Bearing in mind our superiority in numbers in the middle of 1916 and the heavier armaments carried by our ships, the real risk involved in this policy was that of our battle cruisers being drawn on to the enemy’s Battle Fleet, and one or more of our vessels being disabled. Provided that our ships were not disabled, they would, owing to their higher speed, have no difficulty in clear weather in keeping out of range of the enemy’s Battle Fleet, if it were sighted, whilst still maintaining touch with it, and driving off lighter vessels. With the added support of the ships of the 5th Battle Squadron, which had been grouped with the Battle Cruiser Fleet owing to the absence of the 3rd Battle Squadron at Scapa Flow, the tactical advantage of our ships was even stronger, provided always that the 5th Battle Squadron had an excess of speed over the fastest enemy’s Battle Squadron.
In these circumstances, when preparing my despatch, I had felt it necessary on the highest grounds, as well as only just to the officers and men of our battle cruisers, to give some explanation of the heavy losses incurred by our ships in the early part of the action, when we were opposing six battle cruisers (supported, though at long range, by four battleships of the “Queen Elizabeth” class, comprising the 5th Battle Squadron) to five enemy battle cruisers, which were not then supported by the German Battle Fleet. Inquiry into this matter showed that one explanation was that our ships were very inadequately protected by armour as compared with the German vessels of the battle cruiser type. It was considered undesirable to draw attention to this publicly while the war was in progress.
The relative values of protection and gun power had frequently engaged my serious attention. It was also a subject of much discussion amongst writers on naval matters, some of whom went to the length of suggesting that all available weight should be put into gun power and that ships should be left practically without armour. Their views were based on the argument that “the best defense is a powerful offensive.” Although this argument is very true when applied to strategy, the War has shown its fallacy as applied to matériel. The loss of the Good Hope, Monmouth, Queen Mary, Indefatigable, Invincible, Defence, and Warrior, and the considerations to which these losses gave rise, convinced naval officers afloat, even if they did not convince others less intimately associated with the Fleet during the War, that ships with inadequate defensive qualities are no match for those which possess them to a considerably greater degree, even if the former are superior in gun power. The conviction was strengthened by the knowledge we obtained, that German ships, far more frequently hit by gunfire, torpedo, or mine than many of our ships that sank, were yet taken safely into port owing, partly, to their defensive qualities, but, partly, to the limitations of our armour-piercing shell at that time.
There has been in the past a tendency in some quarters, when comparing the relative strength of the British and German Fleets for the purpose of future provision of large vessels in the Navy Estimates, to make comparison only on the basis of the gun power of the vessels of the two Navies. Great superiority in fighting qualities on the part of the British Fleet was suggested by this blindness to other considerations. During my pre-War service at the Admiralty this question was often under discussion, and I consistently demurred to this line of argument as being very misleading, and pointed out that the true comparison lay between the displacement of the ships of the various classes, because if we assumed, as War experience has since shown that we were justified in assuming that the German naval designers and constructors were not inferior in ability to our own, it was obvious that, taking ships of equal displacement and equal speed, and about contemporary date, if our vessels possessed superiority in gunfire, the Germans must possess superiority in some other direction. It was well known at the Admiralty that their superiority lay in greatly increased protection, combined with heavier torpedo armament.
We were also aware that the German vessels were fitted with small tube boilers, which were very economical in weight for a given horse-power, and, consequently, the German vessels obtained thereby a further advantage, the weight saved being presumably utilised in giving the ships additional protection. In other words, they adopted a different disposition of the weight available in each ship.
The tables on pp. 308–11 give particulars of the armament, protection, and displacement of the capital ships of the two Navies engaged in the Battle of Jutland, so far as they are known to me.
The main facts revealed by an examination of these tables are:
BATTLESHIPS
1. The German ships of any particular period were of considerably greater displacement as compared with contemporary British ships.
2. The German ships carried a much greater weight of armour than their British contemporaries.