Notes and Comments

In the JMH for October 2005, Professor Jon Sumida reviewed my recently published Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland: The Question of Fire Control [DGBJ]. My book offers thoroughly revisionist views on subjects that have been dominated for more than twenty years by Professor Sumida's writings; thus a detailed assessment by him of my work, in a prestigious publication like yours, was only to be expected. But it is a deep disappointment, for me and probably for many naval historians, to read a review that rarely engages with my arguments; instead, it attacks my scholarly integrity and misrepresents what my book (and, in some places, what Sumida's publications) actually say.

I shall not trouble to respond to the personal criticisms. But I am very concerned that the review will leave JMH readers with a seriously distorted impression of the merits of my book and of the research and thesis on which it has been based. I shall be most grateful, therefore, if, in fairness, you publish this note as a corrective. It is concerned not with matters of interpretation: but only, and as objectively as possible, to identify the misrepresentations that make the review so misleading.

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The review (p. 1180) accepts that "a number of historians have argued that the nonadoption of the Pollen fire control system compromised British battle cruiser gunnery at the battle of Jutland": but denies that "this is the position taken by the reviewer in In Defence of Naval Supremacy [IDNS]." Yet Sumida does not mention that all six historians cited in DGBJ on pp. 4-5 attribute their views directly to his book or to earlier writings: nor that the key conclusion he cites in the review (IDNS, p. 331) is quoted by DGBJ on p. 12.

It is said that DGBJ "misconstrues text by altering meaning about things that matter" (p. 1181). The example given is the assertion in IDNS (p. 331) about the "adoption of both automatic rate and true-course plotters - which in effect was what was done after the war": whereas DGBJ concludes that "there was no 'adoption of . . . true-course plotters . . . after the war.'" In fact, no parts of the postwar Admiralty Fire Control Tables can be described, whether "in effect" or not, as true-course plotters; they had only rate plotters (John Brooks, "The Admiralty Fire Control Tables" in Antony Preston, ed. Warship 2002–2003 [London: Conway Maritime Press]). Of the "related explanatory text," p. 313 concerns the rejection of true-course plotting by the Dreyer Table Committee. The sentence "The incorporation of rate- rather than true-course plotting in the postwar British fire control system does not necessarily signify much" appears on p. 339, but only in the middle of a long end-note. Faced with the contradiction between the main text of IDNS and this obscure and half-hearted correction, DGBJ concentrated on rejecting the false impression given by the former.

DGBJ is accused of omitting "material that does not support its arguments in summaries of certain documents" and comparisons are recommended of "the synopsis of the report by Captain Edward W. Harding in IDNS with that given in DGBJ (IDNS, 95–98; DGBJ, 105–6), or the rendering of the Dreyer letter to Captain Constantine Hughes-Onslow of 1908 (IDNS, 51; DGBJ, 145)." In fact, the two books make different selections from Harding's long report, as would be expected in view of their different perspectives on its importance: and also of IDNS's mistaken assumption about the nature of the "synthetic method" rejected by Harding (DGBJ, p. 133 n. 128). As for Dreyer's letter (actually on p. 151 of IDNS), there is a substantial overlap between the two selections, some passages quoted in IDNS, p. 151 being found (with new explanations) in DGBJ on p. 146.

The review on p. 1182 cites many pages from DGBJ but mostly ignores their findings, which include:

1. the dependence of the Pollen system of 1912 on manual operations—for...