DETAILS OF NAVAL DESIGN FROM JUTLAND. 69 
After the battle the splinter nets below the gratings were found full of fragments, which 
confirms the opinion held as to the necessity for some additional protection below those grat- 
ings which receive the direct impact. 
Rather an extraordinary thing occurred on the Derfflinger. In the middle of the battle 
the main central or plotting room suddenly filled with gas and had to be abandoned. Grave 
fears were felt for the safety of the ship, since it seemed impossible that, without great gen- 
eral damage, gas should have penetrated to this carefully isolated compartment. Somewhat 
later, however, the exhaust fans were started by men entering with gas masks, and the com- 
partment was at once cleared of gas. It was then found that the gas from the powder fires in 
the after turrets, and probably also from the ship’s own guns, and from shells exploding 
aboard, had passed down the voice tubes to the central and temporarily put the station out of 
commission. 
Large volumes of gas from similar causes also filled the Derfflinger’s engine rooms so 
that men were overcome and died, and for a long time the engine-room force had to work in 
gas masks. 
We may feel sure that no poison-gas shells were used in this battle, and the flooding of 
the central and engine rooms with gas resulted only from powder fires and smoke from 
other sources. However, the result was the abandonment of one station and the complete use 
of gas masks and loss of men in the other. There was clearly shown here the danger from 
gas penetration through voice tubes, and in fact through any form of communication between 
compartments through which gases may pass. 
Torpedo nets had been used both by English and Germans for many years before ie 
battle, the former having, it is believed, been the first of all navies to introduce their use. 
As far as is known, the British removed them from their ships before Jutland; at least 
photographs made on that day do not snow them, and there is no mention of them in the 
accounts of the battle. The Germans, however, went into battle with the nets on board 
stowed brailed up against the side in sea position. Before the day and night were over they 
regretted many times, it is believed, that they had not left them behind. 
The Derfflinger, as has been referred to before, had been handled very roughly during 
the day battle between the fast squadrons of the two fleets. Later that evening, shortly after 
the two forces had lost touch, word was suddenly received on the bridge that the ship must 
stop. The after-torpedo net had been shot away and was hanging in such a position over the 
port propeller that it might foul at any minute. So the ship was stopped and she drifted 
about for a time long enough, and it must have been considerable, to haul the net on board 
and secure it so that it could not get away again. Had this happened an hour or so earlier, 
the Derfflinger would have lain stopped under the guns of the British fleet, and it is not hard 
to imagine that the Germans under those conditions would have taken one battle cruiser 
less back to port. 
That torpedo-net troubles were not confined to the Derfflinger is confirmed by Admiral 
Scheer himself, who states that after the battle the nets on most of the ships were so dam- 
aged that it was impossible to remove them. In many cases they hung down in festoons, 
so that it was a wonder that propellers were not entangled. 
It has been realized for some time that nets could be of service only to ships at anchor 
or at the slowest speed. Now we have it most clearly shown that they may become a grave 
menace to ships in battle. It would seem, then, that the case against the torpedo nets is 
complete. 
