re: 100 years ago this week, the Battle of Jutland

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Though Beatty's larger 13.5 in (340 mm) guns out-ranged Hipper's 11 and 12 in (280 and 300 mm) guns by thousands of yards, Beatty held his fire for 10 minutes and closed the German squadron until within range of the Germans' superior gunnery, under lighting conditions that favoured the Germans.[170] Most of the British losses in tonnage occurred in Beatty's force.

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Oops.

Just saw your post about the British gunnery limitations due to inferior rangefinders. That's interesting and perfectly explains why Beatty held fire and closed range with the German battle cruisers. Great post.

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Just saw your post about the British gunnery limitations due to inferior rangefinders. That's interesting and perfectly explains why Beatty held fire and closed range with the German battle cruisers. Great post.

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Thanks.

Zeiss Optics. That's another edge that the German rangefinders possessed. Zeiss Glass made the optics for all of the German subs and warships in WW1.

Zeiss Glass also made the optics for German tanks, ships and airplanes in WW2.

Zeiss was overrun by the Red Army and enjoyed a new era of Excellence making optics for the post WW2 Soviet Army.

Jellicoe was quite correct in his decision to remain conservative during the course of the battle. Years ago Rumsfeld of the USA spoke about "Knowing what you don't know" and the much more scary "NOT knowing what you don't know."

Nobody on Earth had a clue that the British capital ships at Jutland were going to be blowing up with catastrophic regularity. Jellicoe certainly did NOT know that he didn't know this.

Jellicoe deserves praise for his risk aversion. If Jellicoe had aggressively attacked the German battleships, some of Jellicoe's own battleships would surely have blown up, just as some of Beatty's battlecruisers did.

Both Germans and Brits had propellant charge bags in risky locations in the heat of battle. Both sides lost turrets when penetrations ignited flash fires inside the turret.

The differences were: 1) the British propellant was too volatile. Once ignited it flashed at a speed that created massive overpressure inside the turret. Explosive results.
German propellant was less volatile, burned a bit more slowly when ignited in the gun house by enemy shell, no overpressure no explosion. Turret was still lost but not the whole ship.

2) British armor piercing projectiles tended to explode too early on impact. As such, during the whole battle, only one British heavy shell penetrated and exploded inside a German capital ship at Jutland. Only one out of the thousands fired. Result this hit: turret of German battlecruiser destroyed, but ship did not explode and made it back to base after the battle.

There were many hits on German capital ships by British heavy AP shell, but, all but one exploded outside the German ship structure causing less damage than had they penetrated and exploded inside the enemy ship structure.