Battle Of Jutland

4 Pages 1071 Words

The Battle of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland (known as Skagerrak in Germany), fought between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet, was the largest surface naval battle of all time,and the only major fleet action of WWI. The Battle of Jutland played a key role in the demise of the reputation of battle-cruisers, saw the first use of a carrier based aircraft in battle, and is one of the most controversial naval actions in the Royal Navy's long history. The significance of this battle is so numerous and apparent that I decided to explain it in order to remember the great role it played and will play in sea battles from that point on.
The Royal Navy started the war with a large advantage in capital ships over the Germans. The Germans realized that they were likely to lose a full fleet in battle and so they decided to even the odds by luring smaller parts of the Grand Fleet into traps to eventually bring about equality with the British, at which point they felt confident they would defeat them. They had planned to do this through careful battle tactics and pushing their large U-Boat fleet to its potential usage. In the spring of 1916 the U-Boat offensive against merchant shipping was restricted to prize rules, giving Scheer, the German Commander in Chief, more submarines than usual to use against warships. One of the tactics used was to station them off the major British naval basses and then entice the Grand Fleet out of harbor and over the waiting U-Boats. Initially, Scheer planned to raid Sunderland to draw out the Grand Fleet, but this relied on Zeppelin scouting and the weather ruled this out, so an alternative plan was used. He decided to send the battle-cruisers to the Skagerrak (the sea between southern Norway and Denmark), threatening British patrols and merchant ships in the area. This is when it got interesting. On the morning of May 31st the German High Seas Fleet made for sea hell bent on achieving their mis...