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Jutland On 3 June 1916, the British public finally got to find out about the Battle of Jutland. Sort of. At this stage things look bad. The British have lost more ships and more men than the Germans. And they have lost the opportunity to annihilate the German High Seas Fleet. But worse is to come. The Admiralty is claiming to have sunk 2 German dreadnoughts when they have done no such thing. Over the years it will emerge that explosive handling practices were appalling and communications were poor.  The Times 3 June 1916 p9 Fortunately, there is a crumb of comfort, a rather large one. The Times nails it:
It will not impair the efficiency of our blockade, or our ability to uphold our freedom of the seas for ourselves and our Allies, nor do we think that it will dispose the Germans to encounter that “main part of the English fighting fleet” in the avoidance of which they have hitherto shown such vigilance and alertness.
Jutland may not have been as decisive as Trafalgar but it was decisive enough.
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Jutland was completely indecisive, but fortunately indecision was enough. When you already have your boot on their windpipe, you don’t need a further decision.
All the RN had to do at Jutland was not lose, whereas the German Navy had to actually win.
Yes, Jutland was a bit like a EUFA game with an away goal from the first round draw in the UK’s ‘bag’. All the same, the U-boat peril grew as the surface threat waned.
It is a pity that some good model ships weren’t used to re-enact proceedings at Rutland Water, it could have been ‘Jutland in Rutland’, multum in parvo indeed.
Actually, Jutland was a very decisive encounter. Churchill was right. Jellicoe was “the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.” He didn’t lose. He handled the Grand Fleet well. He came close to inflicting catastrophic losses to the High Seas Fleet (“HSF”). Had he been served better by his subordinates, especially Beatty, Jellicoe very well might have engineered a second Trafalgar. Scheer clearly recognized how close the HSF had come to practical annihilation, even though it had delivered heavier losses. Scheer reverted back to his fleet in being strategy for the duration of the war apart from a few half-hearted and quickly aborted forays.
After more than century of unchallenged supremacy of the oceans, the Royal Navy certainly suffered a shock. The British capital ships (apart from the marvelous QE super dreadnoughts) were technically inferior to their German counterparts. German optics and gunnery practices generally were superior as well, although the British were better in certain gun control aspects. Both sides, it seems, diligently improved practices and tactics as a result of post-battle evaluation.
As an American, I’ve always been intrigued by the assessment of the main British admirals. In the immediate aftermath, Beatty was lionized while Jellicoe was criticized. While that appraisal has changed somewhat over time, the general sentiment seems to favor Beatty still. In my view, Jellicoe may have been extremely cautious, but also cool, professional, and a good thinker on the tactical and strategic levels. Beatty may have been charismatic, but also reckless, of questionable ability, self-serving, and lacking discipline. I’d be curious to hear thoughts from my British cousins.
Cool animated “map” and graphics of the battle. https://vimeo.com/162655850
I have heard reports that after the battle of the Dogger Bank in January 1915, the Germans appreciated the risk of cordite flash etc. and improved ammunition handling whereas the Royal Navy did not make similar improvements, or, if you like, reversion to the standard practices of Nelson’s time over 100 years before.
As the American newspaper man said – “The German navy has assaulted its jailer, but remains in jail”.
However, the bad practices that had crept into the Royal Navy were very bad.
For example in Nelson’s day powder was never kept in silk bags (as it was in the First World War) – it was carefully kept in sealed containers under the control of boys called “powder monkeys”.
Just putting powder into silk bags, and allowing them to leak all over the ship, would have struck men of Nelson’s day as insane.
But then Nelson and co learned their trade in a series of wars.
The Royal Navy of 1914 has had a century of peace.
It was more concerned with “good behaviour” (no women on ship and so on) than the love of killing.
BY the standards of the early 20th century the men of Nelson’s day would have been considered savage pirates.
But they knew their business – the Royal Navy of First World War was far less experienced.
Thanks to Fisher, the Royal Navy of WWI was very far from a comic opera “too much peace” affair. It was superior to the German Navy in some ways – fire control in mass actions for example – and inferior in others – avoiding magazine flash, as noted above AS Mr Ed says, the Germans had an experience with magazine flash that educated them. The Royal Navy’s experience came in a rush at Jutland.
At maneouvering, the Royal Navy massively outperformed the German Navy at aggressive battle-winning manoeuvring; they twice crossed the T of the German Fleet, the second time in ideal conditions of fog bank and sun. The German Navy “remained in jail” because it found this experience _very_ frightening. The German Navy was superior at evasion manoeuvres; their “every ship turn on its tail and run” manoeuvre got them out of a very sticky situation in a way that was unknown to the Royal Navy.
“The Admiralty is claiming to have sunk 2 German dreadnoughts when they have done no such thing.” The two ships were a battle cruiser acting in the German main line and a pre-dreadnought battle ship also acting in their main line. The battle crusier was scuttled at night and the pre-dreadnought was sunk at night. The initial mistake of assuming these two ships were battleships is understandable.
The gun fire from the British Dreadnoughts was good. There was a quality problem with the big shells and many just broke up on impact.
To TK’s point about Beatty’s popularity – a lot of it was style. Beatty was flashy (he was the only officer in the Royal Navy who wore a six-button tunic and his hat at an angle; no-one else would dare take liberties like this with the uniform code) and after his marriage, awash with cash: keep in mind that Beatty’s wife was the daughter of the founder of Marshall Field’s in Chicago, rich as Croesus and very ready to spread money about (once, when Beatty was being criticized for bending his ship during maneuvers, she huffed that she would buy the Navy another). Also, Beatty was a personal friend of King George V, which never hurt his career, George V being a former naval person himself and rather fond of flash in others (except his eldest son). Jellicoe, unfortunately, not only acted like a cautious schoolmaster but rather looked like one, too. The general population expected something swanky and Nelsonian from its admirals, so getting two of your ships (and very nearly three, had it not been for Major Harvey in Lion) shot our from under you, as happened to Beatty at Jutland, was somehow grander than blasting the HSF so hard for so long that it never really functioned again as a cohesive fighting unit, as was done by Jellicoe.
The Grand Fleet lost more ships and men – but the High Seas Fleet ran away.
In an alternate history forum, someone asked whether the Germans could have won a strategically victory at Jutland. My answer was “Yes, possibly.” But that it would require the Germans to win not just “on points”, i.e. inflict more losses than suffered, but win “the field”, i.e. force the Grand Fleet to retire and not come out again.
Jellicoe had to avoid that outcome; he did, and that was a British victory.
It was a loss and defeat.
The RN has not won a battle in over 100 years.
Very similar in fact to the
rewriting of Dunkirk as a victory.
Dunkirk was indeed a defeat, the best that can be said was that it avoided being a greater strategic calamity.
But you are utterly incorrect about Jutland. Indeed the notion is preposterous as the RN achieved its aims (to keep the German’s on the naval defensive, essentially bottled up). The HSF did not achieve anything really.
Likewise the RN projected a force clear across the world to the Falklands to deliver an army, and lost ships in the process. But they won that too. So wrong again.
“The RN has not won a battle in over 100 years.” Battle of the North Cape? Battle of the Barents Sea? Battle of Matapan? And granddaddy of them all for the RN (with a lot of help from the RCN and some from the USN), Battle of the Atlantic?
Air power had a lot to do with winning the battle of the Atlantic. Not sure it was a clear win by the RN.
Yes, Coastal Command played a huge role, but without ASDIC and Hedgehog and depth charges the German would have won, hands down.
And Battle of Taranto of course! And Battle of Mers-el-Kébir (sorry France).
It occurs to me that the broader effect of Jutland in naval terms was that Germany never really tried again to assert a “blue-water” naval strategy. Yes, Germany was building newer, bigger, faster battleships and battlecruisers after Jutland, but these never did anything outside the Baltic area of operations, into which the British never ventured, apart from a few submarines, and the big new ships were either never finished, or were scuttled at Scapa Flow. The Nazis never envisioned a fleet like the HSF and even massive vessels like Bismarck and Tirpitz were designed to be huge, deadly and far-ranging commerce raiders, not really a fleet-in-being. And the catastrophes of the Norway campaign probably did a lot to undermine any Kriegsmarine thoughts of operating a deep-water surface navy like that of Japan.
Possibly not germane, but interesting nonetheless. I think more uboats were lost to aircraft than ships. Donuts, the uboat head honcho was keenly aware of the effectiveness of aircraft and made effective use of the air gap in the north Atlantic. Coastal Command were repeatedly denied the use of long range aircraft which could have been used. By acquiescing to Bomber Harris, Churchill ensured his own sleepless nights.
Topic for discussion. Could the Battle of the Atlantic have been won by air power alone?
I have copious data somewhere but that would require an unacceptable period of non-indolence on my part, so I am going to use my rather unreliable memory on this: I believe it is about equal (air power vs. ASW ships).
But whilst airpower became more and more effective with the advent of centimetric radar (i.e. the ability to spot periscopes and snorkels from the air at long range at night), for much of the war there was a large mid-Atlantic gap where air power could not reach (pre-Liberator), plus during winter air might or might not be available on any given day. But once the gap was closed, the U-boats were double fucked.
But by then between improved ASDIC, Hedgehog, and pretty much every ship having centimetric radar, putting your periscope or snorkel up meant you died if you were anywhere near an allied warship. Indeed the statistics were terrifying. Most of the veteran U-boat crews died in late 1943/early 1944 and I believe being in a U-boat was statistically the most deadly job in the entire war.
It was pretty much in a single month when the Battle in the Atlantic turned around, and it was really dramatic as the scale of issue of centimetric radar because pervasive. The best radars by far were British designed, and once the US started making them in HUGE numbers, that was that. Eventually the US got to the point it was producing more centimetric radars per month than the Germans produced radars of any kind in total for the entire war. Seriously. By late 1944, everything had radars bolted on (capable of spotting tiny targets like a periscope in a storm).
However… had the war dragged on, the advent of the extremely advanced Type XXI U-boat would have made things rather nasty again.
Perry’s memory doesn’t let him down. Absolutely correct. If I might add one thing then it is very difficult to tease out the surface kills from the aerial kills because of the two operating in concert in spotter/sniper mode. He is also correct that the U-Boat crews had the worst loss rates of any specific branch of any service of any country.
Actually Royal Naval gunnery was poor – as had been seen before Jutland. Even at battles the Royal Navy won (due to superior numbers) its poor gunnery was noted (even by its own commanders) for example at the Battle of the Falklands.
However, the Royal Navy also had problems that were not its own fault.
For example a Royal Navy ship had to have enough space to carry coal to go about the world – much the German High Seas Fleet (deigned to threaten Britain) did not have to do that, and so had more opportunity for armour and so on.
Although some Royal Navy failures (such as in night fighting) were self inflicted.
The above should not be held to be saying that Fisher did not generally improve matters – he did improve matters.
Well, once the Tallboys started raining down on the Tirpitz and U-boat pens, things were getting difficult for the Kriegmarine but by that time, the improvements Perry noted were already on stream, and even Fairey Swordfish (I shall see one flying today at Shuttleworth) were being used in mid-Atlantic against U-boats. But that was seaborne air power.
Harris should have been put in his place over the neglect of Coastal Command, and perhaps shot over the Channel Dash, when Bomber Command stood down without telling anyone, but he wasn’t.
With regard to the Battle of the Atlantic, don’t forget the role of escort carriers and merchant aircraft carriers. It took a surprising amount of time for the navy to develop such a simple and very effective weapon.
As to the appalling Bomber Harris, one of his many failures was his obsession with bombing German cities when he should have been attacking the German U-Boat pens in France as they were being built. Once they were finished, there was no point attacking them. They are still there, they are too big to demolish. The massive losses suffered by Bomber Command would have been worth it to stop those pens being built.
Coastal Command was flying VLR Liberators in 1941 but lacked the numbers to close the air gap. They, and the Admiralty, were unable to persuade Churchill of the wisdom of diverting long range aircraft from Harris’ campaign. It began to dawn on the powers that be late in ’42 that summat had to be done and approval was given to equip Coastal Command. It took time of course as the aircraft required modification.
April ’43 was one of, if not the worst, months in the Atlantic for losses. By May of that year Donitz had withdrawn the uboats from the air gap, brought on by a successful air and naval campaign. Coastal Command, and the RCAF flying from Nfld finally had the aircraft required to do the job.
The losses were split evenly that month between air and naval forces and was one of the bloodiest months for the uboats.
In the end it took about 40 Liberators to close the air gap. Aircraft were at least as effective as ships in killing uboats, but the overlooked benefit was that the presence of aircraft forced the submarines under water where they were unable to keep up with the convoys. Coastal Command missed this too.
I recall reading somewhere that the majority of uboat attacks took place on the surface. Don’t know whether this is true.
But for Bomber Command’s tunnel vision the Battle of the Atlantic would have looked very different.
That is true, wolf packs attacked at night on the surface. A submerged U-Boat was very slow, and could not keep up with a convoy, and anyway could only stay submerged for a few hours. The Type XXI U-Boat, with a snorkel, was a different proposition, we were lucky the Germans didn’t have them in 1943.
@MrEd – very glad to hear that Shuttleworth has the Swordfish flying again. When I was there in November last, they had 2 or 3 pots off the motor and the nice man in the brown coat who was working on it was pretty pessimistic about progress. Glad to hear it is all sorted out.
llater,
llamas
Interesting to see how a discussion of the Battle of Jutland veered off into a discussion of the (incomparably bigger and longer) Battle(s) of the Atlantic. But the Battle of Jutland led to the Battles of the Atlantic (both of them) in the sense that the German navies of both World Wars realized that submarine warfare was their only hope of defeating the British and Americans.
I saw a similar statistic which showed the US output of newly built ships in one month was greater than the entire tonnage sunk by the German U-boats during the war to date. The U-boat war was doomed on any measure.
It seems to be a modern British disease to not see bad news plainly in front of you, but to talk it away and produce excuse upon preposterous excuse.
To describe the RN in the Falklands as anything other than a failure is laughable. There inabilities are evident for the world to see, having ships sunk whilst acting as a taxi service does not glory make. Moreover the performance of the British armed forces over the last 20-30 years has been very poor.
I not being rude or nasty, it’s plainly obvious that something has gone very wrong and not seeing it, means it will not be solved.
Tim Newman,
At one stage Liberty Ships were being launched around 3 a day.
The size of US wartime production is staggering. There is a book called Freedom’s Forge, which details some of it.
Little wonder that Churchill slept the sleep of the saved!
The French obviously valued them – they used the Keroman pens for their own subs up until the late 90s.
The Falklands? I’m sure that, in the parallel universe you apparently exist in whereby the Argentinians won the Falklands War, you meant the Malvinas. Or perhaps the Maldives, as the thick-as-pig-shit Leader Of The Free World likes to call the island group.
You could summarise (and grossly oversimplify) the British victory in the Falklands War thusly: the Brits played a weak hand well, whilst the Argentinians played a strong hand poorly.
You are not being rude, you are just not being very convincing. Indeed you saying that the Germans won Jutland when they achieved nothing really does not give your views very much credibility. As you state bald opinions without actually supporting them, you are pretty much just trolling. So in accordance with long standing policy on this site: either make a coherent argument or get lost, there is no third option. Cheers.
Andy: In a war zone, it’s not called a “taxi service”, it’s called a “convoy”. Those lose ships sometimes. The RN got the job done, and the Argentines didn’t, despite having supply lines 10,000 miles shorter and the advantage of surprise.
The Royal Navy in the Falklands War had many handicaps, but had the war come a bit later, it would have been even worse, as the Nott review would have devastated its capacities out of the North Atlantic/White Sea, as well as the proposed sale of Invincible and Hermes.
As it was, the destroyers and frigates lacked for much in terms of close-in weapons to defend against air attack, and a lot had been ‘forgotten’, odd since Adm of the Fleet Lord Lewin had been on Operation Pedestal (look it up on YT) and must have seen a few Eyetie bombs in his time, but there you are: there were barrage ballons in Abingdon, presumably left over from Balloon Command, which could have helped, the Navy did not have smoke generators, they might have been helped by some flak ships (improvised) and I dare say a few Coastal Command veterans still left in service might have had some tips.
Fundamentally, the RN ships were not designed with defence from air/missile attack in mind, despite many having Exocets themselves. The carriers had no AEW, being too small for the tired Fairey Gannet, and helicopters improvised for some functions. When the crunch came, 12 men on the Atlantic Conveyor (a merchantman) were sacrificed to protect the carrier Hermes from an Exocet missile attack, militarily sensible but convoy PQ 17 all over again.
There are a number of points about Jutland and the ships. For a start, British dreadnoughts had a limited beam caused by the size of existing facilities. The Germans could have been restricted by the width of the Keil canal, but widen it instead, so their ships could have a slightly better shape, broader, and carry more concentrated armour. Their explosives were rather better too, but the main issue was accuracy. Some years before the war the British considered two gunnery solutions, one designed by an “outsider” that was very functional and accurate, and a second designed by an insider with connections which was neither. They of course chose the insider solution, but did trial both and in fact the better option was actually installed in one ship at Jutland, the Queen Mary, the first ship sunk.
The British recognised how poor their gun accuracy was but because the position vis-a-vis the predictors was essentially fixed, they looked to other ways to deal with it. In the Battle Cruiser fleet under Beatty, they fixed on the “volume of fire” argument, and emphasizes very rapid shooting. Exercises were judged on how many shots a ship fired in a set time rather than their accuracy, and to maximise this it became the norm (but not official practise) to open up all the fire control and flash control doors to the magazines to speed the flow of shells.
At the battle cruiser run up to tHe main confrontation this played out badly. The British fired perhaps twice as many shells but obtained very few hits. The Battlecruiser New Zealand actually held the record for the most shells fired (she had the smaller shorter range 12″ guns with lighter shells) and also for the fewest hits, only three. She also remarkably took I think 3 hits but suffered no deaths at all. The other battle cruisers were not a lot better, and the Germans were able to play on the weakness of the British predictors by steering for the last target area, so if the salvo was short they moved in, and if long they moved out. The British predictor was inadequate to handle that, especially at near maximum range.
What is more remarkable is that for significant periods the British BC’s were firing at a range that the Germans could not respond to. When the 5th Battleship squadron joined in it was nominally even more on sided, and in fact they did make a big difference. They were more accurate, partially because they were firing at less than their extreme range, and also because they had trained better for accuracy, and the 15″ shells were also far more damaging; their fire left several of the German BC’s in a fairly bad way. In response the Germans actually turned away a bit to get out of range, something that Beatty noticed but didn’t do anything about, partially one suspects to protect his own battered fleet. That was also probably correct, his main task was to lead the Germans onto the main battle fleet and not to defeat the German BC’s.
During the pursuit, the trailing 5th BS squadron got uncomfortably close to the had of the pursuing German main fleet. They (especially Warspite) took a lot of hits, Warspite I think took 30 11″ hits, luckily without doing serious damage, but it was close. So close that in that run North, they used that very rare naval order, full speed. Apparently the usual practise is to order half ahead and then specify the revs. So at first they were at half ahead and what ever maximum revs was specified. As the gunfire from the rear intensified, they were ordered to go to full ahead, which means that the chief was free to use whatever reserves he had up his sleeve for extra speed, probably an extra half to one knot. As a result Warspite closed right up to within 50 meters or so of Malaya, Malaya had a slightly different turbine configuration and it knocked a fraction off the top speed. At that close distance they came very close to colliding because each ship affected the handling of the other through some pretty complex hydrodynamics caused by two 25,000 ton ships doing 25 knots that close together.
As it turned out, just as they joined up with the Grand Fleet the large alteration of course needed by Warspite to take its designated station caused the rudder mechanism to jam and she did two complete circles in front of the oncoming German fleet before the managed to get the rudders straight again. Warspite took quite a few of her hits at this point, mad a fair mess of the rear and middle of the ship but her armour was equal to the task in general and this didn’t immediately affect her fighting capability. But had it happened earlier there’s little doubt that she would have been overwhelmed pretty quickly.
But to me, th real killer is how the British let the German fleet slip back through their lines that night, and although their were numerous sightings, not a single British commander had the personal initiative to open fire.
Sorry if that’s a to:dr screed.
The Type XXI U-Boat, with a snorkel, was a different proposition, we were lucky the Germans didn’t have them in 1943.
If the centimeter radar could pick up the snorkel when it was on the surface, I’m not sure the type XXI would have made much of a difference, even in 1943.