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Battle of Jutland
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Everything about Battle Of Jutland totally explained
The Germans' plan was to use Vice-Admiral Franz Hipper’s fast scouting group of five modern battlecruisers to lure Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty’s battlecruiser squadrons through a submarine picket line and into the path of the main German fleet and so destroy them. But the British had learned from signal intercepts that a major fleet operation was likely, and on 30 May Jellicoe sailed with the Grand Fleet to rendezvous with Beatty, passing the intended positions of the German submarine pickets before the submarines had reached those positions.
On the afternoon of 31 May Beatty encountered Hipper's battlecruiser force long before the Germans had expected, negating any submarine influence, but in a running battle Hipper successfully drew the British vanguard into the path of the High Seas Fleet. By the time Beatty turned towards the British main fleet he'd lost two battlecruisers along with his numerical advantage over Hipper. However the German fleet in pursuit of Beatty was drawn towards the main British fleet. From 18:30 hrs, when the sun was lowering on the western horizon ing the German forces, until nightfall at about 20:30 the two huge fleets — totaling 250 ships between them — were heavily engaged.
Fourteen British and eleven German ships were sunk with great loss of life. After sunset, and throughout the night, Jellicoe manœuvered to cut the Germans off from their base in hopes of continuing the battle in the morning, but under cover of darkness Scheer crossed the wake of the British fleet and returned to port.
Both sides claimed victory. The British had lost more ships and many more sailors, and the British press criticised the Grand Fleet's actions, but Scheer’s plan of destroying Beatty’s squadrons had also failed. The Germans continued to pose a threat that required the British to keep their battleships concentrated in the North Sea, but they never again contested control of the high seas. Instead, the German Navy turned its efforts and resources to unrestricted submarine warfare.
Background
German planning
The German High Seas Fleet had sixteen dreadnought battleships and were falling behind the British in battleship production. Since the British Grand Fleet had twenty-eight, there was little chance of defeating the British in a head-to-head clash of battleships. Therefore, the German strategy was to divide and conquer: by staging raids into the North Sea and bombarding the English coast, they hoped to lure out small British squadrons and pickets which could then be attacked and destroyed by superior forces or submarines. The German naval strategy, according to Scheer, was:
U-boats off the British naval bases and lure Beatty's battlecruiser squadrons out by sending a fast battlecruiser force under Hipper to raid the British coast at Sunderland. If all went well, after the British sortied in response to the raiding attack force, the British squadrons would be weakened by the picketing submarine ambush, and the Royal Navy's centuries-long tradition of aggressive action could be used to draw the pursuing but weakened units after Hipper's cruisers, towards the German main force under Scheer. It was hoped that Scheer would be able to effectively ambush a section of the British fleet and destroy it.
It was further hoped that, once a submarine had attacked successfully, fast escorts such as destroyers would be tied down conducting anti-submarine operations. The German plan thus had several strings to its bow, and had the Germans caught the British in the positions where they expected them to be, they'd have stood a chance of inflicting losses which would have helped to redress the material balance between the fleets.
Unfortunately for the German plan, the British had been given a copy of the main German code book from the light cruiser SMS Magdeburg, boarded by Russian naval officers after the ship ran aground in Russian territorial waters. Therefore intercepted German naval radio communications could usually be quickly deciphered; hence the British Admiralty was usually aware of German deployments and levels of activity, giving it an insight into, and forewarning of, German plans.
British response
The British intercepted and decrypted a German signal on 28 May ordering all ships to be ready for sea on the 30th. Further signals were intercepted and although they were not decrypted it was clear that a major operation was likely.
Not knowing the Germans' objective, Jellicoe and his staff decided to position the fleet to head off any attempt by the Germans to enter the North Atlantic, or the Baltic through the Skagerrak, by taking up a position off Norway where they could possibly cut off any German raid into the shipping lanes of the Atlantic, or prevent the Germans from heading into the Baltic. A position further west was unnecessary as that area of the North Sea could be patrolled by air using blimps and scouting aircraft.
Consequently, Admiral Jellicoe led the Grand Fleet of twenty-four battleships and three battlecruisers eastwards out of Scapa Flow before Hipper's raiding force left the Jade Estuary on 30 May and the German High Seas Fleet could follow. Beatty's faster force of six battlecruisers and four battleships left the Firth of Forth on the next day, and Jellicoe's intention was to rendezvous west of the mouth of Skagerrak off the coast of Jutland and wait for the Germans or for their intentions to become clear. The planned position gave him the widest range of responses to likely German intentions.
The Admirals
» See the respective article of each admiral:
After the battle the Admiralty produced a report critical of the cordite handling practices. By this time Jellicoe had been promoted to First Sea Lord, and Beatty to command of the Grand Fleet; the report, which indirectly placed part of the blame for the disaster on the fleet's officers, wasn't widely distributed, and effectively suppressed from public scrutiny.
Controversy
At the time Jellicoe was criticised for his caution and for allowing Scheer to escape. Beatty in particular was convinced that Jellicoe had missed a tremendous opportunity to win another Trafalgar and annihilate the High Seas Fleet. Jellicoe was promoted away from active command to become the professional head of the Royal Navy, First Sea Lord, while Beatty replaced him as commander of the British Grand Fleet.
The controversy raged within the Navy and in public for about a decade after the war. Criticism focused on Jellicoe's decision at 19:15. Scheer had ordered his cruisers and destroyers forward in a torpedo attack to cover the turning away of his battleships. Jellicoe chose to turn away to the southeast and so keep out of range of the torpedoes. If Jellicoe had instead turned to the west, could his ships have dodged the torpedoes and destroyed the German fleet? Jellicoe himself, in a letter to the Admiralty months before the battle, had stated that he intended to turn his fleet away from any mass torpedo attack (that being the universally accepted proper tactical response to such attacks, practiced by all the major navies of the world
The stakes were very high, the pressure on Jellicoe was immense, and his caution is certainly understandable — his judgment might have been that even 90% odds in favour were not good enough on which to bet the British Empire. The former First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill said of the battle that Jellicoe "was the only man on either side who could have lost the war in an afternoon.".
The criticism of Jellicoe also fails to give enough credit to Scheer, who was determined to preserve his fleet by avoiding the superior firepower of the full British battle line, and who showed great skill in effecting his escape.
Beatty's actions
On the other hand some of Jellicoe's supporters condemned the actions of Admiral Beatty for the British failure to achieve a complete victory. Although Beatty was undeniably a brave man, his mismanagement of the initial encounter with Hipper's squadron and the High Seas Fleet cost the British considerable advantage in the first hours of the battle. His most glaring failure was in not providing Jellicoe with periodic information on the position, course and speed of the High Seas Fleet. Beatty, aboard the battlecruiser Lion, left behind the four fast battleships of the 5th Battle Squadron--the most powerful warships in the world at the time--engaging with six ships when better control would have given him ten against Hipper’s five. Though Beatty's larger guns outranged Hipper's and guns by thousands of yards, Beatty held his fire for 10 minutes and closed the enemy squadron until within range of the Germans' superior gunnery, under lighting conditions that favored the Germans. Most of the British losses in tonnage occurred in Beatty's force.
Losses
See Also: Damage to major ships at the Battle of Jutland
British
Battlecruisers Indefatigable, Queen Mary, Invincible
Armoured cruisers Black Prince, Warrior, Defence
Flotilla Leaders Tipperary
Destroyers Shark, Sparrowhawk, Turbulent, Ardent, Fortune, Nomad, Nestor
German
Battlecruiser Lützow
Pre-Dreadnought Pommern
Light cruisers Frauenlob, Elbing, Rostock, Wiesbaden
(Heavy Torpedo-Boats) Destroyers V48, S35, V27, V4, V29
Selected Honours from Jutland
The Victoria Cross is the highest military decoration awarded for valour "in the face of the enemy" to members of the British Empire armed forces. The Ordre pour le Mérite was the Kingdom of Prussia and consequently the German Empire's highest military order until the end of the First World War.
Victoria Cross
The Hon. Edward Barry Stewart Bingham (HMS Nestor)
John Travers Cornwell (HMS Chester)
Francis John William Harvey (HMS Lion)
Loftus William Jones (HMS Shark)
Pour le Mérite
Reinhard Scheer
Franz Hipper
Status of the survivors and wrecks
On the 90th anniversary of the battle, in 2006, the Ministry of Defence announced that the 14 British vessels lost in the battle were being designated as protected places under the Protection of Military Remains Act. The last living veteran of the battle is Henry Allingham, a British RAF (originally RNAS) airman, aged 111. One ship survives and is still in commission as a Royal Naval Reserve depôt in Belfast, Northern Ireland: the light cruiser HMS Caroline.
Further Information
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