Talk:Battle of Jutland/Archive 3

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A rather significant omission!

Is it me, or does the article fail to mention the destruction of HMS Invincible? I've tried to locate the passage where it is described but can't find it anywhere... On the other hand, the article does imply that HMS Princess Royal was sunk - which, of course, she wasn't... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Getztashida (talk • contribs) 23:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC).

Sorry! I've found it now - I take it back, although the comment about the Princess Royal stands... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Getztashida (talk • contribs) 23:30, 10 December 2006 (UTC).

I had inserted a small blurb clarifying the survival of Princess Royal, but the most recent round of revisions stripped it back out. I will re-insert it, but I don't want to get into a revision war with someone who is doing much more thorough work on this piece. Horologium 19:07, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Repairs to the German Fleet

I found an interesting book on German battlecruisers (Osprey New Vanguard series "German Battlecruisers 1914-18") which gave be some precise details on how quickly the Seydlitz was reapaired after Jutland. Apparently the Repairs were completed in October and she was officially bck in full service in November 1916 - meaning she took about five months to repair. I've added this information to the "Outcome" section of the article as I beliveit gives us a clearer picture of how long it took the German fleet to recover. Getztashida 02:20, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

German activity post-Jutland

I have recently aquired some reference material which lists the High Seas Fleet's sorties after Jutland. The First was in August 1916 - only two months after the battle - and ended in an indecisive destroyer clash. A subsequent sortie in force was obliged to turn back after the Molkte threw a prop and suffered engine damage. Certainly this belies the common perception that the High Seas Fleet remained "bottled up" in harbour for the rest of the war. Unfoertunately I'm, typing this from work and do not have the book to hand to cite, but as soon as I am able I intend to add a sentence about this to the "Aftermath" section and add the appropriate references. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Getztashida (talk • contribs) 12:40, 5 February 2007 (UTC).

With reference to my previous comment, the book is "The Battle of Jutland, 1916" by George Bonney. It states that the High seas Fleet sortied again on the 18th August 1916 and the Grand fleet sailed to meet them, but both sides returned to base without sighting the enemy. The High Seas Fleet sorted again in October 1916, but withdrew after the Westfalen was torpedoed. Getztashida 15:15, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Questions on deck and turret armor suite

I'm working up the U.S. Battleships (they were simply wretched) and noticed while going through Norman Friedland's book on the subject a design evolution that has caused me to wonder about Jutland over and over. This isn't my field so I don't want to presume anything. U.S. Battleship design up till the Nevada class didn't take into account plunging fire. In fact, most of the classes before that assumed fire at 10,000 to 12,000 yards. So they were designed with very thick belts and two stage deck armor, one to set AP shells off, and an under deck to catch any splinters thus preservering the hull and machinery. Obviously this isn't going to work so well if a 12" shell plunges into the deck from a steeper angle. After looking at some of the pictures it appears to me that the RN's turret roofs were being pierced and the tops being blown off. While detonation of the magazines finished the ship this would seem to be a very serious failure of the armor suite. It probably would have happened in earlier U.S. ships (pre-Nevada) also had they been there. They were simply designed for a closer fight. Technology improved after they were built. But I don't see this brought up in this article. I sure don't have the answer I am not an expert on British Battleship design but is this possible? Tirronan 17:17, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

• xpost Answer on Tirronan:

Hi! You left a question on the above about top armour. The engineering of long range rifled naval artillery outpaced tactics and naval thinking as you sort of dance around. In fact it always had and did, but one lesson the Admirals took out of that much over-analyzed battle was to aromour the tops of turrets as you noticed. The British extended the concept eventually to WW-II Aircraft Carriers as well, whereas the US carriers had wooden decks and virtually no armour until late in that war. However, there never was a ship with adequate top armour able to withstand plunging fire from anything like it's own sized guns, or delayed fused aircraft bombs iirc. The most recent forensic historians analyzing Jutland have tended to blame flash and poor cordite handling practices engendered by a traditional emphasis on rate of fire in Brittish gunnery leading to gun crews bypassing safety features with a wink and a nod so turrets could perform well, vice the armor. Imagine however the difference had Beatty's forces been able to put shots on range instead of all those overs during the period when they had the range and didn't fire and the first ten minutes of the battle when they returned the Germans fire... very different outcome in the cruiser action would have ensued, they argue. Makes sense to me! // FrankB 14:41, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I've checked turret top armor on U.S. Dreadnoughts and sure enough 2.5" was pretty standard. We are talking cheesecloth here. I noticed a picture of a German dreadnought with roof blown off so it wasn't just British that had the problem. Nevada Class had 4.5" turret roof armor which isn't horrible given a 17 degree angle of attack most likely in a Jutland range. I note post war virtually every dreadnought got more turret and deck armor. Tirronan 23:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, that's probably a picture of the Seydlitz. Although the Seydlitz's turrets were penetrated, they're roofs were not blown off. Instead, after beaching her in near sinking condition on the Horns Reef, The Germans cut the roofs off and removed the guns (amongst other things) in order to lighten and refloat her. Getztashida 19:59, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Image:Grand_fleet_jutland.jpg

On 22 April new user JT Swe deleted the image Grand_fleet_jutland.jpg from the article, without giving reasons; I reverted him, as the source of the image states that it is the GF at Jutland. JT Swe has now provided evidence on my talk page (reproduced below), which appears convincing, that the image is actually of the Austro-Hungarian fleet on maneouvers in the Adriatic (the article in the Austrian Mint's magazine, "die münze", in particular shows part of this picture). So I have reverted my reversion and removed the image from the article. This does raise questions about the accuracy of other pictures similarly sourced from http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jpsabol/jutland/. -- Arwel (talk) 21:01, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello!

I am sorry if I am wrong in leaving a message like this, perhaps I should be posting this somewhere else as a part of the discussion area of the article. I am a newbie at this though, so please bear with me.

As you know, I removed the image entitled "Grand_fleet_jutland.jpg" from the article. The reason was that it is not, in fact, a picture of the Grand Fleet (or of the High Seas Fleet for that matter). It is actually a painting depicting the Austro-Hungarian Navy during maneuvers in the Adriatic.

It is featured on the cover of the book "K.u.K. Flotte 1900-1918" (K.u.K. is short for Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine), by author Wladimir Aichelberg, and was also featured in a book by Macintyre, Donald and Bathe, Basil W. I do not know the English (i.e. original) title of the book, but the Swedish title was: "Örlogsfartyg genom seklen" (Warships through the centuries), ISBN 91-46-12528-0.

The painting itself, called "K.u.K. Eskader in der Adria", was painted in 1913 by artist August von Ramberg, and is supposedly the property of the Museum of War in Vienna.

The battleship leading the fleet is SMS Viribus Unitis. Her class had a very un-British armament layout of three guns per turret, which can be clearly seen on larger images of the painting. Also, the Viribus Unitis is flying the Austro-Hungarian naval ensign, which again is seen more clearly on larger versions.

The source page of the image (http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jpsabol/jutland/images.html) is titled "Images of the battle", but even so features an image of the High Seas Fleet being led by SMS Blücher, which was sunk at Dogger Bank. Also, HMS Dreadnought did not participate at Jutland. It seems that this page, being so titled, is somewhat inconsistent in showing "images of the battle".

If you want more evidence, download this pdf, called die münze - 3 ausgabe 2006.pdf: [1]. This pdf contains information about a collector´s medal being made, apparently using the painting as a model.

I hope this explains my action of removal.

Regards

--JT Swe 13:28, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Looking closely at the image reveals the lead BB to have triple guns and therefore isn't British. Tirronan 21:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

deficiencies in night-fighting

Would inexperience not be a better word, given how inexperienced some of the British crews were.

Please sign your comments. I can answer this one! The British had and challenge/reply by signal light that was easy to copy and in fact was by the HSF. The Germans used a sequence of colored lights that were rapidly given for recognition at night. The Germans were well practiced at night fighting and had a tactical plan they practiced and fought to, while the GF did little more than lip service to it, the results were evident. There were multiple cases of the GF challenging and the HSF responding with the correct code. Further when the HSF didn't see a sequence of rapid colored lights it had to be GF and all they needed to do was open fire. Tirronan

• Don't forget the British Fleet were backlighted against the horizon... a tremedous factor! // FrankB 16:59, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, at dusk it would actually have been the HSF who were lit up against the hoizon as they were to the west of the GF at this time. similarly, by dawn, the HSF had broken through to the east and would have been visible against the Horizon at dawn. However, as most of the night action was fought in pitch darkness, the relative positions of the fleet to the horizon made little difference at this stage of the battle. Getztashida 08:44, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Suggested addition

I'm just putting this out there as a suggestion to the effects of the lessons on Jutland on the U.S. Battleships designs and refits. I have a great book on that here but I don't have sources of that class on other nations battlefleets so this would have to be a contributive effort with others having such sources.

The lessons of the Battle of Jutland on battleship design

One lesson of Jutland was that enough attention to plunging fire had not been figured into the armour suites of the earlier dreadnoughts. The designs of virtually all of the early dreadnoughts had been one of 12,000 yard engagements with the shells striking at near horizontal to the vertical plane, as such thick belt armor was required and deck and turret roofs strikes were not considered at such ranges. Such was the pace of range finding and mechanical computer development that much longer ranges became likely. As a result dreadnoughts were designed with higher levels of eleavation for their guns increasing both range and the possibility of deck/turret roof strikes. As such, the designs of the early dreadnoughts were not in line with the actual battles and dangers they would face with longer ranges and plunging fire. While no turret strike should allow flash or concussion (causing sympathetic detonation) to reach the magazine, it was the failure of the turret roof armor that allowed the shells to explode inside of the turret space in the 1st place and as such must be considered a failure of the armour suite. The U.S. Navy looked at the battle of Jutland and found in its later designs it had at least a partial answer already in hand, from the Nevada class on medium armor had been abandoned to provide thick armor where needed and none elsewhere to avoid setting off AP shells. At the end of WW1 with time available to pull battleships into long refits virtually every U.S. Dreadnought was brought in and had additional deck and turret top armour increased. Where 1.5" to 2" of armor on the deck and 2.5" on turret roofs was once thought sufficient this was raised to 4.5" and even thicker on the Nevada Class on up. With the unfortunate exception of HMS Hood, every U.S, British, Italian, French, and Japanese, battleship would be designed with thick deck and turret roof armour virtually all incorporating the "all or nothing" armour suite. HMS Hood was the tragic proof as to why no battleship should have ever been designed with weak horizontal armor again.

This is for your consideration and comment

Added additional verbage on all or nothing as applies to all nations.

Regards Tirronan 15:41, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Looks good, but I would suggest restructuring the text. Instead of starting with the Nevada I would start with the direct oberservations from the battle (weak protection against plunging due to rapid growth of fighting distance), then get to the solution (concept of all-or-nothing armor) and finish with it's implementation (the Nevadas and the postwar-updates, using the US Navy as an example). Nevfennas 22:30, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I've rearranged this as per your suggestion. Looking at Wiki articles on other battleship designs shows that some of them at least got thicker deck armor and unless they were idiots that would mean thicker turret armor. Not having sources on Italian, Japanese, British, or French designs leaves me unable to quote this. However most of the post war European designs were coming in with deck armor in the 6"+ range. Tirronan 13:45, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

You might also want to add that many ships had the range of elevation increased on their main armament to enable them to shoot out to longer ranges. Getztashida 17:52, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Completed as per suggestion and should any of you like to add more please reword or ask and I shall do it. Tirronan 20:55, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Very hard to write this without OR. While Hood is certainly a strong argument against poorly designed armour decks, the same could be said of Bismarck, which was designed /much/ later. The 'shell trap' was identified post Jutland, as was the foolishness of having a decapping deck immediately above the armour deck. Bis had both. I'm more inclined to use Bis as an example, since Hood's design was substantially under way by the time Jutland's lessons were analysed, whereas Bis was not even a twinkle in the eye by then. FWIW DK Brown is of the opinion the Hood was actually a reasonable stab at the fast battleship concept, given what was known at the time (well he would say that). Only hindsight allows us to emphasise the importance of massively thick armour decks, due to radar and divebombing. At Jutland, how many armour decks were penetrated successfully? I could look it up in Campbell tonight.Greglocock 22:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll point out that USS Nevada was floating in Scapa Flow with a 4.5" deck and 6" turret tops in 1918. It was certainly possible for the HMS Hood to have had 5" Decks with a 30kt speed. BB designs are always tight by their nature much like tank design and trade offs to something will always be made. The US didn't get a balanced design in post war ships until the South Dakota Class. Certainly someone was realising that plunging fire was a problem before Jutland. Tirronan 14:11, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I think we can make a pretty good case for this. At least where U.S. Battleships were concerned the thicker decks and turret roofs were a deliberate design choice that were brought up when it was realised that plunging fire would be likely. It certainly isn't a mistake that the KGV class went to sea with 6.5" decks and even thicker turret roofs. I will state that if turret roofs were being penetrated then decks were too, its just how the math would work out. I believe that one of the British BC's pulled out of line before blowing up which leads me to think that a engine room or boiler room had been struck.

In Hood's case, the magazine had been penetrated with a 15" shell through the deck armor. This is as bad a case of an armor suite failure as it gets. Even the BC's at Jutland didn't suffer that fate.

Bismark has a lesson or two actually but failure of the armor suite wasn't it. Rodney's 16" gun fired a heavier shell than Bismark at a faster velocity. Most of Rodney and KGV shells were fired from point blank range where the armor would have to be penetrated. The problem with Bismark was that communications were run over the armor protection allowing "soft kill". You see this again with the South Dakota where the damage was never in danger of sinking or even seriously damaging the ships protected vitals, yet damage to the unprotected command and controll stations took her out of the fight for 30 minutes. Bismark's armor suite did everything that could have been expected of it and more. Tirronan 17:05, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we'd better leave Bis' poor design, and Hood's bad luck, and poor design, to other pages. OK, I checked Campbell and I was completely off base. The typical armour scheme at the time used the shell trap (45 degree angled armour deck, introduced by White ~1880) to support the main belt just below the water line, and the decks were a mish mash of 40 lb and 80 lb plate, neither of which provided a reliable barrier against an 11 or 12 inch shell, even at grazing angles of incidence. Typical penetrations were at angles of say 70 degrees to the normal. I agree, the tendency towards a single armour deck directly above the machinery space, supporting the /upper/ edge of the main belt, and elimination of the shell trap, decapping decks, and upper belt were all lessons learned from Jutland with respect to hull armour. The importance of turret roofs etc were all part of the same lesson. It seems to me this stuff would be worth a separate article, otherwise the Jutland article will get too long. Greglocock 23:09, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Here is an article comparing the quality of German ship-design during WWI and WWII, according to it the ship-design progress had become pretty inefficent by the time Bismarck was designed. So I wouldn't look to hard at German WWII ships if you are lokking for lessons learned. Nevfennas 17:54, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

There are lessons from Bismark, like making sure you have really good anti-aircraft directors to go with all those AA guns, they didn't. There was a lesson about having FCS under the armor, they were not, and communications were run over the armor not under it, but they were exposed as well. Bismark was an updated Konig design in many ways. Tirronan 21:37, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, lessons learned from the sinking of the ship, but not by comparing the designs from the pre-Jutland Baden-class to post-Jutland Bismarck to see what lessons the designers had learned the way you can do it with US battleships. Nevfennas 22:02, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

And HMS Nelson, which certainly included many of the lessons learnt, although it is confused by the pressure to meet the Treaty. Hood is an appalling example since she was designed before Jutland and laid down the day of Jutland, near enough, so any changes would have been made on the run, and so were inefficient. Incidentally despite my earlier remarks, very few of the true armour (ie the ones directly over the machinery spaces) decks were penetrated, therfore the decision to go to thick (6") armour decks must have been based on analysis rather than observation. I still think it is going to be OR.Greglocock 00:14, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I can prove that US designs were so influenced which is not OR. However I don't have sources on German designs and design decisions nor on any of the other fleets as I stated in the top of this section. This would have to be a colabretive effort with others finding supporting material. I'd have to assume that the British BB's coming in with 6" plus decks was no accident but proving it will be something else. Tirronan 02:24, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Great. I'll have a look in Breyer tonight and see if he has anything to say about the progression in design. I haven't got the post WW1 DK Brown, but he may mention something about the design of Nelson in Grand Fleet. If you've got one of Norm's BB books I'm sure he's got heaps on this for the US BBs. So, what do we call the new section - "Effect of Jutland on the Design of Battleships"?

Effect of Jutland on the Design of Battleships, their Armament, and Operation

my list - need references

• Elimination of shell trap from armour decks (Breyer, ADM, DK Brown)
• Use of single, thick armour decks in place of multiple thin ones (as Tirronan, also Brown)
• British Cordite explodes, doesn't burn (Brown)
• British AP shells inadequate (Brown, Preston, Campbell)
• Long range firing, hence horizontal protection more important than vertical, rangefinder accuracy important, fire control important (Brown, Campbell)
• Torpedoes, mines less of a threat than was feared (?)
• Importance of RT (Cambpell)
• Signal flags too slow to control modern battleline (Campbell)

Greglocock 04:34, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd have a few issues with a couple of things in your list.

• I'd like a better explanation of shell trap. In US BB a thicker deck was intended to set off the AP fuze and a thinner deck to catch the spinters, is this a shell trap?
• Cordite does burn, I've actually watched a video of it burning. It burns about as fast as modern smokeless powders. Actually all explosives burn, it is the rate of the burn that determines how energistic the explosive is. C4 plastic explosive makes a pretty good cooking element. However any propellent enclosed in a tight armored box is going to be one hell of an explosion, and in a ship's magazine the bottom will blow out 1st most times.
• Torpedoes were far more dangerous to BB's than shells assuming proper armor levels. The US battle fleet at Pearl Harbor had one loss due to bombs (that due to a hatch being open to a magazine) and all the rest to torpedos. A single mine sunk a British Dreadnought. Mines are so dangerous that the current US fleet is being reconfigured with new building (LCS, DDX).
• RT means what, radio/telegraph?
• Signal flags would be operational, not design and that is another issue. I'm not sure that the US learned that much in that Pearl Harbon showed a fleet completely unprepared for suprise attack in violation of most war principles.

I sure like your thoughts on this and the help is most appreciated. Tirronan 15:53, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

That list was a work in progress, I'm sorting out references at the moment. The shell trap is the result of a feature that was introduced by White in about 1880. The armor deck is angled down to support the belt below the waterline. At Jutland this was revealed to be a very bad feature - any shell that pentrated the upper deck bounced along the armour deck and then bounced back into the angled well, off the belt. It then found itself in a constrained box, formed by the angled deck, the belt, and the upper deck, and consequently blew out the entire deck. That's why (most) post WW1 designs use a flat armor deck going to the TOP of the belt - the shell hopefully skids along the armor deck and out the other side, or at least when it explodes it merely blows out the side of the hull. I've got a great paper on this(* Admiralty report CB 04039(2) Immune zone analysis of Tirpitz, KGV, Nelson, and QE). Immune Zone theory was developed in about 1929, by the USN. British cordite was proven to explode, due to some chemical oddity. 06:04, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually we were both right and wrong. The cordite used in WW1 did explode, while the cordite I watched in that video was cordite SC developed from RP C/12 that didn't explode. I've included a section at the bottom of the page that explains it.Tirronan 21:01, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Be aware that the shell trap appears to be a British design element (and that is more than fine) but we need to be careful where it applies to other nations BB designs. That was not in US BB's not that they didn't have their own problems the mid level armor on the sponson mounted guns was shared by British designs complete with a magazine for the 5" guns to be available to be set off with a major gun round that could penetrate. I think I remember Barnham almost blowing to this at Jutland. Tirronan 16:40, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I must have explained it badly, it was near universal (for good reasons) in WW1 designs, eg New Mexico, Bayern, Dante Alighieri, to pick the first 3 I came across in Breyer. Greglocock 22:36, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah! I know of which you speak! That stopped in the Nevada Class and above of which the New Mexico was a sucessor class to Nevada with a all or nothing thick deck connected to the main belt. Yes the only result of the 2" deck with a splinter catcher under it was to ensure you had a huge crater in the hull. So that the New York and below had the same issues for the same reasons including the thin turret tops. Tirronan 01:33, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Shell Traps

I honestly think we need a whole new article, anyawy just in case here's some diagrams

With a predread, Dreadnought, or Bismarck typ armour scheme a shell can penetrate the upper armour deck and bounce along between the upper and main armour decks before bouncing back off the main or upper belt and exploding. The explosion is contained by the armour, and so takes the path of least resistance, wiping out the entire deck

BB with old style armour layout.

After Jutland the ineffective upper armour deck was removed and the main armour deck was thickened. The upper belt and the shell trap were removed. The shell bounces off the main armour deck, and either emerges out the other side of the hull, or explodes agianst the hull plating, which does not magnify the pressure, and so there is less damage. As an aside the armour layout now strongly resembles an American Civil War monitor! plus ca changeGreglocock 00:36, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

BB with post Jutland armour layout.

I really like those diagrams! The design at the top would be the armor scheme used 1st on South Carolina Class through the New York Class. The bottom design was used from the Nevada Class on. Tirronan 13:51, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Floating TOC

The layout is TERRIBLE. The text of the lede is squeezed into an inch-wide column for me. The TOC needs to be moved down, with no text squeezed in next to it. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 01:21, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

re: Sections: Battle_of_Jutland#The Outcome && Battle_of_Jutland#Self Critiques

1. This article needs some additional information for good balance, in particular, the German Navy's post-action assessment of the battle is wholely missing giving me the temptation to add a {{pov}} to the section.
   
   
2. Additional information that would be really interesting to summarize is the lessons/policies the other big gun Navies (France, Italy, Japan, The US and the Dutch) drew/taught during the next several decades from the action. I've an membership in the US Naval Institute, and will see what I can run down in the archives (albeit slowly given time demands!) Perhaps some others could indicate below they'll conduct similar efforts on some of the other countries. Aside from Battle of Tsushima, which were much set aside due to the racist attitudes of that era, the lessons from this battle shaped naval policy for decades, and hence the article needs to reflect that.

Best regards // FrankB 17:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Funny that you brought this up, I was just working out what the changes to the U.S. Battleship fleet where post WW1 and directly corrected when U.S. Battleships were assigned to the 6th Battle Squadron. I have good source material on this. If there is an interest in such a section I can add it. I will not do so unless there is agreement that such a section should be added. Tirronan 17:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Also, if you have some decent sources to work with, you might want to review and/or replace the entire article's citations, as almost none of them are cited in the article text. MrZaius^talk 12:47, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

References

This article contains a lengthy reference list, but there are several large and significant sections that don't make a single citation. All of the references currently listed in the section were entered manually, and are not tied back into the article using the traditional citation templates. This article should be reviewed to make sure that the cited references actually are used, and where. Those not explicitly mentioned in the article should be stricken, at least long enough to have the relevant section do a proper citation. Please note that, barring an improvement, it may be warranted to seek a review of the article's FA status. No peer review has apparently taken place since '04. MrZaius^talk 02:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Results

The simplest thing to put in the box is what it is indisputable, that the result of the battle was inconclusive. Perhaps the Germans had slightly the better of the tactical outcome, but it wasn't a terribly clear-cut tactical victory, and the strategic outcome was pretty much nil - the strategic situation after the battle was pretty much precisely the same as that before. Why argue about this when there's a simple way to handle it - to simply say that the battle was indecisive, and had no clear victor. More detail can be brought out in the article text. john k 20:04, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

You know I actually agree with that, despite all the carnage the net result was... zero. Tirronan 01:21, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Comment. Since British losses were heavier (three battleships were lost vs. one German, roughly 2 to 1 in tonnage and casualties), I would say that something like German tactical success, strategically indecisive may be more appropriate, although lengthier. The article in its current form seems to agree when it states that "For the British, the outcome was a slim tactical defeat". Stammer 12:51, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

That's the wargamer's fallacy. Real battles are fought to attain objectives, not adding up who lost the most points. Neither side attained any reasonable proportion of their long term objectives, and in the short term, within a week, the tactical and strategic position was where it was before. So far as outcomes go, probably the main effect was the (longer term) decision by the Germans to switch their energies to U boat warfare, and in the extreme long term the effect that the damage done had on BB design and tactics. Greglocock 22:59, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

The British needed to keep the naval blockade in place which was in place both before and after the battle. The Germans needed to destroy a large part of the British battle fleet to break that blockade and while the loss of 3 BC's was a blow, it did nothing to change the balance of power. This in spite of the fact that a Dreadnought had been lost to a mine as well. The grim fact of the matter was that the entire BC force could have been destroyed without effect so long as the BB line was whole. Jellico was in position not once but twice to reach a conclusion. The High Seas Fleet was determined not to reach that decision at sea. Given that both fleets had the same speed no decision could be reached unless both sides were determined to have at each other. This was not a Trafalger and it never could have been as one side was determined not to have a gotterdamrung and was not trapped, therefore the battle accomplished nothing except to waste lives. Tirronan 23:20, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

More than twice as many British lives as German lives actually. It is curious that the article contains the statement that I already cited: "For the British, the outcome was a slim tactical defeat". Shouldn't that be removed? Stammer 10:08, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I notice the result has been changed again from "Decisive" - has the consensus changed again or is this slipping in under the radar? --Harlsbottom 21:28, 7 August 2007 (UTC)