Battle of Jutland - Controversy

Controversy

At the time, Jellicoe was criticised for his caution and for allowing Scheer to escape. Beatty, in particular, was convinced that Jellicoe had missed a tremendous opportunity to annihilate the High Seas Fleet and win what would amount to another Trafalgar. Jellicoe was promoted away from active command to become First Sea Lord, the professional head of the Royal Navy, while Beatty replaced him as commander of the Grand Fleet.

The controversy raged within the navy and in public for about a decade after the war. Criticism focused on Jellicoe's decision at 19:15. Scheer had ordered his cruisers and destroyers forward in a torpedo attack to cover the turning away of his battleships. Jellicoe chose to turn to the southeast, and so keep out of range of the torpedoes. If, instead, he had turned to the west, could his ships have dodged the torpedoes and destroyed the German fleet? Supporters of Jellicoe, including the historian Cyril Falls, pointed to the folly of risking defeat in battle when you already have command of the sea. Jellicoe himself, in a letter to the Admiralty months before the battle, had stated that he intended to turn his fleet away from any mass torpedo attack (that being the universally accepted proper tactical response to such attacks, practiced by all the major navies of the world), and that in the event of a fleet engagement in which the enemy turned away he would assume that the intention was to draw him over mines or submarines and that he would decline to be so drawn. The Admiralty approved this plan and expressed full confidence in Jellicoe at the time (October 1914).

The stakes were high, the pressure on Jellicoe immense, and his caution certainly understandable. His judgment might have been that even 90% odds in favour were not good enough to bet the British Empire. The former First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill said of the battle that Jellicoe "was the only man on either side who could have lost the war in an afternoon." Jellicoe was aware of the ammunition problem, as he had tried to improve it at an earlier time. He was probably also aware of the ammunition vulnerability and other qualitative differences. Since the battle was going badly for Britain, it sounds more like propaganda than logic to say that he should have been more aggressive.

The criticism of Jellicoe also fails to sufficiently credit Scheer, who was determined to preserve his fleet by avoiding the full British battle line, and who showed great skill in effecting his escape.