I’m reading Robert K. Massie, Castles of Steel and various web sites concerning the Battle of Dogger Bank.
I’ve believed David Beatty to be an excellent naval commander, famous for saying at Jutland, “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today”.
At Dogger Bank he flew confusing signals, two at the same time which were interpreted to be a single signal, ordered a turn away from a periscope while not indicating why, and when his flagship was damaged and fell behind he did not give command to anyone else.
He flaunted a large hat as Patton flaunted two pearl handled revolvers and posed dramatically for photographs as McArthur would in the next World War.
Was he really that good? Churchill and Fisher seemed to think so.
Well, for what it’s worth, Neither Jackie Fisher nor Winston the C is a good recommendation.
Churchill was the driving force behind such disasters as Gallipoli and had a much higher opinion of his military prowess than was justified. His talent was language and oratory. Jackie Fisher was highly opinionated and if you didn’t agree with him he hated you. Sort of the English counterpart of Hyman Rickover, his ideas on ship design were game-changers.
That said, I think that Beatty was quite good but not Nelsonic. Beatty stuck a romantic and dashing image, had some PR going for him, and appeared to be the Noble Savior of the royal navy. Some of his image was in contrast to others at the time. Jellicoe, his superior and in whose steps he followed, came across as rather timid and overly cautious. Doveton Sturdee, the victor at the Falklands (the WWI falklands) was equally dashing, but also a thorough and careful planner, whose victory was downplayed in Whitehall by Fisher, who sent him south to get him out of the way. I think that Beatty was somewhat impulsive, (as was Nelson, but Nelson sat with his admirals (the band of brothers) and plotted out what was to be done ahead of time) and did not share with his subordinates what he wanted done.
" Doveton Sturdee, the victor at the Falklands (the WWI falklands) was equally dashing, but also a thorough and careful planner, whose victory was downplayed in Whitehall by Fisher, who sent him south to get him out of the way"
So Massie says for an earlier battle. Sturdee was deaf and slow to respond in conversation, and Fisher hated him. Churchill gave him command to get him out of being an officer in the admiralty.
Castles of Steel? I’m only a third of the way into *Dreadnought *and Massie has barely mentioned ships, though I now know that Granny Vicky could’ve been fonder of Willi.
Like you, I read Dreadnaught a few months ago expecting it to be mainly about the ship. If that’s all you want, put it aside – it pretty well sticks to Eddie and Willie and what they and their minions went through, i.e. the actions leading up the the battleship-building race that culminated in HMS Dreadnaught. I found it interesting to read, but man, was it a slog.
Fisher’s dislike was heavily influenced by Sturdee being an adherent of Fisher’s hated rival, Admiral Charles Beresford.
From reading Massie, you don’t get a very positive picture of Beatty, who comes across as egotistical, self-promoting, careless in battle and willing to trash others when opportunity arose (as in abandoning Jellicoe when the latter’s fortunes were waning).
You get a pretty good sense of the two men just looking at photos in Castles of Steel. The one of Beatty shows him striking a jaunty pose seemingly intended to please fans; Jellicoe on the other hand looks like the sort of leader who could inspire intense loyalty among those he commanded.
Beatty’s attempt to rewrite the historical record about Jutland, in order to burnish his reputation, do him little credit - and rebounded on him in the end. He would have done better to have left it alone.
The insistence on retaining outdated methods of signalling, failure to make proper use of SIGINT, ‘obey the last order’, and ‘conform to senior officer’s motions’ did not serve the RN well in the war.
Speaking of pictures, there is a picture of Sturdee standing on a deck somewhere and looking very jaunty with a walking stick under his arm. I seem to recall that picture was in either Dreadnought or Castles of Steel.
In the Nelsonic sense of planning, Sturdee conferred with his officers and the commanders of the other ships all the way from Plymouth to the Falklands, gong over what would they do in various circumstances. By the time they reached Port Stanley everybody agreed on the tactics. When Von Spee showed up, and through the entire battle, the signals exchanged were very minimal. Everybody knew what to do, and as the battle evolved they followed what they had discussed on the way down. It worked superbly, and even though Von Spee showed up while some of Sturdee’s ships were still taking on coal and undergoing repairs, the actual battle was a few hours of total annihilation of the German squadron. One small German ship of those engaged got away (although it was hunted down and sunk a few weeks later), and the admirality chose to criticise Sturdee for that, rather than comment on what was a great victory. That was likely Fisher’s doing.
As far as Beatty, my impression of him was of a VERY competent fighting admiral, with a high opinion of himself. When he moved ashore in later years to succeed Jellicoe, he often wished he was back at sea. I have a copy of his letters to his wife (among others) and he mentions this from time to time. When he would go to Scapa or Rosyth on inspections, he would write his wife and wish he was at sea again.
If you want a really good modern RN admiral, look at Cunningham.
Beatty could have benefited from a dose of Jellicoe’s caution. Otherwise he was what you wanted in a battlecruiser admiral – speed and daring. The battlecruiser concept wasn’t flawed as originally envisioned – use superior speed and firepower to beat up weaker foes, run from the more powerful foes, don’t get bogged down in a fair fight. Basically the same tactics Mongol horsemen were famous for.
Had Beatty not succumbed to the same illusion so many others did (Jellicoe included, in this case) – that big guns meant the battlecruisers were necessary in the battle line – Jutland might have been as clear a win for the British tactically as it was strategically. The battlecruiser and armored cruiser deaths make up 5069 of the 6094 British deaths. Had they been kept back from facing heavy guns, the battle would be a stark defeat for the germans in every category.
I think (warning: Opinion) that perhaps the victory at the Falklands may have, in the minds of some, vindicated the idea of the battlecruiser in the main battle line. But Von Spee had no battleships, just armored cruisers. The two battlecruisers in Sturdee’s little fleet far out classed in both speed (23 kn vs 18) and armament (12" vs 8"). With any decent ship handling the result was largely foreordained. In fact the flagship at the Falklands, the HMS Invincible, was one of the ships blown apart at Jutland. As it happened, the two battlecruisers were being used just as envisioned, the ability to overwhelm enemy commerce raiders was part of their design. But at Jutland they were used against German battle cruisers and battleships. Big mistake. Don’t bring a dagger to a swordfight.
Right. The British had a numbers advantage in dreadnoughts without including the battle cruisers; theur inclusion wasn’t necessary. I have read in many places that admirals found the heavy guns of the battle cruisers an almost irresistible incentive to throw them into the line of battle despite their weak armor. I have never understood that – aren’t military professionals able to resist their impulses and act rationally?
I’m in the midst of Jutland now. Neither side knew that the other guys had their battleships out. The Brits were reading German coded radio signals. The call sign of the flag battleship was shifted to a land station while it was at sea, so they thought the German battleships were at Jade. The Germans laid a trap for cruisers which the British knew about, so they used the cruisers as bait just as Hipper planned to entrap them, with the British battleships out of sight.
“aren’t military professionals able to resist their impulses and act rationally?”
A bit of an aside, but I found this book quite disappointing. It is 100 percent focused on the few individuals at the top, and there is next to nothing about the thoughts or experiences of anyone below the rank of battleship commander. Sorry for the hijack.