Battle of Jutland 3 - The morning of May 31st

The BGF leaves Scapa Flow 1916

We have seen how Scheer single-mindedly pursued his plans to bring about the definitive fleet action. The British side was no less anxious for the confrontation, which they believed would convincingly deal with German pretensions. Beatty's continuous chafing for actions to provoke the Germans was echoed in other quarters, and tested Jellicoe's prudence to the limits. The boredom and frustration of officers and men cooped up in Scapa Flow or Rosyth for weeks at a time added to the tension, and numerous ploys were evaluated. In fact, Jellicoe had planned a sweeping action of his cruiser squadrons in the Kattegat and Skagerrak waters off Denmark for 2nd June to tempt Scheer out. Before that however, they learned from various sources, including Room 40, of unusual activities indicating German preparations. At noon on 30th May the Admiralty informed Jellicoe and Beatty of the likely emergence in force of the Germans. At 5pm the Admiralty ordered the fleet to raise steam. By dusk, the BGF in Scapa Flow was beginning to move. At 10.30pm Beatty's six battle cruisers and the four Queen Elizabeth class Super Dreadnoughts of Admiral Evans-Thomas slipped under the  great Forth railway bridge towards the North Sea.
So - ironically - before Scheer's fleet had even weighed anchor, the BGF was at sea. Jellicoe's orders to Beatty were to head for Horn's Reef** off Jutland, to reach there by 2pm on 31st, by which time Jellicoe's Dreadnoughts would be around 60 miles to the north, and within easy reach.  

The battle zone, in the eastern North Sea
off the coast of Jutland

The scene was thus set for the greatest confrontation in naval history. In reality it was like a complicated ritual dance, in which neither side knew what the other was doing or planning. Controversy and debate still follow on as we arrive at the centenary.
Both great fleets operated with two components - a strong, but relatively small advance force, followed by the main fleets with their greatest capital ships.


The BGF sections were:

North. Jellicoe from Scapa Flow 

             24 Dreadnought battleships in 3 battle squadrons

               1 Battle cruiser squadron (3^rd, led by Hood)

               2 Cruiser squadrons (1^st Arbuthnot, 2^nd Heath)

               1 Light cruiser squadron (4^th, Le Mesurier)

               3 Destroyer flotillas (4^th, 11^th, 12^th)

South. Beatty from Rosyth        

              2 Battle cruiser squadrons (6 ships)

              1 Battleship squadron (5^th, Evan-Thomas) of 4 QE class Super dreadnoughts

              3 Light cruiser squadrons (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd)

              4 Destroyer flotillas (1^st, 9^th, 10^th, 13^th)

The GHSF, also in two sections, comprised:

Scheer                                                

              15 Dreadnought and 6 preDreadnought battleships

              3 Cruiser divisions

              7 Destroyer flotillas

Hipper’s 1st Scouting force       

              5 Battle cruisers

              Light cruiser and destroyer flotillas.

In overall numbers the BGF fielded 150 versus 99 of the Germans. The Dreadnought count was 37 British versus 21 German. All the forces were in play, but nobody yet had caught sight of the opponent, although they were sailing on direct collision course.

Light Cruiser HMS Galatea. Her captain
Commodore Edwyn Alexander-Smyth ordered the
first shots of the Battle of Jutland

As the southerly of the two British groups, Beatty had sent his scouting cruisers further to the south to look for the enemy. Beatty himself was zig-zagging for several hours, both to avoid submarines and to search for the enemy. By late morning nothing had been sighted. The distance of Beatty's scouting force from the main fleet of Jellicoe was becoming an issue and at 2.10pm Beatty, late for the rendezvous, sent orders for his scouts to head north eastwards - closer to the designated area.

Signalling was still an imprecise science in 1916. Beatty had had problems with haphazard and incompetent signalling at Dogger Bank in 1915, but done little about it. His flagship HMS Lion had the same signalling officer in charge as then. At the north east extreme of Beatty's force the light cruiser HMS Galatea did not receive the signal immediately, and as she continued to the southeast spotted smoke on the horizon to the east. Within minutes Galatea was sure she had sighted two German battle cruisers, and at 2.20pm signalled "Enemy in sight" to the rest of the squadron. At 2.28pm it fell to the Galatea to fire the first shots of the Battle of Jutland as she approached Hipper's cruisers at a speed of 28 knots. 

Meanwhile Jellicoe, to the north, had no information to suggest to him the the GHSF was out in the North Sea. To make matters worse, at 12.48pm he received completely erroneous information from the Admiralty to reassure him that Scheer was still anchored in the Jade (from Robert Massie: Castles of Steel). This howler was the responsibility of the aforementioned Operations Division in the Admiralty, who had not troubled to check information coming in from Room 40. Captain Thomas Jackson of Admiralty OD had previously stated that the Room 40 staff were "a party of very clever fellows who could decipher coded signals" but they should never be allowed to interpret them. So, Jellicoe continued on his set course to the east, unaware of what was unfolding to the south. Had he known, he could have changed course and increased speed to the British advantage. When, less than two hours later, Jellicoe heard that Beattie was in direct contact with the GHSF, his fragile confidence in information from the Admiralty was broken.

** Horn's Reef off Esbjerg, Western Denmark, is today a giant wind farm. In 1916 the sandbanks there guarded a gateway to a safe, mine free passage for the German ships to travel north from or south to their home ports

Battle of Jutland 2 - The build up

Beatty's 'Guard Fleet' in the Firth of Forth 1916

As already noted, the firepower and numerical superiority of the British Grand Fleet (BGF) over the German High Seas Fleet (GHSF) meant that the Germans would not seek a pitched battle confrontation against the greatest see fleet ever assembled. Instead they developed their tactics of brief sorties and raids to lure smaller detachments of the BGF into battle on a more advantageous footing. From the 1914 and subsequent raids on Scarborough, Whitby and Lowestoft they had succeeded, at least to a degree, in fragmenting the BGF. When he was appointed C-in-C Jellicoe had selected Scapa Flow off the Orkneys as the safe haven for his fleet. Although initially vulnerable to U boat and mine attack, by 1916 it was fully functioning. However, the public outrage at 
the impunity of the German raids, augmented by Zeppelins, far to the south of Scapa Flow, pressured Jellicoe into stationing a significant battle cruiser fleet, under Admiral David Beatty, at Rosyth in the Firth of Forth. Regular sweeps by this force, added to Tyrwhitt's smaller squadron at Harwich calmed government and public fears. Nevertheless, this enabled Scheer to develop his plans.

Reinhard Scheer was 51 at the outbreak of war. An able and fast-thinking flag-officer in the German Fleet, he was much admired by his subordinates and fellow officers. By end 1915 he was Commander of the 2nd Battle Squadron of the GHSF. Following the Dogger Bank battle of early 1915, the cautious C-in-C Ingenohl had been replaced by the like minded Hugo von Pohl, aged 60. Pohl's only aggressive move was to support strongly Tirpitz's arguments for unrestricted submarine warfare, which was declared in February 1915 and led, among others, to the infamous sinking of the Lusitania.

Alfred von Tirpitz
Direct rival to Jacky Fisher
and architect of German
Naval Power

As a disciple of Tirpitz, Scheer was enraged when the politicians won the argument with Tirpitz and the unrestricted campaign was called off in September 1915. By January 1916, Pohl was seriously ill with advanced cancer, and could not continue. Scheer was thus appointed as C-in-C, at a time when public opinion was pressing for action from the GHSF, since the previous heroics of the U boats were now much reduced. One of his first acts was to recall U boats from the high seas, and to begin a process of U boat ambushes on British fleet ships in the North Sea.

Scheer's aim was to pressurise the BGF, by means of raids, torpedo attacks and Zeppelins, into abandoning its distant blockade of German ports and be forced to engage more directly with the GHSF  His strategy was approved in principle by the Kaiser in February. He developed a plan to bombard Sunderland with a scouting force of battle cruisers led by Vice-Admiral Franz von Hipper to lure out Beatty to the jaws of the GHSF. He would also lay down a gauntlet of U boats off the Firth of Forth, and further north on the route south from Scapa Flow. He aimed to destroy Beatty's squadron before the BGF could arrive from Scapa Flow in sufficient strength.
Scheer planned initially for this attack to be on 17th May, and he sent his U boats out well ahead to take up position. Crucially, events conspired to delay the operation by two weeks. Firstly, there were some technical problems with some of the German Dreadnoughts, and repairs were needed to the Seydlitz, one of Hipper's scouting battlecruisers, after a recent raid on Lowestoft. Secondly the weather intervened, making it difficult for Scheer's Zeppelins to provide him with the badly needed aerial observations.  By the time all arrangement were in place, the U-boats were at the end of their cruising scope and were forced to return towards Germany, ending that part of Scheer's plan. Partly as a result of this, Scheer made a late change of plan to avoid Sunderland, and proceed northwards closer to the coast of Jutland and nearer to the GHSF's own safety zones.

Admiral Scheer's fleet set sail from the Jade - natural harbour of Wilhelmshaven that was its home -early on the morning of 31st May. They were accompanied by Hipper's 1st Scouting group.

Sir Reginald "Blinker"Hall
Director Naval Intelligence 1914-19

Scheer's vigorous, attack minded approach was well known in the British Admiralty, and a bolder policy in the North Sea was anticipated. Furthermore the nascent intelligence services  in Room 40 of the Admiralty, led by 'Blinker' Hall,  had made numerous signal interceptions alerting them to Fleet activity, and the likelihood of U boat ambushes. Shamefully and (as it turned out) very unfortunately for Jellicoe, the value of this intelligence to the coming battle was almost completely lost due to incompetence and petty rivalries within the Admiralty. Those responsible for passing on the messages held the newest branch of the service, Room 40, in contempt, and they failed, or delayed, in passing on messages. This later caused such confusion that Jellicoe disregarded new messages, preferring to rely on the evidence of his own eyes and his own men.

Battle of Jutland 1 - Background

Lord Admiral Horation Nelson
His victories allowed the expansion
of the British Empire

The British Empire began with early 17th century colonisation. It reached its zenith in the late Victorian period, and by 1901 Queen Victoria was Empress of one quarter of the world's population. Imperial success was predicated on sea power to protect its trade and possessions. Nelson's victory over the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar in 1805 was the culmination of a series of actions that gave Great Britain almost a century of unchallenged rule of the waves. However, by the time war was declared in 1914, major and subtle changes produced different scenarios for the Royal Navy to deal with.



The faith of the British public and politicians in the Royal Navy was unwavering -  to the point of complacency and arrogance. Not surprising, since the same attitudes pervaded and emanated from the Admiralty.  In the century since Trafalgar the Admiralty had become bloated and bureaucratic; full of nepotism and class prejudice. It was the drive and determination of First Sea Lord Jacky Fisher (See The War at Sea 1915, posted 17/11/2015) that energised and modernised the Navy. In an unlikely partnership with Churchill, a Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer, Fisher oversaw major cuts to the naval budgets - decommissioning hundreds of redundant ships and removing layers of bureaucracy - while simultaneously provoking an arms race with the Germans over Dreadnought battleships.
Fisher was viewed by many as the Britain's finest sailor since Nelson, although his reforming approach made for him bitter enemies within the Admiralty establishment. Fisher's blind spot was the primacy of firepower over armoured protection for his ships. This would rebound on him tragically at Jutland. However, unlike many of his peers, he was not slow to appreciate the potential of newer forms of sea warfare - mines and submarines - and invested in their development. He was forced out of office as First Sea Lord by his enemies in 1911, not before predicting war with Germany in October 1914. When his prediction came to pass three months early, Churchill, now First Lord, reappointed him as First Sea Lord to replace Mountbatten. Fisher resigned only seven months later, amidst bitter arguments with Churchill over the Dardanelles campaign, and so was not directly involved in Jutland, the pivotal naval action of the war.

From the outset there was bound to be uncertainty surrounding any great actions between the British Grand Fleet (henceforth BGF) and German High Seas Fleet (henceforth GHSF), if and when it came. The Kaiser's declaration of an arms race for superiority in Dreadnought class battleships was crippling economically for both sides, but when it was called off in 1912, the British had 29 Dreadnoughts against the Germans' 17. Overall by 1914, the Allies could call upon 43 Dreadnoughts to the Central Powers' 20. The British public, and likely Churchill himself, believed this meant that a definitive Trafalgar style encounter of the two great fleets would inevitably result in a defining victory for the Royal Navy. But the days of set battles between 'ships of the line' were long gone. New tactics involving destroyers, submarines and mines brought unknown risks to the Dreadnoughts. More ironically, the ridiculous expense of building Dreadnoughts engendered a defensive mindset - that they were too valuable to be risked unless the conditions were absolutely right (as with Hitler's Tirpitz in WW2).

Hence by May 1916, the GHSF and the BGF had still not had that defining showdown. A near miss event on the Dogger Bank in early 1915 had been the closest, and a few skirmishes had resulted from German raids on the east coast of England. Overall the Royal Navy's performance had been patchy at best. A morale boosting victory off the Falklands in late 1914 had barely compensated for the bungling of matters in the Mediterranean in August 1914; the ill fated Dardanelles ventures of 1915; and the perceived failure to protect the civilian population from Zeppelins and naval bombardments from the Germans. The facts that the Navy was enforcing successfully a blockade against Germany's imports, while keeping open the high seas for imperial trade did not feel like success. The public were puzzled, and not a little frustrated. Similarly, in Germany the public saw no action at all from the much vaunted GHSF, while the land armies fought heroically, gaining victories but taking heavy casualties.

Reinhard Scheer - Aggressive,
ambitious and dashing

It was the U boats that had created the major threat to Britain, not the GHSF. The men in both navies, and more particularly their commanders felt the pressure of public opinion, and railed against the frustrations of inaction. A major engagement must surely come soon - but how, and in what form?

Churchill refers to “battle or encounter?” between two great, but unequal, fleets. For the latter, the weaker fleet (almost inevitably the GHSF in this scenario, given the superiority of the BGF) may launch a raid, but will need to escape before the odds ranged against them become overwhelming. The stronger fleet, conversely, will need to take greater tactical risks to force the pitched battle it seeks.

Admiral Sir John Jellicoe
The only man who could "lose the
war in an afternoon" by his decisions

Notwithstanding, the consequences of defeat in such a pitched battle would be severe for Germany, but disastrous for the British. Starvation and defeat for Britain would be inevitable, with loss of control over trade on the high seas; of communications with its armies in action around the world, and the likely withdrawal of the United States from the war. Here lay the source of the Commander of the Grand Fleet’s greatest responsibility – that his actions could “lose the war in an afternoon”. Even the defeats and carnage on day 1 of the Somme campaign shortly to follow carried nothing like that implication. The BGF C-in-C, Sir John Jellicoe was a fine man, sailor and planner. In characteristic style, Churchill had sacked his predecessor Admiral Callaghan on the outbreak of war, appointing Jellicoe, who protested strongly at the treatment of his colleague. After the event his prudence and control over detail came in for severe criticism, but ahead of Jutland there appeared to be universal approval of his appointment and his performance to date. “The safety and overwhelming strength of the Grand Fleet was Jellicoe’s all embracing aim” (Churchill). 

On 14th October 1914, within weeks of taking up his post, Jellicoe wrote to the Admiralty in very measured terms, setting out the potential vulnerability of the BGF to 'modern warfare' underwater tactics. He closed his detailed letter with "The object of this letter is to place my views before their Lordships and to direct their attention to the alterations in preconceived ideas of battle tactics which are forced upon us by the anticipated appearance in a fleet action of submarines and minelayers..."

Thus the prudence of the man with the overbearing responsibility of national safety was clearly set out - and was approved by all his superiors, some of whom were highly critical after the events of the Battle of Jutland. On the German side, a relatively new Commander of the GHSF, Reinhard Scheer, was champing at the bit for some definitive actions.... 

Brusilov's offensive - June-September 1916

Aleksei Alekseevich Brusilov
1853-1926

Apart from the initial successes at Lemberg (Lviv) and in Galicia in 1914; plus some limited success at the Lake Narotch in early 1916 (see Eastern Front Action 25/1/16) the Russians had endured a miserable two years. Following defeats at Tannenberg; throughout Poland, and most dramatically at Gorlice-Tarnow they had endured a long retreat to a 500 miles front running north to south from the Baltic to the Eastern Carpathian mountains. After a relatively quiet winter, however, they had regained momentum in terms of men, communications and armaments production; and since the Chantilly conference in late 1915, were co-ordinating their efforts better with the Western Front allies. 
So who was Brusilov? The only General throughout the whole of WW1 to have his name attached to a strategic campaign - a distinction that eluded Joffre, Foch, Haig etc. -  he must have been an impressive man.
General Aleksei Brusilov was aged 60 at the outbreak of war in 1914, and by mid 1916 was one of the few people to have been involved in action continuously since that time. Like many senior generals his training had been as a Cavalry officer, but he recognised the central role of infantry tactics in modern warfare. He distinguished himself in the early advances following Lemberg, and again in early 1915 when he led the further advances as far as the Hungarian plain. It was the disaster at Gorlice-Tarnow that forced his reversal, and thereafter he had to lead rearguard actions during the long Russian withdrawals from Galicia and Poland. Favoured by the Tsar after his successes, he gained promotions and decorations and in April 1916 was given control of the southernmost sector of the front. The tactics he introduced for his offensive led to Russia's greatest successes of the war, and were adopted by other combatants as the war ground onwards - notably the German shock troops of late 1917 and 1918. Brusilov is viewed as one of the great fighting commanders of WW1. Following the February Revolution in 1917, he was made Commander in Chief of the Russian army but was relieved of his post before the Bolshevik Revolution in November, during which he was badly injured. He died in 1924, aged 70, and received a state funeral from the Bolsheviks.

Brusilov's starting point (left) and the double bulge north
and south (right) created by the advances of Khaledin
and Lechitski

The Russians were planning to move in concert with their Allies in Summer 1916, at a moment when the Germans were maximally committed at Verdun and the Somme offensive had started. The Russian Commander-in-Chief (nominally the Tsar) had his 500 mile front covered by three army groups: the NorthWest, led by Kuropatkin; the West, led by Ewart; and the Southwest group led by Ivanov. Ewart's central group was best placed to make a significant push towards Germany, but all three commanders, scarred by their experiences to date, were defensively minded and reluctant to take the initiative against the Germans. However, in April, Ivanov was recalled to Imperial HQ, and Brusilov was promoted to take over leadership of the SW Army group. Resolved to act at once, Brusilov gained permission to attack along the entirety of his sector - nearly three hundred miles from the Pripet Marshes in the north to Cernowitz and the River Dniester in the south. Because of the pressure in Italy from Trentino, this was before the start of the Somme campaign. Breaking with perceived wisdom, his artillery preparation was intense but very short, and he allocated all of his reserves to the initial assault. Brusilov had four armies within his group, all led by experienced generals, and they attacked in five sectors right along his front. Following the bombardment of 12-20 hours, the attacks began on June 5th. The northernmost group could make little headway through the flooded terrain of the Pripet Marshes, but to the south Generals Kaledin and Sakharov made a major breakthrough in the Volhynian triangle, comprising the fortress towns of Rovno, Dubno and Lutsk. The Austrians made a headlong and hasty retreat.
Similar dramatic success was achieved in the far south where Lechitski's 9th army advanced rapidly along the Dniester into the Bukovina region of Galicia. However, in the centre the Austrian and German resistance, led by Bothner, was stiffer and progress was slower. This meant that the two leading groups of Brusilov were diverging, and this would prove to be a problem later when German reinforcements arrived. Neither was Brusilov helped by the tardy responses of Ewart's army group to the north, which should have been pressurising the Germans to prevent their re-deployment.

Gen Alexey Kaledin.
Blazed the trail for Brusilov
into the Volhynian Triangleh

By late June, Brusilov's greatest successes had been achieved (not without heavy casualties). Kaledin's 8th army and Lechitski's 9th had both advanced more than 50 miles, and taken 200,000 prisoners and large quantities of guns and war material between them.
Thereafter, matters became much more difficult for Brusilov, as German and Austrian reinforcements were pulled all the way from the Western Front and Trentino respectively. Effectively, Kaledin and Lechitski were now fighting separate campaigns, separated by a region where Bothner's Austrian forces were holding on - in one case re-inforced by a German Army Corps that transferred the 1000+ miles from Verdun in only six days. Kaledin and Sakharov made further advances towards their objectives, Kovel and Lemberg, but with heavy losses. Despite the major battle raging on the Somme, the germans were able to mount counter-offensives under another of their outstanding generals, von Linsingen. On one day of such battles, 9th August, the Russians lost 55,000 men. To the south, Lechitski' made valiant efforts to strengthen his grip on Bukovina and to cut off supplies for Bothner's central armies, but by September, Brusilov's offensive had come to an end.

Gen. Alexander von Linsingen
Veteran of the Marne and Ypres 1.
Halted Keldin's charge at the Battle of
Kovel, 24th July 1916

Approximate losses were 1 million for Austria-Hungary, including 400,000 as prisoners; 350,000 for Germany, and 500,000 for Russia. For Austria this was a fatal blow, and she was no longer a serious military player in the war. Thereafter Hindenburg took every significant decision on the Eastern Front. For Russia, although this was their most successful campaign of the war, the high losses in the later stages exacerbated the drop in morale that would culminate in revolution in 1917.
Paradoxically, Brusilov's brilliant successes did most for Britain, France and Italy, weakening appreciably the central powers' efforts in Trentino, Verdun and the Somme. Arguably, had Brusilov been better supported by his colleagues in the central and northern army groups, the offensive might have achieved enough to tip the scales of the Somme conflict in favour of the British.

The Italian front and the Trentino offfensive

Bearing little resemblance to today's borders between Italy and her Austrian and Slovenian neighbours, the WW1 front snaked for well over 400 miles (only approx. 200 miles as the crow flies). From Switzerland and its Alps in the west to the plains approaching the Adriatic Sea at Montfalcone just north of Trieste, this serpentine line created by Alpine topography held two enormous salients. The narrower Austro-Hungarian salient contained the Trentino region, subject to multiple Italian attacks in 1915. The broader Italian bulge was formed by the Dolomites and the Carnic Alps - difficult terrain for any strategic moves. This meant that the Italian offensive ambitions (and the majority of their forces) were mainly confined to pushing eastwards across the plains below the Alps. Many great rivers flow across this region from the mountains to the Adriatic, including the Po and Adige south of Venice, and the Isonzo at the eastern extreme. The Isonzo (today the Slovenian river Soca) became one of those infamous WW1 focal points: fought over time and time again with great losses.

  The vulnerability of a typical salient worked both ways for the Trentino. Although on paper it was exposed to Italian attack on all three sides, the Austrians held the high ground and all the mountain passes, making it hazardous for the Italians to advance over hostile steep terrain. In fact, this salient posed a greater threat to Italy, bulging into Italian territory and menacing the rear of the main Italian communications leading eastwards to the Isonzo region. This threat had caused the Italian 1^st and 4^th armies to make frequent difficult sallies against the Austrian positions during the winter of 1915-16. 

Marmolada in the Dolomites.
Hard to imagine this as a war
front - under 30ft of snow - in 1916

The physical and mental challenges of conducting war in the wintry conditions of the Alps must have been harrowing. Near Cortina in the Dolomites, the Italians tunneled into the mountain for three months, and in April mined a crucial mountain post and blew the Austrians out of it, creating a 150 foot crater in the mountain top. Further west, extraordinary feats by the Alpini – Italian mountain troops – captured small parts of the Trentino salient. In the east, Italy made further pushes towards Gorizia, on the Carso plateau (see map), and the upper gorges of the river Isonzo. Overall, their gains were small but sufficient to threaten important Austrian rail networks. The Austrians needed to counter these threats, and had been making plans to do so.

Upper Isonzo 1916.
Just how did they do it?

The Austrian Commander in Chief, Conrad von Hotzendorf, had been the most belligerent player in the build up to war in 1914. Starved of success, and close to humiliation in Serbia and Galicia, he got on badly with his German ally and opposite number, Falkenhayn. In December 1915 the latter had refused support for Conrad’s proposal to breakthrough from the Trentino, roll up the Italian main forces from the rear and put Italy out of the war. Falkenhayn was too pre-occupied with his own plans to reinforce Verdun from the Eastern Front to offer resources to a man whose abilities he disparaged. By spring however, the Austrians had gathered sufficient strength to try their assault without German support. An advance to the Venetian plain would cut off both main railway lines to the Isonzo.

The Italians were aware of an Austrian build up, but did not expect such a major counter-offensive as was launched upon them on 14^th May. A major bombardment, including 800 Howitzers blasted out from the Trentino salient. After eight days of fierce fighting the Austrians were approaching a key objective of Pasubio, north of Vicenza. Desperate defence held them off there, and at Asagio. Further east, heavy fighting in the passes came to a climax on 30^th May, when Austria lost 7000 men on that day alone. By 3^rd June they had reached the furthest point of their invasion, only 18 miles from Vicenza and the main lines. But they had exhausted their strength, and on that day the Italian Commander in Chief Cadorna announced confidently that the invasion had been halted. He was proved correct.

Luigi Cadorna, Italian C-in-C.
His forces only just managed to
hold off the Austrians

Austria’s major gambit had come close to success, but had failed. Italy was still in the war. Furthermore the cost of packing nearly a million troops and their equipment into the salient had been to weaken significantly their northern forces in Galicia. Although this front had been comparatively quiet through the winter, the Russians were preparing for the next major strategic campaign of 1916 – the Brusilov Offensive.