Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-03-09
Modern Navies of Various Nations Infested

scarcely saw the enemy at all, and it
was already Steaming of to the SOUTH
ward, that Won Scheer knew the whole
British fleet was present.
Ships Took Terrific Punishment.
Throughout those two or three con-
fused hours, however, it was Won Hip
per's battle cruisers which were closest
under the fire of the British grand
fleet; they were hit again and again,
and, though they did not sink and did
not blow up, they sustained a terrible
punishment. The Lutzow, Won Hipper's
flagship, was practically out Of action
and the admiral left here. In the Won
der Tam not a single heavy gun could
be fired. At 7:13 a shell landed on one
OF the after turretS of the Derfflinger
and there was a great ammunition fire :;
few minutes later the companion tur-
rit was hit. AS in the. Lion and the
other ships, the great tongues Of fire
sprang forth high above the turret
roofs, mingled with clouds of yellow
smoke" while all but six of the 1853
men manning the two turrets persisted
instantly. The fires continued to burn.
An hour afterward the turrets "were
still smoking and giving out clouds of
thick yellow gas" and presently the
smoke and poisonous gases from the
turretS began to seep back through the
voice tubes, rendering the control sta
tons untenable. A few minutes later
Comdr. Won Hase himself experienced
direct hit upon the coming tower
where he was standing:
Suddenly we heard q noise like the
crack of doom; there was a tremendous
roar, a terrific defamation, and then
darkness came down upon us. We felt
fearful blow; the whole coming tower
rocked as II it had been struck by a
giants fist, seeming to lift upward, and
then settled vibrating into its old posi-
ton" The shell failed to penetrate the
armor, but it '7renched open the heavy
armored door and TANNED it so that It
was impossible to shut it. But q little
later second heavy shell struck almost
as near and the door was flung shut.
Lesson Not Easy to Learn.
How much more the ships might have
withstood no one can say; Won Scheer
ordered them out of the desperate stu
alton in which they had been placed,
the German feet slipped of to the west
ward, and as night closed down the roar
OF battle died away into the sporadic
outbursts Of gunfire as the destroyers or
light cruisers encountered each other in
pounded steadily on. There were many
terrible moments throughout the night,
as when the people in small British
vessel suddenly saw a great ship burst
out into a column of fire before their
eyes and then disappear, or when q
British destroyer collided with a Ger
man light cruiser and had her upper
works wrecked--not by the projectiles,
but by the blast of the cruisers guns,
fired just above them. And ultimately
there was silence, the chance to recover,
to count losses and to ask what the
lesson had been.
Even that question Is not easy to
answer. In the battle-cruiser action the
weaker forces inflicted by far the
heavier damage; in the feet action the
side possessing overwhelmingly superior
ity quite failed to overwhelm. During
the night the Germans realized that the
Lutzow, with her compartments rapidly
filling, could not be saved; they sank
her themselves after taking of the crew.
It was their only loss Of a capital ship,
as against the three battle cruisers lost
by the British. Won Scheer, who ought
to have been wiped out, passed across
the wake of the British line in the night
and got clear away.
And yet, though the book estimates
were unset, they were also confirmed.
CuriouSiy enough, the whole fantastic
incident was as unnecessary as 1t was
accidental. Before the action, theory
indicated that the Germans could not
risk a battle; after the action, they
never risked one again. 1t achieved
nothing that had not been assumed be-
forehand; it led to no change IN the
naval position. The two fleets exercised
exactly the same influence on the war
after the encounter as they had done
before 1t.
British Vessels Superior.
This was partly because the British
superiority was so very great; the expe-
rience Of the individual ships at least
suggest that the exactly balanced heets
now being discussed at London might
emerge from a real action, should there
ever be another naval war, in q very
different position from that which could
be forecast on the basis OF the tonnage
figures. On the other hand, the very
impossibility of predicting the results
when one side Is not Overwhelmingly
superior might have much the same
effect as the certainty OF the result
when such superiority does exist.
Throughout the brief history OF mod
ern war vessels one may note the curious
fact that these great engines Of war are
so very expensive, so powerful while they
exist and so dif1cult to replace quickly
when they are destroyed that they very
seldom can hA risked In actual battle.