Quotes from Richard Hough

Lieutenant Commander William Sowden Sims brought about a complete revolution in United States naval gunnery, and from the outset was a powerful advocate of the all-big-gun battleship, with its advantage of uniform shell splash for long-range salvo spotting.

the Dreadnought's predecessors of the King Edward VII class with a standard displacement of 16,350 tons could steam at 18.5 knots with 18,000 h.p. from their reciprocating engines; Dreadnought, of 17,900 tons, steamed 21.6 knots on her trials from 23,000 h.p.

Britannia was prepared to derate the whole of her battle fleet and start afresh with new superbattleships but also that she had the wealth and means to do so while her rivals were still recovering from the shock of Dreadnought's appearance.

a considerable portion of the appalling loss of British life was due to the destruction of the old armoured cruisers which had no business at Jutland

Sims revolutionized American gunnery in the early years of the century, was Mahan's leading contestant in the Dreadnought controversy, and commanded the United States Naval Forces in European waters in the First World War. Sims's reasoned, sagacious, and totally crushing attack on the Mahan school decided American battleship construction policy in the vital years leading to 1912. Sims made America a major maritime power.

at the commencement of the battle-cruiser action the German Von der Tann had fought an unimpeded ship-to-ship duel with the British Indefatigable. In fourteen minutes' firing with her eleven-inch guns the Von der Tann had sunk the Indefatigable without receiving a single hit from the Indefatigable's twelve-inch.

At the end of 1912, then, the United States Navy had in commission six First Generation Dreadnoughts. In all of them, the wing turret was eschewed in favour of centre-line disposition; the turbine had arrived; armour plate and internal subdivision were equal to all but the German Dreadnoughts; the average speed was rather below those of its rivals, the gunpower rather above; in size, the latest pair exceeded that of any other capital ship in the world except the latest British battle cruiser.

Armoured cruiser operations with a fleet of Dreadnoughts (though Jellicoe misguidedly thought otherwise and lost three at Jutland) were now ruled out owing to their near equality in speed. The battle cruisers could have filled these fleet duties if they had not possessed an armament that was bound to tempt a commander in chief to place them in line for the sake of their big guns, risking a hit on their vulnerable vital areas.

as the money and shipbuilding facilities were limited in Britain as well as in Germany, each battle cruiser represented the loss of a battleship. Indeed, they were soon costing more and absorbing more labour and materials than their contemporary Dreadnoughts.

Britain's second batch of three battle cruisers (still called armoured cruisers) was laid down from February, 1909, to June, 1910. They were as disappointing and conservative as the Colossus and Orion classes of battleship, and can be regarded as the worst ships built for the Royal Navy during the Fisher era.

Under the pressure of opinion of this weight, applied without let-up during the crucial years of the Fisher-Tirpitz battleship race, it is understandable that arithmetic won the day in Britain, and sight was sometimes lost of the less exciting factors that contributed vitally to a battle fleet's efficiency and fighting power.

We are not concerned with the morality of the Dreadnought. Her purpose was always ugly and wicked, and she was, like any weapon of violence, a symptom of man's baser characteristics.

Weakly protected battle cruisers should never have indulged in a sustained gunnery duel, especially when there were four vastly more powerful fast battleships available in the same scouting force. Armoured cruisers should never have been there at all. Destroyers obscured the enemy.

The British suffered worse casualties than in any previous naval battle, and more than twice as many as the Germans. But the material losses were not so heavy as at first appeared. Because of the very rapid development of the Dreadnought-type ship, the Invincible and Indefatigable were already outdated. The Queen Mary was a more modern battle cruiser, but she was much less valuable to the British than was the brand-new Lützow to the Germans.

The Dreadnought battleship itself was one victor. By its survival (not one was lost) it had appeared to justify both its mighty artillery and the diabolical ingenuity that had been expended on its defences. The other victor was the Dreadnought's first enemy, the torpedo, which governed commanders' judgments, by its threat or its reality caused squadron engagements to be broken off, and whole fleets to flinch away in fear.

The torpedo won Jutland. It nearly won the war for the Germans. But in the end it defeated them by drawing in the United States on the Allied side.

Behind every calculation, every decision, every signal, every turn of the helm, was the deeply held conviction that the disaster of defeat must always be greater than the rewards of victory. The belief that governed all the tactical moves at this one confused melee was that the individual Dreadnought, the squadron, the fleet must be preserved, even at the cost of victory over the foe.

If Jellicoe had suffered overwhelming defeat, nothing could have saved the Allies. As Churchill confirmed, he was "the one man who could have lost the war in an afternoon.

Thus in the early summer of 1916, caution was not going to be thrown to the winds. Inferior forces from both sides were to be "lured" into "traps." The big gun might be fired, if it survived the torpedoes, but only when the odds were overwhelming.

The British Admiralty knew that something was afoot on the morning of May 30th before Hipper and Scheer sailed, for the Germans were as free as ever with their wireless. Beatty and Jellicoe were therefore warned in the afternoon of likely activity.

When dawn broke over the North Sea on May 31st, fifty-eight Dreadnought battleships and battle cruisers were steaming north or east toward the greatest naval collision of arms between surface ships of modern times. Thirty-seven were British, twenty-one were German.

Don't worry what people think now. Don't ever work for popularity. Above all, don't care what the newspapers say. What is important is that your decisions should be clear and stand up to history." Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine

Ever since the Renaissance, the Italian engineering mind has always had a special capacity for viewing a project with a fresh and practical artistry. The Italian talent for stripping down to bare essentials the elements of compromise, which is the heart of all creative design, has never been surpassed; and it was desperately needed to break clear from the archaic form of warship architecture that had lingered on for a quarter of a century.