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Let's continue talking about World War I.

I know there are some rather keen Naval enthusiasts here on Dakka and some people who know a lot about the Battle of Jutland. My memory is a bit hazy, but the German High Seas fleet sallied forth to try and lift the Naval Blockade on Germany and end Britain's command of the Seas. However, they were outgunned, and outnumbered by the British Grand Fleet. The plan was to lure the British battleships out; have a knockdown drag out fight, and then potentially lure them into submarine, torpedo, and mine attacks as the High Seas Fleet withdrew. I maybe misrepresenting the details and confusing some of the plan with what the plans evolved into, but that is my base recollection.

Thinking about the state of both Navies at the time, the geography, technology, and tactical doctrines of the period, did the High Seas Fleet ever really have a chance, or was hope their only strategy?

If people are interested, I did a real time minute by minute Twitter recreation of the Battle of Jutland on the 100th anniversary.

It's probably still there on my Battle of Jutland Twitter account, but you will have to scroll a hell of a long way down because there are 30 months of Tweets from other naval related accounts which BoJ follows.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If people are interested, I did a real time minute by minute Twitter recreation of the Battle of Jutland on the 100th anniversary.

It's probably still there on my Battle of Jutland Twitter account, but you will have to scroll a hell of a long way down because there are 30 months of Tweets from other naval related accounts which BoJ follows.

I thought about that while I was posting on this topic. I thought you might have a few thoughts on the topic KK.

will reply later when not drunk.

Long and short... no, not really.

What Germany needed to happen was to sucker out a small part of the British Grand Fleet and defeat that small part with little damage, and then be in a better position to take on the rest.

The British were well aware of this, and simply sent the whole Grand Fleet out. At that point, so long as the Grand Fleet stayed relatively concentrated, there was no way for the German High Seas Fleet to win aside from depending on lucky critical hits... and avoiding those sort of hits in return.

If you look at the Battle of Jutland in detail, the British made a lot of questionable decisions, especially the commander of the battlecrusier squadron. The Germans actually pulled off a tactical victory, in terms of damage done vs. damage taken. But it was a strategic loss in that the British could make good their losses out of ships in refit and repair and new builds coming online... and the Germans couldn't.

I agree with the above assessment.

As so often in war, accidents and luck played a part.

The one other thing worth mentioning is that the German plan involved luring the British over a screen of submarines as they left port. For various reasons this didn't work. If it had worked, the Germans might have sunk several British ships before the start of the battle, and who knows what would have happened.

Against that, the British had several mistakes and accidents which harmed their plan. The two main things are leaving the aircraft carrier HMS Campania in port, and failing to pass on their full signals intelligence to Admiral Jellicoe. which made it harder to make good dispositions.

The Germans had initial success against Beattie's Battlecruiser Squadron and sank two ships. However, Beattie successfully lured the Germans north into the maw of the fully deployed Grand Fleet. Once the British main line opened fire, it became clear to Admiral Scheer that he was in deep trouble. He escaped with the famous 180 degree battle turn. If Scheer had persisted, he would have sunk some more British ships, but he certainly would have sustained much greater losses because he was so outgunned.

The Germans were still cut off from their base and could potentially have been caught in the night, but British training in night actions was very poor. They simply failed to alert Jellicoe when German ships started to move across their path. This enabled the Germans to break through the line and get home.

At the same time, with just a little more luck on the Germans' part they could have caused a lot more damage to Beatty's battlecruisers. Invincivble, Queen Mary, and Indefatigble already went down due in part to the questionable decision to leave the magazine doors open so the gunners could reload faster, and Beatty's flagship Lion would've gone up in smoke the same way if not for the gigantic brass balls of Major Francis Harvey who flooded the magazine before the cordite could be set ablaze after a direct hit pierced Lion's Q-turret.

That's true. The Germans could have done better with a bit more luck, but that is also true of the British.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Well, it's a moot point what constitutes luck.

HMS Campania missed the signal to leave port, so the Grand Fleet was deprived of its main aircraft carrier, but this could easily have gone the other way.

The liaison officer at Room 40 (signals intelligence) was a knobhead, and he might be not been.

Yep.

The Germans had a solid plan, and really only one thing went wrong with it (missing the U-boats). The British had a solid plan to counter the German plan and had quite a few things go wrong, which is why the Germans did as well as they did.

Yes, the U-boats could have upped the damage to the Grand Fleet quite a bit. But unless the British were complete tools in their ASW work (and by that point in the war they were not) the damage would have been troublesome, not the catastrophic damage the Germans needed to really prevail.

In terms of losses, the Germans won by a narrow margin against a superior foe.

In hindsight, the battle also exposed that the British had a lot of fatal bad habits in terms of how their ships operated. Violating safety protocols by leaving doors open allowing for chain reaction explosions to sink them that otherwise would not. There is good evidence that the Indefatigable was undone by such negligent practices(and the HMS Hood might also have gone down because of a similar problem, indicating the issues were never rectified all through WW1 and 2). If the Germans had pressed the issue, its possible they could have inflicted even heavier losses on the British because of this.

A more aggressive raiding and harassment of the Royal Navy, only engaging in favorable conditions, could have defeated the British by ensuring the loss ratio was favorable. And considering that, while the total number of ships only showed a 50% advantage for the British, 2/3 of the German navy was torpedo boats. In terms of main combat ships the Germans were outnumbered over 2-1. And yet the loss ratio was heavily in favor of the Germans, 2-1 if we ignore the torpedo boat losses.

It was Beattie's battlecruisers who had bad habits with the ammunition.

He was rather slack about this discipline. His ships had a poor shooting record compared to the Grand Fleet proper, and tried to make up for their lack of accuracy by shooting faster.

Beattie was also slack about signals, and never bothered to co-ordinate with the fast battleship squadron which was his main support. These deficiencies too had a serious effect on the course of the battle.

It was notable how much better at shooting the fast battleship squadron was than the Battlecruiser Squadron. They had recently come from the Grand Fleet where there was regular exercise in shooting.

Anyway, the Germans would have done worse against the Grand Fleet than they did against the Battlecruiser Squadron alone.

Their best attack would have been a mass torpedo attack but in the First World War, no-one had thought of that tactic. The torpedoes were launched in small number in each salvo.

 Grey Templar wrote:
In terms of losses, the Germans won by a narrow margin against a superior foe.

A rather decent margin actually. The Germans lost 6 large ships and 2551 men while the British lost 14 large ships and about 7000 men. And that is despite the German navy being just a small fraction of the size of the British navy in the battle.
And in that light, I am going to say that they did not have any chance. The Germans got lucky, the British made lots of mistakes, the Germans performed well during the battle, and they had basically everything going for them. And they still failed to win a strategic victory. The British numerical superiority was such that it basically does not matter how badly they performed or how well the Germans performed. They could have afforded to lose 10 freaking battleships and still outnumber the Germans. The strategic victory would go to the British any way. The Germans had no chance of winning beyond hoping half the British fleet would accidentally scuttle itself.

I think probably Germany never could have won a strategic naval victory in WW1 except perhaps by adopting unrestricted submarine warfare from the start.

Even after they did this, the RN gradually and successfully adapted by bringing back convoys and introducing hydrophones, so maybe this would not have worked anyway.

Unrestricted submarine warfare could possibly have strangled Britain or ended their maritime superiority.

Or, it might have brought the U.S. into the war years earlier, which would not have gone well for Germany.

No way to know now, I'm afraid.

Yeah, my thought was that Germany had no chance at all. They only sallied from port because they "had" to do something.

They had to pray and hope that the British would make a fatal error. Jellicoe was just not that kind of admiral.