Jutland, Jellico, Beatty and Castles of Steel

[Neil]

Was the question actually 'resolved' in any sense though?  The situation before and after the battle was the same.  The German fleet had attempted to bite off a chunk of the Grand Fleet before the battle, and it continued to do so afterwards (although not until it had spent months repairing the damage inflicted by the British).  The British professional opinion wasn't that they had settled the question.  Indeed, they proceeded to launch inquiries as to why they hadn't performed as well as expected. 

Jutland was a victory, but it didn't change the fundamental calculus of the situation.

[PDH]

Jutland was a game best played on Mike's basement floor as there was enough room to turn the whole fleet.

[Neil]

Jutland was a game best played on Mike's basement floor as there was enough room to turn the whole fleet.

We had a terribly large basement, so there was room to play when I was young.  Lately, my copy has been sitting in my games closet.  My wife was not interested in playing Jutland, or Bismarck, or Midway.

[PDH]

I haven't played Jutland or Bismarck since probably 1984.  Shame, really.

[grumbler]

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.

Then the British decisive victory came before the war even started, because the question you raise was as thoroughly answered the day before Jutland as the day after it.

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.

If what you are saying is true, then the RN must have had some goal in actually seeking an action with the German fleet, and we can determine "who won" not by whether the blockade continued, but by whether the British or the Germans came closer to accomplishing their goals.  That's why I argue that the action was a tactical German victory, because they achieved at least the goal of inflicting disproportionate damage.

[grumbler]

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.

I don't believe that it was a British victory of any type.  The hyperbole of the British yellow press isn't evidence of anything.  Arguing that the British clearly won because the Germans retreated and the blockade continued is the equivalent of arguing that the Charge of the Light Brigade was a clear British victory because, in its aftermath, the siege of Sevastopol continued.

The Germans came out to inflict disproportionate damage on the Grand fleet, which they accomplished.  Not enough to tilt the balance against the Grand Fleet, of course, so it wasn't a decisive German victory, but it was a German victory nonetheless.

[The Minsky Moment]

The German goal wasn't to reach some casualty force ratio, it was to annihilate a significant portion of the British fleet such that it could no longer maintain effective command of the North Sea.  They failed to do that.

Proportionality has to be considered in reference to some outcome of significance.  McNamara was content in Vietnam that tactical engagements resulted in a favorable force casualty ratio but that did not yield the strategic results he expected.  At Jutland, the Germans may have sunk more raw tonnage and killed more British sailors.  But the Germans inflicted damage which Britain could repair and replace and sustained damage they could not.

It's true that the German fleet came out again after Jutland, but they never posed a real threat again - the British knew what they were trying to do and the Germans never came close to contesting control again.  How many other military engagements in the Western theater of WW1 can be said to be as decisive?  I take (and agree with) grumbler's point that the Germany had arguably failed before they ever sailed out but unexpected things can happen in war.  That the odds were against the defeated party doesn't make their defeat less of a defeat.  And for the same reason, the fact that the British made inquiries after the battle to address shortcomings doesn't mean it wasn't victory - it means the RN was a sufficiently functional organization to learn from mistakes even in engagements when the outcome was favorable.

[Neil]

The Germans came out to inflict disproportionate damage on the Grand fleet, which they accomplished.

Did they?  They traded Lutzow for Queen Mary.  Apart from that, they destroyed a number of older cruisers, but the main losses there were in manpower.  And because the German fleet had been so badly mauled in achieving those goals, by the time that they were actually in a position to actually put their fleet back to sea, the Grand Fleet was even stronger (even in battlecruisers) than they had been before Jutland. 

The German goal wasn't to 'inflict disproportionate losses'.  It was to single out and annihilate an element of the Grand Fleet.   While you might say that's the same thing, there's an important distinction in degree.  The Germans had lofty ambitions, achieved little, spent a lot to do it and had their efforts essentially erased by new construction and superior British dockyard repairs. 

[grumbler]

The German goal wasn't to reach some casualty force ratio, it was to annihilate a significant portion of the British fleet such that it could no longer maintain effective command of the North Sea.  They failed to do that.

Strawman.  No one is arguing that then  Germans were able to "annihilate a significant portion of the British fleet such that it could no longer maintain effective command of the North Sea."

Proportionality has to be considered in reference to some outcome of significance.  McNamara was content in Vietnam that tactical engagements resulted in a favorable force casualty ratio but that did not yield the strategic results he expected.  At Jutland, the Germans may have sunk more raw tonnage and killed more British sailors.  But the Germans inflicted damage which Britain could repair and replace and sustained damage they could not.

The Germans replaced their non-predread losses, the British did not.

It's true that the German fleet came out again after Jutland, but they never posed a real threat again - the British knew what they were trying to do and the Germans never came close to contesting control again.  How many other military engagements in the Western theater of WW1 can be said to be as decisive?  I take (and agree with) grumbler's point that the Germany had arguably failed before they ever sailed out but unexpected things can happen in war.  That the odds were against the defeated party doesn't make their defeat less of a defeat.  And for the same reason, the fact that the British made inquiries after the battle to address shortcomings doesn't mean it wasn't victory - it means the RN was a sufficiently functional organization to learn from mistakes even in engagements when the outcome was favorable.

That the British made inquiries after the battle to address shortcomings doesn't mean it wasn't a defeat.  That the odds were against the victorious party achieving all of their goals doesn't make their victory less of a victory.  See, I can do this argument by assertion thing just like you.

The Germans never came close to contesting control of the North Sea.  That wasn't in the cards barring a miracle, and they were as far from contesting control the day before Jutland as the day after.  If some miracle could give them control of the North Sea, it could as easily do it on the day after Jutland as on the day before Jutland.

The Battle of Jutland was not decisive in any way.  It maintained the status quo.  But that status quo would have existed on the absence of a battle, so, if we are going to assess the degree to which a side "won" the battle, we have to do so based on the extent to which each side accomplished what they wanted to accomplish in the battle.  On that basis, the Germans won a slight victory.

To argue that the British won is to argue that the Union Army won the Battle of the Crater because, after all, the siege of Petersburg continued and Lee's army never contested control of the eastern Seaboard again.  Your argument would fly in the face of the conclusion of every historian of the action, though.

[grumbler]

Did they?  They traded Lutzow for Queen Mary.  Apart from that, they destroyed a number of older cruisers, but the main losses there were in manpower.  And because the German fleet had been so badly mauled in achieving those goals, by the time that they were actually in a position to actually put their fleet back to sea, the Grand Fleet was even stronger (even in battlecruisers) than they had been before Jutland. 

The German goal wasn't to 'inflict disproportionate losses'.  It was to single out and annihilate an element of the Grand Fleet.   While you might say that's the same thing, there's an important distinction in degree.  The Germans had lofty ambitions, achieved little, spent a lot to do it and had their efforts essentially erased by new construction and superior British dockyard repairs.

The British lost 3 modern capital ships, the Germans one.  If the battle had been repeated with the same losses 10 times, the British would be down to 7 capital ships, the Germans 11.  The British never replaced their BC loses, the Germans did.

The German goal was not, as you say, to "to single out and annihilate an element of the Grand Fleet" - that was not a realistic goal.  Annihilation of a fleet element would have required overwhelming numbers of ships with overwhelmingly superior speed.  As you say, there's an important distinction in degree, and claiming that they wanted to "annihilate" fleet elements misses that distinction in order to artificially set the bar for German victory impossibly high.

The British goal was to decisively defeat the High Seas Fleet so as to free up British naval forces for re-deployment elsewhere.  They were even further from their goal than the Germans, given the outcome.

[Neil]

Did they?  They traded Lutzow for Queen Mary.  Apart from that, they destroyed a number of older cruisers, but the main losses there were in manpower.  And because the German fleet had been so badly mauled in achieving those goals, by the time that they were actually in a position to actually put their fleet back to sea, the Grand Fleet was even stronger (even in battlecruisers) than they had been before Jutland. 

The German goal wasn't to 'inflict disproportionate losses'.  It was to single out and annihilate an element of the Grand Fleet.   While you might say that's the same thing, there's an important distinction in degree.  The Germans had lofty ambitions, achieved little, spent a lot to do it and had their efforts essentially erased by new construction and superior British dockyard repairs.

The British lost 3 modern capital ships, the Germans one.  If the battle had been repeated with the same losses 10 times, the British would be down to 7 capital ships, the Germans 11.  The British never replaced their BC loses, the Germans did.

The German goal was not, as you say, to "to single out and annihilate an element of the Grand Fleet" - that was not a realistic goal.  Annihilation of a fleet element would have required overwhelming numbers of ships with overwhelmingly superior speed.  As you say, there's an important distinction in degree, and claiming that they wanted to "annihilate" fleet elements misses that distinction in order to artificially set the bar for German victory impossibly high.

The British goal was to decisively defeat the High Seas Fleet so as to free up British naval forces for re-deployment elsewhere.  They were even further from their goal than the Germans, given the outcome.

Invincible and Indefatigable weren't really modern capital ships anymore.  I put them in the same class as the Germans losing Pommern.  And Renown and Repulse were adequate replacements.  Hell, Couageous and Glorious, for all their nonsense design, were more useful warships than the first-generation battlecruisers in the context of the late war in the North Sea.  Moreover, the entire battlecruiser concept had started to become less valuable as the Royal Navy started to use more and more aircraft for scouting. 

Their goal was absolutely to defeat part of the Grand Fleet in detail, either the BCF or the Invergordon battle squadron when they reacted to a German bombardment of Sunderland.  That sort of thing absolutely can be done via positioning and visibility.  They certainly weren't going to sea looking to fight the Grand Fleet as a whole and try and see if they could inflict more losses than they suffered.  If that were the case, then Scheer wouldn't have turned away from Jellicoe at every opportunity. 

[OttoVonBismarck]

Must say high quality thread, one of the more interesting ones I've seen on here in years. Naval history is one area of military history that I've always meant to read a lot more on, but just have never made the time.

My opinion is that the strongest argument is that it was an indecisive outcome, i.e. no clear victor. I think the next strongest argument is for a German victory, and the weakest argument is for a British victory. I do think that if we want to make an analogy, it's like a prize fight where it goes to decision and ends up a majority draw (i.e. 2 of three judges score it evenly with the third scoring a victor--the outcome of which is a draw), and probably the Germans are the minority victor but again, as it's a majority draw there is no "real" victor. I also think it's close enough that no one is really a crazy person for arguing any side of it.

That being said the most important outcome of it I think was that Scheer ultimately realized his dream of splitting off portions of the grand fleet and busting it up piecemeal, and being able to repeat it a few times to break Britain's supremacy in the North Sea, was never going to be possible. The biggest lesson out of Jutland for Germany was more that actually successfully luring out only a portion of the grand fleet was just not likely to be possible. That is big because it actually means even building the HSF to begin with was actually a strategic mistake. The whole premise of the HSF is that it would be able to get local superiority in engagements near Germany and beat the RN, and eventually whittle away the RN's overall advantage. The lesson of Jutland is that that was simply not to be, and the lesson of the naval buildup of the pre-war era was that Germany made a mistake in even trying to compete with Britain in development of a large surface fleet.

This is a lesson the admirals of the Kriegsmarine arguably had learned, they of course favored building small ships to focus on raiding enemy shipping and on submarines. But for reasons likely related to the same mental ego problems the Kaiser had, Hitler of course overruled that and committed resources to a pie-in-the-sky 1948 targeted program to get surface fleet parity with the British. While the Germans were smart enough to realize when war broke out in 1939 they needed to shift to submarine production because Plan Z was no longer remotely viable in the present reality of war, the resources already deployed to it had already set Germany on the wrong foot in many ways.

[Neil]

The whole premise of the HSF is that it would be able to get local superiority in engagements near Germany and beat the RN, and eventually whittle away the RN's overall advantage. The lesson of Jutland is that that was simply not to be, and the lesson of the naval buildup of the pre-war era was that Germany made a mistake in even trying to compete with Britain in development of a large surface fleet.

It's worse than that.  The fleet was built to Tirpitz's idea that the threat of a major naval battle in which Britain would suffer devastating losses, even if they annihilated their enemy, and thus leaving them vulnerable to other powers.  The risk of that was supposed to pressure Britain to neutrality.  Unfortunately, between that and their diplomatic bungling, they made themselves so threatening that even before the war had started Britain had reached accommodations with their traditional enemies in France and Russia, which meant that the powers that Britain was supposed to be worried about being vulnerable against were now their partners in containing Germany.  Then matters of prestige, national pride and the Imperial ego came into it, and so even though the Risikflotte strategy had obviously failed by 1912, when there was still time to come to a naval convention with Britain and begin defusing tensions, the Germans were incapable of doing so. 

This is a lesson the admirals of the Kriegsmarine arguably had learned, they of course favored building small ships to focus on raiding enemy shipping and on submarines. But for reasons likely related to the same mental ego problems the Kaiser had, Hitler of course overruled that and committed resources to a pie-in-the-sky 1948 targeted program to get surface fleet parity with the British. While the Germans were smart enough to realize when war broke out in 1939 they needed to shift to submarine production because Plan Z was no longer remotely viable in the present reality of war, the resources already deployed to it had already set Germany on the wrong foot in many ways.

Raeder still liked his bigger ships and wanted his battlefleet back.  And because Raeder had been the one who delivered the loyalty of the Navy to Hitler, he remained very important in crafting German naval policy. 

[grumbler]

The Imperial German Navy was built as it was purely because Kaiser Wilhelm II was jealous of his Uncle Bertie's navy, and wanted some similar shiny toys of his own.  Tirpitz developed the Riskflotte rationale to get his own bureaucratic empire more money/power when it was obvious that there was no rational excuse for building the fleet.  Tirpitz was clever - dare I say Trumplike - in starting a popular movement to force the government to do a silly thing and fund the fleet.  I think that Tirpitz and his advisors knew full well that the British could easily out-build the Germans, and so wasn't really building to beat the British at all.

When the war came, and it was obvious that the High Seas Fleet had no real chance of ever being meaningful in the war, Scheer still had to do something to shield the IGN from the shame of having spent so much treasure so stupidly.  So, he sailed a few times planning to take advantage of a miracle if that miracle manifested itself.  It never did, so he settled for nibbling the Grand Fleet enough to ensure the honor of the German Navy was satisfied, and got out of there before worse things happened.

The British wanted to destroy enough of the HSF to allow the Grand Fleet to stand down its two oldest battle squadrons, mostly to release the men for industry and the destroyers to the trade war.

[grumbler]

This is a lesson the admirals of the Kriegsmarine arguably had learned, they of course favored building small ships to focus on raiding enemy shipping and on submarines. But for reasons likely related to the same mental ego problems the Kaiser had, Hitler of course overruled that and committed resources to a pie-in-the-sky 1948 targeted program to get surface fleet parity with the British. While the Germans were smart enough to realize when war broke out in 1939 they needed to shift to submarine production because Plan Z was no longer remotely viable in the present reality of war, the resources already deployed to it had already set Germany on the wrong foot in many ways.

This is largely true, but it ignores the impact of the German building program on the French Navy.  The French wasted a far higher percentage of their defense funds on a pointless fleet than the Germans did, and they did it mostly to counter the Germans.  That was a real boon to the Germans when, in 1940, they didn't have to face an army with effective machine guns or an air force with planes.