I got to thinking a few months ago that I have never read much about the naval warfare in WW1. So randomly I found “Naval Battles of the First World War”. Not sure it’s the best book on the subject but it was interesting reading. It illustrated that by 1910 there had been great progress overall in fighting ship design and outfitting. Gun torrents with multiple, high velocity, long range guns were universally in use along with streamlined hulls, and heavy armor. Propulsion was still a bit crude with most of them coal fueled to produce steam drive and they were constantly having to seek out ports were they could replenish their coal bins or find merchant ships they could raid and steal their coal. But even with seemingly modern ships with modern weapons, they were still for the most part relying on 19 century communications and visual sighting. They generally had wireless telegraph capability but it was short range, relied on multiple repeating stations, and being mast mounted was also usually about the first casualty of a naval fight. So usually within minutes of battle starting they were back to flag communication.
Do to the lack intelligence and tracking capability the German and British units generally had no idea where each other was exceptional for reports of port calls and sailings (Not to unchanged even at the start of WWII). So they spent most of their time cruising around the oceans, hoping to stumble into the opposing battle group by chance, usually missing each other by a few miles or few hours as navigation plottings years later would show. Often they didn’t even know if the enemy battle group they were seeking was even in the same ocean they were in.
When they would stumble on a few ships visually they had no idea who they were - friend or foe. The few naval aircraft they had were usually on ships too slow to keep pace with the group and were usually useless in all but the best weather. So one side would usually telegraph or flag an inquiry, “who are you”, upon which point if it was an enemy ship they would promptly answer with a fusillade of every gun they had. After a few exchanges there
would be so much smoke from the guns hanging over the ships and the ocean that they would often just be firing blindly hoping to hit something. And of course that meant that signal flagging within the battle group became difficult to impossible so no one in the group knew what the plan was and basically just fought their own battle.
But anyway it was an interesting, if confusing read, illustrating a kind of transition period in naval warfare. For the most part the last, great gun ship to gun ship battles were in WWI.
A few other notes in the book. The guns by then had long range with some of the bigger guns able to reach out nearly (maybe more) than 20 miles. Guns of 11, 12, 14 and 15” were increasingly common. I believe there were even a few 16”. But although they had early fire control technology, they were still reliant on visual targeting. The Germans had superior fire control systems that typically allowed them to get on target quicker than the British ships, but ship for ship the British ships had more throw weight than the Germans and once they found the range they could do a lot of damage.
Somewhat of a carryover from the last century I guess, both had heavy hull armor but fairly light deck and turret top armor. That failed to recognize the greater incidence of plunging hits from long range firing. In general the Germans had slightly heavier deck and turret top armor but both had a weakness in this area. That was compounded by their open elevator shafts from the turrrets down to the powder and shells rooms deep in the hulls. A hit through a turret top often resulted in the shell or blast traveling down the open shaft into the powder rooms, blowing the ship apart. In particular the British were slow to do anything about this and lost a tremendous number of ships this way. The Germans leaped on this quickly and redesigned their elevator and hoist systems to include blast shutters that opened and closed for each hoist of shot and shell to a gun. The British were still in the process of this at the end of the war and continued to lose a lot of ships this way.
One thing I noticed, most ships sunk met a very violent end, often by these magazine explosions that just blew them apart, taking virtually all hands down too. It seemed to be very rare to ever pick up more than 15 to 20 survivors after a ship was sunk.
