PC: Submmarines dominate naval thought?

Well, if you wanted to build a dedicated land-bombardment sub, you could. In order to equal the firepower of a battleship though, it would need to be enormous.
Battleship be damned, up until modern times you'd have real trouble building a submarine capable of matching the shore bombardment capabilities of a light cruiser.
 
I think subs are already as dominant as feasible. Nuclear subs can blow up a big patch of world, and were a big part of the recent Libyan war via Tomahawks. They do have the problems of not being as obvious to idiots, being more expensive, and being lower and especially slower than airplanes.

BlondieBC, I'm afraid your TL has a serious problem. IOTL, the Admiralty was EXACTLY AS ARROGANT as in your TL. The RN kept subs from winning by having already built alot of a SURFACE COMBATANT standard for all big surface fleets - small destroyers, which are good at sub hunting.

Nor can you can get rid of destroyers, because tiny boats are understood to be a vital part of huge fleets, and they had torpedo delivery capabilities considered important then.

I grew up on naval fiction. As I suggested to somebody with a similar idea recently, if you're interested in this sort of thing, CS Forrester wrote some good WW2 naval books plus his famous and also good Napoleonic Hornblower.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
BlondieBC, I'm afraid your TL has a serious problem. IOTL, the Admiralty was EXACTLY AS ARROGANT as in your TL. The RN kept subs from winning by having already built alot of a SURFACE COMBATANT standard for all big surface fleets - small destroyers, which are good at sub hunting.

Nor can you can get rid of destroyers, because tiny boats are understood to be a vital part of huge fleets, and they had torpedo delivery capabilities considered important then.

I grew up on naval fiction. As I suggested to somebody with a similar idea recently, if you're interested in this sort of thing, CS Forrester wrote some good WW2 naval books plus his famous and also good Napoleonic Hornblower.

I am beginning work on this TL in a related thread.

I am not sure exactly what you are saying. The RN did very poorly against the U-boats initially, then improved, especially after the Americans brought extra ships. I guess you are saying the RN admiralty is arrogant?

The general concept is that when the Germans go max effort, they will have about twice as many U-boats as in OTL. I am not trying to greatly improve or degrade the performance of any type of ship.

I am interested in a WW1 time line, not a WW2 timeline.
 
The `arrogant` Admiralty before WW1 built up the worlds largest submarine force and designed the worlds best sub commander selection course.

There are big problems with getting subs to change the course of WW1, there was no doctrine or examples to work with, they had to learn by doing which isn`t ideal. Personally I think the Germans should have put their uboats into the Channel on the first day af the war and sought out BEF troopships to sink without warning, but then again I think a lot of things.
 
The `arrogant` Admiralty before WW1 built up the worlds largest submarine force and designed the worlds best sub commander selection course.

There are big problems with getting subs to change the course of WW1, there was no doctrine or examples to work with, they had to learn by doing which isn`t ideal. Personally I think the Germans should have put their uboats into the Channel on the first day af the war and sought out BEF troopships to sink without warning, but then again I think a lot of things.

with more submarines, and a Kaiser in love with them, maybe....
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The `arrogant` Admiralty before WW1 built up the worlds largest submarine force and designed the worlds best sub commander selection course.

There are big problems with getting subs to change the course of WW1, there was no doctrine or examples to work with, they had to learn by doing which isn`t ideal. Personally I think the Germans should have put their uboats into the Channel on the first day af the war and sought out BEF troopships to sink without warning, but then again I think a lot of things.

True on the massive learning curve. I am months away from early WW1, but it is likely the impact of extra 50 u-boats in August 1914 will be shockingly small, baring luck. I am writing most of the story from the perspective of the CINC U-boat, so this position will lack the power to change broad policies such as unrestricted submarine warfare, which was made at the highest levels.

In retrospected, they should have put their cruiser in the channel to stop the BEF too, but they chose not to do it.
 
Assuming that the Kaiserliche Marine could muster the assets to attack in what time it had, I can't help but think that their subs could have achieved surprise compared to their surface fleet.

Does anyone know what sort of RN escort did the BEF have as it crossed the Channel? I'm sure it would have been sizeable, but my google-fu is too poor to find any hard facts.

Also, I'm not sure if the KM even had the concept of such interdiction via submarines.

It would be a useful way of achieving the OP's premise, though, if the BEF lost sizeable amounts of men and materiel en route to France.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Assuming that the Kaiserliche Marine could muster the assets to attack in what time it had, I can't help but think that their subs could have achieved surprise compared to their surface fleet.

Does anyone know what sort of RN escort did the BEF have as it crossed the Channel? I'm sure it would have been sizeable, but my google-fu is too poor to find any hard facts.

Also, I'm not sure if the KM even had the concept of such interdiction via submarines.

It would be a useful way of achieving the OP's premise, though, if the BEF lost sizeable amounts of men and materiel en route to France.

In open literature, former British Admirals discuss closing the entire channel with submarines in case of war (1907). So the concept of interdiction is out there, and the concept of preventing amphibious assaults is one of the main reasons for submarines. It just requires an aggressive leader making the plan, getting approval for the plan once war starts, and aggressive execution. I can not speak at this time to whether it would likely be successful or not.
 
True on the massive learning curve. I am months away from early WW1, but it is likely the impact of extra 50 u-boats in August 1914 will be shockingly small, baring luck. I am writing most of the story from the perspective of the CINC U-boat, so this position will lack the power to change broad policies such as unrestricted submarine warfare, which was made at the highest levels.

In retrospected, they should have put their cruiser in the channel to stop the BEF too, but they chose not to do it.

The cruisers would not make it back if they entered the Channel. Personally I would have as many Uboats as possible in the Channel as early as possible and then have the HSF sortie toward the south to push troopships into them.
 

Perkeo

Banned
Actually, if submarines are seen as the major threat, that probably accelerates Aircraft Carrier design, because if you're trying to find tiny targets in the middle of the Ocean, planes can cover a lot more ground then surface ships. Moreover the colonial powers can't rely on subs, because they have responsibilities that can only be meet by surface fleets, like defending their own commerce, shore support, showing the flag. Subs still can't do these things well.

So you end up essentially the same as IOTL: The primary weapons are submarines and aircraft carriers and the rest of the navy is build around them. However, I think it's perfectly plausible that the importance of aircraft carriers is reduced and of submarines increased. An essentially land-based power like the Sowjet Union or Germany doesn't need as many aircraft carriers as e.g. the British Empire or the US.
 
Submarines could be attractive for smaller navies because it's a stealth weapon, so why build a battleship or CV if there's a fleet 5 times your size waiting to trash it than build something that's 50 times less tonnage and has a higher chance of surviving?

That mindset could spurn submarine frenzy for the smaller nations especially if submarines are successful and get some lucky kills early on in its development.

Even if the submarines become less effective, the other side has to devote much more resources to defend their shipping, which could be seen as more effective than a navy's surface fleet being stuck in port the whole war. So there's less support for the fleet-in-being doctrine.
 
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