Optimize the Axis Navies for WW2

1918-1922, the Beginning.
As with all the other like threads, this one too is about Naval Optimizations, but this time for all three Axis navies, and working together in as much as this is possible.

What I would like to do with this thread is have the initial discussions being limited to end of WWI to WNC/WNT time frame, as I have many questions and ideas, and I would like to have the opportunity to check my recently gained insights into the whole ToV - WNT package. To do this, I would like to use the functionality of the threadmark feature, and keep the initial responses within the 1918-1922 period, and not allow posts outside that range until opened up with another thread marked post, if that is ok?
 
Beg, and I mean BEG the entente to let Germany keep a few dreadnaughts. If not, your best bet long term is Japan or Italy getting a few and either keeping them or selling them back to Germany. Also, try to get a few replacements for the oldest Italian and Japanese capital ships far enough along that you can have the WNT excuse them. Maybe have Japan start converting the Akagi and Kaga earlier so they get a pass on those as well.
 
So, as the first post within this thread/time period (by me), let's check out what happened historically, and why the ToV and WNT took the shape they did.

From the US perspective:
1) The USA had her trade disrupted by the war, and was not allowed to trade with other neutrals as she saw fit.
2) This led the United States to pass an act that was intended to make the USN bigger than the RN, in 1916.
3) Why did the USA refuse to ratify the ToV? Because of the terms against Germany, or the terms creating the LoN?
4) After it was clear that #2 was going to cause an arms race, the WNC got called, which led to the WNT. What were the American outcomes/term required?

More later, as other posts have already been made...
 
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Beg, and I mean BEG the entente to let Germany keep a few dreadnaughts.

I've read that if the Allies REALLY wanted to hurt German ship-building, they would have let them keep more modern dreanoughts like the Kaiser or the Konigs. As it was, letting them keep the Deutschland predreadnought, they could be replaced almost immediately, whereas keeping later ships would prevent new capital ship construction into at least 1929, if not the 1930s.

Regards,
 
I've read that if the Allies REALLY wanted to hurt German shipbuilding, they would have let them keep more modern dreadnoughts like the Kaiser or the Königs. As it was, letting them keep the Deutschland pre-dreadnought, they could be replaced almost immediately, whereas keeping later ships would prevent new capital ship construction into at least 1929, if not the 1930s.

Regards,
The Allies REALLY did hurt the German shipbuilding industry. They gave it an extremely hard kick in the nuts.

Letting them keep the Kaisers and Königs wouldn't have made any difference in practice. The Kaisers were completed 1911-12 so under the terms of the ToV became overage in 1931-32 and the König class were completed in 1914 & therefore became overage in 1934.
  • Deutschland was laid down in 1929 and completed in 1933.
  • Admiral Scheer was laid down in 1931 and completed in 1934.
  • Admiral Graff Spee was laid down in 1932 and completed in 1936.
However, the people who wrote the Treaty didn't and couldn't know that.
 
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If a different ToV is allowed I'd change it so that the Reichsmarine is allowed to have a maximum of 20,000 personnel instead of the OTL maximum of 15,000.
 
A good starting point might be to look at what the fleets were intended for and how they actually did, but bearing in mind that the circumstances changed rapidly, so not all of the actual service could have been planned for. Maybe judge them on adaptability.
For me, the fleet in being seemed to work well as a threat to tie up resources, so not much to change there. Similarly the lighter craft (E and S boote) were regarded quite well.
I'm not sure if the pocket battleships were better than using more merchant cruisers, and the destroyers and cruisers appeared to underperform. Maybe some room for improvement there.
Subs were ok but might have struggled if Britain had been a bit better prepared for ASW.
 
KM’s main ASUW capability should rest in long range shore based torpedo bombers like nakajima Kate , with ample escorts of long range single engined fighters.
Playing battleship game with RN is non starter for Germany being primarily a land power
 
Beg, and I mean BEG the entente to let Germany keep a few dreadnaughts. If not, your best bet long term is Japan or Italy getting a few and either keeping them or selling them back to Germany. Also, try to get a few replacements for the oldest Italian and Japanese capital ships far enough along that you can have the WNT excuse them. Maybe have Japan start converting the Akagi and Kaga earlier so they get a pass on those as well.
Even if Germany keeps them and modernized them by 1940 they are still at a huge disadvantage in a fleet action with so many light forces gone
Perhaps their best use will be more fleet in being assets
 
The IJN would have done well to even out their pilot training as well.
Do you mean to expand their number of pilots and rotate them out of field to keep them from dying off so they could maintain an experienced set of teachers? That was a big problem they had as the war years dragged on.
 
KM’s main ASUW capability should rest in long range shore based torpedo bombers like Nakajima Kate , with ample escorts of long range single engined fighters.
The Luftwaffe's equivalent of RAF Coastal Command had 8 anti-shipping squadrons in September 1939. 6 were equipped with Heinkel He111H/Ps and the other two were the Luftwaffe's first Ju88A squadrons. By contrast RAF Coastal Command had 2 torpedo-bomber squadrons in September 1939 and there were 2 more at Singapore. All 4 RAF squadrons were equipped with the single-engine Vickers Vildebeest biplane. Furthermore, the 8 squadrons that existed on 03.09.39 had been expanded into two full-strength kampfgeschwardern (total 18 squadrons half with He111s & half with Ju88s) by the end of March 1940.

It wasn't a shortage of aircraft or that the aircraft it had not being fit for purpose, because at the time they had enough aircraft and they were fit for purpose. The Kriegsmarine's problem was that they didn't own the naval air arm and the aircraft didn't have an effective air launched torpedo until 1942.
Playing battleship game with RN is non starter for Germany being primarily a land power.
It depends upon how they play the game. If they try to fight a Jutland style battle for naval supremacy, not a chance. However, if they practice the naval equivalent of guerrilla warfare it's a completely different ballgame.

Unless it's completely landlocked, a Great Power needs a few battleships to be considered a great power and they're useful in peacetime as instruments of diplomacy.
 
For me, the fleet in being seemed to work well as a threat to tie up resources, so not much to change there.
I'm not sure the resources tied up had much benefit for the Germans. I mean, it's nice that the Bismarck and Tirpitz tied up a few battleships and a carrier in Scapa Flow, but they were of little use against Germany anyway. So it didn't help the German wareffort a lot. It mostly helped Japan*, and maybe Italy. But the med was mostly a distraction for Germany anyway.

Although the battleships got a fair bit of attention of the RAF, so that was a benefit.

* PoW and Repulse sailing with a carrier might have made a big difference, i.e. no ships sunk and loads of G3Ms/G4Ms shot down.
 
Unless it's completely landlocked, a Great Power needs a few battleships to be considered a great power and they're useful in peacetime as instruments of diplomacy.
Can this argument be turned around in the sense that Germany not having battleships means they're not considered a great power and thus seen as less of a threat? In which case the optimum navy for Germany is one without battleships, because they're not getting attention from the UK and for Germany the war is won on land anyway (with the possible exception of the U-boats).
 
Can this argument be turned around in the sense that Germany not having battleships means they're not considered a great power and thus seen as less of a threat? In which case the optimum navy for Germany is one without battleships, because they're not getting attention from the UK and for Germany the war is won on land anyway (with the possible exception of the U-boats).
No. Because having battleships (and a naval air force) presents the British with a multi-dimensional threat and all U-boats is a one-dimensional threat which is easier for the British to deal with. It's a similar idea to the strategic triad of aircraft, land based ICBMs and sea based SLBMs which make it more complicated for a potential enemy to deal with than only one or two.
 
No. Because having battleships (and a naval air force) presents the British with a multi-dimensional threat and all U-boats is a one-dimensional threat which is easier for the British to deal with. It's a similar idea to the strategic triad of aircraft, land based ICBMs and sea based SLBMs which make it more complicated for a potential enemy to deal with than only one or two.
But aircraft, landbased ICBMs and seabased SLBMs all can hurt a landbased- and even landlockedpower, while battleships can't (or just a little by shore bombardment)*.

The German battleships didn't really play an important role in the BotA, which was mostly fought between submarines and escorts, the tale of the Bismarck notwithstanding. The UK has to build battleships anyway, because of other threats. Those battleships don't do much against submarines.

Although the German battleships did play a role in the Norway campaign, they don't need a Bismarck and Tirpitz for that (they weren't ready then anyway). What Germany needs is something to attack shipping (= submarines) and something to protect their coast. I'm not sure what that latter exactly is, but a naval air arm, an assortiment of destroyers, cruisers and maybe one or two battleships, battlecruisers or pocketbattleships would get them a long way. The Bismarck, Tirpitz and Graf Zeppelin were just wasted resources for the German wareffort.

* can be largely countered by shorebatteries and airpower. Yeah, battleships did a fair amount of shelling in the various invasions of the European mainland, but the allies had air and naval superiority or supremacy by then.
 
From the Japanese perspective:
1) The Japanese had to give up some of her WWI gains postwar. China and New Guinea went back to china (Then Russia), and NG ended up with Australia IIRC.
2) The Japanese had to withdraw from Russian territory during the Russian Intervention. 70,000 troops, made it to lake Baikal, had to leave.
3) Anglo-Japanese alliance and WNT. The UK started hanging out with the US, and the Japanese didn't get the 70% of the US fleet they wanted.
4) Decisive battle doctrine, discovery of the "Singapore Strategy".

So these are observations/questions to be answered before we move on.

I could try to do this for the UK, but @jsb will likely do it better once they chime in, as they know more than I do.

What I'm trying to do in this first part of the thread is to look at what was, and then figure out why.
 
1) The Japanese had to give up some of her WWI gains postwar. China and New Guinea went back to china (Then Russia), and NG ended up with Australia IIRC.
2) The Japanese had to withdraw from Russian territory during the Russian Intervention. 70,000 troops, made it to lake Baikal, had to leave.
3) Anglo-Japanese alliance and WNT. The UK started hanging out with the US, and the Japanese didn't get the 70% of the US fleet they wanted.
4) Decisive battle doctrine, discovery of the "Singapore Strategy".

So these are observations/questions to be answered before we move on.
I mean mostly just look at how much richer USA and GB are in 1918? People constantly say GB was bankrupt after WW1, but It's still far richer and more developed than Japan so going to win any arms race if IJN doesn't sign WNT, or they argue near Australia over New Guinea? US v Japan is an even worse disparity economically.
 
Also, the poll seems to have been eaten, possibly by my fumble fingered use of the threadmark feature.

I want to keep ToV historical, WNT either historical, or historical for the big three at least, but once we get a firm idea of why things were the way they were up to that point, moving away from ToV is first priority post 1922. Not sure when that can take place in this timeline, but historically the KM was still nerfed by the IACC on ships laid down in 1935, so that obviously needs to go in a thread that seeks to optimize all three Axis navies for WW2.
 
Tentatively, let us work on the 1918-1922 time frame first, with the expectation of then doing additional 4 year bites at a time, so once we get there, we should have a thread marked post for 1923-1926 discussion, followed by another thread-marked post for 1927-1930, and another for 1931-1934. I hope for all restrictions on the German fleet to have been removed (by majority agreement) so the Germans are either restricted by WNT like tonnage allocations, or else not restricted at all, so that the thread-marked post for 1935-1938 will see any major ATL German capitol ships laid down by this time, and this should also include such ships in the RM and IJN, as well, unless folks think that capitol ship construction should continue into 1939-1942?

For now though, let us just try to look at things that underpinned the OTL ToV and WNT, and what might take place to undermine those, sooner rather than later, so that we end up with three Axis navies that are better prepared for WW2.
 
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