MY EXPERIENCES IN THE GREATEST NAVAL BATTLE IN THE WAR
What Happened When the "Bluecher" Went Down
Told by a Survivor of the Ill-Fated German Cruiser
The narrator's name is withheld because at the time of this writing he is a prisoner-of-war. His story is related in the New York American. Copyright, 1915, Star Company. The armored German cruiser Bluecher was sunk in the great naval battle off Helgoland, January 24, 1915.
I—STORY OF THE GREAT SEA BATTLE
We had just had breakfast on the Bluecher when a fast British scout cruiser hovered for a moment on the far-distant horizon and then disappeared. We knew at once that our location was being reported by wireless to the nearest British patrol ships. Orders were signalled at once through the German fleet to turn away from the British shore and steer for home. It was Sunday morning.
About nine o'clock columns of smoke could be seen on the far horizon behind us. The enemy were after us—but not yet could we see them. Suddenly from the blue sky above a shell fell near us, with a moaning, groaning whine. We could see no ship. From somewhere below the horizon had come this shot.
Nowhere visible were there any warships of the enemy which our gunners could find for a target. Still out of the skies above us more shells continued to fall in front of us, beside and behind us.
Finally the observers at the masthead were able to make out through their telescopes the tops of the masts of a ship, but our hull was buried out of sight, and yet those British gunners in their turrets, who could not see even the tops of our masts, were rapidly getting the distance and range of the Bluecher from the fire-control officers far up in their own mast tops.
At this moment was beginning a naval battle the like of which had never occurred before in the history of sea power, for never before have ships of such size and speed, with guns of such great range and punishing power, been engaged. This battle, which began between ships more than ten miles apart which could not see each other, continued to increase in fierceness of action until the British pursuers, who had worked themselves up to the astonishing speed of thirty-four miles an hour, began to overtake us and rake us at point blank range. Although the Bluecher was protected by six-inch plates of armor and six-inch plates on her turrets, we knew that we were doomed. We were at the mercy of five British battle cruisers, faster in speed, heavier in armament and more powerful in guns.
What happened to the Bluecher that Sunday morning is a story unparalleled by anything in the previous history of the world. The Bluecher received every imaginable form of projectile, and as a final kick its end was hastened by a torpedo from the British cruiser Arethusa.
A curious fact is that our most frightful punishment came in the early stages of the engagement when the British ships were eight or ten miles away from us. This extraordinary occurrence was due to the British thirteen-and-a-half-inch shells that were fired at such a high elevation that they came down upon as from the sky, piercing our unprotected decks and penetrating on through to the bottom of the ship, where they exploded in the very vitals of the Bluecher, doing the maximum amount of damage and destruction.
The British ships, as I have said, were away on the horizon, more than ten miles distant, when they started to fire. Shots came slowly at first. They fell ahead and over, raising vast columns of water; now they fell astern and short. The British guns were finding the range. Those deadly water spouts crept nearer and nearer. The men on deck watched them with a strange fascination.
Soon one pitched close to the ship, and a vast watery pillar, a hundred metres high, one of them affirmed, fell lashing on the deck. The range had been found. Dann aber ging's los! Now the shells came thick and fast, with a horrible droning hum. At once they did terrible execution. The electric plant was soon destroyed, and the ship plunged in a darkness that could be felt. "You could not see your hand before your nose," said one.
Down below decks there were horror and confusion, mingled with gasping shouts and moans as the shells plunged through the decks. It was only later, when the range shortened, that their trajectory flattened and they tore holes in the ship's sides and raked her decks. At first they came dropping from the sky.
This was because the British ships were firing from a great distance and must aim high in the air in order that their shells should reach us ten miles away. Thus it was that the shells falling from above on our decks found our most vulnerable spot—for our decks were not protected by steel armor as were our armor-belted sides.
The shells penetrated the decks. They bored their way even to the stokehold. The coal in the bunkers was set on fire. Since the bunkers were half empty the fire burned merrily.
In the engine room a shell licked up the oil and sprayed it around in flames of blue and green, scarring its victims and blazing where it fell. Men huddled together in dark compartments, but the shells sought them out, and there Death had a rich harvest. The terrific air pressure resulting from explosion in a confined space left a deep impression on the minds of all of us on the Bluecher. The air, it would seem, roars through every opening and tears its way through every weak spot. All loose or insecure fittings are transformed into moving instruments of destruction.
Open doors bang to—and jam—and closed iron doors bend outward like tin plates, and through it all the bodies of men are whirled about like dead leaves in a Winter blast, to be battered to death against the iron walls. In one of the engine rooms—it was the room where the high velocity engines for ventilation and forced draughts were at work—men were picked up by that terrible Luftdruck like the whirl drift at a street corner and tossed to a horrible death amid the machinery. There were other horrors too fearful to recount.
II—SCENES OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION
If it was appalling below deck it was more than appalling above. The Bluecher was under the fire of so many ships. Even the little destroyers peppered her. "It was one continuous explosion," said a gunner. The ship heeled over as the broadsides struck her, then righted herself, rocking like a cradle.
Gun crews were so destroyed that stokers had to be requisitioned to carry ammunition. Men lay flat for safety. The decks presented a tangled mass of scrap iron.
In one casement, the only one, as they thought, undestroyed, two men continued to serve their guns. They fired it as the ship listed, adapting the elevation to the new situation. The Bluecher had run her course. She was lagging, lame, and with the steering gear gone was beginning slowly to circle. It was seen that she was doomed, but still the gunfire from the British kept up with relentless, incessant fury.
Some of the men on board were rendered deaf. The ship quivered and rocked under the recoil of her own guns. The deadly British broadsides made her reel. The guns were torn from their settings and whole gun crews hurled to destruction. Men hurtled down from aloft, bruised, bleeding, dead.
Men were swept from the deck like flies from a tablecloth. Everywhere blood trickled and flowed. It was a fever of excitement. Men found blood pouring down their legs, but could not locate their wounds. Men in authority lost their heads and confusion reigned. Their nerves could not stand the strain.
A shell would burst in the interior of the ship in a halo of flame and fire would arise from the deck, though there was nothing on the deck apparently that could burn. During the fight one of the sailors noticed the captain pull up his trousers and search for a wound; no one could then say whether he was wounded or not.
It has been generally believed that a ship fighting end-on stands the smallest chance of being hit. That is what our naval textbooks teach us. But that is no longer the case.
The effective target presented by an armored ship end-on is really much greater than when she is broadside-on, besides, in the former position, losing whatever protection might be afforded by her vertical side armor. This is one of the unexpected lessons taught by the ill-fated Bluecher.
We knew we had more than a hundred miles to go before we would reach the protection of our mine fields, and we knew that the Bluecher had the poorest chance of any of the German ships, as she was the slowest. Desperate efforts were made to keep the Bluecher at her maximum speed, but no matter how hard we tried to get away we saw the big English ships steadily overhauling us.
We knew what was in store for us as soon as our officers were able to make out the outlines of the approaching ships. We knew the armament and the gun equipment we had to face. We knew that each of those oncoming British battle cruisers could throw a weight of metal 10,000 pounds twice every minute—a total of fifty tons of projectiles every minute. Yet through it all some never despaired of their lives; others from the beginning gave themselves up as lost.
As the nearest of the English ships drew closer, the angle of their gun fire became flatter, but still from far off on the horizon came the shells it seemed to drop from the skies. After a time we were receiving literally a hailstorm of shells—some falling from overhead down through our decks, some penetrating through the stern and travelling half way the length of the ship, and still others coming straight through the sides.
And this was not all. The big British battle cruiser that led the British line thundered on past us and then began to rake us with her stern batteries. The gunners in the stern turrets of the British ship had been standing idle and restless, impatient to have a hand in the fight. As this ship drew on past us the rear guns for the first time had a chance at the Bluecher, and they tore our bow and forward works with their heavy shells, while the after guns of the secondary batteries raked our decks at point-blank range.
We were the first under fire in the action and we were the last under fire. Practically every English ship poured projectiles into us. I have never seen such gunnery, and there has never been the like of it before in the history of the world. We could not fight such guns as the English ships had, and before long we had no guns of any kind to fight with. Our decks were swept by shot, our guns were smashed and the gun crews wiped out.
One particular shell from a thirteen-and-a-half-inch gun I remember well. I saw it coming and watched it burst in the heart of the ship. This single projectile probably killed and wounded not less than fifty men. We had our floating equipment handy and soon began to put it on. Many of the men leaped into the water, preferring to trust to getting picked up by the British rather than remain for certain destruction on the doomed and helpless Bluecher.
It was early in the action that the concentrated fire of the British guns on the Bluecher landed a shell directly over our engine room. This slowed up the ship and we began to drop back. Very soon a second shell reached the engine room, and we signalled the rest of the fleet, "All engines useless." In another half hour the Bluecher was a mass of flame from fore bridge to stern. One shell pierced the foundation of a turret and set off some ammunition, causing a deafening explosion and great loss of life within the turret.
In the midst of the infernal noise and carnage a strange incident happened. A reserve sailor who stood unoccupied near one of the gun crews followed the details of the battle as they were telephoned to the turret from time to time by the commander. Finally, unable to keep back his feelings, the sailor produced a violin. While the guns roared in the turrets and pillars of water were thrown up by the falling shells he played "The Watch on the Rhine," and from all sides the men joined in the song.
Battered above decks, the vitals torn and twisted, and with many holes in her sides, the Bluecher reeled and stumbled like a drunken sailor. But it was the torpedo from the Arethusa that was the final death blow. She drew alongside, and one of the British officers shouted through a megaphone a warning in German that they were about to launch a torpedo. Our men understood, and many of them took headers into the water.
Steaming within 200 yards of the reeling Bluecher, the British warship discharged her torpedo, which went home. The explosion had an appalling result, and none would have survived if they had remained clinging to the wreck.
The wounded Bluecher finally settled down, turned wearily over and disappeared in a swirl of water.