Possible German Naval bases in a Commerce War

hipper

Banned
If attacking from the landward side becomes a priority (even a lower order one) due to the hassle the “improved” German raiders are having, what do the WAllies (British) not do? No attack through Kuwait onto Basra? A lesser or not at all Dardanelles? The troops needed to attack Luderitz overland, bringing their own supplies and heavy guns with them, have to come from somewhere?

A point of note: would the “shallow rock bottom” the wiki article for Luderitz mentions cause any issues? Were there any cruiser-sized ships based out of there OTL?


There were lots of troops in Africa who were only used on that continent, Namibia was unable to be defended.
 
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BlondieBC

Banned
If attacking from the landward side becomes a priority (even a lower order one) due to the hassle the “improved” German raiders are having, what do the WAllies (British) not do? No attack through Kuwait onto Basra? A lesser or not at all Dardanelles? The troops needed to attack Luderitz overland, bringing their own supplies and heavy guns with them, have to come from somewhere?

A point of note: would the “shallow rock bottom” the wiki article for Luderitz mentions cause any issues? Were there any cruiser-sized ships based out of there OTL?

Pretty sure older cruisers had visited that port.

If you look at prewar material and war action, the most likely answer is the British do nothing. But people break prewar planning all the time, so here is roughly what happens if the UK gets serious, and we have done near the max action.

  • UK not going to run out of ships. It is just the UK likes to keep a big surplus in the Home Islands.
  • Tsingtao will still fall. All reinforcing does is make the siege take a few months longer and the Japanese might have to use a second division.
  • The ships at Tsingtao will still flee ahead of Japanese declaration of war. The difference is that these ships now have bases that are closer than Germany. East Africa can't handle the capital ships (the opening in the reef is too small, AFAIK). Some of these ships may head here. Or they may run for SWA or Cameroon. Or might split up like OTL. Or might try to operate out of some anchorage like Rabaul. I chose Cameroon in my ATL since I did not even build a base in SWA because it was undefendable.
  • East Africa. The UK had something like 24-30 warships in the Indian Ocean looking for the SMS Emden and others. May do something like send a BC to be the flag ship. If you look at the troop flows and quality of troops, there is only one answer. The ANZAC forces land in East Africa well outside of the shore defenses of whatever port is fortified. These troops will spend the rest of the war in East Africa. We have roughly double OTL German land forces in the area, and there is a lot of ground to fall back on.
  • Realistically, we probably have cancelled Gallopoli even though the UK could pull a couple divisions out of Flanders and still do it. Really ATL writer call, no wrong answers.
  • SWA. Really hard to see bring down European troops since they are needed in Europe so badly, the South Africans have enough troops once internal issues (Boers) are dealt with, and the South Africans want SWA. It will just take longer UK probably dispatches 10-30 warships including BC to contain the issue. And we will see just how good BC is. BC is also in great location do deal with stuff leaking out of Pacific.
  • Cameroon. Realistically, not enough troops. Sort of in right angle type area far from shipping lanes as they round capetown. Distant blockade out of Freetown.
  • If the Tsingtao fleet is not sunk in a battle, it will go to Cameroon where it will spend the war as a Fleet in Being. With all the sailors usable as marines, the port may be taken but the interior of the colony will not stand.

Now these are the best (wisest) reactions of UK. Of course other actions can be taken, but the cost are higher. And roughly speaking, here are the butterflies.

  • Probably 5-10% less supplies reach UK in first year of war. Not so much to sinkings but do to rerouting ships to longer, safer routes. For example, ships rounding Capetown may hug the Brazilian coast. Or shipments from Australia may sail east, not west.
  • All these operations are logistically hard to supply compared to Flanders.
  • These have big impacts on how Flanders go, but the modeling is hard to do and very subject to debate.
  • Probably cancelled/delay Gallipoli. This is a huge Ottoman wank since what the Ottomans needed most was time to organize and supply. Lots of diplomatic butterflies. If you don't cancel Gallipoli but pull the extra troops out of Flanders, these battles will go worse. Ypres falling is reasonable as is the Germans reaching the channel coast in places. Depends on how/when you pull the troops.
  • SWA will fall.
  • After this, you can do a hundred different ATL depending on what butterflies you see.
 
  • East Africa. The UK had something like 24-30 warships in the Indian Ocean looking for the SMS Emden and others. May do something like send a BC to be the flag ship. If you look at the troop flows and quality of troops, there is only one answer. The ANZAC forces land in East Africa well outside of the shore defenses of whatever port is fortified. These troops will spend the rest of the war in East Africa. We have roughly double OTL German land forces in the area, and there is a lot of ground to fall back on.
  • Realistically, we probably have cancelled Gallopoli even though the UK could pull a couple divisions out of Flanders and still do it. Really ATL writer call, no wrong answers.
  • SWA. Really hard to see bring down European troops since they are needed in Europe so badly, the South Africans have enough troops once internal issues (Boers) are dealt with, and the South Africans want SWA. It will just take longer UK probably dispatches 10-30 warships including BC to contain the issue. And we will see just how good BC is. BC is also in great location do deal with stuff leaking out of Pacific.
  • Cameroon. Realistically, not enough troops. Sort of in right angle type area far from shipping lanes as they round capetown. Distant blockade out of Freetown.
  • If the Tsingtao fleet is not sunk in a battle, it will go to Cameroon where it will spend the war as a Fleet in Being. With all the sailors usable as marines, the port may be taken but the interior of the colony will not stand.

With the extra German forces and supplies in SWA is there any change the Maritz rebellion gets greater support among the Boers? (to the point the South African government can't participate)??
Would actually cancelling a land portion of Gallipoli lead to another attempt at rushing the straits with the just navy which works this time? (the Turks got lucky with mine placement the first time)?
Would Spee's squadron, reinforced with a BC or two just stay in the Pacific islands and try to repulse an invasion of Rabaul or Samoa (or counter attack) vs fleeing across the Pacific?
 

BlondieBC

Banned
With the extra German forces and supplies in SWA is there any change the Maritz rebellion gets greater support among the Boers? (to the point the South African government can't participate)??
Would actually cancelling a land portion of Gallipoli lead to another attempt at rushing the straits with the just navy which works this time? (the Turks got lucky with mine placement the first time)?
Would Spee's squadron, reinforced with a BC or two just stay in the Pacific islands and try to repulse an invasion of Rabaul or Samoa (or counter attack) vs fleeing across the Pacific?

For the Boer question, you need a person with better understanding of SA politics. I can give you a firm "maybe".

I personally don't think the forcing the straights was that close to working since there were additional minefield around the turn of land. And batteries that never fired. Plus some German warships that can come out and support the final set of minefields. We have spent a lot of threads on this battle.

As to a decision to try again, i would say 'unlikely but possible'. I spend a lot of time criticizing Churchill who I believe is the man most responsible for the death of the British Empire, but the naval operation was well worth the risk. The original orders should have been, "Force the straights or don't come back". Basically Kemal Pasha orders for the 57th Ottoman regiment, but for the BB squadron.

Sure Spee could do it, but they would have to have supplies such as coal and additional ammo. And things like food for the men. So either Rabaul has been setup as a base,or someone has organized a good line of freighters and colliers supplying them. It is not that it is hard, it just is a lot easier with prewar planning. As funny as it sounds, Spee TF need a supply TF following behind, hiding at anchorages, and the like. But if one say parked a collier and freighter with ammo/food at Rabaul. Another say hiding in Truck. Another say at Bikini atoll. Then Spee is a holy terror until sunk. Now what happens is the British BC are leading cruiser squadrons in the Pacific. Probably 2-3 of them. It would be the stuff of great movies for a century.

When we talk about these bases, I assume people understand these guns are defending warehouses and huge piles of coal. Think of how the USA carved fuel tanks into mountains at Pearl Harbor. Or for a failure, how Mac did not move the rice from warehouses in Manila to Bataan.
 

Driftless

Donor
When we talk about these bases, I assume people understand these guns are defending warehouses and huge piles of coal. Think of how the USA carved fuel tanks into mountains at Pearl Harbor.

For several of the bases, there would need to be protected cisterns for potable drinking water too; of sufficient size to allow for a larger force, or some level of siege/blockade
 

BlondieBC

Banned
For several of the bases, there would need to be protected cisterns for potable drinking water too; of sufficient size to allow for a larger force, or some level of siege/blockade

East Africa is fine since we are fortifying a port with a RR to the interior.

Cameroon is fine. Wet and has a RR.

SWA is a problem, you have to have RR to interior. Side note. RR to interior is huge help since you can both keep some of your supplies many 10s of miles inland and safe from British raids and you can retreat to good defensive terrain if needed.

Rabaul. Water probably fine, i wonder how we feed the 3000 men each day. It has to have regular freighter service.
 
The tricky thing about stockpiles, is stuff degrades, even coal:

https://www.powermag.com/who-moved-my-btus-the-pitfalls-of-extended-coal-storage/

so you have to use the oldest by a period of time and restock, perhaps you have an occasional fleet exercise to use some of the stockpile. Ammo has some of the same decay issues.

And yeah water seems to be a thing at Luderitz so water storage, or perhaps a desalinization plant has to built.

http://www.bgr.bund.de/EN/Themen/Wa...roundwater_namibia.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

"Koichab River: The water supply to Lüderitz is based on fossil water reserves in the Koichab paleo-channel. The Koichab wellfield (49) is situated 100 km north-east of Lüderitz at thefoot of a massive duneformation up to 200 m high.The Koichab area was proposed asearly as 1914 as the most suitable source of water supply for the growing town of Lüderitz, however a water supply scheme was only established in 1968."

I am going to have to visit Namibia one of these years, seems like an interesting place.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The tricky thing about stockpiles, is stuff degrades, even coal:

https://www.powermag.com/who-moved-my-btus-the-pitfalls-of-extended-coal-storage/

so you have to use the oldest by a period of time and restock, perhaps you have an occasional fleet exercise to use some of the stockpile. Ammo has some of the same decay issues.

And yeah water seems to be a thing at Luderitz so water storage, or perhaps a desalinization plant has to built.

http://www.bgr.bund.de/EN/Themen/Wa...roundwater_namibia.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

"Koichab River: The water supply to Lüderitz is based on fossil water reserves in the Koichab paleo-channel. The Koichab wellfield (49) is situated 100 km north-east of Lüderitz at thefoot of a massive duneformation up to 200 m high.The Koichab area was proposed asearly as 1914 as the most suitable source of water supply for the growing town of Lüderitz, however a water supply scheme was only established in 1968."

I am going to have to visit Namibia one of these years, seems like an interesting place.

Yep, and that is why if ego is not an issue, you go with Cameroon. SWA is closer to British logistical bases, has water issues, has a worse harbor, and it is harder to defend. The V of the Cameroon coast combined with the deep river makes it easy to park ships well outside of possible naval gunfire range. Plus the enemy has to land in a swamp if it wants to land outside of naval range.

East Africa is ok, but there is some need dredging and blasting of reefs needed for the port.

As to the supply issue, that is why I went with building ports. These bases don't make a lot of sense, in and off themselves unless you know WW1 is coming. But if you start thinking in terms of building a series of trade ports that also have coaling stations, then these these things begin to make sense. You build a string of bases so Germany can trade with China and the freighters can do the route using only German bases. Or at least non-hostile such as Italian bases or US Ports.

Let's run a different scenario. You plan for war with short notice. This plan is activated when the Kaiser gives A-H the green light on Serbia. Then you have pairs of warships leave with a single freighter. They hide in an anchorage waiting for the war to start. The warships go out and fight, and each captain knows the location of these supply ships. You will run out of warships long before you run out of supplies. For example, with Spee. It will be quite a while before the Japanese navy searches every little atoll that you can hide a ship at. Same idea with African coast line, there is no particular reason the anchorage/river the freighter is hiding at has to even be German territory. Nor is the particular reason this freighter can't sail from neutral port to neutral port on a schedule know by the German Navy.
 
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Let's run a different scenario. You plan for war with short notice. This plan is activated when the Kaiser gives A-H the green light on Serbia. Then you have pairs of warships leave with a single freighter. They hide in an anchorage waiting for the war to start. The warships go out and fight, and each captain knows the location of these supply ships. You will run out of warships long before you run out of supplies. For example, with Spee. It will be quite a while before the Japanese navy searches every little atoll that you can hide a ship at. Same idea with African coast line, there is no particular reason the anchorage/river the freighter is hiding at has to even be German territory. Nor is the particular reason this freighter can't sail from neutral port to neutral port on a schedule know by the German Navy.

There seemed to be nothing like that at all OTL, no preparation thought process going on with the Germans, Tirpitz complained about it in his memoirs (i.e. why didn't they crash import stuff in that last month, copper, nitrates, etc.)

You almost would need at DEFCON 1: war scare level 1, kind of thing that would activate the sending of the units, (often to just be recalled), no one seemed to think that way back then, it hurts even more that Tirpitz was focused on the North Sea, and as he hints in his memoirs didn't want war at all right then, sending the units out just might provoke things.

But certainly we could change things in ATL, perhaps an annual summer exercise to send the cruisers out.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
There seemed to be nothing like that at all OTL, no preparation thought process going on with the Germans, Tirpitz complained about it in his memoirs (i.e. why didn't they crash import stuff in that last month, copper, nitrates, etc.)

You almost would need at DEFCON 1: war scare level 1, kind of thing that would activate the sending of the units, (often to just be recalled), no one seemed to think that way back then, it hurts even more that Tirpitz was focused on the North Sea, and as he hints in his memoirs didn't want war at all right then, sending the units out just might provoke things.

But certainly we could change things in ATL, perhaps an annual summer exercise to send the cruisers out.

Yes, it was really that bad. That was my first shock when trying to write an ATL.

Even simple things took months to figure out. One would think that if the plan was to hide behind defensive minefields, there would be a plan to lay the defensive minefields, but it took 2-3 months to get right. That is why the RN had some of those early successes near Germany early in the war. The Germans should have had the minefields out and protected by patrol boats. With a rapid response fleet to deal with when the UK scout fleets came close to shore. But no, there was little.

UK had similar issue at Scapa Flow. The UK had built its base to fight France in Channel, and knew it needed different bases to fight Germany but never got around to doing anything about it.
 
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