OK, the German High Seas Fleet delivered a nasty tactical victory over the Grand Fleet in 1916. The Germans sank three of the much vaunted Battlecruisers. The British shells werent exploding but their magazines were. "there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today." The only High Seas Fleet ship in trouble was the Lützow, which sank much later.
Despite this, Sheer ordered a Gefechtskehrtwendung (“battle about turn”) and retreated. The Grand Fllet was known to be inferior in Night fighting.
Many more casualties on both sides. The British probably would have got their act together, weathered whatever loses they took and sent the Germans running for port after more losses. The British were only going to yield if they were completely crushed. Sheer fled before he needed to, but they were badly outnumbered by superior crews and he would have faced a pasting eventually. The British would have been willing to take horrifying casualties and the Germans knew it.
The German open sea Navy was a hair up the ass idea of Kaiser Willy. They were never going to match the Brits, and the Germans knew it. Had they lost half the fleet, suicide would have been expected and the German Navy wasn’t into losing half the men. They were required to sortie forth to show that they weren’t a huge waste of money, which they were. They did.
Consider the Bismark in WWII. A vastly superior ship. If they had waited and sent out the Tirpitz with her, and a couple of pocket battle ships, they could have sunk every ship in the Royal Navy limited only by on board ammunition. Consider that when the Bismark was sent out, a lucky hit crippled her and she still nearly made it back to port. With the Tirpitz supporting her, she would have, but she wasn’t available.
Heavier casualties, possible loss of most of the remaining German dreadnoughts (they still were outnumbered by the British better than 2:1 by battle’s end).
Agreed, except for the last one. The British Grand Fleet could not realistically take very heavy casualties, without jeopardizing its main mission of blockading Germany.
Without the German fleet, or the German fleet badly damaged, the blockade would have been just as effective with fewer ships. The British kept so much of their force in the UK because of the threat posed by the German fleet as it was comprised. But both those fleets in half, and the British lose a lot more men and materiel, but they then have a much bigger advantage over the German fleet and can summon more ships from the Empire.
Massies ‘Castles of Steel’ looks at this. I don’t have a copy to hand. But from memory betweeen British ships refitting/new build/could be brought home, they could have made good to at least parity/still outnumbering unless they took very heavy losses indeed. Plus the half a dozen French dreadnoughts could have abandoned the Med (where frankly they weren’t doing much) and reinforced the Grand Fleet.
It is worth repeating that this is a very unlikely scenario. At the start of the engagement the British dreadnoughts were crossing the German ‘T’. It took about 3 minutes for Scheer to decide the situation was hopeless and his only chance to save his fleet was a risky high speed 180 (Which they had actually practised) and to run like hell. After which his only thought and maneuver was towards breaking contact and escaping home.
Both sides lost some smaller ships as well (if you can call armored cruisers “smaller.”) But like the armored cruisers, the battlecruisers were essentially superfluous once the battle lines had made contact – had Britain lost the entire lot of them, it would not have determined the outcome. And the battleships proper were much more durable. Super-Dreadnought HMS *Warspite * reeled out of the line of battle, was hit multiple times by heavy shells (my memory of Keegan is 22 times, Wikipedia says “at least 15”), but continued on with the fleet. Upon arriving home in port, her captain reported her able to sortie again on four hours’ notice.
And in the actual event, the Germans had their “T” crossed in BOTH encounters. Scheer tried gamely to calculate the right moment to turn around and re-engage his foes, but guessed wrong in the darkness and confusion. The smaller, less-experienced force twice getting caught at the position of maximum disadvantage is ill-advised to press on. The High Seas Fleet faced imminent destruction had it done so.
They would have been better served by retiring to lick their wounds and try again another day. Why they never tried again is, in my mind, a more revealing question.