CWO Marc, I always like reading your posts.
When the British admiral exclaims “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today” after two of his battle-cruisers blew up with ‘lucky’ hits you know there is a ship design issue. But that was in regards to ‘battle cruisers’. The full up British dreadnoughts compared well to the Germans counter-parts. The was the sacrifice made in order to make ships go fast enough to chase the enemy down.
As for tactics…a bit tongue in cheek so forgive me but…perfecting a 180 to run away does no impress me. Yeah I know it’s actually a rather difficult feat and is by itself impressive but in the context of a military tactic that will win you battles on the sea that change the outcome of a war…it does seem to leave a bit to be desired for me at least.
Number wise yeah the British did have more but the idea was the high seas fleet was to bait a portion of the British fleet into a battle. Everything went according to plan and the Germans ran away only to sink their own fleet a year after the war was over. The Germans I believe even failed to dump mines over when running away.
So in Jutland the only thing the Germans had was ship design. On average a bit better than the Brits and in the case of battle cruisers the british had fatal design flaws. My scoring was not comparing directly to the British but just a general mark. The Germans had enough quantity to make a threat of a fleet action possible in WWI, in WWII fleet on fleet action was never really a possibility unless 3-4 german ships makes a ‘battle fleet’, in my books that is not even a squadron. In that context they get a 1 out of 1 for quantity in WW I even though the British had many more ships. On the other hand the Germans had pretty much zero experience with large fleet engagements whereas the British did…albiet for the last war with outdated technology and tactics.
Plunging artillery shells were new as were the range fro which they were now being fired from, from what I remember anyways!