This post is based on the latest trailer for Battlefield 1, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymwXbF1VTKU. While most of the trailer's focused on the game's representation of the fighting in the Middle East, there's a short clip of a naval engagement starting at around 1:19. This gets several things wrong about WW1 naval combat.

The first thing we'll look at are in this screencap from the start of the clip. In the image, we can see several torpedo boats and aircraft moving in to attack a dreadnought battleship. The battleship is a British King George V class, which can be seen from the pair of funnels forward of the midships turret, as well as the general superstructure design (providing a pleasing symmetry with Battlefield 1942, where the Allied battleship was the class's eponymous successor). The torpedo boats are Italian MAS boats - the low superstructure with a curving cutaway aft is a clear giveaway. This throws up an obvious issue: the Italians and British were on the same side. Even if we ignore this, the use of MAS boats was mostly limited to the Mediterranean, while the KGVs spent the war with the Grand Fleet in the North Sea. The Germans had their own designs for motor boats, including torpedo launching and explosive designs. Additionally, British dreadnought battleships were typically not risked close to a hostile coast where MTBs were a major threat. However, this is only a minor flaw, as there was a case where MTBs attacked and sank a dreadnought battleship. On the 10th June 1918, two Italian MAS boats attacked an Austro-Hungarian force off the Croatian coast. They managed to hit the dreadnought Szent István with two torpedoes, causing major flooding. Szent István sank two and a half hours after receiving her first hit. This somewhat justifies their inclusion of both battleships and torpedo boats, though I question their choice of craft.

Less justifiable is their inclusion and use of aircraft. On the one hand, the First World War did see a major increase in the use of airpower at sea. By 1918, aircraft were carrying anti-submarine patrols, attacking shipping, and flying strikes against land targets from early carriers. However, the game looks to greatly overstate these capabilities, and misrepresents the way they would be used.

The trailer focuses on a torpedo carrying aircraft, the belly of which can be seen here, with its torpedo. Torpedo carrying aircraft saw their genesis in WW1. The first such aircraft was the British Short 184 seaplane. Deployed to Gallipoli in 1915 aboard the seaplane carrier Ben-My-Chree, they saw several successes. On the 12 August 1915, an aircraft flown by Flight Commander Charles Edmonds attacked and sank a Turkish merchant, which had previously been torpedoed by the submarine E14. Five days later, he torpedoed another Turkish steamer, while his wingman, a Flight Lieutenant Dacre, sank a tugboat. However, the latter sinking demonstrated the limitations of the Short 184 - the torpedo weighed about as much as the aircraft could carry. Forced to land by engine trouble, Dacre had to taxi on the surface of the water to get into position to drop his torpedo, allowing him to take off. To replace the Short 184, the RN began to work on landplane aircraft, capable of operating from the carriers they were developing. Aircraft developed for this use include the Sopwith Cuckoo, Short Shirl and Blackburn Blackburd, all similar single-engined biplanes. Meanwhile, the Germans were organising squadrons of torpedo planes. These carried out attacks on British shipping in the North Sea, with their first attack sinking SS Gena off the Suffolk coast in 1916. The German torpedo planes were almost entirely large seaplanes. All of these aircraft are completely different from the aircraft portrayed in the trailer - as seen in this image it's a single-engined pusher landplane. The German aircraft had two engines, and were seaplanes. The British torpedo planes were single-engined, but in a tractor configuration. As such, the aircraft in game does not represent any of the major torpedo planes used in the war.

In terms of use, torpedo planes of WW1 were mostly used to attack merchant shipping, as opposed to their use against battleships as in the trailer. The Germans used theirs to attack British coastal shipping in the North Sea. As discussed earlier, the RN bombers from Ben-My-Chree targeted Turkish merchants in the Dardanelles and Sea of Marmara. This selection of targets resulted from the limitations of the aircraft and tactics available. The aircraft were generally too slow to attack fast-moving warships - a Short 184 or German Albatros W.5 might have only a 50 knot margin over a battleship moving at top speed. In contrast, the notoriously slow Douglas Devastator of WW2 had a speed advantage of 140 knots, while the biplane Fairey Swordfish had a speed advantage twice that of its WW1 counterparts. Plans to use torpedo bombers against warships aimed to catch a fleet in port. The RN had the most advanced such plan, utilising their new carriers and the Sopwith Cuckoo designed for them, but were unable to carry it out before the end of the war. The first formulation of this plan, created in 1917, called for a grand attack by eight carriers on the German High Seas Fleet in Wilhelmshaven. However, the Admiralty was unwilling to provide the resources for it, and this version of the plan was quashed. It would be resurrected on a smaller scale in late 1918, as Vindictive and Argus joined Furious in the RN's carrier arsenal. However, the war would end before the plan could be put into action. How close it came to completion can be seen in the card sent at Christmas 1918 by the officers of the RAF's torpedo bomber unit. It had a picture of the High Seas Fleet, along with the words 'Oh, that we might have met'. This was the closest any dreadnought came to being attacked by a torpedo bomber in WW1. It's a situation that the game does not seem to represent well - the German fleet would have been surprised at anchor, rather than being attacked while at sea.

This analysis has left out a couple of minor errors that seem evident from the trailer. The battleship does not have the escort you'd expect - dreadnoughts were not something risked lightly without the protection given by destroyers and cruisers. The effect of the torpedoes appears to tend more towards fire and surface explosions, rather than the waterspouts expected from underwater explosions. All this creates the impression of a game that has sacrificed historical accuracy in favour of creating an exciting, shocking spectacle.

Sources:

The Royal Naval Air Service in the First World War, Philip Jarrett, Pen and Sword Aviation, 2015

British Carrier Aviation: The Evolution of the Ships and Their Aircraft, Norman Friedman, Naval Institute Press, 1988

British Aircraft Carriers: Design, Development & Service Histories, David Hobbs, Seaforth, 2013

Fighting the Great War at Sea: Strategy, Tactics and Technology, Norman Friedman, Seaforth, 2014