Battle of Jutland Lessons

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 5^th 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.

 

 

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[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland

The Battle of Heligoland Bight

In the recent Open Post, a commenter suggested doing an analysis of older (pre-WWII) naval battles.  That suggestion led me to wonder whether there were useful lessons to be learned or whether the subsequent advances in technology have rendered any lessons invalid and irrelevant.  Well, let’s take a look at the first naval battle of WWI, the Battle of Heligoland Bight, 28-Aug-1914 and see if it has lessons to offer us today.

To set the stage, at the outbreak of WWI, the British and German navies emphasized strong main battle fleets of dreadnoughts and older battleships supported by battlecruisers, cruisers, and destroyers.  The British implemented a blockade strategy of Germany’s northern coast but were forced to execute a distant blockade instead of a close port blockade due to the threat of submarines and mines.  Germany had several naval bases along the North Sea coast in a large ‘inlet’ of the sea.  The inlet area approach was called the Heligoland Bight and was protected by a series of islands, the most important of which was Heligoland which was heavily fortified.

The German naval forces remained in their protected bases while the British maintained their distant blockade.

As the two naval forces settled into their routines, the German’s developed the habit of sending regular nighttime and daytime destroyer patrols out into the North Sea.  These patrols were escorted out and then met and escorted back by cruisers.

The British developed a plan to ambush the returning destroyers with a locally overwhelming force.  Eight British submarines were positioned around Heligoland Island to act as bait to draw the destroyers out to sea where two destroyer flotillas of 15 and 16 destroyers would engage the Germans.  Two British battlecruisers were tasked with providing additional support for the destroyer flotillas.  In addition, several other British battlecruisers and cruisers were inserted into the action on a haphazard and largely uncommunicated basis.

As the British forces took their positions, the Germans were alerted by increased radio traffic and implemented their own plan which was, essentially, the reverse of the British plan.  The Germans planned to use their destroyers as bait to lure the British ships closer to shore and then have light cruisers engage the British ships.

Weather played a factor with fog and mist causing severe identification problems for both sides.

The battle became a confused, chaotic affair with ships entering the area and engaging and disengaging almost randomly.  Detailed descriptions of the sequence of events can be found in the reference links below. (1,2)  The individual events of the battle are difficult to follow and decipher.  Careful reading and reference to the accompanying maps are required to make sense of the battle.  The sheer confusion for those involved must have been nearly overwhelming.

At one point, in a friendly fire incident, a British submarine fired two torpedoes at the British light cruiser Southampton but missed.  The Southampton then attempted to ram the friendly submarine but failed.

The British lost no ships but suffered heavy damage to one light cruiser and three destroyers.  The Germans lost three light cruisers and a destroyer with several other ships damaged.

So, are there lessons to be learned from this battle?  I think so!  In no particular order,

• Fortune favors the bold – when the bold are backed by local numerical and firepower superiority.  Although the plan largely fell apart, the localized concentrations of British ships enable them to inflict more damage than they received.  Firepower/mass overcame confusion.  This is an important lesson for us, today.  We’ve begun to forego firepower in favor of data and networks.  When confusion comes calling (no plan survives contact with the enemy!), what firepower will we be able to call on to overcome the chaos?


• German destroyers were acting as distributed lethality assets.  Small patrols were sent out to search for targets of opportunity.  Unfortunately, this simply led to the German destroyers being isolated and defeated in detail, with little support.  Despite this lesson, the Navy, today, wants to implement exactly this isolated, distributed lethality operation.


• Submarines caused blue-on-blue engagements and served to increase confusion – this is the classic submarine communication issue.  Nothing has changed today.


• British radio communications were not secure and gave away the impending action, if not the actual details.  It was not, apparently, that the Germans intercepted and listened to the British communications but, instead, they detected a significant increase in radio broadcasts and deduced from this that an action was imminent.  This suggests to us, today, that our communications and data transmissions may not be as secure as we believe and that it is not necessary for an enemy to intercept and decode the transmissions.  They merely need to detect increased transmissions or, indeed, the mere presence of transmissions to glean valuable, actionable information.  We need to regain the ability to operate without communications as we did during the Cold War (EMCON – Emissions Control).  Of course, this directly conflicts with the Navy’s current concept of vast regional networks and fleets of unmanned vehicles all of which require continuous, high bandwidth transmissions.


• General chaos of battle versus our neat concept of perfect data is perfectly illustrated by the neat, tidy, logical British battle plan which disintegrated the moment contact was made with the enemy.  As has often been said, “No plan survives contact with the enemy”.  Despite this oft-repeated lesson, the Navy, today, is counting on perfect situational awareness to execute operational plans that depend on the perfect arrangement of every element.  This is lunacy!  We need to simplify our operational concepts and doctrine and learn to act within the context of confusion.


• On a larger level, the German navy’s refusal to leave their ports violates the adage that, “the seat of purpose is on the land”.  A navy that stays in port has no impact on events on land and is useless.  The modern US Navy runs this risk due to the risk-averse mindset of being unwilling to lose overly expensive ships.

Well, there you have it – a wealth of lessons, most of them seemingly timeless, for us to benefit from today.  It would seem, therefore, that there are lessons that transcend technology. 

This has been a fascinating exercise and I think I’ll try to apply a similar analysis to even older naval actions.  An action from the age of sail ought to make for an interesting study.

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(1)BritishBattles.com website, “Battle of Heligoland Bight”

https://www.britishbattles.com/first-world-war/the-battle-of-heligoland-bight/

(2)Wikipedia, “Battle of Heligoland Bight (1914)”,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Heligoland_Bight_%281914%29