German Auxiliary Cruisers as more effective raiders

The Grand Admiral Raeder had a long standing dispute with a colleague [Wagner] about German naval strategy after WW-I. Wagner argued that to "defeat the dead angle", Germany had to turn the corner on RN blockade . Occupying Norway would help achieve this , but Wagner wanted something more , a direct attack on the UK possibly sea mammal? but he might have been thinking of diversionary bombardments on RN ports to neutralize them long enough to achieve something local like a break out?

Raeder thought of another angle. He argued that raiders operating a hemisphere away, could drag enough RN assets south to allow some king of window of local superiority. In particular combining the effects of Graff Spee's 1914 raid , with possibilities of Scheer's last sortie in 1918 with Hipper's battle cruiser convoy raid.


http://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2228&context=nwc-review

A fantastic pdf that explores the development of the raider concept for WW-II and explains the critical role diesel would have played in this doctrine.


https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/last-sortie-german-high-sea-fleet-april-1918/
 
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This is the real issue without the warships braking out as OTL the RN can simply deploy smaller warships that can still "win" (even mutual damage is a win for the British position) against any realistic AMC.

That is the major weakness of the AMC concept. They aren't powerful enough unless they can close with their victims and the AMCs are both unarmoured and vulnerable with their loads of ammunition. So they are only a serious threat against single unarmed or poorly armed merchant ships.

An effective way to counter this is to as soon as possible after the war begins is equip all Allied flagged seagoing merchant ships with a stern-mounted gun of at least 4 inch in size and provide these ships with a trained gun crew to operate it. Perhaps a little bit of intel about the bigger than OTL German raider program leaks out which produces more incentive for the arming of merchant ships in the event of war. Heck, start arming them after the Munich crisis at least for British flagged seagoing ships to begin with.

The captains of Allied merchant ships should be trained so as to adopt a suspicious attitude toward any unknown merchant ships that are spotted approaching in the distance. Unless the captain is certain of the identity of the other ship then he must order his ship to run from it while opening fire with the stern gun. The radio operator begins transmitting continuously a distress and location message. Eventually enough scraps of the message will penetrate the raider's jamming attempts and anyhow both of the ship's radio transmissions will provide an alarm warning and a DF fix at least. This should be doctrine.

If the unknown approaching vessel is really an innocent neutral or Allied ship it will change course immediately at the first shell splash. It would not take many incidents like this to reinforce the lesson that it is best not to approach other ships at sea.

If the approaching ship is a German raider then the Allied flagged merchant ship has a chance to achieve some hits on the unarmoured and explosive laden raider. The German raider is forced to conduct a stern chase on the merchant and cannot bring all its guns or the torpedo launchers to bear until it closes the range. Meanwhile it is under continuing gunfire from the merchant.

It is possible that just one lucky hit or a few hits can damage or cripple the raider. Of course the same could happen to the merchant ship but in the meanwhile RN, RAN or USN surface and/or air units are being vectored toward this battle. Perhaps the Allied merchant ship will be lost but the position of the likely damaged raider will be established.

Since to be effective the German AMC program required them to attack the low hanging fruit targets then raising that fruit by making Allied ships less vulnerable reduces the strategic effectiveness of the German AMC threat.
 
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The RN armed 3500 merchant/fishing vessels during WW-II, but most were used as escorts and patrol vessels etc.
 
That is the major weakness of the AMC concept. They aren't powerful enough unless they can close with their victims and the AMCs are both unarmoured and vulnerable with their loads of ammunition. So they are only a serious threat against single unarmed or poorly armed merchant ships.

An effective way to counter this is to as soon as possible after the war begins is equip all Allied flagged seagoing merchant ships with a stern-mounted gun of at least 4 inch in size and provide these ships with a trained gun crew to operate it. Perhaps a little bit of intel about the bigger than OTL German raider program leaks out which produces more incentive for the arming of merchant ships in the event of war. Heck, start arming them after the Munich crisis at least for British flagged seagoing ships to begin with.

The captains of Allied merchant ships should be trained so as to adopt a suspicious attitude toward any unknown merchant ships that are spotted approaching in the distance. Unless the captain is certain of the identity of the other ship then he must order his ship to run from it while opening fire with the stern gun. The radio operator begins transmitting continuously a distress and location message. Eventually enough scraps of the message will penetrate the raider's jamming attempts and anyhow both of the ship's radio transmissions will provide an alarm warning and a DF fix at least. This should be doctrine.

If the unknown approaching vessel is really an innocent neutral or Allied ship it will change course immediately at the first shell splash. It would not take many incidents like this to reinforce the lesson that it is best not to approach other ships at sea.

If the approaching ship is a German raider then the Allied flagged merchant ship has a chance to achieve some hits on the unarmoured and explosive laden raider. The German raider is forced to conduct a stern chase on the merchant and cannot bring all its guns or the torpedo launchers to bear until it closes the range. Meanwhile it is under continuing gunfire from the merchant.

It is possible that just one lucky hit or a few hits can damage or cripple the raider. Of course the same could happen to the merchant ship but in the meanwhile RN, RAN or USN surface and/or air units are being vectored toward this battle. Perhaps the Allied merchant ship will be lost but the position of the likely damaged raider will be established.

Since to be effective the German AMC program required them to attack the low hanging fruit targets then raising that fruit by making Allied ships less vulnerable reduces the strategic effectiveness of the German AMC threat.

Good point. Though there was also a risk about arming merchantmen with naval cannons was that they could resort to piracy. Of course with the merchantmen firing in self defence at any suspicious ship on the horizon this would to incidents of hitting the wrong ship.
 
Interestingly the biggest effect amc raiding would have in my opinion would be to force the adoption of convoys world wide by the British.

As we all know that in of itself significantly reduces the effectiveness of merchant shipping.

Also if there are an extra 20 convoys world wide at any given time and they all get an escort (even aa minimal one) the royal navy will be stretched and may have to reduce escorts in the atlantic.

Agreed which would have led to higher U-boat kills.
 
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