Naval History Forums

In a way, it is somewhat curious. The most serious problem in the German turrets, and which regulations were soon in place to try and prevent, was too many charges were out of their cases in handling rooms and magazines in order to speed up the rate of fire. This naturally led to disastor in Seydlitz.

The British were impressed with the German rate of fire, and possibly misunderstanding the German ladder system of ranging, sought to emulate the German ability to fire quickly. This led many individual ships' gunnery departments to cut corners in an attempt to achieve high rates of fire--too many charges out of their cases, too many case covers removed in magazines, and sometimes even magazine doors left open to facilitate the transfer of charges to the handling rooms and hoists. While the Germans were putting the brakes on reckless handling of ammunition (not always with complete success), the British were doing exactly the opposite.

Gary wrote

The nasty aft turrets hit on Seydlitz taught the Germans a lesson which they learned...................The British did not and found out the hard way at Jutland.

The Germans has Hipper...... and the British Beatty [/quote]