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The common view of the years after the battle of Jutland is of the two main battlefleets largely sitting at anchor in their main bases, while the focus of the war at sea turned to the U-boats. As this book demonstrates, that wasn’t the case. Both main fleets remained active for some time after Jutland, and even came quite close to each other, but there would be no more clashes between the rival battlefleets.
The focus of this book is on the actions of the main surface fleets – British, Russian, German and American, with some coverage of the French in the Channel. The U-boat war is mentioned, and examined where it affected the main fleets, but the Battle of the Atlantic isn’t covered in any great detail – as the author says, there are plenty of books on that topic already.
In the immediate aftermath of Jutland the Germans claimed the victory, while the British were depressed by their failure to win another Trafalgar. However the mood on both sides soon began to shift. The British Grand Fleet was ready for battle far more quickly than the German High Seas Fleet, and their advantage in capital ships soon grew. We also see how the British studied what had happened at Jutland, and adopted new operating techniques that would have made them far more effective in any future clash. This included changes to their shell handling to avoid the disasterous explosions that had destroyed battlecruisers at Jutland, and changes to the way gunnery was controlled which allowed them to focus fire more easily. However both sides
Some problems were never really solved during the First World War. Detecting enemy ships at sea was difficult – airships and aircraft were increasingly available, but were often badly affected by the weather in the North Sea. Ships could be spread out to form a cordon, but reliably directions became difficult the further down the chain a ship was. Even then the North Sea was a large space, and the Germans were able to carry out two raids on convoys between the UK and Scandinavian without being caught (even though much of the Grand Fleet was at sea, hunting for a German sortie on the first occasion). Detecting U-boats was even more difficult. Underwater sound detection equipment was developed, but it was far less effective than later sonar, and required the detecting boat to be almost stationary. Anti-submarine weaponry was in its infancy, and not available in suitable quantities until later in the war.
As well as the main British and German fleets, we look at the fighting in the Baltic, where ice posed a major problem, trapping the Russians in harbour over the winter. We see this giving the Germans an advantage, as they were able to start moving earlier in year, and also causing problems for the Russians, as their often badly treated crews were stuck in port for months on end, eroding morale and allowing revolutionary sentiments to grow in the fleet.
The secondary theatres also had their difficulties. We see the British struggling to cope with German night raids into the English Channel. While there were obvious difficulties of night fighting, one does get the impression that the British hadn’t really thought things through properly – several disasters were caused by their tendancy to react to any unknown ship at night by flashing their recognition lights.. This inevitably game the Germans a big advantage, as they knew who was at sea and where, and could open fire safely when this happens. This leads to another big problem that Goldrick discusses – the British were often very bad at letting each commander know who else was at sea and where, leading to some bad decisions and inevitable confusion.
This is an excellent work that demonstrates how active the naval war was after Jutland, and how much effort went into solving the problems posed by new technology that was changing the nature of naval warfare.
Chapters
1 - June 1916 - The War at Sea
2 - The Navies
3 - Operational Challenges
4 - The Shadow of Jutland
5 - The Torpedoes of August
6 - The Baltic in Summer
7 - Little Ships, Submarines and Aircraft
8 - Crisis at Sea
9 - Spring in the North Sea
10 - Enter the Americans
11 - The Baltic in 1917
12 - Twists and Turns
13 - 1918 Opens in the North Sea
14 - End Game in the North Sea
15 - Reflections
Author: James Goldrick
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 322
Publisher: Seaforth
Year: 2018