Before dawn on May 31, 1916, Hipper's flagship "Lützov" led the German naval detachment deep into the enemy to sail to the Danish coast, and the British fleet also set out on the night of May 30, which opened the prelude to the Battle of Jutland, which shocked the world.

Since both sides of the battle were at their best this time, the size of each side's respective yòu bait fleets alone was huge: Betty's fleet consisted of 4 battleships and 6 battlecruisers, while Hipper's fleet consisted of 5 battlecruisers, and both sides had destroyers and other light ships for reconnaissance. The resulting lack of aerial reconnaissance due to the fact that the British seaplane carrier "Campania" for some reason failed to follow the actions of the Grand Fleet played a significant role in the course of the Battle of Jutland.

Betty's course was largely the same as that of Jellico, and shortly after 2 p.m. on 31 May, Betty turned north and joined the main fleet at Skagerak in the evening. At that time, Hipper's fleet was thirty-five miles to the east, heading north on a parallel course, while Scheer's main fleet followed fifty miles behind. Soon Betty's fleet turned to the north, and the lookout on the light cruiser "Galati" on the eastern flank saw the Danish irregular cargo ship "Verjol" in the distance spewing an unusually large amount of steam, and the "Galati" left the formation to check. At the same time, Hipper's light cruiser "Elpin", which was covering both flanks, also saw the "Veryol" and turned its rudder towards it. The two light cruisers recognized each other at about the same time, and quickly sent a warning signal to their respective fleets.

Had the seaplane carrier "Campania" sailed with Betty's fleet, this encounter in favour of the German Navy could have been avoided, as the two sides of the battle of Jiāo would likely have met further north, and the Germans would have been within range of Jellico's main fleet. The Galati and Elpin were moving at full speed and stopped fighting at 2.52 p.m. when they joined each other. Before nightfall, 269 warships -- 149 British and 120 German -- and more than 100,000 naval officers and men fought an unprecedented decisive battle on more than 400 square miles of ocean.

In a hurry, Betty gave a rash order, ordering his six battlecruisers to go ahead at a top speed of 25 knots, while his four slower but more powerful battleships fell behind, thus sacrificing his near-two-to-one numerical advantage.

When Hipper saw that Betty had been hit, he followed Scheer's plan and turned southeast and sailed for the High Seas Fleet, which was waiting there. Betty gave close pursuit, and the two sides began a brief exchange of shès, with the German naval officers and men outperforming the British navy in their shèring skills. At 4 p.m., Betty's flagship battlecruiser "Lion" was hit by a bullet and exploded in the middle of the turret, causing heavy damage; The battlecruiser "Mary NV King" exploded and sank. A few minutes later, the British Navy's battlecruiser "Indefatigable" was defeated by the German Navy "von Fernandes". Morality. The two shells from the Tann were hit and died at the bottom of the sea along with 1,017 crew members in a deafening explosion.

Betty's fleet was dealt a shocking blow, but he was still determined to continue the fight, convinced that 4 battleships of the "King Elizabeth NV" class would soon join him. Here the German ships suddenly hit the battlecruiser "Royal Princess", enveloping it in smoke and flames, and the British Navy lost a third battlecruiser.

Betty's wait was not in vain, and soon he joined Admiral Evan Thomas's squadron of battleships - "Baram", "Malaya", "Brave" and "War-weary". The four British battleships began to bombard with 15-inch guns, and the German ships were soon dealt a terrible blow, and Scheer's plan to ambush Betty was now out of order. Instead of going and trapping the British detachment into the trap between Hipper's battlecruisers and his main fleet, he now had to stretch out his hand to relieve Hipper.

Betty continued to sail in the same direction, and after seeing the main German fleet looming on the horizon, she immediately made a 180-degree turn and headed north at full speed to seek the cannon protection of Jellico's fleet. Evan Thomas did not see the flag of turning, his battleship became the target of German artillery fire, and the British suffered heavy losses and casualties. The "Baraam" and "Malaya" were hit by German ships several times, and the "War Wereary" Cào rudder was also temporarily out of order. But the formidable combat power of the "Elizabeth NV King" class battleships also proved that the huge pounds of the British Huā fee were worth the money, and the British hit the enemy at the same time as they were beaten; "Feng. Morality. The main guns of the Tann were badly damaged, and the Lützov was also heavily damaged, and its power was greatly reduced, and it was barely able to continue sailing. ,

At 5:30 p.m., the German destroyers saw several British light warships approaching them from the northeast. These warships were reconnaissance ships and belonged to Rear Admiral Horace. The group of three battlecruisers commanded by Hood was sent by Jericho to reinforce Betty's fleet. In a brief jiāo front, the German light cruiser Wiesbaden was hit hard in succession and sank along with most of its crew. The German destroyer V-48 and the British destroyer Shark also perished. Two old British cruisers, the "Defense" and its sister ship "Warrior", fought Hipper's battlecruiser Jiāo at 6,000 yards. In less than four minutes, the hull of the "Defense" exploded and sank, and the "Warrior" was also seriously injured and sank the next day.

The two huge fleets rushed towards each other, and the British fleet sailed south in a formation of four battleships in a row of six parallel rows. Each row is 2000 yards apart, and each warship is 500 yards apart. If the battleship was to be deployed in a single row on the side of the ship, it would take four minutes, but the prerequisite for such an action was that the enemy ship was exactly in front and that its exact distance was already known. If the enemy approaches the left or right flank, another maneuver is used so that the fleet can line up the attacking forces in a single line on the side of the board. Jericho couldn't decide on his maneuvers until he knew Scheer's course and bearing. After determining that the German fleet was moving exactly to the right flank of the main British fleet, Jellicoe ordered the entire fleet to spread out to port side, and twenty-four huge battleships lined up in a 15,000-yard combat single line and headed southeast.

Before the British completed this maneuver, Scheer did not know that the British main fleet was in this area. When the horizon to the northeast turned into a curtain of silver-white and orange sè glittering, followed by a huge explosion of hail shells, his light reconnaissance ships were blown to pieces before they could signal him. Jellicoe was performing a strategic maneuver to seize the "T" prefix, when Scheer's fleet was hampered in the use of its artillery fire, while the main British fleet was able to bombard German ships with all its artillery.

Despite the fact that the British Royal Navy was striking under favorable conditions, in addition to the flash of the muzzles, Jellico's ships were obscured by the yīn haze in the eastern sky and the dense soot blowing eastward from the chimneys of the German ships. In less than ten minutes, Scheer's forward battleship was subjected to at least twelve fierce Qi shè. The already scarred German battlecruisers suffered serious losses, and the bow of the "Lützov" was almost below the waterline. Morality. The superstructure of the Tann collapsed, and the cannon slumped to the deck full of dead and dying sailors.

Scheer realized that it was the British main fleet that he had encountered. At 6:36 p.m., he gave the most crucial order in this naval battle to "turn northwest to meet the enemy", and the German fleet, which carried out the "anti-navigation warfare", carried out a fierce battle against the British fleet, and the battleship "Agincourt" at the end of the British fleet was the first to be hit by four "King" class battleships, which caught fire and exploded, and soon sank. Although the German battlecruiser "De Fringer" had been hit several times by the British, it nevertheless delivered a fatal blow to Rear Admiral Hood's flagship, the Invincible, and a thunderous explosion blew the battlecruiser in two, and then sank it along with the entire crew.

The terrible blow to the British fleet left Jellico and Betty a little confused for a while, unaware that Scheer had cut to the tail of his own fleet. By this time, night had fallen, and the light ships of both sides of the battle began to fight against the black, with casualties on each other, and both sides were anxiously waiting for the decisive battle at dawn because they could not distinguish between friend and foe in the dark night.

The "Night of Torpedoes", which had caused great distress on both sides of the Jiāo War, had finally come to an end, and the night battle of Hún had caused heavy losses to both British and German cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo boats, and at dawn the waters of Jutland Sandbar were littered with floating fragments of hulls and the corpses of fallen sailors.

The "duel of giants" began during the day on June 1st, and the British and German battlefleets finally began to face each other in a real jiāo front, and the British fleet pounced on the German fleet in a long column, and the British ships were "King George V", "Ajax", "Captain of the Centennial", "Ireland", "Orion", "Sovereign", "Conqueror", "Thor", "Iron Duke", "Royal Oak", "Magnificent", "Benbau", "Bellerophon", "Reckless". ", "Avant-garde", "Giant", "Clingwood", "Neptune", "St. Vincent", "Marlborough", "Revenge" and "Hercules", Betty's battlecruiser and four "Elizabeth NV-class fast battleships" were also added. ,

The German fleet under the command of Schell fought hard, and the German fleet was "King", "Elector", "Count of the Border", "Crown Prince Wilhelm", "Caesar", "Regent Louis Bōde", "Catherine", "Frederick the Great", "Byrne", "Baden", "Saxony", "Württemberg", "Osterfrisland", "Thuringia", "Helgoland", "Oldenburg", "Bōsen", "Rhineland", " Take the "Sāo", "Westphalia", "Deutschland", "Hesse", "Bōmun", "Hanover", "Silesia" and "Schleswig. Holstein". Hipper's five battlecruisers, which had already been heavily damaged, followed suit, ready to fight to the death.

The largest and most tragic naval decisive battle in human history, with the participation of more than 200 warships and 100,000 naval officers and men with a total tonnage of more than 200,000 tons, officially began.

After the two fleets entered the shè course, they began to bombard, and for a time the cannon on the sea shook the sky, the bullets rained sideways, and the whole sea was boiling, and in this artillery battle that even God felt fearful, whoever had poor firepower and armor protection suffered, and Fisher's "speed is defense" completely lost its role on such a battlefield.

Because the German fleet put the four "Byrne" class battleships with the strongest firepower in the position of the Chinese army, while the Chinese army of the British fleet was composed of relatively weak battleships, these battleships were quickly unable to parry under the fierce blows of the German ship's 380 mm main guns, and the strongest warships of the British fleet at this time were in the rearguard, and they also concentrated their firepower on the old dreadnoughts of the German fleet rearguard. Both sides use the onslaught of each other's weak ships as their main means.

Under the frantic bombardment of deadly large-caliber naval guns, the weak ships of both sides suffered heavy losses, and the German former dreadnoughts "Deutschland", "Hesse", "Bō Mön", "Hanover", "Silesia" and "Schleswig. The six "5-minute ships" of the Holstein sank one after another in less than 20 minutes, and the British battleships "Bellerophon", "Reckless", "Avant-garde" and "Giant" were also sent to the bottom of the sea by German ships.

After seeing the battleships on the side of the fire and sinking one after another, Jericho could hardly believe his eyes, of course he didn't know that the Germans were far more skilled than the British in terms of technical proficiency, and the large-caliber armor-piercing shells equipped with timing tubes issued by the German ships could generally pass through the hull of the British ** ship and then explode, which had a great destructive effect. British shells, on the other hand, could not penetrate the armor steel plates of German ships, and often exploded when they touched them. Moreover, Germany also surpassed the British main fleet in signal technology, ranging and night combat equipment. And when it comes to the vital fire protection system, the German Navy is much superior to the British Navy. The explosion of the British shells in the turret of the German ship did not cause further damage, and the well-protected vertical passage prevented the fire from running into the ammunition depot. When a German shell explodes in the turret of a British ship, it will cause a series of explosions down to the bomb depot. British designers suffered a great loss in a battle that had been at stake for centuries for the British Empire, as they focused too much on speed and large-caliber artillery to the neglect of other necessary improvements.

Although both sides suffered terrible losses, but no one easily retreated, while the battleships of both sides caught and tore each other, Betty and Hipper's battlecruisers were not idle, and were also using the remaining artillery fire to do a desperate battle, due to the German ship's superiority in gunfire and protection, the defects of the British ships were too obvious, and soon, almost all the British battlecruisers, including Betty's flagship "Lion" battlecruiser, were cut in two without exception in a huge explosion, Then he quickly sank to the bottom of the ocean with the crew, only the "Lion" sank for a little longer, allowing Betty to escape to the Xiǎo ship before the flagship sank.

Compared with the heavy losses of the British, the German battlecruiser was able to survive for a while with its excellent xìng, but it still could not escape the bad luck of being sunk, and under the onslaught of four "Elizabeth NV King" class battleships, the "Lützov" finally could not hold on,

After waving the banner "Our mission is complete", it sank, followed by the "Máoqi" and "von. Morality. If it weren't for the four "NV kings" who turned the rudder to support their battleship at the critical moment, the "Seydlitz" and "De Fringel", which were battered and bruised, would have been difficult to escape. ,

The battle soon entered the white-hot stage, due to the fire of the four German "Byrne" class battleships was too fierce, the "Orion", "King", "Conqueror", and "Thor" were sunk one after another, and Jericho's flagship "Iron Duke" was scarred, and the whole ship was on fire, but it still insisted on fighting, and finally sank, and when this heroic battleship sank, the German sailors on the battleship "Baden" saw Jericho standing on the bridge and sinking with the ship.

When the British battleships sank one after another, the German fleet also suffered terrible losses, the "Louite Bōde Regent", "Catherine" and the flagship of the German fleet, "Frederick the Great", also sank in the heavy fire of the British ships, and when the flagship suffered heavy damage, Schell tried to replace the flagship, and when he came to the Xiǎo boat, he was stunned to see his flagship quickly disappear into the sea.

Scheer ordered the sailors to send themselves to the nearest German battleship, but was unsuccessful. Although the British fleet had lost its flagship, the remaining super-dreadnought battleships still refused to flinch, and while they continued to fight, under the bombardment of their all-engulfing artillery fire, the poorly protected German battleships "Osterflisland", "Thuringia", "Helgoland", "Oldenburg", "Bōsen", "Rhineland", "Nasāo" and "Westphalia" were all on fire, and at this time the four "Elizabeth NV King" were all on fire The arrival of the fast battleships of the class exacerbated the losses of the German ships, and all of these German ** ships were sunk by the British ships in a short time.

At this time, almost half of the warships on both sides of the battle sank to the bottom of the sea, but the battle did not stop there, although both sides lost the command of the flagship, but the generals of the detachment all resolutely raised the blood flag, vowing to fight to the end.

(To be continued!) If you like this work, you are welcome to vote for recommendations, monthly passes, and your support is my biggest motivation! ）

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