Battle of Jutland.

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SaparotRob said:
I'm glad you brought that up Glider.
I was "studying up" on Jutland. Okay, watching Drachinifel, Jutland in time-lapse, etc. on YouTube. Drachinifel mentioned U.S. gunnery wasn't up to snuff. Based on the posts here on RN gunnery, USN shooting must have been terrible.
Drachinifel also posted a Jutland "what if". The U.S. battleships spouted heavy smoke and sparks from coaxing every last rpm of the coal burning engines. The U.S. sent coal burning ships to England for easier fueling. In his scenario these battleships had damaged their engines keeping up with RN ships.
How true might that be? Perhaps the USN ships weren't so first class? At least the battleships sent over to England?
Click to expand...

The smoke issues were common across most fleets and I see no reason to doubt that the UK ships were no different to the USN. Different coal would have made a difference but in the UK they would have used UK coal. However the UK were switching to oil as seen in the QE class and that made a huge difference. Literally the fog of war was lifted to a significant level and the sights would have been far more accurate as well as signalling.

I have some numbers re the poor shooting of the USN Battleships (somewhere?) and will dig them out if I can.
 
Glider said:
The smoke issues were common across most fleets and I see no reason to doubt that the UK ships were no different to the USN. Different coal would have made a difference but in the UK they would have used UK coal. However the UK were switching to oil as seen in the QE class and that made a huge difference. Literally the fog of war was lifted to a significant level and the sights would have been far more accurate as well as signalling.

I have some numbers re the poor shooting of the USN Battleships (somewhere?) and will dig them out if I can.
Click to expand...
Ian Buxton's Big Gun Monitors reported that the RN was not impressed with the US 14" guns on the first of the WWI monitors
 
I had been under the impression that the British ships had oil fired boilers. I realize now I was thinking of the RN having steam turbines while the USN ships had triple expansion engines ( due to the older engines using coal).
 
I have some of the numbers but not I admit the ones I was thinking of.

In June 1918 at a range of 18,000 yards the average USN spread of shot was approx. 800 yards.
At the same time the British R Class (15in) at 21,000 yards was averaging a spread of approx. 450 yards

This was by no means the worst. In June 1918 the New York and Texas had patterns of 1,043 and 1,086 yards at 18,600 and 16,950 yards.
It was decided that the 14in/50 Gun was particularly inaccurate as it was too 'loose' or flexible.

The 12in gun was a lot better. The Florida and Delaware averaged spreads of 559 and 720 yards at 17,900 and 15,900 yards

The problem with the 14in was never really solved
 
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Glider said:
I have some of the numbers but not I admit the ones I was thinking of.

In June 1918 at a range of 18,000 yards the average USN spread of shot was approx. 800 yards.
At the same time the British R Class (15in) at 21,000 yards was averaging a spread of approx. 450 yards

This was by no means the worst. In June 1918 the New York and Texas had patterns of 1,043 and 1,086 yards at 18,600 and 16,950 yards.
It was decided that the 14in/50 Gun was particularly inaccurate as it was too 'loose' or flexible.

The 12in gun was a lot better. The Florida and Delaware averaged spreads of 559 and 720 yards at 17,900 and 15,900 yards

The problem with the 14in was never really solved
Click to expand...
Did the USN develop a new 14" weapon for the standard battleships?
 
 
One issue is not clear is why fight the High Seas Fleet in the first place?

You have sea supremecy so battling the Germans means that things can only get worse.

Accuracy is a total bag of spanners but the range of the naval engagement was a lot closer than envisioned so long range accuracy is less important as you close the range.

German gunnery could be laser beams but if your only shooting 11 inch shells then kinda defeats the purpose.

Coal is an awful fuel. Needs back breaking labour to shovel and can be very dirty.

Submarines and certainly in ww1 were no good in fleet actions as they were slower than capital ships. The Pre-dreadnoughts were faster.
 
The Basket said:
One issue is not clear is why fight the High Seas Fleet in the first place?

You have sea supremecy so battling the Germans means that things can only get worse.

Accuracy is a total bag of spanners but the range of the naval engagement was a lot closer than envisioned so long range accuracy is less important as you close the range.

German gunnery could be laser beams but if your only shooting 11 inch shells then kinda defeats the purpose.

Coal is an awful fuel. Needs back breaking labour to shovel and can be very dirty.

Submarines and certainly in ww1 were no good in fleet actions as they were slower than capital ships. The Pre-dreadnoughts were faster.
Click to expand...

Coal, generally, sucks as a fuel. Even in modern boiler systems, it is barely s
cost competitive when one throws in all of its secondary costs: much more difficult storage, expensive, high-maintenance pulverizers (accordong to Combustion Engineering and Babcock & Wilcox, which made the things, the leading cause of coal-fueled plant down time), increased boiler maintenance, and reduced boiler efficiency. That is without going into the costs of either pollution (not paid by the power plants, so they don't care) or pollution controls.
 
Britain ruled the waves before and after and we gained nothing. So from a strategic point of view we were no better apart from losing a lot of men and giving the Germans a propaganda victory.

Coal is bad. How ships were coaled is pretty much back breaking labour with all the coal dust your lungs could take.
 
 
Glider said:
Coal is bad. How ships were coaled is pretty much back breaking labour with all the coal dust your lungs could take.
Click to expand...
It makes good armour backing though. See below, HMS Dreadnought's coal is intentionally placed between the belt and the machinery/magazine spaces. Coal is compressible and floating ash aside, flash resistant.
432px-HMS_Dreadnought_1906_midel_section-EN.svg.png


Whereas in Oil Fuel battleships, like WW2-era KGV class below, the fuel plays no part in the armour, so is kept below the waterline.

434px-KGV-Armor_Scheme.jpg
 
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SaparotRob said:
I'm glad you brought that up Glider.
I was "studying up" on Jutland. Okay, watching Drachinifel, Jutland in time-lapse, etc. on YouTube. Drachinifel mentioned U.S. gunnery wasn't up to snuff. Based on the posts here on RN gunnery, USN shooting must have been terrible.
Drachinifel also posted a Jutland "what if". The U.S. battleships spouted heavy smoke and sparks from coaxing every last rpm of the coal burning engines. The U.S. sent coal burning ships to England for easier fueling. In his scenario these battleships had damaged their engines keeping up with RN ships.
How true might that be? Perhaps the USN ships weren't so first class? At least the battleships sent over to England?
Click to expand...
The USN sent mostly first gen dreadnoughts that were coal burners, I've read there were two reasons. First the impression was that the UK was short of fuel oil so sending coal burning ships meant they would not put undue strain on oil requirements for the RN. The coal burners would mesh nicely with RN supply lines.

Second, I've read but am not positive that the U.S. kept the newer, more powerful ships in home waters because they were oil burners and being new, still getting up to speed so to speak but also pressure from coastal areas that the best ships be kept for home defense.

I wouldn't say the USN ships weren't first class, they went for armor and firepower over speed so were a few knots slower than most foreign contemporaries. And while I like drachfinel <sp?> no admiral (USN or RN) in his right mind is going to blow the engines on main units just to keep up with the fleet. Fleet speed would have been adjusted or, if the American BB's couldn't keep up, there would have been plans for them to achieve a different objective or if same objective, a heavier escort.

And yes, USN shooting was at best abysmal when the BB's reached Scapa Flow, that changed in time however, after all, practice makes perfect, or sort of anyway.
 
I agree with almost everything you say and that the ships were first class apart from the shooting. What was interesting was the interaction between the fleets which sometimes was far from easy.
Gunnery Officers in then RN considered themselves the best and specialised in gunnery, whereas the USN gunnery officers whist having extra training in gunnery had a more rounded training with more time spent in other area's. As a result the often pompous RN considered the USN equivalents to be 'generalists' who couldn't hit a barn door, and the USN not unreasonably considered the RN gunnery officers to be arrogant and overbearing. When sensible Admirals from both navies knocked heads together they started to learn from each other recognising that I think it was the USN rangefinders were far better but the RN directors had significant advantages and when both sides saw this, everyone finally won.

USN training was also a problem as they tended to shoot when the weather was good, plus often practised the 'surprise' tests, in a rather similar to the RN Battlecruisers and we know how that went.
 
Talk about losses.

The Germans put 6 Pre Dreadnoughts into the field of battle.

This was to make up numbers.

Scheer said never again so you're 6 down....off the bat. They lost one with Pommern anyway. So even if Jutland 2: Beatty Rides Again happened then the Germans are already facing a numerical disadvantage.

Plus QE and Emperor of India and HMAS Australia were back in action very quickly. Plus Renown and Repulse and Resolution so the RN has not only made up it's losses but getting better ships
 
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