WWI-Jutland and fallout of possible HSF victory.

[Dominarch's Hope]

Ah. Figured that the British and French had shore defenses and such. But then that suggestion was based on an absurd speculation in the first place.

[Sea Skimmer]

Shore defenses barely existed at Dover on either side, nor was it actually all that well screen by the under strength Dover Patrol, but the allies themselves had huge secondary naval forces that could respond to a large slow moving offensive, including large numbers of submarines, RN had the biggest sub fleet in the world in 1914 and it didn't get smaller, and more importantly no decisive objective or safe anchorage existed for the Germans beyond it. The situation is entirely divorced from Marmara. Even if a German raid was initially unopposed all it could actually do is disrupt traffic for a few days before they ran out of fuel, and then get caught by everything the allies could throw them coming home.

The strength of the Dover minefields varied greatly over the course of the war, but by 1916 sweeping a path big enough fora fleet would have taken multiple days even with no opposition. Also the water is very shallow and full of shoals, limiting the path of dreadnoughts to some rather narrow areas. A raid by fast cruisers which would shoot up channel traffic and then circle back around the UK to try to get home was actually plausible. Sending in battleships of any sort would be a disaster.

All of this was entirely alien to German thinking. The Germans thought of warships like artillerymen did guns on land, saving them was its own end, and initiative was very poor throughout the entire war, even in the German light forces.

[CaptHawkeye]

In a marine choke point mines present the greatest threat. A really old mine can still easily sink a really new battleship. The same cannot be said for gun batteries, which may be useless a year or two after they were built. Top that off with the channel's other defenders, like destroyer squadrons and submarines who can and will carry out torpedo attacks throughout each night. Just like mines, old torpedoes still fuck up new ships really well. Even if ships aren't sunk, waterline damage puts them out of action for months at a time. The window of opportunity for the Germany navy was only getting smaller and smaller as each week went by.

The KM's goals during the war were to inflict enough damage on the British Navy so as to break the blockade on Germany. It's goals were defensive in nature because it had little to gain for too much risk in grandiose offensive operations.

[Thanas]

Also, Wilhelm severely handicapped the admirals by going ballistic about any ship lost.

[CaptHawkeye]

One of the problem's I have with the KM's operational plan is that it struck me as very pie-in-the-sky. Breaking the British blockade would be helpful, but it doesn't gaurantee the trench deadlock will end or that the German Army will be in a better position at any point than it was historically. At best I think they would draw the war out another year or so. Nothing the Navy could do was going to solve Germany's chronic manpower problems.

I also never bought the doctrine of the Fleet-in-Being. Building a fleet to waste your enemy's resources is about as doubled edged as swords come.

[Thanas]

If the blockade is over it would pretty much guarantee German victory IMO. It would mean that the things that sapped the homefront (lack of foodstuffs and industrial materials) could be alleviated, it would also mean the French homefront most likely would collapse first.

[Stark]

It only works if you are doing it on purpose. If the KM hadn't built any more ships during the war (or had only appeared to do so), would the RN have reduced the force they kept nearby to counter it? If not, than you could say all the new construction during the war was a total waste (and I imagine that point has been raised before).

Thanas, without the blockade what would the North Sea look like? Even if the RN was defeated by magic (or too scared to come out or whatever) the shipment of goods to Germany would have had to pass through a series of chokepoints anyway. Wouldn't the allies have just turned to unrestricted submarine warfare?

[Sea Skimmer]

The RN already did stop building large ships during the war except for direct counters to new German units. The last QE was canceled without being laid down, as was the last R class, though two other R class hulls were reworked as the battlecruisers Renown and Repulse and laid down in 1915 using a fair bit of material already on order. This made sense since Germany was working on the Derfflinger class. HMS Hood was laid down in 1916 in direct response to the new mackensen class battlecruisers, her three sisters were suspended in 1917 as unlikely to be completed or of use for the war.

Then you have the three freaklish large light cruisers, which were actually built in part to avoid the formal ban on building new battlecruisers. Otherwise they might have been more like Renown. However these ships also used guns and some armor and other components ordered for the canceled R class hulls and not used up by Renown and Repulse, so the added cost was not so great as it might have been. Of course the 18in gun on Furious was extra, but that was an important technological breakthrough in its own right. The Germans were widely thought to be building ships with 17.7in guns, turned out they were in fact working on 42cm weapons.

Then you have the awesome E class light cruisers that countered the Brummer class, and the Hawkins class which countered fictional German 17cm light cruisers, but these were not overwhelmingly expensive in the scheme of things and the RN always needed more cruisers.

So overall, even if you called a dead halt to building in 1914 and only finished existing hulls, the total savings for the British aren't that large. Not trivial, not but that large. The British Army would gain some random 15in barrels to fire at the Germans, but that still means you have to pay for rather expensive ammunition, as it hasn't already been produced, unlike railroad guns built from weapons intended for older ships.

The British wouldn't have significantly reduced the scale of existing forces even if the Germans did not further work, though by 1917-1918 some of the older dreadnoughts were being kept home when the Grand Fleet sortied. This was as much because of the coal shortage brought on by U-boats disrupting transport as anything else, and the arrival of several better American dreadnoughts. The Germans were powerful enough in 1914 that risk taking was a bad idea.

The coal and oil situation actually kept most of the US battlefleet from being deployed and making stuff even more overwhelming, including all of its newest units which were pure oil burners. Just wasn't worth it supply wise. Instead they acted as escorts for American troop convoys, in case the Germans attempted some kind of battlecruiser suicide attack on them. They had the range to cross the Atlantic and return without refueling in British ports.

[Stark]

I was thinking the other way: if the KM adopted a fleet in being, accepted they'd never use it, and didn't waste any resources on increasing it, would that have had the same effect in pinning the RN, the way a 'fleet in being' is supposed to? I'm pretty sure I'm getting my Kaiser naval memories mixed with with my Fuhrer naval memories so I'm not sure if they called a halt in construction anyway.

Is a fleet in being strategy useful for Germany anyway? Given geography and their inability to use their other forces elsewhere, does it matter if the RN is forced to counter their fleet if they can never do anything with it? Was the impact on other theatres significant?

[Sea Skimmer]

Didn't waste any compared to what? They'd have to build the fleet as large as they did prewar, or else the British just wouldn't build as big a fleet to counteract it. As far as war construction goes, the Germans laid down one battleship, and five battlecruisers during the conflict. None was completed, nor were all of the ships laid down prewar, IIRC one unit was laid down Aug 1st and not finished. No capital ship laid down past Jan 1914 was actually finished, nor were all that many light cruisers or destroyers built in the war. Everything went into submarines. Unless the German fleet is radically reduced long before the war nothing really changes. Really cutting back the HSF prewar could have made a real difference on land, by building more forts, and better equipping the German army which had some units go to war with incomplete artillery establishments as it was.

The big thing is, if the RN was smaller prewar, its unlikely this would have increased British strength in any other way. The British would have just spent less in total from lack of a clear threat, because they didn't see the need for a big army as an alternative place to spend money, nor did they even endorse the idea of heavy coastal defenses, favoring submarines, thus them having the largest sub fleet in the world, for the role after bad experiences in the 19th century with forts that proved quickly obsolete.

Germany always needed some fleet though, because it got iron ore from Sweden and it would be very bad if Russia could freely blockade the North German Coast, and being superior to the French fleet was also a useful goal. This could have been done with ~8 dreadnoughts and no battlecruisers. The British would have seen a limited threat from this.

If the HSF was much smaller its hard to tell that it would make any real difference elsewhere, even allowing that the RN would still be rather large to meet its two power standard + global patrol strategy. The British might have 30,000 more men to throw at some pointless human wave attack in 1915 or 1916, they'd also have somewhat more ammo to fire but only after the factories ramp up production at the start of 1916. The Austrian fleet was already bottled up like mad, and submarines made operations in the Adriatic impossible. Gallipoli failed for its own reasons. Not much else big gun warships could do in the war. Dreadnoughts couldn't even go shell the Flanders since the water is so damn shallow.

An invasion of the north German coast or the Baltic might be considered, but while I think such an attack could be plausible in that it might work, I really don't believe the British would have ever tried it after the mine and submarine were proven so effective.

[Thanas]

If Germany had not built up such a large field they might have expended more resources on coastal defences, like in 1870-71, where a planned french invasion of Northern Germany was stopped by the presence of said defences (and a shortage of coal/supply after northern france got overrun).

[Sea Skimmer]

The French plan was mainly stopped by a lack of men really, only about 17,000 marines could be collected which was plainly not enough with two corps of Landwehr deployed on the coast forts or no forts. The French hoped the Danes would supply an army of 50-60,000 men, they refused.

But in any event, coastal defenses are much cheaper then warships. Enhancing the entire German North Sea Coastline is unlikely to cost more then a single dreadnought. Meanwhile if the coastal defenses do not need to defend naval bases, and more importantly secure the access points to those bases they can be more conservatively designed in the first place.

[Dominarch's Hope]

It only works if you are doing it on purpose. If the KM hadn't built any more ships during the war (or had only appeared to do so), would the RN have reduced the force they kept nearby to counter it? If not, than you could say all the new construction during the war was a total waste (and I imagine that point has been raised before).

Thanas, without the blockade what would the North Sea look like? Even if the RN was defeated by magic (or too scared to come out or whatever) the shipment of goods to Germany would have had to pass through a series of chokepoints anyway. Wouldn't the allies have just turned to unrestricted submarine warfare?

Yeah, if the Entente also tries that, it would push America right over the edge.


And heres the thing. Canadian Grain was almost entirely past the Great Lakes and right above the midwest, and was mostly shipped via the railway.

An embargo and disruption of that supply combined with America responding with its own Sub force, would fuck Britain over sideways.


Just a simple embargo alone would be a strong discouragement.

[aieeegrunt]

If you want to slant the naval war somewhat in Germany's favor all you have to do is make Ingenohl not be a coward, and have the Germans devour Beatty and Warrender. Beatty's only command skill was "BUMRUSH THE STAGE" so a scenario could easily develop where he charges in, gets in trouble, Warrender tries to support him, and it ends badly.

[Thanas]

Ingenohl was forbidden to act in anything like a cowardly manner by the Kaiser.

[Sea Skimmer]

If you want to slant the naval war somewhat in Germany's favor all you have to do is make Ingenohl not be a coward, and have the Germans devour Beatty and Warrender.

How exactly is avoiding destruction of your force by an enemy superior in size, speed and gun power cowardly?

Beatty's only command skill was "BUMRUSH THE STAGE" so a scenario could easily develop where he charges in, gets in trouble, Warrender tries to support him, and it ends badly.

I think you know about nothing on naval tactics, but please do explain how the side with more ships, and higher speed is going to get in that much trouble. The historical run to the south is as bad as things could be for Beatty, what with a major element of his force making the wrong turn and being out of the initial fight, and his force still came out in fairly good shape aside from the ships that exploded. Meanwhile the Dogger bank could easily have seen the Germans annihilated. Only another stroke of bad luck with signals interpretation on the RN side saved them from much heavier losses, not that the RN would have been expected to come out with light damage either. As it was only a massive amounts of luck spared Seydlitz from being blown up and with her Admiral Hipper, and of she course lost her entire aft battery placing her at a grave disadvantage running away.

[aieeegrunt]

I was referring to December 16th raid on Scarborough. I'm pretty sure that a force consisting of 4 battlecruisers and 6 dreadnaughts unexpectedly running into the entire German fleet is in for a bad day.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

One thing I've always wondered is if the Germans should have just exclusively built battlecruisers. Their battlecruisers were so tough they could actually stand in the line (and most of them even survived being pounded by 15in shellfire they had manifestly never been designed against), and unlike the battleships could be deployed as raiders optionally, like the later Kriegsmarine's capital ships were in WW2. They would have also conferred upon the Germans a substantial speed advantage in refusing engagement, and made the British battlecruisers totally worthless. Worse still is if the British respond by laying down more battlecruisers, so that more comparatively hideously vulnerable ships will be sent out against possibly numerically superiour German forces (in terms of fast ships). The HSF would have then only built enough slow, short-ranged battleships to overmatch the Russians in the Baltic, since the battlecruiser force could be relied upon to defeat the French by sheer weight of numbers.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Say, replace two Nassaus with two Von der Tanns, two Ostfrieslands with two Moltkes, all five Kaisers with Seydlitzes, and two Konigs with Derfflingers, and again the Baden class with more Derfflingers/Mackensens, so that Germany has a force of around 17 battlecruisers in 1915 in the North Sea, with 6 dreadnoughts and the pre-dreads able to conduct offensive operations against the Russians in the Baltic.

[Dominarch's Hope]

If they had done something like that, they would have ended up as fast battleships.

British ships were still faster and more numerous...and still failed to catch them and destroy them.

[Thanas]

I was referring to December 16th raid on Scarborough. I'm pretty sure that a force consisting of 4 battlecruisers and 6 dreadnaughts unexpectedly running into the entire German fleet is in for a bad day.

Yes, you are right. That almost happened, but the German high command was too cautious.

EDIT: Zeon, that is an interesting idea. Not sure how good it is due to the higher fuel costs though - Skimmer can probably say more.

[CaptHawkeye]

I always thought Blucher at least would have made a better merchant raider than a wannabe battlecruiser. All she did with the Scouting Force was drag them down to 24kts. On her own she might have fallen into a grey area of not being an attractive enough target to send a huge force after, but not being so insignificant as to present no threat to merchants. Could the British really spare the forces to hunt her down when they had the better battlecruisers of the Scouting Force to worry about?

[Thanas]

Well they detached two BCs to the Falklands to hunt down von Spee.

[CaptHawkeye]

Yeah but only after Coronel had been such a disaster. Prior to that the British didn't take the threat of merchant raiding by armored cruisers seriously. Which Spee used to his advantage right up until he got stupid and attacked the Falklands.

[Thanas]

Wasn't stupidity as much as him running out of coal and being shadowed by British agents.