Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting [Paperback]

John Campbell (Author)

Book Description

Series: Maritime Classics | Publication Date: September 1, 1998

Here is the authoritative work on the great sea battle of World War I.

The Battle of Jutland has produced more inconclusive controversy from historians and naval officers than any other modern sea fight. Jutland aims to complete the historical record, by analyzing damage reports, ammunition expenditures, and the individual actions of the involved ships.

John Campbell, a scientist by training, has analyzed the wealth of material available from both the British and German navies and sheds light on a host of technical questions, such as how various ships stood up to damage, and the quality of ships gunnery.

Jutland proved to be the last great battle of battleships. With WWII came the rise of air power and the aircraft carrier. However, the legacy of Jutland and the era when great ships fought one another for domincance on the seas is still with us today. This book is must reading for history buffs and maritime experts alike.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Jutland has produced more inconclusive controversy from historians and naval officers than any other modern sea fight, and yet no previous account has made more than passing reference to the extensive records of the battle, such as the action and damage reports and the ammunition expenditure returns, or described adequately the various destroyer actions. Here, for the first time, John Campbell has pieced together and analyzed the wealth of official technical material available from both navies, throwing new light on a host of questions, including how many individual ships stood up to punishment and the quality of each ship's gunnery. As a result of his painstaking study, posterity may have to modify its judgment, for better or worse, of certain naval officers and ship designers.Highly successful on its first publication in the 1980s, Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting has become the classic authoritative work on the subject, changing the study of Jutland profoundly and establishing the benchmark for all subsequent naval studies of the First World War. Renowned naval historian Antony Preston provides a preface to this new edition of Campbell's influential book. (5 3/4 X 9, 448 pages, diagrams, charts)

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: The Lyons Press; 1st edition (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558217592
• ISBN-13: 978-1558217591
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,574,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great ... for what it is. May not be for everyone, October 5, 2001

By 

A. M. Lovell "regular guy" (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting (Paperback)

This is a reference book more so than one you read through to gain an understanding of Jutland. Other reviewers have remarked that it is "dry", and the meaning of this word in this context merits explanation.

Campbell's work is about shells impacting ships or water, and their explosive damage in each case where a ship was hit. It is almost entirely devoid of discussion (or even mention!) of who was where, making which decisions based on what information. It is all "what" and little "why".

In other words, very much a reference work on a very narrow (but novel) forensic aspect of this pivotal naval battle. Indeed, you could read this book and come away with the impression that Jutland was about ghost ships steaming about with no one at the helm.

Every recent book on Jutland cites this as a source, and its accuracy and professionalism in cataloging the "'oo killed 'oo" aspects of the battle, but this book is not unchallenged in all that it contains. Andrew Gordon singles Campbell out tellingly on a point of whether the 5th Battle Squadron was taking fire during its belated turn to the North. Given that the handling of this squadron was amongst the most debated elements of the battle, and Campbell's intent was to track every single shellhole, it seems clear from several seemingly indisputable primary accounts cited in Gordon's book that the ships were receiving heavy fire this entire time -- in fact, at least half of the German ships firing were concentrating on them.

This book is a valuable addition to a scholar's library, but is in every case best when combined with other books, given its finely focused topic area. I would offer that Gordon's "The Rules of the Game" is a good companion to this volume in that it focuses on what distinguished Jutland as a battle worthy of study: the men crewing these vessels, the information available to them and what actions they took when so equipped, and the lamentable posturing and blame-laying that took place in the aftermath.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The ultimate in "nerdy" detail about the battle of Jutland, March 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting (Paperback)

I gave the book five stars because it does a terrific job of achieving what it set out to do: describe the fighting in (unbelievable) detail. Of course this also means the book will be perceived as "dry" by most people and will appeal to a small audience. But if you're one of those rare people who wants to know the exact diameter of the hole punched into the second deck of the Barham by the shell that struck home at 5:21 PM, well, this is the book for you!

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Very Dry but Valuable Technical Account of Jutland, May 26, 2000

By 

R. A Forczyk (MD, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting (Paperback)

The author has compiled an impressive amount of technical data on the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Virtually every important detail concerning major caliber rounds fired and their effects is laid out. Each chapter covers a chronological part of the battle, usually 45-75 minutes each. The final summary provides a very detailed list of the damage to each ship, casualties and ammunition fired in the battle. However this book is limited in several areas. It is not particularly readable because the author seems to have an aversion to the English language in favor of excessive use of jargon and sentence fragments. Organizationally, the book needs a detailed chronology which might reduce some of the redundancy. A big part of the book focuses on the damage to each ship and a huge weakness is the reliance on poor-quality, hard-to-read crude sketches. After all the effort he made to collect the information, the author makes little effort to present it well. Standardized, well-drawn battle damage charts would have made this an outstanding work. The battle maps are generally adequate but the omission for one covering the critical night action was a serious deficiency. Finally, I reached the end and had two critical questions remaining unanswered by the author: first, where German warships really that superior or was it just lucky visibility conditions that aided their gunnery? Second, which fleet was hurt more seriously and how might this have affected a renewed battle if the British Grand Fleet had not lost contact on the night of 31 May 1916? Overall, this is a great technical work but it cannot be read without other, more thorough operational accounts handy.