17th October 1914 Battle of Texel The Battle off Texel on the 17 October 1914 was a naval battle off the coast of the Dutch island of Texel during the First World War. A British squadron consisting of one light cruiser and four destroyers encountered the remnants of the German 7th Half Flotilla of torpedo boats. They were en route to the British coast on a mission to lay minefields. The British forces attacked and sank the entire German flotilla of four torpedo boats.
Heavily outgunned, the German force attempted to flee and then fought a desperate action against the British force. The battle resulted in the loss of an entire German torpedo boat squadron and prevented the mining of heavily trafficked shipping lanes at the mouth of the Thames River. The British in exchange took only light casualties and little damage to their vessels. The outcome of the battle greatly influenced the tactics of the remaining German torpedo boat flotillas in the North Sea area. The loss greatly shook the faith of the commanders in the effectiveness of the force.
After the opening naval Battle of Heligoland Bight the German High Seas Fleet was ordered to avoid confrontations with larger opposing forces in an effort to avoid costly and demoralizing reverses. Thus outside of occasional German raids, the North Sea became dominated by the Royal Navy which regularly patrolled the area. Despite the lack of action by German capital ships, light forces still operated regularly in North Sea. At 1350 on 17 October 1914 the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla Harwich Force consisting of the light cruiser HMS Undaunted under Captain Cecil Fox and four Laforey-class destroyers, HMS Lennox, Lance, Loyal, and Legion, was cruising off the coast of the island of Texel. They encountered a German squadron of torpedo boats of the 7th Half Flotilla under Georg Thiele (SMS S115, S117, S118, and S119). S119 was the lead ship of the torpedo boat flotilla and was commanded by Korvettenkapitän Thiele himself. The German ships made no attempt to challenge or threaten the approaching British ships nor did they at first attempt to flee the scene. It was assumed by the British that they were waiting for more German vessels to arrive and had mistaken the British ships for friendly vessels. In reality, the German flotilla had been sent out of Ems on a mission to mine the southern coast of Britain including the mouth of the Thames. It had been intercepted before reaching its targeted area of operations. The British squadron heavily outgunned the German 7th Half Flotilla. The British Commander, Captain Cecil Fox's vessel Undaunted, an Arethusa-class light cruiser, was armed with two 6 inch naval guns and seven QF 4 inch naval guns, all in single mounts and nearly all without gun shields. Undaunted at the time of the engagement was also experimentally armed with an additional pair of 2-pounder anti-aircraft guns, something most of her class lacked. In addition to her guns, the cruiser was also armed with eight torpedo tubes and at best speed could make 28.5 knots. The four British Laforey-class destroyers were much less powerful vessels in comparison to the cruiser being only armed with two torpedo tubes, three 4-inch guns and a singe 2-pounder gun. The destroyers were slightly faster than the cruiser and could make about 29 knots at full power. The German vessels were entirely inferior to the British. The four boats were of the aging Großes Torpedoboot 1898 class and had been completed in 1904. In terms of speed, the German boats were nearly equal to the British at 28 knots. Each of the German vessels was armed with three 50 mm guns, significantly fewer than the British destroyers. These weapons were also of shorter range and throwing weight than the British guns. The biggest danger to the British squadron was the torpedo tubes carried by the German boats, as each boat carried three 450 mm torpedo tubes with five torpedoes per boat.
Battle
Upon closer approach, the German vessels realized the approaching vessels were British and began to scatter and flee. Undaunted, closer to the Germans than the destroyers, opened fire on the nearest torpedo boat.
This German vessel managed to dodge the incoming fire from Undaunted by changing course but by doing so lost speed and the British force caught up with them. In an attempt to protect Undaunted from torpedo attack and to destroy the Germans as quickly as possible, the squadron commander Captain Fox. gave orders for the squadron to split into two divisions. Lance and Lennox proceeded to chase S115 and S119 while Legion and Loyal went after S117 and S118. Combined fire from Legion, Loyal, and Undaunted damaged S118 with her entire bridge being blown off sinking her at 1517. Meanwhile HMS Lance and Lennox engaged S115 disabling her steering gear and causing the German vessel to circle. Lennox's fire was so effective at this point that, as had occurred with S118, the bridge of S115 was completely destroyed.
Despite the damage the German torpedo-boat still did not strike her colours and vainly continued the action. The two centre-most boats in the German flotilla — S117 and the flotilla leader S119 — then made an attempt at engaging Undaunted with torpedoes. Despite the torpedo attack, Undaunted was able to outmaneuver the German boats and remained unscathed. Legion and Loyal who had been finishing off S118 came to Undaunted's aid and engaged Undaunted's two attackers. Legion assaulted S117, but the torpedo boat fired her last three torpedoes at the destroyer and afterword continued to resist with her guns. This vain attempt failed, and Legion pulverized S117 damaging her steering mechanism which forced her to circle before she was finally sunk at 1530. At the same time Legion was battling S117, Lance and Lennox had damaged S115 to the point where only one of the destroyers was still needed to counter the vessel. Lance soon left the battle with S115 to join Loyal in pummeling S119 with lyddite shells. S119 managed to get off a successful torpedo run against Lance, hitting the destroyer amidships, but the torpedo failed to detonate. S119 was then sunk at 1535 by combined gunfire from Lance and Loyal, taking the German flotilla commander down with it. The last remaining torpedo boat S115 continued to stay afloat despite constant attacks from Lennox. The British destroyer eventually boarded the vessel finding her a complete wreck with only one German onboard who happily surrendered. Thirty other Germans were eventually plucked from the sea and captured by the British vessels. The action finally ended at 1630 with gunfire from Undaunted finishing off the abandoned hulk of S115 with heavy gunfire.
Aftermath
The German Seventh Half Flotilla was completely annihilated by Harwich force, with all four of its remaining vessels sunk and over two hundred sailors killed including the commanding officer. Despite the odds no German vessel struck her colours and the entire Flotilla went down fighting to the end. The British casualties were extremely light in comparison with only four men wounded and superficial damage to three of the destroyers. Legion took one 4 lb shell hit and had one man wounded by machine gun fire. Loyal took two shell hits and had three or four men wounded as a result. Lance took some superficial machine gun damage and the other two vessels were unscathed. Thirty-one surviving German sailors were taken out of the water and off the sinking hulks and made prisoners, but one captured officer soon after died of the wounds he had received during the action. Two other German sailors were later plucked from the water by a neutral vessel. The battle was seen as a great boost of morale for the British at the time, as two days previous to the action off Texel they had suffered the loss of the cruiser HMS Hawke due to a U-boat attack. The effect on British morale the battle had is reflected in its fictionalized and nationalistic inclusion in the 1915 dime novel The Boy Allies Under Two Flags, by Robert L. Drake.
Some controversy arose in Germany from the battle because the German hospital ship Ophelia, which had been sent out to rescue survivors from the sunken boats, was seized by the British for violating the Hague Convention's rules on the use of hospital ships. Although the boats of the sunken flotilla were older and some casualties were expected, the loss of an entire squadron of torpedo boats changed the tactics of the German forces displaced in the English Channel and along the coast of Flanders drastically. As a direct result, there were very few further sorties into the Channel and the torpedo boat force was delegated to coastal patrol and rescuing downed pilots for fear of similar losses. An unexpected boon for the British came as a result of the action, when on 30 November a British fishing trawler working the area pulled up a sealed chest that had been thrown off S119 by Captain Thiele during the action so as to avoid its capture. The chest contained a German codebook used by the German light forces stationed on the coast, allowing the British to decipher intercepted German communications long after the action had ended.
John Doran
24th January 1915 Battle of Dogger Bank 1915 The First Battle of Dogger Bank was fought in the North Sea on 24 January 1915, between squadrons of the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet. The British, through decoded radio messages had received advance information that a German raiding squadron was heading for Dogger Bank and sent naval forces to intercept it.
They encountered the Germans at the expected location, surprising the smaller and slower German squadron, who fled homewards. Chasing them for several hours, the British slowly closed with the Germans and engaged them with long-range gunfire. The rearmost German ship, the Blücher was badly damaged, but the Germans also put the British flagship HMS Lion out of action with heavy damage. Due to a signalling error, the remaining British ships broke off pursuit of the fleeing enemy force to sink Blücher, as a result of which the German squadron escaped. All the remaining German vessels returned safely to harbour, though some had heavy damage requiring extended repairs.
Lion made it back to port but was out of action for several months.
It was hailed as a British victory as no ships were lost and casualties were light, while the Germans lost a ship and most of its crew.
Both navies drew lessons from the encounter and both Commanders were replaced on grounds of poor judgement.
Order of battle at Dogger Bank (1915)
- British Forces:
- 1st Battlecruiser Squadron: HMS Lion, Tiger and Princess Royal.
- 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron: HMS New Zealand and Indomitable.
- 1st Light Cruiser Squadron: HMS Southampton, Birmingham, Lowestoft, and Nottingham.
- Harwich Force: three light cruisers (HMS Aurora, Arethusa, Undaunted) and 35 destroyers.
- German Forces:
- 1st Scouting Group: SMS Seydlitz, Moltke, Derfflinger and Blücher.
- 2nd Scouting Group: SMS Kolberg, Stralsund, Rostock, and Graudenz.
- Two flotillas of torpedo boats - 18 in total.
Background to the action
The success at Heligoland Bight had the main German battle fleet effectively bottled up, so the German high command decided a raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby would be made with Admiral Franz Hipper's battlecruiser squadron. This comprised three battlecruisers and one large armoured cruiser—supported by light cruisers and destroyers.
Hipper opened fire at 0800 on 16 December 1914, eventually killing 108 civilians and wounding 525. Public and political opinion was outraged that German warships could sail so close to the British coast, shelling coastal towns with apparent impunity. British naval forces had failed to prevent the attacks, and also failed to intercept Hipper's raiding squadron afterwards. Though the British fleet was at sea hunting Hipper after the raid, the Germans escaped in stormy weather, aided by low visibility and British communication problems.
Buoyed by the success of the raid, Admiral Hipper resolved to repeat the exercise by attacking the British fishing fleet on the Dogger Bank — midway between Germany and Britain — the following month. Hipper suspected that the British fishing fleet was providing intelligence on German fleet movements.
Through intercepted German radio traffic decoded by Room 40 of British Naval Intelligence, the British learned of Hipper's planned sortie on 23 January 1915. Acting Vice Admiral Beatty set sail from Rosyth with five battlecruisers — supported by four light cruisers — to attempt to trap Hipper's force. They were joined by additional cruisers and destroyers from Harwich as Beatty headed south, encountering Hipper's screening vessels at the Dogger Bank at 0705 on 24 January. The day was clear and visibility was unusually good.
Sighting the smoke from a large approaching force, Hipper headed southeast by 0735 to escape, but Beatty's ships were faster than the German squadron, which was held back by the slower armoured cruiser SMS Blücher and by Hipper's coal-fired torpedo boats. By 0800, Hipper's battlecruisers were sighted from Beatty's flagship, HMS Lion. The older battlecruisers of the British 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron lagged somewhat behind the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron. Chasing the Germans from a position astern and to starboard of Hipper's force, the British ships gradually caught up — some reaching speeds of 27 kn (31 mph; 50 km/h) — and closed to gun range.
Beatty chose to approach from this direction because the prevailing wind then blew the British ships' smoke clear, allowing them a good view of the enemy, while Hipper's gunners were partially blinded by funnel and gun smoke blowing in the direction of their targets. Lion opened fire at 0852 at a range of 20,000 yd (18,000 m). Other British ships opened as they came within range, while the Germans were unable to reply until 0911 because of the shorter range of their guns. No warships had ever before engaged at such long ranges or at such high speeds and gunnery challenges for both sides were therefore unprecedented. Nevertheless, after a few salvos the British shells had straddled Blücher.
The British fire was concentrated on two of the German ships, Hipper's flagship battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz at the head of the line and Blücher at the rear. With five British ships to the German four, Beatty intended that his two rear ships, HMS New Zealand and Indomitable, should engage Blücher, while his leading three engaged their opposite numbers. But Captain H.B. Pelly of the newly commissioned battlecruiser HMS Tiger assumed that two ships should concentrate on the leading German ship and engaged Seydlitz, leaving SMS Moltke unmolested to fire at Lion. Worse, Tiger's fire was ineffective, as she mistook Lion's shell splashes for her own (when her shots were actually falling 3,000 yd (2,700 m) beyond Seydlitz).
At 0943, Seydlitz was hit by a 13.5 in (340 mm) shell from Lion, which penetrated her after turret barbette and caused an ammunition fire in the working chamber. This fire spread rapidly through one compartment after another, igniting ready propellant charges all the way to the magazines, and knocked out both rear turrets with the loss of 165 men. Only the prompt action of the executive officer in flooding the magazines, saved Seydlitz from a massive magazine explosion that would have destroyed the ship.
The British ships were relatively unscathed until 1018, when SMS Derfflinger hit Lion with several 12 inches (305 mm) shells, damaging her engines and causing flooding so that Lion began to lag behind. At 1041, Lion narrowly escaped a disaster similar to what had happened on Seydlitz, when a German shell hit the forward turret and ignited a small ammunition fire which, fortunately for the British, was extinguished before it caused catastrophe. A few minutes later, taking on water and listing to port, Lion had to stop her port engine and reduce speed to 15 kn (17 mph; 28 km/h), and was soon out of action, having been hit 14 times.
Meanwhile, at 1030, Blücher was hit by a shell from HMS Princess Royal, which caused an ammunition fire and boiler room damage. As a result, Blücher had to reduce speed to 17 kn (20 mph; 31 km/h), and fell further and further behind the rest of the German force. Beatty ordered Indomitable — his slowest ship — to intercept Blücher.
Now Hipper, running low on ammunition, made the difficult decision to leave the disabled Blücher to her fate and steam for home, in order to save his remaining damaged ships. Nevertheless, the annihilation of the German squadron still appeared likely to the pursuing British until 1054, when Beatty — believing he saw a submarine's periscope on Lion's starboard bow — ordered a sharp, 90° turn to port to avoid a submarine trap. (It is possible that the "periscope" was actually a surfacing, run-out torpedo which had been launched 15 minutes earlier by the German destroyer V5). At 1102, realising that so sharp a turn would open the range too much, Beatty ordered "Course NE" to limit the turn to 45°, and then added "Engage the enemy's rear", in an attempt to clarify his intention that his other ships, which had now left Lion far behind, should pursue Hipper's main force. With Lion's electric generators now out of commission, Beatty could only signal using flag hoists, and both these signals were flown at the same time. But the combination of the signal of "Course NE" — which happened to be the direction of Blücher — and the signal to engage the rear was misunderstood by Beatty’s second-in-command — Rear-Admiral Gordon Moore on New Zealand — as an order for all the battlecruisers to finish off the cripple.
Therefore, the remaining British battlecruisers broke off the pursuit of the fleeing German squadron and rounded on Blücher. Most of the British light cruisers and destroyers also attacked Blücher. Beatty tried to correct this obvious misunderstanding by using Horatio Nelson's famous order from Trafalgar "Engage the enemy more closely", but this order was not in the signal book, so he chose "Keep nearer to the enemy" as the closest equivalent. But by the time this signal was hoisted, Moore's ships were too far away to read Beatty's flags, and the correction was not received.
Despite the overwhelming odds, Blücher fought stubbornly to the end.
Blücher managed to put the British destroyer HMS Meteor out of action and scored two hits on the British battlecruisers with her 8.2 in (210 mm) guns, but was pounded into a burning wreck by approximately 50 British shells. Finally, struck by two torpedoes from the light cruiser HMS Arethusa, Blücher capsized and sank at 1313 with the loss of 792 men.
British efforts to rescue survivors in the water were interrupted by the arrival of the German Zeppelin L-5 (aka LZ-28), and by a German seaplane which attacked with small bombs. No damage was done, but the British ships — which were sitting targets while stopped in the water for rescue — put on speed and withdrew to avoid further aerial attack.
By this time, Hipper had escaped; his ships were now too far away for the British to catch them again. Beatty had lost control of the battle, and he perceived that the opportunity of an overwhelming victory had been lost.
The Admiralty — incorrectly believing that Derfflinger had been badly damaged — would soon reach the same conclusion. However, in light of what happened later at Jutland, where the British battlecruisers were shown to be highly vulnerable to ammunition fires and magazine explosions following hits on gun turrets, it is possible that if Moore's three fast battlecruisers had pursued Hipper's remaining three (leaving the slower Indomitable behind as Beatty intended), the British might actually have been at a disadvantage and might have got the worst of it. Blücher demonstrated the ability of the German ships to absorb great punishment.
All of Hipper's remaining ships were larger, faster, more modern, more heavily armed, and far better armoured than Blücher and only Seydlitz had suffered any serious damage. Apart from the sinking of Blücher, the Germans out-hit the British by over three to one, with 22 heavy-calibre hits — 16 on Lion and six on Tiger — against the British total of just seven hits.
Aftermath of the Battle
Lion had to be towed back to port by Indomitable at 10 kn (12 mph; 19 km/h), a long and dangerous voyage in which both battlecruisers were exposed to potential submarine attacks. Therefore, an enormous screen of over fifty ships was assigned to guard Lion and Indomitable as they crept home. Both reached port safely. The disabled Meteor was also towed home.
Lion was out of action for four months, Lord Fisher having decreed that her damage be repaired on the Tyne without going into dry dock, making for an extremely difficult and time-consuming job.
All the surviving German ships reached port, though Seydlitz was heavily damaged and had to go into drydock for repairs. Although the Germans initially believed that Tiger had been sunk because of a large fire that had been seen on her decks, it was soon clear that the battle was a serious reverse. A furious Kaiser Wilhelm II issued an order that all further risks to surface vessels were to be avoided. Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl—commander of the High Seas Fleet—was replaced by Admiral Hugo von Pohl.
The Germans took the lessons of the battle to heart, particularly the damage to Seydlitz, which revealed flaws in the protection of her magazines and dangerous ammunition-handling procedures.Some of these issues were corrected in Germany's battleships and battlecruisers in time for the Battle of Jutland the following summer. Although the Germans realized that the appearance of the British squadron at dawn was too remarkable to be mere coincidence, they concluded that an enemy agent near their base in the Jade Bay was responsible, and did not suspect that their wireless codes had been compromised.
Although the battle was not greatly consequential in itself, it boosted British morale. But while the Germans learned their lessons, the British did not. The unfortunate Rear-Admiral Moore was quietly replaced, but Beatty's flag lieutenant Ralph Seymour — responsible for hoisting Beatty's two commands on one flag hoist, thereby allowing them to be read as one — remained. Signalling on board Lion would again be poor in the first hours of Jutland, with serious consequences for the British. Nor did the battlecruisers learn their lesson about fire distribution, as similar targeting errors were made at Jutland.
John Doran
6th Oct 1914 New Captain for Undaunted
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