Battle of Jutland

Jutland was the one full-scale clash between the British and German battle fleets in the First World War. Over 31 May and 1 June 1916, in the North Sea off the coast of Denmark's Jutland peninsula, about 250 warships fought a confused series of actions. Britain lost more ships and men, but the German fleet returned to harbour and never again seriously challenged British control of the sea. It was the last major naval battle fought mainly by battleships.

Britain's Grand Fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, had 28 dreadnought battleships to Germany's 16. The German High Seas Fleet could not hope to win an open battle, so its commander from early 1916, Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, planned to lure part of the British fleet into a trap. Vice-Admiral Franz Hipper's fast battlecruisers would draw out Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty's battlecruiser force and lead it onto Scheer's battleships, while submarines waited along the British routes. But British codebreakers learned that a major operation was coming, and on 30 May Jellicoe put to sea with the whole Grand Fleet before the German submarines were ready.

That afternoon, 31 May, Beatty met Hipper's battlecruisers sooner than the Germans had expected. In the running fight that followed, two British battlecruisers blew up when German shells set off their magazines. HMS Indefatigable sank almost at once, leaving only two survivors from a crew of 1,019, and HMS Queen Mary followed; only nine of her 1,275 men survived. Beatty is said to have remarked that there seemed to be something wrong with "our bloody ships" that day.

When Beatty sighted the main German fleet, whose presence at sea had been unknown to the British, he turned north. The Germans followed, and so were drawn towards Jellicoe's battleships.

From about 18:30 the two main fleets were in contact. Jellicoe deployed his battleships into a single long line across the German line of advance, so that his ships could bring all their guns to bear while the leading German ships could reply with only their forward guns. The battlecruiser HMS Invincible was struck and sank within about 90 seconds, but the German fleet was badly placed. Scheer escaped by ordering all his ships to reverse course together in a well-drilled emergency turn, and when he ran into the British line again, he did so a second time, at 19:17, covering the turn with a destroyer torpedo attack and a near-suicidal charge by his battered battlecruisers.

After dark Jellicoe placed his fleet between the Germans and their bases, hoping to renew the battle at dawn. But Scheer forced his way through the light forces at the rear of the British fleet and slipped home past Horns Reef. Messages that might have revealed his route never reached Jellicoe. In the night fighting the old German battleship Pommern was torpedoed and blew up with all 839 aboard, and the damaged battlecruiser Lützow was scuttled.

Britain lost 14 ships, including three battlecruisers, and more than 6,000 men killed; Germany lost 11 ships, among them a battlecruiser and a pre-dreadnought, and about 2,550 killed. Both sides claimed victory. The British press criticised the failure to win a decisive result, and supporters of Jellicoe and Beatty argued for years about their conduct. Yet the strategic position was unchanged: the British blockade held, and the High Seas Fleet avoided further fleet battles. Germany turned instead to unrestricted submarine warfare against shipping, a decision that helped bring the United States into the war in April 1917. British investigations afterwards pointed to weak armour, unsafe handling of ammunition and poor signalling as causes of the heavy losses.

Our 1914 map shows the German Empire, the British Empire and Denmark as they stood during the war.