Greatest Sea Battle

[12Alfa]

 

 

[Grenny]

I thought the biggest battle was the battle of Skagerak?   ;-)

[Werewolf]

Greatest sea battle?

For some reason I thought we'd see the most decisive. Jutland was big but it really didn't impact WWI except to point out to the british some pretty bad design flaws in their ships.

 

Most decisive sea battle ever  that impacted more than just a war but the entire history of western civilization?? I'd have to say the Battle of Salamis.

[Gibsonm]

Perhaps Actium, then maybe Trafalgar?

 

I suspect though we are victims of a classical education and a time horizon of greater than the last 100yrs, as opposed to the film's producer.

[Homer]

On 6/1/2016 at 5:19 PM, Werewolf said:

Greatest sea battle?

For some reason I thought we'd see the most decisive. Jutland was big but it really didn't impact WWI except to point out to the british some pretty bad design flaws in their ships.

 

How did you get from Largest Sea Battle in WWI to Greatest/Most Decisive Sea Battle Ever?  Jutland was significant in that the British gained little in victory but could have lost everything if defeated.  It was possible for the Germans to "win the war in a single afternoon".  What was wrong with the Brit ship designs?

 

[Homer]

On 5/27/2016 at 10:00 AM, Grenny said:

I thought the biggest battle was the battle of Skagerak?   ;-)

 

I had to look that up. 

[Gibsonm]

7 minutes ago, Homer said:

What was wrong with the Brit ship designs?

 

 

They lost 3 or 4 Battlecruisers within minutes (each with 1000 - 1200 men on board)

 

Beatty, the British Battlecruiser commander, said "there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today".

 

Basically the Royal Navy accepted speed and firepower for reduced protection and the Germans had better gunnery and better protection but accepted lower speed and smaller calibre guns.

[Lt DeFault]

The documentary also states that many of the sailors aboard the British ships ignored safety precautions and stored the 104 lb. powder charges for the guns in the turrets, outside of the numerous fire-proof hatches in the magazines. This sped up the firing rate, but caused massive explosions if the turrets were hit.

Edited June 11, 2016 by Lt DeFault

[Ssnake]

Britain could NOT have lost the war in an afternoon. Once that the Dreadnought class ships appeared on the scene the German ships stood no chance to score major hits, but instead were facing mounting losses. If a fleet was in danger to be sunk that afternoon it was the German, had they not reverted course more or less immediately after the first encounter with Beatty.

 

The plan was to lure a small part of the British fleet into the southern North Sea, defeat it, evade retaliation - and if possible repeat that trick to destroy the British Navy piecemeal. But the British knew what the Germans had in mind, and instead tried to lure the Germans into the trap. Beatty was a tad too eager to engage, and bungled communications compounded on that error of springing the trap too early so that, ironically, the German plan at first seemed to work perfectly. Add to that the unsafe practices, sub par gunnery training, bad positioning, and an overly optimistic design, as far as protection levels were concerned and you get high losses as a result. None of the errors alone would have cost as many lives. But in combination they were a deadly mix for the battlecruisers.

[Marko]

12 hours ago, Ssnake said:

Britain could NOT have lost the war in an afternoon. Once that the Dreadnought class ships appeared on the scene the German ships stood no chance to score major hits, but instead were facing mounting losses. If a fleet was in danger to be sunk that afternoon it was the German, had they not reverted course more or less immediately after the first encounter with Beatty.

 

The plan was to lure a small part of the British fleet into the southern North Sea, defeat it, evade retaliation - and if possible repeat that trick to destroy the British Navy piecemeal. But the British knew what the Germans had in mind, and instead tried to lure the Germans into the trap. Beatty was a tad too eager to engage, and bungled communications compounded on that error of springing the trap too early so that, ironically, the German plan at first seemed to work perfectly. Add to that the unsafe practices, sub par gunnery training, bad positioning, and an overly optimistic design, as far as protection levels were concerned and you get high losses as a result. None of the errors alone would have cost as many lives. But in combination they were a deadly mix for the battlecruisers.

slightly off topic

The royal navy didn't learn the lesson from the battle in WW2 HMS Hood on paper should have been a match for the Bismarck

But still had wooded decks one volley from the Bismarck and she went down.

The Bismarck on the other hand It took hundreds of rounds and torpedoes to sink her.

[Werewolf]

On 6/11/2016 at 11:13 AM, Homer said:

 

How did you get from Largest Sea Battle in WWI to Greatest/Most Decisive Sea Battle Ever?  Jutland was significant in that the British gained little in victory but could have lost everything if defeated.  It was possible for the Germans to "win the war in a single afternoon".  What was wrong with the Brit ship designs?

 

 

British Battle Cruisers were designed to be heavily armed but lightly armored for a ship of their size. It was their Achilles Heel so to speak. Other nations tried the concept - including the US in WWII with the Alaska class - I think that was our BC design - but it never made it out of the shipyards and I believe ended up being converted to something else or maybe scrapped - not sure.

 

Largest, greatest - synonymous in my head though there is surely a semantic difference which should have been recognized.

 

Still - Jutland was a relatively large if not at least in the top 5 of modern surface warfare sea battles. (I wouldn't count some of the sea battles of WWII between US and Japan as they included mostly carrier taskforces that never even saw each other but did include a larger number of ships participating).

[Gibsonm]

On 12/06/2016 at 8:19 PM, Marko said:

slightly off topic

The royal navy didn't learn the lesson from the battle in WW2 HMS Hood on paper should have been a match for the Bismarck

But still had wooded decks one volley from the Bismarck and she went down.

The Bismarck on the other hand It took hundreds of rounds and torpedoes to sink her.

 

So "on paper" it wasn't a match.

 

So no real surprise that that one ship 20 years older than the other and missing a bunch of inter war upgrade/refits due to the depression was outclassed.