German destroyer raid in the Strait of Dover

In the early hours of 15 February 1918 German destroyers, large torpedo boats in German terminology, entered the Strait of Dover and for about an hour shelled the small craft guarding the British minefield between Folkestone and Cape Gris-Nez. They sank seven drifters and one trawler, damaged other vessels and returned without a fight with British destroyers. The British chronology of the war places the raid on the night of 15–16 February and calls it the third German raid in the strait. Henry Newbolt’s British official history of the naval war and the memoirs of Admiral Reinhard Scheer show, however, that the attack took place on the night of 14–15 February, after midnight. Newbolt also counts it as already the seventh German destroyer sortie into the strait.

A barrage that began to work

Since 1 January the command at Dover had been held by Vice-Admiral Roger Keyes, who had replaced the dismissed Reginald Bacon. He concentrated the night patrols over the new deep minefield that cut across the strait. Every night it was guarded by some sixty drifters, fishing boats taken into the navy, while trawlers lit up the sea with flares, helped by a searchlight on the shore near Folkestone. German U-boats, which until then had passed through here at night on the surface, had to dive and ran onto mines. According to Newbolt, between 19 December 1917 and 8 February 1918 five German U-boats were lost in the strait, compared with only two in the previous two years. U-boat commanders reported that the passage was becoming almost impossible.

The commander of the German Marine Corps in Flanders, Admiral Ludwig von Schröder, did not have enough ships to break this barrage and asked the fleet command for help. Scheer sent Commander Oskar Heinecke’s II Torpedo Boat Flotilla, made up of large, modern ships. It was to come straight from the Heligoland Bight, without putting in at the Flanders ports, so that the British would suspect nothing. The sortie, planned for 7 February, was postponed several times because of weather and fog. On 14 February the flotilla set out from off Den Helder and after dark sailed along the Dutch coast. Off Hoek van Holland one ship had to turn back with a breakdown.

A night on the minefield

The night was very dark and misty. North-east of the Sandettie bank the torpedo boats split into two half-flotillas. One, led by Heinecke, struck the north-western end of the barrage, on the Folkestone side; the other, under Kapitänleutnant Hans Kolbe, its end by the French coast. At about 0.30 a.m. British time two German ships loomed out of the darkness beside the paddle minesweeper Newbury and in a few moments turned her into a burning wreck. Then it was the turn of one division of drifters after another. The trawler James Pond caught fire from her own flares, the drifters Clover Bank, Cosmos and Silver Queen sank within a few minutes, and Jeannie Murray went down with all hands. On the drifter Violet May four men of the whole crew survived. Two badly wounded men were moved into a boat, but then went back on board, put out the fire and held on until help arrived almost six hours later.

The firing was heard all over the strait, but almost nobody understood what was happening. Earlier one of the drifters had reported a U-boat, so at Dover it was assumed that the drifters were fighting it. The commander of a motor launch fired on by the Germans was convinced that British sailors who had taken him for a U-boat were shooting at him. The green rockets from signal pistols, which were meant to warn of surface ships, were not seen at Dover, and those who did see them did not pass on a report. The commander of the monitor M 26 went to see what was happening, but did not inform the admiral. Keyes, increasingly worried by the continuous gunfire, ordered the destroyers at the Downs anchorage to sea at 1.38 a.m., but when the firing died away he cancelled the order. At about 2.25 a.m. the returning German ships passed British destroyers patrolling the eastern part of the barrage in the dark. Amazon challenged them with the recognition signal, received no answer, and her commander took them for British. Only at about three o’clock was Keyes certain that German destroyers had raided the strait.

Losses and consequences

According to Newbolt, the Germans sank seven drifters and a trawler and badly damaged five other drifters, a trawler and a minesweeper, and 89 men were killed or missing. The British official history of the merchant navy gives 22 killed, 54 drowned and 13 wounded. Scheer wrote that his ships had sunk 25 patrol vessels and four motor launches, but this is a clear exaggeration. The Germans lost three men when the torpedo boat G 102 struck a mine on the way to Zeebrugge, where the flotilla refuelled before returning to Germany. The following night, 15–16 February, torpedo boats from Flanders entered the strait. They met no patrols, which Scheer took as proof that the British had withdrawn their guard, although the British side maintained that the patrols had been operating as usual.

Keyes convened a court of inquiry, which faulted the commanders in the strait for failing to detect the attack and report it. According to some accounts, the admiral then relieved the officers of the monitor M 26 and the destroyer Termagant of their commands, and the commander of Amazon was court-martialled and severely reprimanded. Newbolt concedes, however, that once the Germans had managed to slip past the British destroyers unseen, losses among the craft lighting the minefield could not be avoided. On 20 February in the House of Commons the government admitted that the Germans had scored a success, but refused to give details, explaining that such attacks could not be prevented on a pitch-black night. It was the most successful of the German sorties into the strait since the first raid of October 1916, and also the last of the war. The Germans did not follow it up, and the British quickly restored the night patrols and the illumination of the minefield.