Butler, Daniel Allen

Herwig, Holger H.

Osborne, Eric W.

English

U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons

Naval War College ReviewVolume 60Number 2 Spring Article 212007The Battle of Heliogoland Bight and DistantVictory: The Battle of Jutland and the AlliedTriumph in the First World WarHolger H. HerwigEric W. OsborneDaniel Allen ButlerFollow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-reviewThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted forinclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contactrepository.inquiries@usnwc.edu.Recommended CitationHerwig, Holger H.; Osborne, Eric W.; and Butler, Daniel Allen (2007) "The Battle of Heliogoland Bight and Distant Victory: TheBattle of Jutland and the Allied Triumph in the First World War," Naval War College Review: Vol. 60 : No. 2 , Article 21.Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol60/iss2/21Alton Keith Gilbert, a retired naval of-ficer, uses a descriptive survey methodof research through letters, operationaldocuments, fitness reports, personalaccounts, and awards to chronicle thebiography of Admiral John “Slew”McCain.The book builds a strong sense of thecharacter and tenacity of McCain andhis ability as a warfighter through oneof the most difficult periods of WorldWar II. From his commissioning as anensign to admiral, McCain was influ-enced by the Navy’s greatest leaders.The author describes the developmentof McCain as he progressed through hissea and shore assignments. The studyculminates in a detailed description ofthe war in the Pacific and the tacticsused, particularly when dealing withJapanese kamikaze pilots, underMcCain’s operational leadership.An intriguing aspect of this book is thedetailed description of the politicaldealings among the Navy’s senior lead-ers. This allows the reader to under-stand some of the activity behind thescenes that ultimately shaped the out-come of the war. It is clear that McCainwas a warrior’s warrior who literallyworked himself to death: “After Japansurrendered on September 2, 1945,McCain flew back to his home in theU.S. and died in his bed the next day—perhaps from heart failure but moreprobably from exhaustion.” His dedica-tion to the country, accomplishment ofthe mission, and loyalty to his superiorsare constant themes of the book.The extensive resources and the author’spersonal experience as a naval officermake this a credible, historically accu-rate work. Gilbert’s style brings to lifethe experience of the Pacific War. Inaddition, specific data regarding thelosses of personnel and equipment onlyenhances the understanding of the im-pact of that war on both the U.S. andJapanese forces. The bibliography is agreat resource for anyone who desiresadditional information on the topic.The only criticism I have relates to thetitle. The book comes up a little shorton the actual leadership characteristicsof McCain, and I found myself search-ing for those qualities in his style andcharacter. Yet this is a must-read foranyone who desires to learn about an-other one of the great admirals ofWorld War II.THOMAS ZELIBORRear Admiral, U.S. Navy (Retired)Naval War CollegeOsborne, Eric W. The Battle of Heligoland Bight.Indianapolis: Indiana Univ. Press, 2006. 141pp.$27.95Butler, Daniel Allen. Distant Victory: The Battle ofJutland and the Allied Triumph in the First WorldWar. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Security Interna-tional, 2006. 251pp. $44.95After two decades of unrelenting pub-lishing on the land war of 1914–18, it isnice to see attention being paid to thewar at sea, for that effort ranged fromdistant blockades, mine warfare, unre-stricted submarine warfare, and dashingdestroyer melees, to the largest pitchedsurface fleet battle to that time. Bothauthors tell their stories with a passionfor narrative, paying close attention notonly to admirals but also to the “com-mon sailor” at war. Both come well pre-pared: Osborne, of Virginia MilitaryInstitute, has published Britain’s Eco-nomic Blockade of Germany, 1914–1919(2004) and Cruisers and Battle Cruisers:B O O K R E V I E W S 1 6 3C:\WIP\NWCR\NWC Review Spring 2007.vpMonday, May 14, 2007 3:57:52 PMColor profile: DisabledComposite  Default screen1Herwig et al.: The Battle of Heliogoland Bight and Distant Victory: The Battle oPublished by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2007An Illustrated History of Their Impact(2004), while Butler, a former U.S.Army officer and media commentator,is the author of The Age of Cunard(2004).Osborne’s Battle of Heligoland Bight issolid naval history. On 28 August 1914British cruisers, destroyers, and subma-rines descended into the HeligolandBight and surprised German scoutingforces, which lost the light cruisers SMSMainz, SMS Koln, SMS Ariadne, andthe torpedo boat V-187, as well as 1,251officers and men killed, wounded, orcaptured. The British, in contrast, suf-fered damage to one light cruiser andthree destroyers, as well as thirty-fiveofficers and men killed and fortywounded. Beyond these losses, the im-portance of the battle lies in the factthat it reinforced the already timidstance of the German High Sea Fleetcommand.Osborne’s two major contributions areat the command level and at the tacticallevel. Senior commanders, British andGerman, performed woefully. Therewas a lack of coordination with theforces at sea and among the forces en-gaged in battle. There were also prob-lems with communication (delays indecoding messages and jammed trans-missions) and an overall failure to pro-vide commanders with intelligence onthe composition and position of enemyforces.Officers who today fear that in a “real”war the enemy may well deprive themof cybernetic capabilities must read thisbook. Heligoland showed what it waslike to fight “blind” and under adverseconditions. Clausewitz’s “fog of war”was omnipresent, especially on the Brit-ish side: battle signals were misread;major units put out to sea withoutnotifying other commands; cruisers at-tempted to ram their own submarines;submarines made attack runs on theirown cruisers; and destroyers engaged aNorwegian neutral, mistaking it for aGerman minelayer. The German com-mand did not perform much better. Itfailed to appreciate the size of the Brit-ish force and refused to recognize thatit was supported by battle cruisers. Italso hesitated to send out its own battlecruisers in time to assist. The fact thatGerman battleships had to wait hoursfor high tide so they could cross theJade Bar at Wilhelmshaven did not helpmatters, nor did the true “fog of war,”namely, a heavy fog that swirled aroundHeligoland all that day. In short, this isa superb book on the all but forgottenfirst surface battle of World War I.Distant Victory, of course, has the ad-vantage that it is about a well knownbattle, the greatest in history to thatdate. On 31 May 1916, off Denmark’sJutland Peninsula, twenty-four Britishdreadnoughts and their escorts squaredoff against sixteen German dread-noughts and their escorts—in all, 151British warships against ninety-nineGerman warships. Butler relates the re-sulting battle in gripping, dramaticstyle. He has a keen eye for the boldnarrative, whether speaking of a de-stroyer or a battleship, a commander ora gunner. He follows the traditionalreading of Jutland, that it was a tacticalGerman victory (fourteen British shipswere lost to the Germans’ eleven, and6,784 British casualties as against 3,058German) but a British strategic victory,insofar as the High Sea Fleet failed tobreak the Grand Fleet’s iron grip on theexits of the North Sea. As the New YorkHerald trenchantly put it on 3 June1916, “The German fleet has assaulted1 6 4 N A V A L W A R C O L L E G E R E V I E WC:\WIP\NWCR\NWC Review Spring 2007.vpMonday, May 14, 2007 3:57:52 PMColor profile: DisabledComposite  Default screen2Naval War College Review, Vol. 60 [2007], No. 2, Art. 21https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol60/iss2/21its jailer, but it is still in jail.” Unfortu-nately, Butler fails to draw on the great-est strategic lesson for the Germans: on4 July Admiral Reinhard Scheer, the“victor of the Skagaerrak,” informedKaiser Wilhelm II that further fleet ac-tions would be futile and that only “thedefeat of British economic life, that is, byusing the U-boats against British trade,”could swing the balance in the war.Lamentably, Butler’s lack of familiaritywith German documents and recenthistoriography mars an otherwise inter-esting book. Apart from misspelledGerman words and ships’ names, thereare major howlers. Thus Ludendorff israised to the nobility as “von,” Hugovon Pohl in 1914 is listed as the HighSea Fleet’s chief of staff rather than asChief of the Admiralty Staff in Berlin,Karl Doenitz is cited as a World War I“destroyer captain,” and German diplo-matic and naval files are situated atKoblenz rather than at Berlin andFreiburg, respectively. Further, whileone can accuse the German naval com-mand of timidity, it seems unjust to as-cribe “cowardice” to them. Hyperboleabounds. Did Jutland really “dictate”that “Germany would lose the FirstWorld War”? Was it “the decisive mo-ment of the First World War”? Did it“decide” the “very course of the war”?Was the German failure to interceptBritish cross-Channel troop transportsin August 1914 the “lost opportunity”that “ultimately decided the course ofthe war”?Finally, Butler’s claims that “three gen-erations of histories” have failed to lookat the “strategic aftermath” of the battleand that they have failed for ninety yearsto ask why the Germans never againfaced the Grand Fleet in battle, or whythey turned instead to unrestrictedsubmarine warfare, are not just inaccu-rate but make a mockery of that schol-arship. Careful editorial work couldhave averted some of this. Regrettably,it did not.HOLGER H. HERWIGUniversity of CalgaryHenriques, Peter R. Realistic Visionary: A Portraitof George Washington. Charlottesville: Univ. ofVirginia Press, 2006. 256pp. $26.95The man who was “first in war, first inpeace and first in the hearts of his coun-trymen” is also first as a subject in thecontemporary revival of popular inter-est in the founding fathers. In this workPeter Henriques has provided a concise,balanced, and scholarly companionpiece to the more comprehensive recentbooks concerning George Washington.Rather than a conventional biography,Peter Henriques, a professor emeritusof history at George Mason Universityand a distinguished scholar of the vastcollection of Washington’s writings, hasprovided an analysis of ten of the argu-ably most important issues and rela-tionships Washington dealt with duringhis life. Especially for those familiarwith Washington’s basic biography,these thoughtful and fair-minded essayswill inspire further reflection on thecharacter and career of the indispens-able man of the American founding.Henriques’s erudition and balancedjudgment may be at their most effectivein his consideration of the privateWashington, including an examinationof his beliefs on slavery and religion,and a reflection on his final illness anddeath. Washington, who can be justifi-ably criticized as a slave owner, inB O O K R E V I E W S 1 6 5C:\WIP\NWCR\NWC Review Spring 2007.vpMonday, May 14, 2007 3:57:52 PMColor profile: DisabledComposite  Default screen3Herwig et al.: The Battle of Heliogoland Bight and Distant Victory: The Battle oPublished by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2007

The Battle of Heliogoland Bight and Distant Victory: The Battle of Jutland and the Allied Triumph in the First World War

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The Battle of Heliogoland Bight and Distant Victory: The Battle of Jutland and the Allied Triumph in the First World War

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