The Battle Of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland was the largest sea battle in World War I. It was fought on May 31st - June 1st 1916. The battle was fought in the North Sea near Jutland, which is a mainland in Denmark. The plan was to lure, trap, and destroy a section of the British grand fleet and also break the British naval blocade in the North Sea. The plan of the Germans was to use Vice Admiral Franz Hipper's scouting group of five battlecruisers to lure Vice Admeral Sir David Beatty's battlecruisers into the path of the main German fleet to destroy them. However, the British had learned from signal intercepts that a major fleet operation was likely, and on May 30th, Jellicoe sailed with the Grand Fleet to rendezvous with Beatty.
On May 31st, Beatty and Hipper found each other, and in a running battle to the south Hipper drew the British face to face with the High Seas Fleet. Beatty turned around and fled towards the Grand Fleet and from the afternoon until nightfall at about the two huge fleets (totaling 250 ships between them) were heavily engaged. Fourteen British and eleven German ships were sunk with great loss of life. Jellicoe tried to cut the Germans off from their base in the hope of continuing the battle in the morning, but Scheer crossed the wake of the British fleet and returned to port. Both sides claimed victory. The British had lost more ships and many more sailors, and the British press criticized the Royal Fleet's actions, but Scheer’s plan of destroying Beatty’s squadrons had failed!
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