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Background to the German WrecksThe Naval Race.In the late Victorian years Britain had maintained a "2 Power Standard" ie. that her navy should have superiority over the two next strongest powers ( in those days France and Russia). The German navy was not taken seriously by Britain until Tirpitz arrived in 1897. He began to build up the German stock of ships on the basis that German trade must be protected against the most powerful naval adversary (ie. Britain). He didn't aim to equal Britain's stocks - just enough to provide a serious threat. Britain began to get worried, and by 1905 started to build the first dreadnought. This ship (the Dreadnought) was built in 14 months - an incredible record. She was a complete break from the past with a simple superstructure, a uniform calibre of ten 12 inch guns in 5 turrets and efficient turbines. She was comparatively cost effective to build, was faster than other boats of the time and had the significant advantage of uniform sized guns that simplified targeting and armament storage. The weight savings made by the absence of smaller guns meant that a larger number of bigger guns could be carried. The turbines in the engine room were silent and clean - a revelation to the old guard. She displaced nearly 18000 tons, 3 of her turrets were mounted along the centre line of the ship, and 1 turret on each side amidships. This allowed a 8 gun broadside from either side. The Dreadnought gave the pattern for all subsequent battleships for the next few years. The speed and firepower of this one ship could have dealt with the entire German navy of the time. Fisher, the British Sea Lord, decided to retire many of the Navy's older, obsolescent warships and established that in future, public awareness of naval strength was measured in numbers of dreadnoughts rather than ships per se. The result was a smaller, cheaper and more effective battle fleet. Fisher also developed the idea of a battle cruiser which was faster, more lightly armoured and had fewer big guns. The aim of the battle cruiser was to provide cruiser performance with battleship prowess. The Invincible was the result and very successful it was. It displaced 17250 tons and had eight 12 inch guns, six of which could be used in a broadside. However, with the speed and heavy guns something had to go. Battle cruisers had weak armament. This gave battle cruisers severe disadvantages at Jutland, although at the battle of the Falklands where speed was important the battle cruiser worked well.
The Invincible The Germans quickly responded with their battle cruiser prototype - the Van der Tann. This was more heavily armoured, gunned and a bit slower, but it ensured that the British had to continue building new ships in order to keep up. Incipient nationalism on both sides fuelled the naval race and by 1908 Tirpitz was able to add 8 new "battleships" to the German fleet by building more armoured cruisers. The proposed German building programme would have exceeded Britain's. This of course threatened Britain's basic naval strategy, which was to command the seas. This strategy was that Britain only needed a small conscript army and would rely on her natural island defences with substantial naval resources. Her armed forces were largely trained and deployed for overseas Imperial use. A naval arms race developed with both countries trying to outdo each other in terms of numbers of ships. The British aim was "2 keels to one" - which meant trying to build double whatever the Germans built. Differences in design emerged between the two countries. The Germans favoured slightly smaller guns (11 - 12 inch) and heavier armour than the British. Largely, this was because Britain thought that future naval engagements would be won with a short sharp shock rather than the German's notion of whittling down by smaller harrying attacks. They also differed in their approach to range finding. The British tended to favour a single master range finder, whereas the Germans had separate ones for each gun platform that was then fed back to a main one. There were differences in the way that targeting was assessed. By 1912, Britain started to develop 15 inch guns for the 27500 ton Queen Elizabeth class, which despite a much heavier shell, was far more accurate in firing and was more powerful. Oil fuel was used as a power source. This was more efficient than coal, cleaner and gave weight savings which allowed better armouring. Possible oil supply problems were solved by buying up Iranian oilfields. This battleship class was a huge success. Not only did Britain feel the financial strain of the increased production, but she also had to recall ships from her other dominions in order to strengthen her North Sea fleet. For it was in the North Sea that a naval battle was feared. Britain became more dependent upon France for naval protection in the Mediterranean which bound the two countries more firmly together in case of war. Germany was now committed to naval power, and the German public strongly supported this. Churchill summed up the British reaction by writing the following in 1914 "Besides the Great Powers, there are so many small States who are buying or building great ships of war, and whose vessels may by some diplomatic combination, or by duress, be brought into the line against us. None of the Powers need, like us, navies to defend their actual safety or independence. They build them so as to play a part in the world's affairs. It is sport to them. It is death to us..."
Naval Tactics.Battleships had continued to use the broadside for over 200 years. This meant that battle fleets had to form in a single line if maximum firepower was to be achieved. The huge increase in gun power meant that naval engagements took place further and further away. Gone were the days of Nelson style close engagement. Successful naval battles (and their commanders) relied on the rapid and timely deployment of the fleet into such a line. To do this properly in the days before radio meant some kind of flag signalling or shuttered searchlights. In a battle of dreadnoughts, with the boats well spread out and with thick smoke pouring from the boilers this was unreliable, time consuming and potentially disastrous. The alternative was to plan the battle well in advance, practice it with every possibility accounted for. This emphasised the central control undertaken by the fleet commander, and began to change the way that navies undertook their engagements.
World War 1.By 1914, Britain had 64 battleships, 121 cruisers and 20m tons of merchant shipping. Germany had 40 battleships, 57 cruisers and 5m tons of shipping. Battleships had increased in size and speed was up to 28 knots. Armament was 8 - 12 large guns (11 - 15 inch) with an expected range of 6 miles. At the start of World War 1 the British fleet was well mobilised. Known as the Grand Fleet (in honour of the fleet gathered to deal with the Spanish armada in 1588), the Royal Navy established the base for the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow - a bleak, sheltered outpost in the Orkney islands. From here it was well poised to deal with shipping movements from the North Sea out to the Atlantic. These comprised 3 battle squadrons containing most of the dreadnoughts and was led by Admiral Jellicoe. Day to day challenging within the North Sea and Channel water was left to older battleships, light cruisers and battleships. The German High Seas Fleet, consisting of 3 squadrons, was ensconced at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. There were also some scouting groups and some pre dreadnoughts based in the Baltic. From the start the British maintained a policy of distant blockade which succeeded in protecting its vessels from the threat of the German submarines. Apart from a couple of minor skirmishes around the Heligoland Bight, the two fleets played a stand off position. The costs of maintaining the unused fleet was a great drain on Germany. There was an engagement - the Battle of the Dogger Bank in January 1915 - where a small British contingent managed to down the slow German cruiser Blucher. The Seydlitz was hit and burnt by British fire, but escaped back to port. The Germans profited by this experience and implemented better ammunition handling and protection procedures. No other action occurred until the Battle of Jutland. Jutland was the only major battle between the two fleets. The fresh appointment of Scheer in 1916 to the main command of the High Seas Fleet gave the Germans a fresh aggressive spirit. Scheer put out to sea in May 1916, and was followed by the British who had been reading German naval messages. For a while the two fleets steamed close to each other unseen, until a neutral Danish steamer passed between them causing both fleets to investigate. Both fleets spotted each other and battle started between the lines of ships that tried to "cross each other's T's". The British commander - Jellicoe - showed a mastery of the tactical situation, but that didn't prevent the British fleet from losing 3 battlecruisers (including the Invincible), 3 cruisers and 8 destroyers. Over 6000 British were killed. The battle also showed a weakness in the quality of the British shells and the need for better turret armament. The German losses were more modest, but the boats suffered from more damage and continued to stay in port. Jellicoe had been understandably cautious. As Churchill said, Jellicoe was "the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon". The British still retained control of the seas. Jutland did not resolve the stalemate between the two fleets, and despite the casualties and damage incurred on both sides, the German Fleet was relatively intact by the time of the Armistice. In retaliation, the Germans extended their U boat campaign against allied shipping during 1917. This succeeded in damaging much merchant shipping but it also meant that the convoy system was developed and British battleships were well used. And of course America entered the war. By 1918 it became clear that the submarine threat was seriously compromising the battleship's supremacy, and the rise of aircraft was also in the wind. The battleship was on the wane.
Internment at Scapa Flow.The German fleet presented a challenge to the Allied powers. Something had to be done to ensure that this powerful fleet was not used against them. The Armistice required the German fleet to be interned under guard of the Allies as a hostage. On 25th November 1918 the German warships entered Scapa Flow. The Grand Fleet had met the High Seas Fleet in the North Sea and had nervously escorted them to their new anchorage in the Orkneys. Here they were to stay, moored in neat rows around the small islands of Cava and Fara. There were 74 disarmed boats - 5 battlecruisers (such as the Hindenburg), 11 battleships (eg. Kronprinz Wilhelm), 8 cruisers and 50 destroyers. The following months must have pretty tedious to the skeleton German crews. Not only was there not much to do, but the combination of the Orkney weather in the bleak anchorage of the Flow plus the increasing shabbiness and rusting of some of the once proud leviathans would have done little for morale. The crews were not allowed ashore and food and fuel were delivered by tender vessels. German crews were not used to living long periods on board while at harbour. Rats and cockroaches flourished, and quite a few sailors became ill while others got bored stiff. On many ships there was little adequate heating. There were no British guards on the German boats, but there were usually a few patrol boats and other ships of the Grand Fleet that stood guard. The German Fleet was an important part of the Armistice peace negotiations and the ships were interned rather than captured vessels.
The Scuttle.Seven months were to pass until June 21st 1919. On this day for the first time the entire British Fleet left the Flow for exercises in the North Sea. Two destroyers were left behind on guard duty. Reuter, the German rear admiral, had already established a plan to scuttle his fleet because he didn't want the ships to end up in Allied hands if the Armistice peace negotiations went badly for Germany. The trouble was, Reuter was not kept up to date with news. He was only given old newspapers and was 4 - 5 days behind. So he didn't know that the Armistice had been extended to 23rd June and rather thought that no agreement was likely and that hostilities might break out. He also knew that it was likely that Germany would only be allowed to keep a small fraction of its fleet (in fact the armistice agreement meant that none of the interned vessels would be returned to Germany). The surprise withdrawal of the British Fleet determined him. Within 2 hours the command was passed by semaphore and signal flags from Reuter's flagship (the Emden) to the rest of his fleet. Shortly afterwards, around noon, the first of the boats (Friedrich der Grosse) began to list and settle in the water. Others began to follow as water rushed in through the open sea cocks. The German sailors had been careful to remove internal doors, open and weaken bulkheads, water pipes and condensers. Once the scuttling started the only way to stop the boats from sinking was to tow them and beach them. Most went down in a spectacular fashion as anchor chains snapped, steam and oil blasted out as the ships were subjected to the strains of sinking. Some like the Bayern sank on their sides, their heavy guns forcing them to turn turtle. Those in shallower water like the Hindenburg sank on an even keel. As the boats sank, oil and other debris were left floating on the surface and boatloads of German soldiers tried to land on the surrounding islands. To a party of schoolchildren aboard the Flying Kestrel it was an unforgettable experience. One person recalled "During that time we watched the marvellous display as the German ships sank all around us. I counted them, 12 capital ships going down. Some went up by the bows, some by the stern and some stood up in the water. It really was a marvellous display. In a way it was a very sad sight to see all these men getting into their boats, you really wondered what would happen to them. They had lost all their possessions. The whole thing was done in such a peaceful way. It was just the air escaping from the ships as they went down that caused the turbulence on the sea." Another wrote "The light cruisers settled by the stern. As the afterpart of the ship disappeared, the bows and a hundred feet or more of the hull projected sheer from the sea, looking like some huge whale leaping through space." The British guard force had been recalled and by 2 o'clock was charging back into the Flow in a desperate attempt to stop the scuttling. They were not really successful and tempers arose as the British realised they were powerless to stop it. 9 Germans were killed that day (the last casualties of the war), one of them the captain of the Markgraf. 3 light cruisers (the Emden, Frankfurt and Nurnberg) and 3 destroyers were beached by the British, but the rest of the High Seas Fleet was either partially or wholly submerged within the waters of Scapa Flow. The British picked up the German sailors with "minimum courtesy". Some Germans were assaulted and robbed, and later that night nearly 2000 German sailors were transported by 5 British battleships to the Cromarty Firth. From there they were repatriated to Germany after spending some months at POW camps in England. An attempt was made to bring Reuter to trial, but seeing that the Fleet had not been surrendered then the British had no powers to do this.
Salvage.The "success" of the Grand Scuttle meant that only a few boats were successfully beached and that over 50 vessels had sunk in the Flow. To start with, the Admiralty's reaction was "Where they are sunk, they will rest and rust. There can be no question of salving them." But the wrecks were a hazard, and a few local boats found themselves going aground on the submerged hulls. It was not economic to start salvage operations until 1922. At first, destroyers lying in shallow water were dealt with quite easily. The main challenge came with the deeper wrecks. Over the 20's and 30's most of these boats were successfully salvaged, leaving only 8 boats of the High Sea Fleet remaining there today. The salvage was remarkably successful and was the largest operation of its kind in history. It attracted much media attention and was largely the result of Ernest Cox's ingenuity Cox was a wealthy scrap metal dealer from London who had never salvaged anything underwater before. His dream was to raise the Hindenburg that lay upright in 20 metres of water with its funnels and superstructure above waves. In 1923 he bought the Seydlitz and Hindenburg plus over twenty destroyers. He started off with a couple of the shallower destroyers and after a lot of trial and error succeeded in an successful system of salvage. This involved passing chains under the wreck and then with the help of a floating dock the hull would lift off the bottom and could be moved into shallower water. The whole process was repeated until the wreck was beached. The V70 was the first destroyer to be landed in August 1924. By the end of 1925 18 destroyers had been salvaged. The costs of the operation were allayed by the salvage team being able to use the large amounts of coal that remained within the wrecks for fuel. In 1926 he started on the Hindenburg. A ship this size had never been lifted before and required new methods of salvage. Cox's solution was to send divers down to patch all the holes in the hull and then to pump air into the sealed vessel until it rose. At first this failed, largely because the balance of the boat gave precarious lists that were difficult to control. So Cox tried a new technique. This meant sealing off each compartment within the boat, passing cables underneath and then using the dead weight of a water filled destroyer to bring the hull to the surface. After a few unsuccessful attempts Cox gave up and turned to the Moltke. This wreck lay nearly upside down in fairly shallow water. Divers were sent down to plug all the holes in the hull, and then compressed air was fed into the hull with the aim of lifting the 23000 ton boat off the seabed. The lift worked, but because the bulkheads weren't sealed the air inside the hull slopped around and burst out of the bows as the hulk arose. The boat was lowered back down and airlocks made from boiler tubes were attached to the hull. Workers could descend down these tubes into the hull and start to seal the bulkheads and all the other holes. They created a number of airtight compartments that could be separately inflated with compressed air. Work within the hull was dark, silty and dangerous and the whole exercise was quite laborious. Thirty men took nine months to do all this. Eventually in June 1927 the Moltke was raised upside down and taken to Lyness pier where over 3000 tons of metal were taken off her and sold for scrap. After some hard bargaining a German company agreed to tow the hulk to Rosyth for final breaking. On the way the great hull only narrowly avoided collision with the Firth of Forth railway bridge. Even when the wreck was inside the Admiralty dry dock there were more problems. The Moltke leaked oil and coal dust which made the water visibility just about zero. Visual inspection by divers was impossible and so correct placing of the packing piles underneath the wreck was a chancy nightmare. Next on the list was the Seydlitz. This battleship lay on its side in 20 metres and gave the salvage team many difficulties. This was mainly caused by Cox's initial decision to lift her sideways. Many patches had to be applied to her - ranging from the giant openings of the funnels through to the openings from the boiler rooms, skylights, hoists, gun turrets, portholes and sundry pipes. The first lift was an expensive failure. Many of the patches were blown or damaged and the ship rolled back into deeper water. The team then dealt with her as they had done with the Moltke. After a frustrating number of unsuccessful lifts she was finally brought up in November 1928. Six months later she was towed to Rosyth. She wasn't as stable as the Moltke had been and the 7 day journey was a difficult one. A deeper wreck, the Kaiser in 45 metres, was the next one to be dealt with. This gave very real diving challenges to the team who had to work with an ingenious air lock system in the dark. However, the ship turned out to be fairly straightforward to float and by March 1929 she had been lifted. The journey to Rosyth was uneventful. Work then started on the cruiser Bremse. Despite some flash fires owing to the considerable amount of fuel oil inside her, she was raised up quite easily. She was not really seaworthy so the wreck was broken up at Lyness. Cox then returned to the Hindenburg and after more work and patching she was finally salvaged in July 1930. Unlike the others, the Hindenburg was raised upright. This was his moment of success and elation. The Von der Tann followed. This boat lay upside down and was in good condition so she was salvaged like the Kaiser had been. However, the dark hull stank with foul gases. This nearly caused some deaths when a pocket of inflammable methane gas within the hull exploded having been accidentally ignited by a flame cutter. Another explosion happened in the next wreck - the Prinzregent Luitpold - and one man died. These were the last wrecks that Cox lifted and by 1933 they had both been towed to Rosyth for scrapping. Cox then sold the business to the Alloa Shipbreaking Company. Over eight years he had lost £10000. Cox and his team were energetic and innovative. However, it is said that every Friday 10% of the workforce were sacked and had to reapply on Monday morning. This would certainly have encouraged good work.
The Kaiserin The final salvages on the bigger wrecks - the Bayern, Grosser Kurfurst, Kaiserin, Friedrich der Grosse and Derfflinger - were carried out by Alloa throughout the 30's. Good profits were made on all boats. By 1939 further salvage became impossible as attention was given to Hitler and war preparations. The Derfflinger remained at Orkney throughout the war since the Rosyth dry dock was needed for war work. After the war Nundy Ltd blasted a number of holes in the remaining wrecks - the Koenig, Markgraf and Kronprinz Wilhelm - so that the valuable non ferrous metals could be retrieved by salvage divers. More salvage took place in the 70's. But further salvage of the deep and rusting wrecks is no longer technically possible, so that apart from the occasional retrieval of radiation free steel from the Koenig, the wrecks are left in peace to seals, congers and divers.
Diving Today.Wreck diving in Scapa Flow started in 1980, when John Thornton from Kirkwall and Anthony Duncan from Burray started a dive boat service. This became increasingly popular with sports divers so that there are now around ten or so dive boat charters operating mostly from Stromness or Burray that provide a healthy addition to the local economy. The Orkney Islands Council now owns the Brummer, Dresden and Koeln. They freely allow diving on them, provided that nothing is removed from them. No diving is allowed within 100 metres of the war graves HMS Royal Oak or HMS Vanguard. The Flotta oil terminal is also forbidden to divers. Scapa Flow has become a popular place for adventurous wreck diving and is now a world famous dive site, not least because there are few other places in the world that people can dive warships.
References.
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