The naval order of 24 October 1918 was a plan made by the of the (Imperial German Navy) to provoke a decisive battle between the German High Seas Fleet and the British Grand Fleet in the southern North Sea in the final weeks of the First World War. The plan was drawn up contrary to the wishes and without the knowledge of the German government. When the order to prepare for the sortie was issued on 29 October, resistance broke out aboard some of the German ships stationed at Wilhelmshaven. Despite the cancellation of the operation, the sailors' revolt led to the more serious Kiel mutiny, which began the German Revolution of 1918-19 and the establishment of the Weimar Republic.
Background
Armistice negotiations Following the Allied successes during the Hundred Days Offensive, the new German government under Prince Max of Baden, at the insistence of the Supreme Army Command, asked President Woodrow Wilson on 5 October 1918 to mediate an armistice. One of his conditions was the cessation of the German submarine war. Despite the objections of Admiral Reinhard Scheer, the Chief of the German Admiralty Staff, the German government made the concession on 20 October and submarines at sea were recalled on 21 October.Newbolt, Naval Operations, vol.5 pp. 367 On 22 October, Scheer on his authority and without the knowledge of the new German government, ordered Admiral Franz von Hipper, commander of the High Seas Fleet, to prepare for an attack on the British fleet by the main battle fleet, reinforced by the returning U-boats. Hipper's order was promulgated on 24 October; Scheer approved it on 27 October.Marder, Dreadnought to Scapa Flow vol.5 pp. 171 The fleet then began to concentrate at Schillig Roads off Wilhelmshaven to prepare for the battle.
German fleet The High Seas Fleet in October 1918 was built around the core of 18 battleships and 5 battlecruisers, most of which had been completed before the outbreak of war. Since the Battle of Jutland in May 1916, the obsolete pre-dreadnoughts had been de-commissioned, two new battleships with 15-inch guns ( and ) and the new battlecruiser had joined the fleet, but one dreadnought battleship had been damaged beyond repair by running aground in the Baltic. The fleet had undertaken only three major sorties at full strength into the North Sea since June 1916: 18–19 August 1916, 18–19 October 1916, and 22–25 April 1918. This prolonged period of relative inactivity, at a time when all other branches of Germany's armed forces were very heavily engaged, did much to undermine the morale of the crews and the self-respect of the officers. Acts tantamount to mutiny took place on various occasions during 1917, the most noteworthy being the arrest of 200 men from the battleship in August, two of whom were executed.
Royal Navy
Grand Fleet In late October 1918 the Grand Fleet, based at Rosyth in the Firth of Forth, had 35 dreadnought battleships and 11 battlecruisers (two of them of the very lightly armoured ). Twenty of these ships had been completed since the outbreak of war, and a third of them were armed with the highly effective 15-inch gun; the oldest capital ship in the fleet was , commissioned in June 1908, while had been put in reserve in July 1918. Five of the ships were from the United States Navy and one from the Royal Australian Navy.
The materiel problems which beset the Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland and beyond (i.e. poor flash-protection in ammunition handling, lack of deck armour over magazines, deficient armour-piercing shells, and too few destroyers) had all been remedied to various extents. The new "Green Boy" shells for the heavy guns were thought to be such a great improvement in offensive power that they nullified the advantage of the heavier armour protection of German battleships. The fleet possessed new weapons (such as the Sopwith Cuckoo ship-borne torpedo-bombers and fast steam-driven submarines) for which the German fleet had no match.
The second wave of the Spanish Flu pandemic reached its peak in the Grand Fleet in autumn 1918; about 6 per cent of the fleet's sailors were taken ill, and 1 per cent died."Sailors on the Grand Fleet had epidemics of influenza-like illnesses in April and May, 1918; during these epidemics, 11 per cent of the total force was hospitalised and 0·03 per cent died. The second wave of influenza affected the Grand Fleet in September–October, 1918. About half as many men became ill in the second wave compared with the first, but 38-times more died, mostly of pneumonia." See: G. D. Shanks, et al., Determinants of mortality in naval units during the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, Lancet Infectious Diseases 11 (10), 793-799 (October 2011). The sick list of the light cruiser peaked at 19 men, 6 per cent of her complement, on 23 October 1918, but it had returned to normal (two men) by 31 October; the destroyer of the 12th Destroyer Flotilla was more seriously hit, with 37 (41 per cent) of her crew on the sick list on 31 October.
The morale in the British fleet was high in anticipation of a re-match for Jutland, the personality and leadership of the commander-in-chief, Admiral Sir David Beatty, being an important reason for this.Marder, Dreadnought to Scapa Flow vol.5 pp. 129.
Admiralty intelligence In the First World War British naval intelligence in general, and code-breaking in particular, was highly efficient. It played a very important role in the battles of Dogger Bank and Jutland, in the American entry into the war on the Allied side and the defeat of the U-boats from 1917 to 1918. By late 1917 improvements in German communications security had made intelligence gathering more difficult, at least as far as the High Seas Fleet was concerned.Beesly, Room 40 p.274 Between October 1917 and April 1918, the Germans were able to launch three surprise sorties into Norwegian waters against mercantile traffic, on the last occasion (22–25 April 1918) employing their whole fleet. Each time the British did not receive a warning in time to mount an effective counter-operation.
High-power wireless communications were essential for the control of U-boats at sea; but this also allowed triangulation-based location of the U-boats by the Allies. In addition, U-boats employed a simpler cypher system than that used by the surface fleet, which Room 40, the British Admiralty's code-breaking section, could usually read with few difficulties. In October 1918 these methods allowed the Admiralty to track the U-boats operating in British Home Waters.Grant, U-boat Intelligence, pp. 161–163.
Prelude
Operational order The order of 24 October for the High Seas Fleet's attack is as follows:
U-boat operations The command of the High Seas Fleet had 24 submarines at its disposal, which lay at their bases in the North Sea. The command tried to recall more boats from the missions and direct them to the planned locations. This succeeded with six more boats: U-43, U-108, UB-86, UB-96, UB-121, and UB-125. All boats were to form six lines in the North Sea on the presumed approach route of the British fleet and take up waiting positions in front of the ports of the British fleet in Scotland.Spindler Handelskrieg, Bd.5, pp.338–340.
Two of these U-boats were lost. The first, (Oblt. Johann Vollbrecht), sailed on 27 October from Heligoland for a minelaying mission off the Scottish East Coast, but she was torpedoed and sunk the same day by the British submarine in the central North Sea, roughly east of the Firth of Forth. All 40 crewmen were lost.
The other submarine to be sunk was , which sailed from Heligoland on 25 October with special orders to attack the British fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow. She was commanded by the 26-year-old Oberleutnant zur See Hans Joachim Emsmann who, since first becoming a U-boat captain in February 1918, had sunk a total of 26 ships. She attempted to enter Scapa Flow submerged by the southern passage, Hoxa Sound, on the evening of 28 October. Hydrophones mounted ashore at Stanger Head, Flotta, alerted the British defences, and the sea-bed magnetometer loops, designed to detect the magnetic signatures of incoming vessels and thus trigger remote-controlled mines, were activated. Emsmann raised his periscope at 11:30 pm, presumably to check his position, and was spotted by look-outs on shore; the mines detonated shortly thereafter, leaving the submarine disabled on the sea bed. She was finished off by depth charges from defense trawlers shortly thereafter; all 37 crew members were lost.
Two other submarines, UB-98 and UB-118 were damaged in collision with each other on 28 October, and had to return to port. Five others, U-43, U-67, UB-86, UB-87, and UB-130 also aborted their missions due to breakdowns.Spindler Handelskrieg, Bd.5, p. 340.
British reaction The commanders of the British Fleet were anticipating action, and the fleet was warned to make preparations as early as 14 October 1918.Diary of Midshipman N K Calder (HMS Royal Sovereign), entry for 14 October 1918. On the afternoon of 23 October the Admiralty alerted Admiral Beatty that the situation was abnormal and that they would reinforce him by sending destroyers from the anti-submarine flotillas based at Plymouth and Buncrana.Newbolt, Naval Operations vol.5 pp. 367–368. By late on 28 October the situation was reaching a climax, and Vice Admiral Sydney Fremantle, the Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, and Rear Admiral Reginald Hall, the Director of Naval Intelligence, sent Beatty a full appreciation which read, in part:
For the next 48 hours, Fremantle was able to keep Beatty informed of developments, correctly describing the concentration of the High Seas Fleet at Schillig Roads on the evening of 29 October and its intention to sail on 30 October. Hipper's unexpected postponement of the operation on 30 October was initially ascribed to fog.
Cancellation of the plan
The High Seas Fleet had assembled in Schillig Roads on the afternoon of 29 October in preparation for sailing the following day, 30 October. A ruse that the operation was a training sortie was employed for security, as was usual practice. The raid on the Thames and the Flanders Coast was scheduled for dawn on 31 October and the battle with the British Fleet in the afternoon and evening of the same day. The evening of 29 October was marked by unrest and serious acts of indiscipline in the German Fleet, as the men became convinced their commanders were intent on sacrificing them to sabotage the armistice negotiations. A large number of stokers from Derfflinger and Von der Tann failed to return from shore leave and were rounded up by the authorities; mass insubordination occurred on Thüringen, Kaiserin, Helgoland and Regensburg; and mutinous demonstrations took place in König, Kronprinz Wilhelm and Markgraf. Even in the fleet flagship Baden the mood of the crew was dangerous. The mutinous behavior was confined to the crews of the larger ships; the crews of torpedo-boats, submarines, and minesweepers remained loyal.Marder, Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, vol.5 p. 172. Admiral Hipper canceled the operation on 30 October and ordered the fleet to disperse, in the hope of quelling the insurrection. When ships of the III Battle Squadron, arrived at Kiel via the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal on 1 November, their men helped spark the Kiel mutiny on 3 November.Marder, Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, vol.5 p. 174.
Aftermath
Analysis The detailed orders of battle are given in the Appendix, and are summarised in the table below. The disparity in forces was roughly 2-to-1 in favour of the British. Had the battle been joined, it would have involved some 69 capital ships (in comparison with 58 involved at Jutland).
Ship categoryGrand FleetOther British forcesGerman fleetDreadnought battleships35018Battlecruisers1105Armoured cruisers300Light cruisers36914Aircraft carriers300Flotilla leaders, destroyers and torpedo-boats1604460Submarines145825/30Total262111122-127