If I remember correctly, They did a underwater observation of the wrecks of the battle cruisers, In the early two thousands. They had found that the flash doors on many of the turks had been left open. Which is a fault on beauty for allowing this to happen under his watch, And I also believe it was his direct order.

it is incredible the same thing happened to the HMS Hood more than twenty years later

You are applying hindsight to a danger that was unknown at the time! Cordite was not supposed to explode! True, some experiments had suggested large amounts might, but this was not largely accepted at the time! The idea of very rapid fire to damage and distract your opponents was a rational tactic if you were unaware of the danger! These were basically egg shells armed with sledgehammer! They couldn't afford to engage in a slugging match, you had to hit hard and fast! The German cordite equivalent, with a slightly different formulation, seems to have been slightly more stable.

It was known at the time that cordite could explode.It was known that the lax handling and procedures were a risk.It was decided to ignore it to get a slightly better rate if fire.Which for all intents and purposes is and qas rather stupid anyway because battleships and battlecruisers rarely if ever got to use their full potential rate of fire. Several of the officers in the Battlecruiser Squadron even wanted to reintroduce all the measures that were removed,only to be overruled. And while the german propellant was slightly more stable,that did not matter in case you get an exploding shell near enough.Seydlitz is proof of thar,nearly blowing up twice. After Doggerbank the germans simply got the exact same lesson the british got,and decided not to be stupid about it

@NashmanNash It was generallybelieved that cordite would not explode at that time. True there was evidence that it might, but it was not generally believed that it would.

There was an investigative committee, and it recommended that Jellicoe and Beatty be reprimanded for the lack of command emphasis on ammunition safety. Then Jellicoe was promoted to First Sea Lord, Beatty given the Grand Fleet and the admiral chairing the committee was sent out the command the China Squadron. It was then swept under the "Most Secret" rug until fifty years later, it became evident that there was actually nothing wrong with the ships.

@@NashmanNash There were experiments made before 1914 and they suggested that cordite would explode in closed spaces like magazines rather than burn. A test of an equivalent amount of cordite compared to a battleship magazine kept getting cancelled. Beatty knew there was a risk, but he was convinced that if he had gotten just a few more hits at Dogger Bank, the Scouting Force would have had to slow down and he would have destroyed it. He blithely ignored the damage his own ships had suffered. Including a near magazine explosion aboard HMS Tiger.

lol that sounds less scary for sure

Thank you! Always appreciate reading your comments.

one more lame excusion.

Had he felt guilty he would not have tried to blame Seymour the way he did...Even Hipper and Scheer were not really on respectful terms with him

Please be safe! Try the beef up your turret armor and don’t rush head long into anything!

The whole German fleet was trashed , often overlooked

@@mathewkelly9968 you have any proof of that? I CAN prove that RN lost more ships and more tonnage ...now show me yours

@@robertx8020 Look it up. Within 30 days all the damaged British capital ships, including HMS Warspite, were repaired and back in service. It took the Germans six months to repair the last of the severely damaged battlecruisers.

@@michaelsnyder3871 So the German ships were repaired (and less were SUNK) and you call it a british 'victory' and 'German ships were trashed' Ok If you say so ..I guess we have a different opinion about a 'victory' and tell me ..how long did it take to REBUILD the British ships that were sunk? /s

Years later HOOD followed this tradition. leaving doors open again?

The dangers of cordite explosions was not known at the time. Cordite was supose to burn but not explode!

@@mahbriggs While the explosive nature was not known although the only large scale test had been done in 1897 and was done on newly manufactured material; surely far more testing should have been don especially regarding what was then a relatively new development particularly on aging samples? It was well established that poor quality ingredients and poor manufacturing standards made cordite more volatile as did age. In fact when Grant took over on Lion he discovered that some of the charges in the ship were over 13 years old and he then replaced all the charges on the ship: He also discovered that charges were routinely taken from their cases during drills or exercises and replaced in the wrong case. Failure to maintain temperature of the magazines was also an issue and one that had been highlighted before the war as was stowage of empty coal bags a possible source of spontaneous combustion next to the magazines. It should also be noted that the three navies that suffered catastrophic magazine explosions the RN,IJN and Regia Marina all used not only the same method of nitrification but also Picric acid fillings for their shells meaning that the shell fillings could also have been partially to blame. For all that the removal of safety features and casual disregard for the handling of charges which would have had an 18th century gunner(the man in charge of the powder magazine)recoiling in horror was the main cause of the loss of at least Queen Mary and possibly even the two I class

@@davidmcintyre8145 And your point is? As I pointed out, while there were clues that cordite could explode in some circumstances, it was generally thought it would just burn! One of the pictures of the Invincible shows the forward magazine burning, while the center magazine explodes.that the forward magazine was burning. David K. Brown has a quite good explanation in his book "the Grand Fleet: Warship Design and Developement 1906-1922" You can make the claim that they should have known, but clearly they did not! Not all propellant behaves the same. Small differences in manufacture can have large effects on its behavior.

@@mahbriggs I did point out that manufacturing processes and mixtures varied but the frankly criminal approach to safety in the battlecruisers which as I have said would have appalled an 18th century gunner and which was in essence demanded by Beatty as a way to increase rate of fire was the main issue, I also like you would recommend Brown,that entire series from"Before the Ironclad"to"Rebuilding the Royal Navy"is excellent as is his take on the Falklands war. Drachinifel also did an excellent segment a few years ago in Drydock 65 during a comparison between Hipper and Beatty that details what he thought would be the reaction of a sensible admiral in this case Hipper to the practices in the British battlecruisers

And keep a sergeant Major handy.....

From what i read,Major Harvey actually abused the chain of command to have the safety measures,which lions gunnery officer had reintroduced,to be removed again

please stop telling that myth and insulting thousands ov brave sailors.!

@@michaelpielorz9283 Please stop posting on subjects you know nothing about.

@@michaelpielorz9283 After action damage reports and eyewitness acounts do not equal a myth.

Thank you!

I would argue the british using unstable powders ended up being beneficial. Much of the IJN’s doctrine came from the British and so did their powder doctrines. Since the IJN adopted the poor practices, their ships felt it

It seems that whatever blew up Hood was completely unrelated to what happened in Jutland The most popular theory is a 15" shell hitting underwater just below the main armour belt and penetrating the torpedo protection. It was probably a case of the trajectory and the angles being just right (or wrong). Hood had undergone an extensive redesign after the battle of Jutland and her armour was upgraded to the equivalent of a contemporary battleship (e.g. Queen Elizabeth class). The worries about Hood's relatively weak deck armour at the start of world war two related mainly to a new hazard, armour piercing bombs penetrating deck armour (as happened to USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor). Most of the older battleships were at risk.

@@philiphumphrey1548 not unrelated

The South Dakota had an accident when loading ammunition. Fortunately the crew was alert and the magazine was imeadetly flooded

Hood no one can ever say for sure.The newer (solventless?) German and US propellants were safer but as USS Arizona showed...and Gneisenau's turret fire in 42 put her out of the war.

Not a single German shell penetrated a barbette or into a magazine. And shouldn't have at the ranges and target angles during the battle. The powder was set off by fragments and scabs thrown off the back of the armor, because the powder was out of their storage cans and in places they shouldn't have been.

Tactical German victory, Strategic British one

"The High Seas Fleet has assaulted its jailors, but it is still in jail." The HSF never sortied again after Jutland, and when pressed to do so, resulted in mutiny leading to the fall of the entire German Empire. How can that be a German victory?

Just as I find amusing the lengths to which prople will go to portray as victors a fleet which retired from the battlefield and spent almost the whole of the rest of WW1 swinging peacefully cables in the Jade. A fleet whose crews mutinied rather than face the Grand Fleet again, and a fleet which remained inactive as the Royal Navy's Northern Blockade dragged Germany down to starvation & revolution. There is more involved in assessing the result of a battle than simply counting the corpses. Didn't Stalingrad rather demonstrate that?

The pirates always do that, like portraying DUNKINRK as a victory lmao

@@hashteraksgage3281 Perhaps you might explain how being ordered to lift 40,000 specialist troops out of Dunkirk, and instead managing to lift just over 323,000 was anything other than a victory for the Royal & Merchant Navies?

The royal navy has always been about mediocre ships in large numbers. When the Brits don't have numerical advantage they tend to lose.

I’m sorry if I misunderstand your comment. However, whom is it directed towards?

It seems hard for ppl likew you not do insult ppl that MIGHT not agree with you and your logic is flawed too! FYI you canj win a battle and still LOSE the war So your comment doens't even make sense