Since the beginning of the war, the two most powerful navies in the world had failed to
decisively engage, the British navy instead blockading the Germans to deprive them of
supplies, the Germans harassing international shipping with U-boats, but that changes this
week when mighty ships clash. 100 years ago this week was the Battle of Jutland.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week at Verdun the French tried and failed to retake Fort Douaumont, even though they
had managed to achieve air superiority there and the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army continued
its advance in Italy in the Trentino Offensive.
I’ll look there first today, as that offensive continued this week.
Now, within two weeks of the initial attack Italian Army Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna
had managed to get a new army of 180,000 men to the Trentino and the Italian Fifth Army
would guard the valley mouths, hopefully to prevent the Austrians from spilling out onto
the plains of Veneto, but this week the Austrians took Arsiero, just a few kilometers from the
plains. Asiago soon fell as well, and Cadorna exploded heads in the government by saying
that if enemy pressure continued, he would order a full-scale retreat almost to Venice.
30,000 Italian prisoners had been taken so far.
The week also saw some action on the Western Front.
The endless meat grinder at Verdun was still in full force, but further north at Ypres,
the Battle of Mont Sorrel- in older sources sometimes even called the Third Battle of
Ypres- began on June 2nd and saw two German attacks that penetrated the British lines
700m on a 3km front. The road to Ypres was now open and undefended.
The real news this week, though, was at sea.
Both the British and German fleets were by this time becoming more aggressive. Commander
of the British Fleet Sir John Jellicoe wanted to trap the German High Seas Fleet and his
opposite number Reinhard Scheer was trying to force a mistake. Scheer sent his fleet
into the Skagerrak to attack any British light forces and shipping there, but the 16 German
battleships and 6 pre-dreadnoughts, 5 battlecruisers, 11 light cruisers, and 63 destroyers also
wanted to come into contact with the British Grand Fleet, hoping to break it, and the naval
blockade of Germany.
However, aided by the intelligence operatives of Room 40 who decoded German wireless signals,
Jellicoe was forewarned and sent out his fleet, but the British were, in fact, heading into
a trap. There was nearly a score of U-boats waiting for them. But Scheer would be disappointed
since the ocean is big and the Grand Fleet, 28 British battleships, 9 battle cruisers,
34 light and armored cruisers, and 78 destroyers, passed them unobserved.
The Battle of Jutland would bring four leading admirals’ skills into play - Scheer and
Franz Hipper for the Germans, Jellicoe and Sir David Beatty for the British. The enemies
made contact when both sides went to check out a merchant ship that happened to be sailing
right between the fleets. Firing between cruisers kicked off at 14:28 May 31st, 1916, and the
Battle of Jutland had begun.
Hipper and his battle cruisers headed south, trying to draw Beatty in to Scheer’s main
fleet, still unseen. Beatty followed, aboard his flagship, the Lion. Fire opened between
them at 15:48. The Lion was hit and burst into flames, and would’ve sunk if the magazine
hadn’t flooded and put out the fire. The British Indefatigable was hit by two 11-inch
shells from the German Von der Tann that blew up the whole ship and killed all except two
of the ship’s 1,019 sailors. Then the Queen Mary was hit and blew to pieces. 1,266 men
were killed. Beatty seemed unmoved, and here’s the reaction of his flag captain, Alfred Chatfeld
(Hart),
“I was standing beside Sir David Beatty and we both turned around in time to see the
unpleasant spectacle. The thought of my friends in her flashed through my mind; I thought
also how lucky we had evidently been in the Lion. Beatty turned to me and said, “there
seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today! A remark that needed neither
comment nor answer. There WAS something wrong!”
What was wrong was that the British battlecruiser armor was not thick enough to handle the German
shells, and once a shell had penetrated the hull, inadequate anti-flash precautions meant
that a flash could rip straight down to the magazine, with terrifying results. No ship
on earth could survive explosions like that.
Soon Hipper had led Beatty almost into Scheer’s fleet, but Beatty’s 2nd light Cruiser squadron
was scouting ahead and spotted the long line of German battleships. Beatty actually reacted
like lightning, reversing course immediately and heading back toward the Grand Fleet, and
Scheer didn’t realize that every minute he headed north brought him closer to Jellicoe
and his massed ships.
Beatty, however, sent Jellicoe no useful reports about Scheer’s whereabouts, and soon Jellicoe’s
starboard column was upon the Germans. The 1st Cruiser Squadron under Rear Admiral Sir
Robert Arbuthnot aboard the Defence came under heavy fire and in a few seconds, the Defence
was sent to the bottom of the sea. Soon though, Jellicoe’s battlecruisers were showering
shells upon Hipper’s, and because of the light and the mist, the Germans couldn’t
see them to fire back, but just for a few moments the mist cleared, and the Germans
rained fire on the Invincible. The British naval maxim that “speed would be our armor”
was put to the test and found wanting when the Invincible exploded at 18:34, only six
men survived out of 1,032.
But Jellicoe’s dreadnought battleships were now in a long line blasting the exposed vanguard
of the Germans fleet, causing serious damage. Scheer ordered a turn movement to starboard
that the Germans had practiced, where the rear ship turns first and the successive ships
up the line follow suit, and the Germans soon disappeared from sight. Jellicoe did not follow.
He changed course and put himself between the German fleet and its base at Wilhelmshaven,
and when Scheer turned his ships again, they were again headed directly for the British,
and they came under heavy fire. He turned his battleships away and ordered his battlecruisers
to cover the retreat. They took terrible damage; the kind no British battlecruiser could’ve
withstood, but the Germans had better armor and were better subdivided below into watertight
compartments. The Germans got away, but the Grand Fleet was still between the High Seas
Fleet and its port, and when darkness fell, the question was, could Scheer evade the British
by night and return home?
Since several of his battlecruisers were near to sinking, Scheer took the shortest route,
via Horns reef, but Jellicoe didn’t know this and based on his last reports received
he thought the Northern Friesian coast route was the likely German one so Jellicoe headed
there, with his destroyer flotillas following five miles behind to cover the Horns reef
channel. So Jellicoe’s destroyers crashed into the German Fleet, but the British, unlike
the Germans, did not have properly shuttered searchlights, no star shells, and pretty much
no nighttime identification signals, so they were really wary of firing on the black shapes
heading toward them in the darkness in case they were their own ships. Oh, and nobody
told Jellicoe, with his mighty dreadnoughts five miles ahead, what was happening. The
British did manage to destroy the pre-dreadnought Pommern, killing her crew of 844, but the
High Seas Fleet swept past the British in the night.
The battered and bruised German battlecruisers, some even incapable of attack, limped through
the British columns, and were sighted several times, but none of dreadnoughts opened fire
on the incredulous Germans. The Grand Fleet sailed on, preparing for a new battle at dawn
that would not happen. Scheer reached Wilhelmshaven in the early afternoon.
The Germans lost one battlecruiser, one pre-dreadnought, four light cruisers, and five destroyers,
the British lost more, three battle cruisers, three armored cruisers, and eight destroyers.
2,551 German lives were lost, against 6,094 British, and the Kaiser commented that “The
spell of Trafalgar is broken”, but here’s the thing: the German fleet did not again
seek out battle with the British fleet and Scheer wrote to the Kaiser about the battle
that real victory could only be achieved by sending U-boats to sink British merchant ships.
So the status quo would continue, which for Germany actually meant a strategic defeat.
And we come to the end of another week, the Austrians on the move in Italy, the Germans
blowing holes in the lines at Ypres, and a gigantic naval battle in the North Sea.
And that battle was a real blow for British prestige. I’m going to end today with an
observation about the press and propaganda during the war, which we’ve talked about
before, but you can really see it in action this week, as the British Admiralty released
one communiqué about the battle, and then another with a different spin, thanks to Winston
Churchill, which painted things a bit rosier. The upshot of this was scenes like Vera Brittain,
in her London hospital, saying (Gilbert p.252), “Were we celebrating a glorious naval victory
or lamenting an ignominious defeat? We hardly knew: each fresh edition of the newspapers
obscured rather than illuminated this really quite important distinction.” By this point,
though, nobody really knew what was going on anymore.
If you’d like to learn a bit more about wartime propaganda, click here for our special
episode about it. Our Patreon supporter of the week is Todd Zaragoza. If you want to
see this show get better and better, please consider supporting us on Patreon. And if
you want to read a fantastic book about the world war one at sea, go to our Amazon shop
and check out Castles of Steel. Don’t forget to subscribe! See you next time.