"Cross-Sectional Diagram of HMS Lion's Q Turret" Topic

Someone was looking for a diagram of the interior of Lion's Q turret. See DK Brown's "The Grand Fleet" (page 166) for a pretty good one.

Worthy of note – Check out the thin 3in barbette armor below the 1in upper deck. Sheesh.

B

Thanks, B- I have his "Nelson to Vanguard," and have read part (but not all) of "Warrior to Dreadnought," but I have always missed my chance on "The Grand Fleet," but I finally found a reasonably priced copy. I will check it out.

Hi 9pr,
"Grand Fleet" (for me at least) was the most interesting of the three Brown volumes you mentioned. I am sure will find your money was well spent in buying it.

B

It was. The book is much more recent than I had realized, and I was surprised to see references to Gordon's "Rules of the Game." I had somehow got it into my head that his books belonged to the same era as the first printing of Ray Burt's.

To my mind, one of the most telling paragraphs is this one:

"….the Controller, Tudor, wrote a number of minutes putting the blame squarely on ships' staff for having too many exposed charges and generally slack procedures, encouraged by senior officers to whom rate of fire was everything. When Jellicoe became First Sea Lord he ordered Tudor to retract these criticisms and also suppressed the DNC report. He put the blame entirely on inadequate armor and physical protection against flash."

"….the Controller, Tudor, wrote a number of minutes putting the blame squarely on ships' staff for having too many exposed charges and generally slack procedures, encouraged by senior officers to whom rate of fire was everything. When Jellicoe became First Sea Lord he ordered Tudor to retract these criticisms and also suppressed the DNC report. He put the blame entirely on inadequate armor and physical protection against flash."

The following is strictly my personal opinion, but I think that Jellicoe's underlying motive here was political and psychological – to avoid the appearance of blame for the loss of the ships being placed upon the officers and gun crews of the fleet. Better to blame the anonymous and bureaucratic "design process".

The complete exchange between Beatty, Tudor, Jellicoe and (IIRC) D'Eyncourt became rather "spirited".

FWIW.

B

Is it available anywhere (other than in the archives)? It would make interesting reading.

I am intrigued by your interpretation. Jellicoe did have an extraordinary effect on the men he commanded, and that kind of affection is not given lightly. It is very possible he was simply that selfless. I confess to finding him somewhat elusive: it's clear he was respected and admired, but I have trouble going from the anecdotal stories to the respect in which he seems to have been held. This is not something I have trouble doing with, say, Nimitz, Spruance or Andrew Cunningham.

Hi 9pr,

I have a copy of the documentary exchange (courtesy of Tone Lovell of "The Dreadnought Project"). I hesitate to simply post it here, as it runs to 19 pages as a Word document.

If you are on the Navweaps "Battleship versus Battleship Forum", send me ("Blutarski") a PM and I can include the file in a PM reply to you.

Or email me at – byronangel [at] Verizon [dot] net – and I can attach the file in a reply to your email.

Re Jellicoe: Unlike Beatty, he was never a "self promoter" or social climber and was quite prepared to remain silent if/when he felt it would be in the best corporate interests of the navy to do so. Strictly my personal impression, of course.

B

Faber College – "Knowledge is Good" ….. ;-)

Thanks, B – I will shoot you an email, this has been a busy couple of weeks between work, immunization after effects, and spring turkey season.

"And don't be shy about helping yourself to punch and cookies."

One of Evelyn Waugh's best characters is his fictional Brigadier Ritchie-Hook, often thought to be modeled on Adrian Carton de Wiart, but in fact a pretty true-to-life portrait of Albert St Clair Morford, his brigade commander in the Royal Marines, who was killed in a training accident late in the war. He is the man for whom all of war is essentially a practical joke on the enemy, an attempt to trap and surprise him. It's an interesting illustration of a point that I have seen made elsewhere, that some things that are vices in civilian life are positive virtues in military contexts, if kept within reasonable bounds.

David Beatty seems to me to exemplify that. I think he was probably leaking with aggressiveness, but the flip side of that coin is pretty seamy: affairs, coverups, letting others take the heat for failings that were really his own- it's a long list. Part of being a military leader is building a solid organization and team, and his brand of casual overconfidence was less suited to that than was Jellicoe's methodical, organized approach (for which he is seldom given full credit). OTOH, Jellicoe wasn't well served by his subordinate admirals at Jutland, while Beatty's admirals were better than his staff- I think Hood in particular gave the Germans a surprise. Jellicoe's temperament and persona built an outstanding military organization, but I think he could have done better at Jutland and my impression is that his tenure at the Admiralty could have been better. I also wonder about his tenure as DNO.

But I do think that his real achievement was the organization and inspiration of the Grand Fleet, and that was an accomplishment that did so much to make the Allied victory possible that it is worth far more than any particular feat of generalship.

Hi 9pr,

As regards "the tr4ue Beatty", I had first read early on the Beatty hagiography written by Chalmers. What REALLY opened my eyes was the Beatty biography written by Roskill – a "must read" work.

Re Jellicoe, the one thing that IMO sullied his otherwise great reputation was the GF's aversion to night-fighting which became apparent during the night of 31 May / 1 June.

On one hand, I have difficulty indicting Jellicoe for that, given that he only took command after the outbreak of the war and really had no time or opportunity to develop a doctrine, acquire the necessary hardware and above all suitably train the fleet. There was just way too much on his plate.

That having been said, my hat is off to the Imperial German Navy for recognizing the challenge and taking effective steps to master it. Say whay you will about the shortcomings of the GF that night, I am still in awe of the fact that Scheer succeeded in leading the HSF through the numerous light forces of the GF on a pitch-black night with so relatively little disorder and confusion. How the HSF managed to avoid disintegrating into hopeless confusion is simply remarkable to me.

B

Yes, Roskill's book is something (and the price he paid Beatty's heirs in the lawsuit counts as a service to scholarship). Beatty was a very complicated character. I may be unfair here, but his reluctance to sweat the small stuff and tolerate inefficiencies seems to be a character flaw, an actual or feigned indifference that stems from his desire to strike a certain pose. When you read the details on Evan-Thomas's stroke and Seymour's suicide, it assumes pathological proportions. But there's no denying he had military talent and instinct, but the system never forced him to put in the hard work that would have made him everything he could be.

I'm glad Andrew Gordon gave ABC the last word on Jellicoe, because it was a fair one. In some ways, the succession at the Grand Fleet went the only way it could have successfully gone: had Beatty preceded Jellicoe, rather than following him, the whole war might have turned out differently.

Ironically, their sons wound up in Crete in the same Commando in 1941. If it was in any way an uncomfortable relationship, Evelyn Waugh's diaries and letters make no mention of the fact.

I do not believe that Beatty was ever considered for command of the GF in its entirety – too unseasoned and too immature. Strictly my opinion, of course. As well, a great hallmark of Beatty's career was that he would never take responsibility for anything. Read Beatty's BCF maneuver instructions sometime; Tryon was a signal book pedant by comparison.

Jellicoe, on the other hand, appeared compelled to bear responsible for everything down to the very last detail. He has certainly been criticized for that trait; but my sense is that the challenges of managing a corporate organization the size of the GF had grown so enormously in the course of, say, twenty years, as to outstrip the capacity of the existing staff bureaucracy to manage the task … especially when one considers: (a) that the GF was functionally divided into two different (and in many respects separate) command organizations; (b) that the GF proper was sequestered in such a remote and barren location far from the administrative nerve center of the navy.

B

Re above post – consideration of Beatty to assume command of the GF in 1914!

B