77 Admiral Bacon had developed a plan for a combined operations attack on the Flanders batteries with Sir Douglas Haig’s staff. The operation never took place and maybe, in the form it was put forward, might not have succeeded, but it became the basis for the later and famous Zeebrugge raid with which Admiral Roger Keyes is now associated.
78 Colvin, p224.
79 Colvin, Sir Edward Carson’s biographer, gives some illuminating examples of how Lloyd George would, as is so often done in the business world, undercut the positions of ‘direct reports’. Lloyd George had told Sir Douglas Haig at one War Cabinet meeting in 1917 that he did not agree with the general’s assessment as he had ‘a letter here from a subaltern in the trenches which gives an entirely different opinion’ (Colvin, p261). He did the same with Jellicoe, talking behind the Admiralty’s backs with officers like Dewar or Henderson, both brilliant minds, but in a manner that was lacking in integrity. In the same way, the prime minister’s secretaries would often eat in the canteen underneath the Admiralty to pick up gossip. When he disagreed with Generals Sir Douglas Haig and Sir William Robertson over the proposed attacks through the Julian Alps or his idea to capture Jerusalem, Lloyd George said he would ask the opinions of Sir Henry Wilson and Sir John French on whether they thought what he proposed could be done (Colvin, p281). So impressed was the prime minister with General Nivelle that he even put British troops under his command, without bothering to so much as consult Haig.
80 Colvin, p274.
81 Memorandum, Jellicoe to McKenna, 24 February 1909, BL Add MSS 48990.
82 Jellicoe, The Submarine Peril, p118.
83 Peter Rowland, Lloyd George (1975), p799, quoted in Macfarlane.
84 Colvin, p226.
85 Quoted in Colvin, p265.
86 Macfarlane, p142, quoting Haig, diary entry, 20 June 1917, NLS, Acc 3155, 114.
87 Colvin, p268.
88 Ibid.
89 Quoted from Bacon, Dover Patrol, in Macfarlane, p113.
90 Memorandum, Jellicoe to Keyes, 14 December 1917.
91 Keyes, Naval Memoirs, vol II, p159.
92 Ronald Handley, The Dover Patrol Memorial (Dover, 1998), pp8–9.
93 Letter Jellicoe to Geddes, 15 Dec 1917, NA, ADM 116/1806.
94 Jellicoe, Account of Circumstances of Dismissal, BL, Add MSS 49039.
95 Ibid.
96 Draft Statement, Geddes, 29 April 1918.
97 Draft Statement, Undated, NA, ADM 116/1806; part of the Geddes Papers outlining possible answers for Lloyd George for parliamentary question time.
98 War Cabinet papers, 21 February 1917, BL, ADM 1/8480.
99 Letter, Jellicoe to Beatty, 12 April 1917, Temple Patterson, TIP, vol 2, p156.
100 Journals and Letters of Reginald, Viscount Esher, vol 4, p115, quoted in Macfarlane.
101 Haig, diary entry, 20 June 1917, p114, NLS, Acc 3155.113.
102 Ibid.
103 Beaverbrook, Men and Power 1917–1918 (1956), p166, quoted in Macfarlane, p144.
104 Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 6 March 1918. The speech at the Constitutional Club was made in November 1917.
105 Brownrigg, pp67–8; see also Temple Patterson, Jellicoe, p154.
106 Letter, Jellicoe to Beatty, 30 June 1917, Temple Patterson, TJP, vol 2, p173.
107 Quoted, Thompson, Northcliffe, xii.
108 Ibid.
109 According to Massie the words (‘You kill him…’) are what ‘… the Prime Minister supposedly said to Northcliffe regarding the admiral’ (see Massie, p740).
110 Daily Mail, Lovat Fraser, 29 January 1917.
111 Daily Mail, 15 May 1917.
112 Daily Mail, 18 May 1917.
113 Daily Mail, 6 July 1917.
114 Daily Mail, 22 October 1917.
115 Daily Mail, 19 October 1917.
116 Daily Mail, 25 October 1917.
117 Daily Mail, 1 November 1917.
118 The model is now in the collection of the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth. In June 2011 the model took pride of place on the head table of a formal dinner at the museum to celebrate 100 years since its founding. Guests included HRH The Princess Royal and John McCarthy, a great American friend from Geneva whose mother, the late Lily Lambert McCarthy CBE, donated many of the Nelson artefacts and memorabilia – as well as the famous Fueger portrait of Nelson in full dress uniform – to the NMRN and which are exhibited in the Lambert McCarthy Nelson Gallery.
119 Massie, p743.
120 Ibid.
121 Jameson, The Fleet that Jack built, p204.
122 Geddes, p242.
123 Massie, p744.
124 Ibid.
125 Ibid.
126 Memorandum, Sea Lords to Geddes, 2 January 1918, NA, ADM 116/1807.
127 Jellicoe, ‘Account of Circumstances of Dismissal’, BL, Add MSS 49039.
128 Winton, p262.
129 Colvin, p264.
130 J Lee Thompson, p131, quoted in Macfarlane, p165.
131 Colvin, p162; also in H Montgomery Hyde, Carson, The Life of Sir Edward Carson, Lord Carson of Duncairn (London, 1953).
132 On the occasion of Lloyd George’s breakfast outburst, Carson took great pleasure in then preparing a list of seventy such officers within the Admiralty who had previous sea experience.
133 Wemyss, p370.
134 Ibid.
135 Black, p219.
136 Letter, Madden to Jellicoe, 27 December 1917, BL MSS 49039.
137 Gordon, The Rules of the Game, p531.
138 Letter, Sims to Jellicoe, 29 Dec 1917, BL, Add MSS 49036.
139 Jameson, p237.
140 Ibid, p238.
12 From Kiel to Scapa Flow
1 Gibson and Harper, p279.
2 Ibid, p294.
3 Wolz, From Imperial Splendour, p119.
4 HMS Penn and HMS Oracle. The other British casualty was HMS Falmouth, torpedoed by U.66 on the way back after the fleets failed to engage.
5 Gibson and Harper, p298.
6 Ibid, p322.
7 Naval Mutinies, p42.
8 Horn, p235.
9 Schubert and Gibson, p26.
10 Ibid, p42.
11 Scheer, p293.
12 Horn, p245.
13 Under Article XXI.
14 The detailed orders for the guard ship formation was called Plan ZZ. I understand it means the very last operation, but I could not hold back a slight chuckle. A sense of humour?
15 Warner, p183.
16 Admiral Sir Charles Madden to Jellicoe, 29 November 1919.
17 Van der Vat, The Grand Scuttle, p167.
18 The text is quoted differently by several authors: see Massie, p787, van der Vat, p170, etc.
19 Howarth, The Dreadnoughts, p168.
20 Van der Vat, The Grand Scuttle, pp180-l.
21 Howarth, p168.
22 For a fascinating account of Ernest Cox’s story, see Tony Booth’s Cox’s Navy.
13 Counting Up After the Battle
1 Out-of-action tonnage is defined as the total cumulative displacement of each individual ship while still in dry dock.
2 When many of the German ships were finally inspected at close quarters, what impressed British officers and officials was the honeycomb of watertight compartments (see Hough, pp273–4 quoting an officer inspecting the Friedrich der Größe after salvaging; quote in Temple Patterson, pp42–3).
3 Jellicoe Biographical Notes, British Library Online.
4 Flight Lieutenant Frederick Rutland managed to fly his Short seaplane to within 600m of Hipper’s ships.
5 Admiral Fisher once calculated thecostofa naval officer’s education at £700 per annum, limiting this career path to a possible 300,000 families in the UK. ‘Surely we are drawing our Nelsons from too narrow a class’ was his conclusion. With the advent of both new types of vessel as well as new or dramatically improved technologies, as examples, the torpedo, the submarine, long-range gunnery, wireless telegraphy etc, there was an urgent concomitant need for both wider and dee
per education.
6 Gibson and Harper, pp242–3. The claim is that German ships fired 3,597 heavy shells with 120 hits while the British fired 4,598 shells with 100 hits, Thirty-seven of the German hits (ie 30 per cent) are actually counted from the fire upon three British ships (Warrior, Defence and Black Prince) that were at extremely short range and without reply. No hits were allotted to the sinking of Wiesbaden (which should have been analysed in the same manner as the cases of Warrior, Defence and Black Prince, while nine of Detfflinger’s twenty-six hits were allocated to smaller calibres and, therefore, discounted. With these changes, they reach a final figure of eighty-eight German hits (versus the original 120 claimed) and a comparative rate of 2.44 per cent vs 2.17 per cent for the British. See also Campbell, Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting.
7 Gibson and Harper, p242. See also ‘Summary of British Gunnery Results’, Yates, p296.
8 Jellicoe Autobiographical Notes, British Library Online.
9 For some differing points of view, see Temple Patterson, Jellicoe Papers, vol 1, pp188–9. Beatty to Jellicoe: ‘I should very much like to have a yarn with you about the rapidity of fire. I feel very strongly on this subject and think we should endeavour to quicken up our firing … The Germans certainly do fire 5 to our 2, which would be very deuce if we were unlucky …’ (21 November 1915). Jellicoe to Beatty: ‘I am all for rapidity of fire, but my only fear is that ships may break into rapid fire too soon, as Queen Mary I think did. It’s alright even if not hitting if short, but no use if over…’. (23 November 1915). [Author’s note: Of course, this is exactly what happened with the initial British battle-cruiser fire in the run to the south. The first shots were massive ‘longs’]. Nevertheless, Jellicoe summed up his position in a letter to Jackson days before the battle (28 May, Temple Patterson, p249): ‘At all ranges, the early development of accurate rapid fire is the object’ [author’s italics].
10 Although, as he points out, it was possibly because of Alexander Grant’s refusal to obey these directives, that Lion survived the fate that Invincible, Queen Mary and Indefatigable did not (see Gordon, p47).
11 Padfield, Maritime Dominion, p155.
12 Andrew Lambert, quoted from the TV programme, A Clash of Dreadnoughts.
13 James, p161. Accuracy increasingly depended on sophisticated fire-control arrangements, like centralised director-controlled fire. Neptune was fitted with the prototype director system in 1911, even though there was considerable opposition to the scheme (including from Admiral Sir Francis Bridgeman, whose flag was on Neptune). Churchill intervened and two ships, Orion and Thunderer, one with, one without the system, were pitted against each other in variable weather conditions. The results said Jellicoe ‘proved most conclusively the superiority of the Director System.
14 The German navy standard torpedo, the G.7, was not able to cover 15,000yds, although Jellicoe, days before Jutland, had said he had received reliable information to suggest that the Germans had improved the torpedo so that it i) could reach this distance, and ii) would not leave a telltale wake of bubbles on the surface (see Temple Patterson, TJP). See also Sueter, Submarines, Boats, Mines and Torpedoes, chart on p299 on the evolution of the torpedo between 1876 and 1903. The chart includes Whitehead and Schwarzkopf models (see Brown, Torpedoes at Jutland).
15 Temple Patterson, Jellicoe, p100.
16 Marder, FTDTSF, vol 3, p5.
17 Hough, p290, quoting Korvettenkapitän Friedrich Forstmeier, Marine Rundschau, June 1966.
18 Churchill, p112.
19 Hughes, Fleet Tactics, pp79–80.
20 Temple Patterson, TJP, vol 1, pp243–53.
21 ‘The Commander-in-Chief controls the whole battle fleet before deployment and on deployment except in the case of low visibility mentioned in paragraph 4, Section VI. 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 will be still further reduced.’ (see Golding, p13).
22 Ibid, p243.
23 Ibid, p244.
24 Ibid, p250.
25 Ibid, p244.
26 Ibid, p244.
27 Ibid, p249.
28 Ibid, p189.
29 Ibid, p95. Letter: Fisher to Jellicoe, 17 Nov 1914.
30 Jellicoe differed from his predecessor, George Callaghan, on destroyer tactics. Unlike Callaghan, who had strongly endorsed divisional attack and the offensive use of destroyers, Jellicoe believed the primary role of destroyers was the protection of the battleship fleet. Most of the British destroyers’ torpedo launches took place at night (when centralised command was non-existent), while the majority of German destroyer-flotilla torpedo launches (in fact more than 80 per cent of them) took place in daylight as a result of centralised command decisions. But at one earlier point in his career, Jellicoe had supported independent and more aggressive destroyer action (see Temple Patterson, vol I, p178, Beatty to Jellicoe, 12 Aug 1915).
31 Ibid, p245.
32 Rawson, p242.
33 Marder, FTDTSF, vol 3, p225, quoting Beatty, GFBOs.
34 Jellicoe, The Grand Fleet, quoted Rawson, p149.
35 Marder, FTDTSF, vol 3, p213.
36 Gordon, p517; Temple Patterson, TJP, vol 2, pp47ff.
37 Ibid, p518.
38 Ibid.
39 Gordon, p166, ‘Military Transformation in Long Periods of Peace’, in Williamson Murray and Richard Sinnreich (eds), The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
40 Massie, p746.
41 Dreyer, Sea Heritage, pp223–4.
42 Chalmers, p277.
43 Gibson and Harper, pp240-l.
44 As Arthur Marder put it: ‘It seems to me that the criticism of Jellicoe’s tactics, even when a prima facie case can be made (notably with regard to Jellicoe’s turn-away in the face of flotilla attack), ignores the basic principle of war, namely, that tactics are governed by strategy. That is, battles are ancillary to the main strategy of war. Jellicoe’s primary object was the retention of command of the sea, and this was accomplished. His secondary object was the destruction of the High Seas Fleet; it was highly desirable, but not essential’ (Marder’s italics; see Gibson and Harper, p245, quote from Marder, vol 3, p185).
45 Jellicoe, The Grand Fleet, p421.
46 Dreyer, Sea Heritage, p205.
47 By August 1916 around eighty-four had been delivered (see Sumida, ‘A Matter of Timing’, p116).
48 Jellicoe, The Grand Fleet, p421, regarding the 25ft and 30ft Barr and Stroud range-finders.
49 Sumida, p117.
50 Dreyer to Jellicoe, 25 July 1916.
51 Steel and Hart, p428, quoting Rheinhard Scheer.
52 Sumida, ‘AMatter of Timing’, p122.
53 Ibid, p118.
54 Ibid, p217.
55 Beatty to Admiralty, 14 July 1916, Naval Staff Monograph, Home Waters: From June 1916 to November 1916, p5.
56 Marder, FTDTSF, vol 3, p217.
57 James, Fisher, p69.
58 Marder, FTDTSF, vol 3, p216.
59 Rawson, p180.
14 The Controversy: An Unfinished Battle
1 Ranft, TBP, vol 2, p417, quoting W S Chalmers, Life and Letters of David, Earl Beatty.
2 Bennett, p239.
3 Roskill, The Last Naval Hero, p322.
4 Bachrach, p41.
5 Yates, p266.
6 Yates, p259.
7 Temple Patterson, TJP, vol 2, p464.
8 Ibid, p464.
9 Winton, p282.
10 Temple Patterson, Jellicoe, pp230-l. The passage is quoted in full at the end of Chapter 7 of this book.
11 Ranft, TBP, vol 2, p443.
12 Ibid, p443.
13 Temple Patterson, TJP, vol 2, p399; also refers to Chatfield’s comments about ‘a tone of victory’.
14 Jellicoe ‘had hitherto adhered to his view that he ought not to re
ad it (Harper’s Report), now asked to see his foreword…’ (see Temple Patterson, Jellicoe, p233). And Winton: ‘When he first commissioned the report, Wemyss had intended that neither Jellicoe nor Beatty should read it before publication, and Jellicoe certainly agreed with this stipulation. But the moment he arrived back in England Jellicoe began to hear rumours that all was not well with the record’. Gough (p257) pointed out that Jellicoe already knew before sailing to New Zealand that Beatty ‘intended to make changes’.
15 Temple Patterson, TJP, vol 2, p486. One example is Harper’s letter to the Secretary of the Admiralty, dated 4 November 1920.
16 Gough, Historical Dreadnoughts, p257.
17 Harper left copies of his papers both with the Jellicoe family, as well as a set revised in 1928 with the United Services Institution, and the original with the Historical Section of the Committee for Imperial Defence.
18 What did become available in 1927 was another HMSO publication called the ‘Reproduction of the Record of the battle of Jutland, prepared by Captain JET Harper and other officers by direction of the Admiralty in 1919–1920’. This was a faithful reprinting of the March 1920 printer’s proof, but this of course already included alterations to Harper’s original text.
19 Harper.
20 Roskill, The Last Naval Hero, p324.
21 Temple Patterson, Jellicoe, p235.
22 Roskill, p332.
23 Dewar, The Navy Within, p242.
24 Corbett had been critical of both the Naval Staff Appreciation and the subsequent Narrative. He wrote about the former to Jellicoe in March 1922: ‘I have now got well into the battle (of Jutland) and find, so far as I have got… that my reading of the whole affair differs materially from the “Staff Appreciation”. After I had read it – for they were good enough to let me have a copy – it appears to me that merely as a piece of history it ought not to go out with the Admiralty imprimatur’, Add MSS 49037, ff172–3,10 March 1922 (see Temple Patterson, TJP, vol II, pp413–15).
25 Temple Patterson, Jellicoe, p237.
26 Ibid, p236.
27 On German ships the log-keeping system was also an issue. After Lowestoft, Hase introduced a gunnery record as none had existed before: ‘It was the custom in our Navy that no gunnery-logs be kept, as every man had to devote all his energies to the action itself’. Hase’s gunnery records from Anna and Bertha turrets are the basis for Detfflinger’s account of the battle as each shot was recorded for time (to within ten seconds), elevation and direction.
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