A hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Jutland

[mirth]

Lots of respect for Norm Koger, but Jim Rose is a Derek Smart level wing nut.

[mirth]

And I think I just insulted Derek Smart.

[panzerde]

And I think I just insulted Derek Smart.

There should be a Steam Achievement for that.

[GJK]

Been thinking of picking up a copy of AH's "Jutland" thinking that my son might enjoy the miniatures aspect of it- and now that I have the floor space to lay out the huge battle, it's quite intriguing to me at the moment. 

[MengJiao]

Been thinking of picking up a copy of AH's "Jutland" thinking that my son might enjoy the miniatures aspect of it- and now that I have the floor space to lay out the huge battle, it's quite intriguing to me at the moment.

  The Fear God and Dreadnought version works okay and is more flexible and possibly easier to find in decent shape.

  Some things bearing in mind about Jutland:
  1) Given the fact the RN could read their coded radio transmissions almost as fast as they could themselves, the High Seas Fleet was incredibly lucky to have gotten away with relatively little damage
  2) The current consensus (growing since the 1980s) is that the problem with the RN battlecruisers blowing up was with the propellant, not the ship designs, so any RN ship that gets hit a lot (exceptions being Warspite and Tiger, which were hit more than any other RN ships) is nearly as likely to blow up as a battlecruiser
  3) catastrophic ammunition fires were as common on German ships, but because of slightly less volatile propellant, the result would be one or two turrets burned out rather than the whole ship blowing up
4) Lion of course famously survived exactly the kind of propellant fire that blew up Indefatigable, Queen Mary and Invincible, so even that rule-of-thumb doesn't quite hold.

[Staggerwing]

I may be revealing my ignorance but I was under the impression that much of the 'there's something wrong with our bloody ships' syndrome was because of poor powder-handling habits among certain ships' crews, including leaving bags of propellent 'at the ready' and leaving blast doors to the powder rooms open to speed up loading times.

[Nefaro]

I may be revealing my ignorance but I was under the impression that much of the 'there's something wrong with our bloody ships' syndrome was because of poor powder-handling habits among certain ships' crews, including leaving bags of propellent 'at the ready' and leaving blast doors to the powder rooms open to speed up loading times.

You got it.  While there have been numerous reasons put forward, that is the most obvious problem, and had been attested to.

The RN was very ROF-focused at the time.  Beatty's Battlecruiser squadrons were said to skip powder handling safety measures in order to squeeze out more fire during practice and, just as likely, during the battle. 

[MengJiao]

I may be revealing my ignorance but I was under the impression that much of the 'there's something wrong with our bloody ships' syndrome was because of poor powder-handling habits among certain ships' crews, including leaving bags of propellent 'at the ready' and leaving blast doors to the powder rooms open to speed up loading times.

You got it.  While there have been numerous reasons put forward, that is the most obvious problem, and had been attested to.

The RN was very ROF-focused at the time.  Beatty's Battlecruiser squadrons were said to skip powder handling safety measures in order to squeeze out more fire during practice and, just as likely, during the battle.

  It seems whatever the problems were, they happened on all kinds of ships (for example Seydlitz at Dogger Bank) and the key to blowing up the whole ship was the RN propellant.  After Jutland, of course, the RN worked on all kinds of problems (for example getting AP shells that really worked), but the critical one at Jutland was apparently the propellant.

[PAK]

  The Fear God and Dreadnought version works okay and is more flexible and possibly easier to find in decent shape.

  Some things bearing in mind about Jutland:
  1) Given the fact the RN could read their coded radio transmissions almost as fast as they could themselves, the High Seas Fleet was incredibly lucky to have gotten away with relatively little damage
 

It is not a matter of luck only, but also a gross incompetence on British side. Room 40 properly decoded majority of German transmissions but information was not carried over to Jellicoe. Massie in Castles of Steel wrote something about it. It was a certain Capt. Jackson (I'm writing out of memory, don't remember his name for sure), Grand Fleet command liaison officer to the Room 40, that was a problem. He was a XIX century style fleet officer, with little understanding of modern signal intelligence and great contempt for civilians working in Room 40. This contempt was fully returned to him, and cooperation between Grand Fleet HQ and Room 40 was practically nonexistent, at least in the very hour of impending battle. Before the battle, Germans suspecting that their radio transmissions are not secure, tried a ruse and assigned Scheer's flagship code word to the land station. Room 40 was aware of it and therefore knew that Hochseeflotte was at sea! But Jackson didn't ask about details, he only asked about whereabouts of Scheer's flagship code word. He got an answer, that this code word is anchored... Apparently when after the battle Jellicoe was made aware of the full extent of Room 40 knowledge, that was not carried to him, he was furious.

[MengJiao]

  The Fear God and Dreadnought version works okay and is more flexible and possibly easier to find in decent shape.

  Some things bearing in mind about Jutland:
  1) Given the fact the RN could read their coded radio transmissions almost as fast as they could themselves, the High Seas Fleet was incredibly lucky to have gotten away with relatively little damage
 

It is not a matter of luck only, but also a gross incompetence on British side. Room 40 properly decoded majority of German transmissions but information was not carried over to Jellicoe. Massie in Castles of Steel wrote something about it. It was a certain Capt. Jackson (I'm writing out of memory, don't remember his name for sure), Grand Fleet command liaison officer to the Room 40, that was a problem. He was a XIX century style fleet officer, with little understanding of modern signal intelligence and great contempt for civilians working in Room 40. This contempt was fully returned to him, and cooperation between Grand Fleet HQ and Room 40 was practically nonexistent, at least in the very hour of impending battle. Before the battle, Germans suspecting that their radio transmissions are not secure, tried a ruse and assigned Scheer's flagship code word to the land station. Room 40 was aware of it and therefore knew that Hochseeflotte was at sea! But Jackson didn't ask about details, he only asked about whereabouts of Scheer's flagship code word. He got an answer, that this code word is anchored... Apparently when after the battle Jellicoe was made aware of the full extent of Room 40 knowledge, that was not carried to him, he was furious.

  On May 28 Jellico knew the Germans were coming out in force.  The Grand Fleet put to sea before the High Seas Fleet and their aim was to cut off the retreat of the High Seas Fleet.  Given all that, the High Seas Fleet was lucky to have gotten back behind its mine fields with relatively light loses.  Jellico could have used more information (for example the exit of the German DDs by another route from the battle area), but from the point of view of the High Seas Fleet, having the enemy put to sea to trap you before you even put to sea was definitely a bad situation.

[Boggit]

I may be revealing my ignorance but I was under the impression that much of the 'there's something wrong with our bloody ships' syndrome was because of poor powder-handling habits among certain ships' crews, including leaving bags of propellent 'at the ready' and leaving blast doors to the powder rooms open to speed up loading times.

You're not being ignorant. You have stated exactly the issue. It is the principle reason that so many British battlecruisers blew up - safety procedures. O0

When you consider, for example, that Queen Mary had some 18 compartments to the Seydlitz, yet blew up after 7 main battery hits, whereas the Seydlitz limped home after 22 main battery hits, puts paid to the German accuracy argument. Beatty wanted his battle cruisers to maximise rate of fire, and that is why safety concerns were ignored. His sailors paid the price. As you rightly point out, all it took was one flash fire in the turret, and with the doors open to the magazine, the fire would follow the least resistance i.e. down to the deep magazine in the ship. With Jellicoe's main fleet you do not see the same pattern of events, as they were not under the same rules of engagement set out by Beatty.

Just a thought on the wargame side of things, why not consider Rule the Waves? This covers the Jutland period, plus you get to design the composition of you fleet, and individual ship classes.

[Boggit]

  The Fear God and Dreadnought version works okay and is more flexible and possibly easier to find in decent shape.

  Some things bearing in mind about Jutland:
  1) Given the fact the RN could read their coded radio transmissions almost as fast as they could themselves, the High Seas Fleet was incredibly lucky to have gotten away with relatively little damage
 

It is not a matter of luck only, but also a gross incompetence on British side. Room 40 properly decoded majority of German transmissions but information was not carried over to Jellicoe. Massie in Castles of Steel wrote something about it. It was a certain Capt. Jackson (I'm writing out of memory, don't remember his name for sure), Grand Fleet command liaison officer to the Room 40, that was a problem. He was a XIX century style fleet officer, with little understanding of modern signal intelligence and great contempt for civilians working in Room 40. This contempt was fully returned to him, and cooperation between Grand Fleet HQ and Room 40 was practically nonexistent, at least in the very hour of impending battle. Before the battle, Germans suspecting that their radio transmissions are not secure, tried a ruse and assigned Scheer's flagship code word to the land station. Room 40 was aware of it and therefore knew that Hochseeflotte was at sea! But Jackson didn't ask about details, he only asked about whereabouts of Scheer's flagship code word. He got an answer, that this code word is anchored... Apparently when after the battle Jellicoe was made aware of the full extent of Room 40 knowledge, that was not carried to him, he was furious.

Big +1.

Also during the action Beatty was using the flag system for communication, rather than the radio/telegraph. Given that the weather was poor for visibility - haze and banks of fog - and the ships spread out over a wide area it meant that orders were open to misinterpretation, even if seen at all. Beatty seems to have forgotten that what worked for Nelson with ships barely a few hundred metres apart would work poorly with ships spread out for miles, particularly in poor visibility.

[MengJiao]

  The Fear God and Dreadnought version works okay and is more flexible and possibly easier to find in decent shape.

  Some things bearing in mind about Jutland:
  1) Given the fact the RN could read their coded radio transmissions almost as fast as they could themselves, the High Seas Fleet was incredibly lucky to have gotten away with relatively little damage
 

It is not a matter of luck only, but also a gross incompetence on British side. Room 40 properly decoded majority of German transmissions but information was not carried over to Jellicoe. Massie in Castles of Steel wrote something about it. It was a certain Capt. Jackson (I'm writing out of memory, don't remember his name for sure), Grand Fleet command liaison officer to the Room 40, that was a problem. He was a XIX century style fleet officer, with little understanding of modern signal intelligence and great contempt for civilians working in Room 40. This contempt was fully returned to him, and cooperation between Grand Fleet HQ and Room 40 was practically nonexistent, at least in the very hour of impending battle. Before the battle, Germans suspecting that their radio transmissions are not secure, tried a ruse and assigned Scheer's flagship code word to the land station. Room 40 was aware of it and therefore knew that Hochseeflotte was at sea! But Jackson didn't ask about details, he only asked about whereabouts of Scheer's flagship code word. He got an answer, that this code word is anchored... Apparently when after the battle Jellicoe was made aware of the full extent of Room 40 knowledge, that was not carried to him, he was furious.

Big +1.

Also during the action Beatty was using the flag system for communication, rather than the radio/telegraph. Given that the weather was poor for visibility - haze and banks of fog - and the ships spread out over a wide area it meant that orders were open to misinterpretation, even if seen at all. Beatty seems to have forgotten that what worked for Nelson with ships barely a few hundred metres apart would work poorly with ships spread out for miles, particularly in poor visibility.

  Radios, flags and signal lights were used by Beatty's squadrons.  His flag signals were often ill-judged, but they always seem to have been received (though in one case the haul-down = execute was delayed making things even worse).  For example, at 4.48, Southhampton sent a wireless transmission reporting the High Seas Fleet and Beatty sent out some flag signals which all were received, though they were poorly thought-out and badly done (eg delayed haul-down/execute).  By around 6pm the light was so bad that most signals seem to have been via lights.

[Boggit]

I stand corrected! O0 Even so at least the basic idea about the bad battle communications wasn't too far adrift...  despite my eye watering explanation, which you could sea through... ;)

[panzerde]

You are all making me want to pull Massey out again. Not that I don't already have an enormous pile of Great War reading I'm trying to get through.


I just finished a turn of France '14 with Cyrano. Now to decide if it's a game of In The Trenches or succumb to this thread's temptation to fire up SAI.