Following the Allied successes during the Hundred Days Offensive, the new German government under Prince Max of Baden, at the insistence of the Supreme Army Command, asked President Woodrow Wilson on 5 October 1918 to mediate an armistice.

This prolonged period of relative inactivity, at a time when all other branches of Germany's armed forces were very heavily engaged, did much to undermine the morale of the crews and the self-respect of the officers.

Acts tantamount to mutiny took place on various occasions during 1917, the most noteworthy being the arrest of 200 men from the battleship Prinzregent Luitpold in August, resulting in two executions.

[4] In late October 1918 the British Grand Fleet, based at Rosyth in the Firth of Forth, had 35 dreadnought battleships and 11 battlecruisers (including two of the very lightly armoured Courageous class).

The materiel problems which beset the Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland and beyond (i.e. poor flash-protection in ammunition handling, lack of deck armour over magazines, deficient armour-piercing shells, and too few destroyers) had all been remedied to various extents.

In particular, the newly designed "Green Boy" shells for the fleet's heavy guns were thought to be such a great improvement in offensive power that they nullified the advantage of the heavier armour protection of German battleships.

[7] The morale in the British fleet was high in anticipation of a re-match for Jutland, the personality and leadership of the commander-in-chief, Admiral Sir David Beatty, being an important reason for this.

It played a very important role in the battles of Dogger Bank and Jutland, in the American entry into the war on the Allied side and the defeat of the U-boats from 1917 to 1918.

In addition, U-boats employed a simpler cypher system than that used by the surface fleet, which Room 40, the British Admiralty's code-breaking section, could usually read with few difficulties.

In support of the main task the approach routes of the enemy from east Scottish ports to the sea area of Terschelling will be infested by mines and occupied by submarines.

Hydrophones mounted ashore at Stanger Head, Flotta, alerted the British defences, and the sea-bed magnetometer loops, designed to detect the magnetic signatures of incoming vessels[22] and thus trigger remote-controlled mines, were activated.

Emsmann raised his periscope at 11:30 pm, presumably to check his position, and was spotted by look-outs on shore; the mines detonated shortly thereafter, leaving the submarine disabled on the sea bed.

[26] On the afternoon of 23 October the Admiralty alerted Admiral Beatty that the situation was abnormal and that they would reinforce him by sending destroyers from the anti-submarine flotillas based at Plymouth and Buncrana.

[27] By late on 28 October the situation was reaching a climax, and Vice Admiral Sydney Fremantle, the Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, and Rear Admiral Reginald Hall, the Director of Naval Intelligence, sent Beatty a full appreciation which read, in part: Dispositions of enemy submarines combined with positions of their large minefield recently laid and now clear constitutes fairly decisive evidence of his desire to draw the Grand Fleet out ... No evidence of how he proposes to achieve this object but evidence that no move of his battlefleet can take place before ... tomorrow night.

The evening of 29 October was marked by unrest and serious acts of indiscipline in the German Fleet, as the men became convinced their commanders were intent on sacrificing them to sabotage the armistice negotiations.

A large number of stokers from Derfflinger and Von der Tann failed to return from shore leave and were rounded up by the authorities; mass insubordination occurred on Thüringen, Kaiserin, Helgoland and Regensburg; and mutinous demonstrations took place in König, Kronprinz Wilhelm and Markgraf.

Aircraft carriers[l] Writing after the war, Admiral Scheer asserted that "it was highly probable an expedition of the Fleet might achieve a favourable result.

If the Fleet suffered losses, it was to be assumed that the enemy's injuries would be in proportion, and that we should still have sufficient forces to protect the U-boat campaign in the North Sea, which would have to be resumed if the negotiations should make imperative a continuation of the struggle with all the means at our disposal.

"[35] The High Seas Fleet had undertaken similar diversionary attacks intended to draw British units into a submarine/mine ambush before: the action of 19 August 1916 was the one occasion when this tactic came closest to succeeding.

[38] Henry Newbolt, the official historian of the Royal Navy during the First World War, compared Hipper's planned operation with Michiel de Ruyter's Raid on the Medway in June 1667, when the Dutch Fleet launched a surprise attack on the English naval bases in the Thames estuary, inflicting a serious defeat and in consequence securing a more favourable peace treaty for the Netherlands at the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War.