The Sinking of HMS ‘Victoria’ Led the Royal Navy Astray

http://warisboring.com/the-sinking-of-hms-victoria-led-the-royal-navy-astray/

by Thevet • 9 years ago

94 59 9 years ago

arjie• 9 years ago

Interestingly, this lesson having been learned in war, it lay hibernating to be discovered in engineering decades later.

While most modern safety advice recommends empowering line workers to report safety failures, this also extends to engineering quality. The quintessential example of devolving power down to individuals is Andon[0], the most recognisable feature of which is a little cord any line worker in the factory can pull to stop the entire line.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andon_(manufacturing)

Animats2• 9 years ago

Yeah, yeah, individual initiative. Nest read an analysis of the Charge of the Light Brigade and see how Cardigan's initiative (or stupidity) led the charge in the wrong direction, despite orders from Lucan.

For a serious discussion of how much initiative is too much or too little, read MCDP 1, "Warfighting", the USMC manual on how to run a battle. Good military forces work hard at that balance.

cmdkeen3• 9 years ago

Initiative is very different at sea, and was especially so before the era of effective radio communications. Nations trusted their admirals and captains to effectively be ambassadors as the effect they could have on foreign affairs during peacetime was enormous. From the USS Pueblo to the USS Vincennes the position naval captains are put is often significantly more isolated, complicated, and symbolically important than any other armed service.

arethuza5• 9 years ago

Speaking of trusting naval crews - the UK Tridents subs don't require any codes being sent to authorize launches, they have all the required information and we simply trust them not to abuse it.

kitd• 9 years ago

Cardigan's fault wasn't initiative, but ego. And the orders were anything but simple and clear.

Animats2• 9 years ago

Yes, and Lt. Nolan pointed in the wrong direction.

arethuza5• 9 years ago

If I turn my head to the left and look out of my study window I can look over that exact bit of the Forth in that picture of the British Grand Fleet - the only thing that looks like a battleship there today being the island of Inchmickery:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inchmickery

cmdkeen3• 9 years ago

Though just the other side of the bridges, up at Rosyth, there are two rather large aircraft carriers being built. Also several aging examples of what arguably replaced the battleship, nuclear attack submarines.

arethuza5• 9 years ago

Och yes, I am quite looking forward to watching the carriers sail past, even if I am a bit dubious about their utility.

Must have been quite a site to have the Forth full of ships though.

hardlianotion4• 9 years ago

Not clear At all clear that at Jutland lack of individual initiative swung the battle. The battle was fairly skilfully fought between two state of the art combatants and errors of judgement, while costly, were retrieved on both sides, making the affair something of a score draw.

Betty's taking the initiative the way he did without telling Jellicoe what he faced or where he was going could have cost Britain the battle, as Beattie sailed into the German trap. Scheer's about turn when his T was crossed saved the fleet, so you could say the superb manoeuvring discipline of the German fleet saved it. You could also say that prioritising speed and heavy gunnery over armour (German ships prioritised armour) in the British battle cruisers didn't help them when they came up against German battleships. Or that the German gunnery was superior, or that the British munitions appeared to malfunction (or was that the German armour). There was, however, at least one instance in which faulty signalling from Beatty's flagship was very costly.

I think I understand the point the author is trying to make, but I would need a much clearer account of what he thought went wrong at Jutland to appreciate or agree with it.

etrevino• 9 years ago

You raised the same issues I was going to. The only instance I can think of where command ossification may have hurt the British was during the night actions, when the (German) High Seas Fleet was escaping across the wake of the (British) Grand Fleet. At that point there was a chance for British capital ships to engage-- they'd seen the Germans-- but they deferred the decision up the chain of command. The rear admiral in charge of the squadron declined to attack without an order from Jellicoe, but Jellicoe wasn't told the situation, so he assumed that the contacts to his rear were German harassing attacks. That allowed the remainder of the High Seas Fleet to escape.

Quick edit: though difficult with all of the smoke, the flag signalling did work as intended at Jutland. Flag signalling relies heavily on skilled signal officers. Beattie did not have a good one, which is why he didn't get a crushing victory at Dogger Bank (his signaler sent his entire squadron after the wrong ship). Jellicoe managed to maneuver the fleet quite well once the main battle commenced.

hardlianotion4• 9 years ago

I think the signalling at Dogger Bank may have been what I had in mind - not Jutland, though. Agreed about Jellicoe as well - it seems miraculous to me that Beatty managed to muddy Jellicoe's reputation after the war.

foldr2• 9 years ago

Just a pedantic note. British gunnery was actually pretty good at Jutland (see e.g. here http://www.jutland1916.com/tactics-and-technologies-4/gunner... and here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damage_to_major_ships_at_the_B...). The German gunnery was more obviously effective because it succeeded in blowing up some of the battlecruisers, but in terms of accuracy and hits landed, the British ships put in a pretty good performance.

willvarfar2• 9 years ago

Yes. The British had an Achilles heal in the way it was normal to have hatches open and charged stashed between turret and magazine to increase rate-of-fire. A good piece on this: http://www.jutland1916.com/tactics-and-technologies-4/battle...

rhcom2• 9 years ago

Wow. Those accuracy number are crazy, I had no idea they would be so low (<5%).

hardlianotion4• 9 years ago

Hedging bets with three different spellings of Beatty (I think this is correct spelling now...)

smacktoward• 9 years ago

I think I understand the point the author is trying to make, but I would need a much clearer account of what he thought went wrong at Jutland to appreciate or agree with it.

To get that account I highly recommend jumping straight to the book the article cites at the top, Andrew Gordon's The Rules of the Game; it's a brilliant work, packed with detail but accessibly written and clearly argued. This article recapitulates some of Gordon's arguments, but the book itself is such a pleasure to read that if you are at all interested in the subject you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Shivetya• 9 years ago

Airlines went through this issue back after the Tenerife disaster where the two 747s collided. It was determined that crew must always be allowed to challenge the actions of another.

omegant• 9 years ago

Now the problem is excess reliance in computer aided flying and procedures. New pilots are receiving less hands on flying instruction and are heavilly drilled in following the procedures to the letter(this is not an exageration). It's like a theater play, like the blind obedience and spit and polish of the navy. So assets that are extremely useful become a problem when something goes out of the script. It's hard to maintain the equilibrium, and we have yet to swing the pendulum in the other direction.

nradov• 9 years ago

We had another discussion yesterday about what happens when the automation go awry.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14336897

Confiks• 9 years ago

I'm completely distracted by the name of the website: "War is boring".

The vehement disagreement is almost repulsing me to RTFA.

gumby• 9 years ago

Well, if you followed the blog (as I have over several publishers -- wtf?) I think you'd find it's like minded.

ltratt• 9 years ago

The Rules of the Game is a fascinating book because it starts with the lead-up Jutland, goes back in time to explain how the culture and personalities of the Royal Navy came to be, before going back to Jutland. It made my head hurt the first time I read it, because so much was unfamiliar, but a second read really brought things to life.

The synopsis / review this book offers is a good one but it could, perhaps, be generalised. Though Gordon doesn't make it explicit as such, the lesson I ended up taking away from the book is that cultures tend to go through alternating periods of encouraging initiative or obedience. You can see this in armies (perhaps the classic example is the Prussian / German army: it started off with Frederick the Great as an army of obedience; became (at the top levels at least) an army of initiative under von Moltke the Elder; and (in the West, at least) went back to an army of obedience for most of WWI), technology (look at any well known company's research lab culture), and even wider society. If I had to briefly summarise the consequences of this, it tends to come down to when two broadly equal organisations square up against each other: if one uses obedience as its model, and the other initiative, the latter will tend to win; if the two both use the same system, the outcome seems to be mostly random.

[That said, Jutland isn't a great example of this in my opinion, as it was so protracted and its outcome so muddy. Poor ship design and some sloppy practises with explosives meant the British came off worse in terms of casualties, so arguably the Germans won the day. However, the (smaller) German Navy realised that it had only survived through luck, and basically stayed in port for the rest of the war, whereas the British were out sailing in force less than a week later and continuing the blockade of Germany. The Germans eventually thought the only way to win at sea was unrestricted submarine warfare, which turned out to be perhaps the biggest PR disaster in history. I was astonished to realise that the German Navy's inferiority complex from Jutland persisted into WWII: the German Navy stalled shamelessly when asked to help invade Britain, as the lesson they learnt from Jutland was that the British Navy could never be defeated, so what was the point of trying? So Jutland had complex long-term effects that defy easy classification. Which is, perhaps, why it's so fascinating.]

mcguire• 9 years ago

Excellent points.

To me, the only question is whether Beatty misused his battlecruisers or whether they were fatally flawed to begin with: whether their speed advantage was really worth anything. And whether the result would be a total British victory rather that just a strategic one.

As for the overall point, success breeds overconfidence, which breeds failure, and so on.

cmdkeen3• 9 years ago

There's a separate, fascinating, historical incident that shaped the Royal Navy and by extension world affairs for centuries. The execution of Admiral Byng for "failing to do his utmost" lead to a culture of aggression in the RN. This resulted over the years in many impressive, against the odds, victories such as Pellew's two frigates taking the 74 Droits de l'Homme. It also led to sacrifices such as HMS Glowworm's attack on the Hipper during the Norway campaign in 1940.

The Royal Navy differs from the British Army in taking a more holistic view of traditions and history. Trafalgar is celebrated by all every year, Taranto is celebrated by all aviators every year - rather than only those descended from units involved. This combined with the length of time to draw lessons from has led to the saying "The Navy has traditions, the Army history and the Air Force has habits. And nasty, dirty habits they are too".

hardlianotion4• 9 years ago

Thanks for that. A very interesting story it is as well, with a strong element of judicial murder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Byng

arethuza5• 9 years ago

I can strongly recommend "The Silent Deep" about the Royal Navy submarine service. The parts describing the Perisher course are fascinating (the author, perhaps because he is a Peer, actually got to go on subs during the course) - imagine a training course where if you deemed to have failed you are immediately removed from the training area (by helicopter) and never allowed to work in that area of the Navy again! Mind you, apparently you do get a bottle of whisky to make up for your career being in shreds.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/183977/the-silent-deep/

memracom2• 9 years ago

After Byng's execution the British officer corps started acting like people who were defending their homes and families against a vicious foe. Like the people of Donbass in Ukraine for instance. The result is that the British would not give up in battle and would turn any slight advantage to their favour. This made Britain almost invincible.

Note that in modern Russia there is a military tradition "Russians do not give up!" which many soldiers, especially the special forces, adhere to. This is partly what drove the rebels in Donbass to stand their ground in the face of apparently superior forces. Combined with the fact that they were literally defending their homes and families, the Ukraine army had difficulty making and holding any advances against them.

War is one of those areas where ideology does not seem to have a role, but if you expand ideology to include the internal psychology of the soldiers and their beliefs and motivations, then ideology may indeed be paramount. It's the political ideology that is meaningless. This is seen in WWII Soviet Union where Stalin relaxed the strict Communist ideology in favor of one of family, motherland, ethnic spirit.

nickik• 9 years ago

This initiative vs obedience seems a little wishywashy to me. When do these shifts happen, is is cultural or only a matter of the who is in charge that day? Specially when applied in practice to the German army. Even if the pattern is true, there seem to be many, many far more relevant reasons for victory or defeat.

dantillberg• 9 years ago

I think about this a lot these days with regard to the US/NATO and land-based combat. We built up power for decades during the cold war to prevail on land against major powers, and our Battle of Trafalgar was Desert Storm in 1991. In the following years, absorbed in our sense of supremacy, we shifted our focus to asymmetrical warfare, optimizing our vehicles and doctrines for light war against dispersed forces mixed with civilians.

I think of this every time I hear, "XXX is irrelevant in this age of asymmetric warfare." Sure, maybe that system or doctrine is not useful when fighting 1,000 militants blended into a city of 1,000,000. But what happens if/when we get into a shooting war with an adversary that has a real army, a real air force, and/or a real navy? Will it look like Desert Storm? Or will it look like the Bay of Pigs invasion? And could the US in 2040 look like France in 1940?

kcorbitt2• 9 years ago

But what happens if/when we get into a shooting war with an adversary that has a real army, a real air force, and/or a real navy?

Either the shooting war ends real quick with a diplomatic solution, or the territories of both adversaries quickly turn into faintly glowing wastelands uninhabitable for a thousand years.

The only warfare that matters today is asymmetrical warfare against relatively low-tech guerrillas and third-tier states. Once you credibly threaten the homeland of any opponent near the US's level of military sophistication, you've already lost the war.

erentz• 9 years ago

Exactly. For that reason we really should cut the defense budget in half back to pre-9/11 levels. Talk about an easy fix for the US budget problem.

Ntrails• 9 years ago

I'd say that you can fight fairly complete proxy wars without ever threatening the homelands of nuclear powers as per the post nuclear gentleman's agreement.

I do largely agree though.

remarkEon• 9 years ago

The only warfare that matters today is asymmetrical warfare against relatively low-tech guerrillas and third-tier states.

No, that's not correct, and is emblematic of the insistence to "always train for the last war." The reality of what future war might look like is much more nuanced than "either MAD or more COIN." General Milley talked about this last summer, and I tend to agree with his assessment. Incidentally his critique is inline with the posted article about mindless obedience.

http://breakingdefense.com/2016/10/miserable-disobedient-vic...

xixi77• 9 years ago

I am honestly puzzled at why you believe this to be the case. I'm not even sure it has ever been the case. Consider, for example, how chemical weapons have never been used in WW2, despite all sides having stockpiles. Consider the fact that MAD deterrent absolutely requires both parties to be in perfect agreement about what level of conflict will trigger MAD. Also a shooting war does not have to ever touch anyone's homeland (not to mention that in a war there is usually a disagreement about what exactly a "homeland" is).

anovikov• 9 years ago

No one has a real air force or a real navy except USA. Well some have, but 10% of the size and much poorer trained as well. And air force changed little with respect to asymmetric warfare, and Navy didn't change at all (it only starts to, pouring money into things like lasers to protect from small inflatable boat attacks). They are still pretty much Cold War-ish.

Ground forces will lack artillery pieces and shells and will find its logistics stretched, and tank mods of recent 20 years were going the wrong way for a shooting war, and new combat vehicles like Stryker and not what a real war requires, so it will have some trouble, but ground forces need to act only in the very end - where enemy is softened enough by airstrikes - and that will work whole lot better than in Desert Storm these days. Much more kills per sortie due to all these smart munitions - and there are sufficient numbers of them to break down any armed forces in the world.

So in essence, air force will make sure that every adversary will be pretty soon down to 'asymmetric warfare' level if not completely defeated. Think Russian WWII partisans. And that is what US Army has an excellent experience dealing with.

memracom2• 9 years ago

This is precisely the arrogant ignorance that led to the British Navy's shame with Camperdown and Victoria and then the weak showing at Jutland.

Real soldiers have respect for their adversary and since they practice war in war games, they know that no adversary can be discounted. In particular intelligence and willpower count for far more than weaponry. The film Avatar is another good example of how arrogance about the adversary led to defeat.

The enemy that you need to fear is the one who is not afraid to suffer pain and loss. Like the Soviet Union in WWI for instance. Or Syria's Army nowadays.

gaius• 9 years ago

No one has a real air force or a real navy except USA. Well some have, but 10% of the size and much poorer trained as well.

Haha, read this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

poof1312• 9 years ago

I’m convinced that the US needs to differentiate and separately fund resources for limited and unlimited wars. The military has squandered trillions fighting limited wars with assets designed for more conventional wars. It has also led to a less effective effort as the needs of operators on the ground are often disregarded for what the services want to provide to justify funding. Finally, legally separating the two would allow a better application of ROE and help prevent the current state of never ending “war”. The goal being to constantly strive to downgrade from unlimited war, to limited war, to state department diplomacy, with different funding for each and understandable reasons and criteria for transition between the categories.

shardinator4• 9 years ago

I totally agree with this. I also think in a large number of conflict situations, the real issue is bootstrapping governance rather than fighting an adversary. Though military protection/action is required due the hostile environment.

Having a group trained and equipped to specifically fight asymmetric warfare is the way to go. They should also be able to help train police, ambulance etc. get basic services working and monitor + prosecute corruption in the regime that's been installed.

Terr_• 9 years ago

Victory begets cultural decay by sparing the navy the rigors of future combat, the truest test of martial adequacy.

Reminds me of a fiction quote:

The general was only warming up. [...] "You infants who've come up in the past decade and more have no concept of combat. These long periods of unbroken peace weaken the Service. If they go on much longer, when a crisis comes there'll be no one left who's had any real practice in a crunch."
Miles's eyes crossed slightly, from internal pressure. Then should His Imperial Majesty provide a war every five years, as a convenience for the advancement of his officers' careers? His mind boggled slightly over the concept of "real practice." Had Miles maybe acquired his first clue why this superb-looking officer had washed up on Kyril Island?

(The Vor Game, by Lois McMaster Bujold)

Nomentatus• 9 years ago

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13194/13194-h/13194-h.htm

The Sinking of HMS ‘Victoria’ Led the Royal Navy Astray

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