V. THE THREE OBJECTIVES

The issue of the day would now depend upon how the commanders of the three separate forces appreciated the tasks set to them; the principles that governed the plans for their execution; the efficiency of their command in getting those principles applied; the resolution and skill with which the several units executed each its share in the operations. It was easy enough to define the task of each leader. Sir David Beatty had so far completely justified what seemed the general strategic plan of the British forces. He had driven the German fast divisions back to their main fleet, he had held that fleet for an hour and a half, and had brought it within striking distance of the overwhelmingly superior main forces of his own side. He had lost two capital ships and three destroyers to achieve his end to this point. He had the sacrifice of some thousands of his gallant companions to justify. Neither a parade nor a “gladiatorial display,” only the utter rout and destruction of the enemy’s fleet, could pay that debt. His task was not, therefore, complete. He had to help the Grand Fleet to deliver its blow with the concentration and rapidity that would render it decisive.

It was already obvious that rapidity would be vital. The weather conditions had been growing more and more unfavourable to the gunnery on which the British Fleet316 would rely for victory. Everything pointed to the conditions growing steadily worse. It was a case of seizing victory quickly or missing it altogether. Had there been no shifting mists there would have been two and a half or three hours of daylight on which to count. But with lowering clouds and heavy vapours, clear seeing at 10,000 or even 5,000 yards might be as impossible two hours before as two hours after sunset. Everything pointed, therefore, to this: the British attack would have to be instant—or it might not materialize at all. The Vice-Admiral commanding the Battle-Cruiser Fleet saw his duty clearly and simply. But to decide exactly what action he should take was a different thing altogether.

No less clear was the task of the British Commander-in-Chief. Twelve miles away from him was the whole naval strength of the enemy, 150 miles from his mine-fields, more than 200 from his fleet bases. Against sixteen modern battleships, he himself commanded twenty-four—a superiority of three to two. His gun-power, measured by the weight and striking energy of his broadsides, must have been nearly twice that of the enemy; measured by the striking energy and the destructive power of its heavier shells, it was greater still. Opposed to the enemy’s five battle-cruisers, there were four under the command of Sir David Beatty and three led by Rear-Admiral Hood. Against the six 18-knot pre-Dreadnoughts that formed the rear of the German Fleet, with their twenty-four 11-inch guns firing a 700-pound shell, there were Rear-Admiral Evan-Thomas’s four 25-knot ships of the Fifth Battle Squadron, carrying thirty-two 15-inch guns, whose shells were three times as heavy and must have been nine times as destructive. This317 force, vastly superior if it could be concentrated for its purpose, had to be deployed for a blow which, if simultaneously delivered at a range at which the guns would hit, must be final in a very brief period.

The German Admiral could never have had the least doubt as to his task. His business was to save his fleet from the annihilation with which it was manifestly menaced. So far fortune had been kind. The British Battle-Cruiser Fleet had done what the Germans had expected it to do. It had engaged promptly and determinedly and its losses, surprisingly enough, had been suffered, not while it was holding a force greatly superior to itself, but while engaging Von Hipper, whose ships were less numerous and more lightly armed. Though Scheer did not expect an encounter with the Grand Fleet, he was very far from being unprepared, should it come. Accordingly, when at six o’clock he realized that the supreme moment had arrived, he was probably as little in doubt as to his method of executing his task, as to the character of the task itself.
THE TACTICAL PLANS
Admiral Scheer’s tactics

The tactics of Admiral Scheer were a development and an extension of those of Von Hipper on January 24 of the previous year. If his task was to break off action as soon as possible and to keep out of action until darkness made fleet fighting impossible, means must be found of thwarting or neutralizing the attack of the British Fleet while it lasted, of evading that attack at the earliest moment, and of preventing its resumption. He could only neutralize the attack in so far as he could thwart318 the fire-control and aiming of the enemy by the constant or intermittent concealment of his ships by smoke. He could only evade attack by preventing the overwhelming force against him being brought within striking distance. Recall for a moment the lessons of the Dogger Bank. In his retreat Von Hipper had put his flotillas to a double task. For the first two hours of that engagement he had checked the speed of his battle cruisers to cover Bluecher. When the British Fleet had so gained on him that its artillery became effective, he realized that the case of Bluecher was hopeless and that, unless prompt measures were taken, the case of the battle cruiser would be little better. Bluecher was, therefore, abandoned to her fate and Derfflinger, Seydlitz, and Moltke concealed by smoke. Simultaneously, or almost simultaneously, a veritable shoal of torpedoes was launched across the path on which Lion and her consorts were advancing. The smoke baffled the gun-layers, the changed course forced on the battle-cruisers baffled the fire-control. The Germans gained immunity from gunfire and, in the pause, changed course and got a new start in the race for home. Then the first of a succession of rendezvous for submarines placed on the pre-arranged line of the German retreat, repeated this tactic of diversion just before Lion was disabled. The intervention—an hour later—of a second protecting picket of submarines was decisive, for, on realizing their presence, the officer who had succeeded Sir David in command broke off pursuit. It was on these tactics on a greatly extended scale and developed no doubt by assiduous study and repeated rehearsal, that Scheer now had to rely.

The circumstances of the moment were exceptionally favourable for their employment. The conditions of319 atmosphere that made long-range gunnery difficult, made the establishment of smoke screens to render it more difficult still, exceptionally easy. The wind had dropped, the air was heavy and vaporous, the ships were running from one bank of light fog into another. It was a day on which smoke would stay where it was made, clinging to the surface of the sea, mingling with and permeating the water-laden atmosphere. Further, these were just the conditions in which, were a torpedo attack delivered at a fleet by the fast destroyer flotillas, the threat would have an element of surprise that would be lacking in clear vision. Such menaces, then, should they have any deterrent effect on the enemy’s closing, would be likely to have a maximum effect. The respite from gunfire, the delay in the re-formation of the fleet for pursuit, each could be the longest possible.

Two considerations must have caused Scheer the gravest possible anxiety. In the first place, smoke screens would not protect the van of his fleet. What if the British used their speed to concentrate ships there and crush it? Secondly, as destroyer attacks could only be delivered from a point in advance of the course of the squadrons it was hoped to injure or divert, the method on which he relied, first for breaking off from, and then evading, action could not be used until he had the British Fleet on his quarter or astern. Now at six o’clock the British Fleet was dead ahead of him. Its fleet’s speed must have been three, and may have been four, knots greater than his own. He had four powerful ships, six or seven knots faster still, on his port bow at a range of only 14,000 yards, supported by a 25-knot squadron only three knots slower and of enormous gun power. How was he to turn a line of twenty-one ships to get the whole of this force behind320 him, without some portion of it being overwhelmed in the process? For to turn in succession would be to leave first the centre and the rear, and then the rear entirely unsupported as the leading ships escaped. As we have seen in a previous chapter, until the enemy’s artillery was neutralized, it was out of the question to do anything but to turn on a flat arc, so that so long as it was necessary or possible, all the ships should act in mutual support. The crux of the situation was this: The Grand Fleet was but twelve miles off, a distance that could be shortened to easy gun range in ten or twelve minutes. What if the whole of this force were in a quarter of an hour brought parallel to, and well ahead of, his own? To engage it defensively by gun power would be useless for the odds were hopeless. To turn the head of the line sharply would be to purchase a precarious safety for the van by the certain immolation of the centre and the rear. Scheer must have seen that, were things to develop along this line, he would have no choice but to turn his whole fleet together, a dangerous and desperate man?uvre, but permissible because the time would have come for a sauve qui peut.

But while these considerations may have caused him some anxiety, there were other elements to reassure him. Years before the war, the Germans had discovered and grasped what seemed the fundamental strategic idea that had shaped British naval strategy. It was that the r?le of our main sea forces in war was to be primarily defensive. Our fleet was to consist of units individually more powerful than those of competing navies. As to numbers, we were aiming at possessing these on an equality with the two next largest Powers combined. It was a policy that permitted of an overwhelming concentration against321 the most powerful of our competitors, the Germans, while still maintaining substantial forces the world over. It was a presumption of this policy that the use of the sea would in war be ceded to us by our enemies, and would remain virtually undisturbed until our main forces were not only attacked but defeated. Numbers and individual power made an attack by inferior forces seem the most remote of all contingencies, and defeat impossible.

From this theory the Germans derived a corollary. It was that, as the British ideal was concerned not primarily with victory, but in avoiding defeat, we should probably not face great risks to destroy an enemy—and obviously no enemy could be destroyed without great risks—but rather would be chiefly preoccupied with averting the destruction, not only of our whole fleet, but even of such a proportion of it as would deprive us of that pre-eminence in numbers on which we seemed chiefly to rely. Hence, in the preamble of the last Navy Bill which the Government got the Reichstag to accept before the war, it was plainly stated that the naval policy of the German Higher Command did not aim at possessing a fleet capable of defeating the strongest fleet in the world, but would be satisfied with a force that the strongest fleet could not defeat, except at a cost that would bring it so low that its world supremacy would be gone. The underlying military conception was that the group then controlling the British Navy would not fight, and the underlying political conception that, should this group be replaced by leaders of a more aggressive complexion, the price we should pay for a sea victory would be a combination of the world’s other sea forces against us, they being prompted to this by their long-felt jealousy of Great Britain’s navalism.

322 In May, 1916, the bottom had fallen out of the political argument. There was no naval Power that was the least jealous of Great Britain. The submarine campaign had disgusted all with Germany’s sea ethics, and the whole world would have rejoiced had sea victory, which was necessary before the submarine could be finally defeated, been won. But on the military argument the Germans were on surer ground. They had certain substantial reasons for believing that they had not misread the psychology of our Higher Naval Command. Indeed, if Jutland left them or the world in any doubt about the matter, their interpretation was to receive the most striking of all confirmations by a statesman who had not only been First Lord of the Admiralty, but had personally selected the Commander-in-Chief on this eventful day, and had no doubt been a party to, if he had not inspired, the strategy which the Grand Fleet was to observe. Mr. Churchill left the world in no uncertainty at all that, in his opinion—which, presumably, was that not only of the Boards over which he had presided, but of those from whom it had been inherited—............