Customer Reviews

Jutland 1916: Clash of the Dreadnoughts (Campaign)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Author Charles London has set himself a difficult task: to write a 96-page campaign summary of the controversial Battle of Jutland in 1916. This was the only major clash of dreadnought battleships before aircraft changed naval warfare, but its uniqueness and inconclusive results provide ample fodder for competing interpretations.

On the whole, this volume repesents one of the very best of the Osprey Campaign series. The maps are excellent, and provide much better depictions of the action than the sketch maps usually provided in much lengthier works. The strategic level map on page 32 which depicts the opening moves is one of the best I have seen, including locations of all U-Boats and British submarines (unfortunately he did leave out Zeppelin patrol areas). Both the photographs and artwork are of excellent quality. This volume is a valuable visual companion to John Campbell's technical Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting, which lacks photos and decent maps.

On the negative side, the author is rather blatantly biased toward the British. There is little or no mention of significant damage to British dreadnoughts, including the seven hits on HMS Malaya, the six hits on HMS Barham and the torpedo hit on HMS Marlborough (all three of which had close calls with sinking). On the other hand, damage to German ships is sometimes exaggerated; such as when the author claims that three German pre-dreadnoughts were hit when in fact, two were hit by one shell each (minor damage) and the third suffered one sailor killed from a shell splinter. The author alludes to the German advantage in night fighting but fails to mention that they had starshells, while the British did not.

The author makes selective use of the vast technical data available on Jutland. He notes that both sides gunnery was about the same - 3% probability of hits and that the various advantages and defects of their ship designs canceled each other out. In fact, the British obtained 2.75% hits of rounds fired versus 3.39% for the Germans. In the initial battlecruiser action, the German edge was even more lop-sided: the Germans scored 44 hits versus only 17 hits for the numerically-superior British.

Organizationally, this volume would have done better to provide strict time delimiters, to break the action into phases. Instead, the author uses the "flow" style, which gets very confusing after the initial battlecruiser action. The maps help to sort out the battle, but the text does not. One wonders also why the author included photographs of the Goeben, and ships sunk in the Falklands Battle two years prior to Jutland, but no photos of several major ships such as the Lutzow and Pommerm which were sunk there.

Finally, the author seems somewhat unsatisfied with the indecisive conclusion of Jutland, as everyone always seems to be, except perhaps the Germans. The author uses the fact that the Grand Fleet "remained on the battlefield" the next morning to claim a victory for sea control and assert that Jellicoe would have won any follow-up engagement off the Horn Reef. Here the author's bias ignores the fact that the Grand Fleet had lost all cohesion after twelve hours of fighting; most of the destroyers were separated in the night action and three dreadnoughts had wandered off 45 miles away from the main body. Certainly Jellicoe had the strength to finish off any German cripples, but any renewed battle would have witnessed a thoroughly-spread out Grand Fleet fighting in minimal visibility conditions. Any action on 1 June would likely have been a scaled-down repeat of the previous day: ships blundering into each other in the haze and quick, furtive exchanges of gun fire. More ships might have been sunk, but without radar, air support, better navigation and improved communications, the clash of dreadnoughts could not be decisive in 1916.

Despite the author's bias and certain errors, this volume is still a valuable adjunct to any Jutland collection. Just remember to keep other works handy to sort out the omissions.

I found this book very informative and enjoyable. It reflects the British point of view, containing many facts, details and anecdotes, just what I had hoped for. The battle itself is somewhat confusing, but the excellent maps the book provides are a big help in following that portion of the story. I did note an apparent color coding error on the first battle map, but the editing is nowhere near the sloppy job done on one of the other books in the series.

As to bias, this is what an intelligent reader expects in such an endeavor. One seeks it when it does not adversely affect the inclusion of all of the facts. The reader easily copes with biased conclusions and the excessive of biased adjectives when they appear. One expects a British author to conclude that Britain won the battle. Probably her population as accepts this as fact, as the Germans also believe that they won the battle. Victory is often controversial, especially to the non-professional reader. Again the experienced reader, with the facts in hand, will draw his own (biased?) conclusion. That is part of the fun!

As to Jutland, one may award the victory according to his personal judgment. Historically, of course, it is generally considered that the tactical victor is the side that retains the battlefield.

Here, I think the world has agreed, the strategic victory belongs to Britain, as she obtained her major objectives, while Germany's surface fleet remained merely a psychological threat restricting, to some extent the use of the British home fleet.

I recommend this book as enjoyable reading to anyone with an interest in the subject.

There have been countless books on the 1916 naval battle of Jutland, the only major fleet engagement of WWI, a battle that continues to be controversial to this day. Jutland was one of those 'what-if' battles where changes could have tipped the scales. Charles London's 2000 Osprey book offers up a capsule guide to this epic battle.

Reading London's book, it's hard not to characterize as Jutland as a naval brawl with almost-blinded adversaries stumbling upon each other and then savagely pummeling each other before plowing off into the darkness only to repeat the process. The Grand Fleet, which lost more ships than Germany but still claimed victory, did not cover itself in glory at Jutland with numerous gaffes, goofs and other missed opportunities undercutting the victory. The High Seas Fleet had its shares of blunders as well.

At 96 pages, London's book isn't exhaustive but does a fair job of summarizing the pre-battle build-up, the actual conflict and events following. You do have to pay attention when battle commences and devolves into to-ing and fro-ing. Having clear breaks in the narrative, in conjunction with the 2D and 3D maps, would have made it easier to follow what was a very confusing battle. And I would have liked more on the postwar controversies regarding British and German actions during the battle.

The book includes a nice selection of photographs including rare battle scenes and four atmospheric battle scene artworks.

All in all, a fairly good summary of one hellaciously confusing brawl in the North Sea. Recommended.

This book does a very good job of taking a large, complex naval battle and passing on most of the essentials without getting bogged down.

The book makes short mention of a lot of the fine details surrounding the battle and sticks to the essentials of having the reader understand it in general terms at the end. Pictures and maps are well placed and succeed in giving a novice reader a pretty complete idea of what happened.

The books seems to try to avoid a lot of the controversy but does lean in favour of the Royal Navy but does not do this to any exaggerated extent. For those interested in a deeper, more thorough study there are many works that address the battle in more detal.

For anyone new to naval history or reading their first account of the battle this is an excellent book to get started with!

one of the most overlooked causes of WW1,was Germany's desire to have a world class navy(which the British were determined to stop)!! This book shows how close in fact Germany was to having one.Imagine a modernized navy with all the armour,propulsion systems, and fire power but with the electronics and communications little advanced past the age of wooden ships and you have Jutland.From reading this book I wondered how much of the damage inflicted on the "enemy" was actually "friendly fire",this problem,an obvious one when one can't easily discern the opponent was never addressed in this book.Also with all of the explosive gases released by the continuous firing,there would be alot of "accidents"caused when a spark met a trapped gas pocket,not to mention crew error which becomes an even bigger factor in such confusion.This adds alot of meaning to the term "we have met the enemy and he is us".Casualty wise the Germans won,but strategically the British navy forced the Germans to limp home and concentrate more on the development of U-boats.U-boats are a poor mans catch-up weapons much like the SCUD missiles of today used by militarily weak 3rd world nations.Excellent maps and diagrams to follow although the time sequences could be questioned as well as the positions of the ships but i wouldn't have the expertise to do so,so i'll take the author's word,which is as good as the best.

I was somewhat disappointed with this book. Volumes in the Osprey Campaign Series range in quality from excellent to mediocre, but most are very good. This volume lies on the mediocre side. A huge amount of information is included in the book, but it's very difficult to decipher. The main problem is a lack of clarity and disjointedness to the writing. For example, in "Opposing Plans" section, plans are never actually discussed. We hear a lot about the direction ships intended to sail and why certain tactics were adopted (like both sides planning to lure ships over submarine cordons), but we never hear about what either side was trying to do. Were they intending to fight a major engagement on May 31, or did it just sort of happen?

There are numerous additional small issues. None of these problems are crippling, but they are all irritating. For example, an extensive order of battle is provided that lists all of the ships that took part in Jutland. However, the list does not indicate the class of each ship (dreadnaught, pre-dreadnaught, battle cruiser, etc). This is a particular problem for the German order of battle, because unlike the British whose ships are organized formations with names like "Cruiser Squadrons" (suggesting that most ships in that section were some form of cruiser), the German formations have names like "Geschwader." Because there is no master list to refer to, and because LOTS of ships involved, it is difficult to tell what kind of ship the author is talking about from one moment to the next. As another example, it is often difficult to tell what type of action is occurring in the battle descriptions; are ships firing at each other? Closing on each other? Closing and firing? etc. This is especially problematic at the start of the battle, but the authors descriptions becomes more clear as the battle progresses.

All that said, this is not really a bad book. The 2D maps are very useful (though they only come into play once the combat is well underway and none show the initial dispositions of the fleets, instead less clear 3D maps are used), there are lots of very nice photographs of WWI-era warship, and there is a lot of information about WWI fleet combat. The real loss is that this could have been a great book but it ends up being merely ok. It would likely be a very useful summary for someone already familiar with the battle, but will probably of less value to someone unfamiliar with it.

The author of this book claims a victory for sea control for the British, exagerates damage done to German ships and diminishes those received by British ships. Well, here are some hard facts: Number of ships: German 99; British 159 , Losses: G:11 with 61180 tons Br.:14 with 115025 tons. Personnel losses: G: 2551(6,8%), Br.:6094(11,6% ); Weight of fired shells: German: 85,9 tons , British: 201,1 tons. So, the German fleet sunk about double the battleship tonnage with less than half the metal weight killing more than double the amount of sailors! Now comes the hard question: where is the claimed British victory just somewhat smaller than Nelson's. It must be because I am dumb and German that I can't see it. In fact after the battle the British surface fleet controlled absolutly nothing in the region of Deutsche Bucht to Denmark where however the German fleet did make massive sorties out of this region! And there seemed to be no willingnes whatsoever on the British side to risk their battleships in pitched battle again. So, which sides' moral was dented? Even the best maps and photos couldn't make a book good when it trys to declare victory from defeat because of the author's nationality. So this may be just a good book if you are a: English or b: have at least one other book about the subject for comparison (and you want the good maps and pictures).