“Jutland: Draining the Battle Site” - Channel 5

[Derek Black]

On channel 5 at 9pm tonight is a Jutland documentary.

 

Derek.

[David Filsell]

So the choice tonight is game of thrones or Jutland away.

[paulgranger]

It is overwrought, and not telling us anything we don't know. And I do wish the 'historic present' tense had never been thought of. 

[seaJane]

In what sense "draining"? Seems a bit of a big job ....

[Fattyowls]

22 minutes ago, seaJane said:

In what sense "draining"? Seems a bit of a big job ....

 

I seem to recall that the late Sir Lew Grade put up the money for a movie called 'Raise The Titanic', which suffered huge budget overruns. Sir Lew was quoted as saying that instead of raising the Titanic it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic.......

[seaJane]

nice, but doesn't appear to be the answer...

[4thGordons]

2 hours ago, paulgranger said:

And I do wish the 'historic present' tense had never been thought of. 

I absolutely HATE that.

I spent the day in the Field Museum in Chicago and many of the descriptions of events (I was reading about the "Lager Riots" were written like that) .... urghhhh.

although having read up on it I understand it the standard mode for Latin history and perhaps also in French so it goes back away....

Chris

[kenf48]

11 hours ago, seaJane said:

nice, but doesn't appear to be the answer...

 

It's an obscure series on Channel 5 where they use CGI and sonar images to 'drain' the ocean and make images of the wrecked ships and the seabed etc, e.g. the night before it was the Bermuda Triangle, they've also done Alcatraz, Atlantis etc https://www.channel5.com/show/drain-the-ocean/

 

As previously said while there was little new in the programme and I didn't watch I to the end it illustrated well why there was 'something wrong with our bl***y ships today" with underwater images comparing the scattered shells of the British vessels with those of the German ships.  To be honest as they are war graves I found the reconstructions of the wrecks a little disturbing.

 

Ken

 

 

[seaJane]

Thanks Ken.

[BIFFO]

Well I didn't think it that bad,ok never said anything we don't already know silly billy jack tars leaving cordite out ready to explode,

bit ironic that lots of the scuttled fleet steel sold to the Germans who built u boats in ww2 one sneaked into scapa flow and sunk a British battle ship.

cant see a problem with cgi,we cannot turn the clock back, if the fact are correct and the "action" correct ,ok every documentary I watch the amount of history experts that come out of the wood work,wonder who has a proper job these days.

I`ll get me coat then

[Gardenerbill]

I thought there was some interesting content, but it left a lot to be desired. First I found referring to naval hardware as sexy a little jarring. They didn't explain why the first major battle of the Great war took place in 1916, what had they all been doing in the previous two years, I assume this was the first time the German fleet had left harbour en masse. Why did they only discuss 3 of the 25 ships that were sunk, was this because they didn't have the resources to to scan them all. Finally did the Germans really build U boats out of scrap metal this seemed a little far fetched for me, but I could be wrong.

[MikB]

2 hours ago, Gardenerbill said:

I thought there was some interesting content, but it left a lot to be desired. First I found referring to naval hardware as sexy a little jarring. They didn't explain why the first major battle of the Great war took place in 1916, what had they all been doing in the previous two years, I assume this was the first time the German fleet had left harbour en masse. Why did they only discuss 3 of the 25 ships that were sunk, was this because they didn't have the resources to to scan them all. Finally did the Germans really build U boats out of scrap metal this seemed a little far fetched for me, but I could be wrong.

 

No, they'd been out several times before trying to lure groups of RN capital ships onto the guns of the whole German fleet, but always went home before any major contact - Kaiser's orders, mostly. They'd had a serious defeat at Dogger Bank about 16 months earlier, but this time there was a moment they thought they'd cracked it. As Beatty turned north and scarpered back towards Jellicoe, they had 8 British top-line ships facing 21 of theirs - but they couldn't catch them or slow them down, and ended up following them into Jellicoe's hastily-set trap. A day or two after the battle, Jellicoe could report 24 dreadnoughts ready for sea. Scheer had 10 - the rest variously damaged. So despite the balance of loss being in the HSF's favour, the balance of available strength had swung further in the RN's.

[Gardenerbill]

Hi MikB

Thanks for that my naval history is sketchy at best.

[MAW]

I found the graphics interesting but the programme as a whole was a brain pain. The overview of the battle was incomplete and the frequent excitable references to draining the ocean irritating.

 

The narrator stated that the Germans kept cordite in metal shell cases (as opposed to canvas bags used by the British), but did this include the larger 12-inch guns too?

 

Mark

[MikB]

17 hours ago, MAW said:

I found the graphics interesting but the programme as a whole was a brain pain. The overview of the battle was incomplete and the frequent excitable references to draining the ocean irritating.

 

The narrator stated that the Germans kept cordite in metal shell cases (as opposed to canvas bags used by the British), but did this include the larger 12-inch guns too?

 

Mark

 

It wasn't actual Cordite - which was specifically British in formulation and production process - but their own nitrocellulose-based propellant. But yes - all big German guns used the sliding-wedge breech closure and would need an obturating cartridge case, because the permanent obturator used in the British screw-breeches wasn't practical in that design. German paintings of the battle show decks littered with huge spent cases - there's one of Seydlitz in action showing them being tossed out of a small hatch in the rear face of a main armament gunhouse. It was probably a great deal more expensive and space-consuming than bags, but then you could say there was less risk of losing whole ships. Not sure how true that was, though - the Germans lost Pommern through catastrophic explosion late in the battle, and the loss of RN battlecruisers has tended to be more attributed to casual handling practices in battle than to system design - as the programme for once correctly pointed out.

Edited 1 May , 2019 by MikB