This following letter was sent by Harry W Smith, the Borough engineer at Scarborough to Dr Hay, city of Aberdeen Emergency committee, dated January 8th 1915. It is an excellent summary of the attack on Scarborough and the targets which the Germans were aiming at.
In reply to your letter of the 6th instant, I have pleasure in lending you a copy of the plan showing where the shells fired by the Germans struck in the Borough. I enclose herewith a copy of same and return to me the original, as I am very short handed at present and cannot spare the time to have further copies made. I would be glad if you could end me back the original as soon as possible. As the War Office do not wish this plan to be published, it is, of course, understood that you will keep the matter quite private.
There were a good many shells which fell outside the Borough in villages three and four miles distant, and I have no doubt that in almost all cases these were aimed at our wireless station but were too high.
My own theory is that their first object of attack was the Coast Guard Station on the Castle Hill, and afterwards the Wireless Station, and as they fired from both bays it will, I think, account for the complete way in which they had covered the town.
In addition to the Castle Hill and the Wireless Station, it seems to me that the intentional damage to property was confined largely to the better class houses in the South Bay. The central portions of the town were struck by shells which fell short of the wireless station.
I do not, of course, set up as a gunnery expert, and my theory may be entirely wrong.
...As I have not yet succeeded in getting the positions of the cruisers, but I can say that they fired first from the North Bay fairly close in, steamed south into the South Bay a couple of miles or thereabouts then turned round proceeded north to Whitby firing as they went.
