9 ms·

The Sinking of HMS ‘Victoria’ Led the Royal Navy Astray

94 points by Thevet 9y ago

arjie 9y ago
Interestingly, this lesson having been learned in war, it lay hibernating to be discovered in engineering decades later. While most modern safety advice recommends empowering line workers to report safety failures, this also extends to engineering quality. The quintessential example of devolving power down to individuals is Andon[0], the most recognisable feature of which is a little cord any line worker in the factory can pull to stop the entire line. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andon_(manufacturing) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andon_(manufacturing)
Animats 9y ago
Yeah, yeah, individual initiative. Nest read an analysis of the Charge of the Light Brigade and see how Cardigan's initiative (or stupidity) led the charge in the wrong direction, despite orders from Lucan. For a serious discussion of how much initiative is too much or too little, read MCDP 1, "Warfighting", the USMC manual on how to run a battle. Good military forces work hard at that balance.
- cmdkeen 9y ago
  Initiative is very different at sea, and was especially so before the era of effective radio communications. Nations trusted their admirals and captains to effectively be ambassadors as the effect they could have on foreign affairs during peacetime was enormous. From the USS Pueblo to the USS Vincennes the position naval captains are put is often significantly more isolated, complicated, and symbolically important than any other armed service.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    Speaking of trusting naval crews - the UK Tridents subs don't require any codes being sent to authorize launches, they have all the required information and we simply trust them not to abuse it.
    - _delirium 9y ago
      I think that's true for all countries that have submarine-launched nuclear weapons. One of the purposes of having nuclear missiles on submarines is for them to pose a credible threat of retaliation against a first strike, even if the first strike is successful enough to destroy land-based installations and the command chain. So the theory is that they need to be able to retaliate without a functioning chain of command.
      - arethuza 9y ago
        Of course getting detailed information on these things is difficult but I've seen more than one reference claiming that UK Tridents subs are unusual in this respect - Wikipedia claims that launch keys on US Tridents subs are kept in safes to which the crew do not have the combinations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Two-man_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Two-man... Apparently the reasoning is that the UK is so close to potential enemies that there would be no time for the PM or equivalent to give authorization - the so called "4 minute warning" being very optimistic. The US is much further away from the Soviets/Russia so there would be far more time to broadcast a launch order. Also the UK is notoriously cheap about these kinds of things!
        willvarfar 9y ago
        The US had a secret launch code - Permissive Action Link (PAL) - but that code was allegedly set to 00000000 and launch operators were told this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link The combination was changed in 1977.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      Plus the famous letters detailing what to do in the event of the UK's nuclear destruction.
    - osullivj 9y ago
      And it's said those Trident subs are running Windows XP.
- kitd 9y ago
  Cardigan's fault wasn't initiative, but ego. And the orders were anything but simple and clear.
  - Animats 9y ago
    Yes, and Lt. Nolan pointed in the wrong direction.
arethuza 9y ago
If I turn my head to the left and look out of my study window I can look over that exact bit of the Forth in that picture of the British Grand Fleet - the only thing that looks like a battleship there today being the island of Inchmickery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inchmickery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inchmickery
- cmdkeen 9y ago
  Though just the other side of the bridges, up at Rosyth, there are two rather large aircraft carriers being built. Also several aging examples of what arguably replaced the battleship, nuclear attack submarines.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    Och yes, I am quite looking forward to watching the carriers sail past, even if I am a bit dubious about their utility. Must have been quite a site to have the Forth full of ships though.
hardlianotion 9y ago
Not clear At all clear that at Jutland lack of individual initiative swung the battle. The battle was fairly skilfully fought between two state of the art combatants and errors of judgement, while costly, were retrieved on both sides, making the affair something of a score draw. Betty's taking the initiative the way he did without telling Jellicoe what he faced or where he was going could have cost Britain the battle, as Beattie sailed into the German trap. Scheer's about turn when his T was crossed saved the fleet, so you could say the superb manoeuvring discipline of the German fleet saved it. You could also say that prioritising speed and heavy gunnery over armour (German ships prioritised armour) in the British battle cruisers didn't help them when they came up against German battleships. Or that the German gunnery was superior, or that the British munitions appeared to malfunction (or was that the German armour). There was, however, at least one instance in which faulty signalling from Beatty's flagship was very costly. I think I understand the point the author is trying to make, but I would need a much clearer account of what he thought went wrong at Jutland to appreciate or agree with it.
- etrevino 9y ago
  You raised the same issues I was going to. The only instance I can think of where command ossification may have hurt the British was during the night actions, when the (German) High Seas Fleet was escaping across the wake of the (British) Grand Fleet. At that point there was a chance for British capital ships to engage-- they'd seen the Germans-- but they deferred the decision up the chain of command. The rear admiral in charge of the squadron declined to attack without an order from Jellicoe, but Jellicoe wasn't told the situation, so he assumed that the contacts to his rear were German harassing attacks. That allowed the remainder of the High Seas Fleet to escape. Quick edit: though difficult with all of the smoke, the flag signalling did work as intended at Jutland. Flag signalling relies heavily on skilled signal officers. Beattie did not have a good one, which is why he didn't get a crushing victory at Dogger Bank (his signaler sent his entire squadron after the wrong ship). Jellicoe managed to maneuver the fleet quite well once the main battle commenced.
  - hardlianotion 9y ago
    I think the signalling at Dogger Bank may have been what I had in mind - not Jutland, though. Agreed about Jellicoe as well - it seems miraculous to me that Beatty managed to muddy Jellicoe's reputation after the war.
Shivetya 9y ago
Airlines went through this issue back after the Tenerife disaster where the two 747s collided. It was determined that crew must always be allowed to challenge the actions of another.
- omegant 9y ago
  Now the problem is excess reliance in computer aided flying and procedures. New pilots are receiving less hands on flying instruction and are heavilly drilled in following the procedures to the letter(this is not an exageration). It's like a theater play, like the blind obedience and spit and polish of the navy. So assets that are extremely useful become a problem when something goes out of the script. It's hard to maintain the equilibrium, and we have yet to swing the pendulum in the other direction.
  - nradov 9y ago
    We had another discussion yesterday about what happens when the automation go awry. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14336897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14336897
Confiks 9y ago
I'm completely distracted by the name of the website: "War is boring". The vehement disagreement is almost repulsing me to RTFA.
- gumby 9y ago
  Well, if you followed the blog (as I have over several publishers -- wtf?) I think you'd find it's like minded.
ltratt 9y ago
The Rules of the Game is a fascinating book because it starts with the lead-up Jutland, goes back in time to explain how the culture and personalities of the Royal Navy came to be, before going back to Jutland. It made my head hurt the first time I read it, because so much was unfamiliar, but a second read really brought things to life. The synopsis / review this book offers is a good one but it could, perhaps, be generalised. Though Gordon doesn't make it explicit as such, the lesson I ended up taking away from the book is that cultures tend to go through alternating periods of encouraging initiative or obedience. You can see this in armies (perhaps the classic example is the Prussian / German army: it started off with Frederick the Great as an army of obedience; became (at the top levels at least) an army of initiative under von Moltke the Elder; and (in the West, at least) went back to an army of obedience for most of WWI), technology (look at any well known company's research lab culture), and even wider society. If I had to briefly summarise the consequences of this, it tends to come down to when two broadly equal organisations square up against each other: if one uses obedience as its model, and the other initiative, the latter will tend to win; if the two both use the same system, the outcome seems to be mostly random. [That said, Jutland isn't a great example of this in my opinion, as it was so protracted and its outcome so muddy. Poor ship design and some sloppy practises with explosives meant the British came off worse in terms of casualties, so arguably the Germans won the day. However, the (smaller) German Navy realised that it had only survived through luck, and basically stayed in port for the rest of the war, whereas the British were out sailing in force less than a week later and continuing the blockade of Germany. The Germans eventually thought the only way to win at sea was unrestricted submarine warfare, which turned out to be perhaps the biggest PR disaster in history. I was astonished to realise that the German Navy's inferiority complex from Jutland persisted into WWII: the German Navy stalled shamelessly when asked to help invade Britain, as the lesson they learnt from Jutland was that the British Navy could never be defeated, so what was the point of trying? So Jutland had complex long-term effects that defy easy classification. Which is, perhaps, why it's so fascinating.]
- mcguire 9y ago
  Excellent points. To me, the only question is whether Beatty misused his battlecruisers or whether they were fatally flawed to begin with: whether their speed advantage was really worth anything. And whether the result would be a total British victory rather that just a strategic one. As for the overall point, success breeds overconfidence, which breeds failure, and so on.
dantillberg 9y ago
I think about this a lot these days with regard to the US/NATO and land-based combat. We built up power for decades during the cold war to prevail on land against major powers, and our Battle of Trafalgar was Desert Storm in 1991. In the following years, absorbed in our sense of supremacy, we shifted our focus to asymmetrical warfare, optimizing our vehicles and doctrines for light war against dispersed forces mixed with civilians. I think of this every time I hear, "XXX is irrelevant in this age of asymmetric warfare." Sure, maybe that system or doctrine is not useful when fighting 1,000 militants blended into a city of 1,000,000. But what happens if/when we get into a shooting war with an adversary that has a real army, a real air force, and/or a real navy? Will it look like Desert Storm? Or will it look like the Bay of Pigs invasion? And could the US in 2040 look like France in 1940?
- kcorbitt 9y ago
  > But what happens if/when we get into a shooting war with an adversary that has a real army, a real air force, and/or a real navy? Either the shooting war ends real quick with a diplomatic solution, or the territories of both adversaries quickly turn into faintly glowing wastelands uninhabitable for a thousand years. The only warfare that matters today is asymmetrical warfare against relatively low-tech guerrillas and third-tier states. Once you credibly threaten the homeland of any opponent near the US's level of military sophistication, you've already lost the war.
  - erentz 9y ago
    Exactly. For that reason we really should cut the defense budget in half back to pre-9/11 levels. Talk about an easy fix for the US budget problem.
  - Ntrails 9y ago
    I'd say that you can fight fairly complete proxy wars without ever threatening the homelands of nuclear powers as per the post nuclear gentleman's agreement. I do largely agree though.
  - remarkEon 9y ago
    >The only warfare that matters today is asymmetrical warfare against relatively low-tech guerrillas and third-tier states. No, that's not correct, and is emblematic of the insistence to "always train for the last war." The reality of what future war might look like is much more nuanced than "either MAD or more COIN." General Milley talked about this last summer, and I tend to agree with his assessment. Incidentally his critique is inline with the posted article about mindless obedience. http://breakingdefense.com/2016/10/miserable-disobedient-victorious-gen-milleys-future-us-soldier/ http://breakingdefense.com/2016/10/miserable-disobedient-vic...
Terr_ 9y ago
> Victory begets cultural decay by sparing the navy the rigors of future combat, the truest test of martial adequacy. Reminds me of a fiction quote: > The general was only warming up. [...] "You infants who've come up in the past decade and more have no concept of combat. These long periods of unbroken peace weaken the Service. If they go on much longer, when a crisis comes there'll be no one left who's had any real practice in a crunch." > Miles's eyes crossed slightly, from internal pressure. Then should His Imperial Majesty provide a war every five years, as a convenience for the advancement of his officers' careers? His mind boggled slightly over the concept of "real practice." Had Miles maybe acquired his first clue why this superb-looking officer had washed up on Kyril Island? (The Vor Game, by Lois McMaster Bujold)
Nomentatus 9y ago
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13194/13194-h/13194-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13194/13194-h/13194-h.htm

94 points by Thevet 9y ago

Interestingly, this lesson having been learned in war, it lay hibernating to be discovered in engineering decades later. While most modern safety advice recommends empowering line workers to report safety failures, this also extends to engineering quality. The quintessential example of devolving power down to individuals is Andon[0], the most recognisable feature of which is a little cord any line worker in the factory can pull to stop the entire line. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andon_(manufacturing) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andon_(manufacturing)

Animats 9y ago

Yeah, yeah, individual initiative. Nest read an analysis of the Charge of the Light Brigade and see how Cardigan's initiative (or stupidity) led the charge in the wrong direction, despite orders from Lucan. For a serious discussion of how much initiative is too much or too little, read MCDP 1, "Warfighting", the USMC manual on how to run a battle. Good military forces work hard at that balance.

cmdkeen 9y ago
Initiative is very different at sea, and was especially so before the era of effective radio communications. Nations trusted their admirals and captains to effectively be ambassadors as the effect they could have on foreign affairs during peacetime was enormous. From the USS Pueblo to the USS Vincennes the position naval captains are put is often significantly more isolated, complicated, and symbolically important than any other armed service.
- arethuza 9y ago
  Speaking of trusting naval crews - the UK Tridents subs don't require any codes being sent to authorize launches, they have all the required information and we simply trust them not to abuse it.
  - _delirium 9y ago
    I think that's true for all countries that have submarine-launched nuclear weapons. One of the purposes of having nuclear missiles on submarines is for them to pose a credible threat of retaliation against a first strike, even if the first strike is successful enough to destroy land-based installations and the command chain. So the theory is that they need to be able to retaliate without a functioning chain of command.
    - arethuza 9y ago
      Of course getting detailed information on these things is difficult but I've seen more than one reference claiming that UK Tridents subs are unusual in this respect - Wikipedia claims that launch keys on US Tridents subs are kept in safes to which the crew do not have the combinations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Two-man_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Two-man... Apparently the reasoning is that the UK is so close to potential enemies that there would be no time for the PM or equivalent to give authorization - the so called "4 minute warning" being very optimistic. The US is much further away from the Soviets/Russia so there would be far more time to broadcast a launch order. Also the UK is notoriously cheap about these kinds of things!
      - willvarfar 9y ago
        The US had a secret launch code - Permissive Action Link (PAL) - but that code was allegedly set to 00000000 and launch operators were told this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link The combination was changed in 1977.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    Plus the famous letters detailing what to do in the event of the UK's nuclear destruction.
  - osullivj 9y ago
    And it's said those Trident subs are running Windows XP.
kitd 9y ago
Cardigan's fault wasn't initiative, but ego. And the orders were anything but simple and clear.
- Animats 9y ago
  Yes, and Lt. Nolan pointed in the wrong direction.

arethuza 9y ago

If I turn my head to the left and look out of my study window I can look over that exact bit of the Forth in that picture of the British Grand Fleet - the only thing that looks like a battleship there today being the island of Inchmickery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inchmickery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inchmickery

cmdkeen 9y ago
Though just the other side of the bridges, up at Rosyth, there are two rather large aircraft carriers being built. Also several aging examples of what arguably replaced the battleship, nuclear attack submarines.
- arethuza 9y ago
  Och yes, I am quite looking forward to watching the carriers sail past, even if I am a bit dubious about their utility. Must have been quite a site to have the Forth full of ships though.

hardlianotion 9y ago

Not clear At all clear that at Jutland lack of individual initiative swung the battle. The battle was fairly skilfully fought between two state of the art combatants and errors of judgement, while costly, were retrieved on both sides, making the affair something of a score draw. Betty's taking the initiative the way he did without telling Jellicoe what he faced or where he was going could have cost Britain the battle, as Beattie sailed into the German trap. Scheer's about turn when his T was crossed saved the fleet, so you could say the superb manoeuvring discipline of the German fleet saved it. You could also say that prioritising speed and heavy gunnery over armour (German ships prioritised armour) in the British battle cruisers didn't help them when they came up against German battleships. Or that the German gunnery was superior, or that the British munitions appeared to malfunction (or was that the German armour). There was, however, at least one instance in which faulty signalling from Beatty's flagship was very costly. I think I understand the point the author is trying to make, but I would need a much clearer account of what he thought went wrong at Jutland to appreciate or agree with it.

etrevino 9y ago
You raised the same issues I was going to. The only instance I can think of where command ossification may have hurt the British was during the night actions, when the (German) High Seas Fleet was escaping across the wake of the (British) Grand Fleet. At that point there was a chance for British capital ships to engage-- they'd seen the Germans-- but they deferred the decision up the chain of command. The rear admiral in charge of the squadron declined to attack without an order from Jellicoe, but Jellicoe wasn't told the situation, so he assumed that the contacts to his rear were German harassing attacks. That allowed the remainder of the High Seas Fleet to escape. Quick edit: though difficult with all of the smoke, the flag signalling did work as intended at Jutland. Flag signalling relies heavily on skilled signal officers. Beattie did not have a good one, which is why he didn't get a crushing victory at Dogger Bank (his signaler sent his entire squadron after the wrong ship). Jellicoe managed to maneuver the fleet quite well once the main battle commenced.
- hardlianotion 9y ago
  I think the signalling at Dogger Bank may have been what I had in mind - not Jutland, though. Agreed about Jellicoe as well - it seems miraculous to me that Beatty managed to muddy Jellicoe's reputation after the war.

Shivetya 9y ago

Airlines went through this issue back after the Tenerife disaster where the two 747s collided. It was determined that crew must always be allowed to challenge the actions of another.

omegant 9y ago
Now the problem is excess reliance in computer aided flying and procedures. New pilots are receiving less hands on flying instruction and are heavilly drilled in following the procedures to the letter(this is not an exageration). It's like a theater play, like the blind obedience and spit and polish of the navy. So assets that are extremely useful become a problem when something goes out of the script. It's hard to maintain the equilibrium, and we have yet to swing the pendulum in the other direction.
- nradov 9y ago
  We had another discussion yesterday about what happens when the automation go awry. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14336897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14336897

Confiks 9y ago

I'm completely distracted by the name of the website: "War is boring". The vehement disagreement is almost repulsing me to RTFA.

gumby 9y ago
Well, if you followed the blog (as I have over several publishers -- wtf?) I think you'd find it's like minded.

ltratt 9y ago

The Rules of the Game is a fascinating book because it starts with the lead-up Jutland, goes back in time to explain how the culture and personalities of the Royal Navy came to be, before going back to Jutland. It made my head hurt the first time I read it, because so much was unfamiliar, but a second read really brought things to life. The synopsis / review this book offers is a good one but it could, perhaps, be generalised. Though Gordon doesn't make it explicit as such, the lesson I ended up taking away from the book is that cultures tend to go through alternating periods of encouraging initiative or obedience. You can see this in armies (perhaps the classic example is the Prussian / German army: it started off with Frederick the Great as an army of obedience; became (at the top levels at least) an army of initiative under von Moltke the Elder; and (in the West, at least) went back to an army of obedience for most of WWI), technology (look at any well known company's research lab culture), and even wider society. If I had to briefly summarise the consequences of this, it tends to come down to when two broadly equal organisations square up against each other: if one uses obedience as its model, and the other initiative, the latter will tend to win; if the two both use the same system, the outcome seems to be mostly random. [That said, Jutland isn't a great example of this in my opinion, as it was so protracted and its outcome so muddy. Poor ship design and some sloppy practises with explosives meant the British came off worse in terms of casualties, so arguably the Germans won the day. However, the (smaller) German Navy realised that it had only survived through luck, and basically stayed in port for the rest of the war, whereas the British were out sailing in force less than a week later and continuing the blockade of Germany. The Germans eventually thought the only way to win at sea was unrestricted submarine warfare, which turned out to be perhaps the biggest PR disaster in history. I was astonished to realise that the German Navy's inferiority complex from Jutland persisted into WWII: the German Navy stalled shamelessly when asked to help invade Britain, as the lesson they learnt from Jutland was that the British Navy could never be defeated, so what was the point of trying? So Jutland had complex long-term effects that defy easy classification. Which is, perhaps, why it's so fascinating.]

mcguire 9y ago
Excellent points. To me, the only question is whether Beatty misused his battlecruisers or whether they were fatally flawed to begin with: whether their speed advantage was really worth anything. And whether the result would be a total British victory rather that just a strategic one. As for the overall point, success breeds overconfidence, which breeds failure, and so on.

dantillberg 9y ago

I think about this a lot these days with regard to the US/NATO and land-based combat. We built up power for decades during the cold war to prevail on land against major powers, and our Battle of Trafalgar was Desert Storm in 1991. In the following years, absorbed in our sense of supremacy, we shifted our focus to asymmetrical warfare, optimizing our vehicles and doctrines for light war against dispersed forces mixed with civilians. I think of this every time I hear, "XXX is irrelevant in this age of asymmetric warfare." Sure, maybe that system or doctrine is not useful when fighting 1,000 militants blended into a city of 1,000,000. But what happens if/when we get into a shooting war with an adversary that has a real army, a real air force, and/or a real navy? Will it look like Desert Storm? Or will it look like the Bay of Pigs invasion? And could the US in 2040 look like France in 1940?

kcorbitt 9y ago
> But what happens if/when we get into a shooting war with an adversary that has a real army, a real air force, and/or a real navy? Either the shooting war ends real quick with a diplomatic solution, or the territories of both adversaries quickly turn into faintly glowing wastelands uninhabitable for a thousand years. The only warfare that matters today is asymmetrical warfare against relatively low-tech guerrillas and third-tier states. Once you credibly threaten the homeland of any opponent near the US's level of military sophistication, you've already lost the war.
- erentz 9y ago
  Exactly. For that reason we really should cut the defense budget in half back to pre-9/11 levels. Talk about an easy fix for the US budget problem.
- Ntrails 9y ago
  I'd say that you can fight fairly complete proxy wars without ever threatening the homelands of nuclear powers as per the post nuclear gentleman's agreement. I do largely agree though.
- remarkEon 9y ago
  >The only warfare that matters today is asymmetrical warfare against relatively low-tech guerrillas and third-tier states. No, that's not correct, and is emblematic of the insistence to "always train for the last war." The reality of what future war might look like is much more nuanced than "either MAD or more COIN." General Milley talked about this last summer, and I tend to agree with his assessment. Incidentally his critique is inline with the posted article about mindless obedience. http://breakingdefense.com/2016/10/miserable-disobedient-victorious-gen-milleys-future-us-soldier/ http://breakingdefense.com/2016/10/miserable-disobedient-vic...

Terr_ 9y ago

> Victory begets cultural decay by sparing the navy the rigors of future combat, the truest test of martial adequacy. Reminds me of a fiction quote: > The general was only warming up. [...] "You infants who've come up in the past decade and more have no concept of combat. These long periods of unbroken peace weaken the Service. If they go on much longer, when a crisis comes there'll be no one left who's had any real practice in a crunch." > Miles's eyes crossed slightly, from internal pressure. Then should His Imperial Majesty provide a war every five years, as a convenience for the advancement of his officers' careers? His mind boggled slightly over the concept of "real practice." Had Miles maybe acquired his first clue why this superb-looking officer had washed up on Kyril Island? (The Vor Game, by Lois McMaster Bujold)

Nomentatus 9y ago

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13194/13194-h/13194-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13194/13194-h/13194-h.htm