With the signing of the peace treaty on 28 June 1919, along with the rapid running down of the fleet on the grounds of economy and in the light of experience so painfully learnt during the war, a new direction was required for the principles on which the next generation of warships should be built, and, indeed, how the war at sea should be fought in future.
Not only were the ships to be affected by these changes, but the war had highlighted serious deficiencies in all areas of training, particularly in the area of communications between individual ships, squadrons and the Admiralty.
The lack of effective reporting of intelligence from scouting squadrons to their Commander-in-Chief during fleet operations in the North Sea, where particularly at Jutland Admiral Jellicoe had been starved of the vital knowledge by his subordinate commanders regarding the position of the German ships, robbed Jellicoe of the opportunity to annihilate the High Seas Fleet which, had there been an extra hour of daylight and better visibility, he undoubtedly would have accomplished.
The First Sea Lord Earl Beatty and others at the Admiralty considered that, to maintain the pre-eminent position of the Royal Navy, more and bigger battleships needed to be built.
In this, he was opposed by more forward-thinking officers like Sir Percy Scott, who argued for smaller capital ships limited in displacement to 10,000 tons, both on the terms of cost and of the rapid development of air power, whose destructive potential had been ably demonstrated during the war, along with the development of the aircraft carrier.
Also, the rise of the U-boat and the torpedo had been so successfully employed by the Germans that they almost brought Britain to edge the of defeat and augured for the changes in sea warfare that were to come.
In the end, Beatty’s view prevailed and after the war two large battleships, HMS Rodney and HMS Nelson, both of 35,000 tons’ displacement and each mounting nine 16in guns, were laid down, together with the battle-cruiser HMS Hood. At 41,200 tons and carrying eight 15in guns, this was the largest ship in the Royal Navy and it perpetuated the same errors of poor armour protection that had caused the British to lose three battle-cruisers at Jutland. Ultimately, it was to be the cause of the loss of the Hood herself in 1941.
These were followed by what were to be the last generation of battleships, with the King George V class built under the terms of the Washington Treaty that attempted by agreement to limit the size of all nations’ battleships to 35,000 tons, and postponed their building for five years.
Five of this class, HMS King George V, HMS Prince of Wales, HMS Duke of York, HMS Anson and HMS Howe, were laid down in 1937, with all taking an active part in the Second World War. The Prince of Wales, after having been damaged in the action in the North Atlantic against the German battleship SMS Bismarck when the Hood was sunk, was herself sunk along with the battle-cruiser HMS Repulse by Japanese aircraft off the Malayan coast on 10 December 1941, demonstrating the vulnerability of battleships to air attack.
The final expression of the British battleship was HMS Vanguard of 44,500 tons, laid down in 1941, but not completed until April 1946, at a cost of £9,000,000. She was built too late to take part in the war and was already outmoded by the startling developments in air power, as well as being out of step with post-war naval development. She was soon reduced to the reserve fleet, before going to the breakers in 1960.
On the positive side, the material shortcomings highlighted by the First World War were being addressed, with more attention being given to effective communication and methods of the rapid reporting of information, thanks to better training and improved wireless communications.
The standard of gunnery was also greatly improved with the adoption of the concentration of fire technique, where salvoes from a group of ships were directed jointly onto an individual target, with the fall of shot being adjusted from the analysis of the individual ship’s ranging information. This group firing was most effective and hits could be registered after three salvoes, in marked contrast to poor shooting at Jutland, where at one stage the battle-cruisers took almost an hour to secure a hit on their opposite numbers.
Later developments in the1940s brought in the era of radar-aimed and-laid guns, where enemy ships could be ranged and fired on from great range with pinpoint accuracy in the most appalling weather conditions or the depths of night, as was the Scharnhorst when she was engaged and sunk by the Duke of York in December 1943 – this being the last surface action between capital ships.
The quality of British projectiles had also been a cause for great concern, when it was revealed that many of their heavy armour-piercing shells failed to penetrate the German armour, but broke up on impact, causing only superficial damage.
This shortcoming was addressed during the inter-war period, with the quality of British gunnery and the penetrating power of shells being greatly improved, with improvements in metallurgy, more effective fuses and better training. The protection of magazines was also improved, with the installation of more effective double closing interlocking anti-flash doors to the shell rooms and hoists and the storage of ready-use ammunition in closed boxes to prevent the flash in the case of a hit on a turret spreading to the magazines, as at Jutland. Although great improvements were made, the problems of protecting magazines were never completely solved.
Of the main characters involved in the drama of the war at sea in the Great War, four men (two British and two Germans) had held the fate of their respective nations in their hands.
The British Commander-in-Chief from 1914 to 1916, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe (1859–1935), who many held responsible for the failure to destroy the High Seas Fleet at Jutland, was relieved of command of the Grand Fleet in November 1916 to become First Sea Lord, where, during his term of office, the German U-boat campaign almost brought Britain to the edge of starvation. Jellicoe was once again blamed for his lack of commitment to overcoming the menace, and he was dismissed by the First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Eric Geddes in December 1917. He was created Viscount Jellicoe of Scapa in January 1918 and promoted to Admiral of the Fleet in mid-1918.
Having been replaced by the more popular Sir David Beatty, this promotion bore all the aspects of a bowler hatting, as he bore the odium of losing tactically at Jutland, although he importantly retained the command of the seas in a strategic sense. It is sad to relate that neither the Admiralty nor his successor as Commander of the Grand Fleet, Sir David Beatty, saw fit to invite him to attend the surrender of the High Seas Fleet in November 1918.
Jellicoe became Governor General of New Zealand from 1920 until 1925. On his return to England, he was created the Earl Jellicoe of Scapa in June 1925 and wrote his critical account of the Battle of Jutland and the operations of the Grand Fleet in the Great War. After living in quiet retirement, he died from pneumonia on 20 November 1935 at the age of 75.
Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty (1871–1936) succeeded Admiral Jellicoe as Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet in November 1916, being promoted to full Admiral in January 1919, and even more rapidly to Admiral of the Fleet in May 1919. He was a participant in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, leaving the Navy in 1927, retiring to a quiet life in Leicestershire, where he died on 11 March 1936 at the age of 65. He was buried, as was Jellicoe, in Westminster Abbey.
On the German side, Admiral Reinhard Scheer (1863–1928) became commander of the High Seas Fleet in January 1914 and in August 1916 was promoted to Chief of Naval Staff. Retiring from the navy after the war, he wrote his memoirs in 1919. In 1920 an intruder broke into his home and murdered his wife and maid and injured his daughter. After this incident he retired from public life, but accepted an invitation from Earl Jellicoe to visit him in England, but died before he could make the trip on 26 November 1928 at the age of 65. He was buried at Weimar outside of Berlin.
The great commander of the German battle-cruisers Admiral Franz von Hipper (1863–1932), who took over command of the High Seas Fleet from Admiral Scheer in August 1916, retired from the Navy in December 1918 and did not involve himself in politics or write his memoirs. Instead, he retired completely from public life and lived quietly in Altona, a suburb of Hamburg, until his death at the age of 68 in May 1932. He was buried at his home village of Othmarschen in Bavaria.
Of the kings and emperors who had played such an influential part in world affairs before the outbreak of the war, Franz Joseph of Austria had died in 1916 of natural causes, the German leader Kaiser William II fled into exile in the Netherlands following the revolution in November 1918, and the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed by Bolshevik revolutionaries at Yekaterinburg in July 1918.
In the east, the Ottoman Empire had crumbled away, whilst throughout Europe and the Balkans other dynasties had fallen or were transformed into new democratic states. Only Great Britain’s King George V remained secure in his throne, from where he could speculate on the massive changes of fortune he had witnessed in the fate of nations.
Following the end of the war, the Grand Fleet was rapidly run down on the grounds of economy and ceased to exist as a unit in April 1919. The remaining ships were assigned to the new Home Fleet that, as the name suggests, took over its duties in home waters, while other ships formed the Atlantic and Mediterranean fleets.
In the ultimate analysis, the great fleets of battleships built by Great Britain and Germany at such enormous cost did little to directly affect the outcome of the war, which by its nature was chiefly determined on the fields of Flanders, the Balkans, Russia and the Middle East.
However, by its very presence, the Grand Fleet nullified the German High Seas Fleet and allowed Great Britain and her Allies to command the seas and continue the trade that was essential to the winning of the war, despite the determined efforts of German undersea craft to bring Britain and her Allies to their knees.
Once again the old maxim applied: ‘It is upon the Navy, under the good Providence of God, that the safety, honour and welfare of this realm do chiefly depend.’