Difference between revisions of "Raid on Yarmouth"

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The Raid on Yarmouth was a bombardment by German battlecruisers of the British port of Yarmouth on 3 November, 1914.

Background

On 3 November a German force under Rear Admiral Franz Hipper bombarded Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, the Commander-in-Chief of the German High Sea Fleet, did not want to take the offensive in the North Sea. However, he was keen to carry out minelaying operations and coastal raids in order to maintain morale.

Admiral Reinhard Scheer, then a battle squadron commander and later C.-in-C. of the High Sea Fleet, summarised in his memoirs the naval staff's orders to von Ingenohl as saying that 'The Fleet must...be held back and avoid actions which might lead to heavy losses. This does not, however, prevent favourable opportunities being made use of to damage the enemy...There is nothing to be said against an attempt of the big cruisers in the North Sea to damage the enemy.' FN1

In fact, the Germans then had the best odds that they were going to have to challenge the British Grand Fleet. The loss of the UK-King George V class dreadnought H.M.S. Audacious to a mine on 27 October and refits and technical problems briefly reduced British advantage in dreadnoughts to 17 to 15 German. FN2

The British had four battlecruisers in the North Sea and the Germans three, excluding S.M.S. Blücher, which served with the German battlecruisers but was really the ultimate armoured cruiser. A fourth German battlecruiser, S.M.S. Derfflinger, was not quite ready for operations. The British had two battlecruisers in the Mediterranean, watching S.M.S. Goeben, which the Germans had transferred to the Ottomans. H.M.A.S. Australia was still in the Pacific and two British battlecruisers had been sent to the south Atlantic and one to the Caribbean after the German victory at the Battle of Coronel on 1 November. They did not return until after the British victory at the Battle of the Falkland Islands on 8 December.

The British had more ships under construction, meaning that the odds later moved heavily against the Germans. The attack was to be carried out by Hipper's three battlecruisers, S.M.S. Seydlitz (flag), S.M.S. Moltke and S.M.S. Von der Tann, plus S.M.S. Blücher and four light cruisers. Hipper's squadron sailed at 4:30 pm on 2 November, followed 90 minutes later by two battle squadrons, which were to operate in support. FN3

The plan was, according to the post war British Naval Staff Monograph, to lay mines and bombard 'certain coast works which the imaginative German spies had reported as in place at Great Yarmouth.' FN4 Hipper's squadron narrowly missed a force of British light cruisers and destroyers that had been sent out to look for submarines and mines.

Just after 7:00 am H.M.S. Halcyon, an elderly gunboat converted into a minesweeper, encountered the Germans. She escaped serious damage thanks to the destroyer H.M.S. Lively, which laid a smoke screen, the first to be used in the war. FN5 The destroyer H.M.S. Leopard also came under fire, but the only Halcyon suffered casualties: the Naval Staff Monograph says one man was 'severely wounded' and Naval Operations 'three men wounded', but naval-history.net names one man as dying of wounds. FN6

There were three British submarines at Yarmouth, E 10, D 3 and D 5. They left port when firing was heard, but D5 struck a mine, probably a British one that was adrift as it was a long way from the course that the Germans had been taking. Only five men survived, with 21 dying.

The Germans had been delayed by navigational problems resulting from the removal of the buoys that marked shoals off the Norfolk coast in peacetime and poor visibility making it difficult to take bearings. They were therefore behind schedule and Hipper decided to withdraw. The Naval Staff Monograph argues that the 'boldness of the Halcyon and Lively...saved...Yarmouth from such damage as a well-directed bombardment would have inflicted.' FN7

The British were unable to intercept the retreating German force, but the armoured cruiser S.M.S. Yorck, which had been part of the covering force, struck two German mines on her way back into port and sank. The other German ships had anchored outside Wilhelmshaven because of thick fog, but Yorck, needing urgent dockyard repairs, was given permission to go into port.

As a result of this raid, the Admiralty moved the Grand Fleet back to Scapa Flow from Lough Swilly. The 3rd Battle Squadron, consisting of the eight Devonshire class battleships, the penultimate British pre-dreadnought class, was moved from Portland to Rosyth, arriving on 20 November. They were joined there by the three Devonshire Class Cruiser (1903) class armoured cruisers of the Third Cruiser Squadron. The battlecruisers remained at Cromarty. The raid inflicted little military damage on Britain, apart from the loss of D5 to a friendly mine, which was more than cancelled out by the loss of Yorck to the same cause.

See Also

• Scarborough Raid
• Second Raid on Yarmouth
• Wikipedia

Footnotes

Bibliography