Germans Win At Jutland

[DMA]

Was if da German High Seas Fleet von an Jutland? pardon my pidgin German

Would it make much difference to the outcome of WWI?

And how could have the German U-Boot campaign in the Atlantic be altered if the remaining Royal Navy had to concentrate on the North Sea, instead of the Atlantic, if the Grand Fleet been defeated?

Anything else?

Discuss.

[Riain]

To me a win is the reverse of the post-Jutland strategic situation where the GF was ready for sea the next day but the HSF wasn't for months. In this situation the HSF could head for the Channel the next day and cut supply to the BEF, and perhaps keep it up for weeks or months.

[myrioad]

Even if Jutland is a total victory and the Reichsflotte suffers very lighrt damage. There is still the problem of the remeants of the British Navy falling back. If the German Navy just sits there and bloclks the channel, another force will come and fight the German Navy unless the Germans can beat that as well.

The est for the germans is to break out inot the alantic and cripple the British convoys flowing from the US.

[Riain]

The superiority arising from a win at Jutland would be fleeting for Germany. In a few months the chastened GF would again be superior in numbers to the HSF as damaged ships came back into service. So the long term project of starving Britain into surrender isn't practical. However in the weeks or months available the HSF could cut the cross channel supply lines to the BEF, and perhaps the army could ready an offensive to take advantage.

[Derek Jackson]

I wonder, could the whole of the Battle cruiser squadon have been sunk if luck had been with the Kaiser?- I think this is a long shot but maybe.

If that had happened might Germany have been able to regularly send squadrons to sink ships seeking to enforce the blockade.

Might Germany have also been able to make more use of surface ships to sink UK merchant craft?

[NHBL]

I've done a fair amount of thinking on this scenario, but the results depend on how big a win the Germans gain. If the Grand Fleet is utterly smashed, and there's minimal German losses, in the sort of victory called "Miracle at the Skagerrak," then the war may well be over, or at least headed that way. (And that would be a very near miracle, considering the disparity of forces.) Even if Britain can fight on, the Scheer shock of loosing the battle might be enough to bring the British to seek terms, especially since the entire Entente counted on the Royal Navy.

If the Grand Fleet is merely defeated, but able to fight again, then it gets a LOT more complicated. Even a fairly impressive German victory could easily leave the Royal Navy the stronger force. Which ships are lost is key here, as is how big a defeat...and how the British and German propaganda manage to spin it. It's entirely possible that there won't be any great changes.

Here's one outcome that doesn't strike me as too improbable, but would be a clear German victory: Lion blows up---that was a close run thing. Warspite is destroyed as she circles with her jammed rudder. Then, Lutzow makes it home. Now we have a great victory...5 British dreadnoughts and battlecruisers destroyed to no German ones destroyed, but it still doesn't change in the strategic situation to any great extent.

Britian can loose half its battlecruiser force, and still have numeric parity in those ships. Britian also had 30 dreadnoughts in comission, though 2 were not at Jutland. The High Seas Fleet had 17 dreadnoughts, 1 which missed Jutland. So the victory would have to be massive to change the balance of power.

(Loosing most of the Battlecruisers, or the entire 5th battle squadron (The 4 15" armed Queen Elizabeth class fast battleships that were present) would be a major win for Germany.)

[Grey Wolf]

Originally Posted by NHBL

I've done a fair amount of thinking on this scenario, but the results depend on how big a win the Germans gain. If the Grand Fleet is utterly smashed, and there's minimal German losses, in the sort of victory called "Miracle at the Skagerrak," then the war may well be over, or at least headed that way. (And that would be a very near miracle, considering the disparity of forces.) Even if Britain can fight on, the Scheer shock of loosing the battle might be enough to bring the British to seek terms, especially since the entire Entente counted on the Royal Navy.

LOL, the Scheer shock !

I agree, if its smashed then the effect on morale, on politics, and on loss of face is going to be immense and could force Britain out

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

[Chengar Qordath]

Just a thought, but if the German victory at Jutland gives them a substantial but temporary advantage as some have suggested the Germans might try to draw out the Royal Navy into another battle before the British have fully recovered. Perhaps they start doing raids and shelling coastal towns in East Anglia? That would bring a lot of pressure on the RN to do something to stop the raids, and combined with an RN that is eager to avenge its lost honor could lead to a battle under less than ideal circumstances.

[Riain]

I think that after a loss at Jutland the remaining RN would have to pick it's battles far more carefully in case another defeat utterly destroyed it. __________ I also think that any sort of tactical victory is worthless, the HSF must have a change of strategic circumstances, even if only for a short while, for a victory at Jutland to mean anything.

[Fellatio Nelson]

Originally Posted by Riain

However in the weeks or months available the HSF could cut the cross channel supply lines to the BEF, and perhaps the army could ready an offensive to take advantage.

I wouldn't take the HSF through the Channel.

Dover-Calais is scarcely more than 20 miles; could be festooned with mines, anti-submarine nets, searchlight barriers, shore batteries, submarines, torpedo boats/destroyers.

If they went around the UK and into the Western Approaches, there's a good chance they'd lose a number of ships - maybe more than at Jutland - on the return journey back through the North Sea (and past the remaining GF, who are hardly likely to demur from a scrap even if outnumbered).

[esl]

The problem is that WW-I warships don't have enough range to do much without refuel/coaling. By examining warship stats at this site
http://www.german-navy.de/hochseeflo...ips/index.html

It looks like the bulk of any long range fleet would have had 5000-6000miles range at 12knts. This includes Torpedobootzerstörer ; light and heavy cruisers plus Linienschiff & Battlecruisers. Only the Dreadnoughts had 8000-9000 mile range @ 12knts. The distance through the North sea and into mid atlantic and back again is something like 4000-4500 miles depending how far across you go. Add to that a small researve and they could barely make this distance and back again. Any substanial fighting on top of this would eat into this endurance.

This is why the RN had so many coaling stations around the world. So they could operate abroad over the oceans. Most German warships would have to carry their fuel with them since they didn't have replenishement at sea at that time.

Maybe they should have used Jutland victory to seize Norway and impliment Wegners 'Dead angle' strategy. That way they could turn the corner on the British blockade. Most of the historical 1940 German invasion came from fleet lead shipping and similar capability existed in WW-I , so a port to port invasion of Norway could have occured.

Operating in the mid north atlantic from norway bases reduces this distance to 2000-3000 miles not counting reserves and battle, which is much more doable for the Hochseeflotte. However at this point in the war, strategic fuel supplies were declining, so unless this breakout can facilitate coal or oil convoys to reach Germany it all may be a moot point. Did German employ blocade runners in WW-I?

The British counter would be to establish a 'Scotland-Iceland-Greenland' gap blocade, but this involves 3-4 times the sea to be patrolled than the Scotland-Norway gap. Further such patrols would be difficult with anything less than cruiser, thus tying up valuable capital ships in costly patrols, thus diluting the available fleet to counter Hochseeflotte surges.

[PMN1]

This is what R D Layman has to say about the possibilities in his book Naval Aviation in the First World War, Its Impact and Influence:


Decisive British victory



The consequences can only be conjectured, but one might have been the forestalling of the German submarine campaign. British light forces freed from the threat of enemy heavy units while being protected by their own, could have cleared the Heligoland Bight of its defensive mines and destroyed the U-boats off their ports. Endurance, and range of the minesweepers and destroyers employed in these duties could have been extended by seizing one or more of the Frisian islands (or even Heligoland itself) as bases – an option that had been considered in 1914. Possibly there would have been a penetration into the Baltic, as had been advocated by Lord Fisher.



Decisive German Victory


To suppose a decisive German victory on 19th August is to enter the realm of fantasy, but if disbelief can be suspended the potential consequences could have been staggering to contemplate. An immediate result would have been the end of the British blockade. The High Seas Fleet could have broken out into the North Sea. The battlecruisers might have raided the Atlantic trade routes – an idea that had been presented and endorsed by Hipper in late 1914. It is conceivable that consideration might have been given to the even more radical (and controversial) proposal advanced in 1915 by Korvettenkapitan Wolfgang Wegener, a HSF staff officer, that the Faroe, Azores and Cape Verde islands be used as fleet bases.

With the breaking of the blockade, direct trade with the US could have been resumed in German hulls. Thus there would have been no need for the submarine campaign, which became such a major factor in the American decision to enter the war. There would have been no German industrial sabotage in the US nor the anti-US intrigues revealed in the Zimmerman Telegram. The end of the blockade would have permitted the resumption of food importation, thus ending the food riots that by the end of 1916 had erupted in more than thirty German cities, preventing a portion of the more than 760,000 civilian deaths attributed to blockade related causes by the end of the war and maintaining home-front morale.

[Riain]

What is meant by victory? The best the Germans could realistically hope for is to seriously damage enough RN captial ships to give the HSF numerical superiority for a while, until the damage was repaired. This would allow the Germans freedom to do other things without the looming threat of complete anniliation. Perhaps a BC and cruiser raid into the Atlantic, but I think the best course would be to break into the channel and stop all traffic there for the longest time possible.

[1940LaSalle]

Originally Posted by Chengar Qordath

Just a thought, but if the German victory at Jutland gives them a substantial but temporary advantage as some have suggested the Germans might try to draw out the Royal Navy into another battle before the British have fully recovered. Perhaps they start doing raids and shelling coastal towns in East Anglia? That would bring a lot of pressure on the RN to do something to stop the raids, and combined with an RN that is eager to avenge its lost honor could lead to a battle under less than ideal circumstances.

I was thinking the same thing: taking this to an extreme degree, perhaps a really audacious group of U-boats could find a lightly defended portion of the coast in that region and land a platoon-sized force of marines. If armed sufficiently to overwhelm the local constabulary and seize the town hall/run up the imperial German flag and get pictures, that would have a nasty propaganda shock value, even if they made tracks back for the beach within about 24 hours. That would show Great Britain that the island isn't as invulnerable as they might have thought, and might get the British government seeing ghosts, as it were.

[Rockingham]

Could the Germans use temporarary naval supremacy to aid their forces on the Western front? Perhaps landing large forces on the coast to the rear of the trench lines? Would this allow them to reach the channel?

Taking advantage of a major naval victory, they could launch a potential minor invasion of Britain, end the blockade, and perhaps launch an all or nothing push for France earlier on. I doubt Allied propaganda could smooth over this sequence of events. Perhaps enough to scare the Allies into surrendering?

[Rockingham]

Could the Germans use temporarary naval supremacy to aid their forces on the Western front? Perhaps landing large forces on the coast to the rear of the trench lines? Would this allow them to reach the channel?

Taking advantage of a major naval victory, they could launch a potential minor invasion of Britain, end the blockade, and perhaps launch an all or nothing push for France earlier on. I doubt Allied propaganda could smooth over this sequence of events. Perhaps enough to scare the Allies into surrendering?

[chris N]

A German naval victory at Jtland would have had many impacts on the course of the war. Worale in the High Seas Fleet would be incredibly high while that in the Royal Navy would have been depressing. Politically the impact would have shaken those who favored continuning the war in parliament and there might have been the beginings of the possiblity of peace talks between the sides. The Germans would also gain the chance of using their temporary naval superiortiy to impact the western Front and perhaps to also begin to sweap the mines from the North Sea.

[esl]

Originally Posted by Emperor_of_Rockingham

Could the Germans use temporarary naval supremacy to aid their forces on the Western front? Perhaps landing large forces on the coast to the rear of the trench lines? Would this allow them to reach the channel?

Taking advantage of a major naval victory, they could launch a potential minor invasion of Britain, end the blockade, and perhaps launch an all or nothing push for France earlier on. I doubt Allied propaganda could smooth over this sequence of events. Perhaps enough to scare the Allies into surrendering?

Post war studies in the early 1920s based on their Osel landings in 1917, decided that the best way to exploite temporary advantages at sea was to do just that and mobilise forces to be transported down the coast and landed behind enemy lines. The early realisation was that with just lifeboats Horseboats from ships and towed lighters could be used to move troops ashore, but they could only be light forces, so any such action would have to be in the form of a diversion raid coupled to some major related/linked offensive. Landing raiding troops on UK was seen as a way to force the brits to keep disproportionate amount of troops on home soil , preventing them from being shipped to the continent.

[Grimm Reaper]

From the historical record there is no prospect of a major German victory. The whole point of the operation was that the High Seas Fleet believed that they had finally lured out enough of the Grand Fleet that a win would be beneficial without facing enough to endanger the High Seas Fleet.

As soon as they realized that the entire Grand Fleet was coming the Germans fled home to port.

The British commander was properly aware that a shattering defeat might be the end of his nation whereas an overwhelming victory would be of far less import and was not inclined to take chances.

esl, of what possible point would a German invasion of Norway be? Besides offending all of the neutrals, including the US, giving a recovering British fleet with probably French support a good target and throwing away hundreds of thousands of German troops on occupation duty IF successful?

[esl]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

esl, of what possible point would a German invasion of Norway be? Besides offending all of the neutrals, including the US, giving a recovering British fleet with probably French support a good target and throwing away hundreds of thousands of German troops on occupation duty IF successful?

You'd have to ask Wegener, since it was his strategy.It was this same thinking that got them into Norway in WW-II, since given the situation they found themselves in in 1940, few believed France would fall so easily.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...n15979337/pg_1