Assessment
The outcome of the Battle of Jutland was inconclusive, leading to controversy and a search for someone to blame, especially since the British lost more ships. Beatty was particularly unhappy with the official account of the battle and other historians took sides in support of him or Jellicoe. Beatty did not publish his analysis of the battle, while Jellicoe wrote two memoirs.
A number of serious errors have been identified in Beatty's handling of the Battle Cruiser Fleet at the Battle of Jutland:
He failed to engage the German battlecruisers (the I Scouting Group) with all his ships, thus throwing away a two-to-one numerical superiority and instead fighting six-to-five. Beatty was given command of the 5th Battle Squadron to replace a squadron of battlecruisers away for training. These were four of the most powerful ships in the world, but he positioned them so far away from his six battlecruisers that they were unable to take part in most of the engagement with Admiral Hipper's squadron of five battlecruisers.
Beatty did not take advantage of the time available to him between sighting the enemy and the start of fighting to position his battlecruisers to most effectively attack the enemy. At the point the German ships opened fire with accurately determined ranges for their guns, Beatty's ships were still manoeuvring, some could not see the enemy because of their own smoke, and hardly any had the opportunity of a period of steady course as they approached to properly determine target range. As a result, the German ships had a significant advantage in early hits, with obvious benefit. During this time he also lost the potential advantage of the larger guns on his ships: they could have commenced firing at a longer range than the German ships.
He did not ensure that signals sent to his ships were handled properly and received by the intended ships. Lost signals added to the confusion and lost opportunities during the battle. This issue had already arisen in previous battles, where the same signals officer, Ralph Seymour, had been involved, but no changes had been made. Although Beatty was supposed to act as a fast armoured scout and report to Jellicoe the exact position of the German ships he encountered, or to keep in contact with the German fleet while he retreated to the main British Grand Fleet, he failed to do so. This information was important to Jellicoe to know how best to position the main fleet to make the most of its eventual engagement with the German High Seas Fleet. Despite this, Jellicoe succeeded in positioning his ships to good advantage, relying on other closer cruisers for final knowledge of the German's position, but necessitating last-minute decisions.
Additionally, the gunnery of Beatty's ships was generally poor compared to the rest of the fleet. This was partly a consequence of his ships being stationed at Rosyth, rather than Scapa Flow with the main fleet, since local facilities at Rosyth were limited, but this was a problem identified months before Jutland which Beatty had failed to correct.
After the war a report of the battle was prepared by the Admiralty under First Sea Lord Rosslyn Wemyss. Before the report was published, Beatty was himself appointed First Sea Lord, and immediately requested amendments to the report. When the authors refused to comply, he ordered it to be destroyed and instead had prepared an alternative report, which proved highly critical of Jellicoe. Considerable argument broke out as a result, with significant numbers of servicemen disputing the published version, including Admiral Reginald Bacon, who wrote his own book about the battle, criticising the version sponsored by Beatty and highly critical of Beatty's own part in the battle.
Besides encouraging the publication of books and articles designed to praise his role at the Battle of Jutland and denigrate Jellicoe's, after his retirement Beatty assisted with the preparation of a 5,200 line poem "The Epic of Jutland" by Shane Leslie.
In 2022 U.S. Air Force Academy military historian Chuck Steele found Beatty's failures to improve communications between vessels before Jutland more glaring in light of his own personal awareness of how that had kept earlier victories at Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank from being as overwhelming as they could have been. Gordon Moore, Steele writes, was transferred to the Canary Islands after the latter engagement not for his failures in it but for complaining about Beatty's poor communications to Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty and a strong supporter of Beatty's. Steele also argues that Beatty should also have known how to effectively use his battle cruisers due to the role they had played in smashing the German East Asia Squadron at the Falkland Islands. He faults Beatty for having learned too much from his earlier experience leading troops on land, and Churchill and others for being too impressed with Beatty as the supposed second coming of Horatio Nelson to see that unlike Nelson Beatty did not appreciate the value of newer naval technology.
