Who won the Battle of Jutland?
Neither side won outright. Germany sank more: 14 British ships and over 6,000 men against 11 German ships and over 2,500 men, so Germany claimed a victory. But the British Grand Fleet kept control of the North Sea, the blockade of Germany held, and the High Seas Fleet never again sought a fleet battle.1
On the afternoon of 31 May 1916, in the North Sea off the coast of Jutland, the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet met in the only full clash of dreadnought battle fleets of World War I. In about twelve hours of fighting three British battlecruisers blew up, more than 8,500 men died, and both sides claimed the victory. The Germans still call it the Battle of the Skagerrak. Our 31 May page tells the day in brief; this is the full story.2
Jutland was the climax of the naval war covered in our guide to the war at sea in World War I, and it was fought by the same admirals who had met at Dogger Bank sixteen months earlier. For the two navies behind it, see the military histories of Britain and Germany.3
Why did the British and German fleets fight at Jutland?
Before the war Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz built the German battle fleet as a “risk fleet”: big enough, he hoped, that Britain would not dare fight it. Britain answered with the dreadnought race and, in 1912, with a plan to blockade Germany from a distance instead of seeking a decisive battle off the German coast. When war came, the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow in Orkney and the patrols in the Channel closed the North Sea, and German trade with the Atlantic stopped.4
That left the Germans with a hard choice. The Grand Fleet had almost twice as many dreadnoughts and heavier guns, so the High Seas Fleet could not seek battle with all of it. It sat in port as a “fleet in being”, which frustrated a navy trained for one great battle and a public promised one by years of naval propaganda. The German answer was to try to catch and destroy part of the British fleet at a time.5
Raids on the English coast were part of that answer. In December 1914 German warships shelled Hartlepool, Scarborough and Whitby, and in January 1915 Hipper's battlecruisers met Beatty's at Dogger Bank, where the Blücher was sunk and the rest escaped. The British codebreakers of Room 40 gave only partial warning of the December raid, but read the German signals in time for Dogger Bank.6
In January 1916 Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer took command of the High Seas Fleet. Michael Epkenhans, a German naval historian, describes him as more offensive than his predecessor, but, given British superiority, Scheer aimed only to lure out, trap and destroy parts of the Grand Fleet, wearing down British strength before any decisive battle. The Imperial War Museums put it the same way: Scheer hoped to destroy Beatty's battlecruisers before Jellicoe's battleships could arrive.7
What was Scheer's plan, and how did the British know?
Scheer's first plan was a raid on Sunderland. His order of 18 May 1916 says the bombardment was meant to force the British to send out forces, which the High Seas Fleet would attack from south of the Dogger Bank while U-boats lay in wait off the British bases. Andrew Lambert sums it up as a plan to draw Jellicoe over a submarine ambush and then engage part of his fleet.8
The raid needed long-range airship scouting, and that could not be counted on. So on 30 May Scheer chose a safer course: an advance north toward the Skagerrak, where the coast of Jutland covered his flank. Hipper's battlecruisers would sweep for British merchant ships off southern Norway, and the battle fleet would follow, hoping that only part of the Grand Fleet would come out to meet them.9
The British were already listening. Early in the war the Admiralty had obtained three German naval codebooks, one of them taken by the Russians from the cruiser Magdeburg after she ran aground in the Baltic, and its codebreakers in Room 40 read German naval signals. On 30 May they saw that the High Seas Fleet was about to sail, and that evening Jellicoe left Scapa Flow and Beatty left Rosyth. When the Germans put to sea on 31 May, the Grand Fleet was already out.10
Scheer did not know this. Jellicoe later quoted the published German account of the battle to show that the Germans had no idea the whole Grand Fleet was at sea. Chuck Steele, writing on the Grand Fleet, concludes that superior signals intelligence let the British meet Scheer before he could finish off Beatty.11
The Run to the South: how did Beatty lose two battlecruisers?
In the afternoon of 31 May the light cruisers screening both forces sighted each other, and the battlecruisers closed. Beatty had six battlecruisers, supported by the four fast Queen Elizabeth-class battleships of Rear Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas's 5th Battle Squadron. Hipper had five battlecruisers. Hipper turned south to draw the British onto Scheer's battle fleet, and the two lines fought on parallel courses in what the British called the Run to the South.12
It went badly for Beatty. Steele argues that in his haste to reach Hipper he outran Evan-Thomas's battleships and gave up the range and weight of shot his ships should have enjoyed. Indefatigable blew up, and soon afterwards Queen Mary; in both ships German shells reached the ammunition magazines. Together the two ships took more than 2,200 men with them, while Hipper's force suffered only minor losses.13
Aboard his flagship Lion, Beatty turned to Ernle Chatfield beside him with the most famous line of the battle, as it was later reported: “Chatfield, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.”14
The Run to the North: how did Beatty lead Scheer to Jellicoe?
Then the trap turned round. Commodore William Goodenough's light cruisers, scouting ahead, sighted the whole High Seas Fleet coming up from the south. Beatty turned north, and now it was the Germans who followed, toward a Grand Fleet they did not know was there. Hipper's plan to lead Beatty into Scheer's guns had failed; instead Beatty was leading Scheer to Jellicoe.15
Ahead of Jellicoe, Rear Admiral Horace Hood's 3rd Battle Cruiser Squadron was racing south to help Beatty. Its scout, the light cruiser Chester, ran into four German light cruisers and was badly hit. Her forward gun crew was cut down, but the sight-setter, sixteen-year-old Boy First Class Jack Cornwell, stayed at his post though mortally wounded. He died in hospital in Grimsby on 2 June and was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.16
Hood's battlecruisers then joined the fight against Hipper. The German light cruiser Wiesbaden was left crippled between the fleets, and Hipper's flagship Lützow was hit so hard that she later had to be given up. But then Invincible, Hood's flagship, blew up after a few hits. Only six of her crew of more than a thousand survived; Hood was among the dead.17
Crossing the T: how did Scheer escape Jellicoe?
Jellicoe's twenty-four battleships were steaming in six columns, and Beatty's reports had told him little about where the enemy was. A little after six in the evening (GMT) he deployed them into a single line of battle. Lambert notes that this gave him the better light, put his fleet between Scheer and the German bases, and crossed the German “T”: his whole line could fire on the head of Scheer's column.18
Scheer could barely see the British ships, hidden in smoke and mist, while his own stood out against the clear western horizon. His leading battleships were taking heavy punishment, and he ordered a battle turn-away: every ship turned round at once and steamed away on the opposite course, a maneuver his fleet had practiced in peacetime. In a few minutes the High Seas Fleet vanished into haze and smoke.19
Then Scheer turned back east, straight at the British again. In his own account he explains why. It was still too early for the cover of night; steaming away would look like a retreat and leave his damaged ships to be sacrificed; a second determined advance would surprise the enemy, upset his plans, and make it easier to break away after dark. He also hoped to save the crew of the crippled Wiesbaden. Epkenhans, writing a century later, says simply that at about a quarter past seven Scheer “again ran into the whole Grand Fleet”.20
The second time was worse. Scheer escaped only with another turn-away, covered by his battlecruisers, ordered to throw themselves at the head of the British line, and by an almost suicidal attack of his torpedo boats. Jellicoe turned his battleships away from the torpedoes, which did little harm, but the turn opened the range and the Germans were gone. The turn-away was debated for decades, and Jellicoe gave a long part of his reflections on the battle to defending this way of meeting a massed destroyer attack.21
What happened in the night after the battle?
Jellicoe did not want a night action, because the Grand Fleet had serious weaknesses in night fighting. He steamed south through the night between Scheer and his bases, planning to renew the battle at daybreak.22
Scheer had other ideas. He set course for Horns Reef off the Danish coast, and in a series of confused clashes with British destroyers and cruisers his fleet pushed through the rear of the British line. Signals went astray and ships that saw the Germans did not report it: Epkenhans blames erroneous signals and misunderstandings, and Lambert writes that Jellicoe was “left in the dark by his subordinates”.23
The night cost both sides. Lützow, too badly damaged to keep up, was abandoned and sunk by her own escorts between one and two in the morning of 1 June (GMT). British destroyers torpedoed the old battleship Pommern, which blew up, and the light cruisers Frauenlob and Rostock were also torpedoed in the night fighting. Seydlitz, flooded forward, only just reached port.24
By the early morning of 1 June Scheer was safe behind his minefields and on his way into Wilhelmshaven. The Grand Fleet was back in its bases on 2 June and, after refueling, reported ready for sea at four hours' notice that evening.25
How many ships and men were lost at Jutland?
Britain lost fourteen ships: the battlecruisers Indefatigable, Queen Mary and Invincible, three armored cruisers and eight destroyers, 110,000 to 113,000 tons by EBSCO's and Epkenhans's counts. Epkenhans gives 6,094 British dead; the Imperial War Museums give over 6,000.26
Germany lost eleven ships: the battlecruiser Lützow, the pre-dreadnought Pommern, four light cruisers (Wiesbaden, Elbing, Rostock and Frauenlob) and five torpedo boats, about 61,000 to 62,000 tons by Scheer's and Epkenhans's counts. Epkenhans gives 2,551 German dead; the Imperial War Museums give over 2,500.27
The numbers were not settled at once. Scheer's own estimate, printed again in his memoirs in 1920, still credited his fleet with sinking a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship; in fact Warspite, badly hit when her steering jammed, made her own way home to Rosyth. And Scheer admitted that the Naval Staff in Berlin kept the loss of Lützow secret, which, he wrote, created the impression that German success had been inflated.28
In scale, nothing like it had been seen before. Epkenhans counts 151 British and 91 German warships, making Jutland the largest naval battle in history until Leyte Gulf in 1944; the Imperial War Museums count about 250 ships and 100,000 men.29
Who won the Battle of Jutland?
The German case rests on the count. Epkenhans writes that the Germans, home safe, claimed victory, and that in losses of men and material they were right. The German public, Stephan Huck of the German Naval Museum writes, saw the battle as an overwhelming victory at sea. Steele agrees that Germany could claim a tactical success, having destroyed more ships than it lost.30
The British case rests on what happened next. In Steele's words, “operationally and strategically the fight confirmed Britain's command of the seas”. Lambert calls Jutland the strategic victory that kept British command of the sea. The Imperial War Museums add that it let the blockade go on, a blockade that helped bring about Germany's defeat in 1918. The Grand Fleet could replace its losses; the High Seas Fleet could not change the balance of strength.31
Scheer himself conceded the point within weeks. In his report to the Kaiser he wrote that “even the most successful result from a high sea battle will not compel England to make peace”, and that only a U-boat war on British trade could bring victory. Huck reads the report as an admission that the ideas behind the whole German naval program had failed.32
For the British the battle was a disappointment all the same. Epkenhans notes that in Britain it was seen as a missed chance to annihilate the enemy, and Steele that Jellicoe was criticized for not delivering another Trafalgar. Put together, these readings give the verdict used on this page: a German tactical success, a British strategic victory, and no decision of the kind either navy had hoped for.33
Why did the British battlecruisers blow up?
Battlecruisers carried battleship guns at cruiser speed, and paid for it with thinner armor. Jellicoe himself blamed the armor: he wrote that his battlecruisers were very inadequately protected compared with the German ships, and that his despatch was edited so as not to draw attention to it while the war lasted.34
The Admiralty's inquiry pointed elsewhere. As Paul Halpern summarizes it, the losses were caused less by thin armor than by hazardous ammunition handling: to raise the rate of fire, safeguards against flash reaching the magazines had been ignored. Steele ties this to Beatty's command: British efforts to raise the rate of fire had led to dangerous ways of stowing and handling ammunition. The argument about the battlecruiser as a type has never quite ended.35
How did Germany remember the Battle of the Skagerrak?
In Germany the battle became a myth during the war itself. Epkenhans describes a story of German heroism winning a great victory over “perfidious Albion”: streets and squares were named after the Skagerrak, and a Skagerrak Day was celebrated each year. The myth only faded in the mid-1960s.36
Behind it lay a harder truth. Huck shows how the fleet that had won the “victory” spent the rest of the war mostly in port, its crews losing faith in their officers. In 1918 that frustration exploded into mutiny, and the wish to restore the navy's honor helped drive the scuttling of the interned fleet at Scapa Flow in 1919. Scheer himself, writing soon afterwards, hailed “the deed accomplished at Scapa Flow” as proof of the navy's old spirit.37
What happened after Jutland?
Scheer got his way on the U-boats. Germany began unrestricted submarine warfare on 1 February 1917. Jellicoe, by then First Sea Lord, had to meet the U-boat threat; the convoy system eventually beat it.38
The High Seas Fleet put to sea again, in August 1916 and later, but the battle fleets never fought another action. In late 1916 Beatty took over the Grand Fleet. In the autumn of 1918 German crews refused to sail on a last sortie, their mutiny helped bring down the empire, and in November 1918 most of the High Seas Fleet steamed into British custody. The rest of the story is told in our articles on the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight of 1917 and the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow.39
Jutland still ranks among the greatest naval battles because of what it decided without a decision: Britain kept the sea, Germany turned to the submarine, and the age of the great battleship fleet reached its high point in a single afternoon and evening.40
Where was the Battle of Jutland fought?
In the North Sea off the west coast of Jutland, the peninsula of mainland Denmark, toward the entrance of the Skagerrak, the strait between Denmark and Norway. The Germans named the battle after the Skagerrak; the British after Jutland. The British came from Scapa Flow, Invergordon and Rosyth in Scotland, the Germans from their bases around Wilhelmshaven, and the Germans went home past Horns Reef off the Danish coast.41
