The Battle of Jutland Animation

at the end of May 1916 both the British and Germans planned to send a large battle group to a position roughly 80 miles west of the northern tip of Denmark they each planned a trap for the other with early but hazy intelligence on the German sortie the British left Harbor first the British Grand Fleet coming from its northern bases at Scapa Flow and Cromartie the battle cruisers joining from Ross I further south it was a huge force silently sailing into the night the British were on a direct collision course with hipper scouting group of five battle cruisers they were steaming roughly 60 miles ahead of share and the main battle feed only child's brought the two battlecruiser groups together a small Danish steamer the njarraud was seen by each other scouts simultaneously they went to investigate and in doing so fell upon each other firing what would become the opening shots of the Battle of Jutland BD ships were faster they could shoot further and use heavier shell in his mind he could easily deal with hippos five battle cruisers Beatty was a fox hunting man and loved the chase he showed extraordinary courage under fire but Jenica was always concerned with one thing that Beatty would to easily be pulled into such a trap Beattie immediately raced south wanting to cut hipper off from his route home but in his haste to close with his adversary he may have made a mistake he left behind four of the most modern and powerful ships on the sea that day rare emerald hue Evan Thomas is for 15-inch gunned queen elizabeth-class battleships a question that was asked even by many battle cruiser officers was why Petey had not opened fire earlier he had the range advantage and hipper had always feared the period when his ships would be in a danger zone unable to return effective fire but being hit by British fire 348 on the afternoon of May 31st HIPPA gave the order open fire its flagship the lots are the guns roared within three salvos deadly German fire was straddling the British ships and within three minutes line had been hit twice initial British fire badly overshot the German line maybe because of the bad visibility British fire allocation are also being badly muddled Beattie had intended that litsa should be targeted by both the lion and Princess Royal and that worked but the tiger and Queen Mary mistakenly targeted one ship too far back the second German ship in the line the der flinger was left totally untargeted but it was the firing from the von der Tann that scored the first victory her gunnery officer Marr holds managed to score repeated hits though he said he could hardly make up the target as she was almost totally covered in splash after only 13 minutes of battle the first British ship the indefatigable slid out of line rolled over and sank any survivors didn't last long in the numbing Lee cold waters of the North Sea two men later rescued by the Germans tried in vain to rescue their captain 25 minutes later the Queen Mary also fell victim to German guns she had only been in service three years the pride of the Royal Navy disappeared in the devastating explosion a huge mushroom cloud the owner visible evidence that a ship had ever even been there less than half an hour more than 2,000 British sailors lost their lives in total there were only 23 survivors from the to catastrophic magazine explosions and only 18 of them from the Queen Mary the battlecruisers architect british Amaral sir Jackie Fisher thought the ship's higher speed and greater gunnery range would more than compensate for the relatively light armor protection at Jutland they were proved wrong and the results were fatal getting the explosive cordite charges from a turret magazine to the guns was exhausting and under fire brutally so the Gunners wanted the core eggshell as fast as possible so they could shoot more quickly consequently cordite bags with dangerously stock piled around the insides of turrets and passages and this made the flash tight doors designed to stop the flames traveling between the turrets in the magazines irrelevant two minutes after the Queen Mary had gone lion nearly suffered the same fate a half hour earlier her Q turret had been hit and the top had been blown off a huge Tower of flame now shot skyward had the turrets still being covered she would have also blown up scouting ahead of the battle cruisers good enough on the Southampton urgent is signaled that 16 German dreadnaughts were in sight and closing fast the British now realized they were heading into a trap waiting a few moments to confirm the news Beattie turned his four remaining battle cruisers around but the four accompanying Queen Elizabeth continued southbound into increasingly heavy German fire using the same spot around which to turn his ships and reverse course was a mistake Evan Thomas only made it easier for the German Gunners all they needed to do was to keep their guns trained on the very same spot as the British obligingly steamed into the cauldron of fire B these ships had been hit badly after 75 minutes by around forty four heavy caliber shells and the Germans less than half that amount after the Queen Mary exploded Beattie came to an awful conclusion he turned to his flag captain only Chatfield and muttered there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today now's beat his fortunes that rose as the four Queen Elizabeth's began to move north shielding his rear pressure on his own four ships was relieved but damage to the battleships was extensive even if they dealt out equal punishment but the British trap nearly wasn't ready at all Jellico only had the roughest idea of the position and course of the two German forces his repeated and increasingly exasperated request for information were all but ignored by BG who was busy fighting his own battle five minutes before 6:00 the ships of the ground fleet and the battle cruiser fleets were finally able to make each other out in the hazy mist but crucially Jellico himself still could not see any German ships the British commander-in-chief literally only had minutes in which to decide how to best meet the invisible threat the timing was critical to avoid his own fleet being caught in the middle of the manoeuvre when most of his firepower could not be brought to bear Jellico deployed the grand fleet to port towards the Danish coastline the fleet literally remodeled itself from six parallel lines each with four dreadnaughts into one continuous line five and a half miles long designed to hurl the maximum amount of steel against the enemy the maneuver was brilliant it blocked share within a semicircle of British guns and turning so many ships in such little space required extraordinary seamanship there were close calls but not one collusion amongst 122 ships captains first the British fleet steered towards Denmark then turned south to parallel the coast it might have seemed as though jelica was steaming away from the German fleet but in fact he was positioning his own fleet more carefully as Beattie took the line ahead of the ground treat so that he could position his own battle cruisers in the ban Amaral Arbuthnot crossed dangerously close only getting two of his four ships through beat his own line the defense and warrior headed straight towards the Germans intent on attacking the cruiser V's barboo instead the defense was met with a hail of fire it exploded in a fireball and sank with all hands the German ships were now silhouetted against the western Setting Sun while Jellico zone were almost invisible lost in a gray murk the German fleets direct route home had been cut off by the ground fleet putting themselves in between their opponents and their harbor the Germans had become increasingly boxed in first BTW in the West then Jellico to the north and now in NuForce horace hoods third battle cruiser squadron to the east things started well for heard the invincible went to the rescue of the chester where the young wounded jack cornwall continued to man his post on her forward gun a few days later he would die of his wounds posthumously he would receive the Victoria Cross for his bravery invincible shooting found its mark mortally damaging one of her aggressors the Bea's Barton there was only to be one survivor the stoker Hugo Xena and among the Dead was gorg [ __ ] the much-beloved German poet then at 6:30 another huge explosion invincible had blown up all her crew except six had gone down with her and all that was left this time were just the two halves sternum bars sticking up right out of the shallow waters at first the British sailors cheered they thought it was a German wreck and then they saw her name 60 metres below invincible Zoff gun can still be seen pointing majestically out beneath the cold grey waters of the North Sea hipper ships were out in front of the main battle fleets dreadnoughts strung out in a line that was nine miles long his leading ships were coming under a terrible and increasing rain of British shells the range was short around 10,000 yards and British shooting was superb twenty-three heavy hits and minutes Jellico's own flag behind you hit the conics seven times in as many minutes although to give you an idea of just how bad the visibility was on Dukes gunnery officer was even nervous at this point about opening fire he wasn't sure the ship he saw was an enemy or a friend she was stunned but only for a moment he quickly recovered and ordered a complete turnabout of his battle fleet within four minutes his ships now steaming away from Jellico vanished into the mist Jellico was left totally in the dark none of the captains had seen what happened reported anything back to him Royal Navy had become victim to its own traditions speak only when spoken to do something only when awarded this Navy was not an easy place for officers with initiative the British Admiral decided against following share into the mist he doubted he would catch him but more important he was also convinced some say obsessed that his ships would steam onto mines led by the German ships in their wake in fact his belief that all German destroyers carried mines was wrong but his intentions have been laid out and agreed to by the Admiralty two years before the battle then sheer surprise Jellico a second time he reversed the previous turn to relaunch another attack of the British lion it seemed like madness under intense fire the front of the German line again buckled bunching up so badly this time that before cher even ordered another turn the leading ship started to turn independently so desperate were they to get out from under British fire out in front hippos battle cruisers were now in tatters only one option seemed open to share to get his main battle fleet home as fast as possible and certainly before daylight and would undoubtedly be his fleets annihilation he now ordered waves of torpedo attacks and with the command Hannon find a charge of the heavily damaged battle cruisers at the British line no matter what the cost it was shears only way to cover the escape of the main battle fleet Scheer knew his opponent and correctly anticipated Jellico's next move the threat was enough for the British Admiral to turn the ground fleet away from the swarm of oncoming German torpedoes to try to outrun them turning towards the torpedoes would have been exceptionally dangerous the closing speed alone would have been around 45 miles an hour rather than five and the time taken for the complete turn might just have been too long not one single one of the 31 torpedoes that eventually reached the British lion hit a British ship though there were many close calls Jellico was as he knew he would be widely criticised by much of the press and by the British public and by many of those in the Admiralty who specifically had approved of his intended actions two years earlier including Churchill even by Beattie privately but his Beattie later rode when he himself was ciency of the British fleet when you're winning risk nothing while Jellico only had an inkling where the German fleet was bt signaled that his battle cruisers should take over the lead at that point the nearest German ship was probably nine miles distant Jellico nevertheless followed Beattie suggestion ordering jerem to support him but jerem had no idea where Beattie was between the two lines of a bursary ships however were to light cruisers the Caroline and the royalist they could in fact see the Germans and they promptly engaged unluckily Caroline's torpedo aimed at the battleship Westphal and went right underneath her British torpedoes were in fact notoriously unreliable the two light cruisers then requested help but were turned on rare emerald jerem was not persuaded that the targets weren't in fact be teased gerron's actions lost the British 15 minutes of continued action in daylight and that might not have been decisive in itself but it might also very easily cost-share another ship or two so heavily damaged where they buy now at night for both fleets reorganized Jenica wanted to actually avoid a night action it left too much to chance dreadnaughts in his mind were far too vulnerable to short-range torpedo attacks and german night fighting equipment and experience actually superior to that of the Royal Navy in some critical areas the smaller guns the secondary armament on German ships were directly trained by searchlights that could one moment send out a powerful pinpoint light operating with an iris like shudder and then just as fast completely open up to full illumination for full main battery fire British searchlights by comparison were extremely crude the British didn't even have star shells which the Germans did at this point there was any one thing that was really on Cher's mind to break through the British lion and to take his ships to safety and he had three routes to choose from but to get through he had first to break through the protective screen of the 58 destroyers that Jellico had placed five miles behind the grand fleet and sheer knew about these destroyers from intercepted messages at 10 p.m. Shearer decided to take the shortest route he headed south east for the horns reef throughout the day some of the Admiralty signals were quite misleading making Jellico doubtful of subsequent intelligence starting with the now infamous message stating that Cher's flagship was still in harbour and before five o'clock that illusion had been shattered distrustful of the intelligence he was getting Jellico made up his own mind he headed direct south to the Jade what was worse was that none of the signal intercepts that have been decrypted by room 40 revealing the true destination of the German high seas fleet were passed on Jellico was furious when he found out after the war's end during the next few hours there would be seven separate unequal but bitterly fought engagements between small British destroyer flotillas and German battleships and their escorts in one for flotilla lost a full 70 percent of her ships one of her destroys the nine hundred and thirty five tonne Spitfire physically clashing bow to bow with the twenty thousand ton dreadnought the Nassau in another engagement the rhineland physically sliced a British destroyer in two but the British were also able to claim some successes in the night action a torpedo shot from the British destroyer on sword claim the pre-dreadnought the SMS pawan a secondary armaments magazine caught fire and she exploded in front of the German line with more than 800 deaths not one single report of the many flotillas actions reach the iron Duke that night while German Telefunken signals certainly blocked some of the radio reports most captain's did not understand the value of sending back information to the flagship eventually the Germans did succeed in punching through the British line Angelico had no idea that they'd even done so despite the many opportunities the British failed to sink the massively damaged side lads and the Germans themselves were responsible for scuttling the litsa zeidlitz would not rejoin the fleet until mid-september Dehlia not until the next month jelica was ready four hours after reaching scarper and tiger Princess Royal Barham and Malaya were repaired by July while each of five German battleships needed fifty days of repairs in dock on the basis of sinking more ships and because more British sailors died in the battle the Germans claimed victory the Kaiser welcoming the fleet back on the 1st of June declared that the spirit of Trafalgar and British sea power had finally been destroyed but to claim any victory one needs to have achieved one stated objectives and the German intentions of ending the British blockade or seriously damaging the ground fleet had clearly failed and although one might say that the German high seas fleet fought with great courage and inflicted heavy pain on the Royal Navy it was not able to again successfully challenge the British and finish what had been started at Jutland British sea dominance remained intact and it seemed as if nothing had in fact changed except everything a Pandora's Box had in fact been opened by the very success of holding the German fleet at bay in a secret report to the kaiser days after the battle amercia read that Germany could never win the war by defeating the British feat at sea they had to try to defeat Britain economically by cutting the vital supply of materials and food that came to her by sea that meant that Germany could only hope to win the war by gambling on an aggressive campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare throughout the year she ran enable chief of staff Henning from Holtz and of tried to persuade the cabinet and the Kaiser to change tactics unsuccessfully at the end of 1916 on November the 29th Jellico handed over the command of the Grand Fleet to Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty Jellico accepted the appointment to the position of First Sea Lord to breathe new life into the Admiralty and to find a solution to the growing u-boat threat and as the Navy's new operational head he had to find the answers quickly on febrile ifirst 1917 the savage new submarine war started the Germans calculated that Britain would be on ernie's in five months the country nearly was in April over 600,000 tons of British shipping was sunk much of it off the east coast and if one counts the total of Allied shipping sunk or damaged was almost 1 million tons given that Britain's entire Merchant Marine total 11.5 million tons one can well understand Jellico's rising pessimism the British may have retained surface control of the Seas after Jutland but they very nearly lost the submarine battle in the first half of the following year by the end of 1917 the tools with which to win the anti-submarine war had been put in place by Jellico the most controversial change was probably the adoption of convoy itself which had been wrongly accused of having been against he was not but he could only move forward once America was in the war which happened on April the 6th it allowed the crucial transatlantic convoys to assemble in what had previously been neutral and also gave the British the vital key to convoy success destroyers the first seven arrived on May the fourth and by July there were 34 in British waters there were a mass of other improvements firstly new mines actually in this case copied from the Germans secondly the birth of directional hide refers that was to later become the basis for British Aztec zona third howitzer launch bonds that also became the basis of the very successful British destroy a hedgehog depth charge system in the Second World War fourth a longer endurance aeroplane search system capability with the American Curtis age 12 and finally a massive increase of civilian patrol boats and whalers disguised but armed merchantmen and faster patrol boats but the list goes on the new tools started to impact by December 1917 monthly tonnage losses of merchant shipping fell to 300,000 tons and by March 1918 total losses were down to 200,000 the Germans had calculated that the US would enter the war once unrestricted submarine war was unleashed on neutral ships but they also thought they could defeat Britain before their help would arrive they were wrong less than one month after America declared war in April the six the first American destroyers so desperately needed for the effective running of the convoy system itself arrived in Queenstown helping turn the tide back in favor of the Allies did not save Jellico from the political acts of David Lloyd George the prime minister he was about to finally leave the annual T and get back to his wife and children for Christmas when a Curt letter from Sir Eric Geddes his direct political boss arrived he was just moments after officers from his old flagship the and you had presented him with a silver model of his old ship in Germany the effects of the continued blockade had deep consequences it's stirred revolution civilians suffered terrible food shortages in the winter of 1916 and the time was known as the turnip winter there was little let up as the Allied squeezed on commerce tightened divisions in the German fleet now rusting away in Harbor Randeep morale collapsed and revolutionary unrest grew the intense but very often acrimonious debate that followed Jutland had one great benefit for the Royal Navy it led to a period of steady and profound modernization helping prepare the Navy for the next war in 1928 Jellico invited Reinhard share who was now a widower after the murder of his wife to come and stay with him at his home on the Isle of Wight sadly the meeting never came to pass but it does intrigue me to think of what the discussions would have been had the two old adversaries mad when Jellico died in 1935 the flags of three navies the Royal Navy and both the French and German neighbors were lowered it was a recognition both from the Allies for his efforts but also from former adversaries honoring him two months after Jellico died the younger bt followed the strain of commanded equally taken its toll on his old Jutland comrade in arms the two Jutland Amaral's now lied together in the shadow of Nelson in st. Paul's Cathedral and on Trafalgar Square their bus gaze across the fountains dedicated to their victory one hundred years ago towards Nelson you you

Channel: Dreyer1916

Views: 1,205,358

Keywords: dreadnoughts, naval, Battle of Jutland, ww1, Jutland, Jellicoe, world war one, maritime, battle cruiser, Grand Fleet, Beatty, magazine explosion

Id: U_UryFjKUsM

Length: 24min 0sec (1440 seconds)

Published: Tue May 03 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/daytodaze]

I just listened to Dan Carlin’s “blueprint for Armageddon” podcast series for the second time, and i found myself very intrigued by some of the stuff I didn’t really pay attention to the first time.

He goes into really great detail about this battle, and I regret not paying more attention to it. The large naval powers had a weird paradox of needing to build these huge, expensive ships to show everyone they were a serious force, but they couldn’t really use them in battle because the risk of losing one of these ships was too high. The Battle of Jutland was one of the only times we get to see these massive ships fighting as they were intended.

[u/hasleo]

My grandmoms mom and dad told tales about the flashes of light from the wateres and how the sound made the windows in their farm vibrate doing the battle of jylland(jutland).

[u/MichaelTheElder]

I liked how they overlaid both photos from the era and maps to further illustrate what occurred. They pack a lot of information in only 24 minutes. Thoroughly enjoyed!

[u/Arizona_Pete]

Supremely well done and cool - Thanks for posting!

[u/maxdembo]

great post

[u/[deleted]]

I was looking to find a sample of Gorch Fock's poetry -- would be interesting to read some.

[u/sysadmin001]

That was simply perfect

[u/themindlessone]

"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships"

[u/69vuman]

Great documentary in just a few minutes. I particularly liked the summary of the long term effects on the countries and the war. Thanks for sharing this story with us.