Happy Jutland Day!

This is the fifth and final post in a series commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland.

Part I: SMS Lutzow
Part II: HMS Lion
Part III: SMS Friedrich Der Grosse
Part IV: HMS Iron Duke

These ships also participated in the battle:

HMS Barham
HMS Warspite
HMS New Zealand
HMS Canada
HMS Invincible
SMS Ostfriesland
SMS Schleswig-Holstein

The battle is counted as a tactical German victory and a strategic British victory. British losses (3 battlecruisers, 3 armored cruisers, 8 destroyers, and 6097 sailors) were heavier than German (1 battlecruiser, 1 pre-dreadnought, 4 light cruisers, 5 destroyers, and 2551 sailors), but several German ships were very badly damaged, and the High Seas Fleet did not play a significant role in the rest of the war. Allied surface naval dominance would continue to increase, and the Germans would turn to the submarine to win the naval war. Moreover, while it's easy to imagine scenarios in which the British inflict much more damage on the High Seas Fleet, it's hard to see how the Germans could have done much better than they did.

I've already suggested that I don't think that a British decisive victory would have significantly changed the course of the war. What about a German decisive victory? Let's assume that Scheer had managed to pull of a Nelson at Trafalgar. Let's say that the High Seas Fleet manages to destroy 20 of the 28 British dreadnoughts and six of the nine battlecruisers, while only suffering losses of one battleship and one battlecruiser. That's wildly implausible given the technology of the day, but we'll accept it for the sake of argument. The Germans had one dreadnought in reserve, bringing their total to 16 dreadnoughts and four battlecruisers. The British had two dreadnoughts and one battlecruiser in reserve, giving them 10 dreadnoughts and 4 battlecruisers. This would seem to leave the Germans with a substantial, and potentially war-winning, advantage.

But not so fast. France had seven dreadnoughts that weren't doing anything particularly vital in the Mediterranean. It's likely that these would have been immediately incorporated in the Grand Fleet. The six Italian dreadnoughts were plenty to counter the four Austrian ships, leaving the Allies in control of the Med. British construction was also more advanced than German. Two battlecruisers and three battleships would enter the Royal Navy in 1916, compared with one battlecruiser and two battleships for the German fleet. By the end of 1916, assuming no further losses on either side, the Grand Fleet would have consisted of twenty dreadnoughts and six battlecruisers, while the High Seas Fleet would have had eighteen dreadnoughts and five battlecruisers. In short, having won one Trafalgar, Scheer would have had to win another Trafalgar to achieve a decisive superiority over the Royal Navy. This would have had to be done before US entry into the war (which might well have been accelerated by a German victory at Jutland), and the commitment of twelve additional dreadnoughts (not including the slow Michigan and South Carolina) to the Allied cause. Also, had the Allies needed them, the two Brazilian dreadnoughts almost certainly would have been put into service more quickly than they were. Finally, Japan had four battlecruisers and six dreadnoughts that the British attempted to lease during the war. Japan eventually committed a naval squadron to the Mediterranean, and it's not wholly unreasonable to think that a disaster at Jutland might have forced the British to make concessions necessary for additional Japanese assistance.

Of course, this doesn't include the effect on British morale, which might have suffered dramatically from a German decisive victory. Then again, British morale didn't collapse at the height of the U-boat campaign. The fall of France in 1940 might be counted as a reasonably similar event, and it didn't result in a British collapse. It's possible that a German victory could have driven Britain from the war, but unlikely.

It's strange that a battle of this caliber, representing so much investment from both sides, had so little impact on the course of the war and involved so little damage to the belligerents involved. Jutland would be the only major conflict in either war between fleets of dreadnought battleships. Battleship combat in World War II would never involve more than one or two ships on either side, and the aircraft carrier, especially in the Pacific, would come to dominate naval warfare.

Other Jutland Resources:

Wikipedia
World War I Naval Combat
Battle of Jutland.com
Daily Mirror/BBC

Sunday Battleship Blogging: HMS Iron Duke

Part IV of a five part series on the Battle of Jutland.

Part I: SMS Lutzow
Part II: HMS Lion
Part III: SMS Friedrich Der Grosse

HMS Iron Duke was the second battleship named after the Duke of Wellington. The first, scrapped in 1906, had been distinguished only by its experience, in 1875, of ramming and sinking its fellow battleship HMS Vanguard. The second Iron Duke was the name ship of the last class of dreadnoughts to enter Royal Navy service prior to the beginning of World War I. Iron Duke carried 10 13.5" guns in five twin turrets, displaced 25000 tons, and could make 21 knots (although this had slowed by the end of the war). Iron Duke was a well-designed ship, capable of outgunning her German (if not her American) counterparts, and served as the basis for the Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre.

HMS Iron Duke became flagship of the Grand Fleet upon its creation in August, 1914. Iron Duke carried the flag of Admiral John Jellicoe, who had been promoted by Winston Churchill to command at the beginning of the war. Jellicoe's job was not to lose the war, and the way to do that was to avoid being destroyed by the German High Seas Fleet. given that the German fleet was smaller than the Grand Fleet and was limited geographically, this was an achievable task. Jellicoe understood that numerical superiority was key to victory in modern naval engagements, and steadfastly refused to allow the Royal Navy to meet the High Seas Fleet in detail.

On May 30, 1916, the British received intelligence that the High Seas Fleet was about to sortie. The German plan was to lure the Grand Fleet into a series of submarine ambushes, but the U-boats failed to find any targets. Iron Duke and the rest of the Grand Fleet left Scapa Flow some two hours before the High Seas Fleet put to sea. This put the Grand Fleet in an ideal position to intercept the Germans, who expected the British to arrive much later, and much weaker. The initial contact was made by the battlecruisers of both fleets, and resulted in the destruction of two British capital ships. Admiral David Beatty, however, drew the Germans north into the British trap, and on the afternoon of the May 31, the 24 dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet became visible to the German van.

The German response was to execute a 180 degree turn away from the British fleet. This left the Germans on the wrong side of the Grand Fleet, however, and Admiral Scheer soon ordered another 180 degree turn. This took the Germans directly into the center of the British line. Understanding that this path led to annihilation, Scheer ordered yet another turn, and ordered his remaining battlecruisers to cover the retreat of the battleships (the wisdom of this move is questionable; the battlecruisers were already seriously damaged, and were by nature less able to withstand the British onslaught). Scheer also gave a critical order to his destroyers to execute a torpedo attack against the British line. This move saved the German fleet from destruction.

Faced with the German destroyers, Jellicoe had to decide whether or not to turn into the torpedos or turn away from them. By turning in, the British line might have suffered some losses, but would have been able to keep in contact with the Germans. By turning away, the British risked losing the Germans. Jellicoe, in accordance with normal practice of the day, turned away. After the war, this move was examined in great detail. In Jellicoe's favor, it was noted that he had a reasonable expectation that it would be possible to maintain contact with the German fleet and to prevent it from returning to its bases. The German torpedo attack might have cost several dreadnoughts, it was argued, and given the widespread belief that the Germans had ship-to-ship superiority, this could have nullified the British advantage. Finally, it was argued that Jellicoe's job was not to destroy the German fleet, but to prevent the destruction of the Royal Navy.

I agree with the first argument, but it should be noted that breaking off contact had obvious risks. General signalling ineptitude on the part of the Royal Navy would allow the entire German fleet to escape during the night. Jellicoe knew that this was possible, and could have worked more vigorously to solve Royal Navy communications problems before the battle. The second argument I find uncompelling. The British had 27 dreadnoughts and six battlecruisers at the time of the turn. The Germans had 16 battleships and four battlecruisers. Moreover, the German fleet had suffered a much more severe battering than the British. Also, I seriously disagree with the idea that the British battleships were inferior to their German counterparts. While the German ships may have had better survivability characteristics, the British were much more heavily armed. Even accepting the loss of several ships, the Grand Fleet had a commanding superiority over the High Seas Fleet.

The last argument is most interesting from a strategic point of view. Had the High Seas Fleet somehow destroyed the Grand Fleet, or at least severely reduced it in size, then the British war effort might have been devastated. Theoretically, the German Navy could have raided the British coast, could have attacked British trade on the surface, and could have threatened the supply lines to France. The same was not true, however, of the German war effort. Had the High Seas Fleet suffered complete annihilation, I doubt that the British would have been able to turn it to serious advantage. It would have been very difficult for the Royal Navy to enter the Baltic in any force, and Germany was not dependent on foreign trade. Trafalgar, it should be noted, did not lead to the defeat of Napoleon. On this point, Jellicoe was quite correct to avoid a risky situation.

The British public and the British government, however, did not want a calm and judicious decision. They wanted Nelson and Trafalgar. Jellicoe was eventually "promoted" out of the command of the Grand Fleet, and replaced by David Beatty. The crew of Iron Duke didn't care for the new admiral, so Beatty moved his flag to Queen Elizabeth. The rest of Iron Duke's World War I career was uneventful.

The battleships fleets of the world were constrained by the Washington Naval Treaty, but Iron Duke survived the first cut of 1922. The London Naval Treaty of 1930 further reduced the battleships allowable to the three great naval powers, and Iron Duke was reclassified as an auxiliary. She was used as an accomodations ship in World War II, and was hit by several German bombs in 1939. In 1948 Iron Duke was sent to the breakers. John Jellicoe was made Governor-General of New Zealand after the war, and died in 1935.

Sunday Battleship Blogging: SMS Friedrich Der Grosse

Part III of a four part series to commemmorate the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland.

Part I: SMS Lutzow
Part II: HMS Lion

The first eight German dreadnoughts followed the naming convention previously adopted for pre-dreadnoughts. Like in the US Navy, battleships were named after states. This changed with the construction of the Kaisers, the third class of German dreadnoughts. They, and their successors the Konigs, were named after general or specific monarchs. After nine ships the German Navy reverted to the practice of naming battleships after states with Baden and Bayern. Although one might suspect that the decision to name battleships after monarchs was designed to please William II, he had always been an ardent supporter of the naval program, and no such flattery was necessary.

Friedrich Der Grosse was the second of the Kaiser class, commissioned in October 1912. Friedrich Der Grosse carried 10 12" guns, displaced 25000 tons, and could make 22 knots. Her design included a couple of interesting points. The Germans abandoned the wasteful hexagonal turret distribution that they had used in the Nassau and Helgoland classes, instead carrying one twin turret forward, two turrets rear, and two wing turrets. Theoretically, the wing turrets could fire on either broadside, but such use put enormous strain on the hull and the superstructure. The arrangement was mildly better than that of her predecessors, but the Germans wouldn't achieve a truly efficient turret arrangement until the completion of the Konig class. At one point during the war, Austrian naval engineers visited Kiel and discussed the relative merits of different turret designs. The Austrians, correctly, argued that the German turret distribution was wasteful. The Germans insisted that the triple turrets preferred by the Austrians could never work. The Austrians had a much better case; Szent Istvan could easily outgun Friedrich Der Grosse, despite being 20% smaller. The Kaisers were also the first class of German dreadnoughts to use turbines.

Friedrich der Grosse became flagship of the High Seas Fleet from roughly the date of her commissioning, and carried the flag of Admiral Reinhard Scheer at the Battle of Jutland. The German plan was to lure part of the Grand Fleet into a conflict with the whole of the High Seas Fleet. Pre-positioned U-boats would delay and weaken the Grand Fleet. On May 31, 1916, it seemed that this plan had worked. Six British battlecruisers and four battleships had been lured out of Rosyth to do battle with the German battlecruisers. Admiral Hipper, commanding from Lutzow, led David Beatty and Lion toward the oncoming German fleet, consisting of sixteen dreadnoughts. Upon sighting the High Seas Fleet, the battered British ships turned north and were relieved by the Fifth Battle Squadron, which exchanged fire for a while with the German battlecruisers and with the forward elements of the High Seas Fleet. Unbeknownst to Scheer, however, the Grand Fleet had been neither delayed nor weakened, and was in a position, with fully twenty-four dreadnoughts and three battlecruisers, to intercept Scheer's fleet.

The High Seas Fleet continued to plug north in pursuit of Beatty's ships, and briefly savaged a squadron of British armored cruisers that found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. The crew of the cruiser Warrior was saved by a mechanical problem on board Warspite. Her rudder damaged, Warspite made two full turns in front of the German Navy, taking fifteen hits in the process but eventually limping away. As Warspite sped out of reach, however, Scheer became aware of the presence of the Grand Fleet, which was in the process of crossing the German "T", the most advantageous possible tactical position.

Scheer knew that he couldn't fight the Grand Fleet, and did the sensible thing. He ordered the High Seas Fleet to make a 180 degree turn in line; a very difficult maneuver that required a great deal of practice. Essentially, each ship turned at roughly the same time, rather than in formation. At the end of the turn, the trailing ship was in the lead, and Scheer's fleet was moving to the southwest, away from the British fleet but also away from the German bases. In a move that has still not been fully explained, Scheer then ordered his fleet to execute a second 180 degree turn, back toward the British line. The Grand Fleet was in a perfect position to intercept this, and began hammering the head of the German line. Finally, Scheer ordered a third 180 degree turn to escape from the British. To cover the German escape, he ordered the destroyers and battlecruisers to launch an attack against the Grand Fleet, hoping that this would save the German battlefleet.

This still left the Germans on the wrong side of the British fleet. It was getting late in the day, however, and the Germans managed to avoid further combat before nightfall. During the night the High Seas Fleet took advantage of poor British communications to cross the British line and escape towards Germany. Although many of the German dreadnoughts had been heavily damaged (Friedrich Der Grosse had not suffered much damage), none were sunk.

The rest of Friedrich Der Grosse's career was uneventful. She operated in the Baltic against the Russian Navy, and was interned by the Allies at Scapa Flow. On June 21, 1919 she was scuttled along with the rest of the High Seas Fleet. In 1937 the hulk was raised and scrapped by a British entrepreneur.

In 1928, Admiral Jellicoe invited Admiral Scheer to Great Britain for a visit. Sadly, Scheer died before he could travel to the UK.

Trivia: What British battleship was de-militarized in accordance with the London Naval Treaty of 1930?

UPDATE, 12/3/06: Out of curiosity, why the sudden interest in this post? Have received a bunch of hits from the UK on this post in the last hour...

Sunday Battleship Blogging: HMS Lion

This is the second of a four part series commemmorating the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland.

Part I: SMS Lutzow

HMS Lion was the first of the Big Cats (also known as the "Splendid Cats"), and the sixth battlecruiser constructed for the Royal Navy. The Big Cats were supposed to be a leap ahead in battlecruiser construction, designed with centerline turrets in order to take advantage of a full broadside, and were nearly a third larger than the New Zealand. The name referred to the fact that three of the five ships authorized bore the names of large cats; Lion, Tiger, and Leopard. Tiger, however, was completed to an alternative design after the construction of the Japanese Kongo, and Leopard was never completed. The other two ships in the class were Princess Royal and Queen Mary, neither having particularly notable feline connotations.

Lion displaced 27000 tons, carried 8 13.5" guns in four twin turrets (two forward superfiring, one amidships, and one rear), and could make 27 knots. Her armor protection was poor, although slightly better than that of the Indefatigable class. Lion became the flagship of David Beatty's battlecruiser squadron, intended to counter and destroy the German battlecruiser squadron. While the Grand Fleet battleships were based at Scapa Flow, Beatty's battlecruisers were stationed out of Rosyth, from whence they would be the first to intercept any movement by the High Seas Fleet.

The early part of the war was characterized by various German schemes to lure out and trap part of the Royal Navy in an engagement against the whole of the High Seas Fleet. None of these plans worked particularly well. In December 1914, Admiral Franz Hipper dispatched his battlecruisers to bombard several English towns. The operation, which came off successfully, deeply irritated the British public, which wondered what, if not to protect England, the purpose of all the battlecruisers and battleships of the Royal Navy was. Hipper decided to launch a second raid in January 1915, but British intelligence caught wind of the operation, and the Royal Navy battlecruisers were ready. Lion led a group of five British battlecruisers against Hipper's force of the three battlecruisers and one armored cruiser. In spite of their numerical superiority, the British managed to sink only the Blucher, a German armored cruiser, and damage the remaining ships. Lion, at the head of the British line, was severely damaged, but managed to score a near-critical hit on the German battlecruiser Seydlitz. Only luck saved Seydlitz from a magazine explosion, although the Germans learned from the experience that battlecruiser magazines were vulnerable and had a tendency to explode.

Sixteen months later Lion would serve as Beatty's flagship at the Battle of Jutland. Although the Grand Fleet had been alerted to the German sortie, Beatty and his squadron were the first to intercept the Germans. Beatty's Rosyth squadron was supposed to consist of fifteen ships, including ten battlecruisers and the five Queen Elizabeth class fast battleships. However, HMAS Australia was under repair, Queen Elizabeth was in refit, three older Invincible class battlecruisers had been dispatched to Scapa Flow for gunnery practice. Thus, Beatty only had six battlecruisers and four battleships available for the scrum. Beatty's questionable disposition of forces and poor British signalling meant that only the six battlecruisers would be involved in the opening skirmish with the Germans; the four fast battleships had received an incorrect signal and turned in the wrong direction.

Unaccountably, the British ships did not take advantage of their larger and longer ranged guns to engage the Germans at distance, and the two fleets began to fire simultaeneously. More poor British signalling left the order of fire confused and one of the German ships unmolested. Lion suffered the first major wound of the battle, as a 12" shell hit her amidships (or "Q) turret. The hit peeled back the roof of the turret, and very nearly started a magazine fire. Major Francis Harvey, who had lost both legs to the explosion, managed to order the magazine flooded before dying, a move that saved the ship (and condemned many of his men to drowning). Harvey received a posthumous Victoria Cross. Had Lion exploded, things might have gone poorly for the British. Two of Beatty's other battlecruisers would soon suffer magazine explosions, and the loss of the flagship would have left the British line in disarray. German fire would have been concentrated on fewer ships, and I suspect that the British would have lost at least one more battlecruiser (probably either New Zealand or Princess Royal) in addition to Lion.

Barham, Warspite, Malaya, and Valiant arrived to save Beatty and his ships from the Germans, and Lion was able to limp away. Another incidence of poor signalling prevented Beatty from reporting the size, position, and course of the German fleet to Admiral Jellicoe, a factor in the eventual escape of the High Seas Fleet. Lion continued to fire on German ships, although her role would never be as critical as in those first few minutes of the battle. After Jutland, David Beatty was promoted to command of the Grand Fleet. Much attention was paid to the failure of the British battlecruisers at Jutland, and future designs (including that of HMS Hood) were reworked to incorporate more armor. Regarding the battlecruiser concept, however, it is important to note that the German battlecruisers performed exceptionally well under fire, and that the battlecruisers that would survive into World War II would all be useful ships when employed carefully.

Lion, badly damaged, saw no further action in World War I. Along with her remaining sister, she was scrapped in accordance with the Washington Naval Treay of 1922. Beatty would later turn the surrender of the High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow from a somber affair into a humiliating one. He died in 1936.

Trivia: If you had to name your flagship after a German monarch, which one would you choose?

Sunday Battleship Blogging: SMS Lutzow

Part I of a four part Jutland Series, in honor of the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland.

German shipbuilding was deeply affected not only by the construction of Dreadnought, but also by the construction of the battlecruiser Invincible. Although the debate between a cruiser navy and a battleship navy had largely been settled in the favor of battleships by 1906, Germany wanted to keep a respectable cruiser fleet. HMS Invincible, in response, was designed to hunt down and kill enemy armored cruisers. The Germans learned of the construction of Invincible, but German intelligence, unfortunately, misreported her armament as consisting of 9.2" guns. The German response was the cruiser Blucher, a hybrid design that, because of her small guns and insufficient speed, was utterly outclassed by Invincible.

Nevertheless, German battlecruiser design advanced very quickly. Six German battlecruisers were complete by mid-1915, and most could be regarded as superior to their Royal Navy counterparts. Only five battlecruisers were available to the High Seas Fleet as the sixth, Goeben, had constituted the bulk of the German Mediterranean squadron. The German Navy learned at important lesson at the Battle of Dogger Bank (which did not incluede Lutzow) when Seydlitz almost exploded from a magazine fire. From that point forward, the Germans took extreme care with their magazine spaces, ensuring that no single hit could destroy a ship. The Royal Navy, sadly, would not learn this lesson until 1916.

SMS Lutzow, displacing 27000 tons, carrying 8 12" guns in four twin turrets, and capable of 26.5 knots, was the flagship of Admiral Franz von Hipper on May 31, 1916. The German plan was to force an engagement against a portion of the Royal Navy, thereby weakening the whole. Contemporary naval theory suggested (correctly) that material advantage in a naval battle was exponential, rather than additive. In other words, a larger force could be expected to perform much better than a small force; numerical superiority was more important than usual. The High Seas Fleet could never defeat the Grand Fleet in open battle, but could hope to destroy a portion of it without significant cost. German battlecruisers would try to lure out the British battlecruisers, which would then be attacked with the whole of the High Seas Fleet. The Grand Fleet (including 24 of the 31 British dreadnoughts) was based at Scapa Flow, in the far north of Great Britain, and could not arrive in time to save the British battlecruisers. The Grand Fleet would be further hampered by pre-positioned U-boats.

The German move successfully lured out the British battlecruisers. The situation was ideal for the Germans, as the British battlecruiser squadron had been weakened by damage to HMS Australia and the temporary transfer of three older battlecruisers to Scapa Flow. The Royal Navy battlecruiser squadron under David Beatty would intercept Hipper's battlecruisers with six, instead of ten, ships.
The German advantage was reinforced by tactical conditions and by Beatty's incompetence. Four battleships of the Queen Elizabeth class, largest, fastest, and most powerful in the Royal Navy, had been placed under Beatty's command. However, the battleships trailed the battlecruisers by a considerable distance, and would not join Beatty as quickly as possible due to signalling problems. The German ships were also favored by mid afternoon lighting conditions, and were able to fire first upon the British ships.

The German fire was devastating. Two of the six Royal Navy vessels suffered magazine explosions. A third, Beatty's flagship Lion, was saved only by extraordinarily heroism and luck. While the German ships suffered a battering, none exploded, and none were mortally crippled. Lutzow, Hipper's flagship, suffered from the most severe damage. When the British finally solved their signalling problem, the German battlecruisers came under devastating fire from the four Royal Navy battleships. However, they maintained their place in line, and continued firing on the British battlecruisers until the Grand Fleet appeared on the horizon.

Because of excellent intelligence, the Grand Fleet had left port two hours before the High Seas Fleet, and, having suffered no U-boat damage, was in an excellent position to intercept the Germans. The lead ships in Grand Fleet were three Invincible class battlecruisers, which opened fire (with great accuracy) upon Lutzow. Lutzow and her sister Derfflinger hit the lead ship, Invincible, with several salvos, the last resulting in a magazine explosion. Lutzow, however, was too badly damaged to contine the battle. Admiral Hipper transferred his flag to a destroyer, and Lutzow was dispatched to Kiel. Having taken 24 hits, including at least 4 15" shell hits, Lutzow took on a considerable amount of water, and sat too deep in the water to make it through the Kiel Canal. In what was probably a poor decision, Lutzow was scuttled at the entrance to the Canal estuary in order to avoid British capture.

Admiral Hipper was well regarded for his command of the German battlecruisers at Jutland. While the other three admirals (Beatty, Jellicoe, and Scheer) made identifiable mistakes, Scheer handled his ships very well against superior numbers. He was eventually promoted to command of the High Seas Fleet, although he failed in his effort to put down the Kiel Mutiny. He died in 1932, fourteen years into retirement.

Incidentally, if I haven't mentioned it before this is an outstanding source of information on the Imperial German Navy.

Trivia: What was the first British battlecruiser to abandon wing turrets?

Sunday Battleship Blogging: HMS Warspite

HMS Warspite was the second of the magnificent Queen Elizabeth class battleships. She carried 8 15" guns, displaced 28000 tons, and could make nearly 25 knots. Warspite and her sisters outclassed every battleship in the world upon their commissioning, and remained useful and impressive ships until the end of World War II. Warspite led the most distinguished career of any Royal Navy battleship in the twentieth century.

Warspite and her four sisters constituted the Fifth Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet, a designation designed to take advantage of the ship's high speed. In ordinary operations, Warspite would have been part of the main battle line of the Grand Fleet, which would have limited her to a speed of somewhat less than 20 knots. The necessities of maneuvering in formation limited the speed of a squadron to somewhat less than that of its slowest ship. Warspite, thus, had difficulty operating with the rest of the Grand Fleet. While the US Navy solved this problem by designing all of its battleships with a common (slow) speed, the Royal Navy accepted a speed differential and pursued an organizational solution. In early 1916, the Fifth Battle Squadron was detached from the Grand Fleet and placed under Admiral David Beatty, commander of the Royal Navy battlecruisers.

Due largely to Beatty's ineptitude, the Fifth Battle Squadron arrived late at the Battle of Jutland. Beatty's battlecruisers were being taken to the woodshed by the High Seas Fleet when Warspite and her sisters arrived, diverting fire from Beatty's wounded ships and inflicting serious damage on the already battered German ships. For a short period, the Fifth Squadron faced the whole of the High Seas Fleet. After turning away from the German fleet, Warspite suffered a mechanical "incident". Her steering jammed, and she sailed in two full circles in front of the High Seas Fleet, receiving fifteen hits from German heavy guns. Warspite's accident saved the armored cruiser Warrior, on the verge of sinking after taking heavy German fire. Warpite survived, and slowly made her way back to port, avoiding two German U-boat attacks along the way. The experience at Jutland helped Warspite acquire a reputation for poor luck; she also managed to ram her sisters Barham and Valiant, to run aground once, to suffer a boiler room fire, and was a close witness to the explosion of HMS Vanguard.

Warspite was modernized twice during the inter-war period. The second modernization was quite extensive, replacing the entire original superstructure and repairing some of the damage leftover from Jutland. Warspite and her sisters remained useful in the Second World War largely due to their speed, and served with distinction in the North Sea and the Mediterranean. At the Second Battle of Narvik, Warspite helped to sink eight German destroyers trapped in a Norwegian fjord. Warspite was involved in several major actions in the Mediterranean, including the Battle of Calabria, where Warspite hit Giulio Cesare at a range of 26000 yards, thought to be the longest hit of one moving battleship against another. In 1941 Warspite was transferred to the Pacific and repaired at the Puget Sound Naval Yard before being attached to the Royal Navy's Eastern Fleet in early 1942. The Eastern Fleet fought a few inconclusive actions with the Imperial Japanese Navy before being chased to the east coast of Africa. In 1943, Warspite was transferred back to the Mediterranean.

Warspite's service in 1943 focused mainly on support of British and American landings in Sicily and Italy. On September 15, 1943 a German glider bomb hit Warspite, tearing through her superstructure, her main deck, and her hull. Warpite had to be towed to port, and was never fully repaired. She participated in shore bombardment at the Normandy landings, but hit a mine shortly afterward. Pieced together enough to deliver further shore bombardment in late 1944, she was retired in early 1945.

A campaign to preserve Warspite after World War II failed. Although the reluctance of the cash-strapped post-war British government to spend money on preserving a battered, aging battleship is understandable, it is nonetheless unfortunate that no British capital ships of the twentieth century survive. Warspite, the most active of Royal Navy battleships and the most beloved of the British public, would undoubtedly have been the best choice for preservation. On the way to being scrapped in 1947, Warpite ran aground. She was taken apart over the course of the next three years.

(Images courtesy of www.maritimequest.com)

Trivia: What battleship was the sole survivor of the June 21, 1919 "incident" at Scapa Flow?

Sunday Battleship Blogging: HMS Invincible

Lord Fisher was not content with the invention of Dreadnought, the all big gun battleship which would render the fleets of the world obsolete. The mission of the Royal Navy was not limited to the destruction of the enemy battlefleet. Fisher was worried that smaller, less capable navies might attack British trade through the use of commerce raiding armored cruisers. These cruisers could typically outpace even Dreadnought, and could make the defense of Britain's trade lifeline difficult. Accordingly, before Dreadnought had even left the slip, Fisher commissioned a design for a new kind of ship, the battlecruiser. HMS Invincible was the first of this kind.

HMS Invincible displaced 18000 tons, carried 8 12" guns in four twin turrets (one fore, one aft, and two wing), and could make 27 knots. Although roughly the same size as Dreadnought, Invincible sacrificed one turret and a lot of armour for six extra knots of speed. Invincible could either outgun or outrun any ship in the world. Against armoured cruisers, she was, well, invincible. Facing battleships, she had the speed to withdraw. The Royal Navy would build eleven more battlecruisers, culminating in HMS Hood. The German Navy, feeling the need to match the British, built seven, and the Japanese four.

HMS Invincible began the war with the First Battlecruiser Squadron, based in Britain. Her first action was the Battle of Heligoland Bight, in which a group of British battlecruisers intercepted a destroyed a few patrolling German light cruisers. Developments in the Far East, however, drew HMS Invincible away. At the beginning of World War I, Germany controlled a naval base at Tsingtao. A crack German squadron including Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, Germany's best two armored cruisers, had been transferred to China before the war. The German position in Asia was untenable, however. British and Russian forces could easily occupy the German territory, and the Japanese were making ominous anti-German noises. Admiral Graf Maximilian Von Spee decided to take his squadron into the Pacific in an effort to do as much damage as possible before being caught. There was a small chance, if the German ships were lucky, that they might make it back to Germany. Spee's squadron wreaked havoc in the Southeast Pacific for a couple of months before the British were finally available to collect the ships necessary to track it down. The first British effort ended in disaster, however; the British cruisers became detached from a pre-dreadnought battleship, and were destroyed at the Battle of Coronel. This defeat outraged British public opinion, and the Admiralty decided to deal with Spee by sending HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible to the South Atlantic.

Admiral Graf von Spee's squadron attacked Stanley on the morning of December 8, 1914. The Admiral had no idea that Inflexible and Invincible were in port. Had the Germans launched an immediate and all out attack, they might have had a chance of seriously damaging or even crippling the British ships. On the other hand, Admiral Graf von Spee can hardly be blamed for retreating before an overwhelimingly superior force. The British Admiral, Frederick Sturdee, was unfazed by the initial German attack, and ordered the crew to take in breakfast while the battlecruisers raised steam. When Inflexible and Invincible were ready, they proceeded to leave Stanley, track down the German cruisers (they had an advantage of 3-4 knots) and destroy them at range. The ensuing battle was deeply unsporting, but Scharnhorst and Gneisenau did manage to score a number of hits on their poor shooting Royal Navy opponents before sinking.

HMS Invincible returned to Great Britain, but missed the Battle of Dogger Bank. In May 1916, Invincible was flagship of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron, temporarily operating with the Grand Fleet out of Scapa Flow rather than with the rest of the battlecruiser squadrons. Her commander was Read Admiral Horace Hood, part of a family with a long history in the Royal Navy. Invincible did not arrive at Jutland early enough to participate in the "Run to the South" where five German battlecruisers managed to destroy two of six British battlecruisers. When the Grand Fleet appeared on the horizon, the German fleet began to turn to the south. Hood joined his ships to Beatty's surviving battlecruisers, and Invincible began to hammer SMS Lutzow, the flagship of Admiral Hipper's German battlecruiser squadron.

Unfortunately, the Germans noticed Invincible's excellent gunnery, an unusual characteristic in a British ship. Lutzow and Derfflinger poured fire onto Invincible, and a salvo from Lutzow hit the British ship on its middle turret. Invincible was not designed to take heavy fire from battleships, but the admirals of neither the Grand Fleet nor the High Seas Fleet could resist pressing their battlecruisers into front line combat. Invincible exploded and sank, taking all but six of her crew of 1021 with her, including Admiral Hood. That was twice the number of survivors of the battlecruiser Hood, destroyed almost twenty-five years later. A much larger number of sailors probably survived the initial explosion, but it was not the policy of the Royal Navy to pick up survivors during battle. Invincible came to rest in two pieces, with her stern protruding just above the water. As the rest of the Grand Fleet passed by, the name Invincible was clearly visible on the stern of the wreck.

Trivia: What battleship devoted the highest percentage of its displacement to armour?

Sunday Battleship Blogging: Almirante Latorre

Chile was the final entrant into the South American battleships race. Chile ordered Almirante Latorre and Almirante Cochrane from Armstrong-Whitworth in 1911. The ships were very similar to the excellent British Iron Duke class, except that they carried 10 14" guns rather than 10 13.5". Unfortunately for Chile, World War I intervened, and both ships were purchased by the Royal Navy. Almirante Latorre was completed as HMS Canada in October, 1914, and joined the Fourth Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet.

As mentioned, Almirante Latorre was a well armed, well designed ship. The armament of 10 14" guns compared favorably with most foreign competitors, and made Latorre more powerful than her Argentinian and Brazilian contemporaries. Latorre displaced 32000 tons fully loaded, and could make almost 23 knots. As HMS Canada, she participated in the Battle of Jutland, but did not play a large role. Following the war, Almirante Latorre was refit and sold back to Chile. The Chileans decided not to re-purchase Almirante Cochrane, which was converted into an aircraft carrier, renamed Eagle, and sunk by a U-boat in World War II.

Almirante Latorre served as flagship of the Chilean Navy. In contrast to her Brazilian counterparts, Almirante Latorre was kept in good condition up until an engine room fire in 1951. In 1929 she underwent an extensive modernization in the United Kingdom. In 1931, in protest of a pay cut, the crew mutinied. Chilean Air Force planes, attempting to put down the mutiny, successfully hit Almirante Latorre with one bomb.

Following the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7, 1941, the United States Navy offered to purchase Almirante Latorre. The reasons for this are unclear, as the USN did not really suffer from a shortage of battleships. Three of the eight battleships at Pearl Harbor were returned to service in short order. In fact, the USN withdrew the Tennessee, only lightly damaged at Pearl Harbor, from service for an extensive two year refit. West Virginia and California also underwent much longer than necessary refits. The USN made no effort to bring Wyoming, demilitarized under the terms of the 1930 London Treaty, back to active service, although this probably would have been cheaper and quicker than buying the Chilean ship. Almirante Latorre would have been roughly equivalent to the USS New York, which served most of the war in shore bombardment and convoy escort duty. In any case, the Chileans declined to sell their flagship to the United States.

After the engine fire in 1951, Almirante Latorre spent its last few years inactive. In 1958, she was sold to a Japanese company for scrapping. In 1959, Admiral Chester Nimitz was supporting a project to refurbish the Japanese battleship Mikasa, last survivor of the Battle of Tsushima. Mikasa had suffered some damage in World War II and had generally been neglected since the end of the war. Nimitz provided financial and administrative support for the restoration of Mikasa to her original state. Almirante Latorre, being a rough contemporary of Mikasa, was canibalized in the service of this restoration. Thus, parts of the last survivor of Jutland were used to restore the last survivor of Tsushima.

Trivia Question: What was the oldest dreadnought battleship to serve in a combat capacity in World War II?

Sunday Battleship Blogging: HMS New Zealand

Recall that in the early 1910s Canada considered contributing three Queen Elizabeth class battleships that would be owned and crewed by Canadians but serve in the Royal Navy. Winston Churchill's response to this entreaty was "Well, we'll take your money, but you can't have any ships." The Canadians sensibly declined this gracious offer. The Kiwi reply was "Hey, that sounds like a great idea! Can we also purchase the optional all weather primer? And do you offer any kind of extended warranty or service plan?" Three years and 1.7 million pounds later the battlecruiser New Zealand joined the Royal Navy.

New Zealand displaced 19000 tons and carried 8 12" guns, disposed of in two centerline and two wing turrets. Like all battlecruisers, New Zealand could make a decent speed (26 knots), but lacked the heavy armor of dreadnought battleships. New Zealand and other battlecruisers were designed to hunt and kill armored cruisers and to act as forceful scouts for the main battlefleet. New Zealand's two sisters were named Indefatigable and Australia. The Australians, presumably having more refined negotiating skills, managed not only to purchase the Australia but also to own it, and HMAS Australia served both in the Royal Navy and as the flagship of the Royal Australian Navy. The Royal Navy kindly allowed the HMS New Zealand to visit New Zealand in 1913, at which point roughly a third of the entire population of the country toured the ship.

New Zealand fought in most of the major battlecruiser engagements of the Grand Fleet in the First World War, including the Battle of Dogger Bank and the Battle of Jutland. At Dogger Bank Admiral David Beatty moved his flag from the battered Lion to New Zealand during the battle. David Beatty, much like Douglas MacArthur, had more of a gift for public relations than for military command. At Dogger Bank the disorder produced by sloppy signalling allowed some German ships to escape. At the 1916 Battle of Jutland the problem was more severe, and was exacerbated by the poor marksmanship of the vessels under Beatty's command.

In April 1916, HMS New Zealand rammed HMAS Australia, severely damaging the latter. It is not known whether this was caused by residual Kiwi bitterness. However, the damage did keep HMAS Australia out of the Battle of Jutland. The German purpose at Jutland was to lure a portion of the Royal Navy into the teeth of the High Seas Fleet, and thus destroy part of the Grand Fleet without having to fight the whole. The German battlecruiser squadron under Admiral Hipper sortied into the North Sea in order to draw out the British battlecruisers. This operation was a partial success. The British did take the bait, and committed David Beatty's six battlecruisers to interception of the German ships. The British also, however, committed four Queen Elizabeth class battleships (Malaya, Barham, Valiant, and Warspite) to the intial interception, and backed these two squadrons with the entirety of the Grand Fleet, including twenty four additional dreadnoughts and 3 more battlecruisers. In a sense the German plan worked too well; the British took the bait, but with too much force.

The fighting began on May 31 when the respective battlecruiser squadrons engaged each other. The Germans had five battlecruisers and the British six, including New Zealand. The Germans also had much better fire control than the British, and quickly scored hits on three of the British ships, including Beatty's flagship Lion. The effectiveness of the German fire was enhanced by the fact that damage control aboard the British battlecruisers was wholly inadequate. Indefatigable, following New Zealand in line, was the first to explode and sink. A short time later Queen Mary, ahead of New Zealand in line, also exploded in sank, causing Admiral Beatty to remark "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today". New Zealand, remarkably, took almost no damage. Poor signaling by Beatty had delayed the arrival of the four Queen Elizabeth class battleships, but when they arrived the pressure on the battlecruisers was reduced considerably. Eventually, the entire High Seas Fleet would find itself committed against the entire Grand Fleet. New Zealand fired more shells than any other British dreadnought in the battle, and scored hits on several German ships.

The rest of the war was uneventful for New Zealand, although she did participate in the Second Battle of Helgioland Bight. In 1919, after the war, Admiral Jellicoe chose New Zealand as his flagship for a tour of the Dominions, and she once again visited her namesake country. Jellicoe would later serve as Governor-General of New Zealand. In 1922 New Zealand was decommissioned, and in 1924 she was scrapped in accordance with the Washington Naval Treaty.

Quiz for next week:

1. Which two US battleships or battlecruisers were not named after US states?
2. Which two US states have not given their names to US battleships?

Sunday Battleship Blogging: HMS Barham

Winston Churchill was rather fond of Oliver Cromwell. While he was First Sea Lord, Churchill repeatedly tried to recognize Cromwell by naming a battleship in his honor. Churchill settled on one of the Queen Elizabeth class, a squadron of powerful new fast battleships that would be commissioned in 1915. King George V didn't like the idea of having one of his most powerful ships named after Britain's most famous regicide, and prevailed upon Churchill to choose a more suitable name. The names finally decided upon for the class were Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, Warspite, Barham, and Malaya.

The five ships of this class were the finest battleships ever built for the Royal Navy, correcting for time period. Each carried 8 15" guns, the heaviest armament of the day. More importantly, each of the ships could reach 24 knots, making them nearly as fast as contemporary battlecruisers. Their 28000 ton displacement meant that they did not need to sacrifice protection in exchange for this speed and firepower. A sixth ship was planned for the Royal Navy, but cancelled at the start of the war in favor of smaller, simpler ships. Most interesting, the Royal Canadian Navy seriously considered ordering three of the ships in 1913. The ships would have been assigned to the Royal Navy, but crewed with Canadians and flying under a Canadian flag. Needless to say, this would have made Canada a player in naval affairs of similar stature to Austria-Hungary, Italy, and even France. However, cooler and angrier heads prevailed. Churchill thought the notion of a Canadian squadron serving in the Royal Navy on a permanent basis absurd, although he wanted the ships. The Canadian Parliament turned the proposal down, making Canada virtually the only country of its size to sensibly eschew the fantasy of a Mahanian navy.

Barham and her sisters were attached as a fast battleship squadron to Admiral David Beatty's battlecruisers at the Battle of Jutland. Beatty's six battlecruisers fared poorly against Admiral Franz Hipper's five German battlecruisers. British battlecruisers tended to explode when hit, and the Germans took advantage of this tendency by sinking two of Beatty's ships shortly after the beginning of the battle. Barham and three of her sisters closed with the engaged German battlecruisers and covered the retreat of Beatty's remaining ships. They chased off Hipper's ships, but in doing so became engaged with the vanguard of the High Seas Fleet. All of the ships took hits, but all dealt a great deal of damage, and all four made it back to port.

The rest of the war passed uneventfully for Barham, as the German High Seas Fleet never sortied again. Barham was one of the fifteen battleships retained by the Royal Navy under the conditions of the 1921 Washington Treaty and the 1930 London Naval Treaty, and was modernized between 1930 and 1933. Battleships that could make a decent speed were at a premium in World War II, so Barham proved very useful in the Mediterranean, where she tangled with the Italian fleet at the Battle of Cape Matapan.

On November 25, 1941, U-331 happened upon a Royal Navy squadron on its way to attack Italian convoys to Libya. The German captain fired four torpedoes at the center ship in the British line, then dove to 820 feet, roughly 2.5 times the recommended maximum depth for a submarine of that class. The Germans heard, but did not see, three torpedoes hit Barham, which sank in eight minutes with about 800 men.

U-331 was sunk by British aircraft a year later. Its captain, Freiherr Hans-Diedrich von Tiesenhausen, managed to survive and lived the rest of the war in a prison camp. In 1951 he moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he became an interior designer and nature photographer before passing away in August 2000. Winston Churchill finally worked out his obsession with Oliver Cromwell by naming a tank after him.