glenn239 wrote:Having reached the conclusion night combat favored the German fleet,
Really? Who do you imagine reached such a conclusion prior to Jutland? The concensus across all navies at this time was that a night action was too risky as it was impossible to control the fleets, and friendly fire was too great a risk. Even the advantage the Germans had with their searchlights was unknown to both navies until the night action started.
glenn239 wrote:it was reasonable to assume Scheer would seek a night battle.
It was reasonable to assume Scheer would avoid a night action for the reasons above. Even then, the destroyer flotillas of the GF were left in a position to block any passage across the rear of the fleet just in case such an attempt was made.
glenn239 wrote:No, this was inefficient because it introduced two more points of failure that could have been avoided. First, no subordinate knows Jellicoe's mind and could guess wrong on how he would process information. Second, any new information would be weighed against the downside of waking Jellicoe up. If Jellicoe doesn't go to bed then this doesn't happen and all information is evaluated.
Jellicoe laid in his cot, the room was part of the bridge of Iron Duke, so Jellicoe was hardly removed from the bridge. However, you are ignoring that no signals were sent to Iron Duke anyhow, so it doesnt matter if you think subordinates would have been confused, though Madden was considered an excellent admiral, there was simply nothing to respond to in the first place!
glenn239 wrote:Jellicoe is responsible for the oversights in communication of his command, just like Moltke was responsible for failing to predict and take measures that his armies would not coordinate and communicate adequately. So yes, it was his responsibility.
Jellicoe laid out the need for captains to report all sightings in the GFBO, he could do no more than make the commanders aware of what he expected. He did not appoint admirals or even captains, so if idiots were appointed that is the fault of the Admiralty (or in Moltke's case, the Kaiser). You seem to be forgetting that at this time there were really no means of controlling forces over large distances that were secure.
glenn239 wrote:Secondly, Jellicoe's subordinates would assume that what they were seeing would be reported to Jellicoe by those aboard Iron Duke directly whenever they evaluated that the flagship could see or hear what they did. By taking a snooze Jellicoe threw another wrench into an already complicated situation. Jellicoe had the opportunity of a lifetime and he went to bed instead. The decision was so obviously on the face of it the wrong one, I really sort of wonder if Castles of Steel is wrong and he didn't retire.
At night the destroyers that made contact with the HSF were five miles or so distant from Iron Duke, so it was almost impossible Jellicoe would see what they were seeing, so the only way anyone on the bridge could report these sightings to Jellicoe would be if somebody bothered to report them to Iron Duke in the first place. I am perfectly happy with the idea Jellicoe retired to lay down (I do not believe it recorded if he slept or rested, the latter is more likely as there would likely be too much going on in his mind to relax too much), and such practices were common when lulls occurred in battles, such as overnight. For the decision to be the wrong one, you would need to show that Jellicoe expected a night action to occur.
glenn239 wrote:It's a really simple but ancient principle - the commanding officer is ultimately responsible for his command because he is the commanding officer. To argue Beatty is responsible for his lousy signalling arrangements is perfectly true. Well, so was Jellicoe for his.
Commanders are responsible for areas they have a direct input towards, like training, and for people immediately under their command where they are at hand to rectify errors. When an order has been given, with its intention clear, the commander cannot be responsible for people who fail to follow them, especially where they have not appointed such people themself. Jellicoe is responsible for distributing the GFBO and ordering commanders to read it, he is not responsible for them deciding not to do so. Beatty is responsible for his ships signalling errors because he was at hand when the errors were made, and insisted on keeping the person responsible as his signal officer on two occasions when the Admiralty wished to remove them. Beatty is also responsible for not insisting on proper gunnery practice (indeed almost trying to avoid it), but he is not responsible for his light cruiser commanders failing to give him sighting reports. He would be partly responsible for the mess at Dogger Bank as he was the officer flying pointless signals, especially where they identified another enemy ship, but he was not responsible for Moore deciding to not disobey orders and try to decide the battle, only Moore can be responsible for that decision.
glenn239 wrote:None of this changes the underlying principle, that both Beatty and Jellicoe were responsible for their command's signalling protocols, that these were defective, and that by going to bed Jellicoe introduced an avoidable complication into the situation at a time when the RN had a once-in-a-century opportunity, which hadn't been seen since Trafalgar.
As already noted, this would only apply if anyone had bothered to try and tell Iron duke what was going on. They didnt. Sleeping or awake made no difference, the reports just didnt happen.
glenn239 wrote:After the battle, a bunch of propaganda and spin about maintaining the blockade, but during the battle, the objective was to annihilate first Hipper, then when he showed up unexpectedly, Scheer. It's like Joe Fraser the day after Ali beats him arguing that in the ring he was looking to preserve his TV endorsements rather than knock out his opponent.
Actually, Jellicoe laid down his intentions in a letter to the Admiralty the moment he took command, he also laid out his battle tactics for them to see. Nobody found fault with the latter until after Jutland, when it was mostly Beatty and Churchill who did so, with some Monty Python-esque contributions from Sturdee, and Jellicoe had always maintained that the foremost duty was to preserve the superiority of the GF in order to maintain the blockade, and that the GF existed primarily to enforce the blockade, with all other considerations secondary.
After Jutland we see mostly the efforts of Beatty to rewrite events to make his role as important and heroic as he liked to tell people, avoiding all mention of having his ass handed to him by a force half the size of his own! Beatty was also part of the 'Beresford' school in the latters dispute with Fisher, whilst Jellicoe was closely associated with all the Fisher reforms, which really should tell you a lot about the man, a naval Luddite. If Beatty really had done so well, why did he try to get Harper to rewrite events, and why did he refuse to give a written order for that to happen?