and encountered Hipper—how might such a contest have turned out? Warrender’s battleships were fifteen miles away and could not have arrived in less than forty-five minutes. It would therefore have been four British ships against five German, including
Blücher.
Hipper’s four battle cruisers were a match for
Lion, Queen Mary, Tiger,
and
New Zealand.
The two opposing groups of huge ships, rushing directly at each other at forty miles an hour through the murk, would have had time to fire only a few salvos before their opponents disappeared. Already, the Germans had proved the accuracy of their gunnery. And, as the British were to learn at Jutland, German ship construction was superior to British. David Beatty had the lion’s heart, but on that day, matched against Hipper, he probably had the inferior force.

Assessing the errors made before and during the raid, Jellicoe always believed that he should not have been overruled in his wish to involve the entire Grand Fleet in the attempt to intercept. Fisher agreed with Jellicoe. “Lord Fisher said that in his opinion a great mistake had been made,” Maurice Hankey, the secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, wrote to Balfour. “He said that he had been overruled, but that the First Lord [Churchill] had afterwards confessed to him that a mistake had been made in not utilizing the whole of Jellicoe’s fleet.” Thereafter, Beatty never put to sea without the Grand Fleet coming out in support. If the High Seas Fleet came out to fight, it would have to fight Jellicoe.

Overall British naval strategy was unaffected by the raid. The primary base of the Grand Fleet remained at Scapa Flow, where it would keep the cork in the top of the North Sea. In response to public apprehension about the vulnerability of the coastal towns, one change in deployment was made. Through the autumn, when the fleet retreated to Loch Ewe or Loch Swilly, Beatty had fretted that he was too far away; he wanted his battle cruisers at Cromarty or Rosyth, where they would be nearer the Bight. On Decem-ber 20, the Admiralty gave Beatty permission to make Rosyth on the Firth of Forth his permanent base. The next morning, the battle cruisers left Cromarty and that afternoon steamed into the Firth of Forth. Soon after, the battle cruiser
Indomitable,
which had been refitting in the south after her return from watching the Dardanelles, joined Beatty at Rosyth, bringing his battle cruiser strength to five, even without
Princess Royal, Invincible,
and
Inflexible.

The Admiralty was bitterly disappointed by what had happened. Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby had been sacrificed in order to entrap and destroy Hipper—and Hipper had gotten away. Blame was discussed, apportioned, and set aside. Only Jellicoe mentioned another possibility: “There never was such bad luck,” he said. But, in fact, luck favored both sides that day. Hipper was saved by the chance encounter of his light cruisers, first with Beatty’s screen, then with Warrender’s battleships. Thus warned, he was able to turn north and escape under cover of wind and rain. But if the day was a disappointment to the British commanders, groping for their prey in heavy seas and blinding rain, they were unaware of how narrowly they themselves had escaped destruction. Ingenohl, by pressing forward with more determination and directing the fire of twenty-two battleships against six, could have destroyed or crippled Warrender’s battle squadron. Both sides could complain and, at the same time, be grateful.

Churchill found solace in the knowledge that Room 40 had worked and therefore, presumably, would work again. “Dissatisfaction was widespread,” he admitted. “However, we could not say a word in explanation. We had to bear in silence the censures of our countrymen. We could never admit, for fear of compromising our secret information, where our squadrons were, or how near the German raiding cruisers had been to their destruction. One comfort we had. The indications upon which we had acted had been confirmed by events. The sources of information upon which we relied were evidently trustworthy. Next time we might at least have average visibility. But would there be a next time? The German admiral must have known that he was very near to powerful British ships, but which they were, or where they were, or how near he was, might be a mystery. Would it not also be a mystery how they came to be there?”

Germany celebrated. For the first time in two centuries, England had felt the scourge of war on its own soil. It was “a regular bombardment of fortified places” and “further proof of the gallantry of our navy,” declared the Berlin
Neueste Nachrichten.
The
Berliner Tageblatt
expressed regret at the damage done to Whitby Abbey but explained that “the life of a single German soldier is for us a thousand times more important than a monumental building, even when it possesses such great historical value.” The
Berliner Borsenzeitung
warned that “the bombardment possibly heralds greater events to come.” But while the German people hung flags from their windows, the officer corps of the German navy knew better. A golden opportunity to pare down the British fleet had been lost. Tirpitz, never in any doubt that ship for ship, the fleet he had built was superior, believed that all it needed was a chance to whittle down the greater numbers of the Grand Fleet. Here, the chance had come—and had been thrown away. Scheer, more cautiously, agreed: “It is extremely probable that if we had continued in our original direction, the courses of the two fleets would have crossed within sight of each other during the morning.” Officers of Hipper’s scouting groups were angry, not just because the withdrawal had left their battle cruisers unsupported, but because the potential for larger success had been missed. Captain Magnus von Levetzow of the battle cruiser
Moltke
wrote scornfully to Admiral von Holtzendorff, the former Commander-in-Chief of the High Seas Fleet, that Ingenohl had retreated “because he was afraid to face eleven British destroyers which could easily have been eliminated. . . . Under the present leadership we will accomplish nothing.”

Although Hipper shared the general chagrin at the premature flight of the German battle fleet, he apparently had no misgivings about killing and wounding hundreds of civilians. He viewed it, said his biographer Captain Hugo von Waldeyer-Hartz, “entirely as a war measure and therefore as a task imposed on him by duty. It is a regrettable but obvious fact that modern war is blind: it involves both combatants and noncombatants, slaying indiscriminately. . . . The first objective is to break a nation’s morale; the collapse of its physical resistance will follow.” As for Ingenohl, he defended his decision to abandon Hipper by insisting that he was obeying the order not to risk the fleet. “The advance of the main fleet by day to a juncture with . . . [Hipper’s force] did not coincide with the commands issued by the
All Highest
[the kaiser] as to use of the High Seas Fleet,” he said in his report after the battle. On this ground, Scheer exonerated him: “The restrictions enforced on the Commander in Chief brought about the failure of the bold and promising plan.” Ironically, the kaiser, the principal author of the restrictions on the fleet, also criticized Ingenohl’s behavior. This time, the monarch lectured the admiral, Ingenohl had been too careful with the High Seas Fleet and had missed an opportunity to establish its supremacy in the North Sea: “The effort to preserve the fleet must under no circumstances be carried so far that favorable prospects of a success are missed owing to the prospect of possible losses.” Nevertheless, William made no changes. Friedrich von Ingenohl remained Commander-in-Chief. The basic operations order was not canceled, the restrictions were not lifted, and the High Seas Fleet commander continued to be bound by regulations that put him at fault no matter whether he risked or husbanded his ships.

CHAPTER 20
The Cuxhaven Raid: “Stupid Great Things, but Very Beautiful”

The autumn of 1914 saw war at sea revolutionized by weapons scarcely imaginable a generation earlier: the dreadnought, the submarine, the airplane, and the airship. The potential combatants had already equipped themselves with a number of airplanes, which generals and admirals conceded might be useful for observing the enemy. Airships, lifted by giant bags of lighter-than-air gas strung inside a rigid metal frame, were viewed with greater suspicion. In every war, however, weapons development moves quickly and by Christmas Day, 1914, the Royal Navy was so concerned about the danger from airships—which the Germans called zeppelins—that it mounted an attack by shipborne airplanes on a German airship base on the North Sea. In response, German zeppelins and seaplanes attacked British surface ships and submarines. The Cuxhaven Raid, as it came to be called, was history’s first aircraft-carrier-based air strike. It was also the first naval battle in which, on both sides, the striking forces were made up exclusively of aerial machines.

The rigid airships made famous during the Great War bore the name of their creator, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Curiously, this aerial pioneer was first inspired in St. Paul, Minnesota, when, as a twenty-five-year-old German officer, on leave from his duty as an observer with the Union army in the Civil War, he was invited to go up in a tethered military observation balloon. Count Zeppelin was enthusiastic about his first ascent and began to dream about the possibilities of lighter-than-air craft. His vision was postponed for the many decades he devoted to a regular army career. Only in 1900, after retiring from the army, did he see his own first airship, lifted by hydrogen bags, actually fly. Soon after, it crashed. Three more privately financed, Zeppelin-designed airships followed, which flew but were discarded or destroyed by fire or storm. Zeppelin’s manufacturing company foundered financially, but the German public, impressed by the dedicated persistence of the little pioneer and awed by the immense size of his airships, came to the rescue. Private money flowed in to support his work, and Zeppelin became a national hero. Originally, he had meant to build huge airships for passengers and cargo, but, as a former military officer, he also recognized the airship’s potential as a weapon. As war approached, the German army ordered zeppelins and on Mobilization Day it possessed seven. The Imperial Navy had only one airship, because Grand Admiral von Tirpitz had resisted any diversion of funds from the building of battleships. “As a naval officer who had got to know the force of the wind and the malice of squalls on sailing ships, I never promised myself much from the airships,” Tirpitz announced. Nevertheless, during the first weeks of war, the German navy, short on light cruisers for scouting, grasped that zeppelins, with their long range and endurance, might make up this deficit. Construction of airships and airship bases received priority; within four months, the German navy had four zeppelins.

Neither airships nor airplanes stirred much interest in the Royal Navy. In 1907, the Wright brothers offered patents on their newly developed flying machine to the Admiralty; Lord Tweedmouth, the First Lord, replied that airplanes “would be of no particular value to the Naval Service.” Tweedmouth, however, did not speak for his First Sea Lord, and Jacky Fisher, builder of dreadnoughts and advocate of submarines, was always open to the potential of exotic new weapons. In 1909, with Tweedmouth departed, the Naval Estimates included a request for £35,000 to build one experimental rigid airship. The money was approved and construction of the airship
Mayfly
commenced.
Mayfly
was completed in September 1911, but while she was being trundled out of her hangar for her maiden voyage, a violent crosswind squall broke her in two, a trauma sufficient to terminate rigid-airship construction in Great Britain. Some British naval officers regretted this decision: in November 1911, Jellicoe, visiting Berlin, went up in a zeppelin and came down an advocate. As Second Sea Lord in December 1912, Jellicoe, whose duties included oversight of aeronautical developments, attempted to stimulate interest in the use of airships for scouting at sea. He compared airships favorably with airplanes, whose time in the air was, at best, five hours. Airplanes could neither fly nor land at night; they might travel at seventy miles an hour, compared with an airship’s fifty, but an airship rose when it was stationary, and its buoyancy increased as its fuel was consumed. The other Sea Lords and the new First Lord, Winston Churchill, rejected Jellicoe’s recommendations. “I rated the zeppelin much lower as a weapon of war than anyone else,” Churchill said later. “I believed this enormous bladder of combustible and explosive gas would prove to be easily destructible. I was sure the fighting airplane . . . armed with incendiary bullets would harry, rout and burn these gaseous monsters. I therefore did everything in my power in the years before the war to restrict expenditure upon airships and to concentrate our narrow and stinted resources upon airplanes.”