@ Pierre and Paul - well, lots of pictures guys. Controversy aside, maybe Beatty will start firing sooner? 

@ Zippee - Scheer at the Portsmouth game - well, no pressure there mate! 

@ Fenton - thanks for starting a Jutland topic. I wondered when it was going to happen. 

Quote from: Zippee on 22 May 2016, 11:34:52 AM
Indeed and I get the thrill of being Scheer for the day

Best of luck

Quote from: paulr on 22 May 2016, 07:59:02 PM
Best of luck

Sounds like scheer hell

The BBC Radio proggie is available here:

Jutland: The Battle that Won the War

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07bt7n7

Auntie Beeb's blurb says:

"Lord West explains why Jutland was the most important battle of the First World War on land or sea, a dramatic strategic victory and an inflection point which directly paved the way for allied victory.

He argues that the major British contribution to winning the war came at sea, and that it was the ancient British tactic of blockading and starving out a continental foe which eventually won the day, and shows how central the naval war, and the Battle of Jutland in particular, was to bringing America into the First World War on the allied side.

Lord West visits the German naval base in Wilhelmshaven, former home of the German Imperial navy and the place from which German naval commanders looked out on a North Sea which they could not safely navigate and from which they could not escape. He travels on a boat close to the site of the battle itself to imagine the scene when the sea was filled with giant 'castles of steel', firing huge shells and belching out coal smoke. And after meeting British and German historians, he travels to a new memorial in Jutland to weigh the human cost that day."

Dan Snow is "doing" Jutland next Sunday on TV.  (Sun 29 May 2016 21:00)

Beeb's blurb for that is:

"The Navy's Bloodiest Day on BBC Two will bring the 12 hour naval battle at Jutland to life. On May 31 1916, the Royal Navy precipitated an apocalyptic head-to-head battle with the German Imperial fleet. 151 British warships, many the most modern in Britain's Grand Fleet, confronted 99 German ships. This was supposed to be a walkover - Britain's second Trafalgar. But it didn't work out that way. Instead, the Battle of Jutland was the bloodiest day in the history of the Royal Navy. During 12 chaotic hours, 14 British warships sank to the bottom of the North Sea with the loss of more than 6,000 Allied lives. For a century it's been considered one of the greatest disasters of WWI.

Presented by Dan Snow, engineer Shini Somara and naval historian Nick Hewitt, The Navy's Bloodiest Day will go to the heart of the 12-hour battle at Jutland. With brand-new scientific experiments, they will probe the reasons why so many men died. Through the powerful words of eyewitnesses, read by current Royal Navy personnel; through emotional meetings with relatives of those who died; and on board the only surviving Dreadnought from the era, they come to understand what it was like to fight that day. And as the Royal Navy prepares to commemorate the centenary, they join the first official survey of the battlefield, searching to pinpoint the wrecks of the five giant British warships in which the vast majority of the Allied dead now lie entombed.

The programme also features brand new documentary evidence that helps a reassessment of the significance of the battle. Was Jutland a disaster, or in fact the forgotten battle where the First World War was won, and lost? The programme provides amazing visceral and visual detail helping to uncover what went wrong and why the battle unfolded the way it did."

I'll keep an eye out for those programmes on nz tv (in between all the "reality" tv shows I don't watch)....but don't know if they'll be on here or not.

AAR with what went wrong with whose ships and pics after the game next Saturday.

Could you  watch it on Channel 4's 'Catch up' facility on 'tinternet', Peter ?

It seems to be listed this morning, with 28 days to watch.

Cheers - Phil

Quote from: Techno on 23 May 2016, 05:31:28 AM
Could you  watch it on Channel 4's 'Catch up' facility on 'tinternet', Peter ?

It seems to be listed this morning, with 28 days to watch.

Cheers - Phil

Nope Techno I can find the programme but not get it to run - probably have to be in the UK for it to work. Can't find any mention of Jutland programmes coming up on any of the networks here 

its not on "vutube" either, but did find and watch a couple of older C4 documentaries (from 2003) where they dive several the wrecks from Jutland - conclusion is that in order to fire rapidly the RN ships stacked unshielded cordite in handling rooms and also carried 50% more RPG and cordite than magazines were designed for so this lead to the problems. The lack of flash protection is hardly a revolutionary conclusion, but footage from wrecks certainly seems to support that as being the cause.

Seen Dan Snow in one episode of Dig WW2 - Amazingly they got a Browning .303 from a crashed fighter to fire again after being buried in a Irish bog for 60+ years. 

     

Quote from: Ithoriel on 22 May 2016, 11:23:49 PM

For a century it's been considered one of the greatest disasters of WWI.

Really? And here was I thinking it had merely been damned as one of the greatest missed opportunities. 

Quote from: pierre the shy on 23 May 2016, 11:25:56 AM

its not on "vutube" either, but did find and watch a couple of older C4 documentaries (from 2003) where they dive several the wrecks from Jutland - conclusion is that in order to fire rapidly the RN ships stacked unshielded cordite in handling rooms and also carried 50% more RPG and cordite than magazines were designed for so this lead to the problems. The lack of flash protection is hardly a revolutionary conclusion, but footage from wrecks certainly seems to support that as being the cause.

That's the one I saw.

Quote from: Zippee on 23 May 2016, 12:20:48 PM
Really? And here was I thinking it had merely been damned as one of the greatest missed opportunities. 

Only because the dastardly Hun cut and run before we could give him the trouncing he so richly deserved!

The Brits lost more ships and two to three times as many men as the Germans - tactically that's a loss and was certainly seen as a disaster in the immediate aftermath - dockyardies booed some of the returning ships.

The fact that the Brits could afford the losses more easily than the Germans, that the blockade remained in force and that "The prisoner has assaulted his jailer, but he is still in jail" are facets that several of my acquaintances over the years seem blissfully unaware of.

Let's face it, these programmes are not aimed at naval history buffs, they are the TV equivalent of coffee table books.

Half the fun of these things is realising that the picture on page 48 purportedly of a Tiger I is actually of a PzIVH and a Syrian one to boot!

I didn't realise that HMS Tiger was actually a Syrian PzIVH and that my grandad (who wasn't even on the Turkish side of the family) was actually a Syrian tank driver.

Quote from: fsn on 23 May 2016, 12:34:23 PM
Only because the dastardly Hun cut and run before we could give him the trouncing he so richly deserved!

Err, the dastardly Hun, turned about and re-engaged the RN line - he escaped twice or the opportunity was missed, handed back to us and dropped again

Quote from: Ithoriel on 23 May 2016, 12:48:53 PM
The Brits lost more ships and two to three times as many men as the Germans - tactically that's a loss and was certainly seen as a disaster in the immediate aftermath - dockyardies booed some of the returning ships.

But that's an awful long way from being considered one of the greatest disasters of WW1 for a century!

Let's be honest it's not a war short on disasters, immense loss of life and staggering suffering for little gain. The losses at Jutland set against the greater cost pale into insignificance.

The returning ships were booed and Jellicoe held to account, for not meeting expectations, not for presiding over a disaster - the British don't boo survivors of military disasters, we have a very long tradition of venerating them in high esteem and celebrating their failure!

And if that wasn't the case we'd have court-martialled Beatty on his return (which we should have done in any case!)

Quote from: Zippee on 23 May 2016, 01:54:21 PM
Err, the dastardly Hun, turned about and re-engaged the RN line - he escaped twice or the opportunity was missed, handed back to us and dropped again

Just the sort of cowardly underhand thing the Hun would do.

Quote from: Last Hussar on 23 May 2016, 05:42:22 PM
Just the sort of cowardly underhand thing the Hun would do.

Not to mention planting 5th columnists on board British ships to leave flash doors open

Dashed blighters will be using them underwater boat things next, you just can't trust the cads to engage in a fair fight with 3:1 odds - it's hardly surprising they haven't got a decent cricket team, them and the French, can't trust 'em even if they say they're on our side, at least if we'd have fought the French we'd have had a proper victory to celebrate not some 'strategic goals were met' baloney. Bah! pass the port, Swithers.

Quote from: Zippee on 23 May 2016, 02:03:11 PM
And if that wasn't the case we'd have court-martialled Beatty on his return (which we should have done in any case!)

Many years ago now I was involved in a Jutland refight where I represented Jellicoe. It was played out using 1:3000 scale ships on a number of school dining hall tables where each table represented an area of the North Sea but where adjacent tables might by areas of sea miles apart and tables at diagonally opposite ends of the hall were actually adjacent sea areas.

So, although I could see that Beatty's battlecruisers were on the same table as the the German battlecruisers and both sides were taking a pounding I had no real idea where they were nor where the High Seas Fleet were in relation to them.

I sent a message to Beatty asking for his position and that of the enemy and got back the information that the enemy battlecruisers were so many thousand yards  to starboard of him and the high Seas Fleet about 20 miles astern of him.

I provoked much hilarity with a tart reply along the lines of "And where the f**k are you, Beatty, you bl***y twonk!? Better reports or court-martial expected." Perhaps if the real Jellicoe had been as testy the result of the battle might have been significantly different.

Quote from: Ithoriel on 23 May 2016, 06:13:32 PM
Many years ago now I was involved in a Jutland refight where I represented Jellicoe. It was played out using 1:3000 scale ships on a number of school dining hall tables where each table represented an area of the North Sea but where adjacent tables might by areas of sea miles apart and tables at diagonally opposite ends of the hall were actually adjacent sea areas.

So, although I could see that Beatty's battlecruisers were on the same table as the the German battlecruisers and both sides were taking a pounding I had no real idea where they were nor where the High Seas Fleet were in relation to them.

I sent a message to Beatty asking for his position and that of the enemy and got back the information that the enemy battlecruisers were so many thousand yards  to starboard of him and the high Seas Fleet about 20 miles astern of him.

I provoked much hilarity with a tart reply along the lines of "And where the f**k are you, Beatty, you bl***y twonk!? Better reports or court-martial expected." Perhaps if the real Jellicoe had been as testy the result of the battle might have been significantly different.

That is a brilliant way of handling one of the biggest challenges of refighting Jutland or any large multi-force naval game, consider it "borrowed"

Given the discrepancies in both forces dead reckoning Beatty still would be out by about 12 miles, according to the Official Narrative.

The really frustrating thing was the number of cruisers that were able to see both the Battle Cruisers and the Grand Fleet and didn't report

We had a WWI campaign in the 80s, where the opposing fleets met each other and the resulting action was played out across the floor of a large hall.
Firing was by estimated ranges. The Germans couldn't understand how the British kept getting straddles and hit whereas their range guesses were a long way out and we're taking ages to adjust.

They didn't spot, until about an hour in, that one of our players was a chippy (carpenter), and we were playing across a parquet floor...

Using Fletcher Pratt's rules from Don Featherstone's "Naval Wargames" by any chance Will?

My first naval games were played with those rules, 1:600th scale (mainly Airfix) ships and our back garden.