What did you do with my battlecruisers, Beatty!?

[cheeky_kaleun]

I've been having a tremendous amount of fun with the game Jutland and I just wanted to post some comments on here. I actually purchased it 12 years ago but didn't really have much interest then and my computer wasn't really up to it.

I tried to re-download last year, they use their own proprietary Steam-type program, and it was all too much trouble. I saw others say on here that the company had abandoned the game. I can absolutely confirm they haven't, I tried again a couple of weeks ago, the support people were super helpful and I've spent the last two weeks blasting away at the High Seas Fleet. I was just playing Jutland yesterday from the start of the battlecruiser engagement. I did actually manage to trap Hipper's battlecruisers and annihilate them, but at huge cost.

I boxed Hipper in from the south with Beatty's battlecruisers, and from the west with Evan-Thomas's Queen Elizabeths, and then Hood's 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron sailed south to cut them off at the east. Destroyers and light cruisers in the van of the Grand Fleet sailed south to cut them from the north. It was a total and absolute bloodbath. Admiral Beatty was killed and only Queen Mary and Tiger survived out those six battlecruisers. Only one of Hood's battlecruisers survived. While I had Hipper's battlecruisers boxed in (those ships take a hell of a beating), light cruisers and destroyers launched waves of torpedo and gun attacks from the north.

All this time, I'm trying to get the main line of the Grand Fleet in order, which only gives me more respect for how Jellicoe reformed his squadrons into a single continuous battle line. It's hard! I also lost four armoured cruisers and 22 destroyers, but I did completely sink Scheer's battlecruisers. At that point, I see the van of sixteen German dreadnoughts sailing over the southern horizon in perfect battle line . Can only imagine what Jellicoe must have been thinking.

As you can see below, HMS Barham is not in great shape although this is the point at which all the German battlecruisers have been sunk, and the High Seas Fleet is now just sailing over the horizon from the south in perfect battle order

[Aktungbby]

cheeky_kaleun! great post! after a nine year silent run!

and only Queen Mary <HMS QUEEN MARY EXPLODES: with 1266 lost-18 survivors! and Tiger survived out those six battlecruisers.

Tiger missed Beatty's fire distribution order, as had Queen Mary, and Tiger engaged Moltke, instead of Seydlitz as Beatty intended.The German fire was accurate from the start, with Tiger hit six times by Moltke within the first seven minutes; although two of these hits temporarily disabled both 'Q' and 'X' turrets, <she was not seriously damaged.

[cheeky_kaleun]

The other way to look at it; the Soviets lost more men at Stalingrad than the Germans, do we call it a German victory?

After Beatty's battlecruisers got mauled, as soon as the main fleet enegagement between the Grand Fleet and the High Fleet commenced, Jellicoe's superior tactical intuition and hundreds of years of Royal Navy seamanship kicked in, in that manoeuvre when he remodelled his battleship divisions into one, single long battle-line, an extraordinary display of seamanship and command, crossing Scheer's T not once but *twice*!

It's is precisely why at the end of the engagement the Germans were fleeing for home and the Grand Fleet held the field. Scheer realised he'd been out-admiraled and if there had been another fleet engagement next day it, would have been lights out for the High Sees Fleet.

On a tangential note, I have nothing but respect for Beatty commanding his BCs from the van, from an open 'fiying bridge'. Just meters in front of him the huge 13.5 inch guns would have been roaring, shell splinters and shell would have been talling all around him, and yet he was commanding from the open bridge deck as if in an 18th-century cavalry charge. What a man.

[Randomizer]

I recently resurrected Koger's Jutland after several years of giving it a pass. It runs great and looks OK but the enduring issues with it remain and will probably never be addressed. In a spurt of optimism I dug into the "Battle Editor" to create some new scenarios but even this has proven frustrating.

Did you know that you cannot actually recreate the entire Battle of Jutland in the game? The longest scenario begins at 1548, almost 90-minutes after HMS Galatea spotted SMS B-109 and B-110 with the stopped SS N.J. Fjord. A lot happened in that 85 or so minutes that had a profound effect on the actual battle. It seemed like a good plan to recreate the battle from first contact but that cannot be done using the Battle Editor. The reason is that the available battle space is insufficient so the Grand Fleet and High Seas Fleet must be much closer than they actually were. If you achieve the necessary separation, one or the other (or both) vanish from the scenario when the game is run. If you include both battle fleets using the available, reduced battle space then the Grand Fleet has almost two-hours of extra daylight that Jellicoe did not have.

A game called Jutland, which is not capable of actually modelling the entire battle seems odd. I did recreate the October 1917 Battle of Lerwick, which plays out well for the most part but a scenario based on the interception of Scheer by Beatty's Grand Fleet during the April 1918 sortie to hit the Norwegian convoys turned out much less well. Major ships are lacking, in particular SMS Hindenburg and the large light cruisers HMS Glorious and Courageous and Ramillies. German crew quality, damage control and gunnery remain at 1916 levels but it's clear that by April 1918, the Grand Fleet was probably far superior in these areas.

Koger's pro-German bias is obvious in assorted yet subtle ways throughout the game.

It is good to see that after a century, the "German Victory" at Jutland has largely been consigned to the dustbin of history. Except of course on Internet war gaming forums. As a teen I read James Dunnigan's designer notes from his Jutland board game (played without a board!):

It may be said that the Germans won the battle but the British won the naval war.

... and this coloured my perceptions of the battle for decades since I never thought to ask "are not victories in battle supposed to facilitate victory in war?."

Fortunately new scholarship, Keith Yates, Andrew Gordon and Peter Hart to pull three immediately off the shelves, have done much to place the myth of High Seas Fleet victory to rest. Losses should never be the sole criteria by which naval battles are judged and for Jutland, this was the case for a century.

We still need a game that actually can model the entire battle. Steam and Iron: The Great war at Sea does an excellent job but without the eye candy. The flaws in Koger's Jutland are epic particularly when coupled with the pathetic computer AI.

Anyway, your videos look great so well done you.

Sorry for the text wall, The Battle of Jutland has been a passion of mine for some fifty-years now and I own a rather large and growing Jutland library.

-C

[cheeky_kaleun]

Originally Posted by Randomizer

Koger's pro-German bias is obvious in assorted yet subtle ways throughout the game.

Fortunately new scholarship, Keith Yates, Andrew Gordon and Peter Hart to pull three immediately off the shelves, have done much to place the myth of High Seas Fleet victory to rest. Losses should never be the sole criteria by which naval battles are judged and for Jutland, this was the case for a century.

It's difficult to say. There's no question that German fire control directors and night-fighting were superior, and they simply armoured their ships better. Battleships were really hard to sink, when you think of the pounding the QEs took and yet remained afloat.

An interesting scenario I just created and I'm playing. It's 1917ish and a large convoy of 10 cargo ships. The main escorts are two pre-dreadnoughts, HMS Canopus and HMS Ocean. There are two light cruiser groups (one of three light cruisers, one of two) scouting ahead, a line of 5 destroyers on each side of the convoy, and 5 armoured cruisers like Minotaur, Black Prince. The two pre-dreads are forming the van of the convoy line, a few kilometers ahead. Abreast of the pre-dreads, an armoured cruiser a few kilometers each side, and then the remaining three provide an outer defence.

70 kilometers north, four Queen Elizabeth are able to come to provide reinforcements if necessary.

On the German side, two light scouting groups each of a light cruiser (like SMS Niobe) leading three destroyers. The German battle line is three Nassau class dreadnoughts (which, if you will remember, were the first German dreadnought class) leading five Deutschland class pre-dreadnoughts.

I set the German side PO to "Aggressive", and when their scouting group saw the QEs, they immediately moved to engage them. The entire time I was crossing their T, blasting away at the front of their battleline, although the wing turrets of the Nassau class allow them to fire 6 x 28cm guns in the forward direction). Essentially, the distance meant my armoured cruisers arrived one-by-one from the south to assist. At the close of the scenario where I saved it, I'd sunk all three Nassau class dreads and two Deutschland pre-dreads. I lost two Queen Elizabeths and I decided to withdraw them from the battle and turn south. At the same time, the three remaining German pre-dreads decided to disengage and turn north. All-in-all I lost two dreadnoughts, one armoured cruiser and two light cruisers to their three dreads and two pre-dreads.

In the settings, I've switched accuracy to 100 (the starting setting of 10 is simply not historically accurate) and switched off catastrophic magazine explosions.

Is the above an accurate outcome? Surely four 15-inch gunned QEs which were crossing the T on 3 dread + 5 pre-dread the entire time the German line was steaming toward them, firing from 20km out all the way up to 4km distance, should have annihilated them? I think you're right about a certain German bias, although the Royal Navy did have issues.

Losing the two QEs made me so angry that I just re-jigged the scenario and added three Revenge-class battleships and two battlecruisers. Only a short way into the scenario but already done well, the AC's shooting is superb. HMS Black Prince and HMS Warrior sunk three German destroyers with their 9 inch guns at maximum range, and the Cordelia and Conquest sunk the Niobe, they went right up at point blank range on each side and just blasted the thing to hell.

There may be issues with the game, but it has awakened in me a very pressing interest in WW1 naval history, so for that I can only thank the developers, and I still enjoy the game, in spite of its limitations.

Below, the Duke of Edinburgh finishing off the SMS Niobe as Cordelia and Conquest move northeast to deal with some destroyers. I rather like my armoured cruisers.

Sorry for the text wall, The Battle of Jutland has been a passion of mine for some fifty-years now and I own a rather large and growing Jutland library

It was this video below that awakened my interest in Jutland, and reactivating the game. It also provoked my awe at Jellicoe's manoeuvre remodelling his cruising lines into a single battle line, amazing and I suspect the High Seas Fleet could not have pulled off something like that. When Scheer sailed over the horizon and saw this semi-circle of British battleships on the horizon all firing their guns at him... no wonder he turned.

[cheeky_kaleun]

Originally Posted by Randomizer

-C

All of this study and reading also makes me sad that the UK never kept a single dreadnought as a memorial. The only Jutland ship we have is the Caroline, and the only capital ship are the HMS Belfast and the nuclear sub we are going to keep as a museum.

My idea is that we should refloat the HMS Royal Oak. It served at Jutland and was sunk in World War 2. It's only under about 60 feet of water, we know it can be done because scrap dealers refloated almost the entire scuttled German fleet at Scapa Flow to carve up and sell off for the metal value.

Some say leave it alone, it's a war grave, but by now there are no dead bodies down there. I'd rather the sacrifice of Royal Navy officers and sailors be commemorated with a dreadnought battleship museum that young people can visit and learn about our naval history in the two world wars. They could even get two of the 15-inch guns working again and fire off blanks a few times a month, to demonstrate to visitors the vast power of these extraordinary machines.

So, I'm going to go ahead and buy a book on Jutland. What would you recommend? Obviously I'm new to all this but I have a pretty good grasp of the various ship types, the naval strategies involved, the various players, etc.

[Randomizer]

There's no question that German fire control directors... were superior

This is standard Jutland canon but factually incorrect. German stereoscopic rangefinders were superior in low-light conditions and found the range quicker but took far more operator training and proved very fatiguing for the range-takers. German range takers needed 20/20 vision in both eyes and so drew their operator pool from a relatively small manpower pool.

British coincidence rangefinders absorbed more light but were easier to use and did not require perfect operator vision. Coincidence range finding took longer but held the range better even in conditions of rapidly change rates of change in range.

By Jutland, only a handful of Grand Fleet capital ships had been fitted with the Arthur Pollen's "Argo Clock" fire control computer. This complex and advanced electro-mechanical computer was the basis of all subsequent naval fire control computers and automatically compensated for roll and firing ships' course in addition to providing continuous target updates and predictions. During the two battle fleet engagements, totalling about twelve minutes, the Grand Fleet out hit Scheer's battlefleet some 27-hits to 2. This little factoid is often dropped down the memory hole or excused away by High Seas Fleet apologists. By 1918 virtually all of the Grand Fleet ships armed with 13.5" guns and larger had been refitted with the Argo Clock. The German Navy had nothing comparable until the 1930's.

Jellicoe's neglect of night fighting was a deliberate, Admiralty-approved fleet doctrine. A close range knife-fight with torpedo craft would virtually always favour the inferior force and so were to be avoided. Jellicoe's refusal to close and closely pursue as the light failed must be judged on this doctrinal basis. If you're the superior force, it is completely irresponsible to squander that superiority for a nebulous, short-lived and probably nonexistent tactical advantage.

Note as well that in night fighting in the Channel it was usually the Dover Patrol and or Tyrwhitt's Dreadnoughts who tended to come out on top. The Royal Navy trained for night fighting in situations that would benefit the naval war as a whole. A more legitimate critique might be aimed at the initial reliance on searchlights instead of starshells but this was soon corrected where it mattered.

Jutland books? Six winners are:

Arthur Marder's From Dreadnought to Scapa Flow is hard to beat. I paid some $800 CAD for all five volumes but I think they are on Kindle for a fraction of that. Volume III is Jutland and After.

Peter Hart's Jutland 1916: Death in the Grey Wastes is an excellent single volume and benefits from sources that Marder did not have access to.

Keith Yates' Flawed Victory: Jutland 1916 makes a solid case for why the attrition model of victory used by most Jutland authors is a poor model for the actual battle.

John Campbell's Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting is a great technical resource if a bit hard to read in a sitting.

Andrew Gordon's Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command is an indispensable read if you want answers about the leadership of the Grand Fleet. Spoiler, he's pretty hard on David Beatty and others.

Recently reprinted is The Jutland Scandal by Admirals John Harper and Reginald Bacon. Originally published as The Harper Record in 1927 it was suppressed by David Beatty during his tour as First Sea Lord, it is a pretty damning indictment on his handling of the Battle Cruiser Fleet during the initial engagement and the Run to the South. It too fell down the Jutland memory hole until revived for the centenary of the battle.

Many people recommend Massie, Dreadnought and Castles of Steel but I do not. Robert Massie is a suburb narrator and the books present a wonderful narrative story but he is short on the technical and offers no useful original analysis whatsoever. If you only read one Jutland book, I would urge it not to be Castles of Steel. I own both and occasionally refer to one or the other for some minor detail relating to who's and where's but find them both lacking in substance compared to the titles above.

-C

[Randomizer]

YouTube Naval presenter Drachinifel has produced a three-part series on the battle. See his YouTube home page here:

Drachinifel

-C