Battlecruisers

[Nick Sumner]

That's a good point about the number of guns bought to bear on the smaller German force by the larger British force being a factor.

 

That's the same diagram in Campbell, it shows hits forward of the conning tower which seems to indicate that British correction (lead) was adequate.

 

"Sorry Rich I've no idea" was merely my answer to Tiornu's question as I consider myself under-informed as to the between wars changes in FC.

 

Sounds to me like you have a pretty firm opinion that the German fire control system was unusually demanding.

 

I've no opinions of my own I simply pinch other peoples.

 

Seriously though, its my understanding that the British system was easier to use under the many strains of combat. I'm not saying that this was the sole factor in the drop in the number of hits obtained by the Germans but I don't think it can be entirely discounted either.

 

[Edited by Nick Sumner (22 Nov 2004).]

[Tiornu]

Usually when people discuss the greater difficulty involved in German FC, they are speaking specifically to the matter of rangefinders. The British used coincident types, and the Germans used steroscopic. Between the wars, there was a wholesale flight among the world's navies from coincidence to stereoscopic equipment. The British were the only naval power to stick with coincidence RFs in their new battleships. There is no debate about which system is easier to use. The point I was inquiring towards is this--I believe the evolution of naval equipment showed that the commitment to more demanding equipment (stereo) was more than justified by the increase capability that the equipment offered--at least, in the opinion of most major navies.

Of course, this was all gestating in my brain multiple hours ago, so I have no idea if it was actually leading anywhere.

[Paul F Jungnitsch]

Originally posted by Tiornu:

Usually when people discuss the greater difficulty involved in German FC, they are speaking specifically to the matter of rangefinders. The British used coincident types, and the Germans used steroscopic.

 

That is what I remember reading, and the argument was that in peacetime trials the stereoscopic was more accurate, but in an actual battle as the operators got tired/stressed they tended to lose stereoscopic ability. Any truth to this? Rangefinders in tanks did switch from stereoscopic back to coincidence.

[Tiornu]

At short ranges, there's not much advantage to stereo equipment, so I'm not surprised that tanks would do as well with coincidence optics. Stereoscopic RFs come into there own atlong range and in limited lighting.

[Guest Sargent]

What kind of rangefinder they had wasn't the factor that affected the shooting. It was the good, old-fashioned 'Weather Gage.' Early in the BC fight the Brits were firing into haze and consistently overestimated the range to SG1, the Germans were firing into nice sharp silhouettes against a relatively clear sky.

 

By the time the GF got into action, they were in the haze and the Germans were silhouetted by the setting sun.

 

Between the haze, the fog, and the gunsmoke, many ships of the GF never got a good firing solution (or even recognized what happened when the HSF did their 'turnaway'); all the HSF could see was muzzle flashes in a cloud bank, naturally their shooting was crap at that stage.

 

Go to a target range and fire with the sun behind you and then fire looking directly into it. If the range officer allows, chuck in a smoke grenade to liven things up. Sargent's First Maxim of Shooting: "Ya cain't hit whut ya cain't see."

[Paul F Jungnitsch]

Originally posted by Tiornu:

At short ranges, there's not much advantage to stereo equipment, so I'm not surprised that tanks would do as well with coincidence optics.

 

Also a lot more tankers (presumably) would need to be able to use a stereoscopic rangefinder than sailors, so it would be easier to find enough people with good stereoscopic vision to man the ship rangefinders. However one reason I've seen mentioned for dropping the stereoscopic rangefinders from the M48 was not just finding people with the ability, but that even people with the ability developed headaches after prolonged use, which backs up 'the difficulties in prolonged naval battles' argument (not necessarily applicable to this battle, agreed).

 

The British were the only naval power to stick with coincidence RFs in their new battleships.

 

Found some info on why here on post WWI testing using captured German equipment, pointing to other reasons again:

ADM 186/251:

Progress in Gunnery Material, 1921

 

15ft rangefinders

 

the general conclusion is that the coincidence instruments are more accurate than the stereoscopic rangefinder, and the greatest accuracy throughout the trial was obtained from the 15 ft. F.T.24.

 

30 ft rangefinders

 

"2) The 30 ft. coincidence rangefinders are more accurate :-

(a) When the visibility is good.

( When taking “ snap ” ranges.

© When taking initial ranges.

 

(3) The 30 ft. stereoscopic rangefinders are more accurate :-

(d) In poor visibility or failing light.

(e) When affected by vibration."

 

Later dude

[Manu]

Originally posted by Sargent:

Go to a target range and fire with the sun behind you and then fire looking directly into it. If the range officer allows, chuck in a smoke grenade to liven things up. Sargent's First Maxim of Shooting: "Ya cain't hit whut ya cain't see."[/i]

 

Unless you're of the 'if a bush moves, fire 'till there's no bush left' school of marskmanship - and somewhat lucky.

[larrikin]

Originally posted by Manu:

Unless you're of the 'if a bush moves, fire 'till there's no bush left' school of marskmanship - and somewhat lucky.

 

According to legend, that is exactly how the US military works.

[DB]

Originally posted by Tiornu:

At short ranges, there's not much advantage to stereo equipment, so I'm not surprised that tanks would do as well with coincidence optics. Stereoscopic RFs come into there own atlong range and in limited lighting.

 

Commander George von Hase, Derfflinger's Gunnery Officer:

The range-takers were completely overwhelmed by the first view of the enemy monsters. Each one saw the enemy ship magnified 23 times in his instrument! Their minds were at first concentrated on the appearance of the enemy. They tried to ascertain who their enemy was. And so, when when the order came to suddenly open fire they had not accurately fixed the estimated range. It cannot be put down to incapacity, for throughout the remainder of the action the range-takers did their work excellently. Nor can it be put down to the inefficiency of our instruments; on the contrary our Zeiss stereoscopic finders worked admirably throughout.

(This from Jutland 1916, Nigel Steel & Peter Hart, Cassell, 2003)

 

There are several other quotes from von Hase in the book, which effectively indicate that the considerable damage done to Derfflinger during the day were primarily responsible for his ship's decreasing effectiveness. (Not even to mention the deaths or incapacitation of the entire crews of the Caesar and Dora turrets.)

 

This, however, on the visibility at 7:13 pm, or later:

 

I looked toward the enemy through my periscope. Their salvoes were still bursting around us, but we could scarcely see anything of the enemy [...] All we could see was the great reddish-gold flames spurting from the guns. The ship's hulls we saw but rarely. I had the range of the flames measured. That was the only possible means of establishing the enemy's range.

 

At this point they were firing towards the East, so it would have been very dark indeed.

 

(By the way, what do people think of this book, it's the only one I've got covering jutland in any detail and so I'm loath to trust it too much.)

 

David

 

[Edit: Can't, it seems, get the guy's name right twice.]

 

[Edited by DB (23 Nov 2004).]

[Guest aevans]

Well, von Hase figures prominently in about every serious book that quotes participants' accounts. Of those that were in a position to see most of the action, he seems to be about the most thoughtful and truthful writer on either side, IMO, though a note of patriotic fervor does intrude from time to time. (Which is excusable, considering that of all the accounts I've read, not one is entirely without appeals to partisan emotion, and no one -- including those witness to, or even participant in, the massive calamities of entire ships literally going up in smoke -- seems to have been disillusioned by the humanitarian catastrophe of the battle.)

 

I think the most that can be said is that the opposing leaders seem to have understood their opposite numbers' psychologies remarkably well, but that the intersection of technological and human factors totally suprised those that expected "Der Tag"/"Him Coming Out" to be solely a test of will and skill.

[DB]

Originally posted by aevans:

[snip]

I think the most that can be said is that the opposing leaders seem to have understood their opposite numbers' psychologies remarkably well, but that the intersection of technological and human factors totally suprised those that expected "Der Tag"/"Him Coming Out" to be solely a test of will and skill.

 

Interesting. I'm not sure that "Jutland 1916" follows that train of thought. It's conscious aim it to describe what actually happened, rather than attempting to second-guess what-might-have-beens, or what-should-have-beens. I don't know enough to decide whether it achieves this.

 

The authors do stray from "just the facts, ma'am" on occasion - stating that the survival of Derfflinger after the battering she received was due to superior design, although they had been banging on about the lessons learned by the Germans after Dogger Bank concerning "stale" cordite and flash-fire prevention.

 

It may have been true that Derfflinger was a superior design, but there is no evidence presented in the book to that effect.

 

The over-riding message that I got from the book was that it was rather lucky for the Grand Fleet that they did not stumble over the High Seas Fleet during the night. The Germans seemed to have been much better at reacting aggressively to sightings during the night.

 

David

[istvan47]

I would point a difference between the british and hte german battlecruisers of WWI. The british were meant to hunt the armoured cruisers and by that they should be very fast and quite well armed. The armour was only the last worryng. enough t otake an armoured cruised hit, but not more. The complains about the unability for these costly vessels to fight in a first line battle was right. But not all the battlecruisers were so. The germans were meant to fight NOT the armoured cruisers but rather other BATTLECRUISERS. What's this? It means that while being slower and slighty less armed than the more exuberant brititsh vesssels, the german were so because they had a very solid structure and a lot od armour. So they could take hits from the battlecruisers (and the battleship). Curiosely, they hadn't the deck so armoured like the british but at jutlands the long range shots were not so many becasue the poor viisbility (becasue the kind of engines, all with carbon).

The fact remains, that while the british blowns one after the other, the german vessel shown, despite the heavier caliber of the RN (but it seems that the ammo tended to explode before the time)a far greater survaibility and a high combat efficency, expecially when faced with the british battlecruisers.

 

So, the mosr equilibrated and realisitc design of german types was the more successful and the critics and complains were more for the british kind of battlecruiser, a ship meant to hunt the armoured cruisers and not the similar ships.

 

Another thing to say: The jutland was the sunset boulevard both for the armoured cruisers (the brits had dozens but after that battle in whic they loose one for every of their last tree class of armoured cruisers, they didn't use them much longer in a first line) and the kynd of unit thinked to hunt it, the battlecruiser. So, it was a UNIC case in which both the weapon of older generation and the antidot of the further gen. were obnubilate by the real war results.

[Tiornu]

We must be careful, in considering Jutland, to distinguish between the results of design decisions and the results of operational concerns. The British battlecruisers were exposed to German shells with genuine AP ability, while being outfitted with dangerous and carelessly handled propellant. German battlecruisers were exposed to shells that exploded before penetrating thick armor, and their propellant was much less hazardous. If we change history and give the British a more German-ish ammo situation, then the Germans leave three more capital ships on the bottom of the North Sea while British BC losses are cut to one ship at most. If we then give the Germans a British ammo situation, then who knows...?

German BCs were better protected, but they were weakly armed. British priorities were opposite.

[Yama]

Originally posted by Tiornu:

We must be careful, in considering Jutland, to distinguish between the results of design decisions and the results of operational concerns. The British battlecruisers were exposed to German shells with genuine AP ability, while being outfitted with dangerous and carelessly handled propellant. German battlecruisers were exposed to shells that exploded before penetrating thick armor, and their propellant was much less hazardous. If we change history and give the British a more German-ish ammo situation, then the Germans leave three more capital ships on the bottom of the North Sea while British BC losses are cut to one ship at most. If we then give the Germans a British ammo situation, then who knows...?

German BCs were better protected, but they were weakly armed. British priorities were opposite.

 

I'd like to point out that you cannot absolutely know all potential hazard factors before battle exposes them (often in hard way). Of course one should take every effort to find them before it costs you in combat, but you can never be absolutely sure; and in light of that, better protected ships have more 'safety margin' against unforeseen screw-ups. It's all about percentages.

[istvan47]

i don't take the point. The design of the two kind of battlecruisers were cleary different, regardless of the kind of ammo. The germanas were meant as anti-battlecruisers and the armour was meant to do this, even if the orizontal decks were apparently weaker than the british. The british ships were meant as cruiser-hunters and nothing more. After the WWI the degins were meant effectively to fight the other heavy vessels of the same types not the lower class vessels. The british design wasn't simply meant to withstand with a very heavy caliber, despite the quality of the ammo is important, while the germans thinked to counter the others battlecruisers and battleships. They had the conception of fast battleship before than any other

[Guest aevans]

DB,

 

Allow me to expand on my comments a little bit. When I speak of the opponents understanding each others' psychologies, I'm basically stating that their actions demonstrated that they knew what their enemies would do under certain circumstances, and behaved accordingly. Hipper knew that if he dangled his BCs in front of Beatty's nose, Beatty would chase him. Beatty knew that if he and the 5th Battle Squadron turned tail in the face of Hipper and the rest of the High Seas Fleet, Hipper and Scheer would give chase in turn. Scheer knew that Jellicoe, given a chance to shoot it out battleship to schlachtschiff, would be happy to do so. Jellicoe knew that Scheer would, in a general fleet engagement, come at him with a massed destroyer torpedo attack. Scheer knew that if he did mount such an attack, Jellicoe would turn away, rather than steam on or turn into the attack. (He didn't need to know that Jellicoe had in fact determined to do so almost two years before the battle, and he probably didn't know it -- he well understood the fleet-in-being concept and Jellicoe's strategic position under such doctrinal strictures.) Jellicoe knew that Scheer would accept a night engagement if he felt he needed to. If Scheer didn't know that Jellicoe had determined to avoid one, he could have guessed that the British admiral would, because the Germans were known to be better trained for such a collision, and that such a battle would be outside of either commander's control. This was something Scheer found marginally acceptable under the right circumstances (or, as in the event, out of dire necessity), but something Jellicoe wanted to avoid at all costs.

 

In short, both sides knew each other's cards and how they would be played. About the only tactical surprise was Scheer's battle turn away. The only operational surprise -- and I've never quite understood how Jellicoe convinced himself otherwise -- was Scheer's steering for Horns Reef instead of the Bight. Neither of these appears to me to be decisive. Jellicoe could hardly have expected Scheer to shoot it out with his T crossed, and there's no reason the Germans had to turn in column about a point close to the British fleet, taking the concentrated fire of the British line a ship at a time. Even if they didn't have a simultaneous fleet course reversal maneuver up their sleeve, they could have turned by squadron.

 

As for Jellicoe guessing right and stopping Scheer before Horns Reef, how exactly was he going to do that without accepting a night engagement? I personally think that Jellicoe knew that if Scheer exercised the Horns Reef option, and meant to fight through, he would accept and press a night engagement, which is something that he, Jellicoe, couldn't countenance. So he convinced himself the Scheer would head for the Bight, which was far enough away that the Grand Fleet could use up all of the darkness steaming into a blocking position, and then have their long awaited gun duel with the High Seas Fleet at dawn. Therefore, even if Jellicoe had made the right choice about Scheer's intentions, he would probably have shied away from the fiery consumation that would have ensued if he tried to do anything about it.

 

So much for psychology. What I meant by the "intersection of technological and human factors" was that nobody on either side quite had a clue what a major fleet engagement was going to be like in practice, with the technologies then at hand. The necessity of using wireless efficiently totally escaped all but a few on either side. The speed with which the new ships could engage each other was quite beyond anything seen before, and the shiphandlers weren't ready for it. The effective ranges of the major weapons systems were way underestimated, while their effectiveness was at the same time ridiculously overestimated and underestimated. Overestimated in that the ships were capable of taking a lot more punishment than maybe either side reasonably expected. Underestimated in that the potential for catastrophic ship losses under circumstances of negligent ordnance practices was not well understood at all. I think that the technological surprise of all of these and other factors is best summed up by Beatty's famous observation that something was wrong with the British ships. It never occurred to him that the technologies that the navies so blithely took for granted were actually very poorly understood in some critical and decisive ways.

 

Oh, yeah...almost forgot -- the Derfflinger. Derfflinger was not a supership by any stretch of the imagination, but the German dreadnoughts of the 1914 flight (the Konig schlachtschiffs and the Derfflinger schlachtkreuzers) were possibly the ultimate realizations of the Tirpitz dictum that the first thing a ship must do is float, and the second thing it must do is fight. The Germans explicitly designed and built these ships to take a licking and keep on ticking. They accepted smaller guns (knowing that those guns would still be effective at the ranges they expected to fight) in exchange for armor and compartmentation. You couldn't just beat a German ship with a critical hit, you had to beat it in sections, until nothing was left to fight.

 

[Edited by aevans (24 Nov 2004).]

[Guest aevans]

oops

 

[Edited by aevans (24 Nov 2004).]

[Guest aevans]

Originally posted by Tiornu:

We must be careful, in considering Jutland, to distinguish between the results of design decisions and the results of operational concerns. The British battlecruisers were exposed to German shells with genuine AP ability, while being outfitted with dangerous and carelessly handled propellant. German battlecruisers were exposed to shells that exploded before penetrating thick armor, and their propellant was much less hazardous. If we change history and give the British a more German-ish ammo situation, then the Germans leave three more capital ships on the bottom of the North Sea while British BC losses are cut to one ship at most. If we then give the Germans a British ammo situation, then who knows...?

German BCs were better protected, but they were weakly armed. British priorities were opposite.

 

British armour piercing ammo wasn't as bad as certain apologists want to make it out to be. Yes, certain marks of shell experienced some pretty embarrasing failures, but those same marks scored some truly impressive penetrations, putting out of action numerous German turrets and ripping up somevery well designed and built armored hull structures. The difference in reliability between the German and British shells is one of degree, not of kind.

 

Also, the German guns, while smaller, were not notably less effective. They penetrated British armor -- and not just BC armor -- at battle ranges, doing quite sufficient damage to prove that the smaller bursting charges were still effective enough once they got in.

[Tiornu]

"The british ships were meant as cruiser-hunters and nothing more."

Argh! The whole point of this thread is that British battlecruisers were NOT meant simply as cruiser-killers. They were intended from the start to fight against battleships.

[Tiornu]

"British armour piercing ammo wasn't as bad as certain apologists want to make it out to be."

I don't know what these apologists are telling you, but the engineering in British shells and Germans shells is well documented, as are their capabilities. The British were still using soft caps along with picric acid explosive that made the fuze question largely irrelevant. Anyone who thinks the differences in shell design were not important must disagree with the Germans (who specified a certain death for three of their dreadnoughts if proper shells had been used on them) and with the British (who launched into an immediate campaign to remove their disadvantage--with gratifying results, the famous Greenboy shell).

 

"Also, the German guns, while smaller, were not notably less effective."

Exactly.

[istvan47]

The british ships were meant as cruiser-hunters and nothing more."

Argh! The whole point of this thread is that British battlecruisers were NOT meant simply as cruiser-killers. They were intended from the start to fight against battleships"""""

 

 

Niet. The british battlecruisers were well known to the the natural hunters of armoured cruiser,like the falkland war shown it very well. the Jutland shown that these ships, even the more recent types, weren't able to go vs similar types. When you put 152mm of belt and 170 as barbettes yuo cannot expect that the vessel can withstand 305mm shells. The gemans .like showed by the blucher, were more concerned to make a ship useful vs the battlecruisers than hunt the armourd c. and when they went with battlecruisers they were cleary much more worr0ied to have a better protection than h0igh speed0 and very high firepower. This is a point not so known but if one check the caracteristics of the two types of battlecruisers he find easily thaht these difeerences were.

[Guest aevans]

Originally posted by Tiornu:

"British armour piercing ammo wasn't as bad as certain apologists want to make it out to be."

I don't know what these apologists are telling you, but the engineering in British shells and Germans shells is well documented, as are their capabilities. The British were still using soft caps along with picric acid explosive that made the fuze question largely irrelevant. Anyone who thinks the differences in shell design were not important must disagree with the Germans (who specified a certain death for three of their dreadnoughts if proper shells had been used on them) and with the British (who launched into an immediate campaign to remove their disadvantage--with gratifying results, the famous Greenboy shell).

 

Just drawing a distinction between anecdote and data. The Germans certainly did make some noise about the fact that some (probably a minority) of British shells failed to function. The British took this to heart and made improvements in their ammunition. But it is also true that British ammunition functioned well enough to penetrate almost every turret and barbette that it hit at least once. (The hole in Derfflinger's Dora, for example, is quite impressive, and the one in her Caesar is only slightly less so.) Based on the physical evidence, and not on speculation (which is what most of the German opinion about British shell performance boils down to), the Germans just had more survivable ships.

[Lev]

Originally posted by aevans:

Just drawing a distinction between anecdote and data. The Germans certainly did make some noise about the fact that some (probably a minority) of British shells failed to function. The British took this to heart and made improvements in their ammunition. But it is also true that British ammunition functioned well enough to penetrate almost every turret and barbette that it hit at least once. (The hole in Derfflinger's Dora, for example, is quite impressive, and the one in her Caesar is only slightly less so.) Based on the physical evidence, and not on speculation (which is what most of the German opinion about British shell performance boils down to), the Germans just had more survivable ships.

 

And how is "look at the size of that hole" any less conjecture? The only thing it means is that british shells were not 100% duds, that's accepted as fact by all.

The conjecture is about how many hits were required to get one hole, evidence of penetrating hits says nothing about succes rates without knowing the number of hits.

 

 

 

 

[Edited by Lev (25 Nov 2004).]

[Guest aevans]

Originally posted by Lev:

And how is "look at that hole" any less conjecture. The only thing it means is that british shells were not 100% duds, that's accepted as fact by all. The conjecture is about how many hits were required to get one hole.

 

Well, on Derfflinger, there were four turret or barbette hits. Both hits to the Anton barbette were at a shallow angle and didn't get in -- and probably wouldn't have penetrated, no matter what kind of shell it was. A square hit to Caesar's barbette knocked the turret out. A relatively low angle hit on Dora not only went in, but deformed the forward glacis. I would call that satisfactory performance.

 

Von der Tann had two turrets knocked out, one certainly to a penetrating hit. This on a total of four hits, with the two turret casualties almost certainly coming from the first three. Once again, quite satisfactory performance.

 

Lutzow was in fact sunk, though not catastrophically. Again, satisfactory performance, considering that she took anywhere from only about 60-80% more hits than the heaviest hit British dreadnoughts (none of which sank -- the catastrophic casualties came on relatively few hits), to maybe not as many (depending on source and interpretation).

 

Though there is anecdotal evidence of relatively poor British AP shell performance, there is hard physical evidence that they worked well enough.

[Scott Cunningham]

What about the Seydlitz. I think it had most turrets knocked out as well.

 

I know it was essentially wrecked by the end of the fight.