Which admirals do you prefer?

[Neil]

Which of the combinations of admirals do you like the best?  Feel free to elaborate.

[Ed Anger]

I don't like my American badassery mixed in with gay Brits.

[Barrister]

List doesn't include Nelson.  Epic fail.

[grumbler]

Spruance and Jellicoe, no question.  Solid decision-makers who didn't allow vainglory to cloud their judgement. 

Jellicoe's accomplishments at Jutland (where he twice crossed the German T because he deliberately created a staff system that gave him superior situational awareness) are vastly under-appreciated because the Germans proved that it is easier to run than to fight.

Similarly, Spruance's situational awareness at both Midway and the Marianas was outstanding.  Like Jellicoe, he cut through the fog of war to make all the right decisions.  Had he not been burdened with Halsey's staff at Midway, his first strike would have wiped out the Japanese carriers and Yorktown would never have been lost.

[grumbler]

List doesn't include Nelson.  Epic fail.

  Why does every pair of admirals have to include Nelson?  I don't think you quite "get" the question, which is a good one.  Nelson + Togo would win any competition, but that choice wouldn't be at all interesting.

[Neil]

List doesn't include Nelson.  Epic fail.

The question is actually aimed at weighing certain characteristics of the men in question, and how people respond to them.  Nelson wouldn't be as useful, since he was blessed with a lot of the positive characteristics of all four men.

[Neil]

Spruance and Jellicoe, no question.  Solid decision-makers who didn't allow vainglory to cloud their judgement. 

Jellicoe's accomplishments at Jutland (where he twice crossed the German T because he deliberately created a staff system that gave him superior situational awareness) are vastly under-appreciated because the Germans proved that it is easier to run than to fight.

Similarly, Spruance's situational awareness at both Midway and the Marianas was outstanding.  Like Jellicoe, he cut through the fog of war to make all the right decisions.  Had he not been burdened with Halsey's staff at Midway, his first strike would have wiped out the Japanese carriers and Yorktown would never have been lost.

I generally agree with you.  I feel like Jellicoe deserves a lot of credit for creating a team that put him in a dominant tactical position at the right time.  The only thing I would question is whether the extremely centralized decision-making in his system (which wasn't entirely his fault, institutional and cultural factors were also involved) might have been suboptimal.  I'm mainly thinking of Evan-Thomas' charge at Scheer at the close of the battle cruiser action, and Sturdee and Jerram's unwillingness to consider that the German fleet was passing behind them during the night action.  Still, I have to give him credit:  He knew his win conditions and he played to them.  He also deserves a lot of credit for parsing all the information he received and deploying just in time and in the right direction.  About the only major mistake I can really attribute to him during his command of the Grand Fleet (not as First Sea Lord) was that he didn't make to cut Scheer off from Horn's Reef.  And even that wasn't so much a costly error as it was a missed opportunity. 

[Malthus]

You missed a chance to use "Admirable Admirals". 

[Eddie Teach]

I'll go with Themistocles and Yamamoto.

[grumbler]

I'll go with Themistocles and Yamamoto.

Yamamoto as admiral is about as good an example of the Peter Principal as you will find.  I cannot think of a more over-rated admiral.

I won't comment on Them; I'm biased because he was a shipmate.

[Eddie Teach]

 

[Darth Wagtaros]

Admiral Ackbar!

[Malthus]

If we are choosing from among all possible admirals, I'd go with Nelson and Yi (the historical admiral, not the poster  ).

[grumbler]

If we are choosing from among all possible admirals, I'd go with Nelson and Yi (the historical admiral, not the poster  ).

Yi is a good choice, even if a lot of what is attributed to him may be apocryphal.  he certainly grasped the basics of naval gunnery-based warfare before any of his contemporaries, and was personally responsible for the development of ships, weapons, and tactics that were a generation or two in advance of the rest of the world.

Some historians make a big deal about the fact that he had no formal naval training.  They are correct that this was important, IMO, but for exactly the wrong reason.  His lack of training meant lack of preconceptions.  he could base his methods on logic without interference from tradition.

[Gups]

Anyone know what's happened to NAM Rodger's third volume of the history of the British Navy. The second volume is one of my favourite history books but he seems to have gone AWOL/GRRM on us