A straight night formation simplified station-keeping, but it also presented submarines and long-range torpedoes with a much more predictable target. The Royal Navy's emphasis on zigzagging grew from the loss of HMS Aboukir, HMS Cressy, and HMS Hogue to one submarine in 1914. The lesson was drilled so thoroughly that routine course changes could become an assumed part of normal steaming rather than a special reaction to a sighted threat. A sharp wartime loss had become durable fleet doctrine decades later.
Notable Point · 3:03:19-3:04:25
How the 1914 cruiser losses hardened Royal Navy zigzag doctrine
The Coral Sea discussion pauses to explain why the Royal Navy treated routine zigzagging as an institutional lesson paid for by three cruiser losses in 1914.