The promotion winning Port Vale player who fought in WW1’s major sea battle

About the battle of Jutland

Prior to World War One, Great Britain and Germany had been engaged in a naval arms race with both countries amassing large numbers of battleships and battle cruisers. However, Germany’s fleet was still much smaller and Britain was keen to lure its fleet out and engage it, hoping for a decisive battle to turn the current stalemate in the trenches.

By contrast, Germany planned to lure out a portion of Britain’s fleet and sink it, thus achieving parity in terms of vessels. The Germans planned to use Vice-Admiral Franz Hipper’s fast moving group of five modern battlecruisers as bait to lure Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty’s advance guard battlecruiser squadrons into the path of the main German fleet.

However, when Hipper’s group set sail in May 1916 they encountered Beatty’s squadrons far sooner than they anticipated. Hipper still managed to lure Beatty’s group into the path of the main German fleet. Beatty lost two battleships and four battlecruisers before he retreated to alert the rest of the British fleet.

The Germans made a fateful decision and opted to follow Beatty thus luring their ships into the sights of the hugely powerful British main fleet. For four hours the two fleets, totalling around 250 ships (150 British and 100 German) engaged each other resulting in the loss of 25 ships and over 9,000 casualties.

The two fleets then withdrew and returned to port, the consequence of the action meaning that neither fleet would take the risk of confronting the other again during the war. It was the third and last time that battleships would be the prime combatants in a sea battle.

About HMS Royal Oak

HMS Royal Oak was a Renown class battleship which had only just been commissioned earlier in 1916. She cost nearly £2.5m, had a main armament of four fifteen inch guns, was 620 foot in length and was crewed by 909 men.

Royal Oak joined the battle of Jutland at 6.29pm and four minutes later a German barrage narrowly missed her. In return, Royal Oak managed to hit three German ships with her guns but failed to sink any of them. However, Royal Oak did perform a potentially vital duty in the latter stages of the battle as its guns engaged and prevented an attack by German torpedo boats. In the course of the battle, Royal Oak had fired 38 rounds from her main battery and 84 rounds from her secondary guns.

Royal Oak was still used by the Royal Navy in World War Two and was sunk as a German U-boat successfully penetrated the Scapa Flow anchorage. Tragically, 635 men died with the ship or died later of their wounds. Her final resting place is now a War Grave.