Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/News/November 2017/Op-ed


 * This caught my eye, and I felt I should respond, as I'm not sure I agree with the conclusions here.
 * First off, the suggestion that the action in the Bight was 'a response' to the attack on the Mary Rose convoy. As I understand it, Britain and Germany were vying for naval supremacy in WWI, so they hardly needed an excuse to seek action. The suggestion here is that if the convoy hadn't been attacked the action in the Bight wouldn't have taken place. I can't see the RN holding back if they had credible intelligence that a German detachment was coming out. Also, attacking a detachment of warships is not a reply 'in kind' to an assault on a group of unarmed, and neutral, civilian ships.
 * Second, why is it unclear whether the outrage over this was justified, even in hindsight? The Scandinavian countries were all neutral, yet the IGN had no compunction about attacking and sinking their ships (nearly 800 Norwegian, over 180 Swedish, and more than 250 Danish ships sunk by the U-boat Arm, according to this) with the concomitant loss of life. The Scandinavians were absolutely justified in being outraged. It is also assumed that they were 'transporting war materials'; where does that idea come from? The purpose of these convoys was to deliver British coal to Scandinavia, so these ships, which were west-bound, would have been in ballast or carrying trade goods; there's nothing to suggest otherwise.
 * Third, it's suggested that an attack by surface warships on a convoy would be unusual; on the contrary, it was to be expected. It was one of the things the Admiralty were concerned about when introducing the convoy system. Grouping merchant ships together in convoy effectively protected them from U-boat attack (and by October 1917 the U-boat Arm was well on the way to being beaten) but made them vulnerable to attack by surface warships. If this attack was unusual it is only because the IGN didn't try it more often.
 * Finally, the conclusion (comparing the loss of nine merchants and two destroyers to that of a single minesweeper) is missing the point. The purpose of the cruiser attack on the convoy was to disrupt the traffic and to terrify the neutrals into halting their trading with Britain. It failed, because neither of those things happened. The proper comparison would be the 1600 odd ships that were convoyed east, and 1800 west, in perfect safety during 1917 (losses were 17 and 23 ships respectively). Contrariwise, the aim of the Grand Fleet was to bring the German fleet to battle, or keep it bottled up in port; the fact that they could pick a fight in the German Navy's front yard, while the Germans could only sweep mines with a battleship escort, suggests the RN were succeeding, regardless of how few minesweepers they sank on this occasion.
 * My two pennyworth, Xyl 54 (talk) 02:08, 11 November 2017 (UTC)