took her place in the center of the line, to the rear of and ahead of . II Scouting Group, consisting of the light cruisers , Boedicker's flagship, , , and , and 30 torpedo boats of II, VI, and IX Flotillas, accompanied Hipper's battlecruisers. An hour and a half later, the High Seas Fleet under the command of Scheer left the Jade; the force was composed of 16 dreadnoughts. The High Seas Fleet was accompanied by IV Scouting Group, composed of the light cruisers , , , , and , and 31 torpedo boats of I, III, V, and VII Flotillas, led by the light cruiser . The six pre-dreadnoughts of II Battle Squadron had departed from the Elbe roads at 02:45, and rendezvoused with the battle fleet at 5:00. Run to the south Shortly before 16:00, Hipper's force encountered Beatty's battlecruiser squadron. The German ships were the first to open fire, at a range of approximately . The British rangefinders had misread the range to their German targets, and so the first salvos fired by the British ships fell a mile past the German battlecruisers. As the two lines of battlecruisers deployed to engage each other, began to duel with her opposite in the British line, Queen Mary. By 16:54, the range between the ships decreased to , which enabled s secondary battery to enter the fray. She was close enough to the ships of the British 9th and 10th Destroyer Flotillas that her secondary guns could effectively engage them. The other four German battlecruisers employed their secondary battery against the British battlecruisers. Between 16:55 and 16:57, was struck by two heavy caliber shells from Queen Mary. The first shell penetrated the side of the ship five feet above the main battery deck, and caused a number of small fires. The second shell penetrated the barbette of the aft superfiring turret. Four propellant charges were ignited in the working chamber; the resulting fire flashed up into the turret and down to the magazine. The anti-flash precautions that had been put in place after the explosion at Dogger Bank prevented any further propellant explosions. Regardless, the turret was destroyed and most of the gun crew had been killed in the blaze. By 17:25, the British battlecruisers were taking a severe battering from their German opponents. had been destroyed by a salvo from approximately 20 minutes before, and Beatty sought