Chapter 100: Perseverance

At 9:57, the Derfflinger's luck finally ran out. A 343-millimeter armor-piercing shell from the Iron Duke struck with pinpoint accuracy at the bow, centering on turret A and punching clean through its frontal armor. The shell itself did not detonate, yet the shock of the high-velocity impact immediately disabled the turret and hurled shrapnel that killed more than a dozen men inside it.

Fortunately the ammunition magazines within the turret remained intact.

At that instant the Derfflinger was locked in direct combat with the Iron Duke, flagship of the Grand Fleet. According to the Derfflinger's own log, the ship had already struck the Iron Duke twice before without inflicting lasting harm or reducing her to a fighting cripple. After the latest hit, however, the German battleship's main-gun battery suddenly lost a third of its firepower; only six of her original ten guns could still be brought to bear, while the Iron Duke retained all ten.

The moment exposed the fatal weakness of the triple-turret arrangement. Although the layout packed the largest possible number of heavy guns into the smallest possible space, it forced three separate turrets to be concentrated at only two locations. In battle gunners instinctively chose the enemy's turrets as aiming points. To the British eye the Derfflinger therefore presented just two targets: the two back-to-back turrets mounted at the bow. The Iron Duke, by contrast, had dispersed five twin turrets across three separate positions, giving the German gunners three distinct aiming points.

British gunners were therefore operating at far lower risk and far greater precision than their German counterparts. The very Imperial engineers who had once argued against triple turrets had foreseen exactly this danger: concentrating such a large volume of firepower at two points made it easy to lose an entire battery in a single salvo. Spreading the guns across three positions would have preserved more of the ship's striking power.

The Derfflinger's fate could not, of course, be taken as proof that all triple-turret layouts were inherently flawed. Remember that she was only a battlecruiser; her armor had always been thinner than that of a contemporary battleship. Had the ship that suffered the hit been a full battleship instead, the same 343-millimeter shell would almost certainly have failed to penetrate the turret's frontal armor and the loss of one-third of the main guns would have been avoided.

Two minutes later the Augusta Queen, still in the line astern of the Derfflinger, took her turn. The Marlborough was the nominal opponent, yet the shell that struck the Augusta Queen had come from the Second Division's Captain. At more than twenty kilometers the British gunner had fired at extreme range; the shot was already spent, failed to penetrate the horizontal armor belt, and simply burst on the hull plating, killing a dozen or so men in two nearby gun stations.

The Augusta Queen's survival was entirely due to the major refit she had undergone before the war. Starting in 1912 the Imperial Navy had modernized five pre-war capital ships—Kronprinz, Kaiser Wilhelm, Kronprinz Wilhelm, Prince Carl, and Augusta Queen. The Augusta Queen had received the most complete transformation of the lot. She had exchanged coal-fired boilers for oil-fired ones and steam turbines, installed high-caliber main guns, increased the elevation of the main battery, and—most importantly—had the horizontal armor thickened. Among the five only the Augusta Queen had received this upgrade, because her original freeboard had been high enough to allow a useful increase in displacement without compromising stability for the other ships.

After the refit her horizontal armor stood at 145 millimeters, on a par with contemporary battleship standards. Her immunity zone against 12.5-inch (343 mm) shells had therefore shrunk to seventeen thousand meters: beyond that range no armor-piercing projectile could reach her vitals.

Once struck, the Augusta Queen answered with immediate fury. The Marlborough, the ship the Augusta Queen was actually dueling, was the one who suffered. Lookouts aboard the Augusta Queen saw the shell strike amidships, apparently behind the second funnel, and believed they had destroyed the central turret. They were almost certainly right, although direct proof was lacking because the Marlborough's central turret resumed fire only minutes later. The hit was far from symbolic; it could be read as the opening salvo of the Marlborough's doom.

While the Augusta Queen was fighting her own battle, the three ships astern—Kronprinz, Kronprinz Wilhelm, and Kaiser Wilhelm—received varying punishment. The Kronprinz lost her main director; only the backup sight remained usable. The second funnel of the Kronprinz Wilhelm was torn away, choking the boilers with smoke. The Kaiser Wilhelm took two direct 305-millimeter hits, lost her after turret, and left a jagged wound in her quarterdeck.

The damage was serious but not yet fatal.

Then the Derfflinger herself was struck again, the shell landing between the aft conning tower and the second funnel, exactly where the ship's boats were stowed.

By this time the ship in the greatest danger was the one at the very rear of the line: the Kronprinz. As the Imperial Navy's first true capital ship, she carried the weight of twenty years of national prestige. Yet she had been left almost untouched by the modernization program; her freeboard was too low to permit armor strengthening, and the entire hull had grown old. Many refit details, including the watertight subdivision system, had been left half-finished. In short, she was the weakest battleship in the German fleet.

Against her stood the youngest battleship in the British Royal Navy: the Ireland, a former German-built export vessel seized after the war began. Although she lacked the protection and endurance of the ships built for the Royal Navy itself, she carried ten 343-millimeter guns and fought on roughly equal terms with the Iron Duke class. The Ireland had been laid down to the George V design, only slightly inferior in armor and range.

Within half an hour the Kronprinz had been hit three times. Her own return fire was savage; one 305-millimeter shell struck the Ireland's conning tower with terrible accuracy, killing most of the men inside, including the captain, though it did not penetrate the armor.

During the brief pause that followed, the six battleships of the Second Division turned every gun on the Kronprinz. At 10:22 a 343-millimeter shell found the conning tower, punched through the armor, and killed more than thirty men inside, including the captain and the first officer. The Kronprinz's command was shattered.

She did not withdraw.

Around 10:30 the second officer on the aft bridge stepped forward, took the wheel, and kept the ship in the fight. The Kronprinz fought with desperate tenacity, yet every extra minute of resistance drew heavier and heavier blows. The British had seen it clearly: she was the weakest ship in Redler's squadron and therefore the easiest to sink. The formation itself proved the point. Because she was the weakest, the Kronprinz had been placed at the very end of the line; even if she could not hold, the rest of the fleet would remain untouched. At that moment, around 10:30, she could have withdrawn without endangering anyone else.

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