Jutland Clash of the Dreadnoughts - Part 1 of 2 (World War 1 Naval Battle Documentary) | Timeline

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in the calm before the storm of the first world war no one expected the carnage of the trenches the battlefield for this fight would be the North Sea and it would be fought by the super weapons system of the day the dreadnaughts in UK in 1914 the general public loved their Navy they had no doubt whatsoever that would beat anyone it came up against and indeed within the Navy itself there was there was a a feeling that whoever they fought there beat them everybody envisaged that there would be a great clash of the battle fleets and a bear once and for all encounter which would probably decide the war he did the talking of record without my presence people were talking of a neutral founder on the North Sea in the first few days of the war and of course it was beyond question that the Royal Navy would win they could not imagine that British ships would ever be sunk by the Germans I was impossible but of course it wasn't everything went [Music] the Battle of Jutland was joined on May the 31st 1916 a clash in which two fleets of the most lethal battleships the world had ever seen met in devastating combat see it was more than the greatest naval battle of the First World War it would prove to be the biggest battleship action of all time but it was an event that rocked the British Admiralty to its very core the British fleet was bigger and had more firepower yet in the heart of the battle four of its finest warships were destroyed by devastating explosions leaving the outcome of the battle on a knife-edge it led a British commander in the heart of the fighting to utter the words there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today but what was it [Music] the final evidence of what went wrong still lies beneath the waves of the North Sea at Jutland with a proud remains of historic battle now rest theories abound as to why these ships sank bad tactics lack of armor over stocking of explosives and sheer bad luck have all been blamed now an expedition on these wrecks promises to explain what went wrong with his bloody ships and how this great battle came to hang in the balance [Music] but why were British losses so heavy that day at Jutland scraps of evidence still remain in the archives to offer clues but these Declassified photographs letters from survivors and Diaries from the dead can only tell us so much Enes McCartney is a full-time diver and part-time historian for years he's researched the battle and has dived at Jutland before now he's putting together a team to look hard at the evidence on the ocean floor [Music] the Battle of Jutland was fought 80 miles west of the Danish coastline almost 90 years ago the arguments that surround it are fought to this day in hangs tome Denmark in its McCartney assembles his international team of marine explorers the dive supervisor is Kevin ger so the trauma toss really is to you know survey this but until we actually get the divers down don't think we're gonna need to be able to get scaling it and see exactly what we're looking at they're preparing for the most extensive exploration of the wrecks of Jutland that has ever been undertaken their mission to chart the precise location and disposition of five wrecks critical to understanding the battle they aim to capture new video evidence to untangle the mystery of why the most colossal weapons of their day should consistently detonate so easily these wrecks are some 50 meters beneath the surface it's beyond the limit where it's safe to dive on air they'll be on a mix of helium oxygen and nitrogen each diver will only stay at the bottom for 30 minutes to help them on the voyage is naval architect - marine engineer bill Juran's international expert on how and why ships sink a magazine explosion in and of itself is sufficiently traumatic that it should set itself aside from damage due to collapse and other things like that at first light there a search boat the MV gone leaves for the distant battle site they have just two weeks at sea to gather the new evidence bill and Innes need to explain the mystery at the detonating dreadnaughts of the Battle of Jutland a Trafalgar Nelson won a victory so decisive it guaranteed britain complete command of the world seas for over a hundred years but that power was about to be challenged a newly united Germany had grown to become the most powerful nation on the mainland of Europe but if Kaiser vilhelm wanted an empire he would need to make the North Sea his own Germany started with the battleship program and they started becoming it a threat to the United Kingdom which is something we hadn't really seen before and that was when Admiral Sir Jackie Fisher the head of the Royal Navy came up with a bold stroke a revolutionary new kind of warship would be Britain's answer to the German threat the dreadnought mighty turbine engines the latest innovation would power her to incredible speeds of up to 21 knots exploiting the very latest technologies an internal belt of high tension steel 11 inches thick would protect her vital parts engines fuel ammunition magazines and the bar bets the towering castles in which a massive 12-inch guns would sit guns capable of hitting targets at ten miles the Dreadnought was the prototype for a radical new class of warship but Fischer had taken a gamble by building the most powerful weapon in the world he'd thrown down the gauntlet and started an arms race if the enemy catch wind of what you're doing and they embark on the same program if they can help build you then within a matter of years they will take control of the Seas away from your way in fighting a battle and this was the problem so the dreadnought had to be built in secret the second week ahead they'll feel fast when the dreadnought was built from a year and a day from laying the kill she steamed in her harbor on trial it was an incredible achievement the dreadnought project caught the public imagination in a way no arms program had ever done before Britain must stay great that was never in doubt then she must have dreadnoughts and lots of them the Germans built so many so they built them back they came up with a catchphrase we want eight and we won't wait this sort of fantastic rivalry and so by 1914 the whole of the British general public thought that be that kind of Armageddon a huge naval battle a new Trafalgar in the first months of the war see battles are notoriously confusing a Venice accurate navigation under fire is virtually impossible during the Battle of Jutland no one had radar or today's GPS Global Positioning satellite information communication was mainly by line-of-sight with flags and flash lamps for years no one knew precisely where the actual incidents occurred but Innes has combined archival records with stories from local fishermen and his experience from previous dives and he knows where to start looking for the wrecks we've got accurate GPS positions so what we'll do is we'll go there with a ship locate them using the ship's GPS and we'll put the rib in the water and using the plotter on the rim we will plot out all the high points of the record lie on the seabed hopefully we'll boy it and we will find either end of the air echo which will give us the orientation if you like the path in which the ship was traveling when she blew up then we'll put the side scanning sonar in the water which will go along the side between the two boys and should show us the wreck in its entirety on the seabed now it's the one tool we've got with us that will actually show us the big picture so I see sort of a map yeah exactly a map 25 ships were lost at the Battle of Jutland the team aim to locate and dive the vessels most critical to the story of the battle and revisit the mystery of the volatile British dreadnoughts okay Phil comms check [Music] loud and clear we're going to start pressurization our wrecks lie at a depth of 50 meters so there's a real risk of decompression sickness at all times I'll have a medic and decompression chamber on standby they're too far out at sea for helicopter rescue when war was finally declared in August 1914 the news was not met with surprise if anything there was a national sense of relief their Navy would resolve this crisis and do so quickly and decisively a new Trafalgar would need a new Nelson enter AB knowledge on Jellico commander of the grand fleet Jellico is a popular leader and already a national hero but he had a very different character from the great Nelson Jellico had grown up in the age of steam and steel war had become mechanized and so had the offices he lived by the book in this case the grand fleet battle orders his intricate script for combat when battle arrived Jellico already knew exactly how he would fight it even if the enemy disagreed by 1914 Germany had built no less than 24 dreadnoughts Britain had 38 the Kaiser was closing the gap in German naval bases gunnery officers talked only of der tag the day when the war broke out great British public expected there to be a huge naval battle but in actual fact for the last few years the Admiralty had already decided that wasn't going to happen and the reason is very simple the old days of close blockade of ships being immediately off the German ports were no longer possible because of submarines because of destroyers armed with torpedoes because of mines you couldn't do it you just lose half your fleet so the grand fleet under Sir John Jellicoe went to a distant blockade that distant blockade meant that they wouldn't be at risk they would be in Harbor but nevertheless still blockading the Germans in and the place they chose was Scapa Flow a huge anchorage in the Orkneys dominating the North Sea the Royal Navy had the Germans boxed in with numerical superiority Jellico's grand fleet would slowly starve the German people and their war machine into surrender but in January 1916 the German high seas fleet came under a new commander Admiral Reinhard Scheer suddenly Jellico had an adversary and one that would take on both him and his dreadnaughts Scheer when he takes over the high seas fleet says the Navy's got to do something it can't go on like this the logical way it seems to get the British Navy to respond is to tickle it to the point that public opinion forces it out shares idea of tickling was to launch a series of lightning raids on England's East Coast towns such as Sunderland Middlesboro and Scarborough suddenly found themselves caught up in the great war bait in Cher's trap his aim was to make more aggressive sorties against the eastern coast of Great Britain bombard small coastal towns and this should bring parts of the grand fleet near of the high seas what he was trying to do was isolate the portion of the grand fleet so that he could destroy them so that he could bring himself to a position where he was on it on an equal basis and taking one abandon it worked the people of the Northeast resented being used for German target practice and demanded some protection admiral Jellico had little choice but to respond the result was a brand new posting for one of Jellico's commanders the dashing Vice Admiral Sir David Beaty after bombardments of Hartlepool's cobra demand was that the part of the grand fleet would be brought further south even to the Humber Jellico resisted most of these demands but he did detached beetee's battle cruiser fleet of nine battle cruisers and base it 200 miles further south than scarper in the Firth of Forth [Music] this was exactly what the German command had wanted admiral scheer was ready to put his plan into action Shearer had carefully positioned a kind of tripwire a line of u-boats combined with Zeppelin patrols which were supposed to guarantee that Jellico would not arrive unannounced and trap share now for various reasons the Zeppelin's couldn't fly for weather or break dance the u-boat kind of patrol line was reaching the very end of its time endurance so the plan was modified no longer would it be an attack on the English East Coast it would be a foray up towards Norway perhaps to mop up some coastal shipping they didn't want to cancel the for a completely but for fear of meeting Jellico it had been modified but British intelligence me what share was up to in the very first days of the war German naval codes had fallen into their hands there every radio signal was intercepted and relayed through room 40 the secret apartment on the first floor of the a porti here crypto analysts quietly listened to shares wireless telegraphers and on the evening of May the 30th mobilized the entire British fleet four and a half hours before the Germans even left Harbor these ships were ready for sea of a moment's notice they had to be in case the German fleet came out at any time and of course once that fleet moved out everybody would know and the buzz would go around that the fleet was at sea and that must have sent an electric shock waves throughout the whole of the maritime communities of Britain imagine darling if you can find those starless night and twelve great ships steaming out of the fourth no lights visible are not a sound to be heard by the swish of the waves at Scapa Flow Jellico's ships simultaneously slipped anchor and formed up at last all of the great dreadnaughts were underway and counting down to dare tag and combat people said that it was one of the most awesome sights that had ever been seen this was the largest assemblage of the most powerful fleet the world had ever seen Jellico ordered a rendezvous with beetee's battle cruisers for the following day at 2 o'clock from there they plan to sweep south in battle formation to hunt the unsuspecting Germans share her put to sea as planned within a martyr of 99 ships ahead of him were his scouting battle cruisers under the command of Vice Admiral hipper bt's fleet on the 4th had a shorter distance to travel he didn't know it but hipper and Beatty were on a collision course the titanic clash of the dreadnaughts was about to begin neither side near it but the largest fleet action of all time was about to claim the lives of eight and a half thousand men in a battle lasting less than a day there were no movie cameras at the battle but period footage of the fleet's and dramatic reconstruction would illustrate what occurred that fateful day at twenty past two a British scouting cruiser flagged enemy in sight and the British radios until now silent sprang to life urgent to cruisers probably hostile the signal had a galvanizing effect as both fleets ran to battle stations but as bt closed on the enemy his guns was strangely silent the British should spend all this money equipping their battle cruisers with better guns 13.5 inch as opposed to the German 12 and 11 inch with a longer range and bigger shell so they could open fire first in any engagement yeah what do we find a Jutland as they steamed towards each other they're waiting they're waiting they're waiting they're waiting and eventually who opens fire first the Germans do battle was joined their tag was finally here the visibility decisively favoured the Germans the Germans were against a bank of dark grey and purple ish clouds it was very difficult for the British to spot their follow shot under those conditions the British were against the Western Sun it was very easy for the Germans to get a bead on the target and now the vice-admiral ships would be tested beyond their limits beat his battle cruisers over judged the range allowing the Germans to get closer than they should have done before opening fire thus wasting a range advantage which the British on paper had [Music] the dreadnaughts in line of battle was steaming south for beetee's numerical superiority the exchange of fire was uneven in fact his own ship HMS lion and the following ship the Princess Royal were both targeting Hitler's ship bludsoe leaving one German battle cruiser de flinger totally unmarked further down the line Tiger and New Zealand were both concentrating fire on mult ker this firing pattern was decidedly to the Germans advantage if you are shooting was more than two or three ships against one ship it's very difficult in spotting the splashes the splashes are very important to control your firing to get in a longer distance or in a shorter distance and if you are getting was shooting was two or three ships against one better Cruiser you can't get well this precious are these are for Merc from my ship guns or from another one admits the chaos beetee's flagship HMS lion took the first serious blow ich miss lion was hit gun turret but there was a fire the heat was transmitted by the copper core of the wiring down into the Barbet below and an enormous fire eventually ensued blowing the turret roof off altogether and killing some 70 men everybody inside that turret and Barbet now beneath my bed is the magazine and if the fire had spread to these magazines where the raw ammunition was stored the whole ship could have exploded from the inside out by the order of our marine major who had lost his legs in the explosion that magazine was flooded and that probably saved lives hms lion survived through a combination of heroism and good seamanship but other battle cruisers would not be so lucky that day now villain Ennis must explore the wrecks of the Battle of Jutland to find evidence to explain just what was wrong with those bloody ships builder on sand in his McCartney are on a mission they've set out to explore the wrecks of the Battle of Jutland to find out why in 1916 so many British ships exploded so easily in the initial engagement of the battle the British had numerical superiority but at the end of Vice Admiral beetee's line the battle cruiser HMS indefatigable was fighting for her life the in de fátima in the form to turn were engaged in a single ship duel they were firing at each other the indefatigable was missing the von der Tann landed a series of shells on the indefatigable they penetrated her armor that much is certain we don't or I certainly don't know what happened von der Tann had scored a direct hit HMS indefatigable disappeared in an almighty explosion barely noticed by her rapidly disappearing and heavily engaged colleagues 1017 men perished only two survived to tell the tale all of them are killed all but two of the crew of the indefatigable were killed and this sort of sudden loss is almost unprecedented in warfare there are lots of sixteen year olds boys seamen Midshipmen on board the indefatigable and they were all lost in that huge explosion it was dreadful there was a terrific explosion of all the ship the magazine's went death all the guns go up in the air just like matchsticks 12-inch guns they were bodies and everything [Music] she was beginning to settle down within half a minute the ship turned right over was gone indefatigable disappeared a little after 4 o'clock sides were now even 5 battle cruisers each the British still thought two feet impossible yet within a matter of minutes things were about to get far worse in war bad things happen you can lose a ship so when in Nevada chol blows up nobody is particularly alarmed it's unfortunate and they're sad doubtless but no one is particular shocked by this it's just bad luck Queen Mary however is something quite different Queen Mary is a 13.5 inch battle cruiser much bigger much more powerful and more than that she is possibly the crack gunnery ship in the Royal Navy Beattie had plenty of confidence but it was about to be shaken the Queen Mary was the pride of the fleet and the only British ship consistently hitting the Germans but now she was being relentlessly bombarded by both the flinger and signets within just 20 minutes of the loss of indefatigable Queen Mary met the same fate [Music] everything went beautifully until the 421 most awful explosion took place which broke the ship in half by the foremast she was mortally wounded but still afloat one by one men could be seen coming out to the after turret and climbing down onto the exposed bilge keel and jumping into the water went quite a few men were already in the water the second explosion occurred she was obliterated by an eight hundred feet high mushroom of fiery smoke the level of destruction in that moment that's been captured in a photograph is amazing the plume of smoke dwarfing the ship and yet the ship's 600 feet long and that represented the deaths of most of the over the thousand strong crew that's where they died in amidst at Queen Mary was the greatest German achievement against the Royal Navy in World War one her loss was a very serious blow and this is the loss that prompted Beattie to turn around and make his famous comment to Captain Chatfield beside him there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today the loss of the Queen Mary was an absolute disaster for beating this brutal cutting off of so many young lives is almost unprecedented in warfare it's at this point you start thinking well as an accident there's two accidents now what is the reason for this this was something more than bad luck why should these mighty British dreadnoughts appear so vulnerable to German guns it's a question bill Juran's and the team of divers are determined to find evidence to answer they've arrived at the site of the Queen Mary and commenced the SONA scan it reveals the wreck is in three sections though most of the ship was blown to small pieces and scattered liberally across the ocean floor but they have located a large mass what's coming in now there's a high section narrow this looks relatively intact it's almost in three big lumps survivors reported stepping off the sinking stern of the boat before the fore section erupted if that stern section is still intact diving her could answer some big questions that's the stone that's the stone section look nobody has ever seen the Queen Mary like that if you think that solid part as a stern that's where we need to be diamond that's what I've said because that's what the magazine is bill Juran's has all of the eyewitness reports but he needs more specific evidence to fix the real cause of Queen Mary's sudden demise this is something only the divers can give him the various witness accounts from the day offer no conclusive answer as to exactly how the ship exploded after the battle several conflicting theories were offered up but bill Ennis and the team want to take things beyond theories to hard facts be nice to be able to do something to establish the validity of the various accounts that we have there seems to be a group of observations that say there was an explosion made ships followed by an explosion forward and there seems to be a group that say the opposite so hopefully we'll be able to tell by examining the wreck where the explosions occurred clearly we're looking to find the magazine that's been located on previous dives the authors of the intact magazine yes that's correct cuz you're not gonna find any magazine that exploded it's sort of by definition gone right or sure but you may find pieces you may find it may find bits of it as that would tell something about the nature of the progression of the burn the ROV the remote vehicle carrying an underwater camera will narrow down the best area for the divers to search [Music] working at a depth of over 50 meters the divers have a limited bottom time of 30 minutes the ROV has no such limitations well if we just keep down on one side until we work out something discernible the Queen Mary was some 27,000 times this now seems to be scattered in two large fields of debris somewhere out there is the high section identified by the sonar the mass that Ennis believes is the stern of the vessel you try and pull the yeah it's the second day methodically surveying the littered ocean floor you could be well up to the stern where you are now Chris so coming back this way might have to be beneficial or a magazine might be down to you or in Southeast they see on the belt so we're in the right area you can say they see the thickness of it yeah there's some group joints yeah there's just no shortcut to a thorough systematic survey but sometimes it's worth it that's the problem that's it it's there I can see it yeah that's it okay we'll find the magazine now got it bill hopes the divers can now find evidence from the stern of the wreck that can explain why the forward magazines should have exploded we're looking to find what we believe to be a magazine which is probably would have been originally at the ship as it whirled piece underneath why turret so that's what we're looking for today [Music] some witness reports have implied the Queen Mary sank largely intact in fact the divers swim over an extensive debris field of scattered wreckage this confirms the extent of the massive explosion but they are now approaching the one remaining large section of the wreck about 70 meters long it's the stern and the site of the unexploded magazines this is the area that Ennis has been looking for but finding evidence will be hard they discover the stern upside-down she's rolled over as she sank more than that the years have taken their toll the decks have collapsed one on top of another the ocean floor is littered with a mixture of shells and the tubular containers that cordite explosives were stored in for safety Ennis and Kevin note the spread and profusion of the shells and cordite cases the volume and position could be significant then it's time to start the slow ascent to the surface the divers returned with a wealth of data for Bill to interpret like a treat they're exhausted but they've seen a lot it's Jim clear till you get to about 20 meters and then it's really silted up the Queen Mary was the pride of the fleet almost 1300 men were aboard that tragic afternoon the dive confirms her forward and midship sections are heavily broken up in its reports back what they found so far the first issue is the profusion of British shells could their own supplies have caused the explosion they have to rule it out there are still shells there that are just that is rusty but they've clearly not been involved in any way shape or form for joining the fire that's something sheriff yeah no projectiles are very very inert they're probably safer than anything else on the ship you know I mean they contain explosive but it's really really difficult to set the explosive for Javiera but the divers have also noted the spread of cases of cordite this is the propellant that shoots the shells up the gun barrels and it's far less stable if you have a projectile entering the the space where the cordite is the flash of the projectile exploding is often sufficient to ignite one or more bags of cordite when that happens the other bags of chordates start to burden more or less rapidly as well and that leads to a chain reaction some experts believe that cordite was responsible for spreading the fire that led to the explosion could that explain why the foreign section was so devastated there appears to have been two major explosions one forward and one midships and that matches what we seem to have found on bottom the explosions were undoubtedly cordite there's nothing else there that could cause that certainly shells do not go off in that that manner so that those were all propellant ignitions and burns somehow Queen Mary's on board cordite had been ignited and the cost had been awesome but what exactly was this propellant cordite and why were the Navy carrying this deadly cargo cord I was the standard propellant the first world war and it's a mixture of nitroglycerin gun cotton and a gel to make it all stick together cordite was wrapped up in bundles and used within the breech of a gun to push the projectile out of the gun and this is a 15 inch propellant cartridge similar to the types that used during the Battle of Jutland each 15 inch gun the mark 1 version used four cartridges to a total weight of 428 pounds of cordite each one would have weighed about a weight of a cement sack so the culminating effect at the base of the projectile was a terrific force that allowed that projectile be forced out the gun huge innocent Kevin had been amazed by the amount of ammunition they found not just in the magazine area but throughout the wreck this evidence adds weight to another potential course that these ships were heavily overloaded with ammunition there was a reason for this and the plain leg with Jellico's predecessor in 1913 admiral callahan who commanded the home fleet believed that the inaccuracy in naval gunnery would mean that there'd be high expenditures of ammunition with few hits and so he requests increase for the home fleet he is afraid that in the long-range engagement basically they're going to run out of ammunition or become dangerously low before they managed to achieve decisive results they may in fact have to abandon battle because they didn't have enough ammunition to finish the job so the Admiralty basically agree yes you can carry more ammunition they increase the load whereas the battle cruisers designed to carry 80 rounds per gun at Jutland they're carrying possibly 120 rounds per gun that's a 50% more ammunition and they're really designed to carry now with the shells there wasn't a major problem there was enough room in the shell rooms but when it came to the cordite that's a very different problem there is not enough room in the existing magazines to store the additional cordite the consequences of these additional ammunition outfits is that the British ships are much more vulnerable Queen Mary and indefatigable had been carrying 50 percent more cordite than they had accommodation for that might not have been a problem if they had thicker armor but they hadn't bt ships now taking a pounding from hippos guns were dreadnaughts but they were the lighter faster battle cruiser models they hadn't as much armor protection as their big sisters the heavy duty battleships originally the battle cruiser the concept would it would roam the Seas in isolation hunting commercial raiders the only ship that was couldn't merrily match them were battleships but they didn't have the speed so we needed a ship with the armament of a battleship and the speed of a cruiser they'd been built with the idea that they'd be fast ships that could sail up to lesser ships cruisers like cruisers and destroy them with their massive guns they didn't need much armor speed would be their armor but against ships with similar guns and speed armor became horribly significant with two ships destroyed beetee's battle cruisers were losing the game and yet Vice Admiral Beatty was about to get the chance to turn the tables and set up the biggest ambush in naval history it's August 2003 an international team of divers are hard at work looking for forensic evidence at the bottom of the North Sea evidence as to why in 1916 a series of British warships blew up with catastrophic loss of life and huge political consequences in the biggest naval battle of all time the Battle of Jutland [Music] in the first phase of the battle with two ships destroyed vice-admiral beetee's battle cruisers were losing the game what he needed were the tougher battleships of his escort the fifth battle squad but Beattie had left them trailing too far behind to help this was not out of character for the man his instinct was always to run to the guns the youngest vice admiral since Nelson Vice Admiral Sir David Beattie was dashing and ambitious what's more his battle cruisers had seen most of the naval actions so far in the war hitting the national headlines with their exploits but here at Jutland his bravado had cost two battle cruisers and 2,000 lives and now he was blindly steaming south towards the jaws of the masked guns of the entire German high seas fleet but Beattie was about to get his chance to shine at a little after 4:30 his advanced scouting group spotted smoke over the horizon hipper had been leading bt's force onto a trap instantly the scouts flashed the signal enemy battle fleet sighted the whole situation changes in an instant BT realizes straight away what the peril he's in but he also to his credit realizes the opportunity that lies before him if he can inveigle sheer and the high seas fleet to follow him he can lead them into the arms of Jellico and the grand fleet at last bt had a chance to turn the tables bt saw the main german fleet and quite correctly he said right let's get out of here and turned and his job was to lead this lot into the grand fleet where the grand fleet would destroy it soon they were all heading north towards Jellico all that is except the battleships of the fifth battle squadron still trying to catch up as the battleships pounding southwards past the battle cruisers now fleeing northwards the battleships steamed straight past Beattie heading straight for the German high seas fleet for the German commanders the battleships of the fifth battle squadron were prized beyond their wildest dreams Admiral hipper as well as Admiral Scheer didn't know that the entire Grand Fleet was at sea so they are looking for the British better cruisers and they saw the fifth battle squadron well maybe this is a chance for us to to get two or three ships we have sunk two better cruisers now indefatigable and Queen Mary in the first phase of the battle and now let's get part of the grand flea the British battleship sailed straight into the German guns in a desperate attempt to head north they turned in succession through a hail of fire this is the ultimate test of the superdreadnought those mighty 8th 15-inch guns 13 inch thick Armour enormous investments of British money time and Technology with the finest engines that could propel them to nearly 24 knots fantastic ships this was their test would they be able to withstand the shells that were falling all around them like indefatigable and Queen Mary these battleships were also heavily overloaded with shells and cordite would they now suffer the same fate the fifth battle squadron took severe damage and many casualties but for over an hour the four battleships held off the entire German fleet there was little wrong with these particular ships unlike the battle cruisers the German shells could not penetrate anywhere important they caused damage they caused a lot of damage they killed people but they couldn't harm the inner sanctums where the explosive seeds of their own destruction lay now the Germans were the ones being led into a trap running North BT was drawing the biggest prize in the North Sea on to Jellico's guns too much cordite and too little armor had made the battle cruisers vulnerable but those aren't the only theories that Ennis wants to test more British battle cruisers would fall prey to internal explosions before the day was over Bill Ennis and the boys will have to go north to the site of the next catastrophe if they are to prove why you

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Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 899,191

Rating: 4.7414002 out of 5

Keywords: battle of jutland, battle of jutland documentary, jutland documentary, full documentary, full length documentaries, history documentary, channel 4 documentary, jutland clash of the dreadnoughts, naval battle, jutland battle, documentary history, world war one, royal navy, naval battles, the battle of jutland, grand fleet, history channel, john jellicoe, reinhard scheer, franz hipper, kaiserliche marine, great war, north sea, ww1 documentary, timeline documentary

Id: 6WwZW5Roc80

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 46min 37sec (2797 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 16 2017

Reddit Comments

Thanks for the link. I wish they've kept the original 4:3 aspect ratio.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/seedless0 📅︎︎ Sep 16 2017 🗫︎ replies

The blurb under that video could really use some work, though. The video is a good one.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/pdboddy 📅︎︎ Sep 16 2017 🗫︎ replies