The Battle of the Skagerrak in the North Sea during World War I is considered one of the greatest naval battles in history. The losses in the showdown between the British and German fleets at the end of May 1916 are enormous.
Wilhelmshaven in May 1916. Hardly anything is left of the First World War here. While hundreds of thousands are dying on the battlefields in the west - the Battle of Verdun is raging right now - everything is quiet here. The German fleet, the Kaiser's dearest child, is bobbing in the harbour. But on the night of May 31, the order to sail came. The British naval blockade, which has severely damaged the German wartime economy, is finally to be broken.
The British have a double advantage
By order of May 31, 1916, the German fleet is to break through the British naval blockade. The first shot falls quickly.Unnoticed by the Germans, however, the British are also leaving - they can decode the German radio signals. Never before in history has two entire fleets of modern capital ships steered directly towards one another. There are more than 200 ships, including 28 battleships and nine battlecruisers on the British side and 16 battleships and five battlecruisers on the German side. There is a similar picture in the other ship classes. The overall balance of power is about 8:5 in favor of the British.
Gorch Fock is also on board
Johann Wilhelm Kinau, alias Gorch Fock, has always dreamed of and composed poems about the sea. He lost his life on his first long voyage.The first shot was fired around 4 p.m. in the afternoon. You are in the waters off Jutland, at the entrance to the Skagerrak. First two British battleships are hit, they explode. Of more than 2,000 men on board, only 24 survive.
There are similar catastrophes on the part of the German fleet. Incidentally, here on one of the ships there is a young writer on the lookout whose name almost every German knows - perhaps not his real name Johann Kinau, but his stage name:Gorch Fock.
"We had no idea where the enemy was"
Tracing the course of the battle has taken a great deal of effort from naval historians. The battles and maneuvers drag on deep into the night - with numerous course changes, advances and retreats. Even those involved are often not really in the picture - without aerial reconnaissance and with primitive radio connections. "We had no idea where the enemy was and only a very vague idea of the position of our own ships," said a British captain.
Thousands of casualties on both sides
This sculpture in Thyboroen, Denmark, commemorates the victims of the Skagerrak Battle.As a result, everything looks like a German victory. The newspapers are triumphant:the glorious British fleet, calculated in gross register tons, has lost almost twice as much as the German fleet. But it soon becomes clear that the strategic situation has not changed. The British blockade continues, nothing is won.
The number of human casualties, on the other hand, is appalling:a few hundred shipwrecked people are taken on by ships during the battle, both by our own and by the enemy. The others drown miserably:more than 6,000 Britons and 2,500 Germans. Among them is the young writer from Finkenwerder. Weeks later, his body is washed ashore on an uninhabited island off Sweden. Gorch Fock is buried there to this day.