WE Branch Fanatic
As I said the launch of the Dreadnaught made obsolete every
existing capital ship in every navy in the world. Its combination
of single type main-armament, armour and speed meant that
fleets based on pre-dreadnaught designs were going to lose
against dreadnaught designs. You may not think that it was
a revolution but every other navy in the world at the time did.
The positive point is that a century ago we had the balls to make
a peacetime change of such magnitude.
Lightningmate
The fleet action at Jutland in 1915 took place between two mainly
Dreadnaught based fleets - Beatty was complaining about
the loss of three battlecruisers to magazine explosion when the
battlecruiser squadrons ran head-on into and actively engaged
the lead battleships of the High Seas Fleet before the Grand Fleet
battleships became engaged. I agree with your quote about
people not remembering the lessons of history completely.
WE Branch Fanatic
No one presently knows why the Hood was lost - there are at
least two plausible theories - certainly putting BC's against BB's
is equal numbers is a bad plan. The whole design of gun armed
warships revolved around placing them into battle at a range
where their guns would penetrate the armour of their opposition
and their likely opposition's guns would not penetrate theirs.
Apprentice
Lots of factors squeezed together here, at Jutland, the loss of
the BC's was down to flash from turret penetrations igniting
ready use ammo with the fire proceeding down the ammo hoists
to the magazine below with catastrophic results. This didn't
happen at Jutland to the Germans because in 1914 at the
battle of Dogger Bank the German BC Sedlitz had and survived
a similar turret fire - which resulted in improved ammo handling
and flash guards throughout their fleet. The British learned the
lesson at Jutland with Lion another BC that suffered a turret
fire but survived due to a posthumous Marine VC. Our optics
and ammo were not as good but the thing that saved the
High Seas Fleet at Jutland was the fact that it ran way from
full scale action twice and an British intelligence failure failed
to pass the rendezvous point of the High Seas Fleet the next
day to the Grand Fleet at sea.
Anyway, on the subject of UAV's, time will tell...
-- Andrew