The Battle of the Falkland Islands was a British naval victory over the Imperial German Navy on 8 December 1914 during the First World War in the South Atlantic. The British, embarrassed by a defeat at the Battle of Coronel on 1 November, sent a large force to track down and destroy the German cruiser squadron responsible.

Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee commanding the German squadron of two armoured cruisers, SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau, and three light cruisers, Nürnberg, Dresden and Leipzig attempted to raid the British supply base at Port Stanley on the Falkland Isles. A larger British squadron of two battlecruisers, HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible, three armoured cruisers, HMS Carnarvon, HMS Cornwall and HMS Kent, and two light cruisers, HMS Bristol and HMS Glasgow, had arrived in the port only the day before.

Visibility was at its maximum: the sea was placid with a gentle breeze from the north west, the sun bright, the sky clear. The advance cruisers of the German squadron had been detected early on, and by nine o"clock that morning the British battle-cruisers and cruisers were in hot pursuit of the five German vessels, these having taken flight in line abreast to the south-east. All except Dresden were hunted down and sunk.