Talk:Battle of Dover Strait (1917)

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The best bit, though!

Arthur Marder in From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Volume IV on page 107 mentions that one of the weapons HMS Broke employed against G42 while they were intertwined was "flung cups of hot cocoa", which surely must rate as gloriously notable.

4.16.212.196 (talk) 13:30, 16 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Destroyers or Torpedo boats?

Were the German ships destroyers or torpedo boats? ~~This article mentions them as both.~~ --Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 01:16, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the article linked to it, SMS G85 says that it was a torpedo boat. Here it says all the German ships were destroyers. --Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 01:23, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The confusion is probably due to the developments of destroyers and torpedo boats in this period, and differences in nomenclature of the different navies. Torpedo boat development produced larger and larger designs in the early 20th century, some even being termed 'torpedo boat destroyers'. Eventually the torpedo boat designation dies out, instead becoming either a small destroyer design, sometimes termed an escort destroyer (ie. the British Hunt class destroyers), or a smaller attack craft, which the British and others termed Motor Torpedo Boats, and the Germans Schnellboot, Vorpostenboot, etc, though they retained the designation for longer than the allies, with the Elbing class torpedo boat being a late example. Nowadays these types of craft come under the designation of frigate, corvette, etc. By the First World War, the British tended to use the term destroyer to refer to its light fleet support and escort units, whilst the Germans were still using 'flottentorpedoboot', and would do so for some time to come. So though the designs, roles, capabilities etc of the German 'torpedo boats' and the British 'destroyers' that faced each other at Dover Strait were very similar, they were referred to in different ways by either side. British accounts of the battle might therefore use their own nomenclature and refer to the 'German destroyers', the Germans would call their ships 'torpedo boats' and later historians would make their own choices about what to call them. So the ships at Dover Strait could be either, depending on who was describing them. Benea (talk) 14:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the German ship classes were at the time known as "Großes Torpedoboot", or "Large torpedo boat". Benea is quite correct in stating that the ships were largely equivalent, and just had different names. It's analogous to how the US Navy reclassified their destroyer escorts as frigates in the 70s, while the RN had been calling comparable ships frigates for quite some time. Parsecboy (talk) 03:36, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This seems resolved, so I've fixed it and removed the tag. Regards, Xyl 54 (talk) 14:24, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Battle of Dover Strait redirect

Why does Battle of Dover Strait redirect here? Battle of Dover Strait (1916) is a bigger article, so shouldn't it redirect there (or better yet, be a disambiguation page)?108.82.45.53 (talk) 00:55, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]