Battle of Jutland.

[GrauGeist]

Beleive it or not, there is still a monitor type ship still in service with the Brazilian Navy.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Beleive it or not, there is still a monitor type ship still in service with the Brazilian Navy.

HMVS Cerberus should have been saved, same as Huascar.

 

[The Basket]

The British Battlecruisers that exploded at Jutland were hit by the German Battlecruisers Von Der Tann, Derfflinger and Lútzow not by battleships.

I find it extremely difficult discussing British Battlecruisers without writing a 5,000 word essay on the subject. And yes, Roman Triremes will be mentioned.

The Courageous class were Glass Cannons designed to be used for the British landings on the beaches of Pomerania to march to Berlin. Since their nonsense nature makes it very difficult to actually give them a designation. Three inches of armour isn't stopping a damn thing.

Even Indomitable was better armoured and that had poor armour for a capital ship.

The plan unraveled when the Germans bombarded the British coast. Only the Battlecruisers were fast enough to catch them so they would have to operate alone against perhaps superior firepower. When it was pointed out that Rodney's guns all pointed forward, a British officer said that's the way it is because the Royal Navy doesn't run away.

Remember that Beatty was in positions of power at the end of the war so any report mentioning poor signalling or bad ammunition handling could be quashed and poor armour was the cause.

It is very easy to slag off the Royal Navy and it's performance at Jutland. Plenty of faults for everyone to see.

But they didn't run away and they were in a far better position to fight next day. Seydlitz did sink. It just sank in port. And Seydlitz wasn't going to go for round 2 for a few good months yet.

 

[nuuumannn]

By October 1916 the ship was repaired and operational once more.

Well, not really. It wasn't fully seaworthy until just before the Armistice. Its reconstruction took almost the rest of the war after Jutland. Seydlitz led the German ships into internment into the Firth of Forth on 21 November 1918. This was deliberate by the Germans as a snub, because the Brits had claimed they'd sunk the ship.

I find it extremely difficult discussing British Battlecruisers without writing a 5,000 word essay on the subject.

Ah, the battlecruiser argument - so many individuals, research establishments, museums and military wargamers and strategists have expended so much time and effort analysing these ships and their use in action, but the reason behind their use during Jutland is often overlooked. Let's put it this way; you are an admiral-of-the-fleet and you have a large number of ships at your disposal, some of which are suitable, some of which are not. Your aim is to bring the enemy to battle at any cost because it could bring about the end of the war (or so they believed). You know that not all your ships are capable of matching the abilities in combat as the big battleships, but you bring them anyway. How can you refuse? they are armed with big guns, lots of them and firepower is everything. Numerical superiority of firepower is what the British had and in Jellicoe's case, how could he ignore these big ships and their enormous guns?

Its worth remembering that the Grand Fleet and Beattie's battlecruisers actually sailed before the German ships left the Jade River, owing to decrypts by Room 40 in the Admiralty. The British wanted to draw the Germans into a trap.

It's like Dowding in the Battle of Britain; not enough Spitfire and Hurricane squadrons, but there are Blenheim, Gladiator and Defiant squadrons too. They can't match the Bf 109 in combat, but they can shoot down bombers. Why leave them on the ground?

 

[The Basket]

If you look at the armour on the Queen Mary, it was about ballpark for Von Der Tann. So yes the loss of Indefatigable can be put down to lack of armour but not Queen Mary. In theory, if all the British battlescruisers were Tigers then we wouldn't be having this discussion.

The RN Battlecruiser did have line of battle duties but mainly scouting and chasing torpedo boats.

The Battlecruiser was much faster than a Battleship and offered versatility. Even Beatty in all his greatness did a quick 180 when the full High Seas Fleet appears.

So....had RN had proper shells and proper communication and fought a full on night action then the High Seas Fleet would be on the sea bed in 1916.

Old saying in racing is that to finish first, first you have to finish. That wasn't the case here

 

[Admiral Beez]

So....had RN had proper shells and proper communication and fought a full on night action then the High Seas Fleet would be on the sea bed in 1916.

And not piling charges around the turret in order to make a faster than spec ROF and thus canceling out the designed-in anti-flash features.

"It was always suspected that the system of anti-flash doors would be compromised by an obsession with speed. Confirmed by divers' inspections of the wrecks of the Queen Mary, the Invincible and the Indefatigable later in the century was that the silk cordite bags were brought up from the magazines and stacked in the passageways below the guns. "
Battleship Design and Anti Flash | The Battle of Jutland - Centenary Initiative

Here's the way a RN BB/BC's guns are supposed to be served. I imagine had this been followed that Queen Mary might have survived.

 

[SaparotRob]

And not piling charges around the turret in order to make a faster than spec ROF and thus canceling out the designed-on anti-flash features.

"It was always suspected that the system of anti-flash doors would be compromised by an obsession with speed. Confirmed by divers' inspections of the wrecks of the Queen Mary, the Invincible and the Indefatigable later in the century was that the silk cordite bags were brought up from the magazines and stacked in the passageways below the guns. "
Battleship Design and Anti Flash | The Battle of Jutland - Centenary Initiative

Here's the way a RN BB/BC's guns are supposed to be served. I imagine had this been followed that Queen Mary might have survived.

View attachment 592651

I always wondered how it worked inside those things.

 

[The Basket]

Poor quality but you get the gist.

Caseless ammo like the G11 or Chassepot.

Shove in the big shell. Plenty bags of powder behind it and big boom. Nothing is left so nothing is coming out the Breech after firing.

 

[michaelmaltby]

.... what a work environment ... under pressure in a ship-to-ship engagement .... big thumbs down for me ... I'd take my chances as a Tiger panzer gunner .. before I'd chose that life.
OTH, to hear such big shells roaring inland over your hard-fought positions must have felt like the Intevention of the Gods ... in Normandy in 1944, big Britsh shells flipped Tigers, hidden in woods, on their backs*
*source von Carius Otto Carius - Wikipedia

 

[The Basket]

That's why corners were cut. Takes time to load. So having a few spares nearby save time.

But plenty of armour between you and the outside. Although if your locked in it not so good.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Good vid of British battleships showing the cage. When HMS Lion's X-turret exploded almost 100 men died - it's hard to imagine over 100 men men working in and below these turrets.

 

[SaparotRob]

Good vid of British battleships showing the cage. When HMS Lion's X-turret exploded almost 100 men died - it's hard to imagine over 100 men men working in and below these turrets.

That can't be a fun place to work.

 

[Admiral Beez]

That can't be a fun place to work.

An interesting point, when the loaded the guns, they had to fire them. There's no easy way to extract the shell and charges.

Looking at these two vids, I don't see how piling charges below the guns would be on any use. They still need to get into the cage to get rammed into the breech.

 

[SaparotRob]

Just checked out The Basket's post #88. Maybe it is fun.

 

[The Basket]

Better than the mud of the Somme.

That no lie.

 

[swampyankee]

To some extent, Jutland was an ambiguous victory for the RN, in that they lost those battle cruisers without comparable losses in German capital ships. On the other hand, the German fleet failed in its objective, which was to break the RN blockade of Germany: the German fleet failed to meet its strategic goal for the battle; it's casuistry to claim otherwise.

While it wasn't an unambiguous, spectacular victory like Trafalgar, the German fleet failed to break the RN's control of the sea and, equally important, never tried to break it again during the war.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Better than the mud of the Somme.

That no lie.

Absolutely. For starters, of all the battleships of the Grand Fleet at Jutland only one, HMS Colossus (commanded by the future Sir Dudley Pound) took any damage, when two 11" shells causes minor damage. Beatty's force took a lot of casualties, but nothing like a morning on the Somme. Service on a British dreadnought is mostly boredom, but you have a warm hammock and three meals a day.

 

[The Basket]

What ship you on?
HMS Vanguard.
Oh Bother.

 

[Admiral Beez]

What ship you on?
HMS Vanguard.
Oh Bother.

Indeed. Apparently coal fires could remain undetected whilst they burned next to magazines. Though Mutsu blew up and was oil fired.

 

[swampyankee]

Indeed. Apparently coal fires could remain undetected whilst they burned next to magazines. Though Mutsu blew up and was oil fired.

Leaving aside the yellow journalism of the 1890s, the evidence is that this is how the USS Maine was lost.

Coal, especially coal which may contain pyrites, is prone to spontaneous combustion. This continues to be a serious problem with coal-fired powerplants.