Battle of Dogger Bank (1915)
The
Battle of Dogger Bank was a naval battle fought near the
Dogger Bank in the
North Sea that took place on
24 January 1915, during the
First World War, between squadrons of the
British Grand Fleet and the
German High Seas Fleet.
With the German home fleet effectively bottled up by
Admiral Beatty's success at
Heligoland Bight, German Admiral
Franz Hipper decided to launch a raid upon three British East coast towns with his
battlecruiser squadron, comprising three battlecruisers and the large
armoured cruiser Blücher, supported by
light cruisers and
destroyers. The raid took place on
16 December 1914 at 9am, and resulted in the death of 18 civilians at
Scarborough, causing further damage at
Whitby and
Hartlepool.
British public and political reaction was outraged that the German Fleet could sail so close to the British coast and proceed to shell coastal towns.
Buoyed by the success of the raid, Admiral Hipper resolved to repeat the exercise by attacking the British fishing fleet on the
Dogger Bank the following month. He was however intercepted by the British on
24 January 1915 at the Dogger Bank, midway between Germany and Britain.
Through intercepted German radio traffic analysed by
Room 40 of British Naval Intelligence, the British knew of Hipper's proposed sortie on
23 January. Acting Vice Admiral Beatty set sail with five battlecruisers, supported by six light cruisers, to meet Hipper's three battlecruisers. Joined by additional cruisers and destroyers from Harwich, Beatty headed south before meeting Hipper's screening vessels at 7.20am on the morning of
24 January.
Realising he was overpowered, Hipper attempted to escape, believing the British battlecruisers to be slower than his. But Beatty's ships were distinctly faster than the German squadron, which was held back by the slower armoured cruiser
SMS Blücher and his coal-fired torpedoboats. The British ships reached their extreme firing range by 9 am, with the older battlecruisers of the 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron somewhat behind the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron. Battle started half an hour later.
The British fire was concentrated on two of the German ships, Hipper's flagship battlecruiser
SMS Seydlitz at the head of the line and the old
Blücher at the rear. With five big ships to the German four, Beatty intended that his two rear ships, HMS
New Zealand and HMS
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 the
Seydlitz, leaving
SMS Moltke unmolested to fire at
HMS Lion. Worse,
Tigers fire was ineffective as she mistook Lions shell splashes for her own (when her shots were actually falling 3,000 yards clear of
Seydlitz).
At 09:30
Seydlitz was hit by a 13.5-inch shell from
Lion, which penetrated the working chamber of her after turret barbette. The resulting explosion knocked out the rear turret and worse, thanks to an open door to the adjacent, superimposed, turret knocked out that turret too with the loss of the 160 men. Only the prompt action of her executive officer in flooding the magazines saved the
Seydlitz from a massive magazine explosion that would have destroyed the ship.
By 09:50,
Blücher was also badly damaged and began to fall further and further behind the faster German battlecruisers.
Indomitable was ordered to intercept her. The British ships were still relatively unscathed until at 10:18
SMS Derfflinger hit Beatty's flagship HMS
Lion with three 12-inch shells, damaging her engines so that
Lion began to lag behind and half an hour later came to a standstill when she had to stop her port engine, taking no further part in the battle after 11:00. By about 10:30, Hipper decided to leave
Blücher to her fate.
Nevertheless, the annihilation of the German squadron appeared likely until at 10:50 Beatty, believing he saw a submarine's periscope on
Lions starboard bow, ordered a sharp turn of 90 degrees to port to avoid a submarine trap. (It seems probable that the periscope was surfacing torpedo launched by a German destroyer). Realizing that so sharp a turn would open the range too much, he then ordered ‘Course NE' to limit the turn to 45 degrees. He then wanted to add Nelson's order 'Engage the enemy more closely'. Noticing that this order was not in the signal book, he decided to order ‘Engage the enemy's rear' as the order that came closest to his intentions. With Lions electrics destroyed by further hits from the German ships, she was forced to signal using flag hoists.
But the combination of the signal of ‘Course NE' (which happened to be the direction of the
Blücher) with the signal to engage the rear was misunderstood by Beatty's second-in-command, Rear-Admiral Moore, as an order for all the battlecruisers to finish off the cripple. The remaining British battlecruisers broke off the pursuit of the fleeing German squadron and rounded on
Blücher, sinking her with the loss of 782 men.
Beatty had now lost control of the battle. Rear-Admiral Moore lacked the vision needed to disobey a flawed order, and so the opportunity of an overwhelming victory was lost.
Although a few Germans clung to the hope that one of the British battlecruisers had been sunk, it was clear that the battle was a serious reverse.
Kaiser Wilhelm issued an order that all further risks to surface vessels were to be avoided.
Admiral von Ingenohl, commander of the High Seas Fleet, was replaced. The Germans took the lessons of the battle to heart, particularly the damage to the
Seydlitz which revealed flaws in the protection of her magazines. The defect was corrected in all of 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 a remarkable coincidence, they suspect an enemy agent near their base in Jade was responsible, rather than their wireless procedures.
Although the battle was not greatly consequential of itself, it boosted British morale.But while the Germans learnt their lessons, the British failed to do the same. The unfortunate Rear-Admiral Moore was quietly replaced, but Beatty's flag lieutenant (responsible for hoisting Beatty's two commands on one flag hoist, therefore allowing them to be read as one) remained. Signalling on board the
Lion was equally shambolic in the early stages of the
Battle of Jutland the following summer. Nor did the battlecruisers learn their lesson about fire distribution.
Britain
1st Battlecruiser Squadron:
Lion,
Tiger and
Princess Royal.
2nd Battlecruiser Squadron:
New Zealand and
Indomitable.
1st Light Cruiser Squadron: six light cruisers.
Harwich Force: three light cruisers and thirty-five destroyers.
Germany
1st Scouting Group:
Seydlitz,
Moltke,
Derfflinger and
Blücher.
2nd Scouting Group: Four light cruisers
Two flotillas of eighteen torpedo boats combined.
*Bennett, Geoffrey. Naval Battles of the First World War. (London, 1968).
*Gordon, Andrew. The Rules of the Game - Jutland and British Naval Command. ISBN 0719555426
*Marder, Arthur J. From The Dreadnought To Scapa Flow, Volume II. (Oxford, 1965).
*Corbett, Sir Julian S. Official History of The War. Naval Operations, Volume II. (London, 1922).
*
Battle of Dogger Bank
