Admiral Jellicoe may well have been the man who in Churchills words could have “lost the war in an afternoon,” but he was also the man who to a great extent could have won it.

The moment when Jellicoe’s battle fleet turned away from the massed torpedo attack of the German destroyers was the moment when any possibility of an overwhelming victory was lost. In World War II it was accepted that in order to “comb the tracks” of torpedoes the best move was to turn toward them

28 (thus presenting a narrow profile to attack). In this way the same limited profile was presented, but the range was shortened: the enemy was not allowed to make good an escape.

To be fair to Admiral Jellicoe, in turning away from the torpedoes, he did no more than was accepted as standard practice at the time by the Admiralty. The turn away was of course faulty tactical thinking, for it was a purely defensive measure, whereas the turn toward, being offensive, is clearly a better solution. In this respect alone "Admiral Jellicoe must incur some of the responsibility for the unsatisfactory outcome of Jutland. The “turn-away” countermeasure against torpedo attack, which had been accepted by the Admiralty, was his own proposal.*

 

*Letter from Commander-in-Chief to Admiralty, October 30, 1914-

 

The two other factors which emerge with clarity from an examination of the battle are the defective quality of British ammunition—not the gunnery itself—and the defective quality of the battle cruiser design.

On the gray day when the two greatest fleets in the world met in the unfriendly, muddy waters of the North Sea, the gunnery of the British fleet, and particularly of the battle cruisers, was of a high standard. As they knifed through the mist the lean ships under Beattys command hit their opponents time and time again. The British sailors cheered as they saw—like fireworks bursting on a peaceful night—the orange glows flower and spread on the decks of their German opponents. Those sudden stars, had they but known it, were little to cheer about. They were shells failing to penetrate, shells that were doing little more than local damage or killing exposed personnel.

The successful shell in naval warfare is the one whose hit may never even be seen by the successful gunnery officer— which slices like a screaming drill through armor plate to explode inside a vessel and wound her mortally. It was with shells like these that the German High Seas Fleet hit the Grand Fleet. It was a shell or a salvo with this deep piercing ability that took the lives of Admiral Hood and his men.

There was also “something wrong with our bloody ships,” something that no amount of superior seamanship or morale (two qualities which the British had in full measure over their opponents) could counterbalance. The decks and turrets of the British battle cruisers were not sufficiently armored to withstand the plunging fire of modem armor-piercing shells.

In the past, naval actions had usually been fought at comparatively close ranges. In such circumstances it was essential that the sides of heavy ships should be well protected, for the flattish trajectory of the shells meant that their point of impact was likely to be the side of the opposing vessel. By the time that Jutland was fought, close-quarter engagements had become a thing of the past. The range at which most of the battle cruiser action was carried out was roughly seven and a half miles.*

 

*In the action against Bismarck the Hood opened fire at nearly double this range—25,000 yards

 

Shells striking the target at such a distance are inevitably plummeting or plunging on to their objective, and the armoring of the sides has become of less importance. It is the deck area which requires heavy protection. Furthermore, with the growth of the modem warship, the beam had considerably increased, thus making the deck area a much larger target than before. Defective design was the cause of the British losses in battle cruisers at Jutland. This is a point which can hardly be disputed, and it is one which Jellicoe made in his dispatch: “The facts which contributed to the British losses were, first, the indifferent armour protection of our battle-cruisers, particularly as regards turret armour and deck plating. . . .”

The ship that went down the ways on August 22, 1918, inherited the defects of her ancestry. It was over two years since the Battle of Jutland, but the lessons which the battle should have taught had not been completely incorporated in her design. A few years later experts were to draw attention to the fact that the Hood suffered from some of the same defects which had accounted for the loss of the battle cruisers Indefatigable, Queen Mary, and Invincible. The solution was to increase the weight of her deck armor. For reasons which we will see, this was never done.

For over twenty years the “Mighty Hood”—as she was known to generations of sailors—suffered from a congenital weakness. The fault lay in her design—but she had been designed before Jutland. So for that matter had the German warships which took part in that action. In their case, though, Admiral von Tirpitz had stipulated that he would accept no design from his naval architects which was unable to pass a number of stringent and exhaustive tests.