# Who won the Battle of Jutland? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 2, 2021, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-battle-of-jutland/950022 "2021-09-02T23:46:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Wallaby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/dc4da7/32.png) [@Wallaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallaby)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2021, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-battle-of-jutland/950022/22 "2021-09-06T03:42:34Z")
The point that a lot of people do not realise about Britain losing control of the seas was not just the huge problem of submarine warfare against the cargo ships in the atlantic, but that Britain could not fight in the war at all. Every single British Soldier who fought in France went across the English Channel. Millions of tons of munitions, weapons, ammunition, horses, vehicles, fuel, - you name it, if it came from Britain, it went over the channel. Now imagine the channel under control of German warships (including submarines, battleships, destroyers). ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2021, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-battle-of-jutland/950022/23 "2021-09-06T04:27:45Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > _ **IF** _ the Imperial Navy had somehow succeeded in actually crushing the Grand Fleet (as opposed to just mauling it a bit; more so than they actually did in real life, I mean)—and it’s a mighty big “if”, and may well have been simply impossible—then I don’t see why the German Navy couldn’t have disrupted Britain’s supply lines. It’s less than 500 nautical miles from Wilhelmshaven to Plymouth or Scapa Flow. The [_Kaiser_ class battleships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser-class_battleship) had a range of 7,900 nautical miles. Even the old [_Deutschland_ class pre-dreadnoughts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland-class_battleship) had a range of 4,800 nautical miles. So I think the Germans would have been perfectly able to rampage through the North Sea, English Channel, and the Atlantic approaches to the British Isles…again, _if_ they could somehow have routed the Royal Navy. I get that their ships had the range to easily make the trip. What I mean is, did they have the logistics to maintain control of the waters around the UK, or even just the channel, or would they have been limited to the sort of raids they occasionally conducted earlier in the war—albeit perhaps more frequently and in greater strength? It’s a [blue water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-water_navy)-[green water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green-water_navy) distinction that I’m getting after. Consider this as a challenge posed to the notion that a lopsided German victory at Jutland might have lost the UK the war in an afternoon. That’s only true if Germany could have maintained enough of its fleet out to sea for long enough to make a difference. ---
**Author:** ![gnarator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gnarator/32/8266_2.png) [@gnarator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarator)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2021, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-battle-of-jutland/950022/24 "2021-09-06T16:02:01Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Jutland was only a British “defeat” in that it wasn’t the Trafalgar-type victory that politicians and the public craved, especially after the vast sums that had been spent on the Navy and due to the flawed perception that British ships and sailors were better than their German equivalents I think this was the major disappointment for the British. Beatty (and his backers) were convinced Jellicoe had let victory slip through his grasp. > [@Lumpy](#): > > Was it hoped that if the HSF were annihilated, that Britain could then conduct an invasion of Germany via sea and thus bypass the deadlock on the Western Front? If so, this might explain why the battle was regarded as disappointing in Britain. Admiral Fisher had a plan to land troops on the Pomeranian coast, even without defeat of the HSF. It was an option that was never seriously considered, but I suppose they could have tried it if the HSF had been neutralized. However, it is not true that the HSF retreated to port and never sortied again. The HSF did come out a few more times during the war, notably in the Baltic but also in another attempt to pick off parts of GF escorting convoys to Scandinavia. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-battle-of-jutland/950022/25 "2021-09-09T14:32:50Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > Churchill famously described Jellicoe as “the only man on either side who could have lost the war in an afternoon”. Churchill’s got some nerve talking about WW1 operations not going completey as expected. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-won-the-battle-of-jutland/950022.md?page=1)