Did the Battle of Jutland Really Matter...?

[Hauksbee 103]

Very good article on Jutland found this morning on Yahoo with a few new insights (for me.) Such as: Jellicoe and Beatty were co-equal Admirals and hated each other, and refused to co-operate. So where the Germans fought one unified battle, the British fought two; neither supporting the other.

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At the end of the article, there's even more good information in the Comments Section. Here's one of them by Anthony Skrebys:

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      "Jutland being called a draw is still up to great debate a hundred year later .... it was or could have been a great British victory , but for the massive egos and unwillingness of Jellico and Beatty to work together ... The two British admirals , fought as individuals , instead of being a cohesive force that would exploit opportunities as they produced themselves ... The Germans fought as a singular force , and had better aim , and also the German Battle-cruisers where of a much better construction the their British foes .... a pair of German Battle-cruisers limped back to Kiel being more than half under the water .. it was a long engagement and the haze and difficult light conditions played a very massive part in the battle ... both sides changed battle sides 3 times ... the English thinking on more than one occasion that the ships closest to them were the other English Admiral's fleet that filed into a battle line to support the other ... This was proven very wrong when the Germans opened fire with Battleships, Battle-cruisers , Destroyers, and Torpedo boats, at ranges under 5 miles , and during this heated exchanges , the smoke from their stacks, the burning ships, and even smokescreens , made this seem like a bar-room brawl with the lights out which was further magnified by the setting sun and fading light levels ... at the end of the battle the Germans found themselves west of the English fleets and had to steam through the British Battle fleet to get back to port in Kiel .... Hipper got very lucky with such bad visibility , that he was able to pass between the two English fleets .. this gap was about 10 miles wide , and somehow were not seen ... The British lost more ships and sailors than the Germans by a 6 to 4 ratio ...

 

.....But what was learned from this battle ? It became clear that there is no room for two such Egomaniac Admirals of equal ranks that refused to talk to each other about battle tactics and working together to gain this tactical advantage to turn the battle .... There was a Naval inquiry long after the battle which resulted in major changes in having one man in command of a battle like this ... This battle is still a very major class study even today at Annapolis , with further studies at the War College , and in senior command studies ....

Edited May 21, 2016 by Hauksbee

[fallenphoenix1986 603]

Jutland being called a draw is still up to great debate a hundred year later .... it was or could have been a great British victory

 

Victory goes to he who controls the field, since the German fleet never sortied again after Jutland...

The RN royally screwed up in taking significantly worse losses than they really should have, primarily due to lax fire/flash prevention measures. However it was still a British strategic victory, if a German tactical victory.

 

Craig

[+Gepard 11,324]

The german navy port in the North Sea was Wilhelmshaven, not Kiel. The german Hochseeflotte operated against UK always from Wilhelmshaven, never from Kiel.

The german ships proved better, because they had a better damage resistance. The german crews were better drilled for combat conditions and they had learned the lessons from Dogger Bank desaster.

For the british it was a victory because the german Kaiser was unwilling in future to risk his "loved toy Hochseeflotte" again. There were no longer raids toward the british coast with big ships. The Royal Navy was able to replace their losses faster than the Hochseeflotte. So the RN was able to hold close the entrances of Nort Sea for german commercial ships and blockade the sea trade of Germany.

It was a britis defeat, because they lost more ships, more modern ships and more sailors.

As Craig said already, strategic victory for the Royal Navy, tactical and operational victory for the Kaiserliche Hochseeflotte.

[JimAttrill 24]

That conclusion is nothing new.  I remember reading a book printed in the 1920's when I was a kid and even then it was (as above) viewed as a German Tactical victory but as the German Fleet never sortied again it was a British Strategic victory.   And the German sailors were a 'revolting' lot in 1918 as were the Russians before them in 1905.   Having a whole bunch of people sitting around doing nothing is not a good idea.   The British Navy waited a few years before they, also, mutinied in 1931.

 

Nowadays they have so few ships and sailors left that a mutiny would go unnoticed.    

[Hauksbee 103]

.   The British Navy waited a few years before they, also, mutinied in 1931.

Well...I'll be de'mmed! There was a mutiny in 1931. (I never heard of it) The British government was grappling with the onset of the Great Depression and, in an attempt to cut public spending, reduced Naval pay by about 25%. For a lot of the enlisted men, that put their families under the poverty line. This happened when the fleet was at sea. Rumors pervaded, but no one was really sure what had happened until the fleet returned to Firth Comarty, port of Inverton. Then all hell broke loose. Eventually, the government backed down. Nobody was hanged or court-martialed, though a few did spend some time in the brig.

[33LIMA 972]

As John Keegan records in 'The Price of Admiralty', 'At 9.45 that evening [1 June, after the Grand Fleet was back at Scapa and Rosyth] Jellicoe reported to the admiralty that his warships were ready to steam at four hours' notice. That signal writes the strategic verdict on Jutland. Britain's navy remained fit for renewed action, however soon it should come. Germany's did not...Warspite, Barham and Malaya had suffered damage requiring dockyard attention but the battleship fleet itself was almost unscathed; and despite losses, the Battlecruiser fleet on 1 June still outnumbered the German 1st Scouting Group which, moreover, was crippled by damage. The German dreadnought battleships had also suffered grievously. Koenig, Markgraf and Grosser Kurfurst all needed major refits...and the German battle line could not have met the British at four weeks' notice, let alone four hours, except at risk of outright defeat.' With Scheer's basic plan of a U-boat ambush having completely fallen flat, Jutland doesn't much read like even a tactical victory for the High Seas Fleet, more an inconclusive battle, where better German tactical control and battlecruiser equipment denied the Grand Fleet the victory their intelligence and numbers advantages should have enabled.

 

This is the best book I've read on Jutland - 'The Rules of the Game' by Andrew Gordon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rules-Game-Jutland-British-Command/dp/014198032X

 

Like Peter Townsend's 'Duel of Eagles' on the Battle of Britain, the neat thing is the author's fascinating recounting of the history which led to the battle and which in turn, explains why the Grand Fleet fought as it did, and not as Nelson had done in a different era. Notably, there had developed an obsession with the latest version of the same signal book (Popham's) that had helped, but not so circumscribed, Nelson. This was thought to be so good that it enabled Admirals to excercise complete and effective control of fleets in action, so fostering that culture. Gordon recounts how, with supreme irony, the one man who might have led the Navy down a different path in time for Jutland, Admiral Sir George Tryon, had developed an approach to more imaginative, independent action that would have led to Jutland being fought very differently, but died in the famous collision between Camperdown & Victoria, caused by his own misjudgment in orders for a fleet manoeuvre, compounded by the reluctance of his captains to question him.

 

 

From Wikipedia, as per Gordon's account: 'Tryon's TA system — and with it his attempt to restore Nelsonian initiative into the Victorian-era Royal Navy — died with him. Whether or not Tryon had intended the system to be in effect at the time of the accident, traditionalist enemies of the new system used the collision as an excuse to discredit and bury it...Heavy reliance upon detailed signalling — and the ethos of reliance upon precise orders — continued within the navy right through to the First World War. Several incidents occurred where reliance upon specific orders or signal failures allowed lucky escapes by the enemy in that war, so that had the sinking not occurred and Tryon survived to continue his campaign, there might have been a significant improvement in British performance.'

[JimAttrill 24]

Oh well, as a Brit myself I can go along with the saying that the British 'lose all the battles but win the wars'