The Battle of Jutland - Clash of the Titans - Part 3 (Aftermath, Outcome and Lessons)

[Music] so as the gun smoke cleared on the 1st of june 1916 what exactly had happened at the battle of jupland who'd won who'd lost and what outcome and impact would there be as a result of it on the overall war well the outcome of the battle was not immediately clear to either side and indeed propaganda would start almost immediately in this respect the germans were first off the mark even as sadlits was resting her battered bones on the bottom of the harbour on 2nd of june 1916 the german government released a statement to the world's press announcing a great victory acknowledging only the loss of permin and wiesbaden in exchange for the apparent sinking of a british battleship two battle cruisers two armored cruisers a light cruiser a submarine from somewhere and some destroyers which curiously was actually completely at odds with shia's own estimation which was that his forces had managed to sink war spite three battle cruisers four armored cruisers two light cruisers and 13 destroyers nevertheless national celebrations and a children's holiday were announced a stance which would be the official german narrative well into the 1950s with the royal navy having to trek all the way back across the north sea the british were not able to count their losses quite as quickly and the early release of damaged vessels to return home compounded the situation as around the same time that the germans were broadcasting their triumph all the civilians on the uk's east coast could see were a few battered and listing vessels a limping home which seemed to give credence to the german claims as the rest of the fleet arrived and crews went ashore a steady trickle of telegrams and phone calls began to work their way across the country with inevitable confusion as some would arrive home to find well-meaning friends had reported them dead already warspite one of the first battleships to make it back to port was pelted with coal and insults from the bridge that it passed under on its way in for repairs in the evening of the same day the admiralty released a preliminary estimate of losses based on jelico's reports of course british losses were by then pretty much known whilst estimates of german losses were much harder to accurately gauge since many of them had occurred in the night but the british press expecting jutland to have been a second trafalgar took the minimal information as some form of cover-up and secrecy and ran with the german narrative prompting the release on the 3rd of june of another and then later on the same day a third estimate of german losses each larger than the previous one eventually the admiralty would claim two dreadnought battleships and one pre-treadmill battleship definitely sunk with another dreadnought battleship and a battle cruiser or possibly two further dreadnought battleships as probably sunk along with five light cruisers nine torpedo boats of which three were considered probable only and four submarines with three of these being considered probable only still the german narrative held sway for most of the week until on the seventh unable to conceal it any longer the high seas fleet also admitted the loss of lutzow and rostock although the loss of elbing was still withheld possibly due to the embarrassing nature of the loss to one of her own side this began to change public opinion as the admiralty's release of british losses roughly coincided with or even exceeded german claims with the caveat of the capital ship losses being three battle cruisers and not a dreadnought battleship and two battle cruisers whilst the german admission that they'd been hiding some losses badly dented their credibility and even persuaded many to believe some of the admiralty's somewhat more speculative claims thus by the end of june the international press was moving towards the sense of a partial british victory enhanced by further information that showed that the battle had ended with the high seas fleet running for port and the grand fleet off the german coast looking for a fight with the ditty run in one newspaper of the germans cry we've won but tis a curious view when it is the conquerors that run and the vanquished that pursue or as one american newspaper rather unsubtly put it the prisoner has assaulted his jailer but is still in jail by july the far worse loss of life at the battle of the somme put the ongoing argument out of most people's minds for the time being but in truth what had actually happened in terms of casualties the british had undoubtedly come off worse with 6784 killed against 3039 on the german side the bulk of deaths on both sides being from ships that had gone down with all hands or near enough the british had also lost 113 300 tons of shipping against 62 300 tons on the german side with the actual true losses consisting of on the british side the battle cruisers indefatigable queen mary and invincible the armored cruisers black prince warrior and defense the flotilla leader tipperary and the destroyers shark sparrowhawk turbulent ardent fortune nomad and nestor on the german side they had lost the battle cruiser ludzal the parade dreadnought battleship pomen the light cruisers frown lob elbing rostock and wiesbaden and the destroyers or heavy torpedo boats v-48 s-35 v-27 v4 and v-29 however the damaged capital ships told a different story in terms of capital ships the british vessels that were damaged and in need of repair were the battleships barham warspite malaya colossus and marlborough and the battle cruisers lion princess royal tiger and new zealand although of all of these colossus and new zealand were only superficially damaged and could put to see immediately again if needed on the german side the damage consisted of the battleships kernig grosser kurfurst mark graf kaiser helgeland and schleswig holstein all in need of repairs along with the battle cruisers der flinger seidlitz also likewise out of action but on top of this not counting cruises and below the time needed for repair was also very different the day after the battle the royal navy could still field 23 battleships and four battle cruisers and signaled itself ready for action the german fleet was down to 10 operational battleships and no battle cruisers and would not be able to sail for quite some time by the end of the month hms queen elizabeth emperor of india and hmas australia all of whom had missed the battle were back on the front line as was hms royal sovereign which had just finished working up leaving the british battle line actually stronger than it had been before the fight over july princess royal barham tiger and unbelievably war spite came back into the fleet with lion following soon after albeit still missing q turret whilst many of the german ships would also come back into action over these two months a number including several of the battle cruisers would remain under repair for several months further there would be no replacement for the lost ludsau until the next year when sms hindenburg was commissioned and the only additional battleship of 1916 would be the bayern whilst the british would add the battleship resolution to the ranks alongside the battlecruiser's renown and repulse with ramelise arriving in 1917. in this respect then despite the greater losses inflicted it was the high seas fleet that ended up at an overall greater numerical disadvantage after the battle for the rest of 1916 compounded by shir's understandable insistence that apart from anything else the battle had proved the prairie dreadnaughts should never sail with the high seas fleet again strategically shia was very clear to his superiors the high seas fleet could not weather another battle like that and with the summer excursion almost intercepted by the grand fleet again he abandoned the idea of going after an isolated part of it the royal navy was clearly wise to the tactic and he had no intention of fighting the whole grand fleet in another set-piece battle instead he would send portions of the high seas fleet after the russians in 1917 and ramp up submarine warfare against the british instead in terms of who won then there is no direct and unequivocal answer on the strategic level the british held the field at the end of the fighting and they still held control of the sea and they had the stronger fleet the day after and they deterred most of the further german efforts at contesting any of these they also maintained the blockade of germany which would continue to have significant impacts on the german war industry and food supply but at the same time the german fleet still existed in a fair amount of strength and had not suffered massive losses in the action meaning that the grand fleet and the battle cruiser fleet would still largely be confined to keeping an eye on the germans for the rest of the war instead of being able to act more directly elsewhere tactically it's easy to point to overall losses and say that it's a flat out loss for the british however as with the strategic side it's actually at least in my opinion more nuanced than that you really had four fleets at sea the high seas fleet first scouting group the battle cruiser fleet and the grand fleet under shir hippa bt angelico respectively and they fought some very separate actions whilst the various phases of the battle can be divided up in various ways one of the more common sets of division are is the run to the south the run to the north the first beat action the second fleet action and the knight actions but i think there's another way to look at it bt versus hippa angelico vs sheer now the latter part which comprises the last three phases of the traditional breakup of the battle does include the battle cruisers of both sides and their commanders but they're now in subordinate roles whereas in the first two phases it's basically bt versus hipaa if we split those two actions at the point where the grand fleet opens fire at the high seas fleet at 1831 then the score if you like in the bt versus hippa fight is british losses the battle cruisers interfaticable queen mary and invincible the armored cruisers black prince and warrior and the destroyers shark nomad and nestor whereas on the german side they lose the light cruiser wiesbaden and the destroyers v-27 and v-29 in addition the british have barham warspite malaya lion princess royal tiger and new zealand all damaged whilst on the german side lutzow is badly damaged with deathlinger seidlitz mulker and vondertan taking varying degrees of damage after 1831 when it becomes angelico vs sheer the british lose the armored cruiser black prince the flotilla leader tipperary and the destroyers sparrowhawk turbulent ardent and fortune whereas the germans lose the battle cruiser luxo the pre-dreadnought permanent the light cruisers frown lob elbing and rostock and the destroyers v28 s35 and v4 damage-wise the british have light damage to hms colossus and serious damage to hs marlborough whilst on the german side the battleships koenig grosser kurfurst mark graf kaiser helgeland and schleswig-holstein are all damaged and the battle cruisers der flinger saidlitz mulker and von der tan are also all heavily damaged thus i would argue that jutland tactically speaking was a game of two halves hippa decisively won the first half against beatty but jelico equally decisively won the second half against shir now with that said there were definitely technical lessons to be learned by all parties once the smoke had cleared on the british side a few major problems were identified shell performance communications and the distressing habit of a number of ships to violently disassemble themselves when under fire there was a slightly less urgent but still identified area for improvement in gunnery as well especially amongst the battle cruisers shell performance was worrying plenty of hits had been seen and large viables resulting from these had been truly impressive which led many to think that quite a few more german ships had been sunk than was actually the case since a penetrating hit that generated that kind of explosion would surely have had been fatal the german habit of zigzagging under fire and a number of dear their ship's propensity to heal quite considerably when doing so contributed to this perception as british observers would see what appeared to be a devastating hit or series of hits followed by the german ship appearing to swerve out of line with a pronounced list which they took as a sure indication of massive and rapid internal flooding in fact the increased heal of some ships was combining with a british shell failure specifically many of the shells were detonating either near enough on contact or very shortly after starting to penetrate which meant that the majority of their explosive power was being wasted into the air which was the cause of the large explosions that the british observed as opposed to getting deep into the ship and touching off some much larger detonation only some of which would escape through the shell hole and thus the two possible scenarios looked similar from a distance and the british not knowing about the shell performance issues assumed the latter the cause of this was twofold in some respects and at some angles of fall especially at longer ranges the british shells were too brittle and would just shatter but more generally at the closer ranges that much of the gunfire had been exerted at the lidite explosive that was used as the bursting charge was a very powerful but also highly sensitive in a normal armor-piercing shell the main charge should be relatively shock proof requiring a fuse detonator to set it off this fuse can then be set with a delay which allows it to be initiated by impact but only go off once the shell has gotten deeper into the target however it turned out that lidite was so sensitive it could be initiated by the shock of impact without any reference to the fuse as a result several dozen hits to german belt barbette and turret armor that by all right should have punched through and dealt horrendous damage to their targets by blowing open their sides shattering their boilers and engines tearing into magazines or blowing apart turrets merely quote unquote stove in outer plates broke off chunks of armor or knock turrets out of action allowing the german ships to stay alive and in many cases stay fighting in a few instances even bringing disabled guns back into action after some work whilst under fire this issue alone if properly addressed had the potential to completely rewrite the table of losses for the battle with one later analysis concluding that possibly up to half a dozen more german capital ships might have been sent to the bottom if proper shells had been used but sadly this wasn't entirely a new discovery angelico back when he was third sea lord at the height of the pre-war naval arms race had recognized a number of these issues during gunnery trials and asked the ordinance board for new shells that corrected these issues to be developed however the issue had not been fully resolved by the time jelica was assigned to a new post a few months later and his successors had failed to follow up on the problem the germans themselves upon analysis of the damage to their ships recognized just how many lucky escapes they had enjoyed with hippa apparently later commenting that it was nothing but the poor quality of their bursting charges which saved us from disaster talk of british shell ineffectiveness rapidly became a point of laughter at german naval officers gatherings which gradually felt through to the british via various shared social contacts in neutral navies in a rather sad case of inertia the admiralty did not take this issue fully to heart and it would only be when jelica was promoted to first sea lord at the end of 1916 that he was able to take effective action reallocating the existing shells to move the worst offenders into reserve and starting the process of development on what would eventually become known as the green boy shells which would eventually reach the fleet in early just in time for the last stand of the high seas fleet to not happen post-war tests of these shells against the german battleship barden showed the new type to have considerably improved performance communications was a vexing issue aside from the unspoken need to actually have signal officers who knew what they were doing as the level of clarity and compliance with flag signals in basically every part of the royal navy that wasn't taking orders from hms lion had been a lot higher that aside there was a general acknowledgment that with so many ships spaced out over such distances especially once funnel and gun smoke got involved reading signal flags was somewhat difficult at the best of times before the gloomy weather and later darkness of the battlefield weighed in on top of that many of these same issues were present in the default backup to the signal flag the signal lamp which had the added hazard of being incidentally readable by the enemy especially at night uh this had allowed a number of german ships to get far closer without being fired upon than they should have by any rights as well as the small side issue of the signal lamp pointing out exactly where you happen to be whilst radio was relatively widespread in the grand fleet there had been a general reluctance to use it which stemmed from an over-extension of the relatively sensible policy of minimizing radio signals during general sailing to reduce the chances of intercepts by the enemy whereas the germans much more liberal use of radio worked out better for them in battle but at the same time was what had led to the grand fleet knowing that they were at sea in the first place there was also the possibility of german jamming and especially in the night action a general reluctance to actually communicate with the high echelons of command when it was mistakenly thought that they could see what was going on themselves or indeed for many of those officers to actually show real initiative and with the exceptions of desperate situations such as windy corner or officers like sturdy who were kept close to the center of the fleet because it was felt he was a little too free thinking all of this would lead to a series of reforms including new signals greater freedom of action for squadron commanders and explicit instructions to report what was seen as well as exercise more independent thinking at all times although many of these cultural changes would be more gradual and incremental than some of the more easily addressed purely technical issues but perhaps the most immediate issue was why had three battle cruisers and two armored cruisers detonated like gigantic floating bombs with one or two other ships such as lyon only narrowly avoiding a similar fate here the issues were many and complicated not helped by confusion of information in part deliberate and in part accidental in the years following the battle and if that wasn't enough even once that's all resolved the details of the big ship losses are still not entirely uniform a lot of coverage was given at the time and later on two apparent problems with a lack of armor on british battle cruisers of the time and this was then conflated at some point to saying that the deck armor was insufficient well this latter point can be immediately debunked on no surviving ship was the deck armor ever breached and indeed when you calculate the angle of fall of shot as well as the armor penetration and the range of that the shots were being exchanged at jutland it becomes rapidly apparent that deck armor penetrations become not just exceedingly unlikely but near enough physically impossible in almost all considered instances the ranges involved too close and the angles are full too shallow for a hazard to even be present on the relatively thin deck plating of world war one era capital ships belt and turret armor was a different matter though although there were two sides to the battlecruiser engagement there were really three broad families of ship design present at the time the german ships were a fairly clear linear escalation of protection and firepower starting from from their tan but the british contingent had two very different types of battlecruiser the invincible and indefatigable classes were originally called dreadnought armoured cruisers for a reason they had no better protection in general than the armored cruisers they replaced in fact the main turret faces were an inch thinner and the indefatigable's belt armor was in some places thinner than the minotaurs and warriors their protection was comprehensive against 5.9 inch or 8.2 inch shells if fired at a distance which to be fair is what they were designed to fight and therefore to resist but their 12-inch guns had prompted the germans to build their own ships with that much larger caliber of shell in mind and in return the german 11 and 12-inch gunfire was eminently capable of punching through any part of these two older ships vertical armor at any range that the german guns could actually range out to and later the rangers they could realistically expect to score hits assuming broadside impacts of course conversely the british response to the german response the lion princess royal queen mary and tiger whilst not as heavily armored as the german ships did at least have nine inches of armor on their main belt and turret faces which was generally enough to stop an 11-inch shell at most reasonable ranges and a 12 inch shell at medium to longer battle ranges which was borne out in the absolute battering ships like tiger experienced without any major breach of their protective systems thus a general well british battle cruisers were far too weakly armored assertion is lazy and not in keeping with the facts however the earlier battle cruisers were very vulnerable to penetrations and that certainly didn't help but in the end the main problem was a combination of the propellants used and how they were handled both sides had entered the war with propellants that were somewhat at risk of burning uncontrollably in the event of a hit indeed sms sadlets had come within a hair of blowing itself up at the battle of doga bank when it had taken a hit because of this factor but the british hadn't suffered such a hit in that or other similar engagements and so the chance to learn a direct lesson before jutland was missed in addition the british propellant which consisted of various mixes of cordite suffered from a number of issues whilst it was very energetic and thus hurled shells with considerable enthusiasm the stabilizing agents deteriorated over time and these would gradually leak crystals and dust of extremely flammable by-products such as nitrocellulose it was also stored in silk bags instead of metal casings for the most part but these risks were manageable and the ships had gone into service with a system of flash doors designed to block the propagation of the igniting flash of an explosion taking place somewhere near the magazines along with strict controls about how many charges were allowed outside the magazine at any given time as well as monitoring and replacement protocols for degraded cordite but then the war started and in a rather convoluted way the lack of major modern coastal fortifications began a process that would end in multiple fatal magazine explosions because the coast was exposed the first scouting group began raids designed to draw out the british fleet and without fortifications the british had to respond with capital ships but scapper flow was too far away to protect scarborough even with room 40 coming online and so the fastest ships the battle cruiser fleet would move further south to rossith where they could be closer and they would thus be able to counter the german raids whilst scapaflow was a vast anchorage in the middle of practically nowhere at the time this allowed the grand fleet to conduct regular gunnery practice but the battle cruiserfleet's new home was in the firth of fourth the estuary of the river forth near edinburgh not only was this body of water far too narrow to allow long-range gunnery practice but the sounds of heavy naval gunfire and the resulting explosions would not have gone down too well with the local residents heading out to sea for gunnery practice on a regular basis was both expensive and somewhat dangerous the various encounters with u-boats and mines resulting in the loss of hms abergeer hogue cressie and audacious weighing rather heavily on any decision to deploy outside of battle in those early years of the war this in turn led to a degradation in the battle cruiser fleet's ability to conduct accurate long-range gunnery and so a substitute was found that also seemed to suit the conditions of the anchorage rate of fire specifically the practice of making good long-range gunnery estimates quickly couldn't be maintained then it was reasoned the ability to rapidly fire the guns would make up for this as multiple half salvos in quick succession would in theory allow a ship to walk its shells onto the target in about the same time that a slower and more precise vessel might find the range by the normal method however this rate of fire exceeded the speed at which the various flash doors and interlocks allowed fresh ammunition to be brought up from the magazines and so these safety devices depending on which report you believe were either removed or wedged open in order to let shells and charges pass faster this still wasn't quite enough and so additional charges would be stored in the turrets and working chambers as well giving a head start to the stockpile that the now faster ammunition transport system would in theory be able to keep topped up long enough for an exchange of gunnery to conclude if one could hit fast enough then again in theory at least return fire wouldn't be a problem because you'd knock out the enemy before they could get your range and to be clear the general idea of improving fire rates and thus needing more ammunition dated back to before the war and appears to have been spread into some degree throughout the entire royal navy but it was the above combination of factors that ramped up an already somewhat unsafe practice to a disastrous one in the battlecruiser fleet as the war went on and more fast queen elizabeth became available a system was developed to get the battle cruiser fleet back into the accurate gunnery game by rotating squadrons up to scap afloat for practice and indeed it was this that saw fifth battle squadron sail with beastie and third battle cruiser squadron sailed with jelico on the day of the battle the benefit of the gunnery training being seen in invincible's takedown of ludzow in her brief window of engagement it's also notable that one of the reasons tiger was able to survive the immense battering she endured was that when the new ship arrived in the battle cruiser fleet and was instructed in the various methods prescribed to increase his rate of fire tiger's captain promptly smiled saluted and then went back to his ship and refused to implement most of them indeed even elsewhere the feeling was getting around that things had gotten perhaps a little bit too unsafe as aboard hms lion the gunners were also putting in place measures to cut down on the number of propellant charges outside the magazines and closing up some of the flash doors again which likely helped when it came to the battle but what these practices resulted in was a system whereby in the event of an impact that got through the turret roof sides or some other part of the turret or barbette arrangement instead of there being a small flare-up and a few dozen casualties instead a much larger burn of cordite would occur this would travel along open ammunition handling systems and because of the greater pressure caused by the stacked charges even if the flash doors were closed they weren't designed to handle this excessive overpressure and either way the fire would reach the magazines once there unless already flooded as it happened with lion's q turret the magazine would burn and the ship would briefly turn into a gigantic pipe bomb what happened in lions turret was also indicative of what could happen elsewhere the hit itself didn't cause the deadly overflash but a flare-up of fire sometime afterwards triggered by a still hot piece of metal did in like manner both explosions aboard the interfaccable the first that blew off the stern and crippled it and the second that detonated the forward magazines appear to have been separated from the actual hits that most likely are the root cause of them by about 30 seconds or more internally at least within a week of the battle the royal navy was relatively sure that these practices were the cause or at least a large part of it and further interviews of survivors later in the year backed up these findings whilst he had let the problem develop under his command to give him at least some credit bt acted fairly quickly in the aftermath issuing a number of instructions for improvements some of them knew others as horrifyingly simple as reinstalling flash protection that had been removed on the positive side the grand fleet itself was relatively satisfied that its centrally controlled director firing system was generally superior to the germans allowing them to score more hits although whatever packed with the higher powers the iron duke's gunners had was apparently not replicable across the fleet that said it was recommended to upgrade the fleet to the newer larger range finders that had been found on the queen elizabeth's and the rs whilst also extending director firing provisions to include fitting on smaller ships as well as battleships secondary batteries on the german side there were two main problems they recognized on a technical level lack of firepower and lack of gun range in both cases these were issues the germans had already to an extent recognized but the fact that both tiger and princess royal had taken multiple hits from german guns without too much impediment whilst even a handful of hits from the faulty but considerably larger british shells had rendered a number of their own battlecruiser's combat ineffective despite their greater protection underlined that the 11-inch gun was not really up to combat with more modern ships of the royal navy and the 12-inch gun was probably marginal the bayern class had already moved up to 15-inch guns from the 12-inch guns of the koenigs and on the battlecruiser side the hindenburg had already been launched so little could be done there but the first four of seven planned makinson class were well under construction this rendered them far too costly to rebuild with a larger armament although they had already been planned with 350 millimeter or 13.8 inch guns but the last three hadn't been laid down yet and so the design was modified to the airsats york class for which these vessels would see an upgrade of 15-inch guns to match the bayerns likewise the plans for bayern's planned successor the l-20e alphas were dusted off and the armament was likewise increased this time from 15 inch guns to 420 millimeter or 16.5 inch guns when it came to range again the gun elevations had already been somewhat increased on a number of ships but now the new designs were altered to have even higher elevation from the start and in-service vessels were pulled in to have their own turrets opened up somewhat to further increase maximum elevation and thus range hippa had been acutely aware of potentially being outraged in his combats and whilst bt's errors had let him get in range whilst the battle cruisingly threw away that particular advantage the fact that the queen elizabeth had been able to engage several minutes before he could even begin to an attempt a reply weighed heavily on his post-battle recommendations in the long run the high seas fleet would rarely emerge looking for a fleet action and indeed would be withdrawn if it seemed that the grand fleet was out in 1918 when faced with an order to sail against the british who had now been augmented by the sixth battle squadron made up of american warships the sailors of the high seas fleet mutinied instead the bulk of the fleet would then be brought into scapa flow under the guns of the grand fleet later to scuttle itself when it appeared that the fleet was to be surrendered to the victorious allies having served alongside hippa in first scouting group the later to me admiral raider would go on to command the kriegs marina for most of the second world war the royal navy would take the lessons of jutlin to heart control was loosened aggression was encouraged and a night fighting training was intensified many of the officers present at jutland would go on to command theaters and fleets in the second world war setting a tone for the royal navy's conduct in that particular conflict but never again would massed battle fleets confront each other on the high seas the washington treaty would see the end of such fast battle lines in and of themselves and the next time the great fleets of the world faced off it would be with them scattered across the world in a dozen smaller actions all under the shadow of aircraft and aircraft carriers which would eventually supplant the battleship as the capital ship of a major navy that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for dry dock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 245,129

Rating: 4.944222 out of 5

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Battle of Jutland, World War 1, Admiral Jellicoe, Admiral Beatty, Admiral Scheer, Admiral Hipper, Grand Fleet, High Seas Fleet, Battlecruiser Fleet, 1st Scouting Group, 5th Battle Squadron, Battle Turn-away, Night Action

Id: odoN2kjINwc

Length: 35min 55sec (2155 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/VikingTeddy]

Part.1

Part.2

[u/Briglin]

Interesting site - I'll give your videos a watch - Thanks. I've read Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie several times, nice to have pictures to go with the information. I used to think that WWI would be boring but it's a fascinating time.