None of the results that we had been taught to believe as gospel had happened

From Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie. Page 416.

“The Dogger Bank was the first sea battle between dreadnoughts whose high speed and heavy gun power dominated the action. Both the British and German Battle Cruiser Squadrons were accompanied by flocks of light cruisers and destroyers, but except in the opening moments near dawn and, at the end, in delivering the death strokes to Blücher, they played little part in the fighting. Neither submarines nor mines were involved, although fear of their presence affected British tactics. The preponderance of heavy gun power favored the British: Beatty’s five battle cruisers carried twenty-four 13.5-inch and sixteen 12-inch guns to Hipper’s eight 12-inch and twenty 11-inch guns. During the battle, the five British battle cruisers fired a total of 1,150 13.5-inch and 12-inch shells. The Germans fired 976 12-inch and 11-inch shells. Lion was hit by sixteen heavy shells from the German battle cruisers and one 8.2-inch shell from Blücher. Six heavy shell hits were recorded on Tiger and none on any of the other British ships except one 8.2-inch hit on Indomitable by Blücher. Seydlitz was hit by three heavy British shells—two from Lion (one of these nearly destroyed her) and one from Tiger. Derfflinger also was hit three times, once each by Lion, Tiger, and Princess Royal. Obviously, accuracy on both sides was poor: 3½ percent of the shells fired by the German battle cruisers hit a target while on the British side the percentage achieved by the three Cats firing at the three German battle cruisers was below 2 percent.

[A number of shells fired by the Cats were aimed at Blücher, while New Zealand and Indomitable fired only at Blücher.]

The dismal gunnery figures on both sides do not take into account the circumstances of the battle: high speed, long range, smoke, and the fact that no one on either side had ever fought this kind of battle before. Nevertheless, Lion was hit sixteen times and no German ship more than four times. Discussion of comparative gunnery began on board Lion even as the ship was being towed home. “My impression,” said Filson Young, “was that the German gunfire was better than ours initially, and they got on the target sooner. . . . To anyone sitting, as I was, on the target surrounded by the enemy’s shells, his shooting appeared to be painfully accurate; and, indeed, towards the end of the action, when two and possibly three ships were concentrating on Lion, she was very nearly smothered by their fire.” Young believed that one cause of poor shooting was that “we had no director firing [“a device by which all the guns can be aimed and fired simultaneously and accurately from one central position, generally on the foremast well above the smoke,” according to Young’s footnote definition] in any ship except Tiger.” Yet Tiger, using the new system, had scored only three hits and Lion, which lacked it, had scored four. The result was an erosion of confidence among British naval officers in their equipment, training, and tactics. “Every one of them,” said Young, “had been brought up on the theory of the big gun, the first blow, etc. We had the biggest guns and we got in the first blows, but none of the results that . . . [we] had been taught to believe as gospel had happened. . . . We had gone on hitting, and hitting, and hitting—and three of their four ships had got home. Why?