Battle of Dogger Bank, 1915: the battlecruiser chase that got away

Dogger Bank was the first time the heavy ships of the British and German fleets fought each other directly, and the first clash of battlecruisers anywhere. For a few hours it looked as though the Royal Navy might sink an entire German squadron. It sank one ship.²

Reading the enemy's mail

By 1915 the British Admiralty could read the three main German naval codes about as fast as the Germans themselves. The Germans noticed that their sorties seemed to be expected, but blamed British spy ships disguised as neutral Dutch fishing boats on the Dogger Bank. Rear Admiral Franz Hipper was sent out with his battlecruisers to clear them away.³

On the afternoon of 23 January the codebreakers deciphered the signals for Hipper's sortie, and Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty, commander of the Battle Cruiser Force, was ordered to sea to meet him. Beatty sailed from the Forth with five battlecruisers in two squadrons: Lion, Tiger and Princess Royal, and New Zealand and Indomitable, supported by light cruisers and the destroyers of the Harwich Force. Admiral Jellicoe's battleships left Scapa Flow to cut off any breakout. Hipper had three battlecruisers, Seydlitz, Moltke and Derfflinger, and the older armored cruiser Blücher.⁴

A stern chase

At about 7:20 a.m., still in the dark, the light cruiser HMS Aurora ran into the German cruisers and opened fire. Beatty turned toward the flashes, and in his own words in his dispatch, increased to 22 knots and sent his light cruisers and flotillas after the enemy. As the light came up he could see the Germans, but was not placed to cut off their retreat to the east. Hipper, who had first been told he was facing slower battleships, turned for home.⁵

It became a stern chase. The British battlecruisers could make about 28 knots and the Germans 27, but Blücher only 23, and she began to drop back. Lion opened fire on Blücher at 8:52 and started hitting at 9:07, then shifted to the ships ahead. At 9:35 Beatty ordered each of his ships to engage its opposite number, but Tiger fired at Seydlitz instead of Moltke, leaving Moltke free to pound Lion. Seydlitz was badly hit; a shell set fire to propellant charges in her turrets and nearly blew her up.⁶

The flagship falls out

The Germans concentrated on Beatty's flagship. Lion was hit again and again, by about 16 heavy shells in the count of naval-history.net, and one hit from Derfflinger put a condenser out of action, so her boilers could not be fed and she would eventually have to stop. Around 11 a.m. she dropped astern with a heavy list, her lights and power gone and all but two of her signal halyards shot away.⁷

The battle still seemed to be going Britain's way. Blücher was clearly doomed and Seydlitz was seriously damaged. Then a submarine periscope was reported; Beatty later said he saw it himself, and he ordered a 90 degree turn away, the standard response, which opened the range. He then hoisted "Course North East" and "Attack the rear of the enemy". The two signals were read together as an order to attack the rear of the enemy to the northeast, which was where Blücher lay.⁸

Rear Admiral Sir Archibald Moore, now in command, took the four undamaged battlecruisers back to finish off the sinking Blücher instead of pursuing Hipper. Beatty crossed to a destroyer and boarded Princess Royal at about 12:20 p.m., to find that Blücher was sunk and the German battlecruisers gone. Hipper reached port safely.⁹

The end of Blücher

Blücher fought to the last against the whole squadron. The destroyer Meteor, closing in for a torpedo attack, was hit in her forward boiler room and had to be towed home. Blücher finally rolled over and sank. As British ships picked up her survivors, a Zeppelin and a seaplane tried to bomb them, as Beatty reported in his dispatch.¹⁰

British casualties were light: naval-history.net lists 10 killed in Tiger and two in Meteor. Lion was towed home by Indomitable and needed extensive repairs.¹¹

Lessons learned and not learned

Beatty was bitterly disappointed that he had not destroyed all four big ships. Both navies studied the battle, but John Rickard of HistoryOfWar.org argues that the Germans drew the more important lesson. The fire in Seydlitz showed how dangerous it was to keep too many propellant charges out of the magazines and in the turrets, and the Germans tightened their handling. The British concentrated on fixing their signals. At Jutland, sixteen months later, several British battlecruisers blew up after flash reached their magazines.¹²

Dogger Bank was claimed in Britain as a victory, and it was one: Germany lost a ship and gained nothing. But it was the chase that got away, and its signals failure foreshadowed the problems of the much bigger battle to come.