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In May 1910, Chinese President Song Xiaofei and U.S. President William W. Taft, together with Pope Pius X, mediated in various European countries, appealed for peace and tolerance, and immediately ceased war against the Russian Bolsheviks, the "ghost of Europe". Admiral Schell, the new commander-in-chief of the German High Seas Fleet, had long been dissatisfied with the Royal Navy's "starving blockade" of Germany, and called on the German Navy to fight the British Royal Navy not just for decoration.

Kaiser Wilhelm II had a rather eccentric personality. In fact, he is also related to King George V of England, and William II is the cousin of George V. Because since 1714, the ancestor of the royal family in England has been George I, and George I is a German. The son of the first emperor of the modern German Empire and the daughter of the great Queen Victoria of England, Wilhelm II grew up with mixed feelings for his grandmother, uncle, and cousin who successfully ruled England, and he admired them, loved them, and was jealous of them and resented them.

When William Jr. was born, he was nearly killed by a terrible breech birth, the muscles and nerves in his left shoulder were almost corrupted, one hand and arm were paralyzed, and his upper body was also affected, which made him unable to wear clothes and cut food for the rest of his life. One of his uncles had said that a man with only one arm should not be king of Prussia.

William's mother, desperate to raise him to be a normal person, underwent several years of torturous treatments, such as daily electric shocks to stimulate muscle growth, strapped to a post every day so that his head could stand upright for an hour so that his muscles would not become stiff, and his flabby left arm was usually tied to a freshly killed hare. Soak up the warm breath of a hare. He was forced to ask to ride, fall down, and ride again. If you fall down again, even crying won't help. Until you become a skilled rider. These childhood experiences made his personality inferior and conceited, and he liked to be competitive.

Wilhelm II originally wanted to build an extremely expensive and large fleet, hoping that Britain would treat Germany as equals and that the British royal family would give him respect, but unfortunately it backfired, and the expansion of the German navy completely annoyed the British.

After the start of the war in 1908, the German High Seas Fleet was blockaded in German ports. Hold out and only carry out submarine warfare, but this made Kaiser Wilhelm II quite dissatisfied. The British main fleet squatted like a watchdog in the port of Scapaflo and stared at the German high seas fleet, so that it was trapped in Wilhelmshaven and Bremerhaven for most of the time, becoming a veritable "presence fleet". Kaiser Wilhelm II's frustration intensified when Germany slowed down the speed of the submarine blockade under the threat of Chinese and American intervention.

In the summer of 1910, when the Russian Bolsheviks came to power, the German Army could avoid fighting on two fronts, and the situation on the battlefield seemed favorable to the German-led Allies. Therefore, at this time, despite the mediation efforts of China and the United States, Wilhelm II also imagined that the German Navy would break through the blockade of the British Royal Navy in one fell swoop, and then the army would quickly break through. Smooth out the war. Thus began the "great adventure" of the German Navy against the blockade of the British Royal Navy, one of the largest tonnage naval Armageddons in the history of world naval warfare!

In terms of firepower, the British Royal Navy still had an advantage over the German High Seas Fleet. 33 British dreadnought-class battleships and battle cruisers, 18 capital battleships against Germany, 168 cannons of thirteen and a half and fifteen-inch calibers, 104 cannons of twelve-inch caliber, 176 cannons of twelve-inch caliber against Germany. Britain also had 34 heavy and light cruisers, while Germany had only 11 cruisers, and the ratio of destroyers was 80 to 63.

On 30 May, the new commander-in-chief of the German High Seas Fleet, Admiral Schell, made a plan of operation: to cruise the Norwegian coast at Franz. Feng. The naval squadron of light cruisers and destroyers commanded by Admiral Hippel served as bait. Harassing the British coastal cities, Scheer commanded all the ships of the German High Seas Fleet to lay an ambush fifty miles later. Take advantage of the foggy weather to lure the British Royal Navy into a trap and annihilate it. He did not expect the British Navy to send an entire fleet to intercept a limited invasion if the British Royal Navy attacked. After a symbolic resistance, Hipper turned the rudder and brought the British pursuing fleet within range of the Grand Fleet of Scheer and annihilated it.

As victory seemed to be at hand, Admiral Schell excitedly sent a telegram to Kaiser Wilhelm II about the plan for this naval battle: "Our navy will, at any possible opportunity, carry out an offensive surprise attack on the British naval forces tasked with monitoring and blockading the German coast, and at the same time attack the British coast with minelaying and submarine attacks, so as to achieve the goal of killing and damaging the British fleet." When the results of such operations have accumulated to the point where the naval strength of both sides is equal, all our forces must be ready and assembled to try to find unfavorable fighters for a decisive battle in the fleet. ”

As a result, in the direction of tragedy. Scheer's battle plan had been known to the Royal Navy the day before. The radio station in Wilhelmshaven was still broadcasting with the call sign of Scher's flagship, the Frederick the Great, and the British Navy interpreters intercepted a large number of radio communications that suddenly appeared, and became aware of the unusual activity of the German Navy.

British Admiral John. Jellico and Vice Admiral David. Betty sensed that the German navy was going to make an unexpected move, and they came up with the same attack plan as the Germans: induce Scheer's high seas fleet to attack the ostensibly weaker British fleet, and after a short exchange of shelling, the British forces retreated, and when the German high seas fleet pursued, the British main fleet lurking outside the horizon would fight it!

Vice Admiral Betty of England led an avant-garde fleet from Port Rousseth, Scotland, and on the afternoon of May 31 it reached the waters off Jutland, east of Norway. In order to confuse the Germans, his fleet was very large, including the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron, the 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron, the 5th Battleship Squadron and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Cruiser Squadrons, and the 1st, 9th, 10th, and 13th Destroyer Squadrons.

Admiral Jericho personally led the main fleet from the port of Scapaflo and on the afternoon of May 31 reached an ambush 60 nautical miles northwest of Betty's fleet. Theoretically, Jerichault believed that with the sheer firepower and speed of the British fleet, there was no escape for the German High Seas Fleet this time, and that the British Navy was fully sure of annihilating all the German fleets that appeared in the intended waters.

At two o'clock in the morning on May 31, the sea was pitch black. Take advantage of the thick night. The detachment of battlecruisers under the personal command of Vice Admiral Hipper of Germany faced the wind, including the 26,000-ton flagships "Lützov", "De Fleeter", "Seydlitz", "Moltke" and "von Hipper". Morality. The battlecruiser "Tann", quietly left the port. Also departing from the port were the flagship "Frankfurt" under the command of Rear Admiral Berdick of the German Navy, the light cruisers "Wiesbaden", "Regensburg", "Glaudenz", "Strassund", and the second, sixth, and ninth destroyer (torpedo boat) squadrons.

Half an hour later. Scheer also set out from Wilhelmshaven with the main fleet. Admiral Schell personally took charge of the flagship battleship "Frederick the Great", Rear Admiral Norman led the flagship "Caesar" and the battleships "Empress" and "Regent Louitpoud", and Rear Admiral Barnke led the flagship "King" and led the battleships "Elector", "Governor of the Frontier" and "Prince William".

The main German fleet also included the 1st Battlefleet: it contained two battleship detachments, the flagship "East Friesland" led by Rear Admiral Schmidt, and the battleships "Helgoland", "Thuringia" and "Oldenburg". As well as the flagships "Posen", "Nassau", "Westphalia", "Rhineland" under Rear Admiral Inglehardt.

The Second Battlefleet was a formidable force, consisting entirely of former dreadnoughts, providing fire support. These battleships were the flagships "Deutschland", "Pomerania", and "Hesse" led by Rear Admiral Maugf; Rear Admiral Richterfils commanded the flagships "Hanover", "Silesia", "Holstein. Schleswig".

The 4th Reconnaissance Fleet under the command of Ruyt, the flagships "Stettin", "Stuttgart", "Munich", "Hamburg", "Fraunlob", and "Rostock", with the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th destroyer squadrons carrying out covering tasks, lined up in a warning formation in front of Scheer's fleet. It can be seen that the German high seas fleet is pouring out of the nest this time.

Before dawn broke on 31 May, Hipper led a squadron of naval forces luring the enemy deep into the coast of Denmark as far as Skagerrak, an eighty-mile-wide strait jutting out of the North Sea that separated Denmark and Norway. Scheer chose this route. It was the British spies who deliberately made the coastal areas so numerous that they could discover and report the location of the German troops. To further indicate his position, Hipper's radio transmitter kept transmitting. Something that the Germans revealed. More than they want to reveal. The radio direction station on the east coast of Britain unexpectedly identified the 28,000-ton "Bavaria" as the main radio communication unit of the German Navy.

At about two o'clock in the afternoon, the Betty and Hippel fleets were 50 nautical miles apart, and the two fleets were in a parallel position, but the other was not detected because of errors in the calculation of the intended positions by both sides. At the same time, Scheer's main fleet followed behind at a distance of fifty miles. None of them knew that Betty was right in front of them.

Just as a major battle was about to pass by, an unexpected happened, and a Danish steamer "Strait" passed through the sea between the front of the two fleets, Denmark was a neutral country in the First World War, and the ship did not know that it was between the parallel British and German fleets. The ship emitted an unusually large amount of steam, which alerted the Anglo-German navy. They all thought they had found the enemy, so. A fateful sea battle has begun!

Hipper ordered the light cruiser "Elpin" and two torpedo boats to reconnoitre, and Betty also sent the light cruiser "Galatea" to investigate.

Twenty minutes later, the Galatian reported: "Two battleships are heading east-southeast, and they appear to be enemy ships." ”

Betty ordered the fleet to turn the rudder south-southeast to intercept the two German ships. The 1st detachment of light cruisers was sent to support the "Galatea".

Eight minutes later, the German "Elpin" saw the British "Galateau" and turned its wheel towards it. The two light cruisers recognized each other as the enemy at about the same time, and quickly sent a warning signal to their respective fleets, "The enemy is in sight!" ”

The Battle of Jutland officially began, cruisers with small firepower on both sides, stopped fighting after a salvo from each other, but there was little damage, only one dud fell on the British ship, and when a sailor picked up a cannonball and threw it overboard, his hand was burned. Because the hit rate of artillery shells was very low at that time, in that big battle, the average hit rate of large-caliber shells of the German high seas fleet was only 3.33%, the average hit rate of medium and small caliber shells was 1.16%, and the average hit rate of British battleships was only 2.17%.

However, the Armageddon of the German and British fleets began, and in the hours before nightfall, 149 British warships and 160 German warships fought a life-and-death battle on more than 400 square miles of ocean, with about 100,000 navies on both sides participating in the war, which is rare in history! (To be continued)