The recognition of the importance of sea power in the present conflict has awakened an interest in the naval operations of the war of 1914 to 1918. Naval officers, scholars, and general readers are wondering if the lessons of the last war have really been learned and applied to present-day ships. For example, was H.M.S. Hood of 1941 lost for the same reason, or reasons, that brought about the destruction of H.M.S. Invincible, Indefatigable, and Queen Mary in 1916? Were these losses due to structural weakness, or to superior German tactics and gunnery? Another question often heard relates to the late German battleship Bismarck—was she so much superior to the big ships of 1916? Did S.M.S. Seydlitz withstand punishment anywhere near as great as that suffered by Bismarck before sinking?
The available material on the present naval engagements is very meager, as is to be expected, but there is a huge volume of printed works on the last war. The difficulty of knowing what to read in this great mass of books and periodicals is not easy to solve. It is the writer's opinion that the most important body of literature in this field is that dealing with the Battle of Jutland, for better and more voluminous accounts of that action have been written than are available for any other engagement or particular naval incident. Furthermore, the literature of Jutland is an excellent example of the fact that good, reliable accounts of sea fights are not obtainable until several years after the event. However, it is interesting to note that the press accounts of the battles of the Plate, Matapan, Narvik, or that between Bismarck and Hood, are more complete and read more convincingly than do those written in 1916 following the fight at Jutland.1 Time alone will tell whether we are really getting more complete and accurate reporting in 1941 than we did in 1916.
Newspaper accounts are not the only contemporary records of battles that appear in print. A few months after Jutland a volume of the dispatches of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe and Admiral Sir David Beatty was published,2 partly to still criticism and public clamor for information, resulting from the growing wonder as to whether or not Britain had suffered a defeat of major proportions. This public outcry was the result of more than mere curiosity, for the Admiralty had suppressed the news of the sinking of H.M.S. Audacious in September of 1914, and many people wondered if similar bad news from Jutland were being similarly suppressed. It is quite possible that the communiques of the Admiralty in 1941 are influenced by the results of the “poor press” given the Audacious loss of 1914. As we now know, these 1916 dispatches of Jellicoe’s added little to what the public already knew, for Jellicoe himself was very much in the dark as to what had happened during the battle.3 The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that one must use contemporary accounts of naval engagements with care—even such apparently fine reports as that issued by the Admiralty on the Battle of the River Plate.4
The unofficial accounts of the battle that were published during 1916 and 1917 were of no greater value than the official accounts upon which they were based. Perhaps the best of the unofficial accounts was that by John Buchan,5 which is excellent reading and good literature, but it is not good history and therefore of little value to the naval officer or scholar. Following the rush of books and pamphlets published during 1916 and 1917, there came an almost complete dearth of publication in 1918. But in 1919—the first year after the war—important contributions to the body of information on Jutland began to appear in the books of that year, among the most important of which were the memoirs of Jellicoe,6 Schoultz,7 Hase,8 and Bacon.9 All four of these volumes were of real value, for they gave the impressions and experiences of men in position to have valuable knowledge.
In 1920 Admiral Reinhold von Scheer published his account of the battle,10 thus making it possible to compare the views of the two commanders in chief. But even the comparison of the commanders in chief’s accounts of the battle left much to be desired, for weather conditions during the battle were such that it was impossible for either admiral to know with certainty what had happened, except within the field of his own limited vision.11 The same year that Scheer’s account was published, the British Admiralty issued a volume of official dispatches that included a rather elaborate set of maps and charts.12 These dispatches and charts did not include all the information and detail desired by, and necessary to, students of the battle. This volume did present for the first time a copy of Scheer’s report to his government of July 4, 1916, said to have been found aboard one of the scuttled ships at Scapa Flow. What this volume of dispatches did not state and what was puzzling students of naval warfare all over the world was what had happened to the “Harper Report?”
This now famous “Harper Report” was the result of public clamor for some authoritative statement on the part of the government as to whether or not Jutland had been a British victory, and if not, who was responsible? Essentially, the issue was a question of the merits of defensive as opposed to offensive tactics, or, as the question framed itself in the public consciousness, was Jellicoe or Beatty responsible for the indecisiveness of Jutland? Early in 1919 the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wester-Wemyss, appointed a committee headed by Captain J. E. T. Harper to prepare a report on the Battle of Jutland. This report was not published when completed and speculation became rife as to the reasons for its suppression. The publicity that had attended the appointment of the committee led many to believe that at last the Admiralty would disclose the secrets of Jutland. When this was not done the Admiralty was placed in the position where a "do-nothing" attitude was hardly possible. The result was the so-called "Narrative" which appeared in 1924.13 To further complicate an already embarrassing situation, Sir Julian Corbett and Sir Henry Newbolt published their excellent Official History in 1923.14 The Admiralty "Narrative" thus followed what was considered by many to be a complete and at least semiofficial account of the battle. The "Narrative" was incomplete, lacking in objectivity, and offered excellent ammunition to those who declared that the "Harper Report" had been suppressed because it was unfavorable to Beatty.
In 1925 the publication of the "Official" German history of Jutland15 made it possible for scholars to begin work on the difficult task of putting together the whole complicated mass of material on the battle. To add to the immenseness of the undertaking, several more important works were forthcoming during the late nineteen twenties. In 1925 Bacon published his famous Jutland Scandal16 which was most emphatic in its criticism of the Admiralty in suppressing the Harper Report and in its stirring defense of Jellicoe and pointed criticism of Beatty. As though stung to action by Bacon’s book, or by the knowledge that Harper had retired and was about to publish his own story of the battle,17 the Admiralty in 1927 published the “Harper Report”18 in essentially its original form. This completed the official publications on Jutland by the British—the 1916 and 1920 volumes of “Dispatches,” the 1923 “Narrative,” and finally the 1927 edition of the “Harper Report.”
The volumes mentioned thus far are not by any means the only important works on Jutland but they are the ones which provided the most important material for study by naval officers and civilian scholars. With this list of material available it was possible to begin the preparation of definitive studies of Jutland, which began to appear in the mid-thirties. The most important of these studies are those of Frost, Corbino, and Gibson and Harper,19 with the first named being unquestionably the best of the three.
The literature of Jutland enables one to draw two important conclusions concerning the literature of the naval warfare of 1939-41. The first of these is that whatever appears in print today must be understood to be incomplete, perhaps untrue, and certainly subject to revision. This is not necessarily the fault of the press nor of the agency issuing communiques used by the press, but may be due to the difficulty of knowing all the facts until the enemy’s records can be searched and compared. The second conclusion is that authoritative memoirs and official accounts are not apt to appear before the second year after the war is ended—and possibly much later than that. It must be remembered that the overthrow of the German, Russian, and Austrian governments in 1917-18 had much to do with the completeness of prewar and World War documents published within the first years after 1918. From the viewpoint solely of the naval scholar and student, it is to be hoped that there will be sufficient changes in government in Europe and Japan after this war to bring about a speedy opening of archives and records.
1 Compare the accounts in New York Times covering these actions in 1941 with those covering Jutland in 1916. The same conclusion can be drawn from comparison of 1941 and 1916 releases in the newspapers of the belligerents; British—London Times, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph; German—Hamburger Fremdenblall, Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeilung, Frankfurter Zeitung, and Volkischer Beobachter.
2 Sir John Rushworth Jellicoe, The Battle of Jutland ... the Dispatches of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe and Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty, ed. by Sir Sanford Terry. London, Oxford Univ. Press, 1916.
3 An example of this is to be found in his report of June 4 in which he states that 2 German dreadnoughts were seen to sink (see footnote 2 above, p. 72). Inasmuch as no German dreadnoughts were even seriously damaged, the value of Jellicoe’s report is immediately thrown into question. This does not mean he was consciously falsifying his dispatches, but rather it indicates the impossibility of one man’s knowing what actually is happening in the wide area over which modern fleet actions are fought.
4 Great Britain.
5 John Buchan (Baron Tweedsmuir), The Battle of Jutland, London, T. Nelson & Sons, 1916.
6 Admiral Sir John Rushworlh Jellicoe, The Grand Fleet, 1914-1918, Its Creation, Development and Work, London, Cassell & Co., 1919.
7 Commodore Georg von Schoultz, With the British Battle-fleet. . . London, Hutchinson & Co., 1919. (Schoultz was observer for the Russian Imperial Navy with the British at Jutland.)
8 (Commander) Georg Oskar Immanuel von Hase, “Die zwei weissen volker” . . . Leipzig, K. F. Koehler, 1919. (Hase was gunnery officer on the battle cruiser Derfflinger.)
9 Admiral Sir Reginald Hugh Spencer Bacon, The Dover Patrol; 1915-1917, New York, Doran, 1919. 2 vols.
10 Admiral Reinhold von Scheer, Germany’s High Sea Fleet in the World War, London, Cassell & Co., 1920.
11 The importance of the weather has been discussed by Alexander McAdie in War Weather Vignettes (New York, Macmillan, 1925), and by Lieut. Comdr. Arnold E. True in “The Effects of Meteorological Conditions on Tactical Operations at Jutland,” an article appearing in the U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings in January, 1940 (vol. 66, no. 443). The present writer discussed the battle with an officer who served in a destroyer attached to H.M.S. Marlborough. This officer stated that although his vessel was part of the screen for the battle line and was between it and the German fleet all afternoon, he never saw but one enemy ship during all that time because of drifting fog and mist.
12 Great Britain. Admiralty. Battle of Jutland, 30th May to 1st June, 1916. Official Dispatches with Appendices, London, H.M.S.O., 1924.
16 Admiral Sir Reginald Hugh Spencer Bacon, The Jutland Scandal. London, Hutchinson & Co., 1925.
17 Admiral John Ernest Troyte Harper, The Truth about Jutland. London, J. Murray, 1927.
18 Great Britain. Admiralty. Reproduction of the Record of the Battle of Jutland . . . London, H.M.S.O., 1927. (Papers by command, 2870.) Winston Churchill published his volume of World Crisis (London, T. Butterworth, Ltd., 1923-29. Vol. Ill, Pt. I) which dealt with Jutland the same year.
19 All three of these books have bibliographies, Frost’s and Gibson and Harper’s being the most complete. Holloway Halstead Frost, Lieut. Comdr., The Battle of Jutland. Annapolis, U. S. Naval Institute, 1936. Langhorne Gibson, and John Ernest Troyte Harper, The Riddle of Jutland, an Authentic History. New York, Coward-McCann, 1934. Epicarmo Corbino, “La bailaglia dello Jutland vista da un economista.” Milano, A. Giufirfi, 1933.