BBC2

[Tim Birch]

On tonight (1 Feb) War at Sea BBC2 1900 hrs

Tim

[dmilford]

On Saturday 7th Feb. at 7.00PM on Ch4 (UK) has a 2 hour show on investigating the Jutland wrecks.

[Tim Birch]

Any comments on the program? It gave the impression that the Great War Admirals like their Army counterparts the Generals, were out of touch and lagging behind the rate of advance in technology. Just as the Generals had learnt their profession fighting in small scale colonial wars so the Admirals had served as junior officers in wooden sailing ships where battle tactics consisted of sailing in a line and firing broadsides into the enemy's line.

Beatty failed to use his superior fire power at the outset when his heavy guns had a range of 12 miles against the German capital ships' range of 10 miles. Instead of standing off and picking them off at his leisure he closed with the enemy until their guns were in range, and the opening salvoes were actually fired by the Germans.

It seems that Beatty had not paid enough attention to gunnery practice for fear of upsetting the civilan population in the vicinty of his fleet's base, and furthermore he was more concerned with spit and polish in his ships to the extent that too much gunnery practice was discouraged at the smoke fall out made his ships dirty!

Beatty's opening salvoes missed their targets by thousands of yards, whereas the German gunnery was accurate.

Beatty was also obsessed with the rate of fire for his guns, and whilst actual firing was lacking in training, his gun crews were very fast at loading. In order to achieve this he had allowed too much ammunition to be stored in the turrets themselves, and had done away with flash barriors in the supply shafts from the magazines so as to speed up the rate of hoisting ammunition up to the turrets.

Direct hits on gun turrets of the Indefatigable and Queen Mary resulted in flash backs down into the magazines and the ships exploding, causing his infamous remark "There is something wrong with our bloody ships today"

This is the first documentary I have seen about Jutland - how balanced was it? It was certainly very critical of Beatty during the opening phase of the Battle.

Tim

[Jonathan Saunders]

Thanks for putting me onto this Tim, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I thought Jellicoe came out of it much better than I was expecting - that is right until the end and then the old argument about him not pursuing the German Fleet and crushing them was rolled out.

Personally I wish Jellicoe had pursued and engaged the German Fleet in a "winner takes all" action but at the same time I dont blame him for not doing so. I still firmly believe Jellicoe won the Battle of Jutland. The German Fleet would only ever be a threat again if they showed any interest in coming out of their harbour. If they had done then the Royal Navy wouldnt have been far away.

The programme really kindled my interest in finding out more about the events surrounding Jutland and to test my preconceived views.

[mcderms]

If anyone is interested in how time has treated the Jutland wrecks, try here:

http://www.periscopepublishing.com/images/...0exhibition.htm

A number of my friends were on the expedition last year that found the lost Jutland wrecks including HMS Indefatigable. I'm a wreck diver myself (cue boos, hisses and the usual grave robbing accusations that never get leveled at 'proper' archeaologists) and with my friends have dived on many, many WW1 vessels so please feel free to drop me a line with any particular questions.

[Jonathan Saunders]

and with my friends have dived on many, many WW1 vessels so please feel free to drop me a line with any particular questions.

... will email you off forum

[Bob H]

I was surprised at the amount of blame attached to Beatty by the program. He may have been impetuous and hot headed but most of the claims made against him were either common throughout the fleet, or due to circumstances of the time.

The idea that he had personally caused the ships in his fleet to dispense with the flash precautions is unlikely, as on board his flagship HMS Lion the standing orders for the amount of cordite allowed in each turret at any time, and the use of the doors was maintained. Consequently early in the battle when Lion’s ‘Q’ turret was hit, the fire was contained and the magazine flooded before an explosion could take place as happened in the other battle cruisers.

The lack of gunnery practice was a concern, based as they now were at Rosyth due to public outcry from the bombardment of the East coast by the German battle cruisers. The 3rd Battle Cruiser Squadron had been sent to Scapa Flow for gunnery practice in exchange for the 5th Battle Squadron of fast Queen Elizabeth class battleships. This was not enough but was better than having no practice. The threat of U-boat attack prevented them doing more locally.

The program made no mention of the defective British shells, or the very poor visibility during the afternoon. It also made it sound as if Jellicoe had no intention of fighting after he turned away to avoid the torpedoes. He turned back into line after the immediate threat was over but the German fleet had disappeared in the mist and smoke and it was some minutes before he realized they had turned away.

[dmilford]

As others have mentioned the program was patchy and in places grossly oversimplified.

Beatty took a hammering in it with mixed justification. The lack of gunnery training facilities was not his fault but he does not appear to have taken it seriously; if you read some of his published correspondence with Jellicoe on several occasions he makes comments to the effect that "did training shoot today, we were rubbish, never mind when the real thing happens will be much better". It was Jellicoe's idea to rotate BC squadron through Scapa for training.

On the cordite handling front I'd agree that the program was a little strong in its criticism of Beatty. However whilst I don't think the policy of sacrificing safety for rate of fire was explicit it was certainly known about by at least Chatfield (Beatty's Flag Captain and friend) and therefore very likely Beatty. At Dogger Bank HMS Lion found herself under fire from several German BCs and the volume of spray from near misses made it very hard for Lion to reply. In the post action BCF study of the lessons of that battle volume of fire was given a very high emphasis hence the desire for high rates of fire. The survival of Lion was largely due to one man (Alexander Grant) who fought against BCF policy and managed to implement considerable improvements in safety on Lion against opposition from those above. Chatfield was aware of these improvements but did not attempt to implement them throughout the force. Was Beatty aware of this - I don't know but find it hard to believe that he knew nothing and he and Chatfield did talk extensively on professional matters.

One of the problems with defending Beatty is that he was a repeat offender - many of the errors that he made at Jutland he had made in previous actions but had not learnt from them. So the not briefing subordinate commanders of their role/responsibilities, poor gunnery, communication failings were all things he had suffered from before Jutland and yet repeated.

The program also criticised him for breaking the FC solution of his ships by changing course unnecessarily I'd not heard before and yet failed to mentioned the widespread criticism of his use of the 5BS.

On the Jellicoe front the only part of his actions that got any sort decent of mention was the infamous turn away from torpedoes. Personally even with hindsight I think he made the right choice as approximately 7 BBs were nearly hit even with the turn away. If he had turned towards I think he would have taken considerable damage and yet not that would not have put him in a winning position never mind the possibility of follow up torpedo attacks.