Kattegat raid

On 2 November 1917 British ships of the Grand Fleet attacked German forces in the Kattegat, the strait between Denmark and Sweden. Destroyers of the 15th Flotilla, led by the flotilla leader Parker, sank the German armed ship K and the German fishing trawlers it was escorting. The British official history (Newbolt) writes that the commander of the Grand Fleet had sent “a very considerable force” of light cruisers and destroyers into the Kattegat as early as 31 October. The action recorded in the British chronology of the war took place two days later.

Why the British went into the Kattegat

In 1917 the British were laying ever denser minefields across the exits from the Heligoland Bight. Large German submarines therefore began to sail out into the Atlantic and return by another route: from the Baltic through the Danish straits and the Kattegat, along the coasts of the neutral Scandinavian states. The Germans guarded this route with patrols, and at the same time fished the rich fishing grounds of the Kattegat. After the attack by the cruisers Brummer and Bremse on the Norwegian convoy on 17 October, the Admiralty considered several plans for striking at German forces in the approaches to their bases. According to Newbolt, the commander of the Grand Fleet, Admiral David Beatty, hoped that German patrol craft could be brought to action in the Kattegat. German studies add that the British also wanted to find out how strong the German guard at the entrance to the Sound was.

According to British histories of the Grand Fleet’s destroyers, the expedition was led by Parker of the 15th Destroyer Flotilla and supported by the light cruisers Cardiff, Calypso, Ceres and Caradoc of the 6th Light Cruiser Squadron. German sources speak of 13 destroyers, followed at a distance by two light cruiser squadrons and a battlecruiser squadron.

The Q-ship K

The most important German vessel in the Kattegat was K. She had been built in 1914 at the Stettiner Oderwerke yard in Stettin as the passenger ship Kronprinz Wilhelm for the Stettin–Riga line. In 1915 the navy converted her into a Q-ship to fight Russian and British submarines in the Baltic. She had four 105 mm guns and a crew of about 80. In the Baltic she escorted convoys, and in May 1916 she rammed and badly damaged the Russian submarine Gepard. In March 1917 she was assigned to the so-called special flotilla, which protected German fishing cutters and trawlers in the Kattegat.

She was commanded by Kapitänleutnant of the Reserve Julius Lauterbach, a famous figure in Germany. At the beginning of the war he had been prize officer of the cruiser Emden. Taken prisoner, he was sent to an internment camp in Singapore, from which he escaped in February 1915, during the mutiny of an Indian regiment, and made his way halfway round the world to Germany. In 1917 he published memoirs of this escape. After the war he also described the action in the Kattegat, calling his ship the auxiliary cruiser Marie.

The action

The British destroyers came upon the German group north-west of Cape Kullen on the Swedish coast. K gave battle, but against a dozen or so destroyers she stood no chance and could not protect the trawlers. She sank together with them. Newbolt writes of an armed steamer and nine trawlers. German studies name eight trawlers, among them Frankfurt, Frisia and Makrele. According to the available accounts, the British lost no ship and no man.

According to various sources, 28 or 30 of K’s crew were killed. A dozen or so survivors, Lauterbach among them, were picked up by a Danish steamer, and the rest were rescued by British sailors. As early as January 1918 Lauterbach took command of another ship. The crews of Parker and six destroyers, Sorceress, Ready, Rigorous, Rocket, Rob Roy and Trenchant, received prize money after the war for sinking K.

The raid did not change the situation in the Kattegat. German submarines continued to use this route, and the British minefields laid in the strait did not stop them. It did show, however, that the Grand Fleet was ready to strike at German forces far from its own bases. Two weeks later the British attempted a similar blow in the Heligoland Bight.