One of the most recognized World War I photographs—HMS Invincible blowing up at the Battle of Jutland—has fascinated professional and amateur historians since it was first published soon after the conflict. The image endured for 70-odd years without any doubts as to its authenticity as a combat photo.
But in the past two decades, serious historians began to question its origins and ask if it’s just too good to be true.
At 1830 on 31 May 1916, almost three hours after the first shots of the Battle of Jutland had been fired, the British and German battle fleets were finally coming within range of each other. The Invincible, flagship of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron (BCS), was in the British van leading her sisters, the Indomitable and Inflexible, and pounding away at the opposing battlecruisers Lützow, Derfflinger, Moltke, Seydlitz, and Von der Tann. But at 1834, a salvo of 12-inch shells from the Lützow engulfed the Invincible, and one of the projectiles penetrated her midships Q turret. The shell’s detonation set off charges there, and flames instantaneously spread to the ship’s midsection magazine. Cut in half by the resulting explosion, the Invincible became the third British battlecruiser to blow up at Jutland.
The photo showing the explosion had fascinated me for many years when, in the summer of 2007, a reader’s question in the current issue of Warship International asked about the image’s origins. I then decided to see if I could shed some light on its background. Little did I realize what a research adventure I was in for. To begin with, like many others who were familiar with the photo, I’d never questioned its authenticity. My goals were to discover who the photographer was, what camera he had used, and from what ship he had taken the photograph.
I initially focused my research on the screening ships that accompanied the 3rd BCS into action—two scouting light cruisers, HMS Chester and Canterbury, and four screening destroyers, HMS Shark, Acasta, Ophelia, and Christopher. I reasoned that the photo must have been taken from one of these six ships, most likely from one of the four destroyers. But which one? It could only have been taken from a ship at approximately 500 to 1,000 yards off the Invincible’s starboard beam at precisely 1834, the time she blew up.
The normal screening disposition of the 3rd BCS’s destroyers was in the form of a semicircle arrayed around the leading ship’s bows, No. 1 off the port beam, No. 2 off the port bow, No. 3 off the starboard bow, and No. 4 off the starboard beam. I was confident that if I could determine which of the four destroyers was in the crucial starboard-beam position when the Invincible blew up, I would have the ship the photo was taken from. A further check of that ship’s records and logbook would hopefully identify the photographer and perhaps even his camera.
But the more I researched these ships’ movements, the more I came to the conclusion that none were in that starboard-beam position at 1834. All six had seen extensive earlier action, and the surviving destroyers and cruiser were somewhere astern of the 3rd BCS—and nowhere near the Invincible when she blew up.
Further research yielded a tantalizing clue. A map in John Costello and Terry Hughes’ book Jutland 1916 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977) showed two ships of the 3rd Light Cruiser Squadron, HMS Falmouth and Yarmouth, very close to the Invincible’s starboard beam at the time of her destruction. Further research, however, revealed that the two light cruisers were far ahead of the battlecruiser’s starboard bow, not beam, at the critical moment.
I was about to abandon the photographing-ship hypothesis when I received some crucial new information from the Imperial War Museum—documents relating to Lieutenant Commander John C. Croome that indicated there were two photographs of the Invincible blowing up. At the time of the battle, Croome was a junior midshipman in the Indomitable, the battlecruiser directly behind the Invincible. His papers included an incomplete combat report he had written in 1930 that stated he had taken “a unique photo” from his ship of the Invincible exploding.
According to the report, at the start of the 3rd BCS’s action against the German battlecruisers, Croome received permission to go atop his combat station in the port-side midships turret, whose guns could not be trained on the German fleet to starboard, to get a better view of events. From there he had a grandstand view. When enemy shells began to fall uncomfortably close, the officer decided it was high time to return to whatever protection his turret could afford him. At that point, while looking to starboard, a bright flash caught his eye. Turning his head, he saw the awesome spectacle of the Invincible blowing up and quickly disappearing in a dense column of enveloping black smoke several hundred feet high. He raised his camera (he didn’t mention what type) and took his shot.
I immediately surmised that Croome’s photo could not be the famous starboard-beam image and could only be an astern view of the Invincible. Confirmation arrived a week later when I received a package from Iain MacKenzie, curatorial officer at the Admiralty Library in Portsmouth, England, that included a photocopy of Croome’s astern image.
MacKenzie drew my attention to a possibility I hadn’t considered: The starboard-beam photo was a fake. If this were true, it was a superbly executed one that had fooled historians for many decades. The more I pondered MacKenzie’s arguments, the more they made sense.
When you examine details of the famous photograph and try to reconcile them with known facts of the 3rd BCS’s action with the German battlecruisers, anomalies emerge—little contradictions that just don’t add up. What follows are Iain MacKenzie’s and my own list of anomalies and observations about the starboard-beam photo:
The two destroyers visible ahead of the Invincible: We know that the Ophelia and Christopher were somewhere astern of the Invincible when she blew up. Nor could the mystery ships be destroyers from the 1st BCS, which at 1834 was steaming astern of the 3rd. Those destroyers were still behind their assigned battlecruisers.
Bow wave: Steaming at 23 or more knots, the Invincible should be generating an enormous bow wave. The photo shows a rather muted wave that doesn’t match earlier photos of the battlecruiser and her sisters in action.
Funnel smoke: As a coal-driven ship, the Invincible should be generating volumes of dense, black funnel smoke. The photo doesn’t show a commensurate amount of smoke for the speed of the ship at 1834.
Explosion cloud: Croome’s photograph shows a dense, black, tall cloud from the Invincible’s magazine explosion, but it’s absent from the starboard-beam photo.
German testimony: Günter Paaschen and Georg von Hase, gunnery officers in the Lützow and Derfflinger, observed through their rangefinders that when the Invincible blew up, she was surrounded by shell splashes from the German battlecruisers’ short and long shots. But the starboard-beam image shows no shell splashes or even disturbed water.
Direction of guns: Close examination reveals that the 12-inch forward, A turret, guns are pointing ahead, but they should be aimed to starboard.
Location of photographer’s ship: A vessel off the Invincible’s starboard beam at 1834 would surely have come under fire, but there are no records of any such action.
When the photo was first published in H. W. Fawcett and G. W. W. Cooper’s The Fighting at Jutland (1921), no photographer credit was given, nor was the ship he was in mentioned. The introduction of the unabridged edition of the book claims, “The photographs of ships in action were all taken on 31st May, 1916,” but MacKenzie believes that the Invincible image is not a photo but a photogravure, or photo engraving. A photo negative was transferred to a copper plate that was used to produce ink copies of the image. This raises the possibility that the image was doctored during the complicated engraving process.
I am convinced that is how the famous image was created. The basis for it was most likely an operational, noncombat photo of an Invincible-class battlecruiser, perhaps taken during a North Sea sweep.
The words “faked” and “doctored” in regard to the Invincible image will carry a negative connotation with some readers, but not with me. When first published, The Fighting at Jutland was an important work that contained some of the earliest first-person accounts of the battle to appear in print. What better way to help sell it than to include an extraordinary, full-page image of the Invincible blowing up? That the illusion of its authenticity lived on is a tribute to those anonymous photo-lab technicians who created the explosive image.