Jutland

We have just celebrated (sic) the 100 anniversary of the Battle of Jutland where the British Fleet engaged the German Fleet in the North Sea.
Traditionally the British navy had been the linch pin of Britain's defence against a foreign attack. It was before the advent of an air force other than spotter planes and the bulk of our wartime expenditure was spent on the fleet.
A bit like the Trident missile, the fleet was there to deter, to bottle up, in this case the German fleet in its base and nullify its potential. Huge sums of money had been spent by Britain in matching any warships being built by Germany, the tonnage well exceeded what the Germans could put to sea and this was deemed enough.

As a young lad I grew up on the stories of our invincibility on the high seas. The famous story of Jack Cornwall the young midshipman just a boy himself who stood by the turret of his navel gun in the hight of the battle, his gun crew, dead and dying around him he continued to engage the enemy for which he received a posthumous VC.  

We were proud of our navy, the famous Admirals, Jellicoe and Beatty the famous ships the Iron Duke,the Indefatigable, the Invincible names to conjure with as we read the official line  that we had driven the German back into his lair never to venture out again.
The names of the German Admirals Scheer and Hipper were caught again for us in the Second World War this time as the names of ships as with the Graf Spree, Scheer  and Hipper represented that much feared and highly respected class of ship the Pocket Battleship, high speed raiders sinking all before them in every ocean of the globe.
What we were not told in 1914 was the disaster of the British Command, specifically Beatty in wildly plunging into battle with his under gunned light cruisers and far worse not informing Jellicoe of the initial sighting and engagement. Like some boys own character, "tally ho", he was out for glory and it was to be "his" glory.
On a equal footing and with far less glory was the responsibility for poor design of these ships on which our future as an independent nation relied. Inadequate armour plating, poor design of the location of the magazine in relation to the gun turrets, and guns which lacked the accuracy and the shell penetration of the German ships.
One foot in Trafalgar and one struggling to come to terms with modern warfare.
Churchill the minister in charge of the admiralty and Fisher the irascible moderniser were continually fighting the navel establishment over the future direction of the navy.  Tradition and history played a disabling hand and as these huge ships, Indefatigable sunk, Queen Elizabeth sunk all within half an hour of the start of the engagement, in each case an explosion within the turret and the ship blew up as the magazine caught fire.
6000 men died in the battle of Jutland on the British side whilst 2500 died on the German ships.
History was to repeat itself in the Second World War when the massive battleship, HMS Hood was blown out of the water by the Bismarck, due to deficiencies in protective amour plating, the adversary again our old foe and again, by them employing better design and more powerful gunnery.
The old school tie and its absorption in its self image. The inability of young minds to shoehorn out the old duffer. The lack of our industry to develop new lightweight materials which were stronger than the traditional methods of protection meant, in the contest to limit the weight and increase speed and manoeuvrability, less protection was used and 1415 men died. The radar used to aim the guns was inadequate and the more modern radar which the ship carried, the Captain refused to use. The Bismarck was soon pumping shells into the Hood whilst the inadequate gunnery equipment meant that the salvo's from the Hood were landing in the water.
This is not a celebration of poor design and underfunding, still less an appraisal of the talents of modern warfare over old misguided belief but it does once again signal the soft underbelly of our nation in relying, then as now on the same people to guide and lead us.
We would do better to keep them in the officers mess whilst getting on and enlarging the gene pool from which any future leadership, in war or in politics, is drawn.