Chapter 151: Realization Came Too Late

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By this stage of the battle, if King had been thinking clearly, he would have slowed down instead of pursuing the High Seas Fleet.

Put simply, the Atlantic Fleet could never catch the High Seas Fleet. The initiative to engage or break off rested entirely with the High Seas Fleet, so pursuit was completely pointless.

The High Seas Fleet did, however, have one tactical weakness.

Its primary objective was to destroy the troop convoy, and it would therefore certainly try to draw the Atlantic Fleet away from it. Once King recognized this, the tactical choice was obvious. In simple terms, as long as the Atlantic Fleet remained with the troop convoy, Feng Chengqian would have no opportunity at all.

In fact, King had already begun to understand this.

But something happened at 10:57 that made his blood run hot and caused him to forget the tactic he most needed to employ—the tactic that was also unquestionably the correct one.

The Bayern had been hit for the first time.

The shell struck the gunhouse of the B turret, in front of the bridge. Although it failed to penetrate the thickest armor protecting the barbette—it should be remembered that the three most heavily armored sections of a battleship were the conning tower, the face of the main-gun turret, and the barbette—the fourteen-inch armor-piercing shell still did what it was designed to do. The B turret was temporarily disabled, and the explosion ignited several nearby objects.

From a distance, the Bayern appeared to have suffered catastrophic damage.

The smoke from the explosion, mingled with the black smoke from the ensuing fire, enveloped the bridge. It was quite enough to make the relatively inexperienced American lookouts misjudge the situation.

As a result, King believed that the shell had struck the Bayern’s command bridge.

Had that truly been the case, the shot would have decided the outcome of the entire naval battle. Even if the armor of the command bridge had not been penetrated, the violent shock wave produced by the explosion could have killed or wounded the officers and men inside, depriving the High Seas Fleet of unified command.

Clearly, that was not what had happened.

Because the point of impact was very close to the bridge, more than twenty men aboard the Bayern, including Feng Chengqian, were injured. Their wounds, however, were no more than minor bruises and did not affect the battleship’s combat capability. More importantly, the B turret had not been destroyed. Its gun crew had merely been rendered temporarily incapable of action.

In addition, Imperial Navy regulations required that whenever a turret or barbette was struck by a large-caliber armor-piercing shell, the fire doors on the ammunition hoist had to be closed immediately. Only after damage-control personnel had thoroughly inspected the hoist, the magazines, and other critical areas and confirmed that there was no danger could the fire doors be reopened and ammunition again sent up to the turret.

Completing all this would take at least several minutes. In other words, the B turret was incapable of firing only for the next few minutes.

But those few minutes were enough.

Believing that the Bayern had suffered severe damage, King immediately concluded that the High Seas Fleet must have lost unified command and that this was the best possible moment to pursue it.

At eleven o’clock, the Atlantic Fleet increased speed to eighteen knots.

King was obviously mistaken—and spectacularly so.

Even if one took a step back and assumed that the Bayern really had been gravely damaged and that Feng Chengqian was no longer at his command station, the High Seas Fleet would not have lost unified command. The reason was simple: Admiral Raeder was aboard the battlecruiser Moltke. The moment the Bayern lowered the admiral’s flag, he would immediately assume command.

On the basis of a fundamentally erroneous assessment, King made the worst possible decision.

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Feng Chengqian had ordered the fleet to accelerate for only one purpose: to make the Atlantic Fleet pursue it and widen the distance between the two fleets and the troop convoy.

Or, to put it another way, he wanted King to ignore the troop convoy behind him.

The Atlantic Fleet’s increase in speed naturally produced an even more direct consequence: the accuracy of the six battleships’ gunfire fell sharply.

The High Seas Fleet did not accelerate at once, because it had already increased the engagement distance to twenty-two thousand meters.

This gave the High Seas Fleet roughly five minutes in which to return fire. During those five minutes, the threat posed by the Atlantic Fleet was almost negligible. The eight capital ships of the High Seas Fleet could therefore pour fire upon the six American ships under comparatively relaxed conditions.

The fighting so far had already proved that five minutes was enough time for the eight capital ships of the High Seas Fleet to accomplish a great deal.

Between eleven o’clock and eleven-oh-five, the High Seas Fleet once again demonstrated the superb standards of Imperial Navy gunnery to the United States Navy, teaching it a lesson with a series of precise salvos. The American Navy, of course, paid a very expensive tuition fee—and learned one simple truth:

On the battlefield, it was always people, not weapons and equipment, who made the decisive difference.

During those five minutes, the eight German ships scored fourteen hits on the American ships. Of those fourteen hits, the four scored by the Bayern and Baden were the most important.

At 11:01, with only six main guns available, the Bayern achieved its second success of the naval battle. A 380-millimeter armor-piercing shell struck the Pennsylvania’s A turret, penetrated the turret roof, and exploded inside the gunhouse. Although the shell did not pose a direct threat to the Pennsylvania’s main-gun magazine—the fire and blast doors of the ammunition hoist were closed at the time—it knocked out one-quarter of the Pennsylvania’s main guns.

This shell once again proved that the Imperial Navy’s strategy for developing capital-ship firepower was the most effective.

As mentioned earlier, before the outbreak of the Great War, the Imperial Navy had equipped its capital ships with two different types of armor-piercing shells, one for long-range combat and the other for close-range action. It had also emphasized the importance of horizontal protection in capital-ship design, taking into account the differences between long-range and close-range battle.

The navy that most closely followed the Imperial Navy’s lead was not the Royal Navy, but the United States Navy.

Unfortunately, when building the Pennsylvania class, the American Navy had failed to recognize the importance of long-range combat and had not strengthened its horizontal protection. It was not until the New Mexico class that the horizontal protection of American capital ships reached the level of their Imperial counterparts.

As a result, the armor on the roof of the Pennsylvania’s main-gun turret was completely incapable of stopping a heavy 380-millimeter shell.

More importantly, the American Navy had not yet made a strict distinction between long-range and close-range ammunition.

Had the American Navy, like the Imperial Navy, developed heavy armor-piercing shells specifically for long-range gunnery, then the hit at 10:57—the one that struck the Bayern’s B-turret barbette—would certainly have inflicted severe damage on the Bayern. It might even have detonated the battleship’s main-gun magazine and sent the Bayern to the bottom.

When the Bayern later returned to Wilhelmshaven, engineers discovered that the shell had struck the junction between the barbette and the turret, where the barbette armor was relatively thin. Had the armor-piercing shell been only slightly more powerful, the consequences would have been unthinkable.

After striking the Pennsylvania again, the Bayern’s B turret returned to action.

The Bayern then hit the Pennsylvania twice more. One shell struck amidships on the port side and destroyed the lifeboats behind the funnel. The other hit the caged aft mast, killing two lookouts. Neither hit, however, inflicted serious damage on the Pennsylvania.

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The Baden also scored its first hit, a feat worthy of note.

At 11:03, during its eighteenth salvo, the Baden struck the Arizona. The shell hit near the bow and tore through four decks before exploding in the anchor compartment, blasting away both the main and auxiliary anchors and disabling the anchor machinery. At that critical moment, the Arizona might have suffered a major disaster had damage-control personnel not arrived in time and swiftly severed the anchor chains.

Even so, the blow left the Arizona’s bow severely distorted and flooded more than a dozen compartments in the forward section.

Clearly, there was no way the battleship could still reach a top speed of twenty knots.

Behind the battleships, the six battlecruisers also scored hits, though none managed to inflict severe damage on the American ships. The engagement distance was simply too great. Even with heavy shells, the 300-millimeter guns lacked sufficient power, while American battleships were renowned throughout the world for the thickness of their armor.

At 11:06, the High Seas Fleet began to accelerate.

By then, the engagement distance had fallen below twenty thousand meters.

Feng Chengqian’s strategy was very simple: he would not engage the Atlantic Fleet at close range. Instead, while maintaining the greatest practical distance, he would draw the Atlantic Fleet away from the main sea route.

By this point, King had finally awakened to what was happening.

During the nearly half-hour-long battle, the Atlantic Fleet had already deviated roughly fifteen nautical miles from the main route. If it continued fighting the High Seas Fleet, it would soon be separated from the troop convoy and would no longer be able to provide it with effective protection.

The problem was that by the time King realized this, it was already too late.

He had forgotten that Feng Chengqian had dispatched two cruiser detachments earlier.

At 11:07, Feng Chengqian first received a report from the cruiser detachment heading south. It had located the troop convoy, which had turned south to evade pursuit, and had encountered a detachment of American light cruisers. The two forces were about to enter combat, and the detachment was requesting orders.

Feng Chengqian did not order it to attack the troop convoy. Instead, he instructed it to deal with the American light cruisers escorting the convoy.

Immediately afterward, Feng Chengqian noticed that the Atlantic Fleet had not accelerated to catch up.

At 11:10, the cruiser detachment that had circled around from the north also sent a telegram. Its eight light cruisers had deployed and were searching for the troop convoy fleeing south.

After considering the situation briefly, Feng Chengqian gave the order to turn.

The High Seas Fleet did not break away from the Atlantic Fleet. Instead, it turned to starboard while accelerating at the same time.

In other words, Feng Chengqian intended to get ahead of the Atlantic Fleet and force King into a decisive battle, rather than turn back to protect the troop convoy. This would give the cruiser detachments, which had already maneuvered into position, an opportunity to act.

At this point, did King still have any choice?