The First World War - Jutland German Plan

In an effort to whittle down British superiority in numbers, German strategy initially revolved around making raids on British coastal towns to entice the British Fleet out in small numbers to be ambushed by submarines, but Admiral Jellicoe, the British Grand Fleet commander, refused to take the bait.

By 1916 Admiral Sheer, the High Seas Fleet commander, had accepted this plan was failing. His solution was to use his battlecruiser squadron, under Admiral Hipper, to attack merchant shipping in the North Sea to temp Admiral Beatty’s battlecruiser squadron out of Rosyth and waylay it with his battleships.