From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Volume III: Jutland and After May to December 1916

By Arthur J. Marder and Barry Gough

Volume III in this definitive WWI naval history presents an in-depth analysis of the Battle of Jutland, with a new introduction by historian Barry Gough.

Arthur Marder's five-volume history From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow is one of the finest contributions to naval history, chronicling the dramatic conflicts of the First World War with an “unrivalled mastery of sources” and “a gift of simple narrative” (A.J.P. Taylor).

The third volume presents an in-depth analysis of the clash between the German High Seas fleet and the British Grand Fleet and Battlecruiser Fleet at Jutland, as well as its immediate aftermath. Marder's intricate charting of this great battle is still recognized as the authoritative statement on these events. A new introduction by Barry Gough, the distinguished Canadian maritime and naval historian, assesses the importance of Marder's work and anchors it firmly amongst the great naval narrative histories of this era.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781473841864

Arthur J. Marder

ARTHUR J MARDER was a meticulous researcher, teacher and writer who, born in 1910, was to become perhaps the most distinguished historian of the modern Royal Navy. He held a number of teaching posts in American universities and was to receive countless honours, as well as publish some fifteen major works on British naval history. He died in 1980.

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PART I

The Battle of Jutland

31 May—1 June 1916

I

Jellicoe’s Tactics: The Grand Fleet Battle Orders

(THE EVE OF JUTLAND)

Far too much we were [in the G.F.B.O.s] ‘taking counsel of our fears’, and this was constantly reflected in our tactics. . . . The urgent need was for a little more of Hawke’s spirit: ‘You have done your duty in pointing out to me the dangers; now lay me alongside the enemy.’

CAPTAIN REGINALD PLUNKETT-ERNLE-ERLE-DRAX, writing in March 1925.

When we see the Grand Fleet Battle orders which the C.-in-C. and his Staff produced in times of the greatest stress we must, I am sure, regard their production as a really remarkable achievement. Possibly now, with our War and subsequent peace experience to guide us, we may criticize these orders as being in some respects too detailed and voluminous, but . . . at the time there was little idea of how to apply the Principles of War to tactics and, further, and what is most important to bear in mind, that Officers were not educated to do so! The whole Navy must bear the responsibility for this.

CAPTAIN BERTRAM H. RAMSAY in his Jutland Lectures

at the Naval War College, 1929.

1. MOTIVATING FACTORS AND MAIN CONCEPTIONS

THE ART of tactics had stagnated in the century after 1815.¹ The long period of peace and the unquestioned supremacy of the Navy were not conducive to the study of war at sea. Before 1908 very little thought was given to the subject, except by retired officers and admirals commanding large fleets—only flag officers were supposed to be concerned with tactics and strategy— and this thought was not of a high order. ‘Tactical thought consisted of a few catchwords and a lot of tradition’, and tactics themselves, in the later nineteenth century, of formal movements that bore no relationship to the realities of war.

The renaissance in tactical thought in the five or six years before the war was the work of only a handful of officers. There was still no systematic study of the subject, afloat or ashore, and no continuity when progress was registered. The Admiralty did little to correct the situation. There was no trained staff to formulate exercises with a definite object, or to analyse the results. To avoid hurting the susceptibilities of the commanders of the opposing forces in manæuvres, the Lords of the Admiralty up to 1914 avoided publishing the remarks of the umpires. Nor had the Admiralty ever made a historical survey of the principles of war, with a view to deducing principles to guide the Navy. It preferred to leave the enunciation of principles of strategy and tactics to the initiative of those in command. We should also bear in mind that the Navy of the early twentieth century was wrapped up in the revolutionary advances in matériel. The study of strategy and tactics was bound to suffer. In any case, most senior officers felt that steel, steam, and science had so revolutionized naval warfare that little was to be learned from a ‘dead past’. The Naval War College did little to stimulate a serious study of tactics, as ‘tactical instruction in that establishment consisted of unrealistic games with small model ships on the tactical board, which did little more than compare the guns, torpedoes and armour of the opposing fleets by arbitrary rules’.

The upshot was the lack of a generally accepted, comprehensive, authoritative tactical doctrine in 1914. When Jellicoe assumed command of the Grand Fleet on 4 August 1914, the only orders bearing on its battle tactics were contained in three or four memoranda of a few pages each that had been prepared by Callaghan, his predecessor, in 1913-14, and which did not go much beyond some ‘general principles’, a definition of the functions of the various types of vessels, and an emphasis on the need for initiative by squadron and flotilla commanders. Jellicoe had to produce his Battle Orders practically ab initio. He issued the more urgent of the G.F.B.O.s to the fleet by signal as they were formulated, and on 18 August 1914 he had them printed and issued on three sheets. From time to time he distributed amendments and new pages, as suggested by the lessons of tactical exercises. The actions of the war did not provide much guidance, since Heligoland Bight, Coronel, the Falklands, Scarborough, and the Dogger Bank offered little of major tactical interest. Jellicoe had a complete revision of the G.F.B.O.s prepared in December 1915 and issued under the date January 1916. These (with some changes in the following months) were the Battle Orders in force at the time of Jutland: some seventy closely printed sheets (including diagrams) divided into thirty sections, a remarkable achievement by Jellicoe and his staff. But through his having to write them in order to fill a gap left wide open, essentials became obscured by a mass of detail which by 1914 should have been common knowledge. Nelson and Howe obviated detailed instructions by inviting their captains constantly on board their flagship, so that they thoroughly understood their Admiral’s strategical and tactical ideas. In the same way the Grand Fleet would have benefited from frequent captains’ meetings in the Iron Duke, Yet there is no evidence that either Jellicoe or Beatty gathered his admirals and captains on board the flagship, or if they did, it was a rare occurrence. The situation was quite different in the last war, when captains, where possible, were always summoned to a conference before an important operation.

What were the prevalent tactical ideas of the Grand Fleet on the eve of Jutland? Three main conceptions dominate the G.F.B.O.s: a subordination of the offensive spirit to defensive precautions, especially against the torpedo; the single line, parallel course, and long range of the plan of battle; and centralized command. These we shall examine in turn.

Jellicoe would have liked nothing better than to take the offensive, strategic and tactical, and deal the Germans a smashing blow. But there were powerful reasons why he considered it his duty to handle the fleet at all times with caution. There was, in the first place, his cardinal belief that the overriding duty of the Grand Fleet was to stay alive and in superior force: ‘. . . too much must not be left to chance in a Fleet action, because our Fleet was the one and only factor that was vital to the existence of the Empire, as indeed to the Allied cause’.² This may be contrasted with Nelson’s ‘something must be left to chance’ in his Trafalgar Memorandum, which Jellicoe probably had in mind. But, writes Jellicoe, unlike Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar, which was ‘only a relatively small portion of the available British Fleet’, the Grand Fleet at Jutland ‘included almost the whole of our available capital ships. There was very little in the way of reserve behind it.’ The thirteen pre-dreadnoughts that were of any value, and which were not included in the Grand Fleet, were ‘inferior fighting units’, and there was little prospect of help from the French and Italian battle fleets in the Mediterranean, ‘owing to political considerations and their duty in watching the Austrian Fleet . . .’³

Of more immediate importance in explaining the defensive tone of the G.F.B.O.s was Jellicoe’s determination not to hazard his capital-ship superiority to the risk of underwater damage from torpedoes, mines, or submarine-and-mine traps. He believed, as did the Admiralty, that the enemy, to compensate for numerical inferiority in ships, would employ these weapons to equalize their strength. His respect for the torpedo (whose range had increased from 800 yards in 1900 to perhaps as much as 15,000 yards in 1916), the mine, and the submarine, although full war experience was to prove it an exaggerated one in some respects, was shared by the whole Navy.

As regards the German submarines, the C.-in-C. had ‘no doubt whatever’ that they were ‘certain to get among the battleships, or indeed the battle cruisers, if the enemy’s tactics are at all good’. Again—‘All our tactical games show how difficult they [submarines] are to deal with in action, and how very easy their chances of hitting a line after deployment are.’⁴ He thought an enemy submarine-and-mine trap to be perfectly feasible. ‘In a recent game the German Admiral first steered away from Heligoland, dropped his S.M.’s when he got contact with the British Fleet, dropped minelayers well astern and laid the mines in a known position relative to his fleet, and then turned towards Heligoland before actually coming under fire and drew the British on first his S.M.’s and second his mines. I am disposing my cruisers to meet such tactics, but it is not easy.’⁵ The First Lord’s reaction would not have been challenged in the Fleet: ‘At first sight it would seem that the only way to avoid the perils of ambush is not to go into it; and I find it hard to believe that it can, in any circumstances, be the duty of a British admiral to push his fleet through a hostile covering force of submarines and mines.’⁶

The war was to prove that the inherent limitations of the submarine prevented its effective use with a battle fleet. This was not evident as late as 1916. Beatty was convinced that the war games demonstrated that submarines could be made to attain without difficulty good tactical positions from which to attack. Jellicoe, too, in the latter part of 1915, pressed the advantages of using submarines to co-operate with the fleet in battle. He knew that the speed of even the latest boats was not high enough to enable them to sail with the Grand Fleet. His idea was rather to dispatch them to a rendezvous which they could reach earlier than the fleet. In the summer and autumn of 1915 the two Admirals mounted a campaign to have some of the Harwich submarines stationed at the Tyne for use with the Grand Fleet in battle. Their value, they argued, would be great. ‘It is quite certain that the German battle-fleet will be accompanied by submarines, and we shall be at a great disadvantage if our own submarines are not in a position to take offensive action against the German battlefleet.’⁷ Sceptical about the efficacy of submarines in a fleet action on account of their speed, the Admiralty turned down the proposal; the Harwich boats would be used mostly to intercept the German Fleet on its return, or what was left of it after a grand action. (Something was also said about the need to provide for eventualities like raids or invasions on the East Coast.) To this Beatty retorted (and Jellicoe agreed): ‘It seems positively foolish that we are deliberately arranging for one of our most important classes of vessel, whose destructive power should be enormous, to come into action only AFTER the Battle has been fought.’⁸

A compromise was reached on 17 November 1915. A submarine flotilla would be established at Blyth, under the C.-in-C.’s orders, and it would co-operate with the Grand Fleet in battle; but it would also co-operate in defensive measures in case of a raid or invasion north of Flamborough Head. The G.F.B.O.s stated that the flotilla (eventually to consist of twelve submarines, with four attached destroyers to act as their medium of communication with the fleet) was to join the fleet ‘in time to take part in a fleet action in the middle or southern part of the North Sea’, and gave it two functions in a battle, (i) To operate 10 or 12 miles ahead of the wing columns of the fleet and attack the enemy fleet when it deployed. (2) ‘A group of submarines which misses the enemy’s line should push on towards Heligoland, so as to be on the line of retreat of the German Fleet; or it may be desirable that they should come to the surface to follow the enemy battlefleet, in case it should turn sixteen points; this is particularly desirable if the original direction of the enemy’s deployment is away from Heligoland.’ (XXVI, 2, 4, 5.) Since the Blyth Flotilla had not been formed by the time of Jutland, submarines did not join the battle fleet in that action.

Two conclusions emerge. First, Jellicoe’s submarine tactics were basically offensive, in contrast to the role awarded to the surface light craft. Second, and much more important, since Jellicoe believed in the utility of British submarines in battle, he inferred that the enemy, too, planned to use their submarines that way. He did not know that the Germans had never practised the cooperation of submarines with the High Seas Fleet, and that Admiral Scheer, the C.-in-C. of the High Seas Fleet, planned to use U-boats only as traps and as intelligence gatherers for his fleet before a battle.

Running through the G.F.B.O.s is a cautionary note of safety as to the use which the enemy might make of submarines and mines in a fleet action. As regards the situation envisaged in Jellicoe’s famous letter of 30 October 1914,⁹ that of a German fleet retiring on an opposite course and attempting to lure the Grand Fleet over a trap of U-boats and mines, the possibility ‘must always be present to the mind of the Commander-in-Chief and may largely influence his tactics’. (XXIV, 3.) In wartime exercises he had searched for an effective reply to this manœuvre but had found none. Although the logical counter was a vigorous chase, he had no answer to the destroyer attack and smoke-screen that he expected the enemy would use to cover their turn-away. The smoke-screen concealed the direction of the retreat, and the destroyer attack made close pursuit hazardous. The C.-in-C. specified his tactics as follows:

Exercises at sea and exercises on the Tactical Board shew that one of the most difficult movements to counter on the part of the enemy is a ‘turn away’ of his line of battle, either in succession or otherwise. The effect of such a turn (which may be made for the purpose of drawing our fleet over mines or submarines) is obviously to place us in a position of decided disadvantage as regards attack by torpedoes fired either from ships or from destroyers. If the turn is not followed the enemy runs out of range. If it is followed we have to accept a disadvantageous position for a length of time dependent on our excess of speed over the enemy’s battle line. . . .

It may be expected that I shall not follow a decided turn of this nature shortly after deployment as I should anticipate that it is made for the purpose of taking us over submarines. The Flag officer leading the line should exercise great judgment therefore, in ‘leading in’ to keep the range or to close it. (VII, 8, 9.)

The menace of mines being dropped by the enemy, whether from light cruisers, destroyers, submarines, or merchant ships used as minelayers, would be ‘minimized’ by avoiding the waters passed over by mine-laying craft. ‘For this reason it would be unwise to circle the rear of the enemy’s Battlefleet should deployment take place on opposite courses.’ (VII, 13.)

The G.F.B.O.s also stress the torpedo threat posed by both the German battleships and torpedo craft. ‘The torpedo menace must always be borne in mind. . . . Until the enemy is beaten by gunfire it is not my intention to risk attack from his torpedoes’, to which end ‘in the early stages of action I do not desire to close the range much inside 14,000 yards. . . . It is quite possible the enemy may now possess torpedoes of 15,000 yards running range or more.’ (VII, 7.)¹⁰

A torpedo attack by the enemy’s destroyers on the battle line after deployment would be met by turning the fleet two or more points away from the enemy (IX, 1). Turning towards or away had the same advantage of presenting a narrower target; that is, the ships’ bows or sterns, not their broadsides, were presented as targets. A turn towards a torpedo attack, thus ‘combing the tracks’, was in some ways preferable; it would prevent loss of touch with the enemy and would permit the forward secondary guns to be used to the best advantage against enemy destroyers. Both manæuvres had been practised often in pre-war tactical exercises (beginning in 1911 ). The turn-away appeared to be the better of the methods to ensure the safety of the fleet. With the fleet retiring, the torpedoes would either stop short of the line or be running so slowly that they could be avoided.

Such were the main precautions arising from the threat of mines, torpedoes, and submarines. They amounted to this: that, in the C.-in-C.’s opinion, the only real antidote was not to fight on the enemy’s prepared ground. He was regretfully aware that this line of action was entirely opposed to his, and the fleet’s, desire to bring the enemy to battle as quickly as possible. Admiral Sturdee excepted (see below), there was virtually no criticism in the Grand Fleet prior to Jutland of the precautions; senior officers shared Jellicoe’s and Beatty’s great respect for torpedoes, mines, and submarines.

There was a factor which did not influence the G.F.B.O.s, but which predisposed Jellicoe to run no unnecessary risks at Jutland. This was the strained relations between Great Britain and the United States in the spring of 1916. An outright break was quite conceivable.

One circumstance was in my mind throughout the action [Jellicoe wrote after the war], but which (under advice) I did not refer to in my book The Grand Fleet, as being at the time of its publication a delicate subject. This was the possibility of the United States coining into the war on the side of our opponents, a possibility which increased the desirability of not running unnecessary risks with the Grand Fleet. In the early part of 1916 our relations with the United States were, owing to questions of blockade, becoming distinctly strained. The U.S. Government had appointed a Naval Board to report upon the question as to whether it was necessary, as claimed by us, to take merchant vessels into harbour for examination. Our contention was that the submarine danger rendered it impossible to stop ships at sea for a sufficient period to carry out this examination. The U.S. Naval Board reported that there was no justification for ships being brought into harbour as the examination could be carried out at sea. The report had been sent to me for remarks and of course I disagreed entirely with the conclusion reached. I had been informed, too, by both the Foreign Office and by Mr. Page, the U.S. Ambassador, that relations between the two countries on the blockade question were in a very strained condition. Hence there was reason to fear the outcome of this position, and reasonable caution was a necessity.¹¹

Successive lecturers on Jutland at the Naval Staff College have commented on the absence of surprise in the G.F.B.O.s. As Captain J. H. Godfrey pointed out: ‘Great consideration was given to possible ways in which the enemy might surprise us, such as using submarines with the fleet, minefields and long-range torpedoes, but less attention was given to how we might exploit surprise on the enemy. This attitude rather tended to surrender the initiative.’ This is true. Jellicoe believed that his scope for initiative was limited by the knowledge that the Germans had for years designed their vessels, large and small, to be strong—much stronger than British ships—in underwater attack (the ship-for-ship German superiority in torpedo tubes was, however, balanced by British numbers), and provided with underwater defences to a far greater extent than were British ships. Gunfire, the British forte, offered no opportunities for tactics of surprise.

The second of the main conceptions dominating the G.F.B.O.s was the desirability of an action in single battle line, or line ahead —each ship following her next ahead—at long range and on approximately parallel courses, and with reliance on the big gun. The single line was the established tactical doctrine in the late seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth, in both the British and French Navies, as ensuring the maximum of unimpeded fire. It had not often produced decisive results, but we should remember that the indecisive battles of the eighteenth century were often the outcome of the defensive strategy of Britain’s opponents. The fundamental principle of tactical endeavour, however, concentration on one part of the enemy, if he so mismanaged his fleet as to give you the opportunity for it, was not forgotten, whether before, during, or after the Napoleonic wars. (One finds it, for instance, in Nelson’s Trafalgar Memorandum, which tactics he carried out with a concentration on the Franco-Spanish centre and rear.) But despite the considerable discussion of tactics, especially in the two post-war decades, no one was able to devise a solution against a fleet of equal efficiency and morale. Tactical thought then suffered an almost complete stagnation, because of the lulling of men’s minds by Trafalgar into the belief that all was for the best in the best of all possible navies, the difficulty of grasping the effect of the change from sail to steam, and the increasing absorption of the Navy in matériel. The Navy entered the twentieth century with the line-ahead gun duel recognized as the way in which a naval battle would be fought—the line to be laid parallel to the enemy, ship versus ship in a hammer-and-tongs affair. Togo’s annihilation of the Russian Fleet in Tsushima Straits (1905) sanctified the single line, although British naval opinion appreciated that it was the overwhelming Japanese superiority in morale and matériel, not their tactics, which were often anything but brilliant, that mainly accounted for the result.

In the last pre-war years a small group of officers, juniors like Captain H. W. Richmond and Commander K. G. B. Dewar, and younger flag officers like Sturdee, advocated divisional or ‘divided’ tactics, or the ‘manæuvre battle’, as the way out of the tactical sterility allegedly inherent in one long single line of battle. The attempt to apply equal pressure all along the line, they maintained, usually produced indecisive results. A decision was best achieved by using a part of the battle fleet independently in a general action—specifically, by concentrating a superior force on part of the enemy’s line and perhaps surrounding it, whose defeat would lead to the collapse of the whole enemy line. In the last year of Sir William May’s time in the Home Fleet, 1910–11, the suggestions of Richmond, his brilliant Flag-Captain, started the ball rolling. A series of tactical exercises investigated the possibilities in divided tactics. There are conflicting opinions on their results. ‘Even in clear visibility’, testifies an officer who seems to have been present at the exercises, ‘great difficulty was experienced in co-ordinating such an attack. Short-range wireless telegraphy and aircraft did not exist, and neither of these aids had been fully developed for tactical use at the time of Jutland.’ One contemporary summed up: ‘The conclusion arrived at without hesitation was NO. Such a measure ran the risk that the fast detachment might be wiped out, and if they did not run such a risk, they would not come into action at all. Their absence from the main battle line would, in any case, weaken the overpowering strength of that line.’¹² The impressions of Admiral Dewar, then a commander in the Home Fleet, were quite different. As he remembered them in 1952:

Difficulty and even confusion arose at first because the G.-in-G. endeavoured to control the movements of the various squadrons and flotillas by signal. Towards the end of his command [1911], however, Divisional Leaders, Flotilla Gommanders, etc., were encouraged to act on their own initiative in executing the general plan of attack. So far as could be judged in peace time, this worked very well. . . . Again, when the Home and Mediterranean Fleets met off the Spanish coast in February 1911, the general idea of the Red C.-in-G., Sir George Warrender, was to immobilize Blue’s centre and attack the van and rear. It worked out admirably owing to clear instructions, intelligent co-operation and a free hand to subordinate Gommanders each in his own particular sphere.

In any case, these exercises of 1911 converted May to divided tactics. ‘Dividing the fleet at once gives freedom to subordinates, and in so doing strikes at the root of the purely defensive formation of the single line, and leads to an offensive method of engaging.’¹³ Evidently, however, there was an honest difference of opinion on the merits of divided tactics. Divisional attacks in tactical exercises ended when May left the Home Fleet (March 1911). His successor, Sir Francis Bridgeman, was a single-line admiral, and he reverted to pre-May days, practising deployment into single line. Indeed, beyond the use of a division of fast battleships or battle cruisers acting independently to cross the ‘T’, the division of the fleet was generally regarded as unsound in 1914.

The great majority of senior officers on the eve of the war, including Jellicoe and Beatty, and indeed all Grand Fleet Admirals but Sturdee, accepted the single line as the best way to fight the battle fleet. ‘In all cases’, stated the G.F.B.O.s (VII, 3), ‘the ruling principle is that the Dreadnought fleet as a whole keeps together . . . and, so long as the fleets are engaged on approximately similar courses, the squadrons should form one line of battle.’ The line of battle had to be a long string of ships, all in close order so that the rear ships should not be out of range. Gaps in the line or even between squadrons were therefore frowned upon, and this tended severely to restrain squadronal freedom of action.

Jellicoe’s defenders have insisted that the single-line formation was not so rigid as to preclude independent action by fast squadrons or units of the fleet when suitable opportunity presented itself. They point to the detachment of the 5th Battle Squadron (it was given the function of a Tree wing squadron’) and the Battle Cruiser Fleet from the battle fleet, which seemed to imply the C.-in-C.’s intention to use these fast and powerful forces to cooperate with the battle fleet in a devastating attack on a portion of the enemy’s battle line. This was, however, not the intention of the G.F.B.O.s, which merely directed these ships to engage the opposing battle cruisers and prolong the line of deployment. (V, 5–13, XXIV, 7, and Deployment Diagram in XXIII.)

Now seamen are by nature conservative; few of them are very eager for change. But the case for the single line rests on its important proven advantages in battle. It brought the greatest number of guns of the battleships into action (there was no blanketing of fire when all the guns were trained on, or approximately on, the beam), and it was the best formation for maintaining the coherence of the fleet. Central direction was regarded as vital, yet how was it possible if squadrons acted independently? The high speeds of modern ships, which was not a factor in the sailing-ship era, now made it practically impossible for a C.-in-C. to retain control of independent squadrons, especially in a period when short-range wireless and aircraft had not been developed very far. On the other hand, there were the twin fears that (1 ) an independent squadron attempting a tactical concentration on a part of an enemy fleet would be severely hammered or overwhelmed if it came under the guns of a concentrated enemy battle fleet, and (2) that the British battle fleet would be at a grave disadvantage if the enemy manœuvred so as to engage it, and the independent squadron was not in a position to open fire from another direction at the same time.

Divided tactics not only had its dangers, but there was some question about its feasibility. It was possible when ranges were only three or four thousand yards. But with battle ranges increased to 12,000 to 16,000 yards in the pre-Jutland decade, such tactics became impossible unless the enemy did something remarkably stupid. The reason for this was, of course, that at long ranges it would take a considerable time to change one’s position relative to the enemy unless one had a phenomenal excess of speed, perhaps as much as 50 per cent. And while you were trying to do so, the enemy might be doing something quite different from what you had planned for him. Nor was a tactical concentration called for. Agreeing with the general principle that victory would be most quickly achieved by bringing a superior force to bear on a part of the enemy (while preventing him doing likewise to you), it was appreciated that this could now be done in a way denied to their ancestors.

Sailing ships, with short range and constricted arcs of fire, could only concentrate tactically. Now a ship’s fire could be effective over a much wider arc, and this arc, because of the extended range, could comprehend a large part of the enemy fleet. Gunnery concentration could, in theory, be directed against any part of the enemy fleet the C.-in-C. wished, and, with a marked superiority in numbers over the Germans, as substantial a degree of concentration could be achieved in this way as had been hoped for in any battle of the past. In practice, the single-line advocates—indeed, all students of tactics—accepted a gunnery concentration on the leading ships of an enemy fleet, or the manœuvre of ‘crossing the T’ Essentially, this tactical position is brought about when a fleet in a single line is placed across the line of advance of the enemy. This has the decided tactical advantage of enabling a fleet to bring all its broadside guns to bear on the leading enemy ships, which ships could fire only with their forward turrets, while the guns of the ships in the rear would be hampered and perhaps masked by the ships ahead of them. An admiral finding himself in this situation could do one of two things. He could continue the action, meaning that he must turn parallel to the fleet crossing his ‘T’. Each ship as it turned would be subject to a concentrated fire. (What was hoped for by the force crossing the ‘T’ was a concentration of fire on the turning point, which would be virtually a fixed point, while each enemy ship as she passed through that point was unlikely to fire accurately because she was under helm.) Or the admiral could turn his ships together simultaneously and flee. Grossing the T, in other words, was a modern version of the sailing-ship era tactic of concentrating on a part of the enemy line. But it was not easy to execute, as Tsushima showed, since it required a substantial margin of speed. In 1914 it was still a basic idea in British tactical thought, on the supposition that chance might bring it about, and the G.F.B.O.s (VII, 5, XV, (e)) provided for this tactic, though only in the form of the concentration of the whole battle fleet on the leading ships of columns if the enemy delayed his deployment. These, we shall see, were not the circumstances in which Jellicoe crossed the High Seas Fleet’s ‘T’ twice on 31 May.

There was some common ground between the battle-of-manæuvre and the single-line schools of thought. Both recognized that the line-ahead formation was too dangerous to use when cruising in wartime. It was vulnerable to torpedo attack: the ships were so arranged as to present the largest target to torpedo craft, and it was impossible to screen them by destroyers. It was not only the danger from submarines that made the fleet cruise in columns. It was the best way of providing for the quick formation of the line of battle when needed. If you steamed in single line ahead towards the enemy during the approach, it would take a long time to get into a single line ahead with the enemy on your beam so that you could shoot at him. There was, then, universal agreement that the fleet should approach the enemy in columns (divisions) in line ahead, the columns ‘disposed abeam’, that is, abreast of each other. There was, furthermore, agreement that deployment into a single line just before battle was joined was the only way that a large fleet could get into line of battle without having the guns masked in some, or perhaps many, of the ships. This did not rule out the possibility of turning the fleet afterwards by divisions, so as, for instance, to close the enemy. Where the two schools clashed was in the insistence by those who urged the battle of manæuvre that there must not be a too rigid adherence to the single line in battle—that a tactical concentration could be most easily achieved by squadrons acting independently.

Returning to the G.F.B.O.s (especially VII, 7, 13, XIV, 1), we find that, in addition to fighting in a single-line formation, Jellicoe’s plan of battle was (1) to engage the German battle fleet at long range. The opening range would, therefore, ‘on a clear day, in fine weather’, normally not exceed 18,000 yards, and be reduced to between 15,000 and 10,000 yards, ‘the latter being reached as the enemy’s fire is overcome; in the early stages of action I do not desire to close the range much inside 14,000 yards’. (2) To engage in one long line on approximately parallel courses. Jellicoe was convinced that he could never bring his superior broadsides to bear unless he could place his enormous line of battleships on a course roughly parallel to the enemy’s—and out of torpedo range. ‘Action on approximately similar courses will be one of the underlying objects of my tactics:—(i) Because it is the form of action likely to give the most decisive results, (ii) Because it is probable that the Germans will make use of mines if they can do so.’ (3) To rely on the big gun to achieve a smashing victory. ‘It is undoubtedly to our advantage to endeavour to obtain the final decision in a fleet action by means of our superior gun power.’ (Destroyer Addendum of 1 October 1915, para. 4.)

Post-war critics have regretted the definite intention expressed in the G.F.B.O.s to fight at long range. They assert that all the great victories in British naval history had been achieved at close ranges, where the fleet overwhelmed the enemy by a higher rate of fire and superior morale and discipline. They could point to the Falklands (8 December 1914) and the Dogger Bank (24 January 1915) actions, which had revealed the limitations of long-range gunnery. At the Falklands, Sturdee’s two battle cruisers had to expend almost all their ammunition to sink two enemy armoured cruisers, and at the Dogger Bank it had taken the battle cruisers three hours to sink the pseudo-battle cruiser Blücher. The lesson of these actions appeared to be that the gun could be decisive only at short ranges, where a large number of hits could be scored swiftly. Whatever the merits of the historical argument and the lessons of war experience, they failed to impress the Service before and during 1914–18. The fire-eating Walter Cowan, Captain of the battle cruiser Princess Royal, favoured close action— ‘The decisive range is that at which you cannot miss’—but I can find no admiral who talked or wrote that way in those days. It was the general view that fighting should start at as long a range as practicable. The effective range of British naval guns had increased from about 5,000 to 15,000 yards in the pre-war decade. Long ranges were necessary, it was believed in the Service, if the Navy was to take advantage of its superiority in modern long-range artillery. It was realized that the probability of scoring a hit decreased with the increased range. On the other hand, a hit with a steep angle of descent might be very much more effective than at the shorter ranges. Jellicoe, moreover, did not want to go in to short range both on account of the torpedo menace from the German battleships, and his expectation (VII, 6) that the German fleet would seek a close-range action in order to cover the attack of their flotillas and take advantage of the fairly heavy secondary armament of their battle line.

As for Jellicoe’s reliance on the big gun, this was natural in view of its prestige and the superiority of the battle fleet in numbers, weight of metal, and effective range. When Beatty wondered if they were not perhaps obsessed with the idea of placing reliance on the guns alone, Jellicoe had replied that he was ‘quite certain, indeed, that exactly the reverse is the case’.¹⁴ In practice, the offensive spirit in the G.F.B.O.s was chiefly centred in one weapon, the big gun of the dreadnoughts. It held sway, and all other forces were, as we shall see below, intended to keep the ring while it delivered the knock-out blow. Having not a little to do with the exalted position of the big gun was the fact that tactics were in those days largely dominated by the gunnery officers (Jellicoe was one of them), who held a position somewhat in front of other branches.

And now to an examination of the third main conception dominating the G.F.B.O.s, centralized command in battle, which was in part a derivative of the single-line conception. Whether by written instructions or signals, centralized command dominated the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (It had been the practice in all European navies ever since the reduction in size of the excessively numerous and heterogeneous fleets of the Dutch wars of the seventeenth century had rendered it practicable.) It never occurred to anyone that centralized control could be dispensed with when bringing a fleet into action. Once in close action, there could be almost no control because the smoke prevented signals being read and orders could only be sent by boat, so naturally there were general instructions about how ships were to behave. Similarly, throughout the nineteenth century, the line was worked entirely by the C.-in-C. from his flagship, almost invariably in the centre of the line and assisted by repeating ships as in the sailing days. But centralization was, by the end of the century, being carried to extremes. ‘The system of signalling every movement from the Fleet Flagship produced an acute form of tactical arthritis’, Admiral Dewar points out, ‘suppressing the initiative of Captains and divisional leaders who had merely to follow passively in the wake of the next ahead.’ The idea of co-operation, as opposed to mechanical obedience, was virtually ignored. This state of affairs was accepted by juniors as well as seniors.

The loss of the Victoria (1893), flagship of the C.-in-C, Mediterranean, Sir George Tryon, provided a good example, which was not heeded, of the danger of centralization. When leading a division of battleships in the Camperdown, Rear-Admiral Markham, Second-in-Command, put his helm over and rammed the Victoria in broad daylight. An Admiralty minute stated that ‘had the watertight doors, hatches, and ports been closed, the ship would have been saved, notwithstanding the crushing blow which she received from the Camperdown’. The evidence of the Victoria’s survivors at the Court Martial indicated that in both ships the Captains waited for the Admirals to give the word to take such emergency precautions. To have acted on their own initiative, or even to have consulted their Admiral, had not occurred to them. Such things simply were not done.¹⁵ A lecturer at the Naval Staff College noted how the position of the Admiral as one who alone and unaided controlled the movements of every ship was deeply enshrined; its implications were accepted unquestionably by the service. The ideal of the one superman on the remoteness of the Flagship’s Bridge was one to which the service gave unquestioning allegiance, and was drummed in from the day a naval cadet joined his first gun-room.

From that day the boy came into the hands of a series of autocrats, the Senior Midshipman [the ‘Senior snottie’], Sub-Lieutenant [the sub of the mess], Commander, Captain and finally the Admiral. Between these were layers of lesser beings who held temporary sway, but these were the five steps by which the absolute autocrat—the Commander-in-Chief—was produced.

Centralisation was carried to its extreme and seemed the right, natural and only thing. Devolution of authority [was] interpreted either as weakness or laziness.

This, as I recollect it, was the frame of mind when we joined the service.¹⁶

The introduction of wireless telegraphy early in the twentieth century strengthened one-man control, leaving even less scope for initiative by subordinates. Thus, there was the case, an extreme one, to be sure, of the Captain of a battleship lying at Portland asking permission by W/T of his Admiral, whose flagship was anchored in Tor Bay, to hoist in his steam picket-boat for the night! Illuminating are the views of that redoubtable autocrat ‘Old’ Ard ‘Art’ Wilson (1906) on the possibilities opened up by the advent of wireless: ‘Wireless telegraphy has given me the power of controlling ships all over the Atlantic in a way that has never been possible before. . . . It is rather like playing chess on a board as big as from Gibraltar to England.’¹⁷

‘Over-centralization killed initiative, and lack of initiative rendered decentralization impracticable.’ This was, in essence, the situation before the war—this at a time when ships of the High Seas Fleet cruised independently for six months in the year, during which time they were responsible for their movements and training. Only a few admirals tried to cut through this vicious circle and experiment with less centralized methods of command by delegating some measure of authority to the junior flag officers.

One of them was Callaghan, whose ‘Instructions for the Conduct of a Fleet in Action’ (October 1913) placed decentralization of command first. ‘In carrying out the intentions of the Admiral, Commanders of Squadrons, divisions or subdivisions should be given a wide discretion as to the conduct of the ships under their immediate control.’¹⁸ The C.-in-C.’s supplementary memorandum embodying his intentions reserved control by him of the approach only. ‘After the fleet has deployed and fire is generally opened, I shall continue to control that portion of the fleet (van, centre or rear) in which I am, but the control of other portions or of squadrons must be delegated to their commanders, subject to the general instructions given below or to others which I issue.’¹⁹ Beatty also, upon taking over the battle-cruiser command in 1913, preached the doctrine of decentralization. ‘War is a perpetual conflict with the unexpected. The far greater part of those things upon which action in war must be calculated are hidden in great uncertainty. Therefore it is imperative that Captains should be supplied with all the information available . . . using their own discretion how to act under conditions which could not have been anticipated by him. Instructions, therefore, should be such as not to interfere with the exercise of the judgment of the Captains and should, except in very exceptional cases, be of a very general character.’²⁰ Subsequent Battle Cruiser Fleet Orders (Beatty issued a mere forty-one during his command, March 1913-November 1916) continued to attach importance to the development of initiative in captains and subordinate commanders.

Callaghan and Beatty (May, too) were exceptional. Most of the flag officers who held the top commands in the war retained the ideas and methods of command of the nineties, when they were young lieutenants and commanders. Jellicoe himself occupied an intermediate position, and his G.F.B.O.s contain both centralization and decentralization principles, though with the emphasis clearly on the former. The section on Battle Tactics begins:

The Commander-in-Chief controls the whole Battlefleet before deployment and on deployment except in the case of low visibility. . . . He cannot be certain, after deployment, of being able to control the movements of three Battle Squadrons when steaming fast and making much funnel smoke; with the noise and smoke of battle added, the practicability of exercising general control would be still further reduced.

It therefore becomes necessary to decentralise command to the fullest extent possible, and the Vice-Admirals commanding squadrons have discretionary power to manœuvre their squadrons independently whilst conforming generally to the movements of the Commander-in-Chief and complying with his known intentions. (VII, 1,