World War I as Lutjens's torpedo-boat school

Lutjens's World War I service explains why he later read danger through small-ship experience. His war involved minesweeping training, torpedo boats, coastal raids, and withdrawals when British or French destroyer strength became overwhelming. His cadet cruises, gunnery and torpedo courses, and instructional work preceded commands in vessels measured in hundreds rather than thousands of tons. Repeated infantry instruction reflected an era when naval personnel could be deployed ashore as soldiers, as in interventions surrounding the Boxer Rebellion. A roughly two-week minesweeping course in January 1915 also illustrates how quickly specialised wartime duties could follow a new posting. Accounts place him in actions against British and French destroyers off Flanders, although the exact dates and opponents remain uncertain. He learned that preserving a small force sometimes required breaking contact and running for shallow water. Those experiences help explain his realism about Royal Navy destroyers and his instinct to escape stronger capital ships in the next war. Keeping capable coastal torpedo officers away from Jutland also deprived the High Seas Fleet of reinforcements that might have mattered tactically.