The Battle of Jutland: The Naval Battle of World War I 
 

      Britain’s Royal Navy, at the time of World War I had not fought a major naval engagement since their battle at Trafalgar in 1805. Thus at the time of the Battle of Jutland (30 May-1 June, 1916) they had no experience with new weapons that had been developed for naval warfare. The battle of Jutland pitted the British Grand Fleet under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe and Admiral David Beatty against the German High Seas Fleet under Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer and Franz von Hipper. Britain’s Grand Fleet had superior numbers, technology, and training, but the German’s plan was to lure smaller parts of the Grand Fleet into engagement with larger German forces.

      The British forces consisted of 28 battleship dreadnoughts—a new form of battleships with larger weapons and more armor. Accompanying this main fleet were 9 battlecruisers, 8 heavy cruisers, 26 light cruisers, and 78 destroyers. German forces included 16 dreadnoughts, 5 battlecruisers, 6 obsolete pre-dreadnought battleships, 11 light cruisers, and 61 torpedo boats. The British forces had an obvious numerical advantage, which was always Admiral Jellicoe’s goal due to his inexperience with new technology. The stage for battle was set after the Kaiser of Germany sanctioned offensive naval operations and Von Scheer developed a plan to reduce the British fleet to be the equivalent of the German fleet.

      By the morning of 30 May the British had received word of the mobilization and assembly of the German fleet, and within a few minutes of each other both fleets set sail. Before the main fleets actually met, German U-boats launched a completely ineffective attack against the British lines of ships. They failed to make any impression and the British Grand Fleet sailed on unhindered. Battlecruiser action began at approximately 14:20 on 31 May when a British ship (the Galatea) fired at extreme range on a German destroyer. The Galatea was later hit by a German patrol cruiser.

      Both the British and German fleets sailed in a similar formation, with battlecruisers scouting ahead and the bulk of the fleet sailing behind this scouting group. The first main phase of the battle began after the opening action of the Galatea against German ships; the battlecruiser lines of the British, under Admiral Beatty, began to chase the German battlecruisers into the maw of the High Seas fleet. After Beatty spotted the bulk of the German fleet he began to flee north, back towards Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet. However, during this battle the British numerical advantage was nullified by the German’s superior range-finding and improved shells, as well as Beatty’s failure to make use of new 15-inch guns on his newest ships. Beatty lost two ships: the Indefagitable and the Queen Mary.

      Quickly the Germans, chasing Beatty’s battlecruisers found themselves being bombarded by Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet; they had thought these ships to be too far north to intervene and were caught unawares. Scheer attempted to retreat behind Jellicoe’s forces—a fatal error that Jellicoe did not take advantage of. Just as the Germans retreated, the rest of the High Seas fleet arrived but fell quickly into a trap wherein their line of ships created a “T” formation with the British fleet. German ships suffered 27 hits and inflicted only 2.

The final phase of the battle took place during the evening of May 31 into 1 June.

Scheer ordered his ships to “battle-turn” away from the British fleet (a practiced tactic

that his fleet executed flawlessly), and then turned back to address the British fleet in a breaking-off action. He ordered a torpedo attack on the British line with devastating results. The rest of the night included intense fighting between smaller vessels, with capital ships remaining uninvolved due to the uncertainties of night fighting. Evening battles were characterized by much German movement and bad intelligence and information on the British side, leading to the major losses of ships and men during the evening and night. By the time Jellicoe and the British decided to act, any opportunity they had was lost.

      In the end, British forces lost almost 120,000 tons of ships and about 6,000 men, whilst Germany lost only 60,000 or so tons of ships and 2,500 men. Propagandists in Germany were quick to claim victory, believing that their inferior numbers had yet shown up the larger British fleet. However, Scheer’s plan of destroying the British fleet had also failed. The British could in some ways claim a strategic victory, as the German fleet remained in port for the rest of the war, besides small raids on the British coast. After the Battle of Jutland, the German High Seas fleet restricted itself mainly to submarine and nuisance raids.

      Royal Navy advisors learned much from Jutland and the battle lead to improved magazines and handling procedures for munitions aboard ships, as well as a complete redesign of armor-piercing shells. Also after the battle, Jellicoe was removed from the Grand Fleet and brought into the Admiralty and David Beatty took command of the British Fleet. Jutland was the largest and final battle between battleships. After this massive fleet action, aircraft carriers and submarines would come to the forefront of naval technology and the era of the battleship would end; thus Jutland became a learning experience for both navies, not simply an inconclusive battle in the First World War.