Says Tirpitz (vol. II, p. 284): ‘In the further course of the fight,’ i.e. after the destruction of the Indefatigable and Queen Mary, ‘the English were strongly reinforced by five[[23]] of their newest ships of the Queen Elizabeth class, only completed during the war; these vessels, driven exclusively by oil-fuel, possessed such a high speed that they were able to take part in the cruiser engagement—they attached themselves to the English cruisers and joined in the battle at long range.’
The First Gunnery Officer of the Derfflinger is more explicit:
Meanwhile we saw that the enemy were being reinforced. Behind the battle cruiser line approached four big ships. We soon identified these as of the Queen Elizabeth class. There had been much talk in our fleet of these ships. They were ships of the line with the colossal armament of eight 15–inch guns, 28,000 tons displacement and a speed of twenty-five knots. Their speed, therefore, was scarcely inferior to ours (twenty-six knots), but they fired a shell more than twice as heavy as ours. They engaged at portentous range ... (p. 164).[[24]]
As we were altering course to N.N.W. we caught sight of the head of our Third Squadron, the proud ships of the König class. Everyone now breathed more freely. While we had been engaged by the English Fifth Battle Squadron with its 15–inch guns in addition to the Battle Cruiser Squadron we had felt rather uncomfortable. (p. 167).
After the gradual disappearance of the four battle cruisers we were still faced with the four powerful ships of the Fifth Battle Squadron, Malaya, Valiant, Barham, and Warspite.
These ships cannot have developed very high speed in this phase of the battle, for they soon came within range of our Third Squadron, and were engaged by the ships at the head of the line, particularly the flagship, the König. In this way the four English battleships at one time and another came under the fire of at least nine German ships, five battle cruisers and from four to five battleships. According to my gunnery log, we were firing after 7.16 p.m. at the second battleship from the right, the one immediately astern of the leader. At these great ranges I fired armour-piercing shell.
The second phase passed without any important events as far as we were concerned. In a sense this part of the action, fought against a numerically inferior but more powerfully armed enemy, who kept us under fire at ranges at which we were helpless, was highly depressing, nerve-racking and exasperating. Our only means of defence was to leave the line for a short time when we saw that the enemy had our range. As this manœuvre was imperceptible to the enemy, we extricated ourselves at regular intervals from the hail of fire. (p. 173).
We may now turn to the smaller vessels.
There was no difficulty whatever in settling the design of the destroyers. The Admiralty had vacillated about destroyers in previous years. In 1908 they built large fast 33–knot Tribals burning oil, and then, worried by the oil problem and shocked at the expense, reverted for two years to 27–knot coal-burning flotillas (Acastas and Acherons). I was too late to stop the last bevy of these inferior vessels, but I gave directions to design the new flotilla to realise 35 knots speed without giving up anything in gun-power, torpedoes or seaworthiness. I proposed to the Board that if money ran short we should take sixteen of these rather than twenty of the others. Building slow destroyers! One might as well breed slow racehorses.
The cruisers were much more difficult. The duties of a British cruiser are very varied: now scouting for the Battle Fleet; now convoying merchantmen; now fighting an action with another cruiser squadron; now showing the flag in distant or tropical oceans. In an effort to produce a type which would combine all these requirements, the purity of design had been lost and a number of compromise ships, whose types melted into one another, were afloat or building. They ranged from the strong, heavily gunned and well armoured vessels like the Minotaur through lighter but still armoured variants of the ‘County’ class cruisers down to unarmoured but large ships like the Dartmouths (the ‘Town’ class), and the little vessels of 3,350 tons like the Blonde. Altogether there were nine distinct classes. It was time to classify and clarify thought and simplify nomenclature on this subject. The large armoured cruisers were already superseded by the battle-cruiser. They still remained a very powerful force, numbering no less than thirty-five vessels. We would call them ‘Cruisers.’ All the rest should be called ‘Light Cruisers.’ For the future we would build only battle-cruisers (or fast battleships) and light cruisers. The future evolution of the battle cruiser was well defined and depended on the numbers and character of any that might be laid down by Germany. Our lead in battle cruisers (9 to 4) and the creation of the fast division of battleships made it possible to delay decision on this type; but the light cruiser was urgent and even vital. We required a very large number of small fast vessels to protect the Battle Fleet from torpedo attack, to screen it and within certain limits to scout for it. After hearing many arguments, I proposed to the Board that we should concentrate on this type, to exclude all consideration of the requirements of the distant seas, and to build vessels for attendance on the Battle Fleets in home waters and for that duty alone.