100 books like Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland

It is very difficult to say something new about the Dardanelles campaign and even harder to say something new about Winston Churchill, but without resorting to exaggeration or conspiracy theories, this book manages to do both. It offers a forensic examination of the background to the failed attempt to force the straits and a comprehensive survey of Churchill’s subsequent attempts to ensure that the re-telling of that failure did not rebound to his discredit. There is no better book on this topic.

This book genuinely changes our understanding of British defence policy before the First World War. It is often assumed that the German challenge to British naval supremacy before 1914 was a mirage and that fears that Germany might launch an invasion of the British Isles were simple scaremongering. The reality was different. The Royal Navy may have been bigger and stronger than its German counterpart, but its task was harder and its leaders were not confident that they could prevent German soldiers from landing on British soil. Based on first-rate research, this book explains why.

This is a five-volume history focusing on the Anglo-German naval rivalry from its origins in 1904 to the ultimate demise of the Imperial German Fleet in 1919. This is history writing at its epic best.

Marder’s approach to history is even handed and avoids partisanship. His research is monumental is scale and he developed a network of relationships with many of the key figures in the story. The result is an incredibly well researched and informed history of the naval war, with great depth of insight, all written in an approachable style.

A true classic of naval literature that is a joy to read and is unlikely to ever be surpassed.

Underwater weapons of all types have had a major influence on naval warfare in the twentieth century. Despite this, studies of them to date have not been all they might be either in terms of quantity or quality. Richard Dunley rectifies this in respect of the mine with a major evaluation of its place in Royal Navy thinking and planning in the first decade and a half of the twentieth century. As a result, this is an important book and a major contribution to the literature.

This book makes fascinating reading as it examines the German Battlecruisers (the Germans actually referred to them as Panzerkreuzers—Armoured Cruisers) and they carried smaller calibre main guns than their British counterparts, sacrificing gun power for better protection with heavier armour. They took an enormous amount of punishment at Jutland, but only one was lost to battle damage, the others survived to fight again another day—and they did, though not in the North Sea, but against the Russians in the Baltic.

Anyone who has read anything at all about the Battle of Jutland will have realised that the British and German ‘Battlecruisers’ did most of the fighting, and suffered the heaviest losses. This book gives details of the German ships involved, their design, evolution, build and most interesting, the actual log accounts of the engagement make for even more fascinating study.

Gordon’s book delights and displeases in turn.

He shows how the baked in traditions of blind obedience to orders, together with the class-based culture and selection for command, hindered the actions of the Royal Navy during WW1. Not all of his statements are correct and sometimes his naval history is shaky but the tale is well told and it is an absorbing read.

The Battle of Jutland has fascinated many people down the years. Who won? Some say it was a ‘draw’, others that in terms of ships lost, the Germans ‘won’, but in truth, though the British lost more ships, they ‘won’ a strategic victory in that the High Seas Fleet never again challenged the Royal Navy on the High Seas. As Churchill said, Admiral Jellico was the one man who could have lost the war in an afternoon.

Ever since the ‘inconclusive’ Battle of Jutland there has been a controversy over how it was fought and the outcome. The British media expected a new Trafalgar, or a new Glorious First of June, with the German High Seas Fleet annihilated in a great clash of arms in which ship matched ship and slugged it out. When that didn’t happen, they turned on the Royal Navy and the Commander in Chief of the… show more.

My grandfather fought in the Battle of Jutland, as a young gunnery lieutenant; the hero of The Redeemed, Leo, would do likewise as a boy seaman. I needed insight into men’s experience and found it above all in this book (put together by two naval officers who’d themselves taken part.) It is composed of sixty personal accounts from men of all ranks and is edited to give a gripping chronology of what remains the largest naval battle in history.

This is the ‘Appreciation’ that Admirals Harper and Bacon responded to. It was never published or edited for publication at the time it was written by Captains A C and G B Dewar in 1920-21.

Both were firmly in the Beatty “charge the guns and slug it out ship to ship” faction and even Admirals Chatham and Keys, both Beatty supporters found it far, far too one-sided and likely to divide the RN into factions (Jutland still does). Though it was never published, copies did circulate and Churchill obviously had a copy since he quotes it in his own book “The World Crisis”. Eventually, in 1928, orders were given that all copies were to be collected and destroyed…some survived.

This book is remarkable in that it is the work of two historians who reproduce the original text with explanatory notes, annotations, and additional material. Reading it soon leads the reader… show more.

I usually get bored by very long books too full of dates, people you have never heard of, and endless details, and I am a historian! But I make an exception for this book.

Clark took me back vividly to a period in history that has been covered so often by rewriting the old storylines of WWI with flair and freshness. I came to better understand why World War I was not just a fluke, started by the black swan event of the assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne and his wife in a backwater of the empire on June 28th, 1914.

In spite of the title, if the European leaders were sleepwalkers, and in a narrow sense they were, Clark also provides plenty of evidence that the underlying tensions in the Austro-Hungarian empire were like huge dry piles of straw just waiting for a flame to ignite… show more.