AHC: Have the HSF decisively defeat the GF.

Your challenge, which is likely impossible, is to have Germany's High Seas Fleet decisively defeat Britain's Grand Fleet and establish naval supremacy, with a point of divergence after 1910. Bonus points if you can do it without Russia being allied to Germany.
 
Having just done exactly the opposite...could be accomplished with a few changes of personnel.

Somehow- epidemic, bizarre porridge accident, spasm of Kaiserish temper, lucky bomb- get a competent, aggressive commander like Franz von Hipper in command of the High Seas Fleet (far too many of the actual German admirals were either one or the other),

and replace the highly competent but probably overcautious Jellicoe with a gung ho idiot like, oh, look, there's David Beatty.


Given Beatty's brash ignorance of his and his fleet's own limitations, and some skilful use of light assets and torpedo boats in support of the main line on Hipper's part, I reckon it could all have been made to go horribly wrong, as per the OP.
 

Germaniac

Donor
Look up the action of August 19th 1916... If somehow the British don't intercept the German codes the Germans have the opportunity to fight the British without Jellicoe
 

GarethC

Donor
No Great War, leading to a jump-start on a lot of technologies without, you know, slaughtering a generation of engineers and scientists in the trenches, or in revolutions and purges, that sort of thing.

Say, Princip's gun jams, FF is concerned but all Austria really does is force Serbia to curb the Black Hand and its own intelligence apparatus.

Britain swings Prussophile in the face of Russian growth. Germany scraps some ships - all the pre-dreadnoughts sounds like a good start - to make London happy. Britain in turn presses for a plebiscite in Elsass-Lothringen which is due in 1920 or something.

The Ottoman Empire is bolstered by both Britain and Germany, fearful of Russian influence, and ends up modernising without schism.

With Germany still in China and the Pacific, Japan remains a closer British ally in the 20s and is also more concerned with internal investment and does not militarise as much as OTL, as there are more internal opportunities during its industrialisation

The problem is that there is a later Great War, which is actually quite small, and ends with Britain, Germany, Austria, the OE, and Japan kicking the stuffing out of Russia in a sort of larger-scale Crimean War analogue in the early 20s. Russian defeat causes social unrest and the collapse of Tsarism.

That's going to eventually get us to a late-30s conflict. The dozen years or so after the Great War are enough time for expedience to tilt Germany back against France (blah blah boom-and-bust cycle leads to recession and extremism, also Wilhelm II is getting on a bit and may no longer have as firm a grip on reality as he once did...) while Britain leans towards Paris due to parallel colonialism and fear of the German economy and army.

Eager to get the game underway, and cognizant of the likelihood of continued British neutrality int he face of German triumph in Paris, the HSF opens the batting with a sub-laid nuclear mine off Scapa Flow, sinking rather a lot of battleships for no wicket.

Things then go badly wrong as the RNAS retaliates with carrier-borne airstrikes armed with chemical weapons against Wilhelmshaven...
 
Options

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...
 
The Germans were very good in the initial portion of engagements but the RN got better as engagements progressed, so perhaps a couple of OTL hits in the opening salvos do even more damage than OTL. In addition the 'battle turn away' allow re-engagement to give this advantage on a couple of occasions so this result can be repeated. Afterwards light forces and u-boats sink damaged capital ships limping home, giving a very lopsided sinking result.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
One of the problems with the HSF decisively beating the GF is what GF (Grand Fleet) refers to. It's all the Royal Navy's dreadnoughts, pretty much, and that means so many ships that the German squadron will be outmatched both qualitatively and quantitatively.
OTL the Germans tried to catch and destroy a small portion of Grand Fleet, and even there they have problems (the fastest units of Grand Fleet, meaning the BCs and QEs, actually have about the same weight of metal as everything the Germans have capable of matching the rest of Grand Fleet speed-wise. That's one reason the Germans brought along obsolete Pre-Dreadnoughts to thicken the line at Jutland.)
It is no accident that when the High Seas Fleet realized it was facing the Grand Fleet it promptly turned and ran.

This is not to say it's impossible, but it's going to be hard. Overly aggressive action by a British commander can in large part be compensated for by the fact that his own fleet is so damn huge! It can afford to be poorly led, though not terribly led.
 

NothingNow

Banned
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...

Yeah.

That said, for the Is to get their asses handed to them at the Falklands requires the Blucher or Von Der Tann to be there with Von Spee's Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Which is a major issue really, since it's weakening the HSF at the advantage of a cruiser squadron on the ass end of the planet, even if it was only supposed to be part of a goodwill tour or something.

Alternatively, the weather during the battle could be bad enough that the Invincibles can't take advantage of the longer range of their guns, allowing for either Von Spee's ships to have some good, lucky hits, or for the Invincible or Inflexible to have a turret explosion when a flame from the traverse system arcing yet again hits a powder bag (I'm honestly kinda surprised that none of them had such an accident, given how sloppy RN ammunition handling was in WWI.)

But yeah, something that would gut the Grand Fleet would be something of a miracle if the US isn't joining the Central Powers, or having a go at Japan in the time period (both of which would require the RN to start pulling shit out of the Grand Fleet to cover commitments the IJN can't meet, or to blunt American operations.)
 

Saphroneth

Banned
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.
 
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 BCF very soon in the war did away with most of the safety precautions that slowed down rate of fire; after Dogger Bank really. The Grand fleet didn't; the story about weak turret and deck armour was a convenient lie for the public and the enemy's behalf, to cover Beatty's backside- for which he was distinctly ungrateful.

And smaller ships almost always suffer more severely from weather than larger ships- in bad weather you would look for a battlecruiser or battleship to retain more of it's combat efficiency than a heavy or light cruiser.


The golden opportunity perhaps would be if things elsewhere had progressed to the point- U boat success and surface fleet failure- to the point where Fisher's grand plan to attack the HSF at home in the Baltic actually came to be. That would basically be the Grand Fleet sticking it's head into a mincing machine to try to jam it with skull fragments; there were good reasons why it wasn't done.

If, thanks to tonnage losses in the Atlantic, it seemed essential to try, however...
 

Saphroneth

Banned
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.

The DNs are built to handle shellfire more than torpedoes. That's where the idea comes from.
 
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.

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.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
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.)
 
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.)

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.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
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!
 
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!

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.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
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.
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." ;)
 
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