Second Battle of Heligoland Bight, 1917: a chase through the minefields

In the autumn of 1917 the war in the North Sea had become a war of mines. On 17 November a British force came racing into the Heligoland Bight to catch the German ships clearing them, and a running fight followed through smoke, minefields and confusion. It ended with no ship sunk on either side and with recriminations in both navies.²

Who won the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight and why?

Neither side won outright, and the action is usually judged inconclusive. The Germans saved their minesweepers by drawing the whole British force after their four light cruisers and hiding behind smoke. The British, unsure of their own minefields and slow to use their fastest ships, turned away when German battleships appeared. No warship was sunk.³

Background: the mine barrier

By 1917 the British had laid a broad barrier of minefields across the approaches to the Heligoland Bight. Goldrick argues that the fields hemmed in both the High Seas Fleet and the U-boats on which Germany depended to starve Britain. The British official history describes how the Germans answered with sweeping operations on the outer edge of the barrier, more than a hundred miles from Heligoland, protected by light cruisers and destroyers and sometimes by battleships.⁴ › Battle of Dogger Bank, 1915

The barrier had been slow in coming. British mines were unreliable for much of the war: Goldrick notes that the Royal Navy's first dependable mine was copied from a German model, and Jellicoe, First Sea Lord in 1917, wrote that Britain still lacked a thoroughly satisfactory mine and had few to lay in the early months of that year. As the fields spread outward, the German sweepers had to work ever farther from home, and Jellicoe named the action of 17 November as the kind of chance this gave British light forces.⁵

In mid-November British intelligence learned that a large German sweep was coming. Henry Newbolt, writing the official history, records that reports from agents and submarine commanders were so detailed that the Admiralty drew up a regular plan of attack, and Goldrick likewise writes that Admiralty intelligence had revealed the German operations. The ships were ordered out from Rosyth on 16 November to strike at dawn the next day.⁶

Armies and commanders: two fleets at sea

The German force under Rear Admiral von Reuter, flying his flag in the light cruiser Königsberg, consisted of minesweepers and barrier breakers, specially strengthened trawlers, with destroyers and four light cruisers, Königsberg, Frankfurt, Pillau and Nürnberg. The battleships Kaiser and Kaiserin were kept near Heligoland in support.⁷

The Germans called these sweeps test trips or “thrust voyages.” The minesweepers led, followed by destroyers and barrier breakers, with the light cruisers behind them, while heavy warships covered the procession from waters known to be clear. The covering force for 17 November was the two battleships under the Kaiserin's captain, Grasshoff.⁸

The British came with overwhelming strength. Vice Admiral Napier led the 1st Cruiser Squadron, the large light cruisers Courageous and Glorious, together with the 1st and 6th Light Cruiser Squadrons and their destroyers. Behind them, covering from the west, steamed Vice Admiral Pakenham's 1st Battle Cruiser Squadron, led by the Lion, with Rear Admiral Phillimore in the Repulse.⁹

Three lines on a chart

The British knowledge of the mines was patchy, and both Newbolt and Goldrick put this at the center of the story. Only the commander-in-chief and Pakenham had a full chart of the minefields. Napier could go past one prohibited line, Line A, and believed he could pass a second, Line B, drawn round the danger areas in the mine memoranda, but his chart also showed a large field laid in 1915 that he regarded as an absolute barrier; the officers commanding the light cruiser squadrons had never marked it. Goldrick calls the old field Line C and notes that its mines were long ineffective, which Napier did not know.¹⁰

The battle in phases

Contact. Contact came at about half past seven, at long range, with the rising sun behind the Germans. At 7:37 the Courageous opened fire with her 15-inch guns, and she and the Glorious engaged the German cruisers while the light cruisers went for the sweepers. Under heavy fire the German ships made smoke and vanished behind it. The mark boat Kehdingen, a requisitioned trawler, was the only German vessel lost.¹¹

The chase. Von Reuter fell back toward the southeast, into waters the British believed to be mined. The British, unsure what lay behind the smoke, slowed and turned, and Napier never ordered more than 25 knots from his two fast cruisers, which could make over 30. Both Newbolt and Goldrick single this out as the decisive failure of the day. When Napier paused near Line B, the Germans gained ground, and the British light cruisers came under fire: the Cardiff was hit several times.¹²

Von Reuter's gamble. The German admiral took a deliberate risk. While his destroyers and cruisers drew the British fire, the sweepers slipped their gear and made off to the east, and almost the whole British force followed his four cruisers instead. Goldrick writes that von Reuter delayed his withdrawal so that no light craft were left behind, and both he and Newbolt note that the cruisers then steamed through waters thought dangerous because of British mines.¹³

No British ships went after the sweepers. Newbolt notes that once von Reuter turned southeast his auxiliaries were retiring to the northeast with no British force detached to attack them, and Scheer wondered why the British destroyers, faster and better armed, did not make better use of their strength to destroy his weak minesweepers outright.¹⁴

Smoke and torpedoes. Again and again the German line disappeared in smoke, and the British lookouts reported torpedo tracks. Newbolt describes a torpedo attack ordered by von Reuter to check the pursuit, with one torpedo passing close ahead of the Cardiff; Goldrick writes that the British took the wakes for U-boat torpedoes and that several ships thought they saw submarines, though none was there. Scheer counts six torpedoes fired by the German boats, none of them a certain hit, and the British themselves could fire hardly any torpedoes at that range.¹⁵

The recall. Around nine o'clock Pakenham, reading Napier's signal that the enemy were out of sight, ordered all the squadrons to rejoin him; Napier, believing the Germans had been reinforced, pressed on a little longer before turning back at the limit of his chart. The light cruiser squadrons, who knew nothing of that limit, continued the chase, and the Repulse came up with them.¹⁶

The Repulse. Rear Admiral Phillimore, too, went beyond his orders. Pakenham had warned him not to take the battlecruiser into the minefields, but the Repulse came up behind the light cruisers and joined the fight, the only heavy British ship still in action once Napier had turned away.¹⁷

Turning point: the battleships and the Calypso

At about 9:40, as the pursuit seemed at last to be closing, a shell struck the light cruiser Calypso's conning tower. Everyone inside was killed, her captain, Herbert Edwards, was mortally wounded, and the gunnery officer, Lieutenant H. C. Clarke, took command and brought her home. The sources differ on the shell: Newbolt attributes the hit to one of the German cruisers, Goldrick to a 150 mm round, while Royal Museums Greenwich, describing W. L. Wyllie's drawing of the moment, writes of a 12-inch shell from the Kaiserin.¹⁸

Minutes later heavy salvoes fell around the light cruisers: the Kaiser and Kaiserin had come up from Heligoland. The Caledon was hit on the waterline without serious damage, and the British turned away, with the Repulse covering the retreat. One of her last shells struck the Königsberg and started a serious fire, both accounts agree; Goldrick adds that the hit slowed von Reuter's flagship and ended his hope of turning back. At about 10:40 a dense fog came down and the action was over.¹⁹

The German battleships had come late and did little more than drive the British off. Von Reuter wanted them to advance and catch the British between his cruisers and their guns, but his signals were not understood, Scheer and Goldrick agree. The battlecruisers Hindenburg and Moltke, sent out once news of the fight arrived, reached him only after the British had gone.²⁰

Counting the cost

No warship was sunk on either side. The only German vessel lost was the mark boat Kehdingen, a requisitioned trawler anchored to mark the start of the sweep. The accounts differ on her end: Newbolt records that British destroyers were detached to pick up her survivors, while Scheer writes that her crew went overboard and the British carried her off.²¹

The worst British loss of life was in the Calypso, where everyone in the conning tower and on the lower bridge was killed. The Cardiff was hit three times and set on fire, and the Caledon took a heavy shell on the waterline that did no serious damage. On the German side the Königsberg suffered most: the Repulse's shell passed through her three funnels and burst in a coal bunker, starting a serious fire.²²

Aftermath

In Britain the commander-in-chief was dissatisfied that a large force had let the sweepers escape after a long, unsatisfactory stern chase, Newbolt writes, and the Admiralty criticized Napier's early turns and his failure to increase speed; Goldrick records that Napier was bitterly criticized, though opinion was not unanimous. Both accounts conclude that the staff work had failed: Newbolt reports the Admiralty's finding that the fleet had been kept informed about the minefields in a dangerously haphazard way, and Goldrick that the British had to admit their doctrine, planning and exercises had not prepared them for such conditions.²³

On the German side, Scheer judged that the light cruisers had done their duty of shielding the sweepers but that the two battleships had come to their support too late; Goldrick goes further, writing that the battleships' caution cost the navy the chance of an important success in the very kind of action in the Bight it had long wanted. The Royal Museums Greenwich catalogue notes that reports of the action vary considerably, especially about the units involved.²⁴

Legacy and memory

The action is remembered, where it is remembered at all, as a lesson in staff work. Newbolt ends his account with a question he says was never put: why Napier, with the enemy in sight and in superior force, followed at 25 knots instead of closing at 30. Goldrick's verdict is that Napier had clearly erred in not using the speed of his two fast cruisers.²⁵

Its echoes reached the top of the Admiralty. Goldrick argues that the failure helped bring about the dismissal of the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, six weeks later. The men of the Calypso kept their own memorial: Wyllie's drawing of their ship, signed by three of her officers, is now in the National Maritime Museum.²⁶ › The Zeebrugge Raid, 1918