THE JUTLAND BATTLE.

Matamata Record, Volume III, Issue 153, 9 October 1919, Page 4

THE JUTLAND BATTLE.

With the arrival in New Zealand waters of Admiral Jellicoe and H.M.B. New Zealand, memories are recalled of the,great naval engagement, the Battieof Jutland. Everybody is acarifinted with-lhe British story of the

but it is only since the conelusion of hostilities that the German versions have become available. At all times German stories are accepted with reserve. As a prominent English officer once had occasion to remark: “The Hun will tell you the truth occasionally, but only when he has no end to serve by telling you a lie.” Lieut. L. R. Freeman, who was the official correspondent with the Grand Fleet, and a member of the staff of the Allied Naval Armistic Committee, obtained the following story from a German naval commander. Thus writes Lieut. Freeman: “ The fact that I have never proved one of the statements to have been deliberately false, whereas on the other hand I have sooner or later been able to check from independent sources the truth of nearly everything he told me, strongly inclines me to the belief that the story is not only straight-forward, but also an extremely well-informed account of the naval affair from the ‘ German side." . “ The English naval experts,” the German commander said, “ or at least such of them as write for the papers, have all been greatly mistaken regarding two points in connection with the Battle of Horn Reef. One was in their assumption that the German fleet came out wjth the deliberate intention of offering battle to the English fleet, and the other was in their belief that we had Zeppelin reconnaissance on the day of the battle. As it was to our interest to have our own people believe that we .sought the battle and to make your Admiralty believe that wc had Zeppelins on the day of the battle and yet did not avoid it, our propagandists went to considerable lengths in circulating both reports.

“The truth is that if we had had Zeppelin reconnaissance on the afternoon of May 31 Von Hipper would never have allowed himself to be drawn into action with Beatty s battle-cruisers, which outmatched him in number, speed, guns, and everything but gunnery. “ In the same way Von Sclreer, with the High Sea Fleet, would never have allowed himself to be drawn into action with Jellicoe had he had Zeppelins to tell him how near the Grand Fleet actually was. It had been our intention to have Zeppelins out on this occasion, but it was prevented by unfavourable weather. . We did have two or three over the North Sea. on the following day, and these, being' lighted by the English, gave colour:' to our report that we had them on the day of the battle. All the German artists who drew pictures of the Horn Reef Battle were instructed to show Zeppelins in them, as you will find by looking at our illustrated papers of : that time. “ The way in which the Battle of Horn Reef came to be fought was this: The shipping between England and Norway was given no such protection in the first years of the war as it wa3 in the last, when the risks of attempt-, ing a raid upon a convoy with surface craft were so great thdt we succeeded only twice out of scores of attempts. On May 31, 1916, we had' planned a light-cruiser raid upon a' considerable number of ships we knew would be moving between England and Norway at that time. This raid was to be backed up by Von Hipper s battle-cruiser squadron, and these in turn by the High Sea Fleet. As usual the English Admiralty learned of the plan a day or two in advance, the shipping was held in port or scattered to the north* and a strong patrol thrown out to intercept our cruisers. The raid turned out no more than a blow in the air. But that was not all. Beatty and his battle-cruisers were sent to sea to intercept Von Hipper, while the main English Battle Fleet „ under Jellicoe was hurried down from the north to support him. ;':• “I have read in the English papers that the battle which followed was fought as the result of Von Hipper’s endeavour to surprise and cut off Beatty’s battle-cruisers. The truth is quite the contrary. It was fought as a consequence of. Beatty’s surprising and endeavouring to cut off Von Hipper. Where Beatty’s surprise came in was when he lost two of his ships in the first few minutes of the action. There is no use in denying that we were surprised, too, for at Doggerbank, with about the same relative strength in ships, nothing but the disabling of the Lion saved the German battlecruiser squadron from losing three ships instead of one. Though I am convinced that our gunnery was better than that of the English, yet the results in this case must have been largely due—as the English have al- „ va y ß made so much of a point of claiming-to the fact that wc had the advantage of the light in the opening •> phase of the battle.

“With two of Beatty’s ships gone and a third-the .Lion, as we afterward learned-very hard hit, the temptation to attempt to destroy the whole squadron was too strong for Von Bcheer to resist. The result was that he was all but drawn into the one thing it had been his intention all along*to avoid-a general action with the English Battle Fleet. There is little doubt that nothing but the mis-

tiness of the late afternoon and the coming of night saved us from a great disaster. As it was, though we lost few ships in this phase of the battle, the way in which we were' fairly smothered by the fire of only a part of the English Battle Fleet, brought home to the men of the German Navy for the first time the fact that wc did not have even a fighting chance of a victory in anything but a long-range action, and that—because the enemy had the speed of us—he did not have to fight unless he wanted to. “Of course most of the officers of the German Navy understood all along that the odds against us were far too heavy to give us any real hope of success in a general action. But we had taken great care not to let that knowledge get to the lower dock. Instead, we had been at great pains to make them believe that —just as Hindenburg and Mackcnsen were doing on land—we could win a complete victory on the sea whenever such a victory he came necessary. And they had be lieved that firmly, implicitly—until those of them that survived Horn Reef got together on their return and compared experiences as to the way things had been in their ships during the time the English battleships were concentrating on them in those few minutes before the action was broken off by darkness.

“ They never believed in the possibility of victory after that. On the contrary, with every day that passed the dread of being taken out into another action became more and more of an obsession with them. Up to May 31, 1916, I am confident that we could have told our men that we were going out to fight and destroy the English fleet, and they would have received the announcement with cheers; at any time after that I am equally confident that such an announcement would have brought a mutiny. Our only hope of getting them to take their ships out during the last two years would have been by tricking them into believing that they were off for manoeuvres, target practice or anything but a fight. And at the last we were even unable to got them out in that way. " I was the gunnery officer of the Deutschland in 1916, and on the afternoon of the 31st of May, my squadron, with the battleship Pommern as flagship,’ was steaming slowly on a north-westerly course with the rest of the High Sea Fleet, when a signal -was received from Von Hipper, who '.was a couple of hours ahead of us, jthat he had sighted English battlecruisers and light cruisers, and was ;About to engage them. The fleet ? formed battle line at once, but, to my Surprise, with no increase of the comifortable twenty-four kilometers—about -fifteen miles— an hour we had been steaming right along. The reason for this I understood when I was told that the engine-room had been ordered to fnake just as little smoke as possible. iOn hearing that, I surmised at once ''■that Von Hipper was trying to lead 'the English battle-cruisers into what •.you might call an ambush by the ;High Sea Fleet. Our engineers did rev.markably well in keeping smoke down, '•and only two or three of the oldest •ships—among which I remember the Roon—showed even a suggestion of a \smudge above their funnels. } “ We saw the smoke of both the German and English battle-cruisers before we sighted even their foretops, . and about the same time gun flashes running along the horizon told that firing had commenced. The English ships must have sighted the masts of the High Sea Fleet not long after wc saw their smoke, for it was soon reported that they were turning back to the north. Our ambush plan had proved a failure. “An increase of speed was now ordered —all we could do as a fleet, if 1 remember rightly. The ships of my own squadron were soon at the top oi their speed, and even then having difficulty in keeping up with the faster Konigs and Kaisers. The next thing I remember was seeing a pillar of smoke and fire shoot up to the north, with a second one following it at an interval of two or three minutes. I knew that nothing but ships blowing up could make so much smoke, but even after seeing it with my own eyes it was almost impossible to believe the astounding news in the signal made us from tlic flagship a little later: ‘ Von Hipper reports two English battle-cruisers sunk by gun fire.’ A Stirring Side Show. “ For German naval officers that was the greatest moment they were ever to know. ‘lf the English ships are to be sunk as easily as that, what is to prevent our finishing the job now and here?’ was the thought in everyone's mind. Perhaps we were going to have our Day after all. It must have been that thought which led Von Schecr to press the pursuit of Beatty’s surviving battle cruisers, though he knew that the chase, unless it was finished quickly, could only cud in .1 clash with the main English Battle Fleet. “There was a stirring little side show at this juncture. With the English battle cruisers there had been a squadron of five or six light cruisers —four-futmeled ships of very graceful lines and rather larger in size than the latest English light cruisers. They had been leading the battle cruisers, but when these turned north on sighting the High Sea Fleet the light cruisers stood right on toward us at a speed of at least twenty-five miles aid hour. 1 have often wondered whether) they had been ordered to do it in order

to make certain of what German ships were out or whether it was done merely on the initiative of some very gallant and reckless young admiral. “It looked as though they were trying (o commit suicide. We were ordered not to fire until they turned away, and this they did not do until they were inside of 10,000 meters from the head of our line. 1 don’t just know how many ships were concentrating on them, but it must have been all of two squadrons. We ought to have sunk the lot of them before they had finished turning, and it was only by bad luck rather than bad shooting that we failed to do so. Salvo after salvo seemed to slap across them, and there were times when you could not see them for the spurts of water thrown up by the falling shell. And yet, though we continued firing until the range had lengthened out to well over 25,000 meters, it did not look as though one of them was bit. As soon as we ceased firing their flagship called them hack into line jigain and they stopped zigzagging and headed up after their battle cruisers. “The next thing 1 remember the Konigs and Kaisers were concentrating on four large English battleships —I recognised them at once as being of the Queen Elizabeth class—which seemed to he interposing to break up the pursuit of Beatty's hard-pressed battle cruisers. Right then and there the high hopes we had built up about the ease with which we were going to sink the rest of the English fleet received a serious shock. For more than an hour those four battleships took the fire of every gun of the High Sea Fleet that would bear on them—and some fire from our battle cruisers as well, I think—without appearing to be damaged in the least so far as their fighting powers were concerned. One of them was out of control for a few minutes, but kept right on firing while pile turned two oi three circles, and then resumed her place in battle line. The light was rather against them in firing at us, so that their shooting was not very good; hut even so there is no doubt that they did the High Sea Fleet much more damage than the latter did to them. When we finally began making it a little too hot for them, through more ships from the rear of our line coming into action, they put on speed and easily drew away from us.”