Minimal German Fleet WWII (Baltic only)

What if Germany builds a very minimal fleet in world war 2.

No destroyers, instead just build perhaps more of the type 23 Topedo boats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_23_torpedo_boat

No big number of UBoats, just the small Type IIB, fine for Baltic or Black sea operations (OTL used for training and Black Sea).

The existing OTL LCs are fine for Baltic work Emden, Bremen, etc.. Don't build any of the Hipper class HCs. Build more LCs if you have to.

Instead of the Pocket Battle Ships, turn these into 10,000 ton Baltic Battle Ships, shorter range, less speed, shallow draft.

No Sharnhorsts or Bismarks of course.

-----------------

Of course this means doing OTL Norway is not an option. But maybe that is a good thing. The $$$ saved from this Navy goes into more tanks and planes. This is about beating France then the Soviet Union.
 
What if Germany builds a very minimal fleet in world war 2.

No destroyers, instead just build perhaps more of the type 23 Topedo boats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_23_torpedo_boat

No big number of UBoats, just the small Type IIB, fine for Baltic or Black sea operations (OTL used for training and Black Sea).

The existing OTL LCs are fine for Baltic work Emden, Bremen, etc.. Don't build any of the Hipper class HCs. Build more LCs if you have to.

Instead of the Pocket Battle Ships, turn these into 10,000 ton Baltic Battle Ships, shorter range, less speed, shallow draft.

No Sharnhorsts or Bismarks of course.

-----------------

Of course this means doing OTL Norway is not an option. But maybe that is a good thing. The $$$ saved from this Navy goes into more tanks and planes. This is about beating France then the Soviet Union.

This allows for maybe 3 more armoured divisions and perhaps another 5 infantry divisions that can be used in France and, later Russia.

Sounds good in theory, but it does not mean it will be all sweetness and light for the Axis.

ie, with minimal need to maintain a Home Fleet, The RN launches the raid on Taranto with three carriers, not one, sinking virtually all of the Italian Navy. The remainder can be batted about like a red headed step child with only limited forces and when Japan declares war a strong force is dispatched to the far East consisting of 2-3 carriers and 3-4 battleships. After a failed Japanese air strike, they engage the 4 Kongo class BB's covering the Malayan landings with disastrous results for the Japanese.

Meanwhile, with the Mediterranean an allied lake and the conquest of Libya completed, the British deploy not 2 1/2 but 5-6 divisions to Greece and so on, at best holding Southern Greece and at worst badly delaying Barbarossa...and we all know how well that worked out OTL...
 

Saphroneth

Banned
No Norway also means a reduction in steel availability, IIRC. But then a fair amount of that went via the Baltic, so it's hard to quantify... but the Swedes might have been more interested with trading with the Allies instead, with an Allied presence in Norway.
Harder still to quantify, especially with no Altmark Incident.



...anyway.
No U-boats is an interesting one, I think it gives the RN back several carriers (Glorious, Courageous, Eagle, Ark Royal) and sundry ships.
Lack of a Kriegsmarine also more or less eliminates the Sealion panic, so a lot of development work keeps going which OTL was shut down for MOAR FIGHTERS.

Of course, the extra tanks and so on make land warfare easier, especially against the USSR (which was fairly close OTL, though logistically limited to a huge degree)...
What's interesting about this is that it actually makes the Second World War much more obviously Napoleonic - with near-total command of the seas, the Allies (specifically Britain) can go with their peripheral warfare strategy much more.
That may make defeating Germany on land harder, and it may make defeating Japan easier.
It's genuinely hard to tell, IMO, and would certainly result in a distinct WW2.
 
What if Germany builds a very minimal fleet in world war 2.

No destroyers, instead just build perhaps more of the type 23 Topedo boats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_23_torpedo_boat

No big number of UBoats, just the small Type IIB, fine for Baltic or Black sea operations (OTL used for training and Black Sea).

The existing OTL LCs are fine for Baltic work Emden, Bremen, etc.. Don't build any of the Hipper class HCs. Build more LCs if you have to.

Instead of the Pocket Battle Ships, turn these into 10,000 ton Baltic Battle Ships, shorter range, less speed, shallow draft.

No Sharnhorsts or Bismarks of course.

-----------------

Of course this means doing OTL Norway is not an option. But maybe that is a good thing. The $$$ saved from this Navy goes into more tanks and planes. This is about beating France then the Soviet Union.
Well, you definately got my attention!:) Subscribed
 
This is intriguing... and a better use of resources for Germany.

The two obvious winners in this case are the Heer and the Luftwaffe, but how they use the additional resources will be interesting.

Wouldn't this essentially emulate the German force structure post WW II?
 
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I still they build the U-Boat fleet because of their track record in World War I and it will represent the one weapon you can use throughout the war to attack British SLOCs.
 
Possible Butterflies

What if Germany builds a very minimal fleet in world war 2.

No destroyers, instead just build perhaps more of the type 23 Topedo boats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_23_torpedo_boat

No big number of UBoats, just the small Type IIB, fine for Baltic or Black sea operations (OTL used for training and Black Sea).

The existing OTL LCs are fine for Baltic work Emden, Bremen, etc.. Don't build any of the Hipper class HCs. Build more LCs if you have to.

Instead of the Pocket Battle Ships, turn these into 10,000 ton Baltic Battle Ships, shorter range, less speed, shallow draft.

No Sharnhorsts or Bismarks of course.

-----------------

Of course this means doing OTL Norway is not an option. But maybe that is a good thing. The $$$ saved from this Navy goes into more tanks and planes. This is about beating France then the Soviet Union.
Interesting. No U-boats means more cargo gets to Britain. No U-Boats doesn't mean unrestricted joy for the UK, since they presumably still have to run convoys 'just in case' attacks start up (and indeed they may spend a good part of the war in a state of mild paranoia wondering just when the offensive is going to come, and feverishly imagining the huge fleet that the Axis must be building up to unleash at any moment as a secret weapon...:eek:) No U-Boats might also mean the U.S. is more reluctant to get involved pre-December 1941 - when the fighting's all happening over on the European continent, it's so much easier to dismiss it, than when it's gradually creeping across the Atlantic towards your own shores...

No Norway campaign (assuming Norway firmly adheres to a course of neutrality, and the UK government can't find an excuse it can sell to its public to 'intervene') means Germany doesn't have to worry about garrisoning Norway later in the war; it also (along with the minimum surface fleet and U-Boats) means post-Barbarossa, the UK can run convoys to Soviet Russia almost at will, so long as it has the shipping spare (and cargo to send).

One thought which occurs to me is do these extra tanks and planes mean that Hitler's armies are actually able to take Leningrad or Stalingrad, and if so what are the consequences of that? (I'm guessing that Moscow will still be too far away for the Germans to take it in the first half year of their war against Russia, and too well defended after that.)
 
Convoys only started when U-Boats became an apparent threat, if they don't, convoys don't get adopted, or not nearly as much.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Interesting. No U-boats means more cargo gets to Britain. No U-Boats doesn't mean unrestricted joy for the UK, since they presumably still have to run convoys 'just in case' attacks start up (and indeed they may spend a good part of the war in a state of mild paranoia wondering just when the offensive is going to come, and feverishly imagining the huge fleet that the Axis must be building up to unleash at any moment as a secret weapon...:eek:) No U-Boats might also mean the U.S. is more reluctant to get involved pre-December 1941 - when the fighting's all happening over on the European continent, it's so much easier to dismiss it, than when it's gradually creeping across the Atlantic towards your own shores...

No Norway campaign (assuming Norway firmly adheres to a course of neutrality, and the UK government can't find an excuse it can sell to its public to 'intervene') means Germany doesn't have to worry about garrisoning Norway later in the war; it also (along with the minimum surface fleet and U-Boats) means post-Barbarossa, the UK can run convoys to Soviet Russia almost at will, so long as it has the shipping spare (and cargo to send).

One thought which occurs to me is do these extra tanks and planes mean that Hitler's armies are actually able to take Leningrad or Stalingrad, and if so what are the consequences of that? (I'm guessing that Moscow will still be too far away for the Germans to take it in the first half year of their war against Russia, and too well defended after that.)
The Brits will have a rough idea what the Germans are building, they can see the slips are empty.
And as for Barbarossa - the big limit there is logistics. More tanks at the front only really means you have less fuel/ammo to go around, though it does mean you can continue the diminuendo sequence of a sputtering offensive longer.
 
Things that could be built instead of ships:

Trucks
Transport aircraft
Tracked Vehicles
Rail conversion units
Road repair equipment

So you could improve logistics in Soviet Union.

Best case for Germany.
1) Japan gets cold feet facing a stronger British commitment at Singapore and stays out.
2) With #1 and less Atlantic tensions USA stays out.
3) Italy gets cold feet and remains a benevolent neutral (like Spain), maybe supplying a corps of volunteers for Soviet Union.
4) Germany defeats France as OTL and in a 2 year enhanced campaign defeats the Soviet Union.
5) Logistical and transportation constraints keeps Britain from really pouring in more Lend Lease vs OTL
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Actually, no need for convoys HUGELY increases the amount of Lend Lease (and trading!) the Brits can do - they don't have a dearth-glut cycle at ports and can keep them ticking over at normal capacity (increases overall unloading capacity), they don't have huge amounts of repair work to do on ships damaged by the foul weather of the northern routing (which OTL was... not sure, Astrodragon knows, but it was some double-digit percentage fraction of the work done by British shipyards) and because convoys are less efficient than other routings it also means they can move a higher amount of tonnage in the same time.
Overall results - more Lend Lease material gets transported, less overwork for British shipyards, British ports have a higher potential throughput, and (most importantly) they have the capacity to purchase things in Sterling from most of the planet rather than having to rely on the relatively safe option of buying things in $ from the US and shipping them over in convoys. This makes the British economic situation much better.
So it's basically the Germans getting more strength against Russia (that bit's undeniable, the question is how much) in return for letting Britain also get stronger.

(An absolute minimum estimate is the amount of GRT the U-boats sunk in WW2, expressed in terms of supplies. This does not take into account the fact that these sunk ships which TTL reach port could then have taken another load, it does not take into account the bonuses from different routing or lack of dearth-glut or anything of the sort... just the amount of physical and full cargo space sunk.
14.1 million tonnes of GRT was lost. In perspective, if that was all tanks the UK would have an extra two hundred thousand heavy tanks! Of course it wasn't all tanks, most of it was supplies like beans, bullets, iron ore or oil... but it gives some idea.)
 
(An absolute minimum estimate is the amount of GRT the U-boats sunk in WW2, expressed in terms of supplies. This does not take into account the fact that these sunk ships which TTL reach port could then have taken another load, it does not take into account the bonuses from different routing or lack of dearth-glut or anything of the sort... just the amount of physical and full cargo space sunk.
14.1 million tonnes of GRT was lost. In perspective, if that was all tanks the UK would have an extra two hundred thousand heavy tanks! Of course it wasn't all tanks, most of it was supplies like beans, bullets, iron ore or oil... but it gives some idea.)

What does Britain do with the extra strength. If at war with Italy AND/OR Japan as in OTL, those countries are in trouble. Expand Bomber force?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
What does Britain do with the extra strength. If at war with Italy AND/OR Japan as in OTL, those countries are in trouble. Expand Bomber force?
Bomber force would be one thing, another is that essentially the entire British army (possibly entire Empire army) would be for all intents and purposes one vast mechanized force.
More landing craft, more tanks, basically they reach... what, 1944 levels of supply in 1943?
 
Would Germany's greater land war potential not cause some butterflies with France and the Low Countries? Perhaps butterflying OTL's invasion?
 
The Brits will have a rough idea what the Germans are building, they can see the slips are empty.
And as for Barbarossa - the big limit there is logistics. More tanks at the front only really means you have less fuel/ammo to go around, though it does mean you can continue the diminuendo sequence of a sputtering offensive longer.

Seconded. Plus the biggest problem with Barbarossa is always going to be those three diverging axes of advance - Leningrad, Moscow, Rostov. Besides, you can build all the extra vehicles you want, but where are the engines going to come from? Even with extra tanks, trucks, planes, etc, Barbarossa is eventually going to run out of steam and stall.
 
Ports & Bombing

Actually, no need for convoys HUGELY increases the amount of Lend Lease (and trading!) the Brits can do - they don't have a dearth-glut cycle at ports and can keep them ticking over at normal capacity (increases overall unloading capacity), they don't have huge amounts of repair work to do on ships damaged by the foul weather of the northern routing (which OTL was... not sure, Astrodragon knows, but it was some double-digit percentage fraction of the work done by British shipyards) and because convoys are less efficient than other routings it also means they can move a higher amount of tonnage in the same time.
Overall results - more Lend Lease material gets transported, less overwork for British shipyards, British ports have a higher potential throughput, and (most importantly) they have the capacity to purchase things in Sterling from most of the planet rather than having to rely on the relatively safe option of buying things in $ from the US and shipping them over in convoys. This makes the British economic situation much better.
So it's basically the Germans getting more strength against Russia (that bit's undeniable, the question is how much) in return for letting Britain also get stronger.

(An absolute minimum estimate is the amount of GRT the U-boats sunk in WW2, expressed in terms of supplies. This does not take into account the fact that these sunk ships which TTL reach port could then have taken another load, it does not take into account the bonuses from different routing or lack of dearth-glut or anything of the sort... just the amount of physical and full cargo space sunk.
14.1 million tonnes of GRT was lost. In perspective, if that was all tanks the UK would have an extra two hundred thousand heavy tanks! Of course it wasn't all tanks, most of it was supplies like beans, bullets, iron ore or oil... but it gives some idea.)
The Germans still have aircraft, so moving allied shipping in the Channel and/or using ports along the South coast (such as Southampton) may still be out from mid-1940 onwards for a year or more.
And unless Hitler cancels air raids on the UK (and he has more aircraft in this timeline) at the very least London and some of the other industrial targets of the south/midlands may well take a pounding before he gives the order to go east.
 
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Saphroneth

Banned
The Germans still have aircraft, so moving allied shipping in the Channel and/or using ports along the South coast (such as Southampton) may still be out from mid-1940 onwards for a year or more.
And unless Hitler cancels air raids on the UK (and he has more aircraft in this timeline) at the very least London and some of the other industrial targets of the south/midlands may well take a pounding before he gives the order to go east.
Channel's taking losses, yes, but that does not replace the gain from the U-boats by any stretch - it's still a major net positive even counting the aerial bombardment.
 
What if Germany builds a very minimal fleet in world war 2.

No destroyers, instead just build perhaps more of the type 23 Topedo boats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_23_torpedo_boat

No big number of UBoats, just the small Type IIB, fine for Baltic or Black sea operations (OTL used for training and Black Sea).

The existing OTL LCs are fine for Baltic work Emden, Bremen, etc.. Don't build any of the Hipper class HCs. Build more LCs if you have to.

Instead of the Pocket Battle Ships, turn these into 10,000 ton Baltic Battle Ships, shorter range, less speed, shallow draft.

No Sharnhorsts or Bismarks of course.

-----------------

Of course this means doing OTL Norway is not an option. But maybe that is a good thing. The $$$ saved from this Navy goes into more tanks and planes. This is about beating France then the Soviet Union.

A few problems though...

The type 23 torpedo boat is utterly incapable of being an escort ship, either as an ASW or as an anti-air escort. And it´s more of a coastal torpedo boat. Given the importance of Swedish iron ore you are betting that nobody is capable of attacking merchant ships carrying iron ore to Germany from Sweden (Baltic Sea or North Sea).
I don´t think any German admiral would take that bet. You´d need at least something like the Elbing class torpedo boats to guard against that bet.

Likewise the type IIB submarines are tiny. Longer patrols are out because of cramped space. Not to mention that the submarine had three torpedo tubes and carried just five torpedoes (three in the tubes, two spares). Which means that after one or maybe two engagements it had to return to port for re-supply.
Let´s not mention a single hull, no watertight compartments. And only a single 2 cm AA gun for anti-air defense.
Even an early type VIIA submarine carried 14 torpedoes.

Building the three pocket battle ships had been approved in March 1928.
The "Deutschland" was launched in May 1931, the "Admiral Scheer" in April 1933 and the "Admiral Grad Spee" in April 1934. Which means that turning them into "10,000 ton Baltic Battle Ships, shorter range, less speed, shallow draft" after 1933 is pretty much impossible.You´d have to scrap the already existing hulls, design a new ship and then build the new ship. It definitely would be cheaper to just finish the ordered ships.

And as others have mentioned, without the threat of at least a few German capital ships (or German submarines), the British Royal Navy is free to do whatever it wants. Heck, the United Kingdom could stay neutral, even the French navy could blockade a Germany only protected by type 23 torpedo boats and type IIB submarines.

Nazi Germany in 1939 wasn´t about efficiency.
It was about Hitler and his "divide and rule" strategy.
So the idea that any saved money and steel would go into "more tanks and planes" is nice but not necessarily true. And even if it goes into "more tanks and planes" I´m quite sure that Goering (Head of the air force) won´t add resources to a German naval air wing.
 
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