I'm off work with the tail end of a flu thing (1, 2, 3, aww... ☹️) but that means I'm at a loose end, so lets have a story. Todays reading has been inspired by this tweet, it's the tragic and farcical tale of the "Battle of May Island"
The term "battle" is sardonic, as there was no opposing force. It was a conspiracy of poor weather, operating at the limits of current technology, poor leadership decisions and the confusion that can easily be caused when things don't go to plan.
Our story is set 101 years ago, January 31st 1918 to be precise, in the cold and dark waters at the mouth of the Forth estuary around the Isle of May. 
The participants are the ships and submarines of the Royal Navy based out of Rosyth, 40 vessels in all. They are heading to the main base of the Grand Fleet in Scapa Flow to take part in a huge naval exercise, Operation EC1.
There were 3 battleships from the 5th Battle Squadron, these were of the "Queen Elizabeth" class, the cream of the Royal Navy's battleships at the time, the biggest, the fastest, the most heavily armed and protected. They would take no part in the "Battle"
There were 4 battlecruisers from the 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron. These ships were designed to be armed like battleships, but to be much faster (at the expense of being much less well protected).
And there were the requisite accompaniment of cruisers (intermediate sized ships to accompany battleships or to lead smaller vessels) and destroyers (the smallest class of ships capable of accompanying the main fleet as escorts, scouts and a sort of roaming attack unit)
So far, all pretty usual for the time. But then we come to the last 2 main groups of vessels, the 12th and the 13th submarine flotillas. To understand the scenario better we have to take a little detour into naval thinking and engineering of the time.
When HMS Dreadnought introduced steam turbines into the battlefleet in 1907, she was a good 15% faster than any battleship before her. The main thing was, you can run a turbine at high speed for a long time and not knacker it, so the speed of the battlefleet jumped right up
The battlecruisers present at the "battle" were contemparies of Dreadnought and were good for 25 knots (a good 20% faster than the former), hithertoo unheard of speed for a 20,000 ton capital ship
Naval technology was evolving at an unprecedented rate, and the "Queen Elizabeths" which came just 5 years after the battlecruisers were 50% bigger but could make pretty much the same speed. So what I'm getting at here is that the big ships of the navy rapidly got much faster
For quite a few years, the Royal Navy had planned that the coming war in Europe would basically be fought at sea between the battle fleets of it and the German Hochseeflotte. Britannia would rule the waves and that would be that.
But just to be sure they hit upon an idea (that developed into an obsession) that if you could have submarines that were fast enough to move with the battlefleet, you wouldn't just deal your enemy a blow, you could ambush it and send much of it to the bottom of the North Sea
So you would need a very fast submarine to do that, as your typical Royal Navy submarine of the time could make about 9 knots underwater and 15 on the surface, but couldn't maintain those speeds in any sort of weather or to maintain range
So to make a very fast submarine you need very big engines and to have very big engines you need a very big submarine. And that would be good because a very big submarine would better be able to maintain speed with the fleet in poor weather
So the Royal Navy ordered what was then its biggest and fastest submarine, HMS Nautilus. Designed for 20 knots, unfortunately she couldn't make this. So it was back to the drawing board
The problem was, diesel engines of the time weren't mature enough to deliver the sort of power required. Unwilling to let the concept drop and hunting about for an alternative, attention quickly focussed on the steam turbine. And so HMS Swordfish was built to test the idea
Now modern nuclear submarines use steam turbines, but what we're talking about here are turbines driven by steam from an oil-burning boiler, which of course is only for use on the surface. Swordfish was just to test the concept. She seemed to work but something bigger was needed
And now to deliver the Royal Navy what it desired, the naval designers really pushed the envelope of technology and engineering well beyond its capabilities, and came up with the frankly absurd "K class" submarines
Yes, that's right, it's got 2 funnels and masts. You see these were submarines that were to spend most of their time at high speed on the surface, accompanying the main fleet. They would only really need to go underwater when it came to battle
At which point they were then so large and ungainly and slow as to be little more than ambush predators. They would get behind the German fleet, wait for it, fire off their torpedoes when it retreated over them and then could flee at high speed
These submarines were about twice as long and 2-3x greater displacement than their contemporaries, and they had 10,000 horsepower compared to the usual 1 or 2 thousand, so they could make 24 knots. They truly were bonkers.
Of course you're way ahead of me on this. How do you get a submarine with funnels under water? Well of course you have to fold them away. You have to seal off the flues, you also have to close and seal the ventilators for the boilers, and have to extinguish the boiler fires.
In normal conditions, that whole process took 30 minutes! In an emergency it could be done in 5 tops. Although that wasn't seen as too much of a limitation as they would spend most of their time on the surface and weren't popping up and down all the time like other submarines
There were other problems with the "K class". Namely, their maximum diving depth was 200 feet, but they were 340 feet long, which meant a few degrees out of trim from the level and the hull could collapse.
The "K"s rapidly gained a very poor reputation. The unfortunately named K13 had sank in the Gareloch on trials a year before when her boiler room openings hadn't closed properly before a dive. A heroic rescue effort released 48 men, but 32 lost their lives
2 months earlier, K4 had collided with K1 during an operation off the Danish coast, and the latter had to be scuttled to prevent capture. The submarines were never named, but sailors took the K to stand for Kalamity.
Compounding the technological and engineering problems was how the Royal Navy tried to operate these vessels. As they were fleet vessels, they were organised as such and were to sail in squadrons and be led by a cruiser. This was something they were far too big and ungainly to do
So back to our main story, we have the 12th and 13th Submarine Flotillas. The 12th had four Ks, lead by the 3,300 ton cruiser Fearless
The 13th had 5 Ks, lead by the 1,600 ton destroyer Ithuriel. So in the mix we have 9 of these monstrous and conceptually flawed submarines, working in close proximity to the other vessels of the fleet.
The fleet began to depart Rosyth at 18:30, so it was already dark. It was commanded by Vice Admiral Evan-Thomas in HMS Courageous. Somewhat appropriately that was another ill-considered design of the time, a 20,000 ton, 32 knot "thing" that was effectively unarmoured
The fleet moved in line. Following Courageous was Ithuriel and her 5 submarines. Then there was a few miles gap after which came the 4 battlecruisers. A few more miles came Fearless and her 4 submarines and behind them the 3 battleships. The whole line was about 30 miles long
The fleet is moving at 16 knots. Because it is wartime and there is the threat of submarines, no navigation lights are showing apart from a single pale light on the stern of each vessel, blinkered so that it could only be seen from a few degrees either side of dead astern
As Evan-Thomas passes The Isle of May in Courageous, he orders the speed increased to 22 knots. No problemo, the Ks are good for 24.
This was what the Ks were designed for though, so far so good. But they are moving at high speed and are only 400 yards apart (just over 3 times their own lengths), and although it is calm and clear, there is no moon. So there's little margin for error
A little after 7PM, things start to go wrong. Mist begins to settle just as the ships pass the Isle of May, and then Ithuriel's 13th flotilla suddenly see the navigation lights of a ship heading straight for them out of the mist.
Ithuriel orders the flotilla hard to port to avoid the lights. But as they turn, K14's (3rd in line) steering gear fails and she moves out of formation. The crew wrestle with it for a full 6 minutes before it is restored.
K14 puts on her navigation lights, as does K12 behind her, but bringing up the rear is K22 who has lost sight of them in the mist and she too is now out of line as she has missed the turn
K14's crew restore her steering and she tries to move back into position, but suddenly the out-of-position K22, invisible in the mist, appears out of nowhere and crashes into her, cutting off her bows and penetrating her hull.
The rest of the flotilla is oblivious and continues steaming onwards, as the entangled K14 and K22 try to assess the damage. They manage to extricate themselves but it is clear K14 is sinking. K22 radios this to the leader, Ithuriel.
Unrelated to the unfolding calamity, but K22 is actually the unlucky K13, she was raised from the Gareloch, recommissioned, and wisely given a new number. But this has helped cement the reputation of the K class as Kalamity or even Killer-K.
K22 stands by K14 to assist the rescue, but within a matter of minutes the battlecruisers, following behind at high speed, arrive on the scene. K22 fires a red flare to warn them off, the first 3 manage to avoid but K22 is hit by the 20,000 ton battlecruiser Inflexible
The battlecruisers disappear into the night, leaving K22 wrecked and settling fast. Soon only her conning tower is showing above the water. Meantimes, Ithuriel, leader of the stricken submarines, has decoded K22's radio signal and turns around to assist its stricken charges
Ithuriel radios the battlecruisers her intentions and leads her 3 remaining submarines back towards the Isle of May. They are now moving in the opposite direction from the main fleet.
However, the battlecruisers have not recieved the message (it ended up taking 40 minutes to encode, transmit, receive and decrypt) and very nearly run down Ithuriel and the submarines. Another disaster was avoided very narrowly though emergency manoeuvres
This slows up Ithuriel and the 3 submarines, which take time to get back into formation, but they are soon nearing the Isle of May to assist K14 and K22.
But by this time, Fearless and the 12th submarine flotilla are also approaching the Isle of May at high speed, and find the 13th flotilla heading back towards them out of the mist, heading the wrong way!
Fearless orders full speed astern and sounds her emergency siren, but it's too late and she ploughs straight through K17, sending her rapidly to the bottom. Most of the crew were able to jump overboard but tragically only 12 of her 29 crew are rescued.
Fearless is temporarily dead in the water, and although badly damaged, the crew are able to shore up the internal bulkheads to prevent a total collapse. She will later make it gingerly back to Rosyth.
K4, following behind Fearless, hears the warning siren and also orders an emergency stop. K3 is behind her and does not, she manages to take avoiding action at the last second and avoids her, coming to a stop 3 cables (3/10ths of a nautical mile) beyond.
The next submarine in line, K6, is not so lucky and ploughs straight into K4 despite going full astern. K4 is near enough sliced in half and rapidly begins to sink. To seal the deal the last submarine in line, K7, also collides with her minutes later. All hands are lost on K4
At that point you would hope that it couldn't have got much worse, but we still have the battleships of the 5th Squadron to come. In the darkness, the destroyers accompanying the battleships run down the men of K17 still struggling in the water
In little over an hour, two of the Royal Navy's biggest and newest submarines have been sunk. Four more are badly damaged, as is the cruiser Fearless, and 104 men have lost their lives in the calamity.
K4 went down with all hands, hit by 2 of her sisters. K17 lost 47 men, most had made it out but died in the water from exposure or when the destroyers hit them. K14 is miraculously saved and loses only 2. She is towed back to Rosyth by the destroyer Venetia
The wrecks of K4 and K17 lie on the seabed some 13 nautical miles east of the Isle of May. They were discovered and charted by the survey ship HMS Scott in 1962. Scott was employed in the 1960s mapping the seabed for wartime wrecks in advance of the coming of larger oil tankers
The wrecks are a designated protected place, and have recently been surveyed by divers associated with offshore windfarm development. There's a haunting video on youtube showing the wreck of K4, the part in the image below is the distinctive conning tower
n.b. Naval jargon explainer, the conning tower is the bit of the submarine that sticks up, from where it is commanded (or "conned") when on the surface. You can see the mixture of round and rectangular windows matches
K6 (who had hit K4) was repaired and survived the war, she was scrapped in 1926.
K14, almost sunk by K22, was also scrapped in 1926.
K7 (who had also hit K4) was scrapped in 1921 at the tender age of 4.
K14, almost sunk by K22, was also scrapped in 1926.
K7 (who had also hit K4) was scrapped in 1921 at the tender age of 4.
The unfortunate K22, (ex-K13) which had hit K14, was also scrapped in 1926.
Fearless, leader of the 12th flotilla, was repaired and returned to service, she was sold for scrap in 1921.
Ithuriel, leader of the unlucky 13th, survived the war and was scrapped in 1921
Fearless, leader of the 12th flotilla, was repaired and returned to service, she was sold for scrap in 1921.
Ithuriel, leader of the unlucky 13th, survived the war and was scrapped in 1921
The subsequent court of enquiry tried to pin the blame on Commander Leir of HMS Ithuriel, who had turned back against the flow of the fleet. He was cleared in the subsequent court martial, and would go on to attain the rank of Rear Admiral before retiring in 1931.
The court of enquiry and courts martial were hushed up at the time. The whole episode, as tragic as it was, was deeply embarrassing to the Royal Navy. The files were sealed and much of the information did not come out until the 1990s, long after all involved had passed away.
A memorial was unveiled in Anstruther by Fife Council in 2002
The whole sorry state of affairs, which happened not many miles off the coast, is not one that is well known about. I happened to know about it because as a weird teenager I took this book out the library as my light holiday reading
That's the end of that story, but not of the "spectacularly misconceived" K class submarines. Such was the Navy's faith in them that they had ordered a whole 21. By 1918, 4 had been lost in accidents (K13 was returned as K22)
K5 was lost with all hands in the Bay of Biscay in 1921, it is thought that due to problems trimming her, she exceeded her diving depth (remember, these vessels were hard to handle and were much longer than their safe diving depth)
K15 almost sank in May 1921 when the sea got into her funnels and flooded the boilers. She finished the job a month later when the contraction on a cold night of the hydraulic oil in the apparatus for closing her boiler openings caused them to open. Fortunately all hands escaped
K16 and K12 joined the unlucky K13 at the bottom of the Gareloch but fortuitously managed to resurface after valiant efforts by their crews.
K3 lost control in a dive in the Pentland Firth and went well over her safe diving depth, but miraculously lived to tell the tale
And you'd think that would be the end of the sorry story of the K class, except it wasn't... The Royal Navy obviously soon realised the inherent dangers of giant steam-powered submarines, so it re-ordered the last 4 to have conventional diesel engines
But it didn't actually need giant diesel submarines, they were much to big to be of much use as actual submarines, so they came up with an even more bizarre scheme to use these as submersible "monitors" or coast bombardment vessels
The idea seemed sensible on paper. They would fit the submarines with a giant gun of the sort you find on a battleship, it would surface off the enemy coast, fire a few rounds, then dissappear, only to re-appear some place else and carry on
All nice on paper, but then you've got the problems of trying to mate an extremely large gun with a massive recoil, designed for a 15,000+ ton battleship, with a 3,000 ton submarine. But the Navy persisted, they also thought these would be good for sinking enemy merchant ships
The first was called M1 to distance the class from the Kalamitous Ks. M1 was lost off Start Point in Devon in 1925 with all hands when she was run down by a Swedish merchant ship at night. That her hull was still painted in wartime camouflage did not help matters.
The whole concept was very silly and the Navy recognised this, smaller submarines with smaller guns and torpedoes were much handier and more effective than these wallowing monsters. So the Navy had to come up with another use for them.
So when M1 was lost they decided to use all that space taken up by the giant gun and its ammunition and put it to other purposes. For M2, they decided to fit a hangar and a launch catapult for a small, purpose-built plane, the "Parnall Peto"
And what do you know, the whole crazy scheme worked. It was kind of a solution looking for a problem, but it worked. Sadly M2 was also lost with all hands a few years later in 1932 when she inexplicably opened the hangar doors while surfacing and was flooded
M3 was converted to a minelayer and as this did not involve any large openings in the hull, survived her trials and succesfully proved the concept before being scrapped and replaced by purpose built vessels.
Fortuitously, M4 was scrapped while under construction due to the end of the war.
But the Royal Navy was not quite done yet. They had one last shot with the bizarre giant submarines and built HMS X1 in 1923. The navy imagined she might be a "commerce raider", capable of sinking enemy merchant ships and taking on destroyers or other small warships.
The whole scheme was also bonkers and would probably have ended up in disaster, if the enemy hadn't sunk her she would probably have sunk herself, but her machinery was so unreliable she spent most of her time in dock.
After only 2 years service she was placed in reserve and scrapped 6 years later. If I'm not mistaken, she's the only Royal Navy warship designed and built after WW1 and scrapped before WW2. Anyway, she was technically illegal under the terms of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty
The French copied the basic idea to keep up with the Joneses on the other side of the Manche and built an even bigger one called Surcouf. Keeping up the unhappy reputation she disappeared during WW2 with the loss of all hands while serving with the Free French Navy
I'm not sure if there is a moral to this story but it might be that giant, ill-conceived machines of war are even more dangerous to their own side than the one which they were designed to fight.
