Jutland:Night Actions

As the sun faded after the Battle Fleet action, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe was intent on breaking off close action in a state of blindness in favour of trying to keep a remote touch on the enemy in hopes of resuming action the next day. British searchlights were poor and he thought that long range torpedoes made a night action with big ships too risky. This meant that he had to position his Grand Fleet so as to intercept the High Sea Fleet, commanded by Admiral Reinhard Scheer, at dawn on 1 June.

The British had laid a minefield off the German coast. The Germans kept three channels through it clear: the first, starting from the Horns Reef off the western-most tip of Denmark, gave Scheer a 105 mile journey home from his 9:00 pm position; the second, starting 15 miles south west of the Horns Reef, was 110 miles long; and the third, 180 miles long, ran along the coast from the River Jade to the River Ems. The second was not known to the British, who had left a channel through the minefield, which was a 135 mile journey but was unknown to the Germans. Jellicoe thought that the Ems route was the most likely because of the last report that he had received of the High Sea Fleet's course and because the British maintained a submarine patrol on the Horns Reef route. Scheer, however, was heading for the Horns Reef.

At one point during the night the two battle fleets were sailing on converging courses, like a V. However, a number of chance factors (the British were making 17 knots, the Germans 16, the High Sea Fleet were delayed because Scheer sent what had been his leading ships to the rear of his line) meant that they just missed each other.

On more than one occasion British battleships declined chances to fire on enemy ones. H.M.S. Thunderer let S.M.S. Moltke go because her captain did not want to reveal the position of the Grand Fleet unless it was clear that attack was to be made.

S.M.S. Seydlitz was sighted by H.M.S. Agincourt, whose captain did not want to reveal his division, and by H.M.S. Marlborough, whose captain refused to allow his gunnery officer to fire as he thought that she was British.

H.M.S. Malaya's gunnery officer was not permitted by his captain to fire on S.M.S. Westfalen on the grounds that Rear Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas, two ships ahead, must also have seen the German ship. Evan-Thomas was also informed of a sighting of two German battleships, misidentified as cruisers, by H.M.S. Valiant, but did not pass it on to Jellicoe.

H.M.S. Champion also failed to report sighting of enemy ships to Jellicoe. H.M.S. Faulknor tried to do so but her radio signals were jammed. Jellicoe later wrote that information about the movements of major ships would have ‘given me a clue to Scheer’s movement of cutting across the rear of the fleet.’

A series of actions took place during the night, mostly involving cruisers and destroyers, but also the battlecruisers. During these the Germans lost the pre-dreadnought battleship S.M.S. Pommern with all 844 crew, the light cruisers S.M.S. Frauenlob, Elbing and Rostock, and the torpedo boats S.M.S. S 35 and V 4. The crippled loght cruiser S.M.S. Wiesbaden and torpedo boat Template:DE-V48 both sank during the night, whilst Lützow was so badly damaged that the Germans scuttled her. The British lost the armoured cruiser H.M.S. Black Prince with all 857, crew the flotilla leader H.M.S. Tipperary and the destroyers H.M.S. Sparrowhawk, Turbulent and H.M.S. Ardent.

The night actions took place that showed that the German torpedo boats were better trained for night operations than the British destroyers.

The Germans had obtained the British two letter challenge signal, probably by observing it, whilst their one was a display of multi-coloured lights that were shown briefly and were impossible to copy.

Sunrise on 1 June was at 3:09 am. Scheer had broken through the British destroyers and light cruisers to reach Horns Reef by 3:00. His fleet was in no fit state to fight, but he had evaded Jellicoe.

Jellicoe had got Scheer's route wrong, but there was time for him to have corrected his mistake and headed for the Horns Reef if he had learnt the truth. A signal sent by the Admiralty at 9:58 pm on 31 May and handed to Jellicoe at 10:45 pm gave a position for the High Sea Fleet that was obviously wrong. It had been accurately decoded and it was the original German signal that was wrong, but this, coupled with the earlier signal that erroneously said that the High Sea Fleet was still in port when it was at sea, led Jellicoe to mistrust Admiralty signals. He therefore ignored a message sent at 10:41 pm and decoded and in his hands between 11:15 pm and 11:30 pm that gave accurate information on the H.S.F.'s course.

At 11:30 pm a searchlight message from the light cruiser H.M.S. Birmingham reported that a number of German battlecruisers were heading on a parallel course to the Grand Fleet. In fact they were battleships that had temporarily changed course in order to avoid a torpedo attack. This and other reports from his ships convinced him that Scheer was taking the Ems route.

The Admiralty, however, failed to pass on a series of German signals that gave Scheer's position at 10:43, 11:00, 11:37, 11:43, 00:30 am and 1:00 am that Room 40 decoded between 11:15 pm and 00:25 am.

The worst mistake was not passing on a signal of 9:06 pm from Scheer requesting airship reconnaissance at Horns Reef that was in the hands of the Admiralty by 10:10 pm Jellicoe later wrote that '[t]his was practically a certain indication of his route but was not passed to me.'

The High Sea Fleet passed over the British submarines at about 4:00 am without being attacked. Its ships reached the Rivers Jade and Elbe between noon and 1:45 pm. The Grand Fleet was inside Scapa Flow by 11 am on 2 June and ready for sea at four hours' notice by 9:45 am that day. U-boats attacked H.M.S. Marlborough and Warspite on their way home but neither was hit.

Bibliography

• Corbett, Sir Julian S. (1923). Naval Operations. Volume III. London: The Imperial War Museum..
• Gordon, Andrew (2005). The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command. London: John Murray (Publishers). ISBN 0719561310. (on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk).
• Marder, Arthur J. (1978). From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904-1919: Jutland and After, May 1916–December 1916. Volume III (Second ed.). London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192158414.
• Corbett, Sir Julian S. (1923). Naval Operations. Volume III. London: The Imperial War Museum..
• Tarrant, V. E. (1995). Jutland: The German Perspective. London: Arms and Armour Press. ISBN 1 86019 917 8. (on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk).
• Jellicoe, Nicholas (2016). Jutland. The Unfinished Battle. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing

See Also

• Wikipedia