During early evening, as the mist and smoke cleared over the grey North Sea, the silhouette of HMS Invincible came clearly into view. The German flagship Lutzow brought her 12-inch guns to bear on this newly acquired target. Vice-Admiral Franz Hipper could not believe his luck, at a range of 10,500 yards HMS Invincible was an ideal target. Lutzow's fifth strike found its intended mark between the midship turrets of HMS Invincible. A huge explosion ensued, blowing the Invincible clean in half and killing Admiral Hood along with 1,020 of his crew. Only six men survived the devastation of the pride of Fisher's British Navy. HMS Invincible was among the first of the large battlecruisers, with eight 12-inch guns and displacing 20,000 tons, she had a top speed of 25 knots.
Being a veteran of the 1914 Falklands battle HMS Invincible was well proven in long range confrontations, yet off Jutland Bank on 31 May 1916 she had been sunk with nearly all hands after a short salvo of German shells. Earlier in the day HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary were lost in an almost identical manner. HMS Queen Mary had a German shell penetrate her forward gun turret causing her main magazine to explode. Only nine men survived out of a crew of 1,285.
The battlecruiser was the initiative of Admiral Sir John Fisher, convinced of the need for speed and striking power, for him 'speed was protection'. The concept behind the battlecruiser was to have a fleet of vessels that could pursue the enemy and bombard them with large calibre munitions from a long distance. The high speed and manoeuvrability would ensure that the battlecruiser captain could maintain his desired position and range. Fisher's rationale proved itself at the Battle of the Falklands, where the British Navy conducted a successful long-range campaign against the Germans.
The British battlecruiser's main long-range armament usually consisted of eight guns which varied in calibre from 12 to 15inch. The German armament was generally several calibre behind the British - prior to the Lutzow the majority of German guns were 11 inch. In order for the British battlecruiser to maintain the required speed of 25 knots a 78 percent increase in power was required over previously built vessels of similar size. Vessels such as HMS Invincible had thirty-one boilers to power the steam turbines, which developed 41,000-horse power through four shafts. The cost of such speed and firepower was protection, the quantity and thickness of armour plating was considerably inferior compared with that of the German vessels. The thought was that operating outside the range of the enemy, the necessity for protection was minimal.
At Jutland Bank the British Admiralty wished to intercept the German fleet as it left its home port. In order to reach the enemy before they dispersed into their planned divisions the battlecruisers were sent ahead of the British fleet. One squadron of battlecruisers, under the command of Admiral Sir David Beatty, was finishing its search sweep South of Jutland Bank when a chance encounter was made with a Danish merchant vessel. While Beatty's cruisers investigated the vessel the German Grand Fleet was spotted. As the battle began, Beatty tried to move his squadron around to the South of the German fleet to cut it off from its home port and to keep it occupied until the slower British battleships arrived. The tactic worked, but at a high price - Invincible, Queen Mary and Indefatigable were lost with nearly all hands.
Beside the fact that the light armour of the battlecruiser was never designed for close contact fighting, another problem existed with the British vessels. A fundamental flaw in the main gun munitions handling and storage system worsened the inadequacies of the armour plating. Stored within the working chamber of the gun turrets were large quantities of cordite which, when raised to the right temperature, were highly explosive. At the base of the gun turret was the magazine handling room which had direct access to the main magazines through an armoured door. During periods of battle the door from the gun turret to the main magazine would often be left open to allow easy access to the munitions stores. Once a shell penetrated the gun turret the cordite in the working chamber would ignite causing a chain reaction through the magazine handling room into the main magazine, which would then explode often blowing the ship in two. At the Battle of Jutland this design fault combined with the inadequate armour plating accounted for the loss of three battlecruisers and two cruisers.
HMS Lion would also have suffered a similar fate had it not been for the brave act of Major FJW Harvey, RMLI, the officer in charge of 'Q' turret. After a shell penetrated 'Q' turret and entered the working chamber, Major Harvey, with his dying breath ordered his men in the magazine to close the armoured door to the turret. Harvey died in the turret along with 100 of his men as the cordite exploded seconds later. For this act of bravery he was the first to earn a Victoria Cross in the Battle of Jutland - as Churchill said 'In the long, rough, glorious history of the Royal Marines there is no same and no deed which its character and consequence rank above this'.
The Germans had experienced similar problems two years earlier at the hands of the British at the Battle of Dogger Bank. Following a direct hit by a British shell the Seydlitz had a cordite explosion in one of her turrets which killed over 150 men, she was only saved by rapid flooding of her forward magazine.
Learning from this experience the Germans amended their designs and the Lutzow, being under construction at the time, benefited from these modifications. The Germans considerably reduced the amount of cordite stored in the working chamber of the turret along with the method of munitions transportation and storage. The armament of the turret was also modified, the Lutzow for example had a turret plating thickness of 10.6 inches. Another contribution to the increased safety was that the German munitions required much higher temperatures in order to detonate, this made them more stable but less reliable.
The later German ships were generally superior to those of the British, the newly completed Lutzow was 690 feet long, displaced 26,500 tons and was capable of 26 knots. She carried eight 12 inch guns, twelve 5.9 inch guns, eight 8.8cm guns and four 19.7 inch torpedo tubes. Her decks had 3.2-inch armour plating compared with a maximum of 2.5 inch on HMS Invincible (much of Invincible's decks were unprotected). Her main engines developed 63,000 horse power through four shafts. She was comparable with HMS Invincible in firepower and speed but had superior protection. The British Admiralty, in its arrogance, nicknamed these new German vessels '5 minute battleships' - they were convinced that was as long as they would last against the mighty British dreadnought.
This superior construction also had its price, the German ships on the whole were more complex and expensive, requiring considerably more fuel and men to run than their British counterparts. The main problem with this complexity however, was the time they took to build. The Lutzow took 37 months to construct compared with most British battlecruisers which took around a year. In the race for naval supremacy, the number of vessels rather than their finer quality was the critical factor. Britain already had the largest navy in the world. Its size was maintained so that it could out number the combination of navies of any two countries.
Following the destruction of HMS Invincible and the arrival of a nine mile long line of British Battleships the German fleet made a hasty retreat. Under an incredible outburst of British shells the German fleet executed the 'Battle Turnaway' - a simultaneous 180 degree reversal of course. The crippled Lutzow managed to escape behind a smoke screen laid down by one of the German Light Cruisers. The Frauenlob and the Pommern were however, not as fortunate, the Pommern went down with all hands. By the next morning, 1 June 1916, the Lutzow was shipping enough water to keep her speed below 5 knots. Vice Admiral Franz Hipper used the lull in the battle to transfer his flag to another vessel. Lutzow had sustained heavy damage, 24 hits in all, four 15 inch, twelve 13.5 inch and eight 12 inch and yet she had managed to remain afloat.
Once the crew had abandoned her, Hipper ordered the Lutzow to be sunk by a torpedo from the German Destroyer G38. Even after she was torpedoed at close range it took over two hours for her to finally sink. The Lutzow was the only German dreadnought to be sunk at the Battle of Jutland. The remaining German fleet retreated back to Germany for repairs, but never sailed again as a fleet until they were escorted to Scapa Flow at the end of the war. The Battle of Jutland was a turning point in the First World War, it forced the Kaiser to give up his dream of having the greatest surface navy in the world. Jutland Bank saw the final mighty dreadnought battle as the German Admiralty transferred its attention to a covert U-boat campaign rather than another large all out surface offensive. In less than two days the German Navy had lost 10 vessels and 2,551 men compared to British losses of 14 vessels and 6,097 men. Based upon the appalling British loss, Germany declared the Battle of Jutland Bank a clear victory.
The British also declared the Battle of Jutland Bank a victory, but for different reasons, the German navy never sailed its Grand Fleet again and Britain maintained its control of the North Sea. The sacrifices Britain had made to ensure a victory were high and following the war the Admiralty was forced to make radical changes to the navy. As Admiral Sir John Beatty said after the battle 'there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today'.
Until the Battle of Jutland the British Navy had not had to protect its coastline for over 100 years. The entire naval strategy was based on Nelson's victory at Trafalgar, which proved inadequate for modern warfare. By World War II Britain had learned from the mistakes of Jutland, vessels were improved, navy tactics and procedures modernised. If the battle of Jutland Bank had proved to be as straightforward as the Admiralty had predicted, and the lessons not learned, would they have been as well prepared?
On a bright morning 83 years later, I sat kitted up, eager to find out what lay beneath the shot buoy that bobbed up and down in the all too familiar North Sea swell. Earlier that morning, after continued searching, a positive wreck outline appeared on the sounder's screen. The battlecruiser Lutzow stood 10m proud of the seabed and, by the echo's distinctive shape, was upside down. Often in the final death throws of a dreadnought the large superstructure would cause the ship to roll over as it sank. As we sat waiting to dive, I reflected that on a similar morning 83 years ago the Lutzow was torpedoed, it would have been at about the same time of day that we had discovered her. It was a provocative thought that at the time of her scuttling the Lutzow was at the 'cutting edge' of naval technology and had proven herself with the devastation of HMS Invincible. Could she be as awesome in her resting place?
Usually with the North Sea it is difficult to judge the visibility. On the surface the sea has a foreboding grey-black appearance which gives little away. I was relieved that the recent bad weather had not affected the visibility, as we hung from the shot line at 6m carrying out our final equipment checks I could see the line merge into the deep blue 30m below me. As we made our way down the shot distinctive man-made shapes started to appear. Scattered over the seabed were large armour plates with the holes visible where the rivets that held them in place had long rusted away. We tied in the shot, our eyes quickly became accustomed to the light level and we were aware of a large shadow off to our right. Making our way towards the darkness a huge section of up-turned hull materialised, I stood on the seabed beneath it and looked up at the thick keel plates 10m above me. Swimming through the section of hull, I was amazed how much remained intact - brass plates on the inside of the bulkheads identified valves that still hung in place and large quantities of brass piping lay among the fallen deck plates. After passing through the other side of the hull we came across large intact machinery, around the base of which lay brass munitions handling frames and running gear.
After what appeared a very short period of time we made our way back through the hull to the shot line and made our ascent. Without knowledge of the tide in the area we did not plan for a long first dive, in such a remote location it was necessary to always return to the shot.
For our second dive we relocated the shot so that we could dive as much of the wreck as possible. Although a scooter was available and would have been ideal for exploring the entire wreck, with the North Sea swells recovery back onboard would have been very troublesome. As I glided down the shot line, what appeared to be two up-turned hulls came into view, they stood 5m high and each about 3m across. They ran as far as I could see and appeared to taper into the distance, I followed them for about 40m until they came to an abrupt end. I turned to face the way I had just swam, with this visibility the site was incredible, I was looking down the two stern torpedo tubes. From 30m away these were two impressive forms, tapering towards me, each ended with a huge 20-inch diameter torpedo tube hatch. (The Lutzow had carried 19.7-inch bow and stern torpedoes).
On our last dive on the Lutzow we again relocated the shot, this time on what turned out to be a heavily broken gun turret. As we came to the end of the line I checked that it was still firmly attached to the wreck, it was tied around a large cylinder 30cm across. I realised this was in fact a 12" shell case! I looked around and found the whole area was covered in similar shell cases, many still shining as they had been polished by the sand in the strong currents. We made our way past the turret wreckage and across some superstructure which had blast covers still hanging in place. A brass lantern lay on the seabed nearby surrounded by more shell handling frames and running gear.
All too soon it was the end of our last dive on the Lutzow. Following bad weather and other misfortune we had been on site for just the last two days out of our ten day programme. This is often the price you pay for diving in the remote North Sea, but the dives on the Lutzow made it all worthwhile. The wreck itself was quite incredible and my lasting memory will be of the menacing presence and dignity the Lutzow has. Currently I am planning a return trip in 2,000 to further explore and record this historic wreck - so watch this space!
The Dive Team: Doug Friday - Expedition Leader, Tone Dobbinson - Technical/Safety Co-ordinator, Andy Flowers, Richard Ellis, John Irving, Malcolm Williams, Greg Marshall and Jim McCormack. The team would like to thank Wittering Divers Co. and also George Fenner of Linde Gas.

By Doug Friday.