Chapter twenty-eight: Clash in the Channel
By late August 1915 the 1st Canadian Corps, under Lt. Gen. Sir Edwin Alderson, KCB, was ready to be sent to the front line after being deployed from the other side of the Channel. The election of Alderson, in part, due to his experience in South Africa commanding Canadian troops during the Second Boer War but also for his problems with Sir Sam Hughes, Canadian Minister of Militia. Alderson and Hughes came soon to grips as the former complained about the poor quality of the politically appointed officers, the low degree of training and the total ineffectiveness of the Ross rifle, a weapon personally approved by Hughes.
Thus, Alderson was sent to England to keep him away from Hughes and to command the first corps of Canadian troops, that, by that stage of the war, they were training in Salisbury Plain. Alderson began at once to toughen his troops encamped in the wet, autumn weather and to dismiss the officers appointed by Hughes who had proved ineffectual. By late summer, the Canadian Corps was dispatched to France and attached to the British 2nd Army.
It was then when the Hochseeflotte went for another foray into the Channel, trying to catch the vulnerable transport ships without protection and, as it had happened in the first weeks of th war, the German commander was sorely dissapointed when he found a bigger and thougher enemy.
The younger brother of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Grossadmiral Prinz Heinrich von Preussen, led some of the most modern ships of the German navy in that attack, when he found his path blocked by the Channel Fleet, under Admiral The Hon Sir Hedworth Meux, GCB, KCVO. Meux, a friend of George V, had been, for a time, candidate to become the new First Sea Lord, but the "Fisherites" had blocked this move and Meux had ended defending cross-Channel communications, including transport for the British expeditionary force crossing to France. In March 1915 he became Admiral of the Fleet and now he was facing the German onslaught.
Meux, in a pre-war picture, when he was a Vice-Admiral.
Fortunately for the British, Commodore Roger Keyes was leading another submarine patrol into the Heligoland Bight, much in the same fashion as he had done since the outbreak of war, when the German ship sailed. His flotilla was a mixture of D-class and E-class submarines, based at Harwich, and tasked with undertaking offensive action in German waters. Keyes was a destroyer captain, not a submariner, but he was the ideal man for the job. Two of his submarines, E-9 and E-10 surfaced and one of them, the E-9, commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Max Horton, fired two torpedoes against the flagship of Prinz Heinrich, the new German dreadnought
Kronprinz: at 25,390 tonnes, capable of twenty-three knots and armed with ten 305 mm guns, she was one of the finest ship in the German Navy. At this moment she was also one of the luckies, as the two torpedos missed her. However, Horton was able to alert his commanders abour the German sortie and soon the Channel Fleet, which was escorting the Allied convoys to France, was informed. The Home Fleet also left Scapa Flow, but it was to arrive too late for the battle.
The SMS Kronprinz prior to the battle.
As the convoys returned to the southern coast of England, the Channel Fleet turned round and began to head back into the mouth of the Channel. Meux kept his fleet together by travelling at teen knots, with all his dreadnoughts in the van. Observing radio silence, the movements of his fleet remained unknown by the Germans.
The first sighting of the enemy fleet as it travelled through the Channel by a neutral merchant vessel near the island of Wight. This was not the only sighting, for another merchant vessel saw Prinz Heinrich’s fleet and reported in more detail. Prinz Henrich's fleet was lead by two pre-dreadnoughts,
Hessen and
Braunschweig, followed by the four Wittelsbach Class Battleships -
Wittelsbach, Mecklenburg, Wettin and
Schwaben -, the SMS
Prinzregent Luitpold - a Kaiser class battleship -, the Braunschweig class battleship SMS
Hessen, four cruisers (the CA
SMS Siegfried, as well as
Thetis, Undine and
Arkona, three light cruisers). The German ships sailed in line astern when the British fleet appeared in the horizon with the sight of distant gun flashes being followed up by columns of water rising not too far from his ships. Meux had caught sight of him first.
Meux left behind the much slower pre-dreadnoughts, which were struggling to make sixteen knots. The guns of his dreadnoughts more than made up for the absence of these last three ships, and soon an explosion engulfed the Sigfried: a direct hit on her magazine caused a ball of flame to rip through the ship, instantly sending her to the bottom of the sea without a single survivor. The German response was largely ineffectual, with gunfire often failing to hit Meux’s dreadnoughts, and not causing much damage when it did. The two combatants exchanged blows across the grey stretch of water, with the numerical superiority of the British beginning to manifest. Then another heavy shell from a British dreadnought – this time the
Dreadnought itself – plunged into the
Hessen.
Her captain was killed instantly when the shell struck the bridge, and the ship continued much like a headless chicken, going out from the German battle line as teh crew fought to repair the damage caused. Gunfire from British cruisers made matters worse, and another salvo from
Dreadnought finished the hapless
Hessen, breaking the ship in two. In reaction, Prinz Heinrich turned to starboard to head south-east in hope of avoiding Meux’s fire and to break the contact. As the German fleet turned, the British fire concentrated on the two German ships in the van –
Wettin and
Mecklenburg, and had all the guns of his dreadnoughts firing on these two vessels. Nearly thirty 305-mm (the good old twelve-inch) guns were now aimed at the leading German pre-dreadnoughts, who did their best to return the enemy fire. Eventually, Wettin exploded in a wall of flame while the remains of the ship floundered, which was now rapidly sinking. The damage inflicted on
Mecklenburg was appalling, and with four dreadnoughts now concentrating their fire on her, she soon became a floating carcass of twisted metal.
Soon
Prinzregent Luitpold was heavily damaged. The British dreadnoughts continued to pound
Prinzregent Luitpold for another fifteen minutes, whilst British and German cruisers duelled some way back. Finally, the German battleship began to falter, then list and finally sink.
By then the rest of the German squadron had managed to break the contact and speeded back to its base in Helgoland. In exchange for a hevily damaged light cruiser, the
Diamond, which was sunk when she was being towed to Plymouth, and a few destroyers, the Royal Navy had crushed again the Germany fiend.
@Enewald: Not really. The Serbian army got surrounded and wiped, but, for historical accuracy, I'll try to do something about that later on.
@quaazi: Yes to both comments. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...
@El Pip :rofl:
@Nathan Madien: You're not the only one who thinks that...
@Tommy4ever: Nobody at home, I'd say.
@FlyingDutchie: Last time he was searching for an elusive double agent called Ronald MacDonald.
@Milites: Apparently, the Indian army is bound to be successful. Perhaps they will reach Constatinople. Who knows?