Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/May 2016/Op-ed


 * By TomStar81

May 1916. In the ongoing War World nations are sending men and machines to the front lines to fight on behalf of their affiliated alliance. While the land battles are consuming men like an alcoholic consumes his favorite drink, the bulk of the naval gunship forces of the major European nations have seen little action. Germany has had some success with their submarine campaigns, but following the outcry in the aftermath of the loss of Lusitania the Imperial Navy has been fairly quiet. On the British Isles the Royal Navy has sat largely at ease, with only scattered units in the Asia Pacific region seeing major action. No major sortie of surface ships has occurred in the European Theater, partly due to recent memories of extraordinary losses, partly due to geography, but largely due to fear. But as May draws to a close, the Imperial Germany Navy will attempt to change the status quo by surging its fleet out of port on what will be a historic and epic battle.

In our day and age, naval battles are fought such that neither side really sees the other. Aircraft based on massive aircraft carriers - and in the United States aboard so called "supercarriers" - as well as missile equipped cruisers and destroyers are designed to allow for naval combat to occur far beyond the visual range of either fleet engaged in battle. Submarines outfitted with nuclear reactors and advanced sonar and electronic warfare suits can track and destroy naval targets from great distances using either torpedoes or anti-ship missiles. Space based systems such as radar ocean reconnaissance satellites can observe the movements of entire fleets without risking any assets. On the whole such long ranges allow for the protection of major fleet assets involved in combat by sending only the armed part into action, which risks fewer lives and spares ships from incapacitation or destruction.

In 1916, however, the reigning champion of the seas was the mighty battleship, and these ships were like WWE wrestlers: they were intended to get up close and personal with their opponents in a knock down drag out brawl with the only rule being win or go home. Despite the savage nature of this naval battle doctrine in use in 1916, the major naval powers and the citizens of the nations known to be major naval powers often linked their national pride to these large ships, and the men and women living in the empires often made a point to check up on the progress of the construction and operation of their naval gunships in local papers and other media outlets of the day. For sailors in any of the major navies of the day, an assignment to a battleship was a prized position, and for any admiral command of a gunship fleet (battleships, battlecruisers, etc) could be a defining movement in their career. Most important of all was the geographical aspect of the Navy: with most European nations controlling colonies spread out from one side of the globe to the other, the naval branch was vital to ensuring that soldiers in occupied territories were properly supplied and supported, and the colonies properly defended. Losing a major naval force in combat was therefore unacceptable, as an Empire could rise or fall on the strength of the ships it could bring to bear in a conflict. For these reasons, any naval action involving battleships or other gunships had to be thought through very carefully to avoid unacceptable losses to those fleets in which the heavy gunships were assigned.

By virtue of the geography in Europe at the time, the major Imperial European powers can check the movements made by their opponents. Attempts to move any fleet north into the Russian Empire can be stopped by the Imperial Russian Navy's remaining forces long before enemy fleet units would pose a threat to the Russians. The Imperial German Navy, French Republic Navy, and Royal Spanish Navy's attempts to move north can be checked by the British Empire's Royal Navy, while the location of the British Isles permits the Royal Navy to intercept any move by the German Navy to break out. In the Mediterranean, the Royal Spanish Navy can assemble enough ships to shut down the Strait of Gibraltar, and as an added bonus since the bottleneck is small a naval blockade here could theoretically be backed up by land based artillery forces, making any attempt to break out both dangerous and risky. A blockade of this nature would also effect the French Republic, Royal Italian, Imperial Ottoman, and Royal Greek Navies by sealing them into the Mediterranean Sea. An attempt could be made to escape a blockade of the Strait of Gibraltar by utilizing the Suez Canal to reach the Red Sea, but any attempt to escape from the Red Sea could be checked by a Royal Navy blockade from the Indian Ocean side of the Red Sea, north of the Horn of Africa.

On top this curious situation, collective European memory well remembered the lessons of 1905, when the Imperial Russian Navy's heavy gunship fleet had sortied to relieve its Asia Pacific territories during the Russo-Japanese War. In the Battle of Tsushima, the Imperial Russian Navy had been intercepted and soundly defeated by the Imperial Japanese Navy. The stunning loss of the Imperial Russian Navy's gunship fleet had echoed across the seven seas to every major naval power, which resulted in a major rethinking of battleship designs and of naval gunship tactics in general. The humiliation and subsequent loss of prestige for the Russian Empire undermined Nicholas II's apparent inability to function as an effective commander and chief of the armed forces. This fact was slowly being reinforced at the time due to the ongoing land war and the Russian Empire's failure to regain any traction following its 1915 withdrawal in the face of the German Empire's counterattack on Russia's western front.

For these reasons most of the major European Naval powers had somewhat unofficially found the safest course of action to be transforming their major gunship fleets into fleets in being, effectively withholding them from major combat operations unless the odds could be tilted in their favor. While such a decision could certainly be understood in light of the catastrophe at Tsushima, it also had the effect of forcing most of the naval action up to 1916 to be fought largely with smaller surfaces assets such as cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and of course the submarine, which was coming into its own at the time as a weapon whose full potential had not yet been fully tapped. That changed in May 1916, when the Imperial German Navy Admiral Franz von Hipper, commander of the High Seas Fleet on the northern shores of the German Empire, would sortie his fleet gunship fleet in an attempt to lure out the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet. The resulting naval clash near Denmark's Jutland Peninsula holds place in history as one the largest naval battles in history, and in terms of total tonnage of ships involved, this remains the largest surface battle in history. This would also be the only time that two modern battleship fleets would throw down on the high seas, and the only time that dreadnought battleships would participate in major surface action against an enemy gunship force of similar vessels.

Jutland's battle began on May 31, 1916, when the Imperial German Navy put to sea with the intention of luring the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet out to eliminate it as a threat. Thanks in part to Room 40, the British knew about the plan, and preemptively ordered Admiral John Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe to put to sea with his fleet in an attempt to intercept the German Fleet and destroy it before the German commander could return to the safety of port. What followed was a hours long battle of guns, brains, tactics, and strategy in which two seasoned commanders would move ships like chess pieces in an attempt to find and obtain the long sought after decisive naval victory. In a brutal and gory running battle Jellicoe twice managed to Cross the T of the German fleet, the ultimate prize in a tactical fight between gunships of the time since crossing the T allowed for a gunship to bring all of its guns to bear against a target while preventing the target from returning fire with either the forward or aft gun batteries (which batteries would be effected depended on whether the maneuver crossed the T in front of or behind the formation). However, Jellicoe could not capitalize on this advantage. Hipper, for his part, had better control of his fleet, and employed a shoot and scoot tactic which allowed him to escape with most of his fleet intact. As the gunships exchanged shots the engineering lessons learned at Tsushuma would prolong the life of the ships involved, as the dreadnought type battleship designs allowed for the more important larger guns to play a key role in the battle, but the Royal Navy had not yet adopted the US Navy's "all our nothing" armor concept which was intended to help battleships withstand the effects of guns the same caliber as those installed on the ship in question. In part because of this the Royal Navy would suffer a greater number of ships lost in the battle then the Imperial German Navy, undermining the need for battleships to be protected against shells of the same caliber that the ships in question were using.

As the sun set on May 31 the Royal Navy would suffer an embarrassing loss of face as failures of communication and German surface actions allowed the bulk of Hipper's High Seas Fleet to escape from Jellicoe's Grand Fleet's gun range, reform, and return to port. Jellicoe would be alternatively praised and derided in the press for this. Hipper's fleet returned to port and would spend the remainder of the war in its original capacity as a fleet in being. Despite attempts to lure each other into a decisive engagement, the Battle of Jutland would be the only occasion in which battleship would engage in a knock down, drag out, no strings attached brawl.

A century removed from the battle, this epic clash of the titans in fondly remembered and widely studied. Much has been written in support and defense of the (in)actions take during the battle, which are of necessity taken with a grain of salt due to hindsight bias. Historians alternatively claim the battle to be inconclusive or to be case in which Germany had the tactical victory and Britain the strategic victory. Others claim the battle to be of no consequence, since the naval theater would be dominated by smaller gunships and submarines.