High Seas Fleet becomes League of Nations Fleet?

To my understanding, the Allies had not yet decided what to do with the High Seas Fleet when it was scuttled in Scapa Flow. What do people think of the idea of assigning the ships to the League of Nations as a peacekeeping force in an ATL where it's not scuttled? It would give the League some teeth, and solve the problem of what to do with the ships. Larger countries would be incentivized to provide crews in order to exert influence over the command structure of the fleet, and smaller countries could gain a cadre of trained sailors. Later, when the Washington Naval Treaty or an analogue occurs, ships can be gifted instead of scrapped. Imagine the Lion-class battlecruisers getting prolonged careers, USS Washington and IJN Tosa being completed and becoming LNS Washington and LNS Tosa. :D

Perhaps the fleet could be based out of, and ostensibly protect, League Mandates. I would imagine that the ships would suffer from poor maintenance from lack of funding, but there's almost certainly many more ships than the League can crew, so they can be rotated through service. And anyway, if the League of Nations has any stick at all, even if it's not a big one, it drastically changes what it's capable of doing.


(If this idea is too far out there, it might do better in the ASB section, so feel free to move it)
 
Perhaps the fleet could be based out of, and ostensibly protect, League Mandates. I would imagine that the ships would suffer from poor maintenance from lack of funding, but there's almost certainly many more ships than the League can crew, so they can be rotated through service. And anyway, if the League of Nations has any stick at all, even if it's not a big one, it drastically changes what it's capable of doing.
It's not just a case of rotating them, even just sitting in dock in reserve warships are going to eat up money for maintenance and manpower to keep them ticking over. More ships just means more costs. The main question becomes who's going to pay for and provide the manpower for all this? I'm not sure I really buy the idea of the Great Powers providing a large part of it for 'influence', why set up a possible competitor/constraints on your own actions? Sure they originally backed and said nice things about the League but they don't seem to of taken it very seriously, the first time it conflicts with their national interests they're going to tell them to take a long walk off of a short pier. And even if the smaller countries band together you're going to run into problems like deciding on a common command language, doctrine issues, who pays how much, what happens if they're moved to intervene in a conflict which involves countries that some of the crews are from etc. Personally I have to say that I think this is more Alien Space Bats sub-forum territory than anything else.
 
Most of the HSF was designed for North Sea operations in mind, which limits it to only a few weeks sailing before having to return to port and restock on supplies, munitions, fuel, etc. This would restrict the utility of these vessels in an international peacekeeping role. They'd be pretty much restricted to Mediterranean operations the way I see it.
 
It's not just a case of rotating them, even just sitting in dock in reserve warships are going to eat up money for maintenance and manpower to keep them ticking over. More ships just means more costs. The main question becomes who's going to pay for and provide the manpower for all this? I'm not sure I really buy the idea of the Great Powers providing a large part of it for 'influence', why set up a possible competitor/constraints on your own actions? Sure they originally backed and said nice things about the League but they don't seem to of taken it very seriously, the first time it conflicts with their national interests they're going to tell them to take a long walk off of a short pier. And even if the smaller countries band together you're going to run into problems like deciding on a common command language, doctrine issues, who pays how much, what happens if they're moved to intervene in a conflict which involves countries that some of the crews are from etc. Personally I have to say that I think this is more Alien Space Bats sub-forum territory than anything else.

I'm kind of torn on the realisticness of the idea myself. Who's in charge, where the funds come from, all that, are very serious questions. Not technically insurmountable ones, and essentially the same ones that ruined the League OTL. So to a fairly large extent, my TL/POD thing depends on altering the League to a point where something like this is possible. So my OP is kind of a branch off a (moderately realistic) timeline that hasn't been written. :eek:

Most of the HSF was designed for North Sea operations in mind, which limits it to only a few weeks sailing before having to return to port and restock on supplies, munitions, fuel, etc. This would restrict the utility of these vessels in an international peacekeeping role. They'd be pretty much restricted to Mediterranean operations the way I see it.

They should be able to restock at any member of the League of Nations. There'd naturally be issues paying for it, but the League Fleet is literally going to have the naval stations of Britain, USA, and France combined to base out of. Access to the networks of any one of those would have enabled the High Seas Fleet to project globally, range should not be a strategic issue for the fleet.
 
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Cook

Banned
What do people think of the idea of assigning the ships to the League of Nations as a peacekeeping force in an ATL where it's not scuttled? It would give the League some teeth, and solve the problem of what to do with the ships. Larger countries would be incentivized to provide crews in order to exert influence over the command structure of the fleet, and smaller countries could gain a cadre of trained sailors.
Following the surrender of the High Seas Fleet there was no naval force outside of Allied hands. The two largest fleets in the world was in the hands of the Royal Navy and the U.S. navy, with the French, Italians and Japanese fleets being substantially smaller, but all still allied at the Peace conference. Faced with no threat that their own fleets could not handle, there would be no incentive for the Big Five to agree to maintain any further fleets, especially when they were looking to reduce the size of their own fleets following the war.

And since the maritime objective of the allies had been freedom of the high seas for merchant shipping, and this had been achieved with much smaller ships: destroyers, protecting convoys from even smaller vessels: submarines, the HSF would be redundant at best and a potential threat to the allies at worst; Battle fleets were meant to fight other battle fleets, all of which were allied fleets.

The other detail is that the fleet had been manufactured in Germany. All replacement parts and ammunition would need to be manufactured in Germany or the factories that manufactured the parts and ammunition would need to be dismantled and shipped to an allied country, at a time when it was hoped armaments industries could be converted to manufacturing other, more peaceful things.
 
I'm kind of torn on the realisticness of the idea myself. Who's in charge, where the funds come from, all that, are very serious questions. Not technically insurmountable ones, and essentially the same ones that ruined the League OTL. So to a fairly large extent, my TL/POD thing depends on altering the League to a point where something like this is possible. So my OP is kind of a branch off a (moderately realistic) timeline that hasn't been written. :eek:



They should be able to restock at any member of the League of Nations. There'd naturally be issues paying for it, but the League Fleet is literally going to have the naval stations of Britain, USA, and France combined to base out of. Access to the networks of any one of those would have enabled the High Seas Fleet to project globally, range should not be a strategic issue for the fleet.

Why would theyt be able to base out of U.S. bases? The U.S. wasn't part of the League (and I don't think ever had much of a chance of being a member)
 
How do you solve the problem in that the scuttling of the HSF at Scapa Flow is years apart from the formation of the League of Nations. The continued existence of the HSF could have made negotiations more taxing at Versailles.

I would also consider that any armed force established by the League, particularly in the beginning, would have not been any force capable of doing much more than policing. No battleships or battlecruisers would probably be retained. The HSF cruisers would have been it.
 
I agree. There is no chance that Britain is going to allow the High Seas Fleet's heavy units to go anywhere but the scrap yards. It's possible that the light cruisers and destroyers might be released to international control to be used as a sort of multinational coastguard/rescue service but I think even this is unlikely.

The question would be who's going to agree to fund such a service. The allied powers with the exception of the United States are broke and the US is determined to return to a policy of isolationisim.

This sort of scheme looks attractive on paper but the intervention in Russia shows what would have happened with this theorhetical fleet. As soon as things get financially tight or it becomes unpopular funding and manpower will be pulled and the whole thing will collapse.

There's also the problem that the german ships are obsolete, and as has already been pointed out were designed for use in the North Sea and Baltic, not for long duration missions. Habitability was poor on these ships and the German crews lived ashore in barracks not on their ships. This is acceptabile in the North Sea but if they have to opperate in the rest of the world wont work.
 

Cook

Banned
How do you solve the problem in that the scuttling of the HSF at Scapa Flow is years apart from the formation of the League of Nations.
There was no significant time lag. The preamble to the Treaty of Versailles specifies the founding of the League of Nations and the nature of that league. The German government signed that treaty on 28th of June, 1919. Initially the Allies had demanded that the Germans sign by the 21st, and the High Seas Fleet scuttled on that date, unaware that Germany had received an extension. The first meeting of the League of Nations Council was in Paris on 16 January 1920. League of Nations mandates and free cities were discussed at the Paris Peace conference in 1919, this would be no different.

The problem with the idea is that none of the Big Five would have any reason to want it.
 
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