German sneak attack on British fleet 1 Sep 1939?

Tried it. Didn't work :)

Sort of. They were a dead end, though I suspect they could have been taken farther than they were. They had to surface to reload, and that was 3 minute cycle time. If you could reload submerged, or with only the gun barrel out of the water it would be better
 
There's a report of wargaming the HSF's "death ride" in Nov 1918 on Youtube, presuming that the mutiny didn't happen. They wargamed it nine times and then compiled a broadly representative storyline - this way the fluke events like the HSF all colliding with each other or Seymour's crazy signals sending the GF off at 20 kts in the wrong direction could be omitted as unhelpful.

The K-class have a role to play - they were to steam with the GF then dive just before fleet contact, manoeuvre into position and launch. IIRC, in one wargame they got it entirely right and devastated the HSF and in another some got lost and attacked the GF instead, but generally they arrived in vaguely the right place at kinda the right time and did some damage.
 
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