Talk:Battle of Jutland/Archive 7

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edit mixup

(outdent) I went in and, for ships involved, tried to link them to their respective wikipages... Made no changes to the results section, but upon review of the "history", the before and after makes it look like I did, plus add some sort of arabic link at the very bottom, which definately did not. Please let me know if I'm jsut reading the "history" page wrong. Thanks.Phinmak (talk) 20:21, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

The results section does seem to have changed after your edit. If you didn't do it, perhaps you picked up a different copy of the page with those edits in it, somehow? I'll chop out the bit you apparently added but disclaim. Sandpiper (talk) 23:52, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

intro

Having been reading about the battle and now re-read some of the article, I noticed some inexactitudes in the intro. It claimed Beatty lost his numerical advantage , being reduced from 6 ships to 4 against Hipper's 5, whereas Beatty had 10 reduced to 8 (always in the advantage had he chosen to make use of it), and implied there was a continuous fleet to fleet firefight for two hours. I happen to have Harper/Truth about Jutland in front of me and he claims it was 37 minutes, 15 mins break for the turnaway and then another 15 mins (p.163), but anyway just about everyone including this article says it was two separate periods which were certainly not continuously full fleet engagements. Of course, Harper claims the engagement was 6.17 to 6.54 and 7.10 to 7.25, which is not entirely easy to square with the article quoted times. Does anyone know whether the article times of 'engagement' were meant to include some of the subsidiary events when battlecruisers etc were engaged rather than strictly the main fleets? Also Harper says sunset was 8.07 and while he doesn't exactly say, seems to imply nightfall in the sense of being too dark to see was about 9.00, rather than 8.30 as again implied by the intro. Sandpiper (talk) 13:38, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

The Naval Staff Appreciation, which was based in large part on the Harper Record and the efforts of Harper and his team of four officers, states in a note on p. 107: "Sunset at 8.07 G.M.T., but it was still light enough for firing at 9 p.m." As far as I can see the only action which took place around nine was between 8,000 and 9,000 yards according to Campbell. --Harlsbottom (talk | library | book reviews) 16:00, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I think another little wording tweak will be called for.Sandpiper (talk) 10:54, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Misread my Campbell (not a very well organised book) - there were isolated destroyer actions at much closer ranges around 9, but the point remains that it was still light enough for action at considerable distances. --Harlsbottom (talk | library | book reviews) 12:05, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

It sounds very good as something to write in an intro, but did the Germans really set out to 'contest control of the high seas' which they never again did after this battle? It seems to me that both before and after their policy was to avoid fleet to fleet contact, so this was unchanged. It was only a contest on this occasion by accident (or British intent), never by German design? Sandpiper (talk) 14:00, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm wondering, too, if it's fair to say that the result of the battle was "only" that the British retained dominance of the seas. Surely it's correct to say "Numerical German victory but British dominance maintained".bigpad (talk) 18:45, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) The question is whether one can categorically say the damage inflicted by the Germans counts as a victory. It's all very well stating the obvious and saying that sinking more ships and killing more men gives the Germans the title. The three battle cruisers being the main point, except that the fresh Australia was soon back in the line and Repulse and Renown joined the fleet in September, before Seydlitz had even been repaired completely and months before Lützow could be replaced by Hindenburg. What this article needs is a comprehensive assessment section presenting both sides - the present one just doesn't cut it unfortunately and some of that stuff has been there for years waiting to be weeded. I've got nothing else on so I might try it tonight. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 19:04, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Controversy

While hopping around I noticed the French wiki has a whole article about Controversy, whereas we have only a section (Fr:Controverse du Jutland). Maybe we have a similar article somewhere, but if not, perhaps we should? There is certainly more to be said than is here already. Sandpiper (talk) 02:37, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe there should be an article. However, the French one isn't particularly good (my A-Level French stands me in good stead). --Harlsbottom (talk | library | book reviews) 18:09, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

second fleet engagement after Germans turn back towards Grand Fleet

The article currently says (Gefechtskehrtwendung), By 19:15, Jellicoe had crossed Scheer's "T" again. This time his arc of fire was tighter and deadlier, causing severe damage to the German battleships, particularly Rear-Admiral Behncke's leading 3rd Squadron. By contrast Jutland 1916 by Steel and Hart says Jellicoe's battle line was in a state of considerable disorder, as the turn by divisions had almost undone the initial deployment, while the various adjustments ordered to the speed had caused further confusion all along the line. Though to be fair they go on, yet these were inconveniences rather than serious problems. But they return to the issue on the next page, Unfortunately, not every ship could take advantage of the opportunity. Strung out in divisions as they were, some ships were badly masked and could not fire. There is a rather curious description from someone onboard George V that, The German fleet was to westward... a perfect target, each ship standing out black and clear...it was nearly half an hour before German shells started to fall near...the captain shouted down from the bridge that everyone was to return to action stations. Apparently they were all on deck watching, which seems odd in the middle of a battle. The two points they make which we overlook are that Jellicoe (somewhat contrary to later allegations of his failing to chase the enemy) had broken the line into divisions and turned them towards the Germans who had turned away, but that this then proved something of a disadvantage in poor positioning when they unexpectedly came back. Sandpiper (talk) 08:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Steel and Hart aren't making much sense there. Of course "the turn by divisions had almost undone the initial deployment", as Jellicoe was heading South-East in order to get further between Scheer and his base (since he had no idea where the Germans were at this point). Considering the arrangement of the Grand Fleet at this point in the failing light (divisions in line ahead cruising South with the Sixth Division nearest to the Germans and the First Division and King George V furthest away) I think it's fair to say that whomever Steel and Hart were quoting (I will check this evening) was talking out of his hat. The Fourth Light Cruiser Squadron (Goodenough) to the west of King George V didn't sight the Germans until 19.04, at which point the other British battleships were in a position to fire. The Second Battle Squadron didn't start firing until around 19:15 and King George V was the last to fire at 19:17 at a range of 12,800 yards. She fired on what was supposed to be Lützow, but couldn't tell because of a smoke screen laid by German destroyers. --Harlsbottom (talk | library | book reviews) 12:58, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I smell a rat

During the run to the south we've all read how the light was so terrible for Beatty's BCS 1st and 2nd. I've read enough histories now to have to ask a well considered question... exactly why did 1st and 2nd BCS have such rotten shooting when 5th BS was so terribly effective? It has been quoted often enough about how poor the visibiity was from the view of the 2 bcs squadrons but somehow the 5th BS under Evan-Thomas at greater range and about the same angle had much better lighting? I've got quotes that they started hitting for effect (5th BS) at 21,000 yards and that only improved with time. I know bullshit when I smell it... I would like to get everyone's thoughts on this please. Tirronan (talk) 03:21, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Not too sure what your point is. If you look at the results of firing trials in the late 19th/early20th century you'll read appalling results for ships, which occasionally inspired the captains or admirals to actually work on their gunnery. If the squadron commander wasn't interested in gunnery then no one would practice it. Greglocock (talk) 04:41, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Cant't find the source right now, but I remember reading that the battlecruisers, being forward deployed at Rosyth, had no access to a shooting range deemed secure enough for training and therefore could not practice gunnery during the war. That would explain their lack of performance compared to the battleships stationed in Scapa Flow. Nevfennas (talk) 09:02, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I've expanded my comment above but I am getting at the "horrible" light for Beatty's force, looks to be just an excuse for piss poor shooting again by those two squadrons. 1st and 2nd BCS ran just above 1% hit rate while the Germans ran 3% and 5th BS ran about the same. Tirronan (talk) 12:35, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

The B.C.F. did have limited access to gunnery ranges, but that still doesn't fully explain their appalling shooting. Practice simply can not be an excuse. Look at the Third Battle Cruiser Squadron's firing, generally regarded as good. They spent hardly any time on the ranges at Scapa yet shot well, despite the fact that Invincible didn't have a Dreyer Fire Control Table and Inflexible didn't even use her director! Couple this with the alleged appalling laxity in magazin handing procedures adn the devotion to a high rate of fire in the B.C.F., a very poor picture emerges. Beatty didn't have a gunnery staff officer until after Jutland - Jellicoe always had a post captain on his staff to deal with gunnery issues as well as having the navy's foremost gunnery expert as his flag captain (and it showed - Iron Duke shot extremely well). --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 20:25, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I think this needs to be dug into, the 5th BS ran about as accurate as the German BC force and among the best shooting of the day in the same conditions as the Beatty's BCS forces during the run to the south to the north as well for that matter. Tirronan (talk) 01:34, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

From what I read the first problem was Beatty. He is on record as saying he believed fast shooting at relatively close range was the best way of doing it. Which wholly threw away what Fisher et al had been trying to achieve, ships which could hit first at greater range. Which the 5BS noteably demonstrated. Beatty was wrong. He failed to understand his ships capabilities and weaknesses, and quite possibly contributed to the fatal habit of stacking charges right left and centre to increase speed of firing. He failed to engage Hipper at maximum range, leaving Hipper to shoot first when he was ready with the inevitable advantage this brought. Once Beatty's ships were receiving hits this automatically reduced their own ability to return fire. (This applied to the Germans too, once someone finally managed to start hitting them) I suspect Beatty had a self fulfilling prophecy on his hands: If he believed his ships fought best at medium ranges, he never tried to improve their effectiveness at long range, he didn't believe in it, so they never got better. He was probably also a victim of his own propaganda, where he came off quite well in some skirmishes with the Germans, but in reality taking on and sinking Blucher was the easiest target amongst the German battlecruisers. It is just possible that his best bit of luck on that day was the misunderstanding whereby the British ships broke off their attack on the German battlecruisers, which had only just been coming into range. His whole approach to this battle illustrated a cocksure attitude, to wit leaving behind the 5BS. His ships were positioned badly for the battle: whether or not the light was bad, he just didn't get them into a position where they were ready to fire when they came into range, they were still turning. Some of the 'bad light' was funnel smoke from his own ships, which again is a maneuvering issue. To be fair to him, he seems to have been concerned the Germans would run, so he was trying to get around and cut them off. I dont understand the positions well enough to comment, but this might be a legitimate explanation for his taking a poor position. The Germans, on the other hand, had no intention of running. They didn't. They picked a steady speed which they knew Beatty could comfortably keep up and were thoroughly enjoying making mincemeat of him before the 5BS arrived, which was a bit of a nasty surprise. It may be unfair to argue the 5BS had the same shooting conditions as Beatty, because they were coming from a different angle and in particular might have been clear of smoke, etc, but I don't know. The evidence of the ranges at which the british BCS started shooting, and what they thought the ranges were in contrast to what they actually were, shows that their rangefinding was poor (er, rubbish?). The issue of the more sophisticated fire control setups is beside the point if they couldn't even establish the basic range accurately. I would suspect this was a training issue, though obviously the tail ships of his column steaming through Lion's smoke didn't help. There were a number of instances during the battle when destroyers, etc, were emitting smoke in most inconvenient places and this may apply here from some of his escorts. Some of the claims about poor signalling, eg as to which ships took which targets, don't really hold up: the issue seems to have been that not every british ship could see every German one (bad visibility!) so they miscounted their targets. I don't know if this can fairly be laid at Beatty's feet. Certainly he had an incompetent signals officer, knew he did, did nothing about it, and it was suggested took him on because he was a relative of Churchill's wife's best friend. (Churchill having saved Beatty's career) It was his style of command to be inspiring rather than precisely planned.

As to smelling rat, yes, so do I. 'Bad light' was an acceptable explanation, just as 'bad shells' was. Both contain an element of truth. But although I doubt Beaty had any objections to these explanations being put about, it was also considered in the national interest for him to be hailed as a hero. And then again, this controversy was being argued about while the war was going on and it would not have been a brilliant idea to explain to the Germans exactly what went wrong. Then Beatty became first sea lord after the war. So the version of history from his POV got well and truly established. I'm not sure, but it may be rather more to his credit to say that he seems to have done rather well as first sea lord, and as admiral commanding the grand fleet replacing Jellicoe, seems to have left behind a lot of his gung-ho attitude. He may have learnt something from this disaster. And finally, even if you think he did badly, the question would be who was available as an alternative who would have done better? Sandpiper (talk) 20:40, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Alternative to Beatty as what? Vice-Admiral Commanding the Battle Cruisers? Commander-in-Chief, Grand Fleet? First Sea Lord? In each case there are many alternatives. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 23:13, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, suppose he had fallen out with Churchill and been blackballed from the navy so never had any of these controversial posts, I don't know enough about who was available to take his place, but I doubt there were truly 'many' candidates. Do you know enough about the selection to suggest who might have done it well? The history I have seen of battles which did get fought in WWI was that there were a lot of people able to do it badly. Specifically the critical appointment was commanding the battlecruisers. Churchill wasn't stupid, but on the other hand it wasnt a critical wartime appointment at the time he got the job. Sandpiper (talk) 19:19, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I have a biographical list of every single British flag officer on the active list during the First World War (hundreds of them) - as far as I'm aware noone else has one - the one on admirals.org.uk is far from complete and is replete with silly spelling errors, while the one on GWPDA only contains a number of those who held appointments. I think I've read enough to know who was qualified and who was not, and by and large they were all capable sea officers. As indicated in The Rules of the Game, pp. 14, 626, had the Admiralty stuck by its guns the battlecruisers would have been dispersed to the light cruiser squadrons in May 1915. The only hope Beatty might have had then would be to have commanded a mixed light cruiser/battle squadron, as there would have been other candidates for command of a cruiser force (rather than a battle cruiser fleet as emerged). Had the plan been adopted on the outbreak of war instead of abandoned, who knows what might have happened in the war at sea? Churchill may not have been stupid, but he sure as hell gives the impression that he was in many of his actions. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 19:51, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

As to your last question, and a damning indictment of Beatty's battle cruiser gang, the handling of the Jutland Controversy and the slipshod histiriography of it, I recommend the doctoral thesis by James yates from the University of Hull: The Jutland controversy, A case study in intra-service politics. His reasoning in places is absurd but it makes a very good case that Beatty has led everyone down the wrong track for 90 years. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 23:18, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I was expecting you to respond and was not disappointed. Shame he didnt go to London. Sandpiper (talk) 19:19, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Well the wonders of modern technology, I now have a copy of James Yates. I see his own introductory view on the commanders issue was that there was no one more suitable for the post of commanding the BCF than Beatty. He also subscribes to the view that officers were universally ill equiped to run this war. I was not criticing your knowledge or ready access to information, quite the reverse. But specifically asking an informed person who he might have suggested in Beatty's place and why. Churchill was a mould breaker. He didn't believe in following established rules, and i would say did believe in the unorthodox approach. He was frequently criticised for this. It is undoubtedly true that Beatty's dash and siezing the main chance must have appealed to him, but he was never short of a critical view of officers performance while a journalist, so I don't really believe he would have dropped it in office himself. He saw something in Beatty which he thought appropriate for the task. I would not be surprised if he saw quite plainly the contrast between Jellicoe and Beatty and approved of it for their contrasting roles. I would say it was Beatty's knowledge of gunnery and his ships capabilities which was at fault, and this was probably not immediately evident. Sandpiper (talk) 14:23, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Even Roskill, as opinionated a historian as ever lived, didn't pronounce any judgements on whether Beatty was more qualified than anyone else for command of the First Battle Cruiser Squadron. He just stated (p. 58) that Churchill had "no hesitation" in appointing Beatty over the heads of his seniors. Yates doesn't give any reasons whatsoever for his pronouncement that Beatty was the best, so his opinion, while noted, can be discarded as utterly useless. For alternatives, let's see. On 8 February 1913 Cradock replaced Edward Eden Bradford in command of the Fourth Cruiser Squadron, formerly the Training Squadron. This was Cradock's first seagoing flag appointment since promotion to flag rank, so he can be ruled out. Bradford had distinguished himself early in his career in the Pacific through bravery and quick-thinking. Probably not Battle Cruiser materiel though he probably would have done the job as capably without the ensuing tactical confusion. Arthur Henry Christian commanded the Fifth Cruiser Squadron through his role as Rear-Admiral of the Devonport Division of the Home Fleet - a competent enough officer although he apparently shared Beatty's inability to communicate properly with his subordinates - so Henry Campbell claimed when Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue were sunk. Sturdee commanded the Fifth Cruiser Squadron (renamed the Third) upto the end of 1912 then took command of the Second Cruiser Squadron. I at least have no doubt that he could have led the Battle Cruiser Squadron in an "interesting" way - i.e. aggressively with the same loose and fast historical foundation Beatty relied on. The same goes for Bayly, Beatty's predecessor. Both Sturdee and Bayly are acknowledged to be stubborn asses, but then again, so was Beatty. Douglas Gamble commanded the Sixth Cruiser Squadron in 1912 - sound man to be relied upon. Likewise Warrender, commanding the Second Cruiser Squadron, although he's received a lot of flak from the likes of Marder, Goldrick and Gordon. Berkeley Milne had command of the Mediterranean Cruiser Squadron before he was bumped up to Commander-in-Chief. Who knows what he may have been like had he not had men like Arthur Wilson or Churchill telling him what to do. Troubridge took the cruiser command from Milne in late 1912 - he too got screwed by Churchill's idiocy. Madden, given command of the Third Cruiser Squadron in succession to Sturdee, was one of the best all-round officers of the Navy - no more needs to be said on that score. Every single one of the above named Rear-Admirals bar Cradock (on account of his recent promotion) could have been a viable alternative to Beatty - and this is just a selection from the cruiser flag officers of 1912-early 1913. The only way Yates' assertion that Beatty was the best for the job is if the right man had to be a young socialite flag officer with two weeks sea-experience. And that is clearly preposterous. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 16:09, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Yates wasn't writing for wiki: Rather, he was writing an original piece of historical research, which was deemed by the examiners sufficiently good to win him a PhD. As such he and his original ideas are legitimate source material for us to quote here (well, it was you who recommended him!). Broadly his approach is to take accepted pieces of information, lay them side by side and demonstrate they are inconsistent. In a sense, this veers towards what we ourselves are supposed to do. The thesis isn't really about Churchill or Beatty's appointment, so arguably his view on this is not a properly substantiated one, but it is interesting. Anyone reading, note the thesis is available online (for free) from the british library at ethos.bl.uk, and I at least find it fascinating. Sandpiper (talk) 14:43, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Beatty's sole service as a flag officer afloat had been as Rear-Admiral Commanding, Sixth Cruiser Squadron during the 1912 manœuvres for a couple of weeks.

Reminds me of Tryon's appointment over the head of 'experienced' officers which I was just reading about. I have not read anything much which really comments on how good a sailor Beatty was, merely, as you say, that he had a shortage of formal command experience. I can't coment authoritatively on your list at short notice, but I do note a certain propensity amongst some of those named to do foolish things, which I think was what Yates at least in part was getting at. I am wary of dismissing Beatty as wholly incompetent, because although I see plain failings by him in this battle (and elsewhere), there must also be a danger of simply dismissing his apparent lack of experience/ability as fact rather than lack of clear information. I read the story of his giving churchill a bottle of champagne at omdurman, and this creates an image of the playboy which may be as misleading as his own image building. Churchill was also in his way an aristocratic playboy, but he had a burning ambition to get to the top and a critical eye. Sandpiper (talk) 17:09, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I should point out a foolish error I made in my first statement in this particular line of discussion. Beatty did have a staff gunnery officer - Commander Sidney Robert Bailey. It makes very little difference though, as he was only appointed two weeks before Jutland. If the solitude in which Evan-Thomas lay at Rosyth is anything to go by, Lion was hardly a hive of B.C.F. activity. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 19:55, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

There was Alexander Grant, I never quite gathered what exactly his position was onboard ship but he seems to have had some modest influence on safety? Sandpiper (talk) 18:57, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

He was essentially the top gunnery rating on board ship (his status as a commissioned warrant officer notwithstanding - he ranked below everyone but Midshipmen and Naval Cadets). As Grant himself put it in his memoirs he had a "roving commission" and it would be his job to make sure everything to do with gunnery was in good order. Every big ship had a Chief Gunner or a Chief Gunner (T) for torpedo and electrical duties. Eric Grove (The Naval Miscellany VII. p.381.) has suggested that Chatfield brought in Grant as a "trouble shooter" (Grove's word). Grove doesn't take his speculation further - that this meant Chatfield was incapable of putting his gunnery officer right which hardly reflects well on a future First Sea Lord. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 21:28, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

From his memoir, he seems to have been adept at practicing the art of getting things done behind his superiors backs, then. The memoir I read does not comment, as far as I remember, on whether he had any impact on gunnery practice. Though I can see it might be more difficult to somehow arrange for the ship to wander off and do some shooting without the officers knowing. Sandpiper (talk) 14:23, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Grant would have only been able to influence events on Lion through the Gunnery Officer, Longhurst, unless Chatfield specifically asked for his advice. Live-fire practices would have had to be arranged through Chatfield, Brock (Rear-Admiral, First Battle Cruiser Squadron) and because it was his Flag Ship, Beatty. On the matter of practices, just over breakfast this morning I found this very telling comment on 23 April 1919 from Madden (then Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet) to Keyes (then Vice-Admiral Commanding the Battle Cruiser Squadron) in the Keyes Papers II. p. 31: "… the B.C.S. were based for 4 years on Rosyth which as compared with Scapa was a heaven & so little did they find Scapa to their taste that it was difficult that it was difficult to keep a Rosyth squadron there for more than a sufficient time to carry out Gy. practices." Madden could be, as Gordon would say, be showing jealousy, but even if there's even a tiny bit of truth in his statement it says a lot about the state of the Battle Cruiser Fleet. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 15:16, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I suspect there is some truth in the notion that idleness at Rosyth corrupted the ships fighting ability. However... there was a war and everyone knew it. If there had been will to improve long range gunnery it is pretty clear to me they had the technology to do it. I don't know how Yates will finish up, but I notice he starts by mentioning what I am comnvinced is the red herring of the superiority of the pollen fire control systems. I had already become convinced this was part of a Beatty cover up. I did notice he suggested the BC may have been using reduced charges in the guns....!?@!* Is this substantiable, and did no one understand ballistics? E=1/2mv^2? Sandpiper (talk) 17:09, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I have a book that goes into the FCS systems both of the Pollen versus the Dyerer (rather doubt that I spelled that name right) table, the results were not convincing that one had a major advantage over the other. What is shown is that Beatty was throwing his ships about enough to keep the BCS from settling down on their gunnery. One of the things that was shown was that the BCS seemed to have range finder crews lacking expertise and practice. Interestingly as soon as the 5th BS came into range it was obtaining hits at 21,000 yards very quickly, now no one was firing on them yet and perhaps the angle was better and less smoke but they were hitting at the same rate as the vaunted German Battle-cruisers.--Tirronan (talk) 05:22, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I was reading some Massie the other day and although there are lots of arguments about this in detail, he summarised succinctly by saying Beatty totally failed to use his battlecruisers as they had been designed to be used, hit and run at longest possible range. Beatty never attempted to use them like this but instead tried to have a slugging match. He allowed the German ships to make best use of their own design, thicker armour and shorter range guns. Sandpiper (talk) 09:12, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

There were a lot of failures that day and Beatty had his share of them. He never met with Evan-Thomas to work out coordination between the squadrons, was very late is getting his gunnery up to snuff, threw his ships around like a fox chase, didn't actively coordinate-communicate his intents to 5th BS, didn't communicate with Jelico despite having had the time to do so. The performance of his BC's at the Falklands should have had him on a gunnery range asap, Dogger bank should have been a heads up that his communications methods were not hacking it. I found it interesting that the changes he made upon assumption of command of the Grand Fleet were fairly comprehensive in dealing with the issues that had arisen after, he really seemed to have woken up.Tirronan (talk) 18:07, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I have "Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland" by John Brooks in front of me and he goes into Pollen's Argo Clock versus Dreyer-Elphinstone's Dreyer Table, there seems to be no basis for one's outstanding superiority over the other. Feel free to read it, however be warned that eating 4 pounds of chalk is more inviting. Tirronan (talk) 18:21, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

The Dreyer Table Mark III and above were helm free, cheaper and did what they were supposed to until people overloaded them with home-made extras. The Argo Mark IV wasn't helm free, didn't have a working plotter, cost a fortune and its capabilities were grossly over-exagerrated. Its inventor was also a compulsive liar. Dreadnought Gunnery at the Battle of Jutland is a remarkably easy book to read considering the subject matter.

Falkland Islands can hardly be held as an indictment of British gunnery. Neither Invincible or Inflexible had Dreyer Tables or Directors, and a stern chase with the wind against you is never going to be easy. Invincible had always been in and out of dockyard hands and Inflexible had been out of Beatty's jurisdiction for a very long time, so he can't quite be blamed for that one.

After Jutland, Jellicoe had already started shaking things up (see Dreyer's memoirs), and Beatty would have no doubt realised that if there was another Battle he would have to carry the can for any gunnery failures. There's evidence that Jellicoe sent a number of his top gunnery officers down to Rosyth after the Battle to go through the B.C.F.'s gunnery records. The writing would have been on the wall for Beatty & his dashing band of misfits.

There is an item in the Pakenham Papers I may look up next week from Pakenham (RAC2BCS) to Chatfield (Beatty's Flag Captain and Gunnery Adviser) concerning distribution of fire of the battle cruisers in action. It's dated May, 1916. It would be fascinating and tragic if it proves to be yet another warning that the Battle Cruisers could not afford to make any mistakes in distributing their fire at the Germans. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 18:37, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Well I was trying to get away from issuing an opinion of Mr. Pollen but I share your view on this "Gentleman" and his device. I take a dimmer view on the conduct of the Falklands gunnery than you do I surmise but be that as it may. I think that you will find that in overall percentage of hits to misses that the record remained pretty close to the same. The thread here is really about smoke and mirrors where 5th BS gave a 3 to 1 better shooting performance that the BC's with them at longer range in the same "horrible" lighting conditions. The distribution issue would also add to this I think. It shall be nice to have additional material to consider. Tirronan (talk) 18:28, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Archive 6

I've moved some of the older text to archive 6 as the talk page is over 75k Tirronan (talk) 03:14, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Mahan

The article contains the line Despite numerical superiority, the British had been disappointed in their hopes for a decisive victory comparable to Trafalgar, and the central objective of the influential strategic doctrines of Alfred Mahan. in the outcome section.

I am not an expert on Mahan (still a long way down my reading list), but I understood one of his views was that control of the seas need not necessarily be achieved by decisive victory. In that respect, the British position, of simply maintaining a 'fleet in being' dominating the north sea gave them victory in mahan's terms. The article gives the impression Mahan gave the victory to Germany, whereas I would say the reverse was true. Sandpiper (talk) 07:43, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Most claims that this this was a German victory centre on the balance of casualties, on which basis Isandlwana was a British victory. Tirailleur (talk) 14:57, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

"British dominance of the high seas maintained"

Isn't this just another way, albeit more complicated way, of saying this battle was a strategic British victory? If you retain control of a particular factor in a conflict for the entire war, is that not a strategic success? (RockDrummerQ (talk) 21:44, 3 November 2009 (UTC))

Really, their description is wrong. The British did not have power over the North Sea after the action at Jutland. True, the High Seas Fleet was forced to withdraw from the field via an executive decision by Kaiser Wilhelm (battleships, destroyers, cruisers, etc). But the German's simply deployed submarines to patrol the region and disrupt allied shipping. And they did this. Quite effectively, might I add. They sank over two million tons around Britain alone during their 1917 campaign (from February to April). In summary, although both sides claimed victory, the British lost more ships and men than the Germans did; and despite the fact the German surface fleet was pulled back and stayed in port never to see any major naval action again for the remaining duration of the war, their uboat force made sure the British never really had true control over any waters they were focused in (the Mediterranean campaign was a tremendous success for Germany's uboats). Most military commanders today would consider it to be a minor German victory. 65.255.147.8 (talk) 01:50, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

After Jutland, the British naval blockade of Germany was still in place, preventing any significant import of materials useful to the war or food. U boats could not raise that blockade, only attempt a similar blockade on Britain and it had been trying that since 1915. German surface ships could, but only if the British Fleet was reduced or contained. The German High Seas fleet was the only thing that could be used to reduce the Grand Fleet. GraemeLeggett (talk) 13:53, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

who ever the ip is is just wrong on several counts and again the High Seas Fleet was going to do anything and everything to get away from the Grand Fleet as soon as it was apparent to that it was indeed facing the main brit battle fleet, we are really going to have to look at a rewrite to encapsulate this better. Tirronan (talk) 03:03, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Major naval battles?

How exactly do Elli and Limnos count as major naval battles? The latter was essentially the Greek cruiser Georgios Averoff chasing off two Turkish pre-dreadnoughts, and the former wasn't much more than that. Neither engagement included more than 6 battleships on both sides (and that's generously including the positively ancient Mesudieh and the three old Hydra class coastal defense ships). I'd say unless there's a source calling the two skirmishes "major fleet actions between steel battleships," then they should go. Parsecboy (talk) 20:50, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the exact criteria for a "major fleet action" are, but I would agree that Elli and Limnos don't seem to fit the bill. Groundsquirrel13 (talk) 21:03, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Two months and no further comments or a source, so I've removed the line. Parsecboy (talk) 19:32, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Ive not been minded to get involved and take a view on the relative merits of different battles, but the result of these ongoing changes seems to have been to relegate jutland from the biggest ever battleship battle to just another in a series. The three battles mentioned were still all modest compared to Jutland, both in numbers of ships, firepower, and deaths. Indeed, there being more british dead at Jutland when the losses as a proportion of the fleet were quite small compares to Tsushima where the russians were anihilated makes this point. The introduction originally made a point about the scale of Jutland, not its sequence in history. This point seemed to me to be striking for a new reader, and valid, and ought never to have been deleted.Sandpiper (talk) 14:47, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Since i am the person who added the other battles, Eli and and Limnos were fleet actions between the Greek and Turkish Fleets. Virtually every Greek Major naval combatant was involved in both battles, and the Majority of the Turkish major combatants were involved. Since these two battles involved fleet actions between predrednaughts would not they count?XavierGreen (talk) 00:25, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

by way of ship count they hardly register as "major battles" period. The 1812 Battle of Lundy's Lane was a decisive battle in outcome but comparing it to Verdun would get you some strange looks.Tirronan (talk) 02:22, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. The size of the battle is dependent on the number of ships/men involved, not the proportion of the combatants' fleets. And as for the battles themselves, the former consisted of a brief chase, and the latter consisted of Georgios Averoff chasing the Turkish squadron away. Also, to call anything but the two Turkish Brandenburg class ships "pre-dreadnoughts" is a bit generous. Mesudiye was by then nearly 40 years old, and the three Hydra class ships were essentially coast-defense ships; Averoff was of course an armored cruiser. Parsecboy (talk) 02:25, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Second sentence of the article

I was dead chuffed today that there was a quiz question on 'Brain of Britain' about Jutland and that you could have answered it if you had known the first sentence of the article here. However.......I am not happy with the second sentence. It says It was the fourth major fleet action between steel battleships, following the battles of Port Arthur, Yellow Sea, and Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War. This seems to me to beg a lot of questions.

1)The introduction is essentially a summary of the article, although it may serve to introduce particular important points which are not expanded on elsewhere. Here, this sentence seems to be making a point about the battles place in history, which never gets a mention later on in the article. If we are going that way then maybe there ought to be a paragraph or two somewhere briefly explaining the rise and fall of the battleship, and thus how Jutland happened at the historical point where the battleship was still the ultimate weapon and just before its historical decline in the face of air (and submarine) power. Jutland thus is significant for two distinct reasons: the biggest battle of that war, and the greatest ever face off of battleships while they held this place of importance. In fact, I think the biggest face off of battleships, ever? Instead of explaining this, we have a wimpish statement that there were three historically significant clashes between steel ships before Jutland, and then Jutland came next.

I think in writing discursive stuff like this it is generally good practice to ensure that everything in the management summary can be found, expanded-on, in the main text. If we don't do this, we should.Tirailleur (talk) 17:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

2) This business already under discussion above about whether the battles mentioned were the vital battles to which Jutland is the fourth in line. Is it really put like this anywhere in a source about Jutland?

Not that I've heard, and anyway, given that there were what, 11 BCs at Dogger Bank, wouldn't Jutland be the fifth?Tirailleur (talk) 17:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

3)What's this bit about 'steel battleships'? In reality there were continuous technological developments one of which was the introduction of steel armour. Others include development of big guns, breech loaders, explosive shells, better explosives, radio, oil fuel, turbine engines, torpedos, and so on and so on. All these factors contributed to a steady increase in power of whatever happened to be the first class warship at a particular moment. Is the introduction making essentially a false distinction by arguing that the beast we are concerned with dates precisely from the introduction of steel into its construction? Sandpiper (talk) 20:58, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Tanks and Chariots

From various readings, it appears that just as the launching (or commissioning) of HMS Dreadnaught in 1906 created a distinction between pre-dreadnaughts & dreadnaughts, it would appear that the term steel battleships has been used to differentiate between (from) wooden battleships, brought about by the rather commonly used practice of inserting the Battle of Trafalgar (which used wooden ships) into various articles by previous writers. Although not discussing tactics, strategy, commanders, guns, or casualties; the term(s) does specifically address what type of war machines were used. With the analogy of land warfare being used here as an example; tank warfare specifically, which coincidentally were originally termed landships by the British naval architects that designed them, by using the barometer of Trafalgar with the lately termed steel battleships, it would accurately be comparing ancient chariots to 20th century army tanks (which might also have to be termed steel tanks as to inform new readers who might be unfamilar with those war machines, as well as the fact that many of today's modern tanks are NOT built of just steel). And, as many might argue, but many might agree, the comparision of an ancient horse drawn chariot to a 20th century (they didn't come about until the 20th century) steel tank might not be appropiate. Thusly, many may argue that the comparison of a wooden warship powered by cloth sails might not (or should not) be comparable (or appropiate) to a warship built of steel powered by coal driven engines. Consequently, it would appear that the term(s) steel battleship(s) would be appropiate to clearly describe to new readers of what they are reading about (a chariot or a tank/or a vessel built of wood powered by the wind to a vessel built of steel powered by coal fired engines). This definition appears to fit just as well as the terms "pre-dreadnaught" and "dreadnaught" do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.10.75.150 (talk) 18:06, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I think what it's trying to say is that this was among the earliest major actions after sail gave way to steam for propulsion and after wood gave way to metal for hulls. I'm not sure it's a useful observation because the gulf in capabilities between a Jutland dreadnought and a Tsushima pre-dreadnought was similar to the gulf between the pre-Dreadnought and the Merrimac (if one overlooks the scale of the latter). Most people reading about Jutland do so because they're interested in the first full-on clash of dreadnoughts as opposed to steel-hulled steamships, no? Tirailleur (talk) 17:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

German plan

We say The Germans' plan was to use Vice-Admiral Franz Hipper's fast scouting group of five modern battlecruisers to lure Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty's battlecruiser squadrons through a submarine picket line and into the path of the main German fleet.

Was the German plan really targetted against the battlecruiser fleet or was it in reality seeking any grouping of british warships it might chance upon? Yes, this was the plan after making contact with Beatty, but was it the plan when Hipper started out?Sandpiper (talk) 20:58, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Submarines were sent out to wait for the deployment of any ships from Rosythe, and Scapa Flow, before the HSF deployed, needless to say it wasn't well coordinated as Scheer was surprised to find that the Entire Grand Fleet was out that day sailing towards him. Tirronan (talk) 22:26, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

This is slightly off topic, but surely the ineffectiveness of the u-boats had more to do with the fact that Room 40 was reading the German wireless transmissions and Jellicoe sortied several hours before the Germans left the Jade, than a lack of coordination on the Germans' part. Parsecboy (talk) 23:16, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

But the reason that the U-Boats were out was to watch UK naval bases and sink any warships which came out, and had been since 23 May. They either failed to see any British warships, failed to catch up and attack them or failed in attacking them. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 00:04, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Right right, I was thinking of the zeppelins, not the u-boats. Parsecboy (talk) 00:31, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I think in general it needs a bit of tightening up on exactly what the german plan was. passing over the intended locations of the German submarine picket lines before the U-boats had reached their positions also bothered me, because I had the idea Scheers difficulty was his submarines were sent out too early, not too late. Sandpiper (talk) 02:37, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

rewrite

I'm going to be proposing a rewrite of a couple of sections, in the name of better capturing some of what was going on with the battle as opposed to what we have now. It irritates me to no end when we get the Wargamer's arguments about who won the battle going on but to some extent we have let ourselves in for it by not painting the picture of what was really going on. The HSF Battle-cruiser squadron ran through the night down by 1, and excepting Molke, a disarmed wreck of 3 floating (barely) junkyards hoping against all hope that they could force their way through the GF no matter what the odds or face annihilation at dawn.

I found in the 2nd crossing of the T Massie gives a pretty good account of how furious the fire from the GF was and yet none of the panic he seems to note finds its way into this section. He states how the heads of some of the columns were buried beneath the waterfalls of the shell splashes and the panic that followed was pretty through.

I'm going to put up a couple of rewrites here and see how you all would think about it. Before I start though I would like to hear from the you all. --Tirronan (talk) 07:06, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, When I first read this article I found it big and confusing. Then I understood the battle better and was quite impressed with what is here. It is not bad as wiki articles go. Then I found out more from elsewhere (this is a personal learning curve in action) and I now see a number of deficiencies in it. But being as it is a pretty enormous task to rewrite somethething as big as this, I havn't tried. There is an infinite sea of stuff about this generally and more recently I have been looking at background to the war. Lloyd George's war memoirs don't seem to say anything about Jutland but he is very scathing about Jellicoe's refusal to adopt convoy, and very scathing about a lot of other things re how the WWI was conducted. The crisis generally in shell production, for instance. There is no way in the first half of the war that providing a new navy shell could have been a priority when the army was dying for lack of any shells. The message coming across is muddle on all fronts and he is very unimpressed with admirals (and generals). I found it interesting he felt Beatty showed some support for convoys, which perhaps to me goes a little way to rehabilitating his reputation. He made a mess of Jutland, but it is probably true he was more open to new ideas than most. This isnt exactly answering your question, but I guess it illustrates for me the difficulty of writing a complete and fair description of the events.

You may have noticed I wrote an article [Night action at the Battle of Jutland] about the night events. I did this because I thought it was poorly handled here. I don't regard the artcle I wrote as finished because I ran out of time and never got round to going back to different sources and integrating their accounts into it. Different people have distinct differences on certain points. I think the topic of Jutland is so big that the only way to go is what I did, write sub articles on the different phases so that we can get in enough detail. That still means there should be a section here something like the size we have now, giving a shorter account for each phase. My own logic, as indeed part of wiki instructions on article writing, is that the section here should effectively summarise the sub article (especially they should not contadict each other!), and then the intro here summarises this article. Different levels of detail for people to look at if they are interested. But the logic means you ought to write backwards, and create the detailed articles first. I would therefore suggest a plan of what parts ought to have sub articles, which we would need to work on and then get the sections here straightened out. Thats a theory, this is wiki, so I'm not saying people should not work on this one first if they want to. There is alot to be said for doing big things in small steps. Typically a section would first grow and then be exported to a new article because of length considerations. Here we already have acceptable if not brilliant sections, so perhaps leave then be for now and create from scratch new complete articles on each phase. Sandpiper (talk) 09:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

There are a couple of things about Jutland that make writing it more difficult than it should be. One of these is the smoke screens set up by the feud between Jellico and Beatty, the "poor lighting conditions" being an excuse for shitty shooting by Beatty's group that day for one. It wasn't until much latter that reports of the fleet refusing to communicate sightings up the chain of command came to light. No matter how we dress that pig up it doesn't speak well for C3i or the atmosphere that seems to have most of the commanders thinking that if they needed an opinion one would be provided to them. It was revealed later that 70% of the Naval shells stocks would have failed even the low quality standards they were held to... someone should have been in jail over that. It was considered so serious that the fleet was reluctant to deploy till that and flash tight fittings, new ammo handling procedures, and night fighting tactics, were worked out and that took over a year to correct. Much was revealed by Jutland and little of it spoke well of the Fleet that was entrusted the keeping of an Empire.

The other thing is to the public Germany wished to portray this as a victory. Behind closed doors this was seen as anything but a victory by Naval staff or its leadership. You don't have a Scheer stating that no operation will be successful against the Grand Fleet and that only submarines will redress the balance from a victory. When we give those dry accurate accounts that we do it allows the wargamers to play the who won game. Scheer ran through that night deeply worried that he would lose most of his fleet come dawn. The material damage to his fleet was setting that well on the way to seeing most of his fleet on the bottom should the conflict be renewed as Jellico wanted so dearly.

Mostly we have failed to communicate how badly the High Seas Fleet wanted to get away and how much the Grand Fleet wanted additional battle to the bloody end. We don't show how badly parts of the HSF were mangled and inoperative and the effect it had on needing to get away. This is as much a part of the battle as damage and positions yet we didn't capture it for our readers. --Tirronan (talk) 16:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I had a go at reading through the article again the other day....and fell asleep before I got to the end. Ok it was late, but I drew the conclusion it is very long and complex to help someone who wants a broad idea of the course of the battle. It needs a summary longer than the present intro but shorter than this massive article. Which kinda brings me back to the suggestion of creating more sub articles. I also was just reading another account of the battle in 'the dreadnoughts' by David Howarth. I noticed it brought out rather more the ongoing damage to particular ships as the battle proceeded. For example, that Von der Tann took part in the battlecruiser diversionary charge while scheer was withdrawing with no functional guns. Assuming he is right, perhaps the sort of detail you are talking about which explains how the ships were faring. Another point he made was that the only british dreadnoughts which ever came really into action were the 5BS. All the rest were pretty much in the position of never being shot back at and so never tested in battle. So these four had a rather rare experience. He also suggested that during the latter part of the run to the south Beatty deliberately opened the range so the German guns couldnt reach him, but he could still hit them. Observed that Von der Tann, despite having smaller guns could elevate them more and so was the only German ship able to reply. Again, I would want to investigate this more, but if true it suggests Beatty might have understood belatedly why his ships had been given longer range guns. Not the sort of realisation you would want to mention in an official report. Sandpiper (talk) 10:04, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Howarth's book is very pretty but not very useful. According to Campbell Von der Tann's "C" turret was back in action by 18:30 and therefore ready for the "death ride". --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 11:04, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

What it really needs is an animation of the manouevres. Is there such a thing? I have always meant to put one together, but it would involve a lot of effort since I have few of the necessary skills. I belive the dat exists, it is jsut the effort of putting together the film that is problematical.Greglocock (talk) 11:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree, Howarths book has some excellent pictures which I was eying acquisitively. I don't agree it is not useful, because while there were places I could see he was wrong, there were also points he made which I thought good and added to my understanding. I find this is normal - most books have some good and some bad points. It would still be worth mention here about the state of not just Von der Tann's guns but also the rest of the battlecruisers which had similar difficulties. Greglock, personally I'm not totally happy about what the positions and manoeuvres really were, never mind the difficulties in animating them (which is interesting!). The original sources, eg published by the admiralty, were to say the least manipulated by Beatty. Most of the later charts are based directly on these. Only some of the more recent commentaries have started to question exactly what is on the charts and whether they made sense with the other evidence. Sandpiper (talk) 12:20, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Re-reading this article in sections

I have been rereading the article and have some suggestions for improvement. Rather than dump them all down in one go, here are some observations and comments on the first few.

Lead in piece gives the impression that two RN BC losses were after the encounter with HSF. Were they not both during the RTTS? It paints one picture of Beatty if he pursued Hipper despite losses, quite another if he didn’t suffer any until lured into the trap.

It read ok for me. Sounded exactly like he managed to lose 2 ships despite outnumbering his enemy 2:1.Sandpiper (talk)

That is indeed what happened but it read to me likle Beatty only took losses after the contact with the HSF.83.244.221.116 (talk) 10:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

How plausible was the German plan given the BCF’s 6 to 7 knot speed advantage over the HSF? Every minute the BCF gained 200m on Scheer, so was it ever a runner?

That has occurred to me too, but I think it an issue for later, not in the opening summary.Sandpiper (talk)

Fair comment.83.244.221.116 (talk) 10:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

“Fourteen British and eleven German ships were sunk, with great loss of life. After sunset, and throughout the night...“ ...this gives the impression that all the losses occurred before nightfall.

Following from the previous para it does give an impression the losses happened during the two heavy engagements, yes.Sandpiper (talk)

The section omits the point that the HSF abandoned its plan on contact with the GF and spent the remainder of the engagement trying to retreat. Quite an important point for the plausibility of claims for a German win - if it was going so well, why were they trying so hard to withdraw?

Again,I don't think motivation ought to go in here. There isnt enough space to discuss it in the opening and it is fundamentally controversial so needs writing up well.Sandpiper (talk)

Fair comment.83.244.221.116 (talk) 10:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

German planning With 16 dreadnought class battleships, compared with the Royal Navy's 28 – this doesn’t say at what date this balance of force and hence strategy was in place. Eg at 8/1914, it was a lot more favourable to the HSF, so that the best chance of fighting at or near parity was already gone. Worth a mention in explaining the strategy to cut off and destroy a portion of the GF.

I think a reader would assume the article means at the date of the battle, but I agree there ought to be a mention that the odds worsened as the war went on. However...I think the HSF from the very start was outnumbered and adopted this same strategy?Sandpiper (talk)

I don't have the reference material to hand, but at the beginning of hostilities, the RN's edge was very slim at times. There were BCs on detachment in the Mediterranean, to the Falklands to deal with Spee, several BBs built for foreign powers had been taken over but not yet deployed by the RN (HMS Canada, Erin, and Agincourt, from memory), and the Royal Sovereigns didn't arrive until 1915. About 8 or 9 capital units present in 1916 weren't around in 1914-15. The HSF, in contrast, added only 2 or 3 so was almost at parity at times.83.244.221.116 (talk) 10:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It was also hoped that, following a successful German submarine attack, fast British escorts, such as destroyers, would be tied down by anti-submarine operations. Was this part of the tactical calculus for Jutland specifically, or was it a hoped-for longer-term consequence of the BCF losing dreadnoughts to submarine attack?

Also, no critique here of the plausibility of the German plan. It required submarines to do something never yet achieved (sink a dreadnought), and assumed successive RN detachments could be cut off to whittle the GF down without significant HSF loss in return. Does any writer comment on the soundness of this plan? ISTR Bennett says it was doomed from the get-go.

personally I would not put any critique here. I suggest starting the article with facts so as to tell the story, then all critiquing of what went wrong and right should be at the end. Readers arent in a position to understand the reservations and mistakes until they know what happened. Is there an article somewhere all about overall naval strategy during the war, and if not, perhaps there should be (Might be relevant to the other battle articles)?Sandpiper (talk)

Naval tactics of 1916 outlines the C3 issues, but doesn't come to a conclusion that helps one understand the rest of the article better. This conclusion is, surely, that the speed and size of the fleets, coupled to the dodgy communications, made it hard to manoeuvre them dynamically. The admirals were thus forced to rely on detailed standing orders which tried to anticipate what might occur, and on heavily-rehearsed tactical evolutions to respond quickly to changing circumstances. Both proved stifling of initiative and go some way to explaining what happened (and did not happen).

dont know what c3 means. wikipedia is bad at drawing conclusions, which smaks of original research! Thus we leave people to draw their own conclusions what to make of facts presented. (not that I am defending this, just observing). Again though, if it states here that there were potential problems, then later we can talk about the fact that they came true (and we do to some extent). Sandpiper (talk)

C3 is Command, Control, Communications. It is a central theme of The Rules of the Game that WW1 fleets couldn't be effectively managed by the C3 technology of the day (flag signals basically), and also that RN admirals' preoccupation with adhering to the letter of their orders went back a long way and made them less effective. So we can cite him for one. My point really was that I re-read the section and thought, Yes? So what? I.e. it doesn't articulate the conclusion that's being set up.83.244.221.116 (talk) 10:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

In the Ship design section there should surely be something about gunnery control, as this was to prove a significant issue in the battle. I.e. we should prepare the reader for this issue.

absolutely screams for a sub article. last time I looked there were some stub articles on rangefinders, dumaresq, dreyer table etc but I don't know if there is a sensible article drawing this whole story together...there should be. You are right, this was a big issue, but there is a gunnery section later which goes into this. I think it better later, otherwise it is more difficult stuff for someone to get to grips with before reading about what they came here to learn. I think this is generally a hard article to get into, because there is so much background. Sandpiper (talk)

Dunno, I have a feeling it would work better up front - but that depends on what exactly is placed up front. Ideally there'd be the sub article you mention which could be linked, rather than pausing the narrative to explain the issue.83.244.221.116 (talk) 10:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

That's all for now; any comments anyone?

By the way, should we maybe archive some stuff? I don't know how. Tirailleur (talk) 18:03, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Beatty strikes again, propaganda war

Just an observation which arguably doesnt belong here. Just saw the current BBC series on the history of the RN which had now reached Jutland. They only had a few minutes to cover the battle, but the consequence was that Jellicoe was mentioned, and shown in a film clip nervously grinning at the camera, but I'm not sure the word 'Beatty' was spoken at all. It placed blame on the difficulty of Jellicoe managing his ships by flag signal, with the highlight that Evan Thomas went the wrong way at a critical moment. My reaction was that Beatty had struck again, shifting the blame for the losses onto Jellicoe and ET. Also mentioned bad ammunition procedures, which is fair comment, and bad shell penetration. This last is also fair comment, I suppose, but it has been overplayed. Many many more shells failed because they never hit a ship than because they failed to do damage once they got there. Perhaps I would leave this little observation by wondering whether the constraints on the BBC now in summarising a complicated thing in little space was not the same as that which happened at the time, when there was lots of time to argue about it but little available information. Thus Jellicoe got canned. We maybe need a bit more about the aftermath propaganda battle, returning british ships expecting to be met as heroes but being jeered at. Sandpiper (talk) 22:19, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

What would be interesting to look at is Brian Lavery's accompanying book to Empire of the Seas and how he treats Jutland. Dan Snow is an appalling historian - three years ago he quite happily stitched up his own great-grandfather, General Sir Thomas D'Oyly Snow based on one author's damning opinion of the soldier: the fact that a scene was staged of Snow and the author beneath the name, engraved in a memorial, of a relative of the author killed under D'Oyly-Snow gives you a clue as to how he operates.

Off the top of my head, Snow blamed Evan-Thomas completely for the early setbacks in the battle, attacked the navy for not making use of the "new invention" of radio (utter balls, the Royal Navy helped pioneer wireless telegraphy for God's sake), overstated ammunition handling and shell defects. No doubt there was more crap in there, but oh well. As I say, Lavery's opinion will be far more relevant and interesting. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 20:17, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Having looked at Lavery's book, he too doesn't seem to have much of a clue in the scant space he gives Jutland. He summarises the battle on page 259: the Germans had "better gunnery [by a tiny margin if the statistics are right, and obviously that doesn't take into account the umpteen variables], better damage-control [the man patently doesn't know what he's talking about if he's trying to refer to cordite-handling] and, perhaps, better seamanship [the German's had been practicing the Battle Turn Around regularly since 1912...]". --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 15:54, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

The more that I have studied this battle the worse my opinion of Beatty gets. I'll concede that if his ships had been hitting at 3% instead of 1% he would have been far better off. However not having shells that did the job when they did hit does not improve things no matter how we frame it. Did it cost the British the battle, no, did it make a bad situation worse, yes. I am with you in the fact that I don't want this laid off on bad shells but I don't wish it underplayed either. For 2 years Beatty didn't train his spotters to perfection, the entirety of the HSF did, and the rest of the GF did but somehow this just escaped Beatty. Nor could he be bothered with proper command control despite Dogger Bank, nor could be be bothered with enough gunfire pratice. For that matter throwing his ships around so that they didn't get a good fire control solution wasn't very bright either. Nor was the fact that he left ET behind and did nothing to allow him to catch up quicker. Might be worth exploring how to bring that more to light... I think that having Cordite as the propellent was a mistake as well, every country that used it as a naval gun propellant suffered from spontaneous explosions (the last of which was IJN Mutsu) and any nation that went the other route didn't. It doesn't take a genius to figure that it just might be too explosive to use as a naval gun propellant. In this case one of the major problems was that the ship technology had outrun the C3I technology.--Tirronan (talk) 05:14, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I did read about the differences between German and British propellants, but Id suspect there was not much to be done about it at the time, even if they appreciated the danger which they probably did not. There was a desperate shortage of all kinds of explosive. Sandpiper (talk)

Who was it who wrote that Beatty's BCF was probably the worst formation of significant ships the Royal Navy ever sent to sea? Maybe Gordon? Anyway he argues that ET was out of position at Jutland because Beatty had decided they weren't going to be meeting the HSF that day and had already switched him into his inbound station, i.e. when they turned for home he'd already be in the van. Makes sense of an otherwise mystifying deployment.Tirailleur (talk) 12:59, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

His mistakes with Evan-Thomas went well beyond that, when he traded squadrons with Jellico he didn't forsee actually fighting with the ET's squadron so both flagships sat at anchor near each other without a single meeting as to how to work together. By Protocol ET couldn't ask for such a meeting and Beatty couldn't apparently be bothered.--Tirronan (talk) 15:27, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

What protocol are you referring to? Evan-Thomas was a senior Rear-Admiral, and Beatty a junior Vice-Admiral. Rear-Admirals Brock and Pakenham of the Battle Cruiser Fleet regularly communicated with Beatty. As Gordon suggests, whatever Beatty's reasoning to have the Fifth Battle Squadron temporarily under his command while the Third Battle Cruiser Squadron was at Scapa, fighting the Germans seems to not have been a major concern. This still doesn't entirely absolve Evan-Thomas of blame for not taking the initiative to see Beatty or even Brock and Pakenham while at Pakenham. But ultimate responsibility lay with Beatty. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 15:54, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

There was politics involved between Beatty and ET: Beatty wanted those ships permanently, Jellicoe did not want to give them and ET was a mate of Jellicoe's. I suggest Beatty did not want ET mixing with the rest of his fleet and taking gossip back to Jellicoe. Similarly Beatty and Jellicoe had discussed how the 5BS might be used with the battlecruisers re the problem that they were slower. I think Gordon said Beatty's proposal was that the 5BS should lead the battlecruisers, so starting closer to the enemy their speed would not be quite such an issue. Except...on the day he placed them firmly on the side away from Germany. They were expecting to meet the enemy, was he afraid ET would meet them first and get the glory? He should have been correct to suppose that 6 British battlecruisers could take 5 German ones, and I would guess he felt the odds were good enough he could do without Jellicoe's ships and do it all himself. There is some issue which I do not properly understand concerning Beatty trying to position himself to prevent the sighted German ships escaping before engaging them. I don't know if this makes sense as an explanation for his bad approach, sacrificing good position to trap the enemy. Mind, even if that was what he intended it didnt work. Also Hipper was cautious but didnt seriously try to escape. But all this bad signalling stuff might possibly have something to do with a failed pincer movement against the enemy? Also to the point, ET might reasonably have wondered whether Beatty intended something thus no signal to him.

Bad signalling from beatty's ships has also been overplayed. I do not believe there was any mistake when the BCs had turned north but 5BS was still heading south towards the Germans. ET was very annoyed that he got 'blamed' for not turning back instead of being lauded for taking fire off Beatty. But how it all got described afterwards seems to be more Beatty protecting his image than a bad tactical move at that point. The 'turn in succession' was not very clever, but letting the battleships get between the germans and the british battlecruisers probably was. During the run to the south there should not have been any problem over signals re distribution of fire. Soemone or other pointed out (brooks?) that all the ships had to do was follow standing orders, which were the same as the signal which maybe did not get through. The problem was bad visibility so the british ships could not all count the enemy line to pick targets.

Now as to Snow, I mean to watch the program again but basically it was a potted history so glossing over virtually everything is unavoidable. If you have to make a simple quick explanation of the battle then you cut detail and cut again. jellico was the overall commander. Shells was an officially accepted explanation. He similarly glossed over any details re sinking of Victoria by Camperdown. The high points he makes are probably mainstream consensus as might be had under wiki rules if this article was limited to a few paragraphs. I think a tv show like that is a prime example of where it is more important to be clear and interesting than right. As to radio, I'd agree with Snow that the british failed to make good use of it. All sorts of people failed to radio vital information about enemy positions. Similarly they failed to make best use of their guns (though unfair to blame jellicoe). Chatfield wrote that pre-war Beatty was very hot on trying to extend the range of gunnery practice. I don't see any reason to disbelieve him, but somehow Beatty lost this. Ammunition handling? I don't know for sure, but possibly this was the one critical failing by the British, so full marks for mentioning it. But having said all that, I think he was unfair to dump all the blame by implication onto Jellicoe because most of what went wrong has 'Beatty' all over it. But....although I would feel it unfair to do so, I don't know what I would have chosen to do if I had been writing the script. Sandpiper (talk) 22:08, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't have many issues with Jellico, but there was an atmosphere that didn't seem to allow much in the way of personal initiative or latitude at all. This wasn't Nelson's band of brothers, Nelson knew his Captains so well that he didn't worry he knew they were all after a singular goal, that didn't happen here. I've said it once and I will repeat it, it would seem that many officers thought that if they needed an opinion they would be given one.--Tirronan (talk) 08:04, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Jellicoe was accused of being too cautious. I havn't come across anything he wrote about his experience serving under Tryon, who was dead keen on captains using their initiative, but he also experienced nearly drowning when Tryon mucked it up by relying on Markham to do something sensible; instead Markham sank Victoria and nearly Camperdown too. A salutory lesson perhaps which might encourage caution in a commander. Possibly Markham sank rather more than just Victoria on that day 20 years earlier.Sandpiper (talk) 10:40, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Tirronan, Jellicoe knew his captains perfectly well and they idolised him. Read all the Jellicoe biographies, published papers, Dreyer's book and numerous other reminiscences of people who served under him. Look at the service records of all the captains who served under Jellicoe in the Grand Fleet - then tell me that there was a restrictive atmosphere and no "Band of Brothers". Then read the Grand Fleet Battle Orders - they are fairly lax and only expand in common-sense form upon Callaghan's Home Fleet war Instructions.

Sandpiper, Jellicoe did write about Tryon in his unpublished memoir of his early career. How on earth can you possibly state that Tryon was expecting Markham to do something "sensible"? I didn't realise you had Tryon's confidence that day. Quite apart from giving the idiotic order in the first place, Tryon's demands that Camperdown pull away probably hastened his ship's end with tragic consequences. Study Jellicoe's period of command in the Atlantic Fleet, in the Second Division of the Home Fleet and Second Battle Squadron as well as his command of the Red Fleet in 1913. Then tell me if you still think he was innately cautious as a result of the Victoria-Camperdown collision. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 15:13, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

If you only plan to judge on the basis of having known the people we are writing about, we are not going to get very far unless some of us are startlingly old. Read what I wrote into the relevant articles here: there are a limited number of explanations of what happened that day. One is that tryon was nuts, ill, drunk, whatever. I see no evidence that he was except for what finally happened. I think he behaved in character by setting a challenge for his men. He even showed some caution, by discussing it with his own officers beforehand, which he did not mormally do. They told him clearly they thought it dangerous. So either he was off his head and overruled them, which seems unlikely if he was sufficiently reasoning to have chosen to talk about it on this one occasion, or he also thought it dangerous but was glad they understood this because presumably Markham would understand this also. It was Markhams job to do the right things and he totally got it wrong. He could have done all manner of things with a safe outcome, he chose the really bad option. I don't know what Tryon hoped Markham would do. I have not tried working out the ship spacings, turning etc to see if it would work, but my wildcard suggestion is that he intended Markham to pass through the line between Victoria and the ship behind. Similarly for the ships behind to do the same. That makes sense of the spacings. His forte was tight manoeuvres, and that morning they had done line crossings under his tight control. So I reckon he thought Markham would understand, but if he didnt it would just work automatically. But as I said, I havnt sat down and gathered the facts to see if this would work or not. It may be that if Markham had done precisely as ordered and not tried to dodge at all then he should have automatically passed behind victoria which was running maximum helm whereas literally following orders he would be turning slower. This is beautifully in character with Tryons normal behaviour, a tour de force of ship handling...except it was just too clever. I would be interested to know what Jellicoe, who seems to have been a sensible sort, thought of Tryon. I dont know whether Jellicoe was overcautious, but I do know he was accused of it.Sandpiper (talk) 19:24, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Simon, I understand that Jellico was well thought of and I won't argue that. However the lack of initiative, the failures to keep the Admiral informed, and the lack of aggressive reconnaissance is pretty damning. In the modern jargon, this had C3I failure all over it. I hope you are not telling me that you think all went well in this engagement from the British side?--Tirronan (talk) 07:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Tirronan, I won't dispute the fact that egregious omissions were made in reporting information to Jellicoe - however, those who did that were disobeying both the spirit and the letter of the Grand Fleet Battle Orders. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 19:14, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I think you have to be careful judging the GF performance in comparison to modern standards. The German side also had some trouble controlling their ships and reorganising the line during the night, which maybe indicates they could not do this so easily by radio either. Only a few british ships at night tried to radio in information about the enemy, but even those that tried had mixed results getting through. I think it was probably a presumption that the not wholly reliable radio systems were likely to fail in battle and therefore would be avoided as much as possible. I read a note saying even the concussion from firing the guns might knock out your own radio. This caution was overdone but it was not wholly wrong either. It probably does not come across that this was the first time, ever, that anyone had experience of a fleet action for real with shells and torpedos incoming. I mentioned before that Beatty was supposedly hot on long range gunnery before the war, yet failed to get the very best range out of his guns. This was a game of catch-up with the technological capabilities. We criticise Beatty for his stupidity, but we have the advantage of hindsight. Similarly Jellicoe was probably amongst the most forward in pushing innovation. Consider what he was up against: Craddock doing a death ride at Coronel and Arbuthnut did the same at Jutland. Give these people some freedom and half of them just charged into enemy guns.Sandpiper (talk) 08:07, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

They did not have radio telegraphy (RT) in World War I; they had wireless telegraphy (WT). RT is voice; WT is non-voice. Please do not use words like 'radio' to mean wireless telegraphy, because it's confusing.

I don't see how you could have controlled a line of ships tactically in World War I with WT. WT was too slow, because they had not got the organisation right. First you had to decide what to transmit. Then send this information from the bridge to the wireless room, where it would be encrypted, and then transmitted. The receiving ship's wireless room would receive the signal; decode it, and sent it to the bridge. The transmitting ship would want a confirmation - so you now have to do the whole process now in reverse. In the 1890s it was discovered that voice tubes were unreliable when the guns were firing, so the method of getting a signal to the wireless room from the bridge was by written note.

Flags, signal-lamp and semaphore were almost instant - you can see why they carried on using them.

The British had an admiral in the pre-war years who experimented with operating a fleet at night without lights. His name was Beresford. When the Admiralty found out what he was doing, they ordered him to stop it on safety grounds; if his fleet had been allowed to continue, maybe the British would have found solutions to the various problems.--Toddy1 (talk) 11:43, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I assume that you're referring to the mention of this issue in Bennett's rather poor biography of "Charlie B". If you'd read Gordon's take of it, then you'd know that both Fisher and Wilson had practised manœuvring with lights. Read Bacon's first autobiography and you'll find that the torpedo boats were training without lights in the 1890s, and read Marder and you'll see that the British gave a fair amount of time to night exercises from 1907 onwards. --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 11:16, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

without getting sidetracked into yet another issue, I fancy Fisher was also doing night work with his fleet when at sea. To me, radio and wireless are interchangeable. Wireless is another word for that thing which talks and sings when I switch it on and brings messages fom the BBC. Now telegraphy, to me that means telegraph, dots and dashes and no voice. That is entirely a laymans understanding but I would have thought it is what the general public would also understand the words to mean. Sandpiper (talk) 13:09, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I am sorry - but to have any understanding of this, you have to learn the terms.--Toddy1 (talk) 22:47, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. This is a talk page, but anything which ends up in an article needs to be understandable by the general public. You can't use technical terms which people will think they understand but don't. Sandpiper (talk) 20:56, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I have read history books, where they have used modern US Army ranks to translate ancient Roman Army ranks. I am sure they meant to make it understandable - but I hated it, because it was so confusing.

Most people understand radio - if you communicate by radio you talk into the radio, and people hear your words. If that is not what's happening, then don't call it radio. Use whatever the correct term is, and explain in a note - or create a Wikipedia article on that term.--20.133.0.13 (talk) 15:49, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, again that would be what would happen today if you wanted to use that kind of setup, more often data is shoved over the airwaves on asic based radio links with phased locked loops. That was not what they had at Jutland, they were using the spark generated radio that wasn't much of a step over the 1st Marconi if I remember this correctly, All communications were via tapped out morse code that most likely would have been encrypted as well. So this isn't as quick as light or flag and perhaps not all that much more certain in some cases. Toddy I am going to ask you to be a bit more understanding and share what you know. This isn't all that apparent to many at all.--Tirronan (talk) 18:23, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

The Type 1 transmitters installed in battleships had a range of 500 miles, cruisers had the Type 2 which had a range of 100 miles and destroyers had the Type 4 with a range of 50 miles. All were spark sets, and had corresponding receiver sets, and in the case of battleships and cruisers had auxiliary transmitting sets. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 19:14, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Jellicoe in person

Just to mention it, I was startled today to hear Jellicoe talking on the radio. I wasn't expecting that. He recorded a poppy appeal message in 1935, I take it just a couple of weeks before he died. Do you suppose it is out of copyright? Sandpiper

I doubt it. It's not particularly relevant at any rate (as much as I do like Jellicoe's voice). --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 11:09, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Submarine losses

we dont mention that the Germans lost at least 1 submarine in the run up to the battle. Should this be listed in the losses table? User:Sandpiper 08:01, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

German fleet attempting to break out into baltic

Just been revising the intro. It currently says Not knowing the Germans' objective, Jellicoe and his staff decided to position the fleet to head off any attempt by the Germans to enter the North Atlantic, or the Baltic through the Skagerrak, . Anyone any suggestions why Jellicoe would be trying to stop them entering the baltic which they customarily entered at will via the kiel canal? Sandpiper (talk) 13:37, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Someone's been having a laugh, it would seem. --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 13:45, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Entering the North Atlantic is similar nonsense. The german ships didn't have the range to do that. Threatening the convoy routes to Russia and Norway was the only thing they could do.Nevfennas (talk) 20:04, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Port Arthur Battleship Engagement

The article's first paragraph stated that Jutland was the 4th major battleship fleet action after Port Arthur, Yellow Sea, and Tsushima in that order. Although Port Arthur was initiated as a destroyer attack with torpedoes in Port Arthur's harbor on 08 February 1904 on anchored Russian battleships; there was a very light exchange of battleship gunfire about 10 hours after the initial torpedo attack. 8 battleships, 4 Russian & 4 IJN were hit by combinations of 10 inch shore battery fire (from Port Arthur) and the guns from the battleships. Apparently 5 Russian battleships and 6 cruisers made it out of port and began cruising in three columns along the coast when they gained contact. (Ref: Forczyk p. 42, 43) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.10.75.150 (talk) 04:56, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Would that not count as a major fleet action since the Russian Pacific fleet clashed with the Japanese fleet?XavierGreen (talk) 23:42, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

According to the author Forczyk, it was a 20 minute sea fight, apparently counting the shore batteries; as Togo made the mistake of fighting them both at the same time (a lesson he learned the hard way; not to do that again!). So, since the Russian & IJN battleships were at sea, maneuvering, and exchanging gun fire, it was a battleship fleet fleet action. But since Togo had actually split his fire between two different enemies (another error he learned not repeat), the battleships & shore batteries; and used his secondary guns against the pre-dreadnaughts and NOT his main guns (12-inch), while choosing to fight the shore batteries with his 12-inchers, it might be generally acceptable to consider the naval battle portion of the Battle of Port Arthur to have been a battleship fleet action. But not a major battleship fleet engagement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.10.75.150 (talk) 16:38, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

ammunition

is there some space in the article for used ammunition and hits ? Blablaaa (talk) 06:04, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Campbell wrote a whole book about it. If you wanted to get serious on the subject it could fill an entire sub article with details of which ship hit which as the battle progressed. (so thats a vote for such a sub article, assuming there isnt something somewhere already?) Sandpiper (talk) 06:36, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Germany and the Emporor

I did not try to hard to find a more suitable heading, so my apologies. If Germany's Navy campaigns became more consolidated, then it may be described as a long term victory for Germany, but what is long term? Germany was then a Monarchy, so if Germany had any type of victory, it must have been of benefit to the Emporor. Where is the German Monarchy now?--83.108.30.141 (talk) 21:36, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

I believe it may be found six feet under Huis Doorn... jk ;) Jrt989 (talk) 21:58, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

trim addition about battlecruisers being outmatched

just removed a recent addition from the battlecruiser section, posted here now in case anyone objects to just deleting it. The poster is anon or I would have mentioned it to him. 'Admiral Togo, during the Battle of Tsushima on 27 May 1905, had successfully placed two of his armored cruisers on his battle line. Post Tsushima conclusions drawn by both British and German naval officers, mistakenly believed this to have been an acceptable option. Financial restrictions and a balanced battle-line forced Admiral Togo to utilize his cruisers; he was simply lucky that he had gotten away with it! '

Reply: Recommend that sentence (or paragraph) concerning Togo's cruisers should be returned, as it explains why the British Navy put their cruisers on the battleline to begin with. Naval officers studied the Tsushima battle as part of their profession (it was the only modern naval battle to study at that time-being separated by only 11 years from WWI). The short answer (or stated another way): The British might not have utilized their battlecruisers the way they did, if Togo hadn't got away with it at Tsushima 11 years earlier. The reference book for that entry should also be returned; readers need to know where that information came from. Professional fighting men (used to) always try to remember the old axiom, "it's the man behind the gun that counts, not the gun." Translation: it was Togo's and the British use of battlecruisers that counted...not the cruisers themselves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.107.96.58 (talk) 18:27, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Ive removed it because it doesnt advance the argument. The battlecruisers did not sink because they were outmatched and fighting battleships. Ours were sunk by other comparable ships. Theirs did pretty well against all comers. We only mention the concept to immediately dismiss it, so no need to expand the point.Sandpiper (talk) 21:44, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The Battle-cruisers were lost because of 1. lack of horizontal protection 2. lack of flash tight fittings 3. because of the mistake of using cordite as a propellant. Every navy that used cordite had spontaneous detonation of magazines through out the history of battleships and that alone should have moved the RN away from it. Later versions of cordite were based on German RP propellants.Tirronan (talk) 22:21, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

The main problem with the British propellant was that it didn't contain a stabilizer for the nitrocellulose, which became unstable as it decomposed. The German RP did - which was a lesson from the ammunition fire aboard the cruiser SMS Vineta in 1907 or so. Horizontal protection was not much of an issue; none of the major ships sunk were lost as a result of insufficient armor (i.e, too many shell holes below the waterline). They were all sunk by magazine explosions. Both SMS Seydlitz and SMS Derfflinger had turrets and barbettes penetrated by shells; if they had been carrying British-type propellant they both would have blown up. You're right about the flash-tight fittings; Lion was saved in part because her magazine doors were shut when her Q turret was penetrated. Parsecboy (talk) 01:17, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

with the exception of USS Nevada none of the ships of this era carried enough horizontal armor to prevent plunging fire from taking a toll, turret roofs were pierced and that is a failure of the armor system. Fire control outran old armor designs and FC could be retrofit-ed fairly easily while reworking armor was almost impossible in wartime.Tirronan (talk) 22:51, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Lion's turret was penetrated through the front vertical plate, though towards the top edge so it might have been weaker than the centre of the plate. If there was a weakness which could have been helped by more armour, it was to make the turrets thicker to resist shell strikes. This was the critical weakness. The geometry of the shell trajectories means that incoming shells did not plunge, hence the design of relatively thin horizontal armour (I have read several descriptions of misses bouncing off the water, like stones thrown to skip). Horizontal armour was blamed for penetration by shells, but I havnt seen any evidence to support it. It was just assumed by the official enquiries, and i think probably to disguise the real issue, which was inflammable ammunition and its storage. These ships and their guns were designed to fire shells at elevations of maximum 10-20%. (The ships which survived into WW2 had their elevating equipment changed to allow higher shots and more range.) The shells were intended to fly very fast on flat trajectories and arrive with maximum kinetic energy.

Incidentally, when I read a description of Tsushima it didnt really support the conclusion made about it. It may have demonstrated to those who analysed it, or were there watching, that certain things were bad ideas, but the outcome of the battle was the result of the usual muddle, luck and incompetence. Likewise here, if Beatty had approached the battle differently, would he have done better?Sandpiper (talk) 13:58, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Lion's armor wasn't very thick to begin with, second, the roof armor was just 1" thick if memory serves so if the hit was near the roof there would be a loss of support to the armor. While the BC exchanges were made at 16k yards and therefore not all that much of a threat visa vie the horizontal armor issue that wasn't the only fire taking place. We have discussed this before, German ammo did cook off during penetration of the turrets in fact almost every time, so did the Brits, they were under fire from the 5th BS which was at or near max range and therefore was plunging fire. The difference was that cordite can and will explode the German RP wouldn't. The US didn't use cordite either but Japan did. Do a bit of research and you will find a surprising correlation between self detonation in battleship magazines and cordite. The US wouldn't use it, nor Germany there was a reason for that. Much has been made of the difference in storage but that just doesn't stand up either. Again all that is in the archive.Tirronan (talk) 23:26, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this has been discussed before. I dont accept that a shell coming in at 20 degrees or so is 'plunging'. It is much closer to the horizontal than the vertical. Analysis of the path of the shells shows it is pretty symmetrical because they are travelling very fast and come down at much the same angle they go up. It might be the case that the deck armour was more at risk from shells exploding upon it than from the penetrating power of the armour piercing warhead. I did look up what angle the 5BS shells would be coming down at but I forget now, but it isnt very great. The guns were modified before WW2 for greater elevation. In any case the 5BS was shooting at German ships, so it isnt an issue re the british deck armour, and at max range for the 5BS, the germans were certainly not shooting back at all. There is a picture of the turret roof from Lion lying on the deck. I take it that it was was bolted or riveted in place and probably relatively weak against a force pushing it out rather than one trying to push it in, so it popped off relatively easily. If the idea was to vent any blast inside, this might even be a design feature! Cordite seems to deteriorate with age, with the nitroglycerine separating out, which made it unstable. Lion had new charges, I have no idea what was on the lost ships. Sandpiper (talk) 21:56, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

24k yards I believe, and I don't know the ranges that every turret was pierced at but there is at least one passage talking about hits admidship in the boiler room from an over head shell so I don't at all agree with you at all.Tirronan (talk) 23:18, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I have read reports of shells which hit something and ricoched down, and of shells exploding with bits going down. Which might argue for better horizontal armour, but doesnt mean the shells were 'plunging'. I dont know if there is an official definition of the angle required to 'plunge', but these guns were massive so as to fire horizontally! It was originally thought pointless to be able to elevate them significantly. This just isn't 'arrows raining down from the sky'. Sandpiper (talk) 22:56, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

outdent, there was plunging fire as well however that wasn't what doomed the 3 British BC's, I believe that in every case it was fire from German BC's at close range, here it is lack of vertical armor and cordite as well as the probability of bad ammo handling procedures. Also none the less, there was longer range fire taking place also.Tirronan (talk) 04:13, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

But what is your definition of plunging fire? what angle counts as 'plunging'? What angle counts as 'horizontal'?Sandpiper (talk) 06:59, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Studying History

Returned the armored cruisers justification to the battle-line; since it's known that naval/military officers traditionally study past wars and battles prior to fighting the next one. As was the case for Jutland, even if sometimes they draw the wrong conclusions. Or, unlucky enough for that "conclusion" to not work for them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.105.32.38 (talk) 05:38, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you can provide an exact quote from Forchyk's book which you cite so we can see exactly what he has to say about this? In the case of tsushima I take it he is talking about outclassed ships (cruisers) being included in a battle line against more powerful vessels. In the case of Beatty's battlecruisers they were fighting a similar group of ships with similar capabilities when two were lost. I doubt very much that the british navy drew the conclusion from tsushima that a larger group of british warships should choose not to engage a smaller group of similar enemy ships, and I doubt that the British navy should have drawn this conclusion. I dont see how tsushima is relevant to this? As to the issue of whether battlecruisers should have been included in the british battleship line, well, they weren't. They were used as fast armoured scouts. The Germans used them for a hit and run attack against battleships, but I dont think Sheer did this because he thought it brilliant, but out of desperation. So what is the evidence that british/Germans had drawn mistaken conclusions from Tsushima, and if they had that it affected the battlecruisers at Jutland?

Reply: The quote is referenced on pages 76-77. The book is in the possession of another military officer (Naval Officer; with a fascination for tumblehome battleships). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.105.32.38 (talk) 07:59, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Well maybe you can at least give some idea of what it actually said? if not, then theres not much point including it. At the moment it seems suspiciously like advertising.Sandpiper (talk) 22:46, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Sandpiper, Looked at pages 76 & 77, they might be a bit more dramatic than Wikipedia's version, but they both delivered the same accurate message. Added another book to the reference category (found quite by accident while researching an un-related matter): John Keegan's "The First World War"; p. 262 supported Osprey's book, in that p. 262/263 said that the navies at Jutland "unfortunately" believed that battlecruisers "should" engage BBs/suffering terrible losses and pointlessness because of those beliefs. However, Keegan doesn't present evidence of how/why those "navies" came to those beliefs. Fortunately, Osprey supplied that evidence (cited the source). Wasn't sure where to place the "footnote/reference #", so it was inserted to the sentence that most nearly mirrored the Osprey referenced material. The footnote/reference # might look more professional next to the original Osprey one, but as previously mentioned, Keegan wasn't as detailed as the Osprey publication was (on this topic), and so it was placed next to the sentence that it most closely supported. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.105.32.38 (talk) 03:50, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

If signbot hadnt timestamped this for you I wouldnt know you had inserted a comment here. Why dont you create a user id and sign comments so we can keep track of the conversation? I have questioned that this book says what you say it does. So please type out the relevant passage for us here if you want us to accept it really says what you claim.Sandpiper (talk) 05:43, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Sandpiper, Just re-organized the footnote #; looks better & more precise.

I would agree with you that it was crass stupidity for Arbuthnot's armoured cruisers (very much inferior ships) to become involved in the batlleship exchanges during the main fleet action, but that is not the engagement under discussion (section you edited is about battlecruiser losses). In the case of Arbuthnot, he wasnt supposed to be there and was a very aggresive officer, whose instincts got the better of him. He mistakenly thought he saw an opportunity, caused trouble for the battlecruisers which had to dodge around him and ended up under big enemy guns he hadnt realised were there. His ships were also not in a 'line of battle'.

The section originally mentioned the fact that battlescruises were not designed to be used as battleships, but indeed there was a tendency to think of them as such, but it didnt affect the battle and was not why they were lost.Sandpiper (talk) 08:01, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

What is the rationale for the statement that Arbuthnot "wasnt [sic] supposed to be there"? --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 08:40, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I dont believe any britsh commander then or now is supposed to place his ship in a position of extreme jeopardy for negligible gain. Fisher said 'a glorious but not a justifiable death'. He had no business cutting across the battlecruisers. I dont know what his orders said about where he was supposed to be, but I doubt it was sailing up and down between the two fleets? The comment about cruisers not being ships of the line was entirely appropriate if talking about arbuthnots ships, but I would expect the british battlecruisers present at jutland would handily sink the japanese battleships at Tsushima which were significantly inferior to the German battlecruisers he did take on. Its all relative: the same names are used but the ships change completely over the years. Sandpiper (talk) 22:20, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

And how do you know that Arbuthnot's position was one of "extreme jeopardy for negligable gain" when he deployed his squadron? Being wise after the event ... --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 07:04, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Sound of guns going off from the battlecruisers he nearly collided with and direction said guns were pointing? Sandpiper (talk)

Chatfield's memoirs give some details of a conversation with Arbuthnot about what he would do in a battle . Tale told is that Arbuthnot's armoured cruisers were supposed to be ahead (on one of the wings) of the Battle Fleet during approach to battle, but after BF deployment in line of battle they should take station to the rear of the line. How they got there was not specified; they could either go down the disengaged side of the BF, or between the BF and the enemy. Arbuthnot - according to Chatfield - thought it would be less dull to go between, rather than behind; Chatfield gave good reasons why the excitement should be foregone, but A pooh-poohed them. That doesn't fully explain what he did, but it would seem sufficient to show that he should not have been there (both in the sense that his orders did not require him to be there, and in the sense that in the absence of specific orders even without hindsight other commanders would not have put their ships where A put his. (I think I recall from reading Marder (gulp) 40 years ago an anecdote of the commander (Tug Wilson ?) of one of the LCSs visiting the wardroom of one of his cruisers, finding that it had prominently displayed a nicely framed Nelson quote to the effect that 'I cannot conceive any captain to be far wrong who lays his ship alongside the enemy' and insisting that it be taken down at once: 'We'll have none of that nonsense here; we have a job to do and it's not that' . I would take the same point to apply to A's ships)) Rjccumbria (talk) 23:33, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

@Sandpiper, what would you say about Beatty leading the B.C.F. across the middle of the Battle Fleet then? All Arbuthnot would have been aware of were the BCs which Beatty was engaging. As to intentions, this Marine officer's account from the I.W.M. is more plausible than Chatfield's excuse, which even Gordon says doesn't ring true:

Admiral Arbuthnot had made it abundantly clear in a series of addresses to the ships' companies of the vessels under his command, that when he encountered the enemy he would close to the rather meagre range of our guns and engage remorselessly. In the action he put his precepts into practice, but the old ships of the 1st Cruiser Squadron were no match for the German battlecruisers. --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 01:00, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I think Id say he was a bloody fool and should not have been in command (arbuthnot). It is not the job of any military officer to be a hero but to fight effectively. Arbuthnots actions were exactly the kind of thing Tirpitz was counting on to win with fewer ships in a fight against the british. Beatty had the same idea of closing and shooting irrespective of the design limitations/advantages of his ships that his guns had longer range than the germans. War is best conducted as a turkey shoot, not a fair fight. Beatty was present at the battle of Omdurman (yes, commanding a ship) which was conducted in classic style of overwhelming superiority of force, but didnt manage to apply this himself at Jutland. He was grossly overconfident. I've read several comments about smaller ships steaming up and down between the fleets being a bloody nuisance because of the smoke they were making. Crossing the line of the fleet is hardly desireable, but it rather depends on outcome whether its justified. I only vaguely remember when you are talking about re Beatty, but its interesting not least because im also interested in the Victoria/camperdown collision and sinking, where had Markham crossed Tryon's line he might have performed a very pretty maneuvre instead of a nasty sinking. Sandpiper (talk) 08:12, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

You still haven't explained why Arbuthnot was out of line for following the letter of the Grand Fleet Battle Orders (something missing from Chatfield's little story) and using his squadron aggressively at the van of the fleet. I'd say that Arbuthnot and Defence and Warrior were the victims of sheer bad luck, just like Indefatigable, Queen Mary and Invincible. I was always under the impression that what Tirpitz wanted was to overwhelm isolated portions of the Royal Navy's newest and most powerful warships, such as could conceivably been achieved with Beatty's force.

As to Victoria and the Camperdown, until the day you or anyone else finds themselves in Markham's shoes I wouldn't pass comment as to what he should have done. In the meantime, a re-reading of the minutes of the Court-Martial would surely be in order. --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 08:51, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I did get a copy and went through it, and mean to make notes when I get time. I think Tryon was blamed for giving impossible orders which were precisely obeyed, whereas in fact he gave doable orders which were disobeyed, but I dont know if there is evidence for or against it in the minutes. Tirpitz hoped to win by having better officers and better ships, because he knew he could never win on numbers. In this context a bad officer is one who loses ships for no gain, such as arbuthnot, or Craddock at Coronel. I am not convinced about whether it made a difference, but Beatty also used his ships wrongly and not as they were designed. That is the wrong kind of officer. Jellicoe was criticised, not least by the aggresive Beatty supporters, for being too cautious. The sort of cautious which might have saved a couple of battlecruisers and left the Germans just as badly off. If Goodenough had commanded arbuthnot's ships and had been in his place, what would he have done? Then again, to get back to what I think was my point originally, these armoured cruisers had a dismal record, at Coronel, here, or the 'live bait squadron'. They had no business in the line of battle anywhere. Sandpiper (talk) 23:35, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I get a distinct feeling I have strayed into a big ship action and should rapidly disappear to the disengaged side, but before I do so, can I just point out that I was refering to Chatfield, not to give a reason for what Arbuthnot did (I fully take on board Gordon's criticism that the conversation was not directly relevant to the situation at Jutland) but to give a reason for believing that Arbuthnot should not have been that close to enemy capital ships (Gordon does not criticise that aspect of Chatfield's account - but then he doesn't half have a go at Arbuthnot). And the fate of armoured cruisers against even battle cruisers was surely not entirely hindsight after Falklands and Dogger Bank (even if in 1916 it wasn't quite so accepted that German ships were not quite as fragile as the British) Rjccumbria (talk) 18:32, 11 July 2010 (UTC)