Castles of Steel (80 page)

It was coincidence that the decisions of the opposing commanders during this quarter of an hour so closely affected each other. Thus, just as Hipper decided to succor the lagging
Blücher,
Beatty thought he saw a periscope and gave his order to turn away. Hipper, almost simultaneously, was signaling his battle cruisers to turn toward the British battle cruisers and his destroyers to attack. Then, seeing the entire British squadron turn sharply away (because of the “periscope”), the German admiral assumed that Beatty was reacting to evade the threat of the German destroyers. In response, at 11:07 a.m., he canceled the German destroyer attack.

Even so, Hipper felt that he must do something to aid
Blücher.
His staff was watching him closely on
Seydlitz
’s bridge. “Only when he realized the full tragedy of
Blücher
did his human sympathy break through,” said Captain von Waldeyer-Hartz. “There had always been a close bond of friendship and confidence between him and his captains. He was especially fond of Captain Erdmann . . . of
Blücher.
He was therefore strongly tempted to go to his friend’s aid.” Hipper’s officers unanimously opposed this move. Captain Moritz von Egidy of
Seydlitz
declared flatly that his ship could not continue to fight. Two of the flagship’s five turrets were out of action, there was 600 tons of water in her stern, and only 200 11-inch shells remained for the main battery guns.
Derfflinger
had also been hard hit and the relatively unscathed
Moltke
could not singlehandedly engage the four British battle cruisers that remained in action. Listening, Hipper realized that in attempting to save one ship, he might lose all. “I dismissed any further thought of supporting the
Blücher
. . . now that no intervention of our main fleet was to be counted on,” he said.

Few in the German navy criticized Hipper’s decision to abandon
Blücher.
“If Hipper’s leadership at this short moment betrayed possibly a trace of indecision, it was because Hipper the man got the better of Hipper the tactician,” said Waldeyer-Hartz. “The moment . . . Captain von Egidy reported that . . . the ammunition for the heavy guns was as good as used up, Hipper forced himself—it could be seen in his eyes—to look the facts squarely in the face. There can be no doubt that, had the High Seas Fleet been advancing, he would, in spite of everything, have made an attempt to rescue the
Blücher
or at least save the ship’s company from death or captivity. The decision to refrain he found extraordinarily difficult. His face clouded; an expression of injured pride, grief for his comrades who had to be abandoned, was to be read in his eyes. Then suddenly, a sharp, jerky movement—a curt order with the accustomed assurance—and the squadron turned back to a southeasterly course.”

This course toward Germany soon put the German ships beyond the reach of Admiral Moore. The remainder of Hipper’s return went without incident, although two of his three battle cruisers were burning, encumbered with wreckage, and crowded with dead and wounded men.
Moltke
was mostly unharmed, although her captain reported that “in stern turret D, seven men of the gun crew were so exhausted that they could [no] longer carry on . . . the ventilation gear was put out of action by the vibration of the turret and this resulted in suffocation of the men.”

Retreating across the North Sea, Hipper considered sending his destroyers back for a night torpedo attack, but decided against it because their fuel was low and their crews exhausted. On the voyage home, Hipper’s sadness at the loss of
Blücher
was balanced by reports that the British had lost the battle cruiser
Tiger.
One report came from
Moltke,
which had observed the large fire amidships on
Tiger
and assumed that the ship could not survive. This assessment was buttressed by a signal from the captain of the zeppelin
L-5,
cruising above the battle, who declared that he could see only four British battle cruisers. In fact, the zeppelin had arrived too late to witness the departure of
Lion,
wounded and far behind, but still afloat.

At 3:30 p.m., Hipper’s battle cruisers rendezvoused with the High Seas Fleet and that night anchored in the Jade River. The following morning,
Seydlitz, Derfflinger,
and
Kolberg,
all heavily damaged, limped into Wilhelmshaven. In order to reduce her draft sufficiently to go through the locks,
Seydlitz
had to pump out the 600 tons of water in her stern. In the late afternoon of January 25, Hipper’s flagship finally entered the inner harbor and went into dry dock.

CHAPTER 22
The Battle of the Dogger Bank: “Why Didn’t You Get the Lot?”

Blücher,
abandoned, did not escape. When Beatty hoisted his final signal to the battle cruisers, “Attack the rear of the enemy,”
Blücher
was engaging Commodore Goodenough’s four light cruisers at a range of 12,000 yards. For over two hours, she had been under fire from one or another of five British battle cruisers. Hit repeatedly, she had lost speed and developed a list, and only two of her six 8.2-inch turrets remained in action, but still her gunfire was straddling Goodenough’s ships so accurately that at 11:05 a.m. the commodore was forced to retreat to a range of 16,000 yards. Then once again he edged in toward the German ship, beginning to score hits at 14,000 yards. Meanwhile, Commodore Tyrwhitt was coming up in
Arethusa,
accompanied by four
M
-class destroyers. At 11:20 a.m., these four ships attacked
Blücher
with torpedoes.
Meteor
came close enough to launch her torpedoes, but before she could do so, she was struck by a heavy shell that put the destroyer out of action. Her three sisters managed to fire their torpedoes and believed that they had scored five hits.
Arethusa
now bored in, peppering
Blücher
with 6-inch-gun fire until the range was down to 2,500 yards, at which point Tyrwhitt’s flagship turned sharply and launched two torpedoes. Both struck, all electric power on
Blücher
failed, and the ship’s below-deck spaces went dark.

Still, it was not over. The doomed German ship now became a target for four British battle cruisers. Admiral Moore, performing the duty he believed he had been given, assembled the battle cruisers in line and with sixteen 13.5-inch guns and sixteen 12-inch guns, began to conduct a massacre.
Tiger, Princess Royal, New Zealand,
and
Indomitable
began to circle their victim, firing continuously. By then,
Blücher
’s punishment was purely gratuitous. She was a wreck, out of control, shrouded in steam and smoke: the cruiser and her destruction seemed to have been become “a kind of obsession with the captains of the two British battlecruisers [
Tiger
and
Princess Royal
].” Again and again they fired, pouring shells into the helpless mass of flame and smoke. A German survivor recalled that “
Blücher
was under fire from so many ships” that it seemed

there was one continuous explosion. . . . The ship heeled over as the broadsides struck her, then righted herself, rocking like a cradle. . . . The shells came thick and fast with a horrible droning hum. . . . The electric plant was . . . destroyed and . . . [belowdecks] you could not see your hand before your nose. . . . The shells . . . bored their way even to the stokehold. The coal in the bunkers was set on fire. . . . In the engine room, a shell licked up the oil and sprayed it around in flames of blue and green, scarring its victims. . . . The terrific air pressure resulting from explosion in a confined space . . . roars through every opening and tears . . . through every weak spot. . . . Open doors bang to and jam—and closed iron doors bend outward like tin plates and through it all the bodies of men are whirled about like dead leaves . . . to be battered to death against the iron walls. . . . As one poor wretch was passing though a trap door a shell burst near him. He was exactly half way through. The trap door closed with a terrific snap. In one of the engine rooms . . . men were picked up by that terrible air pressure and tossed to a horrible death amidst the machinery.

The British watched with horror and awe. Near the end, a witness on
Indomitable
saw a sheet of flame leaping up from
Blücher
’s bow that “stayed for about twenty seconds and I should think must have roasted them all in their fore turret.” It could not continue. At 11:45 a.m., Tyrwhitt signaled Moore that
Blücher
appeared to have struck her colors, and Moore ordered a cease-fire. As
Arethusa
and her destroyers closed in to rescue survivors, Tyrwhitt observed that
Blücher
“was in a pitiable condition—all her upper works [were] wrecked and fires could be seen raging between decks through enormous holes in her sides.” Goodenough’s light cruisers also approached while, farther off, the battle cruisers prepared to leave. “It was a pathetic sight to see that huge ship a mere wreck lying helpless as we steamed by,” said a young midshipman on
Indomitable.

At seven minutes past noon,
Blücher
suddenly heeled over, floated for a few minutes bottom up, and then went down.
Arethusa
and her destroyers came closer, lowered boats, and began picking up survivors from the water. One of these was
Blücher
’s Captain Erdmann, who subsequently, as a result of exposure in the cold sea, died of pneumonia as a prisoner in England. Of the 1,200 men in the crew, only 234 were saved. Afterward, the Royal Navy recognized the achievement of
Blücher
and the heroism of her crew. For over three hours, during which she had been hit by seventy shells and seven torpedoes,
Blücher
never ceased to reply. In the words of the official British naval history, “As an example of discipline, courage and fighting spirit, her last hours have seldom been surpassed.”

More German sailors might have been pulled from the sea had it not been for the ill-timed arrival of two German flying machines. The zeppelin
L-5,
patrolling over the North Sea, had not been summoned by Hipper to act as an aerial scout, but her captain, Lieutenant Commander Klaus Hirsch, had picked up numerous radio messages and, curious to see what was happening, had steered his airship in the direction of the battle.
Lion
saw her first. “As we turned out of action, we observed a zeppelin approaching about eighteen or twenty miles away,” said Filson Young. “I confess that we felt rather helpless with both our engines stopped and had no doubt that she was coming to finish us off. Apparently, however, she did not see
Lion,
but headed instead for
Blücher.
” A few minutes later,
L-5
’s officers and men found themselves looking down on
Blücher
’s death agony. They saw “a tremendous picture although we could hear almost nothing of the thunder of the guns because of the noise of our engines,” said one of the officers. “The four English battle cruisers fired at her together. She replied for as long as she could, until she was completely shrouded in smoke and apparently on fire. At 12:07 p.m., she heeled over and capsized. We didn’t drop bombs on the English ships. We had no chance because the clouds were at 1,300 feet. If we had dared fly over them at this altitude we would have been shot down.”

The crews of the motionless British light cruisers and destroyers, staring up at the huge cigar-shaped airship droning overhead, felt every bit as vulnerable as the German airmen. Then, quite suddenly, attention was diverted to a second German assailant, this one actually dropping bombs. A German seaplane based on Borkum had witnessed from a distance the sinking of
Blücher.
The plane misidentified the doomed vessel as British, an error explained by the fact that all British battle cruisers had tripod masts and
Blücher
was the only large ship in the German navy with a tripod mast. The pilot and observer, looking down on the rescue operation, believed they were watching British ships pulling beleaguered British seamen out of the water. Banking around, the seaplane roared down and the observer began heaving twenty-pound hand bombs out of the rear cockpit. No British ship or sailor was hit, but Commodore Goodenough, the senior officer on the immediate scene, quickly ordered a withdrawal. Afterward, Tyrwhitt speculated that some of the German bombs might have killed German sailors in the water. In any case, he was certain that, but for the seaplane attack, he could have saved many more men from the icy seas.

As
Blücher
was sinking, Rear Admiral Moore had to decide what to do next. Admiral Hipper was now a smoke cloud on the horizon between 24,000 and 30,000 yards (twelve and fifteen miles) away, making for home at 25 knots. If Moore resumed the pursuit, he would need at least two hours to get back within range; by then, he would be much too deep inside the Bight for safety. Moore’s disinclination to accept this challenge was reinforced by his flagship’s interception of a signal from the Admiralty to Roger Keyes, whose submarines were approaching the German coast. The message was ominous: “High Seas Fleet coming out.” Unfortunately, in
New Zealand
’s radio room, the direction of the message was reversed and Moore, on
New Zealand
’s bridge, was told that it was Keyes who had informed the Admiralty that the German battle fleet was coming out, rather than the Admiralty informing Keyes. Now Moore knew what to do. No part of his duty, or even of common sense, dictated that a British admiral should lead four battle cruisers against the High Seas Fleet in German waters. He decided to retreat. His decision was reinforced by his concern over the condition of
Lion.
He had last seen her battered and listing. Because Beatty’s flagship had lost all electric power and could not send messages, Moore had heard nothing from her since losing visual contact. He decided to go to her assistance. At 11:52 a.m., he formed the battle cruisers into a new line with
New Zealand
in the van and headed northwest at 20 knots toward
Lion
’s last known position. At noon, Moore informed the Admiralty: “Reports High Seas Fleet coming out. Am retiring.”