Most Signifigant WWI Battle?

 

OK, but the Japanese didn't have the inferior fleet in the 1890s either (I assume you're suggesting they had the inferior fleet but still did not adopt the 'fleet-in-being' strategy, and nevertheless won).

 

Technically, China had two battleships, yes, and Japan 'only' cruisers, but Zhenyuang and Dingyuan were already some 15 years old in a period of fast-changing warship development, and the Japanese cruisers were much newer. Moreover, after the two 'battleships', the next EIGHT ships in order of size engaged at the Yalu were all Japanese. Only two Japanese warships were less than 3,000 tons: ten of the Chinese ones were under 3,000 tons.

 

Of course, Japanese logistics, discipline and leadership were all also superior.

 

I think you mean the british battlecruisers....Queen Mary and Invinvible were hit and blown up by Derfflinger and perhaps Seydlitz.  The German battlecruisers were in turn badly handled by the Brits, with Derffliger heavily damaged, and put out of action for the rest of the year, Seydlitz flooded and barely limping back to the Jade estuary, and Luetzow so badly damaged she was abandoned and sunk by the Germans.  The culprit here was the flawed thinking of the use of battlecruisers.  When under fire, speed is not armor.

 

The four Queen Elizabeth battleships, along with the rest of the fleet, increased the effectiveness of their gunnery as the day-light battle progressed, and kept the Germans at such long range that they did not threaten the British battle squadrons.  Of course the night action was terribly confused with collisions and much less effective marksmanship. 

 

The longer range gunnery of the Grand Fleet's larger guns also kept the German destroyers and cruisers at arm's length and forced them to launch torpedo attacks at such long range that the torpedoes themselves were running very slowly on their compressed air by the time they reached the British battleships.  The torpedo attacks certainly disrupted the British operations, but they were able to maneuver to avoid the slowed torpedoes. 

 

The British destroyers lost 8 to German 5, but they had more to lose.  The Germans and British both used their torpedo flotillas aggressively, screening and attacking, but the German boats caused little or no damage to the larger units.

 

Other than the suffering of both sides' battlecruisers, Jutland was pretty much a long range gunnery duel, and the larger number of British battleships, with larger guns, kept the perceived German advantage in torpedoes in check, and as a result the High Seas Fleet as well.

 

I just wanted to emphasize that the QE battleships were grand old ladies, and served well in both wars.  Malaya and Warspite had damage at Jutland, but were back with the fleet by July.

 

EDIT:  Before someone jumps on me, yes the Princess Royal also blew up, and the von Der Tann also had heavy damage at Jutland (all battlecruisers).  German ships were designed with better watertight compartmentalization, had wider beams for underwater bulges, etc.  However, the survivability was cancelled out by the numbers of British capital ships, and by their larger guns.

 

     

 

       

 

What you say does make sense.  The battlecruisers, however, IMO were a flawed concept.  They seem to have presented a temptation to the Admiralty to merely increase the number of big guns in the fleet regardless of their thinner armor.  If they had been intended for running down commerce raiders, etc., maybe they made more sense, but other than HMAS Australia (and the two at Falklands) I don't think any of them were away from the Grand Fleet.  In the Indian Ocean, the raider SMS Emden was taken care of by an Australian cruiser, so they didn't appear to be needed for that duty...