On 05Jun2020 0401, James Catchpole - jlcatchpole at googlemail.com (via
tml list) wrote:
> My understanding is that when the battlecruiser squadrons were
> deployed forward to Rosyth from Scapa Flow under Admiral Beatty, he
> was unhappy about the lack of time for them to practice together,
> especially in gunnery, due to the aggressive patrol schedule the
> Admiralty demanded. As a consequence, he ordered that the individual
> ships drilled for faster gunnery to compensate, reasoning that if they
> didn't have time to improve their accuracy they would just have to
> fire more shells. What he didn't do was check *how* they were
> achieving this, and that's when the gunnery crews started shorting on
> their safety drills when moving ammunition from the magazines. At the
> very least the ship's captains must have turned a blind eye, or known
> exactly what was happening and neither stopped it nor told the admiral.
The captains pretty much had to know, seeing as at least one didn't
allow it. They may have chosen to just pretend not to notice, but they
had to have known.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>