AH navy based on the jeune ecole

A thread, which I read a few weeks ago, was discussing the plausibility of an oceangoing Austro-Hungarian navy.

Although the consens was that AH had the least reason of the great powers to build such a navy, the matter intrigued me. What would be the effects and consequences if the focus was put on a jeune ecole navy?

No navy of that time ever dedicated themselves completely to the jeune ecole doctrine. France did from time to time, but their policies changed very often in that field. It would be interesting to see an AH navy modelled after the jeune ecole and the italian response to it, especially given the advantageous geography AH had for such a navy.

In retrospective of WW1 many people have critisized the huge amount of money AH has spent on mediocre dreadnaughts. Money that would have better spent elsewhere, so where would that money be spent elsewhere?
 
If the AH navy had won the battle of Heligoland 9. May 1864 they might have considered something of a more ocean going squadron in which case jeune ecole may have seemed interesting to them.
 

Delta Force

Banned
That was probably this topic I made earlier.

The Jeune École doctrine as put forward by French naval theorists advocated the use of smaller, cheaper warships for attacking enemy capital ships, essentially an asymmetric response. It's not a sea control doctrine, but unless Austria-Hungary were to acquire a base outside of the Otranto Strait, they would have to fight their way in and out of it every time they wanted to leave the Adriatic Ocean. Much how the Imperial Russian Navy wanted to extend the reach of the Black Sea Fleet beyond the limits of the Turkish Straits, the Austro-Hungarian Navy probably wanted to extend its reach beyond the limits of the Otranto Strait and Adriatic Ocean.

I don't think coastal defense will be too much of an issue for the Austro-Hungarians, as they could use Skoda artillery in coastal batteries to defend against raids on major cities. They would probably still want coastal battleships to defend the extended Croatian coastline, which has many islands and a generally rugged terrain. The biggest issue for a Jeune École fleet for Austria-Hungary would be achieving breakout, because commerce raiders would have to exit through the Strait of Otranto every time they left to raid or came back from raiding, creating a natural chokepoint for blockade forces. This wasn't an issue for Austria-Hungary in World War I because they simply went under the Otranto blockade with submarines, but that's not really an option in the 1890s.

There's also the matter of battleships and armored cruisers being more prestigious ships for the naval reviews and other functions of pre-World War I international diplomacy. Call it showboating, but you don't want to show up a torpedo boat flotilla when everyone else has bigger and more prestigious ships present. Apparently Kaiser Wilhelm II had a bad experience at one naval review in the 1880s or 1890s when he showed up with a flotilla of torpedo boats, which helped lead to his interest in building a powerful and prestigious fleet so he would never be embarrassed again.
 
Even if an AH JE navy broke out of the Adriatic where is it going to go? Even the biggest parts of the Med aren't big enough for the commerce raider to escape after sinking merchant ships.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Even if an AH JE navy broke out of the Adriatic where is it going to go? Even the biggest parts of the Med aren't big enough for the commerce raider to escape after sinking merchant ships.

That's true, and without any battleships the Mediterranean will belong to whatever power the Austro-Hungarians are facing, unless the Triple Alliance is in force and Italy honors it, in which case it's still going to be heavily contested.
 

Driftless

Donor
In part it depends on who their enemy was. The Italians, British, & French could effectively keep them bottled up in the Adriatic. Others?

Probably the best Jeune Ecole type option for A-H would be submarines, but practically those were post-1900
 
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Delta Force

Banned
Also, unlike the French and other colonial powers (even other smaller powers, such as the Dutch and Portuguese), the Austro-Hungarians never had any overseas colonies. That means they had no where to go for repairs, refueling, and rearming as the war progressed. Assuming breakout, cruisers would have only one sortie, because Trieste and Pula were the only bases they could visit without the risk of being impounded for the duration of the war.
 
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