ComNavOps enjoys examining historical naval battles for lessons applicable to us, today. One such battle is Jutland in WWI. Jutland has been analyzed to death by a multitude of writers and historians and many of the lessons are obvious and repetitive. Rather than repeat what’s already been thoroughly covered, I’d like to focus on just a couple lessons that may be less obvious.
To ever so briefly review, the WWI Battle of Jutland occurred between the Royal Navy Grand Fleet (Jellicoe) and the German Navy High Seas Fleet (Scheer). As noted, the battle has been thoroughly described by many sources. I won’t attempt to describe the battle other than as necessary to support the various points. You can research the details of the battle for yourself, if you’re interested.
The Germans planned to break Britain’s blockade by enticing a portion of the Grand Fleet out, trapping it, and destroying it. As it happened, both sides wound up luring sections of each other’s fleet into traps, generally unintentionally. Thus, both sides wound up trying to execute the same plan!
In the end, the Royal Navy lost
- 3 battlecruisers
- 3 armored cruisers
- 8 destroyers
The German’s lost
- 1 battlecruiser
- 1 pre-dreadnought battleship
- 4 light cruisers
Many other ships on both sides were damaged.
Following is a discussion of a few lessons that deserve special attention.
Submarines – The Germans attempted to lure the Royal Navy forces across a picket line of submarines. However, poor timing, bad weather, and poor communications prevented the submarines from achieving much success. In addition, British ASW efforts forced some subs out of their intended operating areas.
The obvious lesson is that submarines are very difficult (impossible) to communicate with and control in close combat and their limited sensor ranges make ad hoc independent operations by the submarines very difficult. While some modern observers believe that submarines will instantly spot, identify, and target anything that moves, the reality is that submarines are still not able to be part of a ‘team’ combat effort. Communication difficulties make friendly fire incidents highly likely or, best case, they paralyze the submarine due to uncertainty.
So many naval observers want to include submarines in naval battles but, in order to be effective, submarines must be deployed to areas with no friendly activity, leaving them free to maneuver and to assume that any contact is an enemy and that they can act accordingly. Combat coordination between subs and surface ships is simply not feasible.
Confusion – This requires special attention because it is a constant of combat that the US seems to be ignoring. Examples of confusion include,
- Both sides had a plan (very similar plans, as it happened) and both side’s plans fell apart immediately.
- Beatty’s battlecruisers passed by the unprepared German submarine picket/trap line and showed up near the German ships long before the Germans expected them
- The German submarines were not ready when the operation began. German submarines reported British ship courses incorrectly (they reported a leg of a zig-zag rather than the base course).
- The British 5th Battle Squadron battlecruisers failed to receive course change instructions and, having not operated with Beatty’s ships before, did not know to maintain formation on the flagship and the overall formation was seriously disrupted.
- Groups from both sides appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
- The German commander, Scheer, had no idea the British Grand Fleet was even at sea until they appeared in front of him.
- The German fleet was sighted several times by Jellicoe’s screen while disengaging and escaping but the sighting reports were not received by the British.
The only clear winner was Murphy. Confusion rules the battlefield. All our vaunted and hyped networking won’t change that reality one iota when combat and Murphy come calling.
The terrain of the naval battlefield is confusion. It’s what you hide in and it’s how you conceal yourself.
As has been said so many times, no plan survives contact with the enemy which emphasizes the importance of sound doctrine
Survivability – Survivability is paramount in battle. So many British ships blew up so quickly. If you can’t survive, you can’t contribute; you’re a waste of resources. The US Navy has intentionally adopted unarmored, non-survivable warships – some of them designed to be abandoned after the first hit!
Related note: You must exercise under realistic conditions (overheated steering gear jammed because no one stressed the gear during exercises).
 |
| HMS Queen Mary Exploding |
Communications – German radio signals alerted the British that a major operation was happening and the British sailed before the Germans were ready. It is a timeless lesson that communications are never as secure as believed. Even today, our low probability of intercept, line of sight, encrypted, whatever communications are not nearly as secure as we’d like to believe. The enemy doesn’t need to break our codes to discern our intentions. Signals analysis (frequency of transmissions, locations of transmission sources, increase in comm traffic from HQ’s, departure from normal communications, etc.) will clearly tell at least the general concept of what’s about to happen and alert the enemy. I’ve talked to current comms people and, while they won’t divulge any details, they assure me that communications are nowhere near as secure as believed.
An important aspect to note is our current habit of constant micromanaging which requires every level to continuously communicate with the levels one step above and below. This verbal diarrhea cannot be concealed. The sheer quantity assures that the enemy will detect it. We must break ourselves of this habit and start practicing total communications silence.
The failure to train realistically and establish standardized doctrine resulted in communications issues even between ships of the same side. For example, from Wikipedia,
… the battleships of the 5th Battle Squadron – which were too far behind to read his [Beatty’s] flags – found themselves passing the battlecruisers on an opposing course and heading directly toward the approaching main body of the High Seas Fleet.[1]
And, another example, a British ship-launched seaplane spotted German forces but was unable to relay the information to back to the ship.
Distances - Too many people today seem to think that ships will sail a hundred feet apart in combat. On this blog, we’ve discussed the reality that a carrier group, for example, will be spread over a circular area 25-50 miles in radius. Ships in combat will be miles apart, not a hundred feet. At Jutland,
Beatty's ships were divided into three columns, with the two battlecruiser squadrons leading in parallel lines 3 mi (2.6 nmi; 4.8 km) apart. The 5th Battle Squadron was stationed 5 mi (4.3 nmi; 8.0 km) to the north-west … [1]
And this was before the advent of missiles with their much longer ranges.
Summary
As I said, this post touched on just a few lessons that bear added attention. History is screaming lessons at us but our arrogance – and incompetence – prevents us from hearing them.
We have got to start preparing for high end naval combat – not the fantasy type of combat where everything we do works and nothing the enemy does works but real, confused, chaotic, up close, combat. We’ve got to train for the kinds of things we think will never happen: night combat, gun range combat, total chaos, loss of command and control, unanticipated enemy forces, and so on.
We need to start training without concern for stressing or damaging equipment. We need to let our pilots apply maximum g’s and if the airframe can’t stand it then we need new, stronger airframes. We need to maneuver our ships to the edge of their envelopes and if equipment fails we need better equipment. While we can’t ignore safety, it can’t limit our training, either. Accidents and deaths will happen and we have to accept that. Our priority is not keeping everyone alive and healthy; it’s preparing for high end combat where anything less than 100% preparedness is a guarantee of defeat and mass deaths.
We have got to either test our completely unfounded notion of secure communications and data transfer under realistic conditions and prove that it works or give it up as unworkable and learn to fight without constant communications.
We must start intentionally incorporating total confusion into our exercises. Let’s, unannounced, ‘kill’ commanding officers and see what happens. Let’s give intentionally incorrect orders and see who can adapt and overcome. Let’s start providing intentionally false contact reports and see what happens. And so on. We must embrace confusion and chaos and learn to fight with them as our constant companions. We must get familiar with them so that they no longer frighten or upset us.
We need the Van Riper’s of the world to humiliate us in realistic exercises and then thank them for doing so while we correct the identified problems.
___________________________________
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland
Agree! Agree! We must also fully supervise our crews to ensure they do not "cheat" to win like below (I should also add the unsafe procedures also allow for a higher rate of fire during exercises in other sources, not the one linked below but below below ):
ReplyDelete"British naval planners and commanders had put in place both mechanical design features and procedural safeguards to protect their ships and crews from catastrophic ammunition-related explosions.
Unfortunately, naval leaders and the commanders of individual vessels allowed their fear of not having enough ammunition during battle to override these mechanical and procedural safeguards, with tragic results."
https://apuedge.com/maritime-risk-and-safety-battle-of-jutland-exposed-flaws-in-british-naval-procedures/
A modern example would be extra fuel maybe some use nitro on the engines,and as our vertical missiles launchers can not reload at sea, our CIWS, and maybe drugs to enhance reaction of the crews to "win" during exercises.
I propose we have on-board cameras record crew movements during those exercises to ensure all safety procedures are followed like how Special Forces train like at below:
"Performance is observed, measured, and evaluated using state-of-the-art feedback systems"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdullah_II_Special_Operations_Training_Centre
This would prevent bad practices like:
"The dangerous practice of stacking ammunition outside of the protective magazines and even leaving anti-flash doors open during battle was a direct result of a British obsession with speed of gunnery. It might be no coincidence that the ships that were considered to have the fastest gunners in the British navy were the Invincible and the Queen Mary, ripped apart by horrendous magazine explosions and each going down with almost all hands."
https://www.jutland1916.com/tactics-and-technologies-4/battleship-design-and-anti-flash/
Thus we must have safety first culture as the great CNO already said " We need to maneuver our ships to the edge of their envelopes and if equipment fails we need better equipment. " thus we must also inspect each ship after each exercise and perform the repairs as needed to not have K-19 below with reactor leak:
"It is believed that the probable reason for the leak was an incident during the start-up tests of one of the reactors, where the first pressure test went all the way to 400 atm because of a pressure gauge malfunction. The designed pressure was only 200 atm, so this resulted in damage to the piping of the primary system. The person in charge of the test, however, did not report the incident to his superiors, so the repair work was not performed."
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/lowet2/
We must have specialized expert people who will inspect and report (not of the ship's crew as they will be exhausted after training) to prevent like the Soviet K-19 above.
The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.
ReplyDeleteAdmiral Beatty would like to revise and extend his remarks in answer to the honorable gentleman Anon:2:50.
ReplyDelete"Something is wrong with our bloody training today"
Which is the lower USN priority, training or testing ?
"Which is the lower USN priority, training or testing"
DeleteImpossible to tell from public data due to the fact the navy has been so unclear as noted by CNO below
https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2023/01/2022-dot-report.html
On a side note I think the Germans could have won the battle of Jutland if they had been more aggressive as the British train only for high fire rates and did not follow proper safety procedures thus had the German fleet been more aggressive and actually went after the British fleet they, in their better armored ships and slower firing but properly stowed ammo would be harder to sink than the British thus a luck hit and the British ship would go up in flames like Russian tanks jack-in-the-box as seen below
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/europe/russia-tanks-blown-turrets-intl-hnk-ml/index.html
Speaking of Russian, or Soviets, the current air of secrecy of the US navy reminds me of the secrecy of the USSR's military (Hey! it is time to be more open about military matters to any reading this)
"The German commander, Scheer, had no idea the British Grand Fleet was even at sea until they appeared in front of him."
ReplyDeleteThis has virtually no application in modern naval warfare.
Because of crew cell phones, electro-magnetic aircraft catapults, and active sensors 'fully viewing the battlefield', there is no chance that an American fleet will show up unexpectedly in front of the Chinese.
Lutefisk
Let's dispense with the notion of cellphones on a ship at war after the first week of combat. The lessons will have been learned and paid in blood. Moving on ...
DeleteYou may be taking the 'appeared in front of him' a bit too literally. Consider this scenario: The US and China are contesting the Philippines as either the protection for, or opening to, the southern flank of Taiwan. There are undefined electromagnetic sources all over the region from all the assets in and around Taiwan (assuming a Chinese invasion). A US fleet approaches from the southeast of Philippines while a Chinese fleet operates northwest with the islands between the two fleets. The islands act to shield both sides from radar and other sensors, effectively acting as blind spots casting surveillance shadows in both directions. The two fleets could certainly 'appear' seemingly out of nowhere. Remember, they don't have to literally appear in visual range a few miles apart. An opposing fleet can 'appear' out of nowhere in the form of a wall of incoming missiles!
Given the range of missiles and surveillance assets, the 'appear out of nowhere' can occur at ranges of hundreds of miles. Your fleet is sailing along, blissfully unaware and, suddenly, a wall of incoming missiles appears out of nowhere because the other side happened to spot you before you spotted them.
One of the lessons that will be quickly learned (and should be being worked on now during training) is the notion of using surrounding geography to shield/hide one's emissions. We're going to be fighting in and around the various islands of the first island chain so we'd better figure out how to use them to our advantage.
"Let's dispense with the notion of cellphones on a ship at war": a cunning plan would be to confiscate crew cell phones, to make plenty of fake use of them back at the home port, or nearby. The trick would only work once, I suppose. Although you might pull it off a second time if some small low-value vessel steamed off somewhere irrelevant again with lots of fake phone use.
DeleteWould anyone fall for it? Dunno, but it all adds to the fog of war.
^ That would make a great CNO Fiction scenario.
ReplyDeleteLutefisk
Hmm ... I'll have to give that some thought.
DeleteConcur all. Also: Accurate Intelligence isn't.
ReplyDeleteWith communications, the constant com to up and down levels sounds like young cellphone users wanting to share their every event and movement. The less said, the better. Nothing is best.
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't think our communications diarrhea is the result of a desire to share; I think it's a result of a fear of responsibility. We lack the courage and integrity to act and accept responsibility for our actions (society has conditioned us to blame everyone else rather than accept personal responsibility) so we constantly seek approval from above and control of those below so that their mistakes don't cost us a career.
DeleteBoldness wins wars.
DeleteBut boldness in a peacetime military can end a career, so we end up bureaucratically weeding out those that don't stay inside the box.
Officers are downgraded during promotion decisions for things like their official DA Photo shows too many wrinkles in their dress uniform. Ugh.
Lutefisk
"The Rules of the Game", covers the wonderfully baroque signals system of Victorian RN. You don't need modern tech to kill initiative and promote brass polishers.
DeleteBoldness ?, Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus
did quite well against boldness. ;-)
Just looked up "The Rules of the Game".
ReplyDeleteIt looks interesting.
Lutefisk
Just a couple of quick points.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't draw much conclusion from the effectiveness of WW1 submarines. They're not really submarines, just boats that can go underwater for brief periods. They were terribly slow underwater, and slower than a contempoary warship on the surface. As well as being blind to anything outside (their very low on the horizon) visual range. Modern passive sonar, long range torpedos, over the horizon missiles......I don't think meaningful comparisom can be made.
Re: Battlecruisers. We're never be sure 100%, but it's almost certain the BC were lost not due to inherent weakness but unsafe ammo handling practise. It had become procedure, and note this is solely in the BC not the Grand Fleet itself, to maximise ROF by storing up spare ammo and cordite in the turrets and disabling the various safety features that were supposed to stop fires from flashing from a turret to a magazine but slowed the passage of shells being brought up. Interestingly the Germans had also had similar tendencies at the start of the war, but after they almost lost Seydlitz at Dogger Bank to such a flash fire they massively tightened up their training and safety features.
"I wouldn't draw much conclusion from the effectiveness of WW1 submarines."
DeleteI didn't ! What I focused on was the inability to control and coordinate submarines as part of an integrated battle plan. The factors that led to that inability still exist to the same extent today and would, therefore, lead to the same inability to control and coordinate today's submarines as part of an integrated battle plan.
Control and communications are just as big a problem today as they were at Jutland and, likely, more so! Today's subs spend all of their time underwater which makes communications and control even more difficult than for a WWI sub which was largely surfaced and, therefore, in a BETTER position to communicate.
Today's subs are just as susceptible to being forced out of a designated position due to the presence of enemy assets as WWI subs. Whether it's helos, fixed wing ASW aircraft, ASW corvettes, other subs, or whatever, subs are still going to be susceptible to being forced out of a designated position.
My conclusion was,
"Combat coordination between subs and surface ships is simply not feasible."
That conclusion still holds for today's subs and it has nothing to do with the sub's effectiveness as a sub. It has to do entirely with the inherent limitations of a submarine whether in WWI or today.
"We need the Van Riper’s of the world to humiliate us in realistic exercises and then thank them for doing so while we correct the identified problems."
ReplyDeleteWhich provokes the question: Have we actually corrected the problems that Van Riper exposed?
"Have we actually corrected the problems that Van Riper exposed?"
DeleteAbsolutely, yes! The Navy learned that they should never run a free-form wargame and, sure enough, they haven't done one since. The Navy learned that they should never have an out-of-the-box thinker be the red force leader and they haven't made that mistake ever again. So, yes, the Navy learned and implemented the important lessons!