But two points in this connection may be borne in mind. The affair off Heligoland took place on August 28, 1914. After losing three cruisers by exposing them to Sir David Beatty’s and Commodore Goodenough’s forces, the Germans managed their affairs very differently. Perhaps from this time on no German craft ventured into the North Sea at all, except when the whole fleet came out in force. And they did not come out in force very often, nor at all, except at night or when the weather was clear enough for the fleet’s scouts, either in the form of airships, destroyers, or cruisers, to give long warning of the presence of danger. The two raiding expeditions and Von Hipper’s excursion of January 28 are undertakings of a very different character.
The Bombardments.—Whatever the explanation, there was no more fighting in home waters for exactly five months, but the Germans made two expeditions in force right across to the English shores. Early in November a squadron of cruisers appeared off Yarmouth, fired at the Halcyon, let off some rounds, without doing any damage, on the town, and retreated precipitately, dropping mines as they went. A British submarine unfortunately ran foul of one of these and was lost with all hands at once. Halcyon, perhaps the smallest and least formidable vessel that ever crept into the “Navy List”, engaged the enemy imperturbably when they fled, losing one man from a fragment of shell, though practically unhurt herself. Private letters speak of salvoes falling short and over in the most disconcerting manner, and of the ship being so drenched with water as to be in danger of foundering. The old story of the very accurate, but ineffective, fire of the German ships, was thus repeated. But no official or detailed information on this subject has been given. In December a second and much more successful raid was made. Scarborough, the Hartlepools, and Whitby were bombarded by a squadron, whose composition was never officially announced. The American papers have printed letters from Germany stating that the Von der Tann and Moltke, the Yorck and the Bluecher, with smaller cruisers, constituted the force. The visitors to Hartlepool experienced the hospitality of that flourishing port in its warmest form. The garrison artillery dealt faithfully with Von der Tann, and her disappearance was credibly attributed to injuries sustained in a collison, which damage to her steering gear, effected by the north country gunners, had prevented her evading. The squadron that bombarded Yarmouth made off in the thick weather. It was obvious from the terms in which the Admiralty announced the fact that the bombardment had taken place that it was considered quite certain that they could not escape a second time. Unfortunately, however, they did; but they lost the Yorck by a German mine when re-entering harbour. The details of the arrangements made for anticipating them were quite properly kept secret, but it became known that a sudden fog explained why these arrangements did not succeed.
Both in the case of the Yarmouth and the Scarborough raids the enemy appeared at daylight. He had evidently crossed the North Sea during the night. From Whitby to the mine-fields off Heligoland is about 275 miles, a distance which each of the ships employed could cover quite comfortably in thirteen or fourteen hours. Had the squadron left Heligoland an hour before dark it could have fetched the English coast by daylight, hardly using more than three-quarter power. If it started for home at 8:30 it would have nine hours of daylight before it. At twenty-five knots 225 miles could be covered. This would bring them within fifty or sixty miles of the minefields, and it is probable that at some greater distance from Heligoland than this a rendezvous for submarines and destroyers had been arranged.
These raids were doubtless planned on the theory that the battle-cruiser fleet would be based on some point so far north that no difference in speed between the British and German ships would enable the former to overtake them before the mine-fields, or at least the waiting submarines and destroyers were met. And it may well have been hoped that an exasperated English Admiral, if he came up with them then, would not willingly give up the hope of an engagement. It may have seemed a very feasible operation to draw him either on to the mines themselves or within range of the submarines. It is, it seems to me, not difficult to reconstruct the German plan for both the Yarmouth and the Whitby raids.
It has often been pointed out—and with perfect justice—that in shelling open and undefended towns, and even a commercial port like Hartlepool that did have a 6-inch gun or two to defend it, the Germans were employing their fleet to no immediate military purpose whatever. It has been suggested that there might have been the very excellent military object of keeping our battle-cruisers in home waters and so securing Von Spee a free hand abroad. What has not been so often insisted on is that had there been any military centre, fort, or magazine worth attack, the fugitive character of the bombardments robbed them of any probable hope of hitting it.
There have been ample experiences during this war of ships bombarding distant objects on shore. And it is finally proved to be one of the most difficult operations conceivable. The case of the Koenigsberg was altogether exceptional. And many as were the difficulties to be faced in that action, there was yet this favourable element present, that the people in the aeroplanes could not possibly make any mistake as to the target that was to be bombarded, nor from the fact that it was a small ship lying in a considerable expanse of water could the observers, spotting all the different rounds, fail to give to the fire-control parties on board very accurate indications how to correct their sights for the next round. At the Dardanelles when isolated forts were attacked on a point on land, where one ship could lie off nearly at right angles to the line of fire and mark the fall of shot and the firing ship correct the fire for line, exact corrections of the same character as at the Rufigi were made possible. But when it came to correcting the fire by captive balloons and aircraft, when forts and gun positions had to be picked out in the folds of the hills, and still more where forts had to be engaged with no other corrections than the men in the control tops of the firing ship could supply, it became practically impossible to ensure sustained effective firing.
When, therefore, the German ships lay off Lowestoft, Hartlepool, Whitby, and Scarborough and bombarded for half an hour or so without any attempt to select particular targets, or if such were selected, to adopt any scientific means of directing their fire on to them, it became perfectly clear that their military object was about as defined as that of midnight bombing raids with Zeppelins. One is driven to the conclusion, therefore, that the primary object of these adventures was mere frightfulness, and that perhaps the secondary object was to draw the pursuing ships into some catastrophic trap.