A better title might be: Fire Control: the Question of Dreyer vs. Pollen.

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	• Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland: The Question of Fire Control (Cass Series--Naval Policy and ... John Brooks Routledge, 2006 - 321 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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Interesting Naval History in Very Readable Format

This is an excellent primer on WWI naval gunnery. Anyone who plays naval miniatures or who is interested in this niche history subject will not be disappointed. While the fundamental assessment does involve Pollen vs. Dreyer, the book explains every single relevant aspect to fire control, including diagrams, and voluminous first hand citations. Ever wonder how a ship in WWI could hit a moving target at 10 miles? This book shows the Royal Navy's years of experimentation to solve this problem. In addition, this book provides insight in just how complex the entire procedure of evolutionary technology is in practice. In other words, the book produces a useful study model of the 'hit and miss' aspect of lethal technology. Most importantly, the book does not require any technological background in order to be understood and is written with careful and clear explanations of what could otherwise be rather difficult and dull material.

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A better title might be: Fire Control: the Question of Dreyer vs. Pollen.

Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland: The Question of Fire control, by John Brooks, Routledge, 2005, 321 pages.

A better title might be: Fire Control: the Question of Dreyer vs. Pollen. Rather than offering a comprehensive discussion of fire control, this book confines itself with the relative merits of two fire control systems and some of the issues concerning the decisions to select one over the other. The book sets out to answer more or less the following questions: did the navy buy the inferior system and did it make any difference. The author makes a cogent case for his opinions.

I'm deducting one point because the title is overly broad.

This book is a scholarly work and reads like one. There are over 1000 footnotes and over 100 quotes. In a scholarly work that would be 1000 small nuggets and 100 big nuggets of fact. These quotes are, of course, taken out of context. They are certainly well footnoted, but that is of little benefit to the average battleship nut (I am one) who doesn't have access to the contextual documents. The author uses these quotes to tell his story, but the effect is disruptive. The average non-scholarly reader would get more out of it if the author simply used his own words.

I am deducting another point for style. Deducting a point because a scholarly work reads like a scholarly work may sound foolish, but this review is for Amazon where the average reader is not looking for a scholarly work on a squabble from almost a century ago.

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Dreadnought Gunnery Primer

This book is the best primer on dreadnought gunnery at the time of the Battle of Jutland. There is no comparable work in English for this complex subject and it's effects on naval warfare.

The book is easy to read as it leaves the complex mathematics involved to the appendices but gives the reader a useful understanding of the problems, solutions and terms used before delving into the equipment's developmental history in a similar matter. After this the reader is taken to the Battle of Jutland and is shown the effects of the technology and the decisions that put it in to use. The German solutions to the same problems at the battle are also covered as is the subsequent development of fire control to WWII.

The book is written as a statement/descenting work on many long held beliefs of the effects of the British Naval Establishment leading up to Jutland.

This is a 'must read' for anyone wishing an introduction to the complexities of battleship fire control and British and to a lesser extend German solutions. The reader will depart with a good understanding of all of this.

I can not reccomend this book highly enough!

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In 1913, the Admiralty rejected Arthur Pollen's Argo system for the Dreyer fire control tables. Many naval historians now believe that, consequently, British dreadnoughts were fitted with a system that, despite being partly plagiarized from Pollen's, was inferior: and that the Dreyer Tables were a contributory cause in the sinking of Indefatigable and Queen Mary at Jutland. This book provides new and revisionist accounts of the Dreyer/Pollen controversy, and of gunnery at Jutland. In fire control, as with other technologies, the Royal Navy had been open, though not uncritically, to innovations. The Dreyer Tables were better suited to action conditions (particularly those at Jutland). Beatty's losses were the result mainly of deficient tactics and training: and his battle cruisers would have been even more disadvantaged had they been equipped by Argo.

After a foreword by Professor Andrew Lambert, the book reviews critically recent studies of fire control, and describes the essentials of naval gunnery inthe dreadnought era. It follows the development of the Pollen and Dreyer systems, refutes the charges of plagiarism and explains Argo's rejection. It outlines the German fire control system: and uses contemporary sources in a critical reassessment of Beatty's tactics throughout the Battle of Jutland.

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