While the Cats are Away…
While the Cats are Away…
Von Spee’s success in tying down British forces had not passed unnoticed in Germany, and it allowed the Admiralty to persuade the Kaiser that his precious fleet should be used more aggressively, particularly while the British lacked a significant margin of superiority in numbers in the North Sea.
In mid-November, following the loss of the Audacious, Jellicoe had a maximum of 16 battleships and 5 battlecruisers, usually less one or two ships away for refit or repair. A further two Iron Dukes had just commissioned, but the CinC knew they were not yet fully effective.
Ingenohl’s fleet had 14 battleships and 4 battlecruisers, plus the Derfflinger, which had commissioned at the beginning of the month.
Operations started cautiously, with a mining operation off Yarmouth covered by the four operational battlecruisers on 3rd November. The minefield would sink only a small coaster, but the operation suggested more ambitious missions could be attempted, as the heavy ships of the Royal Navy were nowhere to be seen. A grander plan was conceived, in which the battlecruisers would attempt to draw away part of the British fleet by bombarding the English coast.
Across the North Sea, the Royal Navy was riding high after Admiral Patey’s victory in the Bismarck Sea, which had been followed by the destruction of Germany’s most successful raider, the Emden, in the Indian Ocean. Further good news was not long coming, as in early December, Dresden was hunted to exhaustion by Stoddart’s forces in the Atlantic and forced to accept internment in Brazil, while Karlsruhe had suffered a magazine explosion off the coast of Africa in November (although the British didn’t confirm this until January). New Zealand’s squadron had followed the route taken by Gneisenau and Nurnburg across the Pacific, but had instead found the Leipzig off the coast of Chile on December 2nd.
The Gneisenau and Nurnburg had avoided Cradock’s forces during November, meeting a collier that had been sent out from San Pedro, and hiding in the isolated bays and maze of channels around the tip of South America. Captain Maerker of the Gneisenau decided to stay away from the Falklands (very wisely – the islands were defended by the battleship Canopus and the cruiser Monmouth, in addition to Cradock’s occasional visits to re-coal), and instead headed for the mouth of the River Plate. There he hoped to raid British shipping before meeting another supply ship to the east of the Abrolhos Rocks and heading back towards Germany.
On the morning of 11th December, Invincible, Good Hope and Suffolk were to the north of the Plate when they received a radio signal from the refrigerator ship Estrella, which was being pursued by a warship (one of the first ‘raider warnings’ ever broadcast). Judging by the signal strength and the position given, they were right on top of her and Cradock ordered his flagship Invincible to charge ahead.
Nurnburg had caught and fired on the freighter in retaliation for the distress signal by the time Cradock reached her, and the Estrella would burn and sink. However, she was revenged swiftly as Nurnburg was crippled by the battlecruiser in less than half an hour’s action, before she sailed on, to leave the two armoured cruisers to finish the smaller German ship.
Gneisenau should have been well away from her companion, as there was no need for both ships to approach an unarmed merchantman. However, with little fuel or time to spare, Maerker had chosen stayed in contact. It was a fatal mistake, as Gneisenau was chased down over the course of the next three hours. Although Invincible ran out of ammunition for her forward turret during the pursuit, and Gneisenau’s gunnery was excellent, the final result was never in doubt.
Closer to home, the capture by the Russians of German naval codebooks in late August had given the Admiralty in London a crucial advantage. They were forewarned of German plans for a further raid, but even so the information was incomplete, and a range of possible routes and locations had to be covered.
British co-ordination went badly wrong; signals were missed and sailings were delayed, while scouts from the Second Battle Squadron engaged German light forces, but Hipper’s battlecruisers escaped at speed before the battleships ever sighted him. Poor weather and a mix-up of coded position indicators meant that Beatty’s battlecruisers never came within 30 miles of the Germans, despite their charging south at high speed once the confusion had been straightened out.
The German raid of 16th December was the most severe blow to the Royal Navy’s prestige in over a century; mainland Britain had been attacked and the Navy had failed to destroy the enemy in return. However, for the British war effort as a whole, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise; to the newspapers and the public, the Germans were now unquestionably ‘brutish Huns’, ‘baby-killing barbarians’ and such like, and the recruiting offices were filled to overflowing with volunteers desperate to do their bit in revenging the victims of Scarborough and Hartlepool.
By the start of 1915, the Navy had cleared the oceans of German warships, but in the North Sea, the Kaisermarine still had a short period of grace, while scattered British forces returned to home waters.
Von Spee’s success in tying down British forces had not passed unnoticed in Germany, and it allowed the Admiralty to persuade the Kaiser that his precious fleet should be used more aggressively, particularly while the British lacked a significant margin of superiority in numbers in the North Sea.
In mid-November, following the loss of the Audacious, Jellicoe had a maximum of 16 battleships and 5 battlecruisers, usually less one or two ships away for refit or repair. A further two Iron Dukes had just commissioned, but the CinC knew they were not yet fully effective.
Ingenohl’s fleet had 14 battleships and 4 battlecruisers, plus the Derfflinger, which had commissioned at the beginning of the month.
Operations started cautiously, with a mining operation off Yarmouth covered by the four operational battlecruisers on 3rd November. The minefield would sink only a small coaster, but the operation suggested more ambitious missions could be attempted, as the heavy ships of the Royal Navy were nowhere to be seen. A grander plan was conceived, in which the battlecruisers would attempt to draw away part of the British fleet by bombarding the English coast.
Across the North Sea, the Royal Navy was riding high after Admiral Patey’s victory in the Bismarck Sea, which had been followed by the destruction of Germany’s most successful raider, the Emden, in the Indian Ocean. Further good news was not long coming, as in early December, Dresden was hunted to exhaustion by Stoddart’s forces in the Atlantic and forced to accept internment in Brazil, while Karlsruhe had suffered a magazine explosion off the coast of Africa in November (although the British didn’t confirm this until January). New Zealand’s squadron had followed the route taken by Gneisenau and Nurnburg across the Pacific, but had instead found the Leipzig off the coast of Chile on December 2nd.
The Gneisenau and Nurnburg had avoided Cradock’s forces during November, meeting a collier that had been sent out from San Pedro, and hiding in the isolated bays and maze of channels around the tip of South America. Captain Maerker of the Gneisenau decided to stay away from the Falklands (very wisely – the islands were defended by the battleship Canopus and the cruiser Monmouth, in addition to Cradock’s occasional visits to re-coal), and instead headed for the mouth of the River Plate. There he hoped to raid British shipping before meeting another supply ship to the east of the Abrolhos Rocks and heading back towards Germany.
On the morning of 11th December, Invincible, Good Hope and Suffolk were to the north of the Plate when they received a radio signal from the refrigerator ship Estrella, which was being pursued by a warship (one of the first ‘raider warnings’ ever broadcast). Judging by the signal strength and the position given, they were right on top of her and Cradock ordered his flagship Invincible to charge ahead.
Nurnburg had caught and fired on the freighter in retaliation for the distress signal by the time Cradock reached her, and the Estrella would burn and sink. However, she was revenged swiftly as Nurnburg was crippled by the battlecruiser in less than half an hour’s action, before she sailed on, to leave the two armoured cruisers to finish the smaller German ship.
Gneisenau should have been well away from her companion, as there was no need for both ships to approach an unarmed merchantman. However, with little fuel or time to spare, Maerker had chosen stayed in contact. It was a fatal mistake, as Gneisenau was chased down over the course of the next three hours. Although Invincible ran out of ammunition for her forward turret during the pursuit, and Gneisenau’s gunnery was excellent, the final result was never in doubt.
Closer to home, the capture by the Russians of German naval codebooks in late August had given the Admiralty in London a crucial advantage. They were forewarned of German plans for a further raid, but even so the information was incomplete, and a range of possible routes and locations had to be covered.
British co-ordination went badly wrong; signals were missed and sailings were delayed, while scouts from the Second Battle Squadron engaged German light forces, but Hipper’s battlecruisers escaped at speed before the battleships ever sighted him. Poor weather and a mix-up of coded position indicators meant that Beatty’s battlecruisers never came within 30 miles of the Germans, despite their charging south at high speed once the confusion had been straightened out.
The German raid of 16th December was the most severe blow to the Royal Navy’s prestige in over a century; mainland Britain had been attacked and the Navy had failed to destroy the enemy in return. However, for the British war effort as a whole, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise; to the newspapers and the public, the Germans were now unquestionably ‘brutish Huns’, ‘baby-killing barbarians’ and such like, and the recruiting offices were filled to overflowing with volunteers desperate to do their bit in revenging the victims of Scarborough and Hartlepool.
By the start of 1915, the Navy had cleared the oceans of German warships, but in the North Sea, the Kaisermarine still had a short period of grace, while scattered British forces returned to home waters.
