Battle of Jutland

[Anders Palm]

Hi!

Have anyone on the forum been diving the Battle of Jutland wrecks? I was supposed to go there some years ago but it was cancelled (only days before leaving :mad:).

Again, any ideas of diveboats going there? I take it all wrecks have not been found...

Regards,
Anders

[Richard Lundgren]

Hi!

Have anyone on the forum been diving the Battle of Jutland wrecks?

Regards,
Anders

Ingemar was a sidescan operator on a projet searching for targets in that area some years ago. Im sure he will tell us more about it

Richard

[Ingemar Lundgren]

I was there diving a couple of years ago. I also did some side scan surveys. I will get back with more info later when i have more time. We dived the Lutzow, Invincible and a few more wrecks. Here is a side scan image that i took of, i think the Invincible. It gives you an impression of the condition the wreck are in, most of them hull up and very badly damaged. The Britt's had a serious design problem, their ships blew up after just a few hits. This can clearly be seen on this image. Note the double barrel cannon in the image.

90

[Ingemar Lundgren]

We where diving with the Loyal Watcher http://www.deepblu.co.uk/loyalwatcher/about.htm
http://www.deepblu.co.uk/loyalwatcher/images/lw_rich37.jpg

They ran a good operation and had trimix filling on board. Most wrecks where around 45-50m so that was a big bonus giving long bottom times. The visibility was very poor when i was there but i have herd it can sometimes be pretty good. We never had more then 2-4m visibility though. Diving a huge battle ship that is severely broken up in bad vis is not really enjoyable. My intent was to take stills during the trip but i scraped the idea because of the bad visibility.

I dived the following wrecks

SMS Lützow
SMS Frauenlob
HMS Invincible

Of these SMS Frauenlob was the best dive. The Germans built ships to last as was evident on the Frauenlob, she was much more intact then all the other wrecks. Would have been a great dive if the vis was better.

Some more info on Jutland http://www.periscopepublishing.com/images/Jutland%20gallery%20pages/Jutland%20exhibition.htm

[Martin Björkdahl]

The Britt's had a serious design problem, their ships blew up after just a few hits.
The brittish ships also had problems with the highly explosive cordite and didn't shut safety doors in order to get it faster to the cannons although to a high cost. The ships were overloaded with shells and cordite so they put them in non safe enviroments due to a naval doctrine, basicly fear of running out of ammunition, It's also known that the britts had poor communication with Jellicoe as Wikipedia writes:
Communication between ships and the British commander in chief were poor. For most of the Battle Jellicoe had no idea where the German ships were, even though British ships were in contact. They failed to report positions contrary to the Grand Fleet Battle Plan. Some of the signalling was carried out by flag instead of wireless — a questionable procedure given the mixture of haze and smoke that obscured the battlefield.

Wikipedia has a great page concerning the subject Battle of Jutland at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland

Also there was a documentary on Viasat History about the Battle of Jutland recently..

[jluttichau]

Again, any ideas of diveboats going there? I take it all wrecks have not been found...

Theres a book in danish about the wrecks:
http://www.nolimitsdiving.dk/NLD/WebShop/Boger/Jyllands%20Slaget%201916/OmJyllandsSlaget.htm

Also No limits diving have arranged a dive trip to the wrecks.

Cheers
Jonas

[Kieran Hatton]

Ahh Jutland, a true passion and pain in the arse to get to.

Good write up and pics can be found at www.starfishenterprise.org (http://www.starfishenterprise.org)

Good reading on naval battles of that time are

Castles of Steel by Robert Massie and Drednaught by the same guy talks at length about design and construction as well as the naval arms race leading up to WW1. Battleship by Peter Padfield is also good but slightly shorter than "Drednaught".

Happy hunting