Battle of the Falkland Islands (IV)
STRATEGY—TACTICS—GUNNERY

Von Spee’s mistakes we have seen in the course of my comment on the narrative. They were broadly fourfold. Three arose from an inability to realize from the very beginning the true character of the situation, the fourth from want of resolution to fight an unequal action on the only conditions in which any success was to be gained.

Von Spee’s initial blunder was approaching the Falkland Islands with the whole of his force instead of making a reconnaissance by a single fast, light cruiser. It was obvious that he could gain nothing by surprise. For it was beyond the power of the colony to extemporize defence. It was equally obvious that he stood to lose everything if he was himself surprised. And however improbable it might have seemed to him that a force superior to his had reached the Falkland Islands by this date, he should yet have realized that there was nothing impossible in such a force being there very much earlier. For from the North Sea to the Falkland Islands is only a little over 7,000 miles. He might have credited the British Admiralty with a willingness to avenge Cradock’s defeat and with ingenuity enough to arrange the most secret coaling of any force that was sent out. When all allowances were made, there should have been no difficulty in battle-cruisers reaching the South Atlantic three214 weeks after they were despatched. Nor was there any reason why the despatch should be delayed more than two weeks after the news of the disaster.

If Gneisenau, instead of turning away when the tripod masts of the battle-cruisers were seen, had persisted in the advance towards Kent; had Scharnhorst joined her at top speed, it is morally certain that Kent and Macedonia would have been destroyed before either of the battle-cruisers could come to their rescue. It would not have been difficult to have found dead ground that the guns of Canopus could not reach, and from such a point to have subjected the battle-cruisers to a most damaging succession of salvoes, as they emerged from the narrow channel, before there was any possibility of their replying. It was indeed possible that the motive power of each might have been so injured that a pursuit by the battle-cruisers would have been impossible. At the worst, Von Spee would have paid no higher price than he ultimately paid, and he might have won an exchange entirely beneficial to German arms. Certainly, an action fought in these conditions would have given ample time for the light cruisers to make their way into the winding and uncharted fjords of Patagonia. Here Dresden maintained herself for many weeks, and who knows but that the others might have lasted longer still? Had it been possible for the three to keep together they would have been formidable opponents for any single cruiser in search of them. Had they scattered and been able to maintain their coal supply, they could have held up British trade for a considerable time.

Just as Von Spee missed this real opportunity, so, later on, he first of all kept his light cruisers with him far too long, and then, throughout the action, accepted battle215 far too much on Admiral Sturdee’s conditions. But the initial mistake was the greatest.
BRITISH STRATEGY

The battle of the Falkland Islands was an event of enormous importance and interest, and I propose to discuss a few of its more obvious bearings. Let us first consider its immediate direct and indirect effects upon the course of the war. The overseas naval situation at the end of October, while not in the larger sense at all threatening or dangerous, afforded nevertheless grounds for very great anxiety. Emden had made a series of sensational captures in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Karlsruhe was working havoc with the British trade off the northeast corner of South America. The German China squadron had evaded the Japanese and British and Allied fleets in the East, and Australia and her consorts had obtained no news of its whereabouts when cruising between the Antipodes and the German islands. A few British ships had been taken by Dresden on her passage down to the Straits of Magellan, and the public was entirely without information which led them to suppose that either Von Spee or any of the raiding cruisers were the subject of any effective pursuit. Though the loss of ships by hostile cruisers was absurdly smaller than experts had anticipated, it was quite large enough to disconcert and alarm the public, who knew, after all, very little about the character of those anticipations. Suddenly in the first week of November came two thunderclaps. Admiral Cradock, with a preposterously weak force, had been engaged and been defeated by the lost Von Spee. Of the four ships composing his squadron, the armed liner Otranto and the light cruiser Glasgow had216 escaped, but Good Hope and Monmouth had gone down, lost with all hands. Then on November 3rd came the bombardment of Lowestoft by certain German cruisers. It was the first attack of any kind on the people of these islands, and it was hastily explained to us by the Admiralty—and quite rightly—that the thing was without a military objective or military importance, and as if to forestall naval criticism, we were further told that it would not be allowed to disturb any previously made Admiralty plans. We were asked to believe that it was a mere piece of frightfulness.

But it is not certain that this was the only motive of the adventure. May it not have been done in the express hope that the British higher command, face to face with a shocked and outraged public opinion, would hesitate about diminishing those forces at home which were best calculated to intercept and bring to action the fast vessels which alone could be employed with any chance of safety on these bombarding expeditions? Is it not more than possible that the German staff, knowing the prospects of the rebellion in South Africa, was most desperately anxious to give Von Spee an added chance of crossing the Atlantic in security and lending the tremendous support of his squadron to the German forces in South-West Africa, who, with this added prestige, could be counted upon to attract all the disaffected South African sentiment to its side? Were not these bombardments, in short, undertaken solely to compel us to keep our stronger units concentrated?

Whether this was the German plan or not, let it stand to the credit of the Fisher-Churchill régime that no fear, either of public opinion or as to the success of future raids, stood in the way of dealing promptly with the Von217 Spee menace. It should undoubtedly have been dealt with long before. It was a blunder that Jerram’s force was not overwhelmingly superior to Von Spee’s; a blunder that he had not been instructed to shadow him from the beginning. Cradock’s mission ought never to have been permitted. But now that fate had exposed these errors of policy, the right thing at last was done. Yet it must have taken some nerve to do it. The British forces in the North Sea had certainly been greatly strengthened since the outbreak of war. Agincourt, Erin, Canada, Benbow, and certain lighter units had joined the Grand Fleet. Tiger was finished and commissioned as part of the Battle-Cruiser Fleet under Sir David Beatty. This gave him four battle-cruisers of a speed of twenty-eight knots and armed with 13.5 guns, in addition to the four of an older type—New Zealand, Indomitable, Invincible, Inflexible. To take two of these and send them after Von Spee reduced this force very considerably, but it was probably thought that the addition of Tiger left Sir David strong enough for the main purpose. After victory had been won a month later, rumours were prevalent that a third battle-cruiser had been despatched westward as well, but this has never been confirmed. But on the main point, namely, the vital importance of sending an adequate force for the pursuit and capture of Von Spee, the strategical decision was indisputably right.

Its value can be judged by the immediate results of the victory. Between November 1st and December 8th it is almost true to say that British trade with the west coast of South America was at a standstill. On the east coast things were very little better. For if shippers were still willing to send their ships to sea, it was only on the receipt of greatly enhanced freights. Immediately218 after the victory Valparaiso shipping put to sea as if no war was in existence, and all Pacific and South Atlantic freight fell immediately to normal. Even the escape of Dresden did not qualify the universal sense of relief. The repercussion in South Africa was equally prompt. The rebellion in the Anglo-Dutch colonies had been put down. But to embark on the conquest of German South-West Africa was a different thing altogether, and certainly one that could not be attempted so long as there was the least suspicion of insecurity in General Botha’s sea communications. And while Von Spee was at large this insecurity was obvious. One of the direct results then of the despatch of Admiral Sturdee to the South Atlantic was to make the first military invasion of German territory both possible and ultimately successful.

Apart from its immediate results in the way of relieving British trade in South America and removing the last obstacle to active British military policy in South Africa, the Falkland Islands engagement was of enormous value not only in re-asserting the prestige of the British Navy, but in giving fresh heart to all the Allies after the exhausting struggles to defeat the German advances on the French capital and Calais. It was especially the first definite proof the Alliance had received that British sea-power was no vague and shadowy thing, but a real force which, rightly and relentlessly employed, must ensure the ultimate victory of Allied arms. These were its good sides.

It had one lamentable and disastrous consequence. Emden was captured before the battle-cruisers left their English port. Karlsruhe was never heard of again, and the rumours of her destruction seemed before December to be well founded, so that after the victory of December 8th, beyond the fugitive Dresden and two armed liners219 unaccounted for, there was not a German ship in the world to threaten a single British trade or territorial interest. For Koenigsberg, if she had escaped the guns of the two ships that had attempted her destruction in the mouth of the Rufigi, which was doubtful, was at any rate so closely blockaded that her power for active mischief was clearly at an end. German naval force was then limited to the High Seas Fleet, still of course intact, but with apparently no wish to attempt an active, and no power to make an effective, offensive. Of this force Sir John Jellicoe seemed to have taken the measure. Four months of activity, strenuous and anxious beyond description, had made our fleet bases proof against submarine attack, so that the only offensive open to the German fleet, that embodied in the policy of attrition, was no longer a menace. The submarine attack on trade was unexpected. At a blow, then, Whitehall, which for four months had been kept on tenterhooks by its unpreparedness for cruiser or submarine warfare, suddenly found itself without a naval care in the world.

But Mr. Churchill could not be idle, and the tempter planted in his fertile brain the crazy conception that the unemployed and unemployable fleet should add to his laurels, by repeating, on the Dardanelles forts the performances of the German howitzers at Liège, Maubeuge, and Antwerp. The failure of the Naval Brigade at Antwerp was to be picturesquely avenged. In judging of the results of the Falkland Islands battle then, we must set against its immediate and resounding benefits the humiliating tragedy of Gallipoli.
THE TACTICS OF THE BATTLE

The battle of the Falkland Islands, as we have seen, resolved itself into three separate engagements, and two220 of these may be taken as classic examples of the tactics of superior speed and armament, unconfused by the long-distance torpedo. It was this theory of tactics that held the field in England from 1904 or 1905, when the Dreadnought policy was definitely adopted, until 1912 or 1913 when the effect in naval action of the new torpedo, was first exhaustively analyzed. These actions, then, taken in conjunction with the Sydney-Emden fight, stand entirely by themselves, and it is possible that very little naval fighting will ever take place again under similar conditions.

At the Dogger Bank and off the Jutland Reef the torpedo was employed to the fullest extent, with results that we shall see when we come to consider these actions. We have of course, no direct statement that no torpedoes were employed in the Falkland engagements. Indeed in a modified way the torpedoes certainly had some influence. But there is the whole world of difference between torpedoes fired singly from one warship to another, and torpedoes used both in great quantities and by light craft which, under the defensive properties of their speed, can close to ranges sufficiently short to give the torpedo a reasonable chance of hitting, or, by taking station ahead, can add the target’s to the torpedo’s speed to increase its range. We shall be broadly right then in treating these engagements as affairs of gunnery purely, for the torpedo had seemingly no influence in the periods that were decisive.

Briefly put, what were the tactics of Admiral Sturdee with the battle-cruisers, and Captain Ellerton with Cornwall and Glasgow on December 8th? Their business was to destroy an enemy far weaker than themselves, one who had neither strength enough to fight victoriously nor speed enough to fly successfully. Both followed the same plan.221 They employed their superior speed, first to get near enough for their heavier guns to be used with some effect, and then, whenever the enemy tried to close, to get to a range at which his inferior pieces could be expected to get a considerable percentage of hits, they man?uvred to increase the range so as to keep the enemy at a permanent gunnery disadvantage. As this long-range fire gradually told, the enemy’s artillery became necessarily less and less effective, until he was reduced to a condition in which he could be closed and finished off without taking any risks at all. These tactics resulted in Gneisenau and Scharnhorst being destroyed by Invincible and Inflexible, the whole crews of both German ships being either killed or captured, while the two battle-cruisers had three casualties only. Invincible was actually hit by twenty-two shells, Inflexible by only three, and it was the latter ship who had the only three men hit. Cornwall received eighteen direct hits and, like Invincible, had no casualties at all, while Glasgow had one man killed and five wounded.

Obviously an action could not be fought upon these lines unless time and space sufficed in which to bring about the desired result. In point of fact, when the disparity of force is considered, the time taken was extraordinary. Inflexible opened fire on the German cruisers at five minutes to one, Scharnhorst sank at seventeen minutes past four, and Gneisenau just after 6 o’clock. If we suppose only twelve 12-inch guns to have been bearing throughout the action, we have one hundred 12-inch gun hours! There was time therefore—at a battle-practice rate of fire—for both ships to have fired away their entire stocks of ammunition at least dozens of times over. What they did, of course, was to fire extremely deliberately when the target was within range and the conditions suitable,222 and to cease fire altogether when they were man?uvring.

In the Cornwall-Glasgow-Leipzig action, fire was opened at about 4 o’clock, and it was not till about 7:8 that the enemy was beaten. An hour afterwards he sent up signals of distress and surrendered. Here there were eleven 6-inch guns in the two British broadsides, and five 4-inch, against a handful of 4.25. The disparity in force was perhaps not quite so great as in the battle-cruiser action, but these things are difficult to compare, and from all accounts 6-inch lyddite, once the hitting begins, does not take long to put a light cruiser of the Leipzig class completely out of action.

Captain Allen’s action against Nürnberg is in very sharp contrast to this. He opened fire at 5 o’clock, some few minutes after the enemy had attacked him. The range was about 11,000 yards, and for some time no apparent damage was done. At 5:45, however, though Nürnberg seemed still undamaged, the range was reduced by 4,000 yards, owing to Nürnberg’s sudden loss of speed. There then followed twenty minutes of action at ranges between 6,000 and 3,000, and these sufficed to finish the enemy............