Before dawn on May 31, 1916, Hipper's flagship "Lützov" led the German naval detachment to the Danish coast, and the British fleet also set out on the evening of May 30, thus opening the prelude to the Battle of Deland, which shocked the world.

Since both sides were fighting with their main forces at their best, the scale of the decoy fleet exchange on both sides alone was enormous: Betty's fleet consisted of 4 battleships and 6 battle cruisers, while Hipper's fleet consisted of 5 battlecruisers, and both sides had destroyers and other light ships for reconnaissance. The lack of aerial reconnaissance caused by the failure of the British seaplane carrier "Campania" to follow the movement of the Grand Fleet played a major role in the course of the Battle of Deland.

Betty's course was largely the same as that of Jellico, and shortly after 2 p.m. on 31 May, Betty turned north and joined the main fleet at Skagerrak in the evening. At that time, Hipper's fleet was thirty-five miles to the east, heading north on a parallel course, while Scheer's main fleet followed fifty miles behind. Soon Betty's fleet turned to the north, and the lookout on the light cruiser "Galati" on the eastern flank saw the Danish irregular cargo ship "Verjol" in the distance spewing an unusually large amount of steam, and the "Galati" left the formation to check. At the same time, the light cruiser "Elpin", which was covering the flanks of Hipper, also saw the "Friol" and turned the rudder to sail towards it. The two light cruisers recognized each other at about the same time, and quickly sent a warning signal to their respective fleets.

Had the seaplane carrier "Campania" sailed with Betty's fleet, this encounter in favor of the German Navy could have been avoided, as the belligerents were likely to meet further north, and the Germans would have been within range of Jellico's main fleet. The Galaty and Elpin were moving at full speed and ceased fighting at 2.52 p.m. after firing a salvo at each other. Before nightfall, 269 warships -- 149 British and 120 German -- and more than 100,000 naval officers and men fought an unprecedented decisive battle on more than 400 square miles of ocean.

In a hurry, Betty gave a rash order, ordering his six battlecruisers to go ahead at a top speed of 25 knots, while his four slower but more powerful battleships fell behind, thus sacrificing his near-two-to-one numerical advantage.

When Hipper saw that Betty had been hit, he followed Scheer's plan and turned southeast and sailed for the High Seas Fleet, which was waiting there. Betty gave close pursuit, and the two sides began a brief exchange of fire, with the German officers and men outnumbering the British Navy in their marksmanship. At 4 p.m., Betty's flagship battlecruiser "Lion" was hit by a bullet and exploded in the middle of the turret, causing heavy damage; The battlecruiser "Queen Mary" exploded and sank. A few minutes later, the British Navy's battlecruiser "Indefatigable" was defeated by the German Navy "von Fernandes". Morality. The two shells fired by the Tann were hit and died at the bottom of the sea along with 1,017 crew members in a deafening explosion.

Betty's fleet was dealt a shocking blow, but he was still determined to continue the fight, and he was convinced that 4 battleships of the "Queen Elizabeth" class would soon join him. Here the German ships suddenly hit the battlecruiser "Royal Princess", enveloping it in smoke and flames, and the British Navy lost a third battlecruiser.

Betty's wait was not in vain, and soon he joined Admiral Evan Thomas's squadron of battleships - "Baram", "Malaya", "Brave" and "War-weary". The four British battleships began to bombard with 15-inch guns, and the German ships were soon dealt a terrible blow, and Scheer's plan to ambush Betty was now out of order. Instead of luring the British detachment into a trap between Hipper's battlecruisers and his main fleet, he now had to stretch out his hand to relieve Hipper.

Betty continued to sail in the same direction, and after seeing the main German fleet looming on the horizon, she immediately made a 180-degree turn and headed north at full speed to seek the cannon protection of Jellico's fleet. Evan Thomas did not see the flag of turning, his battleship became the target of German artillery fire, and the British suffered heavy losses and casualties. The "Baram" and "Malaya" were hit by German ships several times, and the rudder mechanism of the "war-weary" was also temporarily out of order. But the strength of the "Queen Elizabeth" class battleships also proved that the huge amount of pounds spent by the British was worth it, and the British hit the enemy while being beaten; "Feng. Morality. The main guns of the Tann were badly damaged, and the Lützov was also heavily damaged, and its power was greatly reduced, and it was barely able to continue sailing.

At 5:30 p.m., the German destroyers saw several British light warships approaching them from the northeast. These warships were reconnaissance ships and belonged to Rear Admiral Horace. The group of three battlecruisers commanded by Hood was sent by Jericho to reinforce Betty's fleet. In a brief encounter, the German light cruiser "Wiesbaden" was hit in succession and sank along with most of its crew. The German destroyer V-48 and the British destroyer Shark also perished. Two aging British cruisers, the Defense and its sister ship, the Warrior, engaged Hipper's battlecruiser at 6,000 yards. In less than four minutes, the hull of the "Defense" exploded and sank, and the "Warrior" was also seriously injured and sank the next day.

The two huge fleets rushed towards each other, and the British fleet sailed south in a formation of four battleships in a row of six parallel rows. Each row is 2000 yards apart, and each warship is 500 yards apart. If the battleship was to be deployed in a single row on the side of the ship, it would take four minutes, but the prerequisite for such an action was that the enemy ship was exactly in front and that its exact distance was already known. If the enemy approaches the left or right flank, another maneuver is used so that the fleet can line up the attacking forces in a single line on the side of the board. Jericho couldn't decide on his maneuvers until he knew Scheer's course and bearing. After determining that the German fleet was moving exactly to the right flank of the main British fleet, Jellicoe ordered the entire fleet to spread out to port side, and twenty-four huge battleships lined up in a 15,000-yard combat single line and headed southeast.

Before the British completed this maneuver, Scheer did not know that the British main fleet was in this area. When the northeastern horizon turned into a curtain of silvery-white and orange glittering lights, followed by a huge explosion of hail shells, his light reconnaissance ship was blown to pieces before it could signal him. Jellicoe was performing a strategic maneuver to seize the "T" prefix, when Scheer's fleet was hampered in the use of its artillery fire, while the main British fleet was able to bombard German ships with all its artillery.

Despite the fact that the British Royal Navy fired in favorable conditions, in addition to the flash of the muzzles, Jellicoe's ships were obscured by the haze of the eastern sky and the thick soot blowing eastward from the chimneys of the German ships. In less than ten minutes, Scheer's forward battleship received at least twelve fierce volleys. The already scarred German battlecruisers suffered serious losses, and the bow of the "Lützov" was almost below the waterline. Morality. The superstructure of the Tann collapsed, and the cannon slumped to the deck full of dead and dying sailors.

Scheer realized that it was the British main fleet that he had encountered. He wasted no time, and at 6:36 p.m., he issued the most crucial order in this naval battle to "turn northwest to meet the enemy", and the German fleet, which carried out the "anti-navigation warfare," fired a fierce salvo at the British fleet, and the battleship "Agincourt" at the end of the British fleet was the first to be hit by four "King" class battleships, which caught fire and exploded, and soon sank. Although the German battlecruiser "De Fringer" had been hit several times by the British, it nevertheless fired a deadly salvo at Rear Admiral Hood's flagship, the Invincible, and the thunderous explosion blew the battlecruiser in two, and then sank it along with the entire crew.

The terrible blow to the British fleet left Jericho and Betty a little confused for a while, and they did not know that Scheer had cut into the tail of his own fleet. By this time the night had fallen, and the light ships of the two warring sides began to fight in the dark, and there were casualties on each other, and since they could not distinguish between friend and foe in the night, both sides were anxiously waiting for the decisive battle at dawn.

The "Night of Torpedoes," which troubled both sides of the war, finally came to an end, and the melee at night caused heavy losses to the cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo boats of both Britain and Germany, and at dawn the sea of the Sandbank was littered with floating fragments of hull wreckage and the corpses of fallen sailors.

The "duel of giants" began during the day on June 1st, and the British and German battlefleets finally began to face to face with the real confrontation, and the British fleet formed a long battle column to pounce on the German fleet, and the British ships were "King George V", "Ajax", "Captain Hundred", "Ireland", "Orion", "King", "Conqueror", "Thor", "Iron Duke", "Royal Oak", "Magnificent", "Benbau", "Bellerophon", "Reckless", "Avantgarde", "Giant", "Clingwood", "Neptune", "St. Vincent", "Marlborough", "Revenge" and "Hercules", Betty's battlecruiser and four "Queen Elizabeth"-class fast battleships also joined in.

The German fleet under the command of Schell fought hard, and the German fleet was "King", "Elector", "Border Count", "Crown Prince Wilhelm", "Caesar", "Regent Louitpoud", "Catherine", "Frederick the Great", "Byrne", "Baden", "Saxony", "Württemberg", "Osterfrisland", "Thuringia", "Helgoland", "Oldenburg", "Posen", "Rhineland", "Natze", "Westphalia", "Deutschland", "Hesse", "Pomerne", "Hanover", "Silesia" and "Schleswig". Holstein". Hipper's five battlecruisers, which had already been heavily damaged, followed suit, ready to fight to the death.

After the two fleets entered the firing range, they began to bombard, and for a time the cannon on the sea shook the sky, the bullets rained sideways, and the whole sea surface was boiling.

Because the German fleet put the four "Byrne" class battleships with the strongest firepower in the position of the Chinese army, while the Chinese army of the British fleet was composed of relatively weak battleships, these battleships were quickly unable to parry under the fierce blows of the German ship's 380 mm main guns, and the strongest warships of the British fleet at this time were in the rearguard, and they also concentrated their firepower on the old dreadnoughts of the German fleet rearguard. Both sides use the onslaught of each other's weak ships as their main means.

Under the frantic bombardment of deadly large-caliber naval guns, the weak ships of both sides suffered heavy losses, and the German former dreadnoughts "Deutschland", "Hesse", "Pomern", "Hanover", "Silesia" and "Schleswig. The six "5-minute ships" of the Holstein sank one after another in less than 20 minutes, and the British battleships "Bellerophon", "Reckless", "Avant-garde" and "Giant" were also sent to the bottom of the sea by German ships.

After seeing the battleships on his side fire and sinking one after another, Jericho could hardly believe his eyes, of course he did not know that the Germans were far more skilled than the British in terms of technical proficiency, and the large-caliber armor-piercing shells with timing tubes fired by German ships could generally pass through the hull of the British [***] ship and then explode, which had a great destructive effect. However, British shells could not penetrate the armor steel plates of German ships, and often exploded when they touched. Moreover, Germany also surpassed the British main fleet in signal technology, ranging and night combat equipment. And when it comes to the vital fire protection system, the German Navy is much superior to the British Navy. The British shells exploded in the turret of the German [***] ship without causing further damage, and the well-protected vertical passage prevented the fire from running down to the ammunition depot. When a German shell exploded in the turret of a British ship, it caused a series of explosives down to the ammunition depot. British designers suffered a great loss in a battle that had been at stake for centuries for the British Empire, as they focused too much on speed and large-caliber artillery to the neglect of other necessary improvements.

Although both sides suffered terrible losses, but no one easily retreated, while the battleships of both sides caught and tore each other, Betty and Hipper's battlecruisers were not idle, and were also using the remaining artillery fire to do a desperate battle, due to the German ship's superiority in gunfire and protection, the defects of the British ships were too obvious, and soon, almost all the British battlecruisers, including Betty's flagship "Lion" battlecruiser, were cut in two without exception in a huge explosion, Then he and his crew quickly sank to the bottom of the sea, except for the "Lion", which sank a little longer, allowing Betty to escape to the boat before the flagship sank.

Compared with the heavy losses of the British, the German battlecruiser was able to hold out for a while longer with its excellent surname, but it still could not escape the bad luck of being sunk, and under the onslaught of four "Queen Elizabeth" class battleships, "Lüzov" finally could not hold out and sank after waving the banner "Our mission has been completed", followed by "Moltke" and "von. Morality. If it weren't for the four "queens" who turned the rudder to support their battleship at a critical moment, the "Seydlitz" and "De Fringel", which were battered and bruised, would have been difficult to escape.

The battle soon entered the white-hot stage, due to the fire of the four German "Byrne" class battleships was too fierce, the "Orion", "King", "Conqueror", and "Thor" were sunk one after another, and Jericho's flagship "Iron Duke" was scarred, and the whole ship was on fire, but it still insisted on fighting, and finally sank, and when this heroic battleship sank, the German sailors on the battleship "Baden" saw Jericho standing on the bridge and sinking with the ship.

When the British battleships sank one after another, the German fleet also suffered terrible losses, and the "Regent Louitpoud", "Catherine" and the flagship of the German fleet, "Frederick the Great", also sank under heavy fire from the British ships.

Scheer ordered the sailors to send themselves to the nearest German battleship, but was unsuccessful. At this time, although the British fleet lost its flagship, the remaining super-dreadnought battleships still refused to flinch, and under the bombardment of artillery fire that they could devour everything, the poorly protected German battleships "Osterfrisland", "Thuringia", "Helgoland", "Oldenburg", "Posen", "Rhineland", "Nazai" and "Westphalia" all burst into flames, and the arrival of four "Queen Elizabeth" class fast battleships aggravated the German ship's lossesIn a very short time, all of these German ships were sunk by the British ships.

At this time, almost half of the warships of both warring sides sank to the bottom of the sea, but the battle did not stop there, although both sides lost the command of the flagship, but the generals of the detachment all resolutely raised the blood flag, vowing to fight to the end.

(To be continued)