“Now we have given Fritz his due,” said I, “let us get on to the second part of the battle, Act Two of the naval drama. You will agree that the handling of our damaged squadrons by Beatty and Evan-Thomas was magnificent, and that the execution done by us was fully up to the best English standards?”
“Yes,” replied the grim Salt Horse, to whom I had specially appealed. “We will allow both. Beatty’s combination of dash and caution was beyond praise and the gunnery was excellent.”
“None of our ships were sunk, none were seriously hit,” put in the Gunner. “On the other hand we certainly sank one German battle cruiser and one battleship, and very heavily damaged others. I don’t know how many. I think that we must accept as proved that not many German ships of the battle line were sunk in any part of the action. When badly hit they fell out and retired towards home, which they could always do. During the second part both fleets were steaming away from the German bases, so that a damaged enemy ship had only to stop to be left behind in safety. A good many ships were claimed by our officers as sunk when they were known to have been damaged and had disappeared; but I feel sure that most of them had fallen out, not been sunk.”
“The outstanding feature,” cried the Maker of Guns, “was the superiority of our gunnery. We have always encouraged individuality in gun laying, and have never allowed Fire Control to supersede the eyes and hands of the skilled gun-layers in the turrets. Control and individual laying are with us complementary, not mutually exclusive. With the Germans an intensely mechanical control is of the essence of their system. They are very good up to a point, but have not elasticity enough to deal with the perpetual variations of range and direction when fighting ships are moving fast and receiving heavy punishment. Fritz beat us in the first part, but we, as emphatically, beat him in the second.”
We then passed to a technical discussion upon naval gunnery, which cannot be given here in detail. I developed my thesis, aggravating to expert gunners, that when one passes from the one dimension—distance—of land shooting from a fixed gun at a fixed object, to the two dimensions—distance and direction—of moving guns on board ship firing at moving objects, the drop in accuracy is so enormous as to make ship gunnery frightfully ineffective and wasteful. I readily admitted that when one passed still further to three dimensions—distance, direction, and height—and essayed air gunnery, the wastefulness and ineffectiveness of shooting at sea were multiplied an hundredfold. But, as I pointed out, we were not at the moment discussing anti-aircraft gunnery, but the shooting of naval guns at sea in the Jutland Battle.
Of course I brought down a storm upon my head. But my main thesis was not contested. It was, however, pointed out that I had not allowed sufficient weight to the inherent difficulties of shooting from a moving ship at a moving ship ten or a dozen miles away, and that instead of calling naval gunnery “wasteful and ineffective” I ought to be dumb with wonder that hits were ever brought off at all. I enjoyed myself thoroughly.
“Don’t be hard on the poor man,” at last interposed the kindly Salt Horse. “He means well and can be useful to the Service sometimes though he has not had a naval training. The truth is,” he went on confidentially, “we feel rather wild about the small damage that we did to Fritz on May 31st: small, that is, in comparison with our opportunities. Our gunnery officers and gun-layers are the best in the world, our guns, range-finders and other instruments are unapproachable for precision, our system of fire direction is the best that naval brains can devise and is constantly being improved, and yet all through the war the result in effective hits has been most disappointing—don’t interrupt, you people, I am speaking the truth for once. Fritz’s shooting, except occasionally, has been even worse than ours, which indicates, I think, that the real inner problems of naval gunnery are not yet in sight of solution. You see, it is quite a new science. In the old days one usually fired point blank just as one might plug at a haystack, and the extreme range was not more than a mile and a half; but now that every fighting ship carries torpedo tubes we must keep out a very long way. I admit the apparent absurdity of the situation. Here on May 31st, two fleets were engaged off and on for six hours—most of the time more off than on—and the bag for Fritz was three big ships, and for us possibly four, by gun-fire. The torpedo practice was no better except when our destroyers got in really close. During all the third part of the action, when Scheer was fending us off with torpedo attacks he hit only one battleship, the Marlborough, and she was able to continue in action afterwards and to go home under her own steam. Yet upon a measured range at a fixed mark a torpedo is good up to 11,000 yards, nearly six miles. In action, against moving ships, one cannot depend upon a mouldy hitting at over 500 yards, a quarter of a mile. If gunnery is wasteful and inefficient, what about torpedo practice in battle?”
“What is the solution?” I asked, greatly interested.
“Don’t ask me!” replied the Salt Horse. “I knew something of gunnery once, but now I’m on the shelf. I myself would risk the mouldies and fight at close quarters—we have the legs of Fritz and could choose our own range—but in-fighting means tremendous risks, and the dear stupid old public would howl for my head if the corresponding losses followed. The tendency at present is towards longer and longer ranges, up to the extreme visible limits, and the longer the range the greater the waste and inefficiency. Ask the Gunner there, he is more up-to-date than I am.”
The Master Gunner growled. He had listened to Admiral Salt Horse’s homily with the gravest disapproval. He was a simple loyal soul; any criticism which seemed to question the supreme competence of his beloved Service was to him rank treachery. Yet he knew that the Salt Horse was as loyal a seaman as he was himself. It was not what was said which caused his troubled feelings—he would talk as freely himself before his colleagues—but that such things should be poured into the ears of a civilian! It was horrible!