Chapter 127: Unable to Hold On

Beatty was indeed proactive and eager for a decisive victory, yet he made a fatal error in judgment.

Undeniably, holding the line for a while longer might have led to a victory. The problem was that the High Seas Fleet’s performance in this engagement was significantly better than that of the Grand Fleet, and Hipper fought with such aggression that he left Beatty with very few opportunities. More importantly, the loss of a single battleship had little impact on the High Seas Fleet.

It could even be argued that Hipper did not need to adjust his battle order at all because of it.

After the *Prinz Luitpold* withdrew from the line, Feng Chengqian adjusted the engagement order of the Second Battleship Squadron. Per his orders, the *König Albert* and the *Kaiserin* shifted their fire to the *Neptune* and the *Agincourt*, leaving the *Kaiser* and the *Friedrich der Grosse* to deal with the *Queen Elizabeth*, thereby maintaining a numerical advantage in the pairings. Furthermore, this eased the pressure on the four battleships at the head of the line.

Feng Chengqian’s adjustments soon proved effective. At four minutes past seven, the last turret of the *Queen Elizabeth* was destroyed. Having lost her combat capability, the ship turned away to disengage. Although the Royal Navy claimed after the war that Beatty had ordered the *Queen Elizabeth* to retreat, Beatty later mentioned in his memoirs that he had given no such order; the ship’s captain had withdrawn from the battle line without authorization from the fleet commander. The Royal Navy only claimed it was Beatty’s order later to save face.

Of course, the captain of the *Queen Elizabeth* was not in the wrong. At the time of withdrawal, the ship had taken on over 1,500 tons of water, and to maintain balance, about 800 tons of seawater had been pumped into the starboard side, bringing the total water intake to over 2,000 tons. The ship’s maximum design flooding capacity was less than 3,000 tons. In other words, had she taken on another 700 tons, the *Queen Elizabeth* might have foundered on the journey home, even if she hadn't been sunk outright. Moreover, if the Grand Fleet were defeated, the *Queen Elizabeth* would certainly not have escaped had she not withdrawn early. In fact, it was precisely because she left the line early that the *Queen Elizabeth* avoided the searching German ships that night and returned to Scapa Flow two days later. Had she retreated with the rest of the Grand Fleet, she likely would have been overtaken that very night.

With the *Queen Elizabeth* out of the line, the situation turned dire for the Grand Fleet. At the head of the line, the four *König*-class battleships used their two-to-one superiority to suppress the remaining two battleships of the Grand Fleet’s First Battleship Squadron. In the center, after forcing the *Queen Elizabeth* to withdraw, the *Kaiser* and the *Friedrich der Grosse* reduced speed to rendezvous with the *Kaiserin* and the *König Albert*, joining forces against the Grand Fleet’s Second Battleship Squadron. Although the Germans had only four ships, the *Kaiser* and *Friedrich der Grosse* were nearly undamaged, the *Kaiserin* still had three turrets firing, and the *König Albert* had two operational, totaling thirty-nine main guns. In contrast, the six battleships of the Grand Fleet’s Second Battleship Squadron had only sixty-four main guns, of which only fifty-six were still in action. When accounting for hit rates, the British numerical advantage in firepower was neutralized. Furthermore, the four German ships were surging with momentum, fighting with increasing ferocity, while the Grand Fleet, having suffered continuous heavy damage, lacked the morale of the High Seas Fleet. At the rear, the Grand Fleet’s advantage was also insufficient; the Third Battleship Squadron had failed to gain absolute superiority in their duel.

At this moment, another force could not be ignored: the reconnaissance squadron led by Raeder. Just before seven o'clock, Raeder had completed his most critical mission—forcing Hamilton to withdraw the *Tiger* and the other two battlecruisers from the battlefield. Consequently, by ten past seven, Raeder had led his squadron back.

Per Hipper’s orders, Raeder’s primary task was to entangle the Grand Fleet’s Fourth Battleship Squadron, ensuring that those six older battleships could not play a role. Clearly, Hipper had overestimated those six ships. During the first hour of fighting, the Fourth Battleship Squadron had contributed almost nothing and could be considered negligible. It was not that the British crews were lacking in effort, but that the ships themselves were inadequate. Although the Royal Navy had followed the Imperial Navy’s lead in modernizing capital ships over ten years old before the war, the work was not thorough. For instance, the three *Bellerophon*-class and three *St. Vincent*-class ships did not have their main gun elevation increased or their barrels lengthened during the refit. The result was that all six ships suffered from severe deficiencies in long-range combat capabilities.

In the initial fighting, these six battleships contributed almost nothing. This was inevitable; positioned at the end of the line, the Fourth Battleship Squadron had to follow the ships ahead and could not change its engagement tactics at will. It was by exploiting this that the High Seas Fleet avoided being outnumbered. It can be said that if the Fourth Battleship Squadron had been able to contribute during that first hour, the outcome of the naval battle would have been vastly different. Regrettably, those six ships could not be put to effective use in time.

As Raeder returned to the battlefield, Beatty lost his last hope of victory. At 7:15, he finally realized that victory was out of reach and that continuing the fight would only result in greater losses. The question was, was there still time to retreat?

At 7:18, as Beatty prepared to issue the withdrawal order, the Grand Fleet suffered another heavy blow. The *Marlborough*, having fought hard for over an hour, finally reached her limit; a 300mm armor-piercing shell penetrated her side armor and exploded in the number one boiler room on the port side. The *Marlborough* was now trapped. Although she could maintain a combat speed of twelve knots, she would certainly be unable to keep up with the other ships during a retreat. Before Beatty could recover, the *Iron Duke* also took a heavy hit. An armor-piercing shell from the *König* struck the bow, destroying the foremost main turret. The violent explosion injured dozens of crew members on the bridge, and Beatty was not spared. The result was that Beatty failed to issue the order to retreat in time.

It was not until 7:27 that Beatty finally signaled the rest of the fleet to retreat via flag hoist. However, not all ships saw the flagship’s signals immediately. The reason was simple: night had fallen, and the flag signals were unclear.

Thus, problems arose. When the *Iron Duke* pulled back, the *Marlborough* did not keep up, and the Second Battleship Squadron behind her did not immediately follow. It was not until 7:32, when darkness had fully set in and the *Iron Duke* used light signals, that the Second Battleship Squadron turned to disengage. The Third Battleship Squadron turned at 7:37, and the Fourth followed at 7:40. In other words, it took the Grand Fleet more than ten minutes to turn and retreat.

During those ten minutes, the High Seas Fleet’s gunfire did not cease. At 7:33, after the *Marlborough* struggled to adjust her course, her stern was struck, and the steering compartment was destroyed by a 300mm armor-piercing shell. At 7:35, the command bridge of the *Aries* was destroyed, leaving the Second Battleship Squadron without unified command. At nearly the same time, the rear turret of the *Monarch* was hit, and the ship erupted in flames, appearing starkly visible in the night. At 7:37, the bow of the *Centurion* was blown away, also igniting a fire that made her a conspicuous target. At 7:39, the *George V* was hit in the stern, her port propeller shaft severed, and her speed could only be increased to sixteen knots. At 7:40, the *Hercules* was hit; the sudden flare of fire led German observers to believe the ship had suffered a massive explosion.

Even after the Grand Fleet completed its turn, the fighting did not stop. At 7:42, the *Vanguard*'s engine room was hit, her speed dropped sharply to under ten knots, and she was forced to withdraw from the formation alone. At 7:45, just as she was about to leave the battlefield, the *Temeraire* was struck in the stern by an armor-piercing shell fired from nineteen kilometers away. The shell penetrated the horizontal armor and exploded less than two meters from the bottom of the ship, severing the two central propeller shafts.

In those ten-plus minutes, the losses suffered by the Grand Fleet were even greater than in the previous hour of fighting.

Of course, the Grand Fleet did not come away empty-handed. By this time, within the High Seas Fleet, besides the already withdrawn *Prinz Luitpold*, the *König Albert* and the *Kaiserin* were nearly wrecked. The *Kaiserin* had taken on over 2,000 tons of water, and to maintain balance, 1,200 tons had been pumped into the opposite side. When she stopped firing, her freeboard was less than two meters, and waves were nearly washing onto her deck. The situation for the *König Albert* was even worse, with her stern already submerged. To keep the ship afloat, the captain ordered two-thirds of the crew to use every available container to bail out water, and they jettisoned a vast amount of equipment and supplies. At the time, the crew even threw personal belongings into the sea to reduce the ship’s displacement.

The most severely damaged were the four *Helgoland*-class battleships of the Third Battleship Squadron. Throughout the preceding battle, these four ships had borne almost the entire weight of the gunfire from the twelve battleships of the Grand Fleet’s Third and Fourth Battleship Squadrons, shouldering the pressure to create opportunities for their friendly ships at the cost of their own integrity.