>>>>> It is important to note that, however valuable Harper's work was (and remains), the only reason it ever saw the light of day was because Harper was forced to agree to some "judicious editing" by Beatty and his BCF cronies. Recall that,by this time, Beatty held great bureaucratic power as 1st Sea Lord at the Admiralty and had populated his bureaucracy with numerous BCF supporters. People think that the Battle of Jutland ended at nightfall on 31 May 1916; not so. It continued for another ten years or so as an internecine war between the Jellicoe and Beatty faction for control over the "official account". To get an appreciation of how ridiculous this dispute became, consider the famous 360 degree turn executed by the BCF late in the battle (around 7pm). Beatty at first vigorously denied that it ever occurred and produced an imaginative "S curve" track plot that he claimed was the actual maneuver carried out. However, when the Jutland Despatches was printed and released, NEW ZEALAND's track chart clearly showed a 360 degree circle having been performed. Chatfield then rushed to Beatty's defense, claiming that although the BCF had indeed performed a 360deg circle, it was simply an accident caused by a faulty gyro-compass.wadinga wrote: ↑Mon Aug 08, 2022 12:58 pm On the subject of what happened with Lion between 16:00 and 16:09 Harper's recalculated navigation is available at:
https://www.jutland1916.com/wp-content/uploads/051.jpg
However unlike your splendid 100 year old maps these online renditions pixelate when you expand them sufficiently to show detail. Grrr
He shows Lion making a slight turn to starboard and turning back to port later. As we know there was some enmity between Harper and Beatty so if this deviation had been more extreme I expect it would have been identified.
I recently uncovered a further cache of nineteen charts lying forgotten in my files. These were large individual charts that accompanied the Jutland Despatches in a separate case; I had forgotten I had them. Each prominently bore the printed signature of the commander whose forces were depicted - Jellicoe, Beatty, Burney, etc. Sadly, they all lack range/distance scales and the German track charts bear no resemblance to Corbett's careful reconstruction - just arbitrarily drawn straight lines that fictitiously suggest the Run to the South to have been a more or less parallel gun battle between Beatty and Hipper. One amusing item I noticed was that Beatty's BCF track chart shows his 7pm BCF maneuver as the above-mentioned S-curve, while the track chart of 3BCS, which had just rejoined Beatty, was consistent with that of NEW ZEALAND showing the BCF circling 360 degrees. Moral to this story: "Praemonitus, praemunitus" - Forewarned is forearmed; be careful when studying such issues.
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>>>>> Submarine sightings were indeed commonplace. What piques my interest is that Beatty himself claimed to have personally made such sightings.Beatty was not alone in imagining periscopes P216 of Campbell -
"The 6th division steadied on course 178 at about this time , but turned sharply to port again to avoid supposed torpedoes, and an imaginary submarine,"
Later on the same page:
"As usual imaginary submarines were sighted. The Calliope signalled the presence of one......."
p250
"There were the usual sightings of imaginary submarines between 1945 and 2015 The Hampshire, Shannon and Duke of Edinburgh firing at one of these supposed targets."
For example, see Beatty's original 2 February 1914 despatch regarding the Battle of Dogger Bank ("With Beatty in the North Sea" by Filson Young, Appendix A, para 18. page 296) -"At 10.54 A.M. submarines were reported on the starboard bow, and I personally observed the wash of a periscope, 2 points on our starboard bow. I immediately signaled, 'Turn 8 points to port together' - this signal was hauled down at 11.0 A.M." Interestingly, Filson Young footnoted this passage as having been "altered in published report". Curious.
Unable to track down the reference re the Jutland submarine sighting right now.
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"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today." comes to my mind. What other heartfelt sympathies were expressed by Beatty? Not saying you are necessarily wrong on this point; I just can't recall any regretful comment beyond that expressed by Beatty.Beatty is a contentious and perhaps over-rated commander but given the performance of some of the other senior officers, eg Evan-Thomas, Arbuthnot for instance he might not be as bad as some paint him. OTOH he might be. For me Chatfield's cold-hearted comment:
This seemed at the moment just a disappointment. The Indefatigable was a smaller and more weakly protected ship than those of the first division and was not really a serious tactical loss. - is a bleak indictment of attitude. At least Beatty was moved to some human emotion when his ships and men were destroyed.
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We have discussed this several times previously. If you plot the progress of the change into line-of-bearing formation versus the flurry of last minute signals hoisted by Lion between 3:45 and 3:48, it could not have possibly have been completed within the time available before fire wsa opened. Brooks estimates that the formation change would have required six minutes to complete; the BCF had, at most, three minutes. See Brooks' "The Battle of Jutland", pp. 184-187.. Brooks further argues (and I concur) that the prevailing 4-6kt breeze out of the WNW was piling up on the engaged side of the BCF battle line quite in addition to the smoke of the 9th flotillas destroyers crawling along the engaged side of the battle-cruisers - especially since Beatty was steadily altering course by successive turns to starboard (3:49, 3:50.5, 3:52.5, 3:55, 4:00).I don't see that the 15:46 signal countermands the 15:45. One is about formation and the second is about the course of the formation. The idea might have been that with the ships on Lion's starboard quarter, smoke blowing downwind to the east would dissipate a bit by the time the next astern reached it. In reality it didn't because the wind was so light. This starboard echelon does fit with Harper's depiction of Indefatigable's sinking well to the west of Lion's track, although even Harper's best efforts must be qualified when McCartney has shown considerable error in Indefatigable's location.
Re the location of Indefatigable's sinking relative to Lion, see Campbell ("Jutland", pp. 60- 61) -
The Navigating Officer of the New Zealand, Commander Creighton, who was stationed in the conning tower, stated that the Torpedo Officer's attention was drawn to the Indefatigable by the Admiral's Secretary, both of whom were also in the conning tower. The Torpedo Officer, Lieutenant -Commander Lovett-Cameron crossed to the starboard side of the conning tower, and observed her through his glasses. She had been hit aft, apparently by the mainmast, and a good deal of smoke was coming from the superstructure aft, but there were no flames visible, and Lovett-Cameron thought that the smoke came from her boom boats. The New Zealand was turning to port at the time, and the Indefatigable's steering gear seemed to be damaged, as she did not follow round, but held on until she was about 500 yards on the New Zealand's starboard quarter, and in full view from the conning tower. While Lovett-Cameron still had his glasses on her, the Indefatigable was hit by two shells, one on the forecastle, and the other on "A" turret. <snip> ..... the Indefatigable completely blew up ......