Thursday, May 31, 2012

Todays Highlight in History


The Battle of Jutland (German: Skagerrakschlacht) was a naval battle by the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet (which included ships and individual personnel from the Royal Australian Navy and Royal Canadian Navy) against the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet during the First World War. The battle was fought on 31 May and 1 June 1916 in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. It was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of battleships in the war. It was only the third-ever fleet action between steel battleships, following the smaller but more decisive battles of the Yellow Sea (1904) and Tsushima (1905) during the Russo-Japanese War.

The High Seas Fleet was commanded by Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, and the Grand Fleet by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. The German fleet's intention was to lure out, trap, and destroy a portion of the Grand Fleet, as the German naval force was insufficient to successfully engage the entire British fleet. This formed part of a larger strategy to break the British blockade of Germany and to allow German mercantile shipping to operate. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy pursued a strategy to engage and destroy the High Seas Fleet, or keep the German force contained and away from Britain's own shipping lanes.
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