Jutland:
The Battle, Part One: Planning
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
May 2024

No naval battle has been studied so thoroughly as that of Jutland, on the last day of May 1916. The battle’s usually framed as the climax of the First World War at sea, since it’s the only occasion where dreadnought battleships (not just battle cruisers) actually shot at each other.

Reinhard Scheer, appointed to command of the German High Seas Fleet in January 1916, undertook an aggressive series of actions throughout the first months of the year. He sought to meet the British Grand Fleet in battle after its strength had been worn down by submarines and mines, but to make that happen, he had to lure them into either minefields or submarine patrol zones.

The initial plans for the German operation that led to the Battle of Jutland called for a bombardment of Sunderland, a coastal town in northern England, by German battle cruisers. The Grand Fleet would come out to drive them off, suffer losses to German submarines and to mines laid outside British bases, and then the German battle fleet would fall on the outnumbered survivors. Zeppelin reconnaissance would make sure that the odds favored the High Seas Fleet before it engaged in battle.

It was an audacious plan: the Grand Fleet numbered 38 dreadnought battleships and battle cruisers against 22 such German ships, with similar advantages in cruisers and destroyers. The British were thought to have separated their squadrons among multiple ports, allowing the Germans to fight a part of the British fleet with all of their own, but German naval intelligence still did not have a clear picture of British basing arrangements as the war neared the two-year mark.

On 4 May 1916, the German government formally renounced unrestricted submarine warfare, and Scheer quickly obtained permission to use every available u-boat alongside the battle fleet. Soon afterwards, First Lord of the Admiralty Arthur Balfour announced that British squadrons would be re-distributed to assure that German ships would not bombard the English coast again. That gave Scheer the assurance that a bombardment would bring the British out to fight.

The operation, scheduled for 17 May, would begin with the German 1st Scouting Group (five battle cruisers) supported by light cruisers and destroyers would shell the town of Sunderland, about 100 miles south of the British battle cruiser base at Rosyth. When the British came out in pursuit, the German dreadnought squadrons, waiting about fifty miles behind the battle cruisers, would appear and hopefully sink at least several of the British heavy ships. Even if the battle failed to take place – and in the harsh waters of the North Sea, most sorties failed to result in contact – the British battleships and battle cruisers would be exposed to submarine attack.

A König-class battleship, about the time of the battle.

Then things began to go wrong. The battle cruiser Seydlitz had struck a mine on 24 April; repairs took longer than anticipated and when completed the ship still leaked. Scheer did not wish to conduct the operation without all of the battle cruisers, recalling the experience of Dogger Bank in January 1915. Meanwhile the battleships of the III Squadron, just returned from gunnery exercises in the Baltic Sea, needed condenser repairs.

Meanwhile, weather conditions thwarted zeppelin reconnaissance over the British naval bases. The submarines waiting off the British coast had orders to break off and return on 1 June; the Germans did not have the ability to change those instructions. If the operation ere to take place at all, Scheer had to sortie. He switched to an alternative plan, to move into the approaches to the Skaggerak, the wide strait north of Denmark leading from the North Sea into the Baltic. Scheer issued the new Operational Order 6 on 28 May; the battle cruisers led by Vice Admiral Franz Hipper would depart on the morning of 31 May for the Skaggerak. Should they not encounter British merchant shipping, they would “accidentally” show themselves off the Norwegian coast.

As in the original operation, the battle fleet would follow in a supporting position. Scheer left behind one dreadnought, König Albert, which had not completed her condenser repairs, and the new dreadnought Bayern, whose crew had been granted leave when it appeared that she would not be ready for the 17 May start date. The still-leaking Seydlitz accompanied the battle cruisers, but Hipper shifted his flag to the new Lützow, suspecting that he would be sending Seydlitz home before the operation was complete.

The operational order left the pre-dreadnoughts of the II Squadron patrolling the Helgoland Bight just outside the fleet base of Wilhelmshaven, and now Scheer made a crucial error based solely on emotion. Scheer had commanded the squadron at the start of the war, and the current squadron chief, Rear Admiral Franz Mauve, pleaded that his ships be allowed to participate. They could not keep up with the dreadnoughts, and could not stand up to the heavy British guns, but Scheer listened to Mauve’s appeal to the honor of his ships’ captains and crews. He added the pre-dreadnoughts to the operational order.

That moment of weakness would lead directly to the destruction of the pre-dreadnought Pommern – Mauve’s old command – with all hands.

On the other wise of the North Sea, the fleet reorganization had placed the Battle Cruiser Fleet (nominally 10 battle cruisers) at Rosyth on the Scottish east coast, the 2nd Battle Squadron (eight dreadnoughts) at Cromarty to the north of Rosyth, and the 1st, 4th and 5th Battle Squadrons (22 dreadnoughts between them) at Scapa Flow. The pre-dreadnoughts of the 3rd Battle Squadron (seven of them, plus one dreadnought) moved from Scapa Flow to Sheerness, in England. A few adjustments had been made during May: the 3rd Battle Cruiser Squadron moved to Scapa Flow to engage in gunnery exercises, and the new super-dreadnoughts of 5th Battle Squadron went to Rosyth in their place.

Jellicoe’s flagship Iron Duke, seen in drydock, April 1914.

The Grand Fleet also had a few ships missing from its order of battle. The powerful new super-dreadnought Queen Elizabeth was drydocked at Rosyth, and the dreadnoughts Emperor of India and Dreadnought (the latter part of the 3rd Battle Squadron) were under refit as well. The new dreadnought Royal Sovereign had not completed working up, while the battle cruiser Australia was under repair following an April collision with her sister New Zealand.

Sir John Jellicoe, commanding the Grand Fleet, had already attempted his own operation in early May in an attempt to bring on a fleet battle. On 17 May the British signals intelligence operation, known as Room 40, detected the deployment orders for German submarines. When no merchant ship sinkings followed, analysts suspected that the submarines were part of some larger operation.

On 30 May, the powerful transmitter aboard the High Seas Fleet flagship Friedrich der Grosse blurted out the deployment orders for the First Scouting Group and its supporting elements, followed by the order for the rest of the fleet to assemble in the outer roads of Wilhelmshaven on the 31st. That afternoon Room 40 picked up more details, that “most secret” orders would be executed the next day.

Those orders had already been delivered by hand and in person. Just as they had before the Battle of Dogger Bank, the German fleet command alerted their enemies with needless repetition. The Battle Cruiser Fleet was ordered to raise steam, destroyer and minesweeper patrols were called into port, and British submarines headed out to sea – all before the High Seas Fleet had left its own base.

The story continues in Part Two.

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Jutland: North Sea 1914
Jutland: Dogger Bank
Journal No. 46: Iron Dogs
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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and his new puppy. His Iron Dog, Leopold, could swim very well.

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