Jutland, Jellico, Beatty and Castles of Steel

[grumbler]

For neither was it the only objective. The British primary objective was to maintain the blockade. Secondary to that was the destruction of the HSF. The secondary objective was obviously not worth it to risk the primary.

If Jellicoe had been ordered to destroy the HSF at all costs he would not have turned away from the destroyer attack. But he was not ordered to do that.

It was also not the habit of the RN to hide in harbour.

Are you making a point here?

The Grand Fleet had nothing directly to do with the blockade.  The blockade was carried out by the Dover patrol and the Northern Patrol.  The Grand Fleet existed to counter the High Seas Fleet, not to blockade Germany.  If neither the Grand Fleet nor the High Seas Fleet existed (e.g. wiped each other out entirely), the blockade would have been unaffected

[Threviel]

The German objective was to catch a small part of the Grand Fleet and destroy it in detail. They failed to achieve that objective.

The British objective was to maintain the blockade, they succeeded with that objective.

That the Germans caused more casualties is neither here nor there, they failed in their objective and the Brits did not.

If the only British objective was to maintain the blockade, the Grand Fleet would have stayed in port.  The British went to sea to decisively defeat the HSF and free up British naval resources for other uses.

So, the British failed in their objective, and the Germans in theirs.

Also Grumbsy, you've forgotten more about this shit than any us have ever learned. Stop being a contrariaran nitpicker and try instead to expand on our badly thought out thinkings. We all love to read your in depth, well written texts. I for one really appreciate when you show the holes in my thinking, but please do stop with the anal nitpicking shit. You provably knew full well that my post in no way was an attempt to fully explain all objectives of the combatants. If you didn't then please ignore this.

[Threviel]

For neither was it the only objective. The British primary objective was to maintain the blockade. Secondary to that was the destruction of the HSF. The secondary objective was obviously not worth it to risk the primary.

If Jellicoe had been ordered to destroy the HSF at all costs he would not have turned away from the destroyer attack. But he was not ordered to do that.

It was also not the habit of the RN to hide in harbour.

Are you making a point here?

The Grand Fleet had nothing directly to do with the blockade.  The blockade was carried out by the Dover patrol and the Northern Patrol.  The Grand Fleet existed to counter the High Seas Fleet, not to blockade Germany.  If neither the Grand Fleet nor the High Seas Fleet existed (e.g. wiped each other out entirely), the blockade would have been unaffected

Ohh, FFS, stop it. The Grand Fleet was the anchor of the whole thing, without it the blockade wouldn't last a week. Everything was about the blockade.

But what if martians intervened? Well, fuck it, call the department of silly what-ifs and check.

[grumbler]

Ohh, FFS, stop it. The Grand Fleet was the anchor of the whole thing, without it the blockade wouldn't last a week. Everything was about the blockade.

But what if martians intervened? Well, fuck it, call the department of silly what-ifs and check.

  Berkut started a thread to invite a discussion the battle of Jutland.  I am discussing the Battle of Jutland. 

Board discussions consist of two kids of posts:
1.  An argument, supported by evidence and analysis, or
2. A counter-argument challenging either the evidence part of the argument, or the analysis part of the argument.

Posts that complain that argument supported by analysis is just "being a contrariaran nitpicker" aren't counter-arguments.  Calls in response to argument to "FFS, stop it" aren't counter-arguments.  Arguments by assertion aren't arguments, either.

I see no reason why you are going all personal attack mode here.  this is just a discussion.  If you don't agree with my arguments, that's fine.  As I have said several times, you could easily argue that neither side won Jutland.  What you can't argue in the spirit of the thread is the hindsight argument that the Allies were going to win the war anyway, so anything that was not a decisive German victory was a British victory.  Had the Germans broken the lines in the Ludendorff Offensive and forced a white peace, the blockade would have turned out to not be decisive after all.  If you are going to discuss "who won the Battle of Jutland" in any sort of interesting way, you are going to need to dump the idea that yours is only correct answer and any ideas contrary to your are due to "contrarianism."

Thought experiments have value to most of the audience here.  If my thought experiment is over your head and you think it the equivalent of "Martians," that's on you.

[Berkut]

The British strike me as delusional then. Did they really think they could blow away the entire HSF in one engagement? Surely at the distances that ship combat occurred in this era as soon as the Germans started taking losses everybody knew they would steam away.

The British were supposed to be these great seaman, did they really think such an unlikely thing was a realistic possibility?

Well, yes, they did expect such a thing to be possible.  Tsushima had only been eleven years in the past, and it was just such a decisive victory.

Of course, the GF didn't need to "blow away the entire HSF in one engagement" to win a decisive victory, just smash enough of it that the rest could be contained by a fraction of the Grand Fleet, allowing the rest of the GF to be used in the Med, against submarines, and in trade protection. 

The Germans would steam away from any encounter with the entire GF, but steaming away isn't the same as getting away.  If the Germans steamed away at each squadron's best speed, the slower 2/3 of the HSF would be gobbled up piecemeal.  And if the HSF stayed together, it could only retreat at the speed of its slowest ship, which would mean its destruction.

I don't think that it was unreasonable to suppose that it might be possible to achieve such a decisive victory, but the fleet commanders knew very well that it was extremely unlikely, given visibility in the North Sea and the virtual requirement that an engagement take place in the late afternoon, after the fleets steamed and maneuvered all day.

The actual battle of Jutland was very close to it being actually what happened.

When the HSF steamed away as it got dark, Scheer had a bit of a problem. The GF was between him and his ports. And "nigth" at that lattitude at that time of year was something like.....4 hours. The sun would come up at around 3am.

He had a couple options on where to go, and Jellicoe thought he would try to run south and get around the GF, and deployed appropriately - Jellicoe had no desire for a night action, correctly surmising that the Germans were better at it.

Scheer actually decided to go north and cross the GF's wake. This was, well....pretty damn risky. But it made sense.

Jellicoe thought all that fighting and such was just his screen fighting off the expected nighttime attack from the German light forces trying to get at the battleships at night to try to even the odds for the next days fighting. The Admirality had also gotten some radio intel with Scheers intended course, but they either passed it along along with a bunch of contradictory stuff, or simply did not pass it along at all.

In any case, had

A) The Brits realized what was happening, and turned back north (which was probably the likely course of events absent like three different bizarre things happening, or
B) Scheer decided to run south instead of crossing back north

The outcome of Jutland very likely would have been a decisive British victory with enough of the HSF destroyed that it was no longer a threat to the GF.

Again, that is the *likely* outcome. But likely things don't always happen, they just happen more often then not.

The stories of that nights fighting is just kind of bizarre:

The most powerful British ships of all (the 15-inch-guns of the 5th Battle Squadron) directly observed German battleships crossing astern of them in action with British light forces, at ranges of 3 mi (2.6 nmi; 4.8 km) or less, and gunners on HMS Malaya made ready to fire, but her captain declined, deferring to the authority of Rear-Admiral Evan-Thomas – and neither commander reported the sightings to Jellicoe, assuming that he could see for himself and that revealing the fleet's position by radio signals or gunfire was unwise.

I mean....wtf? That just seems so....not British. So not Nelson. You have a target under your guns, your are loaded and ready to fire and you do not because....why exactly? Nobody ordered you to fire? Since when does a British ship need an order to blow an enemy ship out of the water!

[Berkut]

Another bizarre story from that nights fighting:

Just after midnight on 1 June, SMS Thüringen and other German battleships sank Black Prince of the ill-fated 1st Cruiser Squadron, which had blundered into the German battle line. Deployed as part of a screening force several miles ahead of the main force of the Grand Fleet, Black Prince had lost contact in the darkness and took a position near what she thought was the British line. The Germans soon identified the new addition to their line and opened fire. Overwhelmed by point-blank gunfire, Black Prince blew up, (all hands – 857 officers and men – were lost), as her squadron leader Defence had done hours earlier.Lost in the darkness, the battlecruisers Moltke and Seydlitz had similar point-blank encounters with the British battle line and were recognised, but were spared the fate of Black Prince when the captains of the British ships, again, declined to open fire, reluctant to reveal their fleet's position.

So two different little mini stories.


In one, a British armored cruiser, thinking the German line is their ships, sails under its guns, is identified by the Germans and promptly blown away.

WHOOPSIE!

In the second, two badly damaged German battlecruisers do the same things, and THEY are identified by the Brits, but allowed to slink away, because the Brits don't want to reveal the positions of the fleet.

What is bizarre about this is that it is the GERMANS who are trying to conceal what they are doing, not the British!

Shit be crazy.

[grumbler]

Jellicoe was harshly criticized for taking a nap on the bridge of Iron Duke as the sun set, and his staff even more so for not waking him up when they realized something was happening astern.  I'm not sure when the exact moment was that the British lost the chance to cut off the Germans from the Horn Reef, but their failure to communicate clearly what was happening was a constant in that battle.  Again, The Rules of the Game discusses why Gordon thought this had happened.

The Germans had all the luck in the battle, for sure.  Even so, they naver had a chance to accomplish their mission, while the British had the chance but muffed it.

The costs of passivity was a lesson that was learned well, however.  In WW2, the RN was aggressive as all hell, and mostly benefitted from it.  The loss of Prince of Wales and Repulse is the only downside I can think of.  Even there, though, it was unthinkable that the Navy not support the Army in its hour of need.

[jimmy olsen]

Enjoyed reading this thread.

[Neil]

I certainly don't claim to expertise re ship classes etc but it is useful to keep in mind the different purposes warships were built for during this era. For Britain in particular, colonial needs and commitments were very important.  My understanding of classes like the armored cruiser is that they were intended for those uses - i.e. it wasn't expected that such ships would play a critical role in a Great Power fleet clash in the North Sea but that they would provide effective power projection in far-flung colonies.

The armoured cruiser (of which the battlecruiser was an evolution) had actually come back into vogue in the battleline as a result of the extensive use that the Japanese made of them, most notably at Tsushima.  So there was a strong argument that using the cruisers with the battleline could produce great results.  Unfortunately, the enormous improvements of the dreadnought era exacerbated the vulnerabilities of the cruisers, and they ended up performing quite poorly in the war against heavier opposition. 

[Neil]

The outcome of Jutland very likely would have been a decisive British victory with enough of the HSF destroyed that it was no longer a threat to the GF.

The really interesting thing to think about is this:  Would that have mattered? 

If Jellicoe crosses Scheer's T off Horns Reef at 4am on a second Glorious First of June and annihilates him, what effects does that have? 

Jellicoe becomes a national hero, and possibly a marquess rather than an earl, although if he becomes First Sea Lord and bungles the response to the submarine menace, that might take off some of the shine.  Still, he probably wouldn't have been shuffled off to be the Governor General of New Zealand after the war.  No matter how much the Northcliffe papers hated him, you can't hide the greatest hero Britain has had since Nelson, although I don't think that Jellicoe had it in him to be another Wellington. 

Beatty still likely becomes C-in-C in succession to Jellicoe at some point, although Jellicoe's prestige will make it impossible to bury him.  Really, there wasn't any other practical candidate apart from Sturdee, who Jellicoe trusted even less than Beatty.  Madden was still too junior. 

Now, does the British command of the sea allow them to intervene against the submarine bases?  Probably not.  Shore-based artillery, torpedoes and minefields will be able to keep the British from engaging in any kind of close blockade.  They would have a lot more freedom in deploying their own anti-submarine minefields, which will interfere with submarine operations and increase losses, but they'll still get through and the British resistance to convoys will still become a problem. 

Because of the land-based weapons and minefields, it'd be very unlikely that Britain would discard the battlefleet by trying to throw it into the Baltic. 

However, you have all that manpower on a battlefleet that is suddenly far larger than it needs to be.  There would be a lot of pressure to create a 'naval division', whether to serve on the Western Front or to create the manpower for one of Lloyd George's sideshows. 

Interestingly, a decisive victory for the British at Jutland might slightly delay the end of the war, as it was poorly-treated German sailors of the battlefleet (as opposed to the much better conditions on the submarines) who provided the initial spark to the German Revolution, and they can't do that if they're all drowned or captured.  It probably wouldn't make a difference in the end, but history would be a little different. 

[Berkut]

Indeed - that is why I argued that the actual result was a pretty decisive British victory, in that the difference between what DID happen and what would have likely happened had Jellicoe blown away the HSF in some glorious battle was not really all that different.

The HSF took their shot, but they failed. It was never a particularly good or likely shot, but one they probably had to take at some point since they strategic initiative was with the allies at sea, and they were content with the status quo (since it meant they were likely to win).

[Neil]

I would say 'clear' British victory, not 'decisive'.  Jutland really didn't decide anything.  To quote the papers of the time 'The German fleet assaulted their jailor, but they remain in jail'. 

There might have been better times for the German fleet to try, especially earlier in the war, when the odds weren't quite so much against them.  But yeah, if you're commanding the German fleet in 1916, the best time to try and move against the British was yesterday, and the second best time is today.  The odds only get longer as the war goes on.

[Berkut]

As long as the Brits always looked at any developing situation as "Yeah, thats a fucking trap!" the Germans were very unlikely to pull off what they had to pull off to make a go of it.

Plus, since the Brits were reading the Germans mail as well....yeah, they were pretty much fucked regardless.

[grumbler]

Indeed - that is why I argued that the actual result was a pretty decisive British victory, in that the difference between what DID happen and what would have likely happened had Jellicoe blown away the HSF in some glorious battle was not really all that different.

The HSF took their shot, but they failed. It was never a particularly good or likely shot, but one they probably had to take at some point since they strategic initiative was with the allies at sea, and they were content with the status quo (since it meant they were likely to win).

It's peculiar to hear someone argue that a battle was "pretty decisive" because it didn't matter! 

The British would have accomplished the same result with less loss by staying in port.

[The Minsky Moment]

If "decisive" means a battle whose outcome decides some matter of strategic significance, then it was decisive in the sense that it effectively resolved the question of whether the High Seas Fleet posed a meaningful strategic threat to Britain's command of the North Sea.

Staying in port was not a realistic option as at some point questions could be raised why German battleships were being permitted to go anywhere they wished, shell British coastal cities, etc. without any response.