Keep Jellicoe!!!

Hello, as you may know next year is the 100th anniversary of Jutland, the most important naval battle of the European theater in WW1 for afterward Tirpitz demanded that the Kaiser re-institute U-boat warfare.

Now whatever the Commander's faults (Except Hipper, Hipper is best admiral) at Jutland, ensured the High Seas Fleet got a bloody nose and ensured England would rule the waves on the top half.

Now the difficult part.

He had probably earned the despisal of a good chunk of the nation for not doing Trafalgar 2 he kept the fleet intact, essentially unharmed, and stronger than ever a year later (Plus the ships lost weren't going to be missed, save the destroyers). Plus he didnt go for Trafalgar 2 allowing the Navy not to suffer any unnecessary losses.

For his work and hard service he got canned, essential exile to New Zealand until 1924 by the PM Lloyd George and his cronies on a Friday so no newspaper would report it until Monday, including his 'faithful' fellow Admiral Beatty who replaced him. Then wrote nasty versions of the 'truth' at Jutland.

At the end of his career Beatty won an Earldom in 1919 despite nearly losing all his battlecruisers and the five Super-dreadnaughts.
Jellicoe win his Earldom in 1925 after returning home and having to deal with the wave of bio writers who hated his guts for 'abandoning' Beatty.

Now lets imagine a world where the Admiral who kept his forces together and was beloved by the fleet got rewarded for his actions (criticism on the U-boats is heavy though). While Beatty has slower going.

Is there any way this is possible.
 

HMS Lion blows up when Major Francis Harvey dies before he can order his magazine flooded, taking Beatty with it. For extra credit, ALL the battlecruisers are destroyed, and several of the Super-Dreadnoughts when german destroyers get close enough to fill them with torpedoes or something of that nature, leaving Beatty not only dead, but a total incompetent idiot who got most of his fleet destroyed, no matter how you try to spin it.
 
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There is no question that John Jellico was a far superior admiral. I would beg to differ that Hipper was the best admiral present. Jellico saved Beatty’s squadron. His deployment at 6:01 was absolutely correct. He was expecting the Harwich force to join him, not knowing that the Admiralty had held them back. That alone may have been the difference between a tactical victory and a smashing victory. If nothing else the presence of 20 more cruisers and destroyers would have enabled a broader search after darkness. He also cannot be blamed for what Beatty called “something is bloody wrong with our ships. Simply put the German battle cruisers were superior to the British. Blame Jackie Fisher for that one.
As far as command of the Grand Fleet it probably would not have mattered since the Germans never came back out. Where it might have really made a difference would be if Jellico were First Lord after the war.
 

Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
Have the five-man committee that concluded the Harper Report resist Beatty's demands / orders that the sections relating to the BCF performance be altered and the report be published as planned without Beatty's proposed preface. This would remove the need for the 1924Narrative of the Battle of Jutland which was markedly pro-Beatty, and the Admiralty preface to this that objected to Jellicoe's objections! And get Churchill to write a more reasoned version in The World Crisis
 
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