Taken from “Warships and Sea Battles of World War I” (Bernard
Fitzsimons, Ed. London: BPC Publishing Ltd. 1973. ISBN 0-517-130912).

Edward Wittenberg
ewitten507@aol.com

Correcting the failures

Some, but not all, of the failures on the British side were
recognized and attempts were made to correct them. The Tiger and the
other battle-cruisers were urged to improve their gunnery, which to
Jellicoe had always been suspect, and the Admiralty accelerated its
programme of installing director firing systems in all ships.

The battle orders were reworded so that Pelly’s mistake regarding
fire concentration could be avoided in the future and the signalling
system was improved by the installation on each ship of an auxiliary
wireless set and by further additions to the signal book which would
clarify the sort of instructions which Beatty had so desperately wished
to send when his flagship fell out of line.

The other innovation which Churchill and Fisher pressed for, the
transfer of the battle-cruisers to the Humber and the Grand Fleet
battleships to Rosyth, was abandoned after vigorous protests from both
Jellicoe and Beatty. For although this move would put both forces in a
better intercepting position, these two bases did not compare with Scapa
as an anchorage or a practice area, were navigationally unsuitable and
could easily be mined. In the field of tactics the British did not seek
for, or perhaps did not think of, any answers to the threat posed by
German mines and submarines during the action. Yet without such
answers and in view of the Grand Fleet’s super-sensitiveness to such
attacks, their only reply remained that of swinging away, disengaging,
temporarily at least, from the battle. Temporary disengagements,
however, could swiftly develop into more permanent ones if great care
were not taken.

Finally, the Dogger Bank action tended to confirm the opinion of
Fisher, Beatty and perhaps others that the battle-cruisers themselves
‘will finish the job’. This was a rather natural thing to say in view of
their performance here and earlier at the Falklands, but in both battles
the British warships had possessed a large numerical superiority and
the enemy had retreated with- out engaging in a ‘toe-to-toe’ boxing
match. In other words, although the Lion indeed took some heavy
punishment, the British battle-cruisers were not yet proven in full
battle, especially in their defence capabilities. In particular the
weaknesses of Beatty’s ships to plunging shells and to the possibility of
the being ignited by flashes in the turrets had not shown itself, as it
had done in the case of the Seydlitz, where the Germans took the
necessary corrective action.

The battle of the Dogger Bank had seen the British and German
battle-cruisers engage each other and the weaker force once again
evade the stronger. In that it revealed where command of the sea lay,
the action justified the eulogising of the British press. But it also
produced evidence of serious weaknesses on both sides. Whether this
would be enough to tilt the balance of power in the North Sea in the
future was another question.