The influence of the naval battle in Helgolan Bay

The Battle of Helgolan Bay was the first large-scale maritime confrontation between Britain and Germany in World War I, and the victory undoubtedly belonged to Britain. The overwhelming advantage of combat cruisers has been fully demonstrated in this battle, which fully proves the important role of high-speed capital ships in avant-garde warfare. Three German light cruisers, Mainz, Cologne and Ariadne, a lightning strike ship V 187 sank, Flawn Loeb, the lightning strike ship V 1, and minesweepers D8 and T33 suffered heavy losses, resulting in the following losses of Major General Mas 1242, of which 7 12 were killed, 336. In contrast, the loss of the British side was completely insignificant, and no ship sank. Only the light patrol Lin Xian, destroyers laurel, Hastert and Laertes were seriously injured, with 35 deaths and 40 injuries, among which the most seriously injured Lin Xian Ship 1 1 dead 16 was injured.

The good news spread all over Britain's small territory. For most British people who don't know the process and only care about the result, this long-awaited victory is undoubtedly a stimulant. But for insiders, there is only a thin line between this brilliant victory and disaster, which exposes many problems in planning, communication and coordination of the Royal Navy. The meanness of study makes the planned support force useless. If Jellicoe hadn't decided to send Betty and Goodnow, Tilhuite would have suffered a great loss. Keith's plan takes into account the risk of approaching the enemy base and quickly reinforcing the enemy. Therefore, he specially sent a decoy submarine to move the scheduled battlefield to the west. However, the Harriet was attracted by the enemy in front of her, but she ran eastward in the opposite direction and sank deeper and deeper. Lin Xian's premature injury, mistaken identification of friendly ships and other reasons made the pace of westward progress stumble, and the reinforced German troops kept chasing after them. It is really surprising that the simple and clear plan of encirclement westward has finally evolved into an extremely embarrassing side-by-side retreat. In addition, the communication dereliction of duty of the staff officers almost caused the submarine to accidentally attack friendly ships.

The most fatal mistake in the internal defense plan of the German navy before the war was to assume that Britain would send light ships into Helgolan Bay without the cover of heavy ships. Based on this assumption, the Germans confidently entrusted the task of weakening the enemy's blockade fleet to the weak light surface warship forces, while leaving the main fleet in the port. I hope to weaken my opponent with a small number of troops and save the main forces for the main decisive battle. However, insufficient attention was paid to the realistic and urgent patrol demand, which led to this defeat.

Hippel made a separate plan for the German light patrol. However, due to limited visibility, the German light patrol lost the option of flexible advance and retreat. In the face of the relatively concentrated harriet sub-fleet, they didn't take any advantage, but became the prey of Betty and Goodnow. In his memoirs, Schell believes that in order to maintain morale, the British fleet should not be allowed to enter and leave the front yard of Germany without hindrance at the beginning of the war. The Germans rushed for the fighter plane, and his excuse may explain part of hippel's motives.

This naval battle had a great influence on Germany's naval strategy. In the face of the British fleet, the grasp began to waver. The Kaiser didn't want to risk the weaker navy. In his view, after the German army defeated France, a powerful ocean-going fleet would become a huge weight for peace talks with Britain. So the Kaiser ordered the fleet to "keep on the defensive and avoid combat activities that might lead to greater losses." Since September, the German navy has laid a large number of mines in Helgolan Bay. The patrol of the originally panting light ship was greatly reduced, and the released troops were put into other more urgent tasks; Since then, the battle cruiser team has been on standby at the mouth of the Jed River, always keeping a battleship squadron in a state of readiness; Single-ship combat is also strictly prohibited. This means that the plan of "internal weakening-decisive battle" initiated by Tirpitz and carefully prepared by the German navy for more than ten years died unfortunately only after more than 20 days of war, and was replaced by "avoiding war and protecting ships" wholeheartedly.