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| Steaming in advance of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe's Grand Fleet, Beatty's battlecruisers, supported by the battleships of the 5th Battle Squadron, collided with Vice Admiral Franz Hipper's battlecruisers in the opening phases of the Battle of Jutland. Engaging at 3:48 PM on May 31, the German fire proved accurate from the outset. At 3:50 PM, Queen Mary opened fire on SMS Seydlitz with its forward turrets.As Beatty closed the range, Queen Mary scored two hits on its opponent and disabled one of Seydlitz's aft turrets. Around 4:15, HMS Lion came under intense fire from Hipper's ships. The smoke from this obscured HMS Princess Royal forcing SMS Derfflinger to shift its fire to Queen Mary. As this new enemy engaged, the British ship continued to trade hits with Seydlitz. At 4:26 PM, a shell from Derfflinger struck Queen Mary detonating one or both of its forward magazines. The resulting explosion broke the battlecruiser in half near its foremast. A second shell from Derfflinger may have hit further aft. As the after part of the ship began to roll, it was rocked by a large explosion before sinking. Of Queen Mary's crew, 1,266 were lost while only twenty were rescued. Though Jutland resulted in a strategic victory for the British, it saw two battlecruisers, HMS Indefatigable and Queen Mary, lost with nearly all hands. An investigation into the losses led to changes in ammunition handling aboard British ships as the report showed that cordite handling practices may have contributed to the loss of the two battlecruisers |
Notes: https://www.thoughtco.com/world-war-i-hms-queen-mary-2361217 |
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