Smashing the Grand Fleet to the point of Germany having the most powerful navy in Europe is not AB, but VERY difficult. Admiral Ingenhol, at one point, did have a chance to smash a detachment of the RN's dreadnoughts with the entire High Seas Fleet--but that still wouldn't have brought Germany superiority.
Now if Sturdee met with misfortune at the Falklands, and lost one of the I's, that winnows things down a wee bit.
However, IMVHO, a battle that left the High Seas Fleet truly dominant would be known as "Miracle at the Skagerrak" or some such. When wars and battles happen, the likely outcome sometimes blows up as thoroughly as a British battlecruiser at Jutland.
Taking advantage of that victory becomes the challenge...
I wonder if you could have the HSF adopt shore based torpedo-aircraft and so on in a really, really big way - OTL giant torpedo biplanes existed that could carry a 21" torpedo only a few years later, so it's not completely outrageous.
That offers the possibility of seriously laming a large number of GF units with the torpedo strike and then finishing them off with the surface units and possibly even subs.
Even then though, how many planes scoring how many hits (assuming all torpedoes function as advertised) does this require? Even at Pearl Harbor where you had a large and very well trained naval air force attacking stationary targets, three of the eight battleships were back in action in a matter of weeks and only two were total write offs.
The problem with gaining a truly decisive victory for either side is that you simply have too many ships that are designed to be able to take punishment involved. Therefore far more ships are going to get beaten up but will still make it home than ships getting sunk.
The key here isn't to sink any ships - I'm not sure that's possible with naval aircraft in that period, even the outsized Cubaroo.
The requirement is instead to lame a portion of the Grand Fleet so that they can't withdraw at fleet speed and so that the entire High Seas Fleet including a load of Pre Dreadnoughts can catch them and pound them.
This wouldn't be a Pearl, or a Battle Off Malaya, or a Taranto. It would be more like a Bismarck - lame some of the big ships so they can't withdraw at speed, then have the entire HSF fall on them like an avalanche.
Getting a decisive defeat in a material sense is so hard that it basically requires the RN to ram itself into a minefield at full speed ahead.That's fine but I still don't think that equates to a decisive defeat at least in a material sense. Yes it will likely mean a more clear cut tactical success for the HSF and a humiliation for the GF that in the minds of British politicians, the British press, and the public could be turned into decisive defeat because they were so expectant of a decisive victory.
I read an article once that some of the single ship victories by USN frigates in the war of 1812 got blown out of proportion by the British press because they were so used to the Royal Navy always succeeding that people no longer demanded victory but perfection even though in terms of material loss these engagements were the equivalent of mosquito bites on an elephants butt. Irritating but nothing more.
To a certain extent the US military is in a similar situation today. One F-16 gets shot down and people treat it like it's the Schweinfurt raid all over again.
Getting a decisive defeat in a material sense is so hard that it basically requires the RN to ram itself into a minefield at full speed ahead.
(Perhaps the HSF could invest in high speed minelayers?)
I was going more for a clear and lopsided defeat - if the Grand Fleet loses (going really far on the HSF has a good day scale here) twelve DNs and all he OTL BC losses for no German losses, then it's a defeat as spectacular as Trafalgar or the Armada. The decisive aspect is not in terms of "that decides the war", but "the knock on effects of that decide the naval aspect of things". (If the RN lost over a dozen capital ships in a one sided massacre, they'd suffer a morale hit the likes of which has simply never happened to the Senior Service in centuries.)
Yeah, I was turning the Kriesgmarinewank dial up to eleven for that one to demonstrate a point.IMO 12 DNs sounds a bit extreme given that in the OTL battle the GF didn't lose any. I would argue that even if they lose four or five DNs along with the OTL BC losses in exchange for OTL German losses then you probably get the effect you are looking for and that would be a bad thing.
Yeah, I was turning the Kriesgmarinewank dial up to eleven for that one to demonstrate a point.
Reducing the numbers works out, but I'd instead say that a way to make it a worse material defeat is to have serious motive damage to a lot of the Grand Fleet. Damaged turbines, that kind of thing - laming the fleet and making it less able to react to German breakout attempts which are the whole reason for the GF in the first place.
Of course the Germans are themselves quite battered, but the panic doesn't know that!
The best way you can phrase Jutland for the Germans is "Jutland was a battle in which a lot of British capital ships committed suicide."Your last point is what nails it. The thing that has always burned me about the "Jutland was a tactical German victory" argument (besides the fact that I hate the term tactical victory as I find it utterly inconsequential) is that the HSF returned to port badly beaten up and in no way ready for action for some time whereas on 2 June, a few hours after returning to Scapa Flow Jellicoe reported the Grand Fleet as ready for action.