If they will not meet us on the open sea (a Trent TL)

[Saphroneth]

As for the good RBL gun - yes, this is something that TTL the British are making essentially their number one priority. OTL they saw only the bad sides of RBL guns, and went with RML guns instead for their warships for a decade or two - which have the disadvantage of slow loading and the advantage of being powerful against armour.
Here they're going for a weapon that's capable of piercing armour meaningfully while still being BL - even if it ends up weighing eighty tons for a 9.2" gun and they can only fit them two to a ship, it's a weapon useful against armour while still being quite fast firing.

 

[FriendlyGhost]

Palmerston was quite a character.

[off-topic]For an ASB look at Palmerston, I highly recommend this by @Thande (sorry that this is a bit of a spoiler for that story, though)[/off-topic]

 

[Saphroneth]

[off-topic]For an ASB look at Palmerston, I highly recommend this by @Thande (sorry that this is a bit of a spoiler for that story, though)[/off-topic]

Reread that yesterday.

 

[FriendlyGhost]

At minimum, the conclusion about convoy is extremely wrong. (It's an OTL wrong conclusion, but it's still wrong TTL.)

How long will it take TTL for this to be worked out, I wonder? OTL it took two years of the 1WW before the Admiralty even considered convoys again, and the OTL USA still didn't use them (despite RN advice) when they entered the 2WW, leading to the 'Second Happy Time' for the U-boats then.
The question above entirely depends on which wars will happen TTL of course, so I don't actually expect you to answer it .

 

[diestormlie]

How much of that, however, was ideology and how much of it was a literal lack of ships to use?

All those Corvettes that the RN will have kicking around for Blockade Duty could be redirected for Convoys if the winds changed, however...

 

[Saphroneth]

How much of that, however, was ideology and how much of it was a literal lack of ships to use?

All those Corvettes that the RN will have kicking around for Blockade Duty could be redirected for Convoys if the winds changed, however...

It was ideology.

 

[cerebropetrologist]

How much of that, however, was ideology and how much of it was a literal lack of ships to use?

As I understand it, there were two apparently mutually exclusive schools of thought. One was that the increase in volume of the British merchant fleet, and the increased capacity which steam gave to commerce raiders, made it impossible to protect convoys. The second was that the advent of the 12-knot merchant steamer made it unnecessary to protect convoys.

Presumably, ITTL, the failure of a tactic with which the Union has been threatening the British for generations has led the Royal Navy to the conclusion that "if they couldn't manage it, nobody can".

 

[FriendlyGhost]

It was ideology.

Maybe 'ideology' is a bit too strong - the Admiralty didn't set out to lose more ships, after all - the conclusion was reached because they mis-read / mis-interpreted the data, mostly. It does seem a bit logical, after all, that putting ships together in a convoy just makes a bigger target for attackers - it's slightly counter-intuitive to realise that it also makes the attacker less likely to get away with more than one attack, which is essentially how the convoy defence system works (vastly over-simplified, I know ). The fact that a convoy can only sail (steam) at the speed of its slowest member also played into the decision. To the Admiralty's credit, once they worked out that their assumptions/preconceptions were wrong, convoys were implemented very well (even if objection to them did cost Jellicoe his post as 1st Sea Lord!).

 

[FriendlyGhost]

Presumably, ITTL, the failure of a tactic with which the Union has been threatening the British for generations has led the Royal Navy to the conclusion that "if they couldn't manage it, nobody can".

This is a common mistake in war/defence planning - assuming that because your enemy in the last/current war couldn't/can't do something, it's something which can't be done. Nowadays, we try to get round this with robust 'red-teaming' - having someone deliberately try to find the holes in a plan (the Vatican used to call this person the 'devil's advocate'). What every armed forces wants is someone who can find the holes in both the enemy's plans and his/her own - to exploit the former and block up the latter. Unfortunately, most armed forces, throughout history, are quite bad at this...
Anyway, enough of me de-railing the thread with military tacticology* - sorry Saph.

*my new word for the day

 

[Saphroneth]

Maybe 'ideology' is a bit too strong - the Admiralty didn't set out to lose more ships, after all

I know, and I'd have used a different word if I had more time. I was mainly answering diestormlie's question.

And yes, the way the Union commerce raiding hasn't really worked out has led the British to make unwarranted assumptions about how well they can manage things - among other things, they've missed that most of the time their enemy won't be "already concentrated at home with a larger British fleet next door".

 

[RodentRevolution]

It was ideology.

Erm...actually it was more a reflection of the realities of this period and a failure to realise that things like turbine engines and oil firing had changed the rules by 1914

It seems that for example a certain Captain P.H Colomb submitted a paper to RUSI entitled Convoys Are they Any Longer Possible? in 1887-88 which was hugely influential. Basically in the era of coal fired ships with reciprocating engines warships could devote less volume to bunkerage than contemporary merchantmen with meant while they could sprint faster they cruised more slowly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Howard_Colomb

Does not really go into detail on his theories and studies of naval warfare but does at least go to show I am not making him up.

 

[Saphroneth]

Erm...actually it was more a reflection of the realities of this period and a failure to realise that things like turbine engines and oil firing had changed the rules by 1914

As cerebro notes, there's a contradiction in the theories which were advanced to suggest that convoy was not possible. It's an easy to miss contradiction, it's true, but it's there. (There's also the distinct problem that the "impossible" and "unnecessry" theories both assume that the entire merchant marine is completely modern - this is of course never going to be true!)

 

[RodentRevolution]

As cerebro notes, there's a contradiction in the theories which were advanced to suggest that convoy was not possible. It's an easy to miss contradiction, it's true, but it's there. (There's also the distinct problem that the "impossible" and "unnecessry" theories both assume that the entire merchant marine is completely modern - this is of course never going to be true!)

I would need to dig more into the papers and doctrines of the time as they were not completely antithetical to convoys for certain high value targets like troop transports but there were reasons, some more valid than others, as to why it was not felt they were so necessary. Thus Admiral King was not simply being an anti-British ideologue when he scorned convoys but he was being entirely obsolete in his thinking on the subject.

One of the things to realise is that convoys were indeed unnecessary in the face of German surface raiders of 1914-15 by the time the convoys would have been organised most raiders had been sunk and the rest confined to German ports. Convoys were however run in the North Sea for example prior to big transatlantic convoy system being implemented. In the 1860s-1910 the RN is in an even stronger position in regards cruisers and cruiser bases vis-a-vis most threats...now if someone comes up with clever submersibles and decides not to play nice it is different or given I cannot crystal ball this future if someone with lots of long range cruisers shows up but until then...the argument does make at the very least, a certain sense.

 

[Saphroneth]

From a story PoV, this is intended to be a mistake in British planning.

From a historical PoV, the British did have a thinking that convoys were not required even in the face of enemy surface commerce raiding for some fraction of the late 19th and early 20th century - this is just bringing that earlier.

From a strategic point of view, they're still planning on using escorts and convoy for high value (directly militarily important) targets - they're just basically deciding based on incomplete information (like the low numbers of enemy high-speed potential raiding ships) that convoy is not economical or sensible for most ships in wartime.
This is a mistake because it removes that from their tool kit. It could be a big mistake because they could have done to their commerce what happened to the Union OTL due to only a relatively few Confederate commerce raiders - not now, but in a decade or two perhaps, and at no point in that decade are they likely to have a sudden "wake up call" without things getting painful for them beforehand.

 

[Claudius]

Once again, thanks for a truly fascinating TL. From the developments thus far, it seems possible that you have butterflied OTL's Great War, thus saving millions of lives. Given the alterations in German history there might not be a German Empire at all. and the sides in some distant future war might include an alt- Entent including the USA and France vs. Britain and Prussia

 

[Saphroneth]

I might well do a "British Army lessons learned" thing, actually - this one much more a matter of "British perceptions" than necessarily reality, though given they currently have (arguably, arguably) the best army in the world at pitched battles, it's probably going to be fairly accurate for the here and now anyway.

Come to think of it, the Duke of Cambridge might prove an effective mouthpiece. Despite the caricature, he was quite the reformer in his youth (which this is!) and seems to essentially have been R Lee Emery as a field officer and duke. Via Robcraufurd:


“...the Duke had inherited from his uncles, of the Regency generation, a command of varied and picturesque imagery far beyond the resources of Billingsgate.”
He once ended a cadet mutiny at Sandhurst with little more than bad language, and when Kaiser Wilhelm I made various suggestions of eligible German princesses (ignoring the Duke’s existing morganatic marriage) he was greeted with a "wealth of invective [that] nearly paralysed the Emperor. In bluntest terms he [the Duke] described Germans in general, Prussians in particular, and Teutonic princesses in detail. No gentleman, he stormed, would ever advise another to desert a lady to whom he had pledged his word in the sight of God and man."
He once concluded a review with the words “In all my experience of reviews in England, Ireland or on the Continent of Europe, I have never witnessed such a damnable exhibition of incompetence as has been shown by the Grenadier Guards today. When the Cease Fire sounded, the First Battalion was firing at the Serpentine; the Second Battalion was firing at the Marble Arch; and God Almighty knows where the Third Battalion was firing. I don’t.”
At another inspection, he had the following discussion with the colonel of a battalion:
“Where are the pioneers? I don’t see them.”
“In front of the leading company, your Royal Highness.”
“Have they got their picks and shovels with them?”
“Certainly, your Royal Highness. Do you want them to do anything?”
“Yes. I want them to dig a very deep and very wide hole, and then bury this battalion in it.”

 

[diestormlie]

"wealth of invective [that] nearly paralysed the Emperor. In bluntest terms he [the Duke] described Germans in general, Prussians in particular, and Teutonic princesses in detail. No gentleman, he stormed, would ever advise another to desert a lady to whom he had pledged his word in the sight of God and man."

When the Cease Fire sounded, the First Battalion was firing at the Serpentine; the Second Battalion was firing at the Marble Arch; and God Almighty knows where the Third Battalion was firing. I don’t.”

“Yes. I want them to dig a very deep and very wide hole, and then bury this battalion in it.”

Sounds like a charmer. Also fucking Hilarious.

 

[Thoresby]

I might well do a "British Army lessons learned" thing, actually - this one much more a matter of "British perceptions" than necessarily reality, though given they currently have (arguably, arguably) the best army in the world at pitched battles, it's probably going to be fairly accurate for the here and now anyway.

Come to think of it, the Duke of Cambridge might prove an effective mouthpiece. Despite the caricature, he was quite the reformer in his youth (which this is!) and seems to essentially have been R Lee Emery as a field officer and duke. Via Robcraufurd:


“...the Duke had inherited from his uncles, of the Regency generation, a command of varied and picturesque imagery far beyond the resources of Billingsgate.”
He once ended a cadet mutiny at Sandhurst with little more than bad language, and when Kaiser Wilhelm I made various suggestions of eligible German princesses (ignoring the Duke’s existing morganatic marriage) he was greeted with a "wealth of invective [that] nearly paralysed the Emperor. In bluntest terms he [the Duke] described Germans in general, Prussians in particular, and Teutonic princesses in detail. No gentleman, he stormed, would ever advise another to desert a lady to whom he had pledged his word in the sight of God and man."
He once concluded a review with the words “In all my experience of reviews in England, Ireland or on the Continent of Europe, I have never witnessed such a damnable exhibition of incompetence as has been shown by the Grenadier Guards today. When the Cease Fire sounded, the First Battalion was firing at the Serpentine; the Second Battalion was firing at the Marble Arch; and God Almighty knows where the Third Battalion was firing. I don’t.”
At another inspection, he had the following discussion with the colonel of a battalion:
“Where are the pioneers? I don’t see them.”
“In front of the leading company, your Royal Highness.”
“Have they got their picks and shovels with them?”
“Certainly, your Royal Highness. Do you want them to do anything?”
“Yes. I want them to dig a very deep and very wide hole, and then bury this battalion in it.”

He would have got on brilliantly with Phil the Greek.

 

[Finbarr the Fair]

He would have got on brilliantly with Phil the Greek.

I wonder if Phil is related somewhere along the line to him. Did any of Cambridge's descendants, siblings or cousins marry into the Greek Royal line?

 

[Saphroneth]

24 September

The Duke of Cambridge's memo on Lessons From the American War arrives in Britain. Much discussion takes place at Horse Guards as a result - it is understood, however, that others (such as Pennefather) had some input.

Among the points addressed are:

1) Quick reaction forces are essential for dealing with wars in the colonies.
2) These forces should be concentrated in the United Kingdom as far as possible.
3) Mobilized militia is not an effective replacement for line infantry, but can be an effective supplement (i.e. a second line).
4) The muzzle loading rifle's advantages in range and accuracy are so great that any breech loading rifle which causes more than a small reduction in these properties should be rejected.
5) Breech loading artillery of the Armstrong type has some minor reliability issues relating to the vent piece, but is otherwise capable, powerful, long ranged and accurate.
6) The breech loading carbines lately adopted for cavalry should not be permitted to quash the spirit of the offensive.
7) Bayonet charges should be emphasized not as a replacement for fire but as an addition to fire.
8) The close order formation is no longer necessary except in the presence of skilled enemy cavalry or defending an embrasured position.
9) Better doctrine is required to direct the Armstrong guns of the artillery arm - their full range is hard to use on the battlefield. (Pennefather suggests use of short range telegraph, though major concerns are in place over how viable this actually is.)
10) The current army should not be reduced in size by more than 20,000 or so, and that only over the Duke's protests - a 10% reduction of the size of the army would result in a 25% reduction in the home force, thus significantly reducing the ability of the Army to deploy troops in a crisis. Indeed, an increase might be preferable.
11) Militia and volunteer movements at home are all very well, but they should be trained as close to the standard of regular infantry as possible. (There is a one-page diatribe on the capabilities of Canadian militia, though he does allow almost as an afterthought that they are at least better than what they were facing.)



A joke which does the rounds at Horse Guards is that the Duke's secretary has clearly removed most of the profanity and bad language. This joke is, in fact, correct - the Duke originally dictated two pages on the Battle of Moulin Rouge, for example, where his description of the Canadian militia included the terms "fools", "tin-eared to any proper instruction", "undisciplined half-trained sots" and "attempting so far as I can tell to shoot down the clouds so as to provide themselves better cover, were it not for how they missed even the sky". (It is often hard to tell from his scathing language that Moulin Rouge was actually a British victory.)