Why either outcome wrecks both battle fleets

A British defeat would end the operation and imperil the Allied war, yet Germany could not annihilate the combined British and Russian fleets without losing much of its own navy. Jutland provides a comparison of scale: Britain brought about 150 ships against Germany's ninety-nine, including twenty-eight dreadnoughts against sixteen and nine battlecruisers against five. Those are 1916 figures, with intervening construction, rather than a precise readiness list for June 1915. The proposed Baltic operation would add older battleships and almost every available destroyer. It might bring 140 destroyers, possibly nearer 160, compared with seventy-eight at Jutland. About twelve of the thirty-three older battleships might be assigned to blocking operations, while the remainder strengthened the fighting fleet. The additional pre-dreadnoughts could occupy Germany's older battleships while modern British dreadnoughts engaged their counterparts. Operational victory could still come with extraordinary material loss. Whichever fleet survived would face a radically changed naval balance.