Lest we forget. World war one centenary.

[jerseydevil]

Its actually an overview of all types, battleships, carriers, cruisers, etc. Points out various strengths and weakness, and discusses how they actually preformed. I found it extremely interesting to have a knowledgeable insider's viewpoint.

That I need then.  Battlecruisers are almost an obsession with me for some reason, the whole concept and its application has fascinated me since I was a kid and saw the famous pic of HMS Invincible cut in half resting on the floor of the North Sea.  Jackie Fisher was a crazed genius IMO, brilliant to the point that some of his ideas were tragically dangerous. 

[jerseydevil]

Here's the picture, I've posted it here before.  There are 1,026 men entombed in that wreck.

[ColoSwiss]

Friedman's book discusses that. Only about a third of the way through the book, but some early comments by Friedman, as well as one of the reviews, indicate that changes in tactics led to changes in ammunition handling procedures designed to speed up long-range shell fire. Apparently it was unsafe storage rather than structural problems that led to the loss of three British battle cruisers, but I haven't finished the book yet.

Friedman has a lot of very interesting insights into a lot of complex matters I've never seen addressed elsewhere.

[jerseydevil]

Ammunition handling most likely was the main reason for those losses at Jutland.  The Royal Navy made a cult of rapid gunnery.  Many of those ships removed doors between the magazines and the turrets to ensure a fast flow of shells and propellant to the guns.  SMS Seydlitz suffered a catastrophic magazine/turret fire at Dogger Bank, and didn't explode only because of rapid flooding of her magazines.  Flashproof doors became standard on German ships soon after that, but not on British ships.  That HMS Lion wasn't destroyed at Jutland is a bit of a miracle honestly.  It was a close call as pictures of her "Q" turret burning imply.  At the same time though, Tirpitz said it simply, "The primary mission of a warship is to stay afloat".  The German battlecruisers at Jutland had the same thickness of their armored belts that the RN battleships did.  What nobody realized was the damage that a shell hitting the deck armor from long range could cause.  Horizontal protection was horrible, as was the total armor scheme of the Lion-class BC's.  Their armor couldn't stop a standard German 11in shell at any range!  Look at HMS Hood, what happened to her was something that had been discovered the hard way 30 years earlier........ 

[jerseydevil]

May 7, 1915 - The British liner RMS Lusitania is hit by a single torpedo fired by the German submarine U-20.  She sinks in only 18 minutes, killing 1,198 passengers and crew.  Arguments continue as to if the Lusitania was targeted for destruction, carrying munitions (she was), and many other aspects of the sinking.  The German commander stated in his report that he thought he was firing on an armed troop ship, as the Lusitania was listed as in prewar publications, and as her sister ship Mauritania was being used as.  Though the sinking of the Lustiania is often given as a reason for the US entering World War 1, in fact the United States would not declare war on Germany for almost another two years.

[kosmo]

My grandfather was a US GI shipped over towards the end of the war.  He spent about the last month of the war in combat and then was there for some months after the Armistice.  Ironically, his father was a German immigrant to the US and my grandfather still had many aunts, uncles and cousins in Germany.

The generations were long in my family.  My grandfather died at about 70 y.o. when I was 3 y.o. so I never really new him.  My great grandfather died at 84 y.o. (but before my father, his grandson was even born.)  It still blows my mind to think my great grandfather was born in 1845.