“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
Introduction
There has been a hundred years of discussion about the failings of the British Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland. Although more recent analysis has emphasised Jellicoe’s strategic victory in winning command of the North Sea, the fact remains that in terms of ships and personnel lost, the battle proved significantly more costly to the Royal Navy (RN) than to the German High Sea Fleet. In terms of ship tonnage, the Grand Fleet lost almost twice that of their opponents, and three times as many capital ships.
The poor performance of the British battle-cruisers; three being blown up in quick succession; has tended to obscure the successes of the smaller Royal Navy ships. In fact, more than half of the British ships lost at Jutland – eight vessels – were destroyers. An even more surprising statistic is that more than half of German naval losses, and many of its most grievous wounds during the battle can be attributed directly or indirectly to the heroic actions of British destroyer flotillas. It is time to take the historical searchlight off the big ships of Jutland and shine a light on these smallest of fighting units.
At the time of Jutland, the torpedo-boat destroyer, or simply ‘destroyer’, as it would soon be abbreviated to, was a relatively new concept. Prior to the widespread appearance of submarines in the early 1900s, the favoured delivery system for the self-propelled torpedo, which had been in development since the 1870s, was the small torpedo boat (TB). As the range and destructive potential of the weapon steadily increased, larger boats were needed in order for it to be used in the open sea. To prevent TBs reaching the battle line, a more powerful yet equally fast vessel was required; a torpedo boat capable of ‘destroying’ other TBs. Initial solutions such as the torpedo-gunboat or ‘torpedo-boat catcher’ were ineffective due to their insufficient speed. The British eventually discarded building these types of vessel in preference to simply enlarging existing torpedo boats so that they were more heavily armed than in other navies.
The torpedo had first been demonstrated to sink large ships as far back as 1878,[1] but it wasn’t until the introduction of more powerful steam engines around the turn of the century which could push small warships to speeds in excess of 35 knots that the potential of the torpedo to attack and sink warships at sea was truly realised. The paramount need for speed meant that neither torpedo-boat nor destroyer was armoured, and both types had comparatively large and extremely vulnerable engine spaces. In either type, one shell hit was often all it took to cut the steam pipe powering the engine and cause the ship to lose all power.
However, by the outbreak of World War One, the massed torpedo attack conducted by ‘flotillas’ of TBs and destroyers was sufficiently feared by the captains of capital ships for them to effect immediate evasive action. This involved turning a vessel several points of the compass away from the approaching torpedoes, thus, increasing the range while at the same time reducing the target area. In spite of the obvious drawbacks of such a defensive manoeuvre, the torpedo was ‘a danger, at that time new and unmeasured, to which no capable tactician could venture to expose his fleet.’ [1]
Whereas the RN embraced the concept of the destroyer, introducing ever larger and better armed designs in the lead up to World War One, including Destroyer Flotilla Leaders of more than 1,700t, the Imperial German Navy (IGN) continued to focus on building smaller vessels it termed ‘Grosses Torpedoboot’. These ships were generally half the displacement of their RN counterparts and carried fewer and smaller guns. This reflected differing strategic thinking between the two navies. While the IGN stuck to the original purpose of torpedo boats; that of executing torpedo attacks on bigger warships, and leaving the task of their protection to light cruisers, the RN wanted a ship that could perform both roles; attacking larger ships with their torpedoes and destroying smaller ones with their artillery.
Torpedo boats and destroyers were by far the most numerous vessels at Jutland; 78 out of a total of 151 combat ships in the Grand Fleet, 61 out of 99 in the High Sea Fleet. In both navies, these vessels were arranged in numbered flotillas of up to sixteen units, usually belonging to the same class, and led by a light cruiser or flotilla leader. British flotillas were separated into divisions of four while the IGN subdivided theirs into ‘half-flotillas’, usually of five torpedo-boats. The creation of divisions and half-flotillas enabled smaller groupings to be attached to specific battle squadrons or assigned temporary support roles.
Of the eight British destroyers lost at Jutland, half; Ardent, Fortune, Sparrowhawk, Shark; belonged to the K-Class (formerly Acasta Class) constructed between 1912 and 1913. The ships displaced just under 1,000t and carried three 4-inch guns and two 21-inch torpedo tubes. Two others; Nomad, Nestor; were of the more modern Admiralty M Class, some of which were still being completed at the time of Jutland. These ships were almost identical in armament and displacement to the K-Class but at 34knots were 2-3 knots faster. The recently completed HMS Turbulent had originally been laid down for the Turkish navy. She was slightly larger than contemporary RN destroyers and carried two additional 4-inch guns. The final destroyer lost at Jutland was HMS Tipperary. She was also of foreign design, having been constructed for the Chilean navy. At 330ft and 1,700t, she was one of the largest destroyers at Jutland, and served as a flotilla leader along with her sisters HMS Broke and Faulkner. These ships had a complement of around 200 men, but standard British destroyers generally carried 75-80 crew.
Unlike British destroyers, German TBs were not given names but a letter of the alphabet corresponding to the shipbuilder and a number. Thus, TBs built by Vulcan at Stettin started with V; those by Germaniawerft at Kiel, a G; those by Schichau, an S, even though in many cases these ships were of the same class. Of the 61 German TBs at Jutland more than two thirds were of the 1911 and 1913 designs. The former displaced around 600t and carried two 3-inch guns and four torpedo tubes (TT). The latter were enlarged versions of approximately 800t with one extra 3-inch gun and two extra TTs. Both types carried a crew of about 80. German TB speeds generally matched their British counterparts, but being smaller they had demonstrably inferior sea-keeping.
In smaller warships, torpedo tubes were located on deck and mounted on turntables so that the weapons could be fired off either beam. Collectively, German torpedo boats carried more torpedo tubes than British destroyers at Jutland, but this advantage was offset by the fact that many of the latter carried spare torpedoes. In addition, the RN had a significant advantage in the number of TTs carried aboard larger vessels such as light-cruisers.
Great War torpedoes were ‘wet-heaters’, having a combustion chamber of compressed air and chemical fuel cooled externally by water. As the power generated was finite, range was determined by speed settings. British torpedoes at the time were mostly the Mark II or VI 21-inch type with an approximate range of 8000yds at 30kts, or 4,500yds at 45kts. German surface ships were equipped with the 19.7-inch G6/7 variety. At 27kts, these weapons could travel up to 10,000yds but at their maximum speed of 37kts, range fell to less than 4,500yds. Obviously, at slower speeds, torpedoes could be more easily spotted and their targets had more time to take evasive action. Discharging a torpedo at a higher speed necessitated being nearer to the target and exposing the discharger to more accurate shellfire.
To launch an effective torpedo attack, ships had to be positioned close enough to the main battle-fleet to enable them to steam ahead at short notice but not so as to obstruct its line of fire. Most commonly, destroyer and TB flotillas were placed at the head or astern the line of battle, and to port or starboard depending on the actual or anticipated direction of battle. At Jutland, German torpedo-boats were generally more offensively positioned in the van, owing to the High Sea Fleet’s disadvantage in firepower. British C-in-C Admiral Jellicoe, whose battleships carried main armaments of larger calibres than those of his counterpart Admiral Sheer, did not need to rely so heavily on the torpedo attack and so kept his destroyer flotillas slightly more withdrawn.
The Battle of Jutland is so named by the British in reference to the Danish peninsula that marked the most proximate landfall to the battle, about 75 miles to the east.[2] Historians have identified various phases to the battle, which took place over a roughly 12-hour period, beginning in the afternoon of May 31st and concluding in the early hours of June 1st 1916.
Two distinct early phases after the initial sightings of the enemy were the ‘Run to the South’, as Vice-Admiral Beatty’s scouting battlecruisers traded blows with those of Admiral Hipper, and the ‘Run to the North’, as Beatty, having come into contact with Admiral Sheer’s pursuing battle squadrons, sought to lead them northwards into the maw of Admiral Jellicoe’s approaching battle-fleet. The next phase covers Jellicoe’s deployment ahead of the advancing German warship columns. ‘Windy Corner’, ‘the period of peril and heavy traffic attending the merger and deployment of the British forces’, forms the most dramatic aspect of this phase. Sheer’s ‘Gefechtskehrtwendung’ or ‘Battle Turn Away’ marks yet another phase of the battle. Finally, the ‘Night Action’ is perhaps the most dramatic phase from the British destroyer perspective.
However, these so-called phases are a historian’s artifice, which neatly compartmentalise events but do not accurately reflect the real-time disorder of the battle. The reality of Jutland is perhaps best summed up by Rudyard Kipling, who was commissioned by the Admiralty to write a number of newspaper articles about the battle, including the destroyer action, that were published later that year under the title Sea Warfare:
But how is a layman to give any coherent account of an affair where a whole country’s coast-line was background to battle covering geographical degrees? The records give an impression of illimitable grey waters, nicked on their uncertain horizons with the smudge and blur of ships sparkling with fury against ships hidden under the curve of the world. One sees these distances maddeningly obscured by walking mists and weak fogs, or wiped out by layers of funnel and gun smoke, and realises how, at the pace the ships were going, anything might be stumbled upon in the haze or charge out of it when it lifted. One comprehends, too, how the far-off glare of a great vessel afire might be reported as a local fire on a near-by enemy, or vice versa; how a silhouette caught, for an instant, in a shaft of pale light let down from the low sky might be fatally difficult to identify till too late. But add to all these inevitable confusions and misreckonings of time, shape, and distance, charges at every angle of squadrons through and across other squadrons; sudden shifts of the centres of the fights, and even swifter restorations; wheelings, sweepings, and regroupments such as accompany the passage across space of colliding universes. Then blanket the whole inferno with the darkness of night at full speed, and—see what you can make of it. [2]
Bow Creek to Anatahan 