Just before four o'clock on the afternoon of May 31, 1916, a
British naval force commanded by Vice Admiral David Beatty confronts a squadron
of German ships, led by Admiral Franz von Hipper, some 75 miles off the Danish
coast. The two squadrons opened fire on each other simultaneously, beginning
the opening phase of the greatest naval battle of World War I, the Battle of
Jutland.
After the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, the German
navy chose not to confront the numerically superior British Royal Navy in a
major battle for more than a year, preferring to rest the bulk of its strategy
at sea on its lethal U-boat submarines. In May 1916, however, with the majority
of the British Grand Fleet anchored far away, at Scapa Flow, off the northern
coast of Scotland, the commander of the German High Seas Fleet, Vice Admiral
Reinhard Scheer, believed the time was right to resume attacks on the British
coastline. Confident that his communications were securely coded, Scheer
ordered 19 U-boat submarines to position themselves for a raid on the North Sea
coastal city of Sunderland while using air reconnaissance crafts to keep an eye
on the British fleet's movement from Scapa Flow. Bad weather hampered the airships,
however, and Scheer called off the raid, instead ordering his fleet—24
battleships, five battle cruisers, 11 light cruisers and 63 destroyers—to head
north, to the Skagerrak, a waterway located between Norway and northern
Denmark, off the Jutland Peninsula, where they could attack Allied shipping
interests and with luck, punch a hole in the stringent British blockade.
Unbeknownst to Scheer, however, a newly created intelligence
unit located within an old building of the British Admiralty, known as Room 40,
had cracked the German codes and warned the British Grand Fleet's commander,
Admiral John Rushworth Jellicoe, of Scheer's intentions. Consequently, on the
night of May 30, a British fleet of 28 battleships, nine battle cruisers, 34
light cruisers and 80 destroyers set out from Scapa Flow, bound for positions
off the Skagerrak.
At 2:20 p.m. on May 31, Beatty, leading a British squadron,
spotted Hipper's warships. As each squadron maneuvered south to better its
position, shots were fired, but neither side opened fire until 3:48 that
afternoon. The initial phase of the gun battle lasted 55 minutes, during which
two British battle cruisers, Indefatigable and Queen Mary were destroyed,
killing over 2,000 sailors. At 4:43 p.m., Hipper's squadron was joined by the
remainder of the German fleet, commanded by Scheer. Beatty was forced to fight
a delaying action for the next hour, until Jellicoe could arrive with the rest
of the Grand Fleet.
With both fleets facing off in their entirety, a great
battle of naval strategy began among the four commanders, particularly between
Jellicoe and Scheer. As sections of the two fleets continued to engage each
other throughout the late evening and the early morning of June 1, Jellicoe
maneuvered 96 of the British ships into a V-shape surrounding 59 German ships.
Hipper's flagship, Lutzow, was disabled by 24 direct hits but was able, before
it sank, to sink the British battle cruiser Invincible. Just after 6:30 on the
evening of June 1, Scheer's fleet executed a previously planned withdrawal
under cover of darkness to their base at the German port of Wilhelmshaven,
ending the battle and cheating the British of the major naval success they had
envisioned.
The Battle of Jutland—or the Battle of the Skagerrak, as it
was known to the Germans—engaged a total of 100,000 men aboard 250 ships over
the course of 72 hours. The Germans, giddy from the glory of Scheer's brilliant
escape, claimed it as a victory for their High Seas Fleet. At first the British
press agreed, but the truth was not so clear-cut. The German navy lost 11
ships, including a battleship and a battle cruiser, and suffered 3,058
casualties; the British sustained heavier losses, with 14 ships sunk, including
three battle cruisers, and 6,784 casualties. Ten more German ships had suffered
heavy damage, however, and by June 2, 1916, only 10 ships that had been
involved in the battle were ready to leave port again (Jellicoe, on the other
hand, could have put 23 to sea). On July 4, 1916, Scheer reported to the German
high command that further fleet action was not an option, and that submarine
warfare was Germany's best hope for victory at sea. Despite the missed
opportunities and heavy losses, the Battle of Jutland had left British naval
superiority on the North Sea intact. The German High Seas Fleet would make no
further attempts to break the Allied blockade or to engage the Grand Fleet for
the remainder of World War I.
