Why read Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland?

Book cover of Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland: The Question of Fire Control

Book description

This new book reviews critically recent studies of fire control, and describes the essentials of naval gunnery in the dreadnought era.

With a foreword by Professor Andrew Lambert, it shows how, in 1913, the Admiralty rejected Arthur Pollen's Argo system for the Dreyer fire control tables. Many naval historians now…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Matthew S. Seligmann

Author

A lot of ink has been spilt on why the Royal Navy was unable to overpower the German fleet at the battle of Jutland. Some focus on flaws in equipment and ship design, others on flaws in leadership and tactics, others still on poor fighting methods. This book examines the subject in the round and shows, contrary to received wisdom, that in gunnery at least, the Royal Navy entered the battle with the instruments best suited to its needs. Such failures as there were – and there were many – were largely down to individual command decisions on the day.

From Matthew's list on Churchill’s First World War Navy.