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Updated: May 2, 2025
The German fleet was slower than the British fleet by several knots, and if the statements by Jellicoe and Beatty of the damage done are even approximately true, Von Hipper and Von Scheer must have been embarrassed by the necessity of caring for a large number of badly crippled ships. The night is short in that high latitude not over five hours at the maximum.
For Scheer it was now imperative to withdraw if he could. Accordingly at this juncture he sent out a flotilla of destroyers in a desperate effort to cover the retreat of his fleet. They fired a number of torpedoes at the English battle line, and retired with the loss of one boat. Their stroke succeeded, for Jellicoe turned his whole line of battleships away to avoid the torpedoes.
It will doubtless start off toward the west or southwest and swing around to the south and southeast as soon as Von Scheer feels confident of having cleared the western flank of the British fleet. We may then draw two bounding lines from the point which the Germans are known to have occupied at ten o'clock, and feel reasonably sure that four o'clock will find them between these lines.
The hopes depended partly on the skill of the new commander, Von Scheer, and partly on his too-well justified belief that the Germans possessed better shells, better armour, better searchlights, and more accurate range-tests than the British Navy.
The trouble about a Huitfeldt binding is that it is thick and clumsy and the buckles stick out so that they catch in the snow when running. The Scheer binding avoids these drawbacks. It is put on just as easily as a Huitfeldt and the thin thong lies so closely along the boot that there is nothing to catch in the snow.
The British may well have been cautious during the night about venturing far into the fog, which, as they knew, if it concealed the capital ships of Von Hipper and Von Scheer, concealed also their destroyers, and possibly a stretch of water strewn with mines laid out by the retreating enemy.
Guns: 2 machine. 10 12 inch, 45 cal. At 6.35 Scheer performed a difficult maneuver that the fleet had practiced for just the situation that existed at this time. He wheeled his battleships simultaneously to starboard, forming line again on a westerly course.
Verdun had been promised them as a certain key to early peace, and Admiral Scheer was deified as the immortal who tore loose the British clutch from the German throat. But Verdun and Jutland faded in succeeding months before the terrible first-hand evidence that the constant diminution of food made life a struggle day after day and week after week.
So Beatty turned to the northward, and, as he had hoped, Von Hipper followed; not, however, until he had run far enough on the old course to effect a junction with Von Scheer, whose battleships fell in astern of the battle cruisers as these last swung around to the northward and took up a course parallel to that of Beatty and Thomas.
Admiral Scheer, also, on getting report of the English cruisers, quickened the speed of his main fleet. At 3.30 Beatty and Hipper discovered each other's battle cruiser forces. Hipper turned about and headed on a southerly course to lead the British toward the advancing main fleet.
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