Saying "There seems to be something wrong with our ships today" while getting bombarded in a WWI sea battle is just about the most British understatement I've ever heard.
I don't know what Beatty was thinking when he engaged, he was litterally sailing in "glass cannon" ships. They could dishout increadible punisment and were really fast but they could not take any hits because their armor was bad. He even had a range advantage as his BCs could fire from further away then the German ones, yet he ignored that fact, instead he engaged the germans directly in a gunnery duel, something his BCs were not meant to do. Not to mention that German BCs were the polar opposite of british ones, more armor for smaller caliber guns, which made them really hard to kill as is seen from the fact that the only German BC lost the Lutzow was scuttled by its own crew as opposed as to sink on its own due to damage taken. So it's not as if the BCs were shit, but they were grossly missused by Beaty, forced into a situation they could not handle.
FranzAntonMesmer It reminds me of the famous exchange between Lord Uxbridge and the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo when Uxbridge's leg got blown off by a canon: "By God, sir, I've lost my leg, sir!" "By God, sir, so you have!" Or those propaganda posters with a smiling British soldier saying "Come do your bit!" The British are freaking *masters* of understatement.
Understatement is not entirely exclusive to the upper ranks. One of the famous cartoon strips of the time was Fragments From France, by Lt. Bruce Bairnsfather (scene: 2 men in an artillery barrage) "If you know's of a better 'ole go to it!" A much older example of this kind of joke was made by a mortaly wounded Pt. Thomas Atkins to Wellington at the battle of Boxtel was "It's all right, sir, all in a days work" Although the latter one is a bit apocryphal.
What a battle! My great-grandfather was a sailor on the SMS Pommern. I'm lucky that my grandmother was already born. His name was Heinrich Wicke. I salute to him and all the british and german sailors who lost their lifes. Lets hope that there will be no war in europe again.
My maternal grandfather's brother (my great uncle).(His name was Archibald Morison), was the Surgeon on the H.M.S. Indefatigable, the first british ship to blow up. only 2 survived of a crew of 1019. RIP.
My grandfather was on a German Battleship as a very young sailor in this battle. Later he served on Submarines. Survived the war but died before I met him. My mom still has his iron crosses
My grandfathers grand uncle was Admiral Scheer, the Males in our Family all share the same high hairline and spotty beards. Also when you look at fotograms of us as children you cannot distinguish between us.
Yes indeed let’s hope Europe never tries to commit suicide again ! My deepest regard to the bravery and heroism of the sailors of grand fleet and high seas fleet
Ironically, the huge fleets built during the pre-war years were so expensive and prestigious that no side was really keen on sending them out and risking their destruction. They cost billions in todays money and were symbols of national pride. So both fleets essentially cancelled each other out by simply... doing nothing. The huge battleships of WW1 were almost like the Cold War's nuclear deterent and were the superweapons of their time.
That is certainly the case but you it's not that easy to say that they did nothing. Britain had the Naval Blockade and just the existence of the other fleet forced you to adapt your strategy.
Except that while nukes averted wars, the dreadnought arms race actually helped trigger WWI, meaning they were counterproductive as deterrents. Still, WWI was the last hurrah of gun-armed ships: within two decades the battleship would become obsolete and pointless as naval aviation rose to dominance.
The LAST thing Scheer wanted was to encounter the Grand Fleet. He hoped to meet and destroy a small part of it. He knew the odds of going up against the whole British fleet. That's why he ran, twice. The strategic situation after the battle was likely best summed up by a contemporary writer: the prisoner has assaulted the jailer but is now back in jail.
I defo wouldn't say they did nothing. The Germans based there strategy off of a naval tactic, the so-called 'guerre de course' which focuses on commerce disruption, while the English took a traditional approach to the war, using their superior numbers to blockade the channel between France and England, as well as between Scotland and Norway.
My family is originally from the west coast of Jutland. It has been passed down through family history that on that May day in 1916 it was possible to hear the roar of the cannons from beaches all day long - but that no ships were ever in sights. Quite an astonishing way of following a battle from a far, I would say.
Von der Tann was, later in the battle, so badly battered that her main turrets were disabled. Essentially out of action, her captain maintained position in line so that any Royal Navy shells fired at her would be wasted, not aimed at combat-capable ships. Also, the magazine of HMS Lion was flooded deliberately by a mortally-wounded Royal Marine who saw flaming debris falling into the ammunition lifts. He was awarded a VC, posthumously.
m.ua-cam.com/video/U_UryFjKUsM/v-deo.html Here is another in depth video of Jutland with lots of animations that I found on UA-cam that I think you will enjoy!
Well. I'm not religious but I agree that naming the ship 'Invincible' was asking for trouble. Also, taking the ammunition out of the magazine and stacking it around the turret working rooms, where it was not protected from any nearby explosions, was really stupid. The British wrecks have been dived and the cartridge cases ( giant 12 inch diameter leather tubes ) were found all round the handling rooms, where they should not have been. Once out of the cartridge cases the cordite propellant was just in big silk bags. They laid a trail of them from the magazine to the turret, so that when the turret was hit, the explosion set off the ammunition trail back to the magazine. The protective doors that should have been closed were all latched open. Speed of fire was everything, and safety be damned...
+The Great War love your channel been subscribed since January 2015 anyways I read that British losses were mainly due to unsafe ammo racks while the Germans and American navies had better safety measures
Aircraft carriers were very much experimental at this time, I don't think any combat missions were flown by planes from carriers. Seaplanes on the other hand saw action, they had special support ships known as sea plane tenders, these used to accompany the main fleet but mostly provided reconnaissance.
+Don Felipe if I recall one was launched in 1918 but didn't see any real action it would make for an interesting out of the trenches as it was in ww2 where aircraft carriers blossomed at the hands of the IJN and US Navy
The Battle of Dodger Bank The Battle of Coronel The Battle of the Falkland islands The Gallipoli campaign (ships vs forts) **But! you have already covered all of those quite well**
Interesting that the doomed western front offensives and the battle of Jutland had something very important in common - the inability to effectively communicate in combat.
So happy to see how this channel has grown. I subscribed back around 9k subscribers, and too see the amount of views and the like/dislike ratio on each video just warms my heart. Wonderful channel, and I wish you well in the future!
I never would have thought that a channel like this could even exist in UA-cam. Let alone be done with such amazing quality and in such a great format. You guys are an amazing team and I (along with everyone else) truly appreciate you're fantastic work. I'm so happy I found this channel!!!
If an enemy assaults your position, and you take more casualties than they do but at the end of the battle, you still hold that position, is it a tactical defeat? No. The germans started that battle with the intention of eliminating the blockade, the British took higher casualties, but they stopped them from breaking out.
No, that is simply BS, a straw man invented by the British to try to claim some form of victory out of this debacle, the HSF did not intend to break the blockade at Jutland it did not intend to steam ANYWHERE NEAR THE BLOCKADE, the cruise was set up as a way to keep the crews active and show the flag in substitution of the Sunderland raid, delayed and then cancelled due to weather and consequent the unavailability of Zeppelin reconnaissance. There was simply no strategic victory.
trauko1388 Ok, their intention was to either break the naval blockade or cripple the grand fleet, both of which they failed. The British had a strategic victory as the blockade stayed in place until the end of the war. The Germans sank more ships so they had a tactical victory. Whether either side won is debatable but as the blockade started to drain Germany later on I would say that Britain came out on top even though they lost more ships. Saying the British lost is like saying the Russians lost the Eastern Front during ww2 because they lost more men.
Man those animations about the movement of the different navies and how it was kinda clusterfuck reminds me of what happens in some games I play that involves Naval Warfare
Crazy to think that it actually happened though. The same thing goes for supply routes and things like that on the ground, world war 1 is an absolute mess....well perhaps I should say war in general, but WW1 takes the cake.
Excellent episode, I was waiting for this one since episode one. Naval battles and air battles especially interest me since aircraft and ship technology are fascinating to me. Thank you Indy.
Great episode, even better than usual! The animations really give a good idea of what happened in the battle - reading reports and looking at static maps is always very confusing.
nice choice of words, since that was the same way the HMS Courageous was built and I've heard several historians complaining that that was the worst idea ever (the british agreed, all 3 of that class were converted to carriers quickly) but srsly, paper aint armor
Great episode, it's amazing you could summarize a battle like that so well in so little time. I'm a little surprised, though, that you didn't use this episode to trot out Churchill's quote about Admiral Jellicoe - That he couldn't win the war, but he was the only man who could lose it in a single day.
***** Yes, I know, And the pictures they chose were great and epic. There's really not a sufficient amount of actual Battle of Jutland pictures available to make a video out of anyway. I didn't intend for my comment to be taken as critique, just as an observation :)
Hm, it is actually labeled as Deutsche Hochseeflotte before the Battle of Jutland in the archive we use and like Peter said we are not naval-nerd enough to have noticed that.
On my village War Memorial, one of the names is "Ldg. Stoker G.T. Hicks. HMS Invincible.Drowned. 31st of May 1916" I've always mean to find out what happened but always forget - but I know now. Watching that, there probably wasn't much left to drown - poor blokes. I'm 'playing catch up' on this channel at the moment, but cheers. It's a great idea, beautifully executed.
Another Great episode from the Great War crew. Shame you didn't give Major Frances Harvey his due for ordering the magazine on HMS Lion to be flooded, saving her from sharing the fate of her sister ships.
One of the reasons for the British ships taking so many catastrophic losses was the mis handling of ammunition for the guns. In practice drills to increase their rate of fire the crews would pre-stage shell and powder in unarmored passage ways also the anti-flash blast doors would be left open to facilitate moving the ammo faster. It made for great scores during gunnery drills but when put in practice during the real battle it meant disaster for the entire ship.
It is better and better and cooler and cooler and I can see this in how much work has gone into this important episode. Well done especially to the graphics crew.
I have an exam on 20th century naval history this week and I have to admit, its really impressive, the accuracy which this channel deals with this episode, possibly the most important naval engagement of the war. From the fact about the magazine doors being left open on the HMS Lion and HMS Queen Mary, to the fact that Germany strategically lost this battle.
The German Army usually were from one region, Prussian, Bavarians, Westphalians etc. That made the communication easier and was a natural way of forming entities. They were neighbours often, and it was also faster to mobilize in regions then to collect troops made up by recruits from all over the land. But normally they all were equipped similar and while having "local" generals and sometimes nominally under a member of the families of the monarchs (but in reality a trained "professional" officer made the decisions).
Wow! Super cool episode! Congrats! I bet it was hard to make all those arrow animations with the movement of the fleets. Just... wow! I can't even emagine how you obtained so acurate data from such a imprecise era. I am looking foreward to seeing what your achievements will be in 10 years.
The North Sea has drawn them near The Fleet of the High Seas approach A contest of titans commence These days will dictate their fate The Grand Fleet prepares their guns Unleashed as the Dreadnoughts clash at last!
Very true. I thought people were superstitious at that time?! What superstitious person in their right mind would name their ship "Invincible". That's like #1 on the superstitious list of do's and don't's
In WWII Germany called a ship "Großdeutschland" ("Great Germany", more or less). It was noticed how not so nice it would be if Great Germany was sunk (after it got damaged pretty heavily) and the ship got renamed...
I hate to point out mistakes, but at 2:02 the german ships are on the western side of Lindesnes and that is still the North sea, Skagerak start east of Lindesnes.
If you want a perfect example of even the often forgotten bits of this war having an effect a century later, Germany's parliament just approved a motion calling the Armenian Massacre a genocide. Which Turkey certainly wasn't fond of.
Beatty used a flag system to communicate with the Jellicoe. However, Jellicoe could not see the flags because they were 5 miles away and it was misty. Beatty refused to use morse code and he was ,for the most part, an adventurer who was seeking glory at sea
The communications problems on the Royal Navy side in this battle go beyond Beatty. Jellicoe wasn't getting reports from ships in his own force, especially that night. Unfortunately, people rarely get good at war without practice and there hadn't been any fleet actions (and wouldn't be any more). Look at the WW2 battles in the Solomon Islands: Savo Island was a farce but the USN eventually got better and stopped making the same mistakes.
Among the ships commanded by Beatty this day, only HMS New Zealand got out without major damages and very few casualties. It was always considered a lucky ship. Legend told that the ship captain always wore a Maori pendant gifted to him by a Maori chieftan, who said that it would protect him and the ship from evil spirits.
Not just a pendant, he also wore a Maori piu-piu, a flax type of kilt. I've read that in several different books and Castles of Steel mentions it as well.
one of the last surviving ships from this battle is in Belfast, Northern Ireland and is the H.M.S Caroline. it has just undergone a restoration and is well worth a visit. you can stand on decks that were actually there at Jutland. do you guys know anything about it's actions in and after the battle?
the idea that the British battlecruisers were subdivided poorly and inherently inferior in terms of design is actually not true. the main problem for the British was the emphasis on an increased rate of fire which meant that nearly all safety mechanisms to protect the deep magazine from chain explosions from the turrets were ignored to increase rate of fire. the former point about construction was proven incorrect by an experiment on a recent BBC documentary 'Jutland the Navy's bloodiest day' where a model of the hull of the HMS Queen Mary was subjected to similar water incursions that the SMS Seydlitz suffered. it did not sink, thus the idea of inferior design isn't entirely correct. rather it is the Officer's insistence on rate of fire that sank the Invincible Indefatigable and the Queen Mary
The Stoned Videogame Nerd actually the British scored more hits at Jutland impliying at least a parity if not superiority of range-finding equipment, the problem was the shells were crap some broke up on impact fuses didn't work etc. German crews found that they could reassemble shells that had broken up on the deck armour. with better quality control for shells the RN could have actually had another trafalgar
Yes and no. While safety procedures contributed to the disasters for the British battlecruisers at Jutland, it is also true that the British ships sacrificed more armor for greater speed and firepower than their German counterparts did. Just a difference of design philosophy.
Everything I have seen so far about the loss of the British battlecruisers is that the gun crews did not follow proper procedures in handling the powder. Flash doors were propped open and bags of cordite were stacked in the turret in order to maintain the high rate of fire that the Royal Navy practised. All it took was a single turret hit to detonate the stored cordite, and the resulting flash would spread down to the magazine, destroying the ship. The same thing almost happened to HMS Lion, Beatty's flagship, when one of the turrets was hit, Fast action by Royal Marine Major Francis Harvey, the turret commander, who ordered the magazine to be flooded, most likely saved the ship. I very much doubt that all three battlecruisers took an unlucky direct hit to the magazine, as those are located deep within a ship (below the waterline) and I believe the range was too close for plunging fire from the German ships (which is was many historians believe happened to HMS Hood in her fight against Bismarck, plunging fire through her thin deck armour).
The doors between the turret and powder hoist and powder hoist and powder handling room were supposed to work like an airlock, with having both doors open at the same time impossible, so a flash couldn't pass down the hoist into the magazine. They had disabled the interlock and had all the doors open all the time for faster firing, and it's likely that all three ships were destroyed by hits to turrets that the ships should have survived.
Some interesting reading. After action reports by the British concerning the battlecruisers. www.dreadnoughtproject.org/tfs/index.php/A_Direct_Train_of_Cordite
I've read the same. And that in fact the flash problem had been experienced by the Germans at the Battle of Heligoland in 1914, which they had learned from.
The battle cruisers tend to have as much artillery as the dreadnought, but less armor. The idea was to use the battle cruisers in the wings to engage the lighter armored ships, such as light cruisers and destroyers (even heavy cruisers) and destroy them with they heavy weapons. However, battle cruisers were often used as the starting engaging ship provided they got higher speed than the others. Fatal mistake that causes heavy losses in that type of ship, because they couldn't withstand a dreadnought. Seems that the Brits didn't learn that mistake because they made the same mistake in 1940, sending the HMS Hood against the Bismark. Great Graphics!
there were no dreadnoughts present at the first clash, as far as i know. only battle cruisers were fielded on both sides. so the armour difference between these to ship classes was not the cause of the demise of the british cruisers. i read, that the reason the british lost so many ships was, that the crew formed long lines of sailors passing the ammunition charges from the magazin to the gun towers to increase the rate of fire. thing is, that if you dont have bulkheads between your corridors a single explosion along the way can lead to a magazin detonation (what is infact what happened to these cruisers, hence why they sank so fast). sry if my sentences are a bit stiff, i m german.
Yes the British sailors were not conducting proper safety measures for faster reload speed. However there was armro and gun range difference. The Germans battlecruiser philosophy was smaller gun for speed. British was less armor for speed. This meant the British was at a disadvantage to begin with by closing in and not using its range advantage. in a slugfest, the heavier armor of the Germans easily proved decisive. As evidence only 1 German battlecruiser sank. British battlecruisers has always been meant to do kind of a hit and run tactic not a slugfest. Of course improper handling of rounds and magazine turned a disadvantageous mistake to a fatal mistake.
A German officer characterized their "Large Cruisers" as Cruiser-Battleships, with the British ones being Battleship-Cruisers, meaning that the German ships were closer to the Battleship side and the RN ones to the cruiser end of the spectrum. I fully agree, I would even go as far as to call them the first fast-battleships since they were as well-armored as the contemporary RN battleships.
But they have less protection. On the other hand, you're totally right when you said that the asignation between different classes was a mess. When does start a battle cruiser and finish a heavy cruiser? The French Dunkerque class in 1932 had that same problem, i.e.
Álvaro Alonso Macías Well, the heavy cruiser was well defined from the start since it was an artificial creation by treaty, the battlecruiser was a name invented by a newspaper with them still being classified as armored cruisers, so, who knows?
Hi Indy an team love your work as usual. Hear is a really cool video on Jutland Narrated by the Grandson of Jellicoe eua-cam.com/video/U_UryFjKUsM/v-deo.html one minor issues regarding the perpetuation of the narrative regarding the RN battlecruisers recent exploration of the wrecks disproved the inadequate armour theory regarding the RN battlecruisers forensic examination of the Wrecks themselves proved that not a single shell penetrated the deck or magazines and the explosions were caused by flash fires which were caused by the removal of flash doors and the deliberate storage of cordite in un-armoured places near the turrets this occured under Beatty's command and was against existing Admiralty guidelines regarding Cordite storage of the time. This was pointed out in an Admiralty Report that was later suppressed when Beatty became commander of the Grand Fleet and a second report was written blaming the lack of armour the original report still exists in Admiralty Achieves and still has the the handwritten rejection of the report still written on the front page in green ink an the something wrong with our ships quote is only a partial quote as the rest of the quote is "and our something wrong with our systems". However like the original report that part of the quote is often forgotten about as the RN was unwilling to publish any criticism of systems and officers and believed it more expedient to blame design flaws due to the ongoing War and with the promotion of Beatty to First Sea Lord in 1919 and the later promotion of Beatty's Jutland Flag-captain Ernie Chatfield to the same position in the 1930s this narrative carried on for another generation. The Falsehood of the RN battlecruisers not being able to take a hit is exemplified by comparing HMS Tiger with HMS Queen Mary as they were almost Identical ships with the same armour layout as on HMS Tiger recent changes in command staff had led to the correct implementation of the existing Admiralty rules regarding cordite storage and was able to survive 18 separate large calibre hits and an additional 4 secondary armament hits mainly from the German Battlecruiser Motlke with the loss of only of 24 its crew killed and 46 wounded sorry for how long winded this is but I actually once did a lecture on the subject for BRNC Dartmouth having which was attended by the then Admiral in charge of RN in Northern Ireland as at that point they were still using HMS Caroline (only surviving ship from the battle as a HQ)
Useful video. It does mention the charges being left outside of their safe handling areas. I believe there is another show that got into that but it has been several years since I saw it. Don't think it was this video but still good to see it mentioning the matter.
That photo of the giant holes in the armor at around the 6:25 mark is really impressive and terrifying too. It must have been absolute hell being on one of those ships with gigantic shells coming in left and right.
"Luigi Cadorna managed to get a new army of 180000 men"
Poor men.
I love this comment.
dank
Did you see the South Park episode with the cripple fight? Italian front In a nutshell. Cadorna vs Hotzendorf, poor men.
Saying "There seems to be something wrong with our ships today" while getting bombarded in a WWI sea battle is just about the most British understatement I've ever heard.
I don't know what Beatty was thinking when he engaged, he was litterally sailing in "glass cannon" ships. They could dishout increadible punisment and were really fast but they could not take any hits because their armor was bad. He even had a range advantage as his BCs could fire from further away then the German ones, yet he ignored that fact, instead he engaged the germans directly in a gunnery duel, something his BCs were not meant to do.
Not to mention that German BCs were the polar opposite of british ones, more armor for smaller caliber guns, which made them really hard to kill as is seen from the fact that the only German BC lost the Lutzow was scuttled by its own crew as opposed as to sink on its own due to damage taken.
So it's not as if the BCs were shit, but they were grossly missused by Beaty, forced into a situation they could not handle.
FranzAntonMesmer It reminds me of the famous exchange between Lord Uxbridge and the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo when Uxbridge's leg got blown off by a canon: "By God, sir, I've lost my leg, sir!" "By God, sir, so you have!" Or those propaganda posters with a smiling British soldier saying "Come do your bit!" The British are freaking *masters* of understatement.
Understatement is not entirely exclusive to the upper ranks. One of the famous cartoon strips of the time was Fragments From France, by Lt. Bruce Bairnsfather (scene: 2 men in an artillery barrage) "If you know's of a better 'ole go to it!" A much older example of this kind of joke was made by a mortaly wounded Pt. Thomas Atkins to Wellington at the battle of Boxtel was "It's all right, sir, all in a days work" Although the latter one is a bit apocryphal.
+Astral_Eclipse
British Naval personnel didn't follow simple health and safety regulations and lost more vessels as a result.
At least he didn't ask Chatfield to give him a kiss.
that poor capitain of that merchant ship must have said something like "well we fucked up "
lmao ikr
"well...shit"
that feeling when you have something shady in the cargo of your ship...
It was at this moment that the captain realized, he done screwed up.
He called for his brown trousers.
The merchant ship captain: *Looks left* *Looks right*
"Well shit..."
*chuckles* I’m in danger
*guess I'll die*
Major “that one fishing boat between a Jaegar and a Kaiju” from Pacific Rim vibes lol
What a battle! My great-grandfather was a sailor on the SMS Pommern. I'm lucky that my grandmother was already born. His name was Heinrich Wicke. I salute to him and all the british and german sailors who lost their lifes. Lets hope that there will be no war in europe again.
My maternal grandfather's brother (my great uncle).(His name was Archibald Morison), was the Surgeon on the H.M.S. Indefatigable, the first british ship to blow up. only 2 survived of a crew of 1019. RIP.
R.I.P
My grandfather was on a German Battleship as a very young sailor in this battle. Later he served on Submarines. Survived the war but died before I met him. My mom still has his iron crosses
My grandfathers grand uncle was Admiral Scheer, the Males in our Family all share the same high hairline and spotty beards. Also when you look at fotograms of us as children you cannot distinguish between us.
Yes indeed let’s hope Europe never tries to commit suicide again ! My deepest regard to the bravery and heroism of the sailors of grand fleet and high seas fleet
Ironically, the huge fleets built during the pre-war years were so expensive and prestigious that no side was really keen on sending them out and risking their destruction. They cost billions in todays money and were symbols of national pride. So both fleets essentially cancelled each other out by simply... doing nothing. The huge battleships of WW1 were almost like the Cold War's nuclear deterent and were the superweapons of their time.
That is certainly the case but you it's not that easy to say that they did nothing. Britain had the Naval Blockade and just the existence of the other fleet forced you to adapt your strategy.
I agree. Sure, they played their part and all but its not exactly the gigantic, over-the-top naval gun battles that most people would imagine.
Except that while nukes averted wars, the dreadnought arms race actually helped trigger WWI, meaning they were counterproductive as deterrents.
Still, WWI was the last hurrah of gun-armed ships: within two decades the battleship would become obsolete and pointless as naval aviation rose to dominance.
The LAST thing Scheer wanted was to encounter the Grand Fleet. He hoped to meet and destroy a small part of it. He knew the odds of going up against the whole British fleet. That's why he ran, twice. The strategic situation after the battle was likely best summed up by a contemporary writer: the prisoner has assaulted the jailer but is now back in jail.
I defo wouldn't say they did nothing. The Germans based there strategy off of a naval tactic, the so-called 'guerre de course' which focuses on commerce disruption, while the English took a traditional approach to the war, using their superior numbers to blockade the channel between France and England, as well as between Scotland and Norway.
They advanced 700 meters? I told you, the war will be over by christmas!
Xd
christmas in 2 years....
This just in: Christmas cancelled until 1918
My family is originally from the west coast of Jutland. It has been passed down through family history that on that May day in 1916 it was possible to hear the roar of the cannons from beaches all day long - but that no ships were ever in sights.
Quite an astonishing way of following a battle from a far, I would say.
That sounds very interesting.
Von der Tann was, later in the battle, so badly battered that her main turrets were disabled. Essentially out of action, her captain maintained position in line so that any Royal Navy shells fired at her would be wasted, not aimed at combat-capable ships.
Also, the magazine of HMS Lion was flooded deliberately by a mortally-wounded Royal Marine who saw flaming debris falling into the ammunition lifts. He was awarded a VC, posthumously.
The animation in this episode is incredible 👍🏻
dude they really are. It demonstrates how crazy those battles were. Kudos to the animation teams!
Thanks man.
m.ua-cam.com/video/U_UryFjKUsM/v-deo.html
Here is another in depth video of Jutland with lots of animations that I found on UA-cam that I think you will enjoy!
ironic that a ship named Invincible would be one of the casualties
they jinxed it well
Nothing good can come of naming your ship "Invincible"
naming a ship "Invincible" is just tempting God himself to come down to Earth and sink it
Well. I'm not religious but I agree that naming the ship 'Invincible' was asking for trouble. Also, taking the ammunition out of the magazine and stacking it around the turret working rooms, where it was not protected from any nearby explosions, was really stupid. The British wrecks have been dived and the cartridge cases ( giant 12 inch diameter leather tubes ) were found all round the handling rooms, where they should not have been. Once out of the cartridge cases the cordite propellant was just in big silk bags. They laid a trail of them from the magazine to the turret, so that when the turret was hit, the explosion set off the ammunition trail back to the magazine. The protective doors that should have been closed were all latched open. Speed of fire was everything, and safety be damned...
Didn't do the last HMS Invincible any harm.
That what some nice animations. Great job as always.
+Polopolo - Born2Mine Thanks!
+The Great War love your channel been subscribed since January 2015 anyways I read that British losses were mainly due to unsafe ammo racks while the Germans and American navies had better safety measures
+The Great War will you guys talk about the first aircraft carriers which were introduced in ww1
Aircraft carriers were very much experimental at this time, I don't think any combat missions were flown by planes from carriers. Seaplanes on the other hand saw action, they had special support ships known as sea plane tenders, these used to accompany the main fleet but mostly provided reconnaissance.
+Don Felipe if I recall one was launched in 1918 but didn't see any real action it would make for an interesting out of the trenches as it was in ww2 where aircraft carriers blossomed at the hands of the IJN and US Navy
Do more naval battles! I love WW1 naval battles I read them all the time.
+Neurofied Yamato Well, there aren't so many huge ones on ww1
The Battle of Dodger Bank
The Battle of Coronel
The Battle of the Falkland islands
The Gallipoli campaign (ships vs forts)
**But! you have already covered all of those quite well**
The naval animation was perfect, looking forward to seeing more
Great animation of the naval engagement.
Interesting that the doomed western front offensives and the battle of Jutland had something very important in common - the inability to effectively communicate in combat.
No Conrad this week.... I'm disappointed, I need my weekly Conrad fix!
Question for out of the trenches. How was wildlife affected by the war. Great work Indy and crew
Grant Stephanz well if i was a deer or a bird or whatever, I wouldn't stick around.
bit late lol im still on the binging period when i dont have to wait a week for every episode
I love it when I come home from school to find that The Great War has uploaded another video! Tack för detta Indi!
i gotta say guys, really good job on this series. Love it! Better content than discovery channel and such had the past 5 - 10 years
Thanks.
I have been waiting for this particular episode and you did not disappoint me. Brilliant work!
Great, thanks.
haha, me 2 lol,
even if i started watching after the series ended
So happy to see how this channel has grown. I subscribed back around 9k subscribers, and too see the amount of views and the like/dislike ratio on each video just warms my heart. Wonderful channel, and I wish you well in the future!
I never would have thought that a channel like this could even exist in UA-cam. Let alone be done with such amazing quality and in such a great format. You guys are an amazing team and I (along with everyone else) truly appreciate you're fantastic work. I'm so happy I found this channel!!!
+Noah Davis Thanks, really glad you like it
The maps of the battle Jutland map requires a benny hill theme.
Oh that was glorious. Thank you very much for that suggestion.
Lol. I'm a bit confused as to why it's called the battle of Jutland, isn't it just Denmark?
The battle of Denmark just wouldn't sell. It was fought off of the Jutland peninsula, part of Denmark.
Yeah cos war is funny.
Throw in a laughtrack for the casualty reports of Verdun while you're at it.
Not so funny now eh.
@@Madhattersinjeans yes it is.
Those german BCs though.... Incredible ships.
Such an epic naval battle has not been fought since this one
Battle of the Coral Sea
Interesting how the British suffered a tactical defeat but won a strategic victory. In some ways, this is similar to the Battle of Coral Sea.
+FranzAntonMesmer but it didn't.
I should have read this before I posted almost the same thing above.
If an enemy assaults your position, and you take more casualties than they do but at the end of the battle, you still hold that position, is it a tactical defeat? No. The germans started that battle with the intention of eliminating the blockade, the British took higher casualties, but they stopped them from breaking out.
No, that is simply BS, a straw man invented by the British to try to claim some form of victory out of this debacle, the HSF did not intend to break the blockade at Jutland it did not intend to steam ANYWHERE NEAR THE BLOCKADE, the cruise was set up as a way to keep the crews active and show the flag in substitution of the Sunderland raid, delayed and then cancelled due to weather and consequent the unavailability of Zeppelin reconnaissance.
There was simply no strategic victory.
trauko1388 Ok, their intention was to either break the naval blockade or cripple the grand fleet, both of which they failed. The British had a strategic victory as the blockade stayed in place until the end of the war. The Germans sank more ships so they had a tactical victory. Whether either side won is debatable but as the blockade started to drain Germany later on I would say that Britain came out on top even though they lost more ships. Saying the British lost is like saying the Russians lost the Eastern Front during ww2 because they lost more men.
"Nobody knew, what was going on anywhere"
Brillant summary of the whole war.
Nicely done, Sir!
Thanks.
great way of illustrating the battle! you guys kill it in the presentation department. really helps me understand and connect
+Joseph Wright Thanks, glad it works out
Man those animations about the movement of the different navies and how it was kinda clusterfuck reminds me of what happens in some games I play that involves Naval Warfare
Crazy to think that it actually happened though. The same thing goes for supply routes and things like that on the ground, world war 1 is an absolute mess....well perhaps I should say war in general, but WW1 takes the cake.
This was the most concise explanation of the Battle of Jutland that I've seen. Great job!
The animations in this episode were amazing - so helpful in understanding the battle! Great job guys
Best GW episode yet, and the best short presentation of the naval battle that I've seen. (Minor quibbles only.) Keep it up!
Thanks, Dennis.
really love the new animations! good job, great video once again :D
I've been waiting for this episode for a long time this is in my opinion one of the greatest battles fought in the modern age of warfare.
Excellent episode, I was waiting for this one since episode one. Naval battles and air battles especially interest me since aircraft and ship technology are fascinating to me. Thank you Indy.
Thanks for another great episode Indy!
Great episode about something I've heard of, but didn't know nearly enough about. The animation does a great job of bringing it together. Big thanks.
there are a couple of other very good documentaries about Jutland on youtube that go into much more detail, you should check them out.
I really dug the new naval battle animation and the dynamic view of the newspapers. Keep up the great work!
The admiralship of Jellicoe during Jutland was very impressive, crossing the T a number of times.
Unfortunately Scheer would not play by the rules and allow his ships to be nicely sunk by the British.
Beatty was being a bit of a dick, and it gave Jellicoe a bad name
This episode is fantastic! Informative and dramatic.
this episode was a particular good one! great animations also.
Thanks!
One of the best ilustration of Jutland battle I have ever heard. Congratulations on the Animation and Story.
Great episode, even better than usual! The animations really give a good idea of what happened in the battle - reading reports and looking at static maps is always very confusing.
Naval Warfare is challenging to illustrate for sure.
Finally caught up with the weekly show. Now to start going through your specials. Keep up the good work!
"The Courageous Royal navy will outrun the German Shells!" -Admiral Fisher
Sail baby sail, faster than my shells
nice choice of words, since that was the same way the HMS Courageous was built and I've heard several historians complaining that that was the worst idea ever (the british agreed, all 3 of that class were converted to carriers quickly)
but srsly, paper aint armor
@@gfdx3214 ahh yes, the "large light cruisers" as Fisher called them.
Great episode, it's amazing you could summarize a battle like that so well in so little time. I'm a little surprised, though, that you didn't use this episode to trot out Churchill's quote about Admiral Jellicoe - That he couldn't win the war, but he was the only man who could lose it in a single day.
This is, in my opinion, the best episode you guys have done so far.
That's an amazing painting of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Navy you've got there at 6:59 :)
***** Yes, I know, And the pictures they chose were great and epic. There's really not a sufficient amount of actual Battle of Jutland pictures available to make a video out of anyway. I didn't intend for my comment to be taken as critique, just as an observation :)
Can you tell me where can I find this painting on the internet ? It looks great, thanks
Hm, it is actually labeled as Deutsche Hochseeflotte before the Battle of Jutland in the archive we use and like Peter said we are not naval-nerd enough to have noticed that.
On my village War Memorial, one of the names is "Ldg. Stoker G.T. Hicks. HMS Invincible.Drowned. 31st of May 1916" I've always mean to find out what happened but always forget - but I know now. Watching that, there probably wasn't much left to drown - poor blokes. I'm 'playing catch up' on this channel at the moment, but cheers. It's a great idea, beautifully executed.
the graphics were awesome! Love your chanel
Thanks.
+The Great War You guys are really stepping up your animations and quality. Keep up the good work Indy and Team!
We try our best.
Another Great episode from the Great War crew. Shame you didn't give Major Frances Harvey his due for ordering the magazine on HMS Lion to be flooded, saving her from sharing the fate of her sister ships.
I didn't realize that magazine explosions could be quite that incredibly intense! 2 men out of thousands is crazy
*UNOPPOSED UNDER CRIMSON SKIES! IMMORTALIZED OVER TIME, THEIR LEGEND WILL RISE!*
Also great animation and information on the battle of Jutland!
One of the reasons for the British ships taking so many catastrophic losses was the mis handling of ammunition for the guns. In practice drills to increase their rate of fire the crews would pre-stage shell and powder in unarmored passage ways also the anti-flash blast doors would be left open to facilitate moving the ammo faster. It made for great scores during gunnery drills but when put in practice during the real battle it meant disaster for the entire ship.
Absolutely love the new graphics! The show just keeps getting better and better.
Great new animations!
It is better and better and cooler and cooler and I can see this in how much work has gone into this important episode. Well done especially to the graphics crew.
Thanks Ian!
Conrad strikes again, forward to Venice! What a genius.
Well, actually it wasn't a bad plan, because the area near Venice was a way better defensive position (that will be utilized later in the war).
I have an exam on 20th century naval history this week and I have to admit, its really impressive, the accuracy which this channel deals with this episode, possibly the most important naval engagement of the war. From the fact about the magazine doors being left open on the HMS Lion and HMS Queen Mary, to the fact that Germany strategically lost this battle.
Great episode!
Excellent storytelling and illustration. You have presented a clear and entertaining narrative, with excellent support from the animations!
Thanks!
I've heard that the Bavarian Army was pretty much independent from the Prussian. Could you give some info about it? Thanks!
The German Army usually were from one region, Prussian, Bavarians, Westphalians etc. That made the communication easier and was a natural way of forming entities. They were neighbours often, and it was also faster to mobilize in regions then to collect troops made up by recruits from all over the land. But normally they all were equipped similar and while having "local" generals and sometimes nominally under a member of the families of the monarchs (but in reality a trained "professional" officer made the decisions).
Wow! Super cool episode! Congrats! I bet it was hard to make all those arrow animations with the movement of the fleets. Just... wow! I can't even emagine how you obtained so acurate data from such a imprecise era. I am looking foreward to seeing what your achievements will be in 10 years.
The North Sea has drawn them near
The Fleet of the High Seas approach
A contest of titans commence
These days will dictate their fate
The Grand Fleet prepares their guns
Unleashed as the Dreadnoughts clash at last!
I just found your videos today and I must say your show is very good, well documented, illustrated and presented, can't stop watching !
Thank you! Glad that you enjoy it!
HMS Invincible... not so invincible.
Questionably harsh
Ahh reminds me of Makaisson from Warhammer. The Unsinkable. Sank. The Unbreakable. Broke.
Naming a ship that is just asking for something terrible to happen to it.
Very true. I thought people were superstitious at that time?! What superstitious person in their right mind would name their ship "Invincible". That's like #1 on the superstitious list of do's and don't's
In WWII Germany called a ship "Großdeutschland" ("Great Germany", more or less).
It was noticed how not so nice it would be if Great Germany was sunk (after it got damaged pretty heavily) and the ship got renamed...
Can't stop loving your video
I hate to point out mistakes, but at 2:02 the german ships are on the western side of Lindesnes and that is still the North sea, Skagerak start east of Lindesnes.
love watching these every Friday Morning great way to start the weekend keep up the good work lads! :D
Haha, thanks.
If you want a perfect example of even the often forgotten bits of this war having an effect a century later, Germany's parliament just approved a motion calling the Armenian Massacre a genocide. Which Turkey certainly wasn't fond of.
Best episode yet I think!
Amazing quality. These episodes have gotten so good.
Great job guys!!
+Zangetsai Thank you thank you. Couldn't do it without our Patreon fund
Beatty used a flag system to communicate with the Jellicoe. However, Jellicoe could not see the flags because they were 5 miles away and it was misty. Beatty refused to use morse code and he was ,for the most part, an adventurer who was seeking glory at sea
The communications problems on the Royal Navy side in this battle go beyond Beatty. Jellicoe wasn't getting reports from ships in his own force, especially that night.
Unfortunately, people rarely get good at war without practice and there hadn't been any fleet actions (and wouldn't be any more). Look at the WW2 battles in the Solomon Islands: Savo Island was a farce but the USN eventually got better and stopped making the same mistakes.
Oh boy, I've been waiting a long time for this one :D
Fire Broadsides!
Fireside Broadcasts!
The animations in the video were absolutely stunning, the battle as well as the papers. Keep up the good work!
Glad you liked them, we are always trying to improve them.
Among the ships commanded by Beatty this day, only HMS New Zealand got out without major damages and very few casualties. It was always considered a lucky ship. Legend told that the ship captain always wore a Maori pendant gifted to him by a Maori chieftan, who said that it would protect him and the ship from evil spirits.
Not just a pendant, he also wore a Maori piu-piu, a flax type of kilt. I've read that in several different books and Castles of Steel mentions it as well.
Thank you! My favourite battle besides Tshushima.
one of the last surviving ships from this battle is in Belfast, Northern Ireland and is the H.M.S Caroline. it has just undergone a restoration and is well worth a visit. you can stand on decks that were actually there at Jutland. do you guys know anything about it's actions in and after the battle?
I've been waiting for this episode for a long time :')
And now I'm procrastinating again while I have a video to make xD
the idea that the British battlecruisers were subdivided poorly and inherently inferior in terms of design is actually not true. the main problem for the British was the emphasis on an increased rate of fire which meant that nearly all safety mechanisms to protect the deep magazine from chain explosions from the turrets were ignored to increase rate of fire. the former point about construction was proven incorrect by an experiment on a recent BBC documentary 'Jutland the Navy's bloodiest day' where a model of the hull of the HMS Queen Mary was subjected to similar water incursions that the SMS Seydlitz suffered. it did not sink, thus the idea of inferior design isn't entirely correct. rather it is the Officer's insistence on rate of fire that sank the Invincible Indefatigable and the Queen Mary
exactly
I also seem to remember that there was an old fleet order still in effect that had the British ships carrying more munitions than they normally would
The Stoned Videogame Nerd actually the British scored more hits at Jutland impliying at least a parity if not superiority of range-finding equipment, the problem was the shells were crap some broke up on impact fuses didn't work etc. German crews found that they could reassemble shells that had broken up on the deck armour. with better quality control for shells the RN could have actually had another trafalgar
How ironic for a ship known as the "Indefatigable" to be sunk by virtue of its own "indefatigability".
Yes and no. While safety procedures contributed to the disasters for the British battlecruisers at Jutland, it is also true that the British ships sacrificed more armor for greater speed and firepower than their German counterparts did. Just a difference of design philosophy.
Brilliant episode guys, keep up the good work.
Regards,
A very satisfied patreon backer.
5:35 Well, looks like the Invincible... *puts on sunglasses* wasn't invincible.
You would make a great Horatio on CSI
Really good animations to visual the battle of Jutland. Keep up the great work!
Everything I have seen so far about the loss of the British battlecruisers is that the gun crews did not follow proper procedures in handling the powder. Flash doors were propped open and bags of cordite were stacked in the turret in order to maintain the high rate of fire that the Royal Navy practised. All it took was a single turret hit to detonate the stored cordite, and the resulting flash would spread down to the magazine, destroying the ship. The same thing almost happened to HMS Lion, Beatty's flagship, when one of the turrets was hit, Fast action by Royal Marine Major Francis Harvey, the turret commander, who ordered the magazine to be flooded, most likely saved the ship. I very much doubt that all three battlecruisers took an unlucky direct hit to the magazine, as those are located deep within a ship (below the waterline) and I believe the range was too close for plunging fire from the German ships (which is was many historians believe happened to HMS Hood in her fight against Bismarck, plunging fire through her thin deck armour).
The doors between the turret and powder hoist and powder hoist and powder handling room were supposed to work like an airlock, with having both doors open at the same time impossible, so a flash couldn't pass down the hoist into the magazine. They had disabled the interlock and had all the doors open all the time for faster firing, and it's likely that all three ships were destroyed by hits to turrets that the ships should have survived.
Some interesting reading. After action reports by the British concerning the battlecruisers.
www.dreadnoughtproject.org/tfs/index.php/A_Direct_Train_of_Cordite
I've read the same. And that in fact the flash problem had been experienced by the Germans at the Battle of Heligoland in 1914, which they had learned from.
I've been looking forward to Jutland, you guys did not disappoint, fantastic animations.
The battle cruisers tend to have as much artillery as the dreadnought, but less armor. The idea was to use the battle cruisers in the wings to engage the lighter armored ships, such as light cruisers and destroyers (even heavy cruisers) and destroy them with they heavy weapons.
However, battle cruisers were often used as the starting engaging ship provided they got higher speed than the others. Fatal mistake that causes heavy losses in that type of ship, because they couldn't withstand a dreadnought. Seems that the Brits didn't learn that mistake because they made the same mistake in 1940, sending the HMS Hood against the Bismark.
Great Graphics!
there were no dreadnoughts present at the first clash, as far as i know. only battle cruisers were fielded on both sides. so the armour difference between these to ship classes was not the cause of the demise of the british cruisers.
i read, that the reason the british lost so many ships was, that the crew formed long lines of sailors passing the ammunition charges from the magazin to the gun towers to increase the rate of fire. thing is, that if you dont have bulkheads between your corridors a single explosion along the way can lead to a magazin detonation (what is infact what happened to these cruisers, hence why they sank so fast).
sry if my sentences are a bit stiff, i m german.
Yes the British sailors were not conducting proper safety measures for faster reload speed.
However there was armro and gun range difference. The Germans battlecruiser philosophy was smaller gun for speed. British was less armor for speed.
This meant the British was at a disadvantage to begin with by closing in and not using its range advantage.
in a slugfest, the heavier armor of the Germans easily proved decisive.
As evidence only 1 German battlecruiser sank.
British battlecruisers has always been meant to do kind of a hit and run tactic not a slugfest. Of course improper handling of rounds and magazine turned a disadvantageous mistake to a fatal mistake.
A German officer characterized their "Large Cruisers" as Cruiser-Battleships, with the British ones being Battleship-Cruisers, meaning that the German ships were closer to the Battleship side and the RN ones to the cruiser end of the spectrum.
I fully agree, I would even go as far as to call them the first fast-battleships since they were as well-armored as the contemporary RN battleships.
But they have less protection.
On the other hand, you're totally right when you said that the asignation between different classes was a mess. When does start a battle cruiser and finish a heavy cruiser? The French Dunkerque class in 1932 had that same problem, i.e.
Álvaro Alonso Macías Well, the heavy cruiser was well defined from the start since it was an artificial creation by treaty, the battlecruiser was a name invented by a newspaper with them still being classified as armored cruisers, so, who knows?
Great work from The Great War team. Thanks for posting!
Hi Indy an team love your work as usual. Hear is a really cool video on Jutland Narrated by the Grandson of Jellicoe eua-cam.com/video/U_UryFjKUsM/v-deo.html one minor issues regarding the perpetuation of the narrative regarding the RN battlecruisers recent exploration of the wrecks disproved the inadequate armour theory regarding the RN battlecruisers forensic examination of the Wrecks themselves proved that not a single shell penetrated the deck or magazines and the explosions were caused by flash fires which were caused by the removal of flash doors and the deliberate storage of cordite in un-armoured places near the turrets this occured under Beatty's command and was against existing Admiralty guidelines regarding Cordite storage of the time. This was pointed out in an Admiralty Report that was later suppressed when Beatty became commander of the Grand Fleet and a second report was written blaming the lack of armour the original report still exists in Admiralty Achieves and still has the the handwritten rejection of the report still written on the front page in green ink an the something wrong with our ships quote is only a partial quote as the rest of the quote is "and our something wrong with our systems". However like the original report that part of the quote is often forgotten about as the RN was unwilling to publish any criticism of systems and officers and believed it more expedient to blame design flaws due to the ongoing War and with the promotion of Beatty to First Sea Lord in 1919 and the later promotion of Beatty's Jutland Flag-captain Ernie Chatfield to the same position in the 1930s this narrative carried on for another generation. The Falsehood of the RN battlecruisers not being able to take a hit is exemplified by comparing HMS Tiger with HMS Queen Mary as they were almost Identical ships with the same armour layout as on HMS Tiger recent changes in command staff had led to the correct implementation of the existing Admiralty rules regarding cordite storage and was able to survive 18 separate large calibre hits and an additional 4 secondary armament hits mainly from the German Battlecruiser Motlke with the loss of only of 24 its crew killed and 46 wounded sorry for how long winded this is but I actually once did a lecture on the subject for BRNC Dartmouth having which was attended by the then Admiral in charge of RN in Northern Ireland as at that point they were still using HMS Caroline (only surviving ship from the battle as a HQ)
Useful video. It does mention the charges being left outside of their safe handling areas. I believe there is another show that got into that but it has been several years since I saw it. Don't think it was this video but still good to see it mentioning the matter.
Jon South. I saw that documentary as well. It painted a whole new picture as to what really happened at Jutland.
Love what you guy's are doing keep it up. Great graphics!!!!
+Jan van hove Thanks!
So the Indefatigable was defatigated...
and the Invincible was mortified
Great video! Thanks Indy and team.
Invincible indeed
That photo of the giant holes in the armor at around the 6:25 mark is really impressive and terrifying too. It must have been absolute hell being on one of those ships with gigantic shells coming in left and right.
Holy animations Batman!
Loving the new animation keep up the amazing work
Yeah, Jutland! Also, earliness.