Second Battle of Heligoland Bight

On the morning of 17 November 1917 British cruisers attacked German minesweepers and the ships covering them on the outer edge of the minefields in the Heligoland Bight, some 65 nautical miles west of the island of Sylt. For more than two hours they chased four German light cruisers through the minefields, until two battleships came to the Germans’ aid. It was the second battle in the bight, more than three years after the first, in August 1914. This time neither side achieved a clear success.

An ambush on the minesweepers

In 1917 the British laid many thousands of mines in the Heligoland Bight to make it harder for German U-boats and the High Seas Fleet to put to sea. The Germans therefore had to send out minesweepers almost every day to clear channels as much as a hundred miles or more from Heligoland. They were covered by light cruisers and torpedo boats, and sometimes, closer to the island, by battleships as well. The Germans called such sorties Stichfahrten. The minesweepers went first, followed by the torpedo boats, and at the rear the so-called barrier breakers, trawlers filled with timber, cork and cement that were meant to survive a mine explosion.

British codebreakers in Room 40 and intelligence agents reported that the Germans were preparing a large sortie for 17 November. The Admiralty decided to break it up. On 16 November the commander of the Grand Fleet, Admiral David Beatty, issued orders, and in the afternoon strong forces left Rosyth. In the lead was Vice-Admiral Trevylyan Napier’s 1st Cruiser Squadron with two new, large and fast ships, Courageous and Glorious, armed with 381 mm guns. It was accompanied by the 1st and 6th Light Cruiser Squadrons of Commodore Walter Cowan and Rear-Admiral Edwyn Alexander-Sinclair. Behind came Vice-Admiral William Pakenham’s battlecruisers, with the flagship Lion, and further back the 1st Battle Squadron.

On the German side the minesweepers, torpedo boats and barrier breakers were led by Rear-Admiral Ludwig von Reuter with four light cruisers: Nürnberg, Pillau, Königsberg and Frankfurt. The battleships Kaiser and Kaiserin waited in reserve near Heligoland.

The chase through the minefields

At 7.30 a.m. lookouts on Courageous sighted the Germans, and seven minutes later the ship opened fire. Reuter kept his head. His cruisers and torpedo boats moved towards the British and laid a thick smoke screen, behind which the minesweepers abandoned their gear and fled. Only the armed trawler Kehdingen, which lay at anchor as a marker buoy, remained. Hit, she could not get away in time and sank, and British destroyers picked up her crew.

The British set off after Reuter’s cruisers, which were falling back to the south-east. But the Germans knew the channels through the minefields, and the British admirals did not. Napier had charts on which older minefields, largely harmless by now, were still marked as dangerous, and twice he turned away on reaching a line he regarded as the limit of safety. Pakenham knew the Admiralty’s more accurate chart, but was sailing far behind. The commanders of the light cruiser squadrons, for their part, did not know about one of the large fields, so they pressed on. At about nine Pakenham, convinced that contact with the enemy had been lost for good, recalled all the ships. Napier, who could see the Germans again, did not obey the order for the time being. The battlecruiser Repulse of Rear-Admiral Richard Phillimore joined the fight.

The chase continued in poor conditions. Napier’s big ships fell behind and stopped firing. The German torpedo boats repeatedly launched torpedoes, and the British ships had to dodge them. At about 9.40 a shell from a German cruiser pierced the conning tower of the light cruiser Calypso. Everyone inside was killed, the ship’s captain, Captain Herbert Edwards, was mortally wounded, and the gunnery officer took command.

The battleships

Shortly before ten a salvo of heavy shells fell around the British light cruisers. Kaiser and Kaiserin, which Reuter had called to his aid, had arrived. One 305 mm shell hit the cruiser Caledon on the waterline, but did no serious damage. The British turned away to the north-west. Their withdrawal was covered by Repulse, which was the last to fire. One of her shells hit the cruiser Königsberg and started a serious fire on board. At 10.40 a.m. thick fog came down and the battle was over.

According to the Admiralty communiqué, one officer and 21 men were killed and four officers and 39 men wounded. Twenty-two Germans were taken prisoner. Admiral Reinhard Scheer wrote after the war that the Germans lost 21 killed, 10 seriously and 30 slightly wounded. On Caledon a mortally wounded young sailor, John Carless, though his abdomen had been torn open, went on helping to serve a gun. He was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously.

Beatty was disappointed. Large forces had failed to sink the minesweepers they had been sent against, and had let themselves be drawn into a long, fruitless chase. The Admiralty opened an inquiry, which showed that information about the minefields had reached the admirals haphazardly and in different forms. From then on the Admiralty was to supply it directly to the fleet. The intelligence historian Patrick Beesly later argued that Napier had been unfairly blamed, because the Admiralty, protecting the secret of Room 40, had not passed on to him everything it knew about the German channels through the mines.