Jutland And After May 1916 December 1916

This new book reviews critically recent studies of fire control, and describes the essentials of naval gunnery in the dreadnought era.With a foreword by Professor Andrew Lambert, it shows how, in 1913, the Admiralty rejected Arthur Pollen's Argo system for the Dreyer fire control tables.

The legendary hidden report on the Royal Navy’s failures at the WWI Battle of Jutland is revealed for the first time in this transcribed edition. Jutland, the largest naval battle of the First World War, was the most controversial engagement in the Royal Navy’s history. Falling well short of the total victory expected by the public, it sparked fierce debate among senior naval officers, many of whom had been directly involved in the battle. The first attempt to produce an objective record was delayed and heavily censored. That report was followed by a no-holds-barred critique of the fleet’s performance intended for training purposes at the Naval Staff College. This became the now-infamous Naval Staff Appreciation, which was deemed too damaging to be published. All proof copies were ordered destroyed. Despite the orders, however, a few copies survived. Now this long-suppressed work is finally revealed in this edition featuring expert modern commentary and explanatory notes.

During the first two years of World War I, Germany struggled to overcome a crippling British blockade of its mercantile shipping lanes. With only sixteen dreadnought-class battleships compared to the renowned British Royal Navy's twenty-eight, the German High Seas Fleet stood little chance of winning a direct fight. The Germans staged raids in the North Sea and bombarded English coasts in an attempt to lure small British squadrons into open water where they could be destroyed by submarines and surface boats. After months of skirmishes, conflict erupted on May 31, 1916, in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark, in what would become the most formidable battle in the history of the Royal Navy. In Jutland, international scholars reassess the strategies and tactics employed by the combatants as well as the political and military consequences of their actions. Most previous English-language military analysis has focused on British admiral Sir John Jellicoe, who was widely criticized for excessive caution and for allowing German vice admiral Reinhard Scheer to escape; but the contributors to this volume engage the German perspective, evaluating Scheer's decisions and his skill in preserving his fleet and escaping Britain's superior force. Together, the contributors lucidly demonstrate how both sides suffered from leadership that failed to move beyond outdated strategies of limited war between navies and to embrace the total war approach that came to dominate the twentieth century. The contributors also examine the role of memory, comparing the way the battle has been portrayed in England and Germany. An authoritative collection of scholarship, Jutland serves as an essential reappraisal of this seminal event in twentieth-century naval history.