Who Won at Jutland?—John Keegan's View

The Battle of Jutland, 31 May to 1 June, 1916
By Robert Henry Smith

An Excerpt from The Price of Admiralty

At 9:45 [the evening of 2 June 1916] Jellicoe reported to the Admiralty that his warships were ready to steam out again on four hours’ notice. That signal writes the strategic verdict on Jutland. Britain’s navy re­mained fit for renewed action, however soon it should come. Germany’s did not. [Nonetheless] the kaiser preferred to ignore this fact. He exulted that “the magic Trafalgar has been broken,” distributed Iron Crosses wholesale to the crews of the High Seas Fleet when he visited it on June 5, and kissed many of the captains. He promoted Scheer to full admiral and invested him with the Pour le Merite, Germany’s highest military honor. . . “The High Seas Fleet,” Scheer said in his report to the kaiser, “will be ready by the middle of August for further strikes against the enemy.”

True to Scheer’s word, the High Seas Fleet did put to sea, on August 19, and steamed north to bring the English east coast town of Sunderland under bombardment. Scheer’s approach was covered, however, by 10 of the zeppe­lins he had not been able to take to Jutland, and when one reported that the Grand Fleet was bearing down on him from the Scottish anchorages, he reversed course and raced for home. The Admiralty cryptographers had de­tected his sortie, and were to do so again when he next put to sea, in October, with the same humiliating outcome. That was to be the High Seas Fleet’s last open challenge to the Royal Navy.

[In June 1916] Germany could publicly celebrate Jutland because the raw “exchange ratio” was in its favor. The High Seas Fleet had inflicted far greater damage than it had suffered. Three British battlecruisers, the Indefatigable, Invincible, and Queen Mary, were sunk, as were three armored cruisers, the Black Prince, Defence, and Warrior, and eight destroyers. And five British capital ships had suffered hits by 11-inch shells or heavier, notably the Lion, Tiger, and Warspite. The High Seas Fleet, by contrast, had lost only one battlecruiser, the Lützow; the other ship casualties were either pre-dreadnoughts like the Pommern or secondary units like the four light cruisers and five torpedo boats. . .

Three to one, in rude terms, did make Jutland look more like a German than a British victory. But calculated in refined rather than crude terms, the “exchange ratio” was very much more in  Britain’s  than  Germany’s  favor. Three of her fast battleships–Warspite, Barham, and Malaya–had suffered damage requiring dockyard attention. But the battleship fleet itself was al­most unscathed; and despite losses, the Battle Cruiser Fleet on June 1 still outnumbered the German 1st Scouting Group, which moreover was crippled by damage. The German dreadnought battleships had also suffered  griev­ously. König, Markgraff, and Grosser Kurfurst all needed major refits when they returned to port, and the German battle line could  not have met the British at four weeks’ notice, let alone four hours’, except at risk of outright defeat. The balance of forces had not been significantly altered by relative losses. The Grand Fleet still outnumbered Scheer’s, 28 dreadnoughts to 16.

This Selection Is from Keegan's 56-page
Chapter on Jutland
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The human cost, however, had fallen far more heavily on the  British. True, her long tradition of “following the sea” and her large seafaring popula­tion made her losses easier to replace than the German. But the truth was that over 6,600 British officers and sailors had gone down with their ships or been killed on their decks while the  Germans had lost only a few more than 2,000.

John Keegan