Castles of Steel (77 page)

The two turrets on
Lion
’s bow were trained on
Blücher.
One 13.5-inch gun of the upper B turret was elevated and at 8:52 a.m. a single ranging shot was fired. As the cordite smoke blew back in their faces, the watchers on the bridge fixed their binoculars on the German ship. “We could see the tiny fountain of water that told us the shot was short,” said Young. Gun elevation was slightly adjusted and two more sighting shells were fired. They fell over. It was sufficient;
Blücher
had been straddled. At 9:00,
Tiger,
close on
Lion
’s heels, fired her own ranging shot at
Blücher
. At 9:05 a.m., Beatty made a general signal to the squadron: “Open fire and engage the enemy.” The first two British battle cruisers immediately erupted with salvos of armor-piercing shells. Soon,
Princess Royal,
1,000 yards astern of the
Tiger,
came within range and opened fire. To the rear,
New Zealand
and
Indomitable
plowed silently ahead, their 12-inch guns not yet able to reach.

Firing at ranges of 20,000 yards was beyond anything imagined before the war. Although the extreme range of the 13.5-inch gun—by 1914, the main armament of ten British dreadnought battleships and four battle cruisers—was 22,000 yards, prewar British gunnery training still assumed a close action at moderate speed. In the spring of 1914, Churchill ordered experimental firing at 14,000 yards, and he said, “to universal astonishment, considerable ac-curacy was obtained.” Beatty, commanding the battle cruisers and suspecting what war would be like with these fast ships and their powerful, long-range guns, went further and asked permission to conduct his own gunnery practice at towed targets 16,000 yards away with his ships steaming at 23 knots. Now, traveling at 27 knots and firing at a range of almost 20,000 yards, the British long-range guns began to score hits. As they did so, Beatty altered course slightly to starboard, placing his battle cruisers in echelon rather than single line ahead, thus enabling each ship to bring its after turrets to bear.
Lion
first hit
Blücher
at 9:09 a.m. Ten minutes later, with the range down to 18,000 yards and with both
Tiger
and
Princess Royal
also firing at
Blücher, Lion
shifted her guns to the third German ship in line, the battle cruiser
Moltke.

At 9:15 a.m., the Germans began to fire back. From
Lion
’s bridge, Young observed this happen:

The enemy appeared on the eastern horizon in the form of four separate wedges or triangles of smoke. . . . Suddenly, from the rear-most of those wedges [
Blücher
], came a stab of white flame. “He’s opened fire,” said Captain Chatfield and we waited for what seemed a long time, probably about twenty-five seconds, until a great column of water and spray rose in the sea at a distance of more than a mile from our port bow. . . . Minute by minute the ranges came down, and during each interval further flashes were observed from the enemy and further fountains of water arose between us, always creeping a little nearer, but still short.

Before long, other German battle cruisers opened fire and the sea around both opposing groups of ships was alive with tall columns of water. From
Lion,
Young could see British shells hitting German ships. The hits appeared as “a glare amid the smoke. There was no mistaking the difference between the bright sharp stab of white flame that marked the firing of the enemy’s guns and this dull, glowing and fading glare which signified the bursting of one of our own shells.”
Blücher,
not surprisingly, was the most severely punished. After the battle, prisoners from
Blücher
said that they had not known which of their enemies was hitting their ship, but that the third salvo had struck on the waterline and reduced her speed and that the fourth had almost carried away the after superstructure and had disabled the two after turrets.

As the guns on both sides continued to lash out, observers on
Lion
and
Southampton
saw signs of commotion in the formation of German destroyers ahead of Hipper’s battle cruisers. Concerned that Hipper might order a torpedo attack as a means of relieving pressure on his beleaguered ships, Beatty countered by signaling Tyrwhitt and the Harwich Force: “Destroyers take station ahead and proceed at your utmost speed.” This effort to shield
Lion
and her sisters failed because of the great speed of the British battle cruisers. At 27 and 28 knots, most of Tyrwhitt’s destroyers could scarcely keep up with Beatty’s big ships. They lacked the additional speed necessary to pull ahead and they continued where they were, on Beatty’s port beam. Only the seven new 30-knot
M
-Class destroyers were able to respond and gradually to creep out in front of their own onrushing battle cruisers. As it happened, the anticipated German attack did not take place and the long-range artillery duel continued. With
Tiger
and
Princess Royal
now pounding
Blücher, Lion
shifted first to
Moltke
and then, as they came within range, to
Derfflinger
and
Seydlitz.
Meanwhile,
Lion
herself, leading the British charge, had come under fire. German salvos were straddling the ship and, at 9:28 a.m., one of
Blücher
’s 8-inch shells struck
Lion
on her bow A turret, not penetrating the turret’s armor but producing a concussive shock that disabled the left gun.

The German cannonade also broke up the little party of observers standing on
Lion
’s bridge. “Up to now,” wrote Filson Young,

there had been very little sound but the rush of wind and water, with the occasional roar of our guns, but now the noise of firing was becoming louder and louder; the enemy’s shots were falling on both sides of us quite close so that the spray . . . drenched our decks. The moment had come for an adjournment to the conning tower, that small armored citadel, the mechanical brain of the ship, whence she could be steered and maneuvered and her gunfire controlled by means of a complicated mass of voice pipes, telephones and electric and hydraulic gear. As it was already overcrowded with people indispensable for all these purposes, the Admiral’s staff divided.

Young and another junior officer were dispatched to a “windy eyrie in the foretop”—the small observation platform high up the mainmast, sixty feet above the deck, eighty feet above the sea. For Young, the climb to the foretop was the most dangerous and frightening part of the battle:

As we were climbing . . . a terrific blow and a shake proclaimed that
Lion
had been hit [this was
Blücher
’s 9:28 a.m. hit on A turret]. The climb had been bad enough in ordinary circumstances. It was perfectly horrible now. We were already pretty cold from standing in the wind, we were encumbered with thick clothing, life jackets, and oilskins and the wind on the mast . . . was terrific. It shook and tore at us until I really wondered whether my hands would be able to keep their grip on the steel rungs. . . . I felt sure that the end had come when, having dragged myself up step by step to where the floor of the foretop overshadowed us, I found the steel covering of the manhole, giving entrance to it, was shut. . . . It would be impossible to make the man inside it hear and my companion immediately below me on the ladder was hailing me vehemently to hurry up as he could not hold on much longer. Fortunately, the Navigating Commander, who was just leaving the bridge, [looked up and] saw our dilemma and hailed the foretop with the result that the manhole was opened just in time.

Meanwhile, said Captain Chatfield,

to the conning tower [the action station of the captain] I had to go. In it were the Chief Quartermaster, the Navigator, the two telegraph able seamen, and a signalman. It was situated immediately behind B turret, noisy and wet from spray and from steaming at high speed through the vast columns of water which somehow incredibly forced its way through the lens threads of my Ross binoculars. . . . Gradually, we had been closing the enemy who were now all engaged. The salvos fired from their guns looked like the switching on momentarily of large red searchlights; one got into the habit of allowing for the forty seconds before the salvo fell. If it fell over the ship, it was unseen and unnoticed. The
Lion
being the leading ship, received almost as good a measure of the concentration of the enemy’s fire as had their rear ship,
Blücher,
the early concentration of our own.

From his perch in the foretop, Young observed the rest of the battle:

It was impossible to endure the wind standing up in this square box, so we knelt on the steel floor and could just rest our elbows on the rim and keep our eyes and [field] glasses over the edge. . . .

The Admiral and his staff did not remain long in the conning tower. The only view from that protected place is through a very narrow slit at eye level, which, although it gives a view of a kind of three quarters of the horizon, was of little use to the Admiral. He was thoroughly enjoying himself and did not like to waste his day in the cramped and crowded security of the conning tower and he and the Flag Lieutenant, the Flag Commander and Secretary were soon up on the compass platform again where the view was perfect although the danger from splinters was considerable. They were flying about us all the time in the foretop. During a lull between salvos, Beatty hailed us in the foretop to ask how we were enjoying ourselves. . . . Very soon after . . . [and following another tremendous blow that shook
Lion
], I put my head out to look down and see what happened. There was a great drift of cordite smoke all round the compass platform and to my horror, instead of the four figures I had last seen standing there, there were only four tumbled smudges of blue on the deck. After the smoke cleared away, I saw that they were greatcoats and presently to my inexpressible relief, my four friends reappeared eating sandwiches. . . . Being very hot in the conning tower, they had taken their greatcoats off when they came up, and there being at the moment an unusual lot of splinters flying about, the Admiral, much against his will, had been persuaded to return to the conning tower. After five minutes, he broke out again, and came on the compass platform, which he occupied for the rest of the action.

By 9:35 a.m.,
New Zealand
had come within range of
Blücher
and had opened fire; now only
Indomitable
remained out of action. Having four ships within range of Hipper’s four, Beatty decided to give structure to the battle and signaled his squadron, “Engage the corresponding ship in the enemy’s line.” His intention was a ship-for-ship distribution of fire:
Lion
should take on
Seydlitz,
leading the German line; his second ship,
Tiger,
should fire at Hipper’s second ship,
Moltke;
the third British ship,
Princess Royal,
would engage
Derfflinger;
and
New Zealand
would continue to hammer
Blücher.
In sending this signal, Beatty assumed that all of his captains understood that
Indomitable
still was not within range and therefore was not included in this command. Unfortunately, Captain Henry Pelly of
Tiger
misunderstood the intended alignment. Believing that
Indomitable
was already engaging
Blücher,
Pelly, in his calculations, moved every British ship one vessel forward against the German line. Therefore, as Pelly saw it, with
Indomitable
firing at
Blücher, New Zealand
would take on
Derfflinger,
and
Princess Royal
would engage
Moltke.
This left the first two British ships,
Lion
and his own
Tiger,
to concentrate on Hipper’s flagship,
Seydlitz.
Pelly thought this made good sense, especially in light of a Grand Fleet Battle Order that decreed that where there were more British than enemy ships, the two leading British ships were to attempt to incapacitate and destroy the first German. The other British captains, however, knew that
Indomitable
was excluded; they had correctly understood the intended assignments, and carried out Beatty’s order. But, with both
Tiger
and
Lion
firing at
Seydlitz,
nobody engaged
Moltke.
To leave an excellent gunnery ship like this German battle cruiser undisturbed was to invite disaster. Already, most of the German squadron was aiming at Beatty’s flagship and now, says Arthur Marder, “the unmolested
Moltke
was able to make excellent target practice on
Lion.
” Pelly’s mistake was compounded by the fact that his inexperienced gunnery and turret officers were aiming poorly and that
Tiger
’s shells were falling 3,000 yards beyond
Seydlitz.
They did not recognize this because they took
Lion
’s shells, which were straddling the German flagship, to be their own. When Commodore Goodenough, observing the battle from the bridge of
Southampton,
signaled “Salvos of three, apparently from
Tiger,
falling consistently over,”
Tiger
did not receive the message.

By the time Hipper had correctly identified his pursuers as battle cruisers, Beatty had closed the range to 28,000 yards (fourteen miles) and it was too late for Hipper to avoid battle. “At nine a.m.,” Scheer wrote in his history of the naval war, “our battle cruisers were on a southeasterly course so that all the ships could open fire from the starboard on the English battle cruisers. Our light cruisers and both the destroyer flotillas were ahead of our battle cruisers, slightly on the starboard side.” At 9:08 a.m., the German battle cruisers opened fire at 20,000 yards. Aiming was difficult, even with the excellent German stereoscopic range finders, because “the view . . . from the fire control was very much hampered and partially blinded as the result of dense smoke.” Despite this handicap, Hipper was pleased by the conduct of his ships and captains: “The action signals were coming through perfectly and the movements were carried through as though at maneuvers. In spite of the high speed at which the action was being fought, the formation was keeping distance [between ships] very accurately.” Hipper rarely signaled during this part of the chase. Unable to push his ships to higher speeds, he simply steered a course southeast for Heligoland. “The chances of support from our own forces were greater there,” he explained, “and the farther we could succeed in drawing the enemy into the Bight, the greater prospect there would be of setting destroyers on him during the ensuing night.” A melee in the Heligoland Bight, at which point Beatty would have outrun
his
supporting units, might find the tables turned with the British forced to flee while
their
wounded and stragglers were picked off one by one. Meanwhile, Hipper worried about
Blücher,
the weakest and slowest of his big ships, now steaming at the rear of his force and being battered by British gunfire. But it was not
Blücher
that would suffer the first near-catastrophic blow. It was Hipper’s flagship,
Seydlitz.