"WWI Naval Book?" Topic

Has anyone read these books?
1) Technical change and British Naval Policy 1860-1939 (Rabft)

2) In Defense of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology, and the British Naval Policy 1889-1914 (Sumida)

3) Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland (Brooks)

They seem to be important to understanding WWI naval concepts and are very expensive. Anyone reccommend one over another?

Any feedback is appreciated

3 is good, but very technical. I would recommend "Rules of the Game" by Andrew Gordon, it provides a comprehensive understanding of the RN in WWI and a good technical explanation of ship handling in battle (it also explains why the RN continually failed to defeat the Germans when presented with repeated opportunities).

I have read Technical Change and British Naval Policy, by Bryan Ranft. It's mainly an academic study of the subject. I found it interesting, but it might be a little dry.

Gordon's The Rules of the Game is an excellent book, and I highly recommend it.

I haven't read Sumida's book (it's mainly about the selection of the Dreyer fire-control system over Pollen's superior one) though I've read a number of his essays, and Brooks' book was written in response to Sumida's. Sumida's review of Brooks' book touched off a vituperative little exchange between the two in the Journal of Military History in 2006 which I personally felt generated more heat than light. I once spoke with Sumida on the phone, and I will say, he is incredibly knowledgeable on the Royal Navy, though he doesn't necessarily write on what one might consider the sexiest aspects.

Which book would provide the best essay on all the aspects of british gunnery effectiveness vs. the Germans. Looking for causes and effects on why Britsh gunnery was so much less effective.

Was it poorer fire control or poorer ammo or both. Seems like the story has more to it than conventional wisdom suggests.

Gordon's Rules of the Game is probably your best bet. That's the subject of Brook's book as well, but his conclusions have been more contested and do not appear to be generally accepted by the academic community.

Ordered Gordons book. Most copies were hundreds of dollars but I was able to track one down for thirty bucks. Thanks for your feedback.

Anyone else have any knowledge of the other books?

I will give another vote for Gordon; it covers the roots of all decision-making problems of the RN.

The book by Brooks is interesting; however just covers the debate on the Pollen vs. Dreyer systems.

Sounds like you want to check out John Campbell's Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting. It combines many of the factors that lead to the poor hit ratio and the damage that the hits caused.

Below is the bibliography from my IDE Master's thesis paper, which I did on John Fisher's "naval revolution"; feel free to ask me about any of the titles in this list.

I would add one book I just finished; Robert O'Connell's "Sacred Ships" which examines the rise of the battleship cult in the US Navy. It is a very detailed and technical account of the birth of the US dreadnought program.

Brooks, John. Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland : The Question of Fire Control. Routledge , UK : Cass Series: Naval Policy and History, 2006.
Brown, David K. Grand Fleet: Warship Design and Development 1906-1922. London , UK : Caxton Editions, 2004.
Burr, Lawrence. British Battlecruisers 1914-1918. Oxford , UK : Osprey Publishing, 2006.
Campbell, John. Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting. Annapolis MD : Naval Institute Press, 1998.
Gordon, Andrew. The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command. Annapolis MD : Naval Institute Press, 2005.
Hart, Peter, and Nigel Steel. Jutland 1916 Death in the Grey Wastes. London , UK : Cassell Publishing, 2003.
Herwig, Holger H. Luxury Fleet:The imperial German Navy 1888-1918. London , UK : Ashfield Press, 1980.
Hoare, Peter. Battleships of World War I. London , UK : Anness Publishing Ltd, 2006.
Hough, Richard. Dreadnought. New York , NY : McMillan Publishing Co, 1975.
Jellicoe, Sir John R. "Grand Fleet Battle Orders Vol III 1914-1916." Admiralty Staff, 1916.
Knox, MacGregor, and Murray, Williamson. The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050. New York , NY : Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Lambert, Nicholas A. Sir John Fisher's Naval Revolution. Columbia , SC : University of South Carolina Press, 2002.
Mahan, Alfred Thayer. The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783. Boston , MA : MA Little, Brown, and Company, 1894.
Massie, Robert K. Castles of Steel. New York , NY : Random House, 2003.
—. Dreadnought. New York , NY : Ballantine Books, 1992.
Nilback, A P. "Tactics of Ships in Line of Battle." US Naval Institute Proceedings, February 1896.
Padfield, Peter. The Battleship Era. New York , NY : David McKay Co, 1972.
—. The Great Naval Race. Edinburg , UK : Birlinn Ltd, 1974.
Roberts, John. Battlecruisers. London , UK : Caxton Publishing, 1997.
Staff, Gary. German Battlecruisers 1914-1918. Oxford , UK : Osprey Publishing, 2006.
Yates, Keith. Flawed Victory: Jutland 1916. Annapolis , MD : Naval Institute Press, 2000.
Young, Filson. With the Battlecruisers. London , UK : Birlinn, 2002.

Thanks for the suggestions and opinions.

I ordered Campbell's book.

We have several sets of WWI Naval rules and want to see how each author's rules translate the facts and data in to a game system.

Do you have a favorite set of WWI naval rules?

A lot of WWI rules out there and I've played most of them over the years.

My favorite is Gemeral Quarters 3/Fleet Action Imminent by ODGW. Big advantages are the quick learning curve (I've had complete newbies running the game on their own within 20mins), a high degree of appropiate detail, and consistent historical outcomes. The game can handle up to 20 major ships a side (you can do Jutland but it'll take longer. BTW, that's true of every just about every WWI rule set). One key element is the use of nation specific CRTs that have the historical differences built in (such as the lower performing shell, superior range or better fire control). Finally, the heavy ongoing support from the author and publisher is outstanding. For me, these rules have the best mix of historical accuracy and playability of any that I've played.

FAI has been my favorite since GQ3 came out.

I have given NTCoD and VaSAoD a try recently and find them acceptable too. But I am back playing FAI.

Naval games are rare for many gamers and to get everyone up to speed on games they don't play on a regular basis is a lot of work. What I have had to do is make text versions of the rule and construct how to pages for each aspect of the rules. A sort of quick sheet on how to resolve the rules. These speed up play considerably.

I have also made several custom ship data sheets which further expalins and simplifies the gaming to those unfamiliar with the rules.

Do you do anything like this or are you gaming the rules enought through out the year that everyone is knowledgable?

PS: I agree Lonnie and the crew are very supportive. Also the work that Mal did on the on the ship cards is nice.

Rules of the Game is probably the most accessible but Dreadnought Gunnery is the most technically accurate. To say Brook's conclusions have not been accepted by the academic community is both true and somewhat disingenuous. The group lead by Sumida, which includes Lambert and Katherine Epstein have been virulent against Brook's work but a numerous other naval scholars agree with Brooks and disagree with the Sumida led faction and its poorly supported arguments of naval plans by Admiral Fisher that were so secret that the lack of any archival evidence for them is clear evidence of the effective conspiracy to hide them!

Tsofian, what you say is very interesting. Could you enlarge a little on it?

Given that we have resurrected an 8-year-old thread, I'd like to comment on the OP's follow-up post:

Which book would provide the best essay on all the aspects of british gunnery effectiveness vs. the Germans. Looking for causes and effects on why Britsh gunnery was so much less effective.

With one exception, I don't think that British gunnery was less effective than German gunnery at Jutland. For example, note hitting rate on the run to the south (poor lighting for British) with the run to the north (poor lighting for Germans).

The single exception was in the magazine explosions suffered by the 3 British BCs. In turn, this has been plausibly explained in recent publications as due to "suicidal" magazine safety precautions implemented by most ships after Dogger Bank (Friedman "Fighting the Great War at Sea", and the 2017 McCartney Jutland archeology book). These in effect turned the entire ammunition handling chain into a magazine, which could be set off by a turret penetration.

MH

If you remove the hitting rates of the battlecruisers under Beatty, who did not properly train his crews the British and Germans shot almost identically. One big problem for the British was the failure of their AP shells, which detonated before they got through the armor.

Also, as mentioned was the ammunition handling practices of the Battlecruisers.

A C London

I can't claim to be unbiased. I know a number of the folks in the camp that is question Jon Sumida's work.

I will let some online resources tell the tale, as they do a much better job than I can.

link

link

link

link

Sumida earned his PhD in 1982 and first came upon the publishing scene with "The Pollen Papers" (George Allen & Unwin for the Naval Records Society, 1984), a book made possible Sumida was granted access to the private papers of Arthur Hungerford Pollen.

It was followed by his (IMO) most valuable and influential book "In Defence of Naval Supremacy" (Unwin Hyman 1989).

Since then, some troubling aspects (IMO) appear to have arisen in Sumida's intellectual and academic deportment. He seems to have anointed himself as lord, master and custodian in perpetuity of all analyses and interpretations of early modern British naval history. Any who disagree with his views and conclusions are aggressively and unpleasantly attacked, often on an unpleasantly ad hominen basis (see Sumida'a review of John Brooks's book "Dreadnought Gunnery in the Battle of Jutland". Since then Sumida seems to have embarked upon a revisionist crusade, critiquing and disputing the works of several earlier respected military historians – Mahan, Marder nad, most recently Clausewitz.

What troubled me most about Sumida's approach to his work was his essay "A Matter of Timing" (JMH, Jan 2003) in which he argues that (a) Jellicoe had developed a radical tactical fleet engagement plan so secret that it was never recorded or officially put to paper, followed by (b) an argument that this very lack of evidence is proof of existence, because (c) only he possessed the critical research acumen necessary to ferret out its existence as a function of gaps in the official records. Interested parties should read it for themselves, but IMO it is an exercise in stretching reader credulity to the breaking point.

Several very fine books have been recommended by others, but several new books have appeared since the original 2010 OP. I suggest the following -

"The Battle of Jutland", John Brooks (Cambridge University Press, 2016)

"Jutland, World War I's Greatest Naval Battle", (ed) Michael Epkenhans, Jorg Hillmann, Frank Nagler (University Press of Kentucky, 2013)

"Jutland, The Naval Staff Appreciation", (ed) William Schleihauf (Seaforth Publishing, 2016)

B

Also Jellico's grandson has written a very well received book on Jutland.

Blutarski
I agree wholeheartedly with your post.