The High Seas Fleet sorties in support of Operation Michael

I remember starting to read that for a short period of time. Soon thereafter, I arrived at the part where 5 German battlecruisers go up against 5 Queen Elizabeth-class battleships and 8 British battlecruisers who are escorted by a superior number of destroyers and cruisers, wherein the Germans proceed to launch multiple successful torpedo attacks in daylight against a maneuvering and escorted enemy (and only losing a few torpedo boats in the process), destroy 4 British capital ships (including through the wonderful "British battlecruiser explodes!" characterization), severely damage 3 more, and do this all while losing only one of their own battlecruisers : apparently only the German übermensch mine that it ran into could do the trick, so in the end the British didn't themselves sink any German ships.

I decided there was no point in reading more after that.
In fairness he has rewritten it a number of times. The version I read had the battle cruisers run into 8 predreads that were in the channel then fight a withdrawing battle at long range against the QE's and the battlecruisers at maximum range with no ships sunk on either side (until a british BC wandered off the swept channels). The German ships were badly damaged retiring and the British weren't badly damaged.

Members with keen memories may remember that I once suggested a similar thread to this except the HSF death ride to the channel was at the start of the war before the Dover Barrage of mines essentially closed the channel and the land offensive that was to be swung by a delay of supplies was the race to the sea and not operation Michael.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
You think that if the battleships are worthless, converting their crews into infantry brigades will be better?
That is an interesting question.

Arguably the best job in Germany for a military age male after June of 1916 was as a crewman of a HSF battleship. Hot food three times a day, semi-comfortable bunks, no mud/trench-foot, chances of a violent death close to nil, all of which were not only better than the condition among infantrymen, but better than most of the civilian population which faced food shortages, fuel shortages, and the constant fear that they would find out that family members would show up on the casualty lists (my Grandmother, who had emigrated from what is now the Czech Republic to the U.S., found out her Brother had been killed in action on the Chicago Tribune's casualty list). I have long wondered if the reason that the mutinies/unrest that struck both the Tsarist fleet and the HSF was linked to plain old boredom and too much time on their hands.

The other side of the question, however, is the impact of the HSF as a "fleet in being". As long as the fleet rode at anchor, ready to come out and threaten the sea lanes, the Grand Fleet had to remain on a hair trigger. That reality soaked up huge resources that British also could have used on the Western Front (probably more, since the British had less manpower to draw on and committed several times the resources to ship construction).

So, would a light division be worth releasing at least that many British personnel to the BEF, and allowing the British foundries to produce hundreds of additional artillery pieces and tanks out of the steel used to construct the "R" class BB? I would argue that the HSF was actually more valuable sitting in port than either engaging (and unquestionably losing) a major engagement with the overwhelming Grand Fleet in the North Sea or being stripped of personnel (something that British agents could not miss, just by the reduction of traffic to local pubs) to reinforce the army.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
No, there wasn't. You're talking about Villers-Bretonneux, which the Germans captured on April 24. There was a very minor rail line running through the town, but a 'major rail junction' it was not, and it's not part of Michael in any event.



What's a short time? A day or two before Grand Fleet arrives and inflicts the most devastating defeat in modern Naval history? Are you saying the BEF does not have enough supplies in France that a two day interruption in supplies will cause a total collapse? Anything to back that up? So if the High Seas Fleet sorties on the March 21 and causes, at most a couple of days of disruption, is this still affecting the BEF when the Germans first attack Villers-Bretonneux on April 4? How is British (and French, since they played a fairly important part in things) morale affected after they sweep the seas clean of the HSF?

There was a rail junction that was critical. It was briefly taken or almost taken. If you follow the advice I gave, the troops will be available for the whole campaign and can be used in this attack. Or poorly used.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Just to clarify, the possibility I'm considering here is that the sortie disrupts supplies crossing the channel for a short time.

Essentially it's swapping the any units in engaged for a disruption to the BEFs supply lines. Even if they don't sink a single transport, it seems possible that they could temporarily stop it, giving the German Army on the Western Front the edge needed to take and hold Amiens.

At this point I'm not sure how significant this will be but I do remember a discussion here that suggested it would have made a lot of Allied positions in Northern France and Belgium untenable due to the layout of the rail network.

The problem is you are committing suicide for the high seas fleet for nothing in return. You will first have to break through the minefields, which can take a few days with light opposition. Before the Germans have completed this task, the Grand Fleet will be attacking the High Seas Fleet from the East. And even before the Grand Fleet arrives, there is a smaller fleet in London that has to be dealt with. Along with all the smaller ships and high quality British submarine force. And the British Naval aviation.

For an operation like this to work, you have to attack before the minefields and other defenses are setup, and this means attacking in the first few weeks of the war. There is a point in time where the HSF skillfully deployed might have cut of British supplies. This time is either when the Royal Marines are landing in Antwerp or the initial deployment of the BEF. It is an interesting possible battle that still heavily favors the British, but it is the best surface odds of the war.
 
The problem is you are committing suicide for the high seas fleet for nothing in return. You will first have to break through the minefields, which can take a few days with light opposition. Before the Germans have completed this task, the Grand Fleet will be attacking the High Seas Fleet from the East. And even before the Grand Fleet arrives, there is a smaller fleet in London that has to be dealt with. Along with all the smaller ships and high quality British submarine force. And the British Naval aviation.

For an operation like this to work, you have to attack before the minefields and other defenses are setup, and this means attacking in the first few weeks of the war. There is a point in time where the HSF skillfully deployed might have cut of British supplies. This time is either when the Royal Marines are landing in Antwerp or the initial deployment of the BEF. It is an interesting possible battle that still heavily favors the British, but it is the best surface odds of the war.

This is what I envisisaged in the thread I started.

Historically there was plans to do this sort of exercise until 1911/1912 ish. The plans were to sortie battlecruisers at full speed into the channel with battleships following at best speed. The battle cruisers would be able to interdict traffic and retire under the guns of the battleships.

As a plan it was dropped in 1912 when almost all predreadnoughts were moved to to the channel fleet. The battleships would slow down the raiding battlecruisers so that the grand fleet may be able to intercept and the predreadnought battleships were in the channel in sufficient numbers that the battlecruisers would be out matched.
 
A big problem with a HSF sortie is that from September 1914 the commanders of the HSF were cautious bordering on defeatist. Caution with capital ships is understandable but such caution with destroyers and light cruisers means that the war just doesn't get fought.

The problem is that while Germany had plenty of good ships, competent sailors and the like it didn't have the sort of command structure conducive to fighting the war. The Kaiser was basically in personal command of the fleet; the Admiralty was of equal rank to the HSF and Baltic Fleets and later the Marinekrops Flandern and Tirpitz was basically a Civil Servant like the US Secretary of the Navy. The result is that nobody was in charge of looking at the naval war as a whole, moving units to and from commands as required and directing operations as part of a strategy.

This is why any single HSF sortie won't win the war, because such sorties need to be part of a wider naval war fought off Flanders and in the Baltic day in and day out by light forces. This war wasn't being fought because commanders of the HSF kept hold on all of their forces to defend the Bight and not to diminish their command.
 
Interesting possibility - what if the HSF gets orders to sail and the later mutiny happens? The crews know it’s a suicide mission and the breakdown in discipline didn’t happen overnight...
 

BlondieBC

Banned
A big problem with a HSF sortie is that from September 1914 the commanders of the HSF were cautious bordering on defeatist. Caution with capital ships is understandable but such caution with destroyers and light cruisers means that the war just doesn't get fought.

The problem is that while Germany had plenty of good ships, competent sailors and the like it didn't have the sort of command structure conducive to fighting the war. The Kaiser was basically in personal command of the fleet; the Admiralty was of equal rank to the HSF and Baltic Fleets and later the Marinekrops Flandern and Tirpitz was basically a Civil Servant like the US Secretary of the Navy. The result is that nobody was in charge of looking at the naval war as a whole, moving units to and from commands as required and directing operations as part of a strategy.

This is why any single HSF sortie won't win the war, because such sorties need to be part of a wider naval war fought off Flanders and in the Baltic day in and day out by light forces. This war wasn't being fought because commanders of the HSF kept hold on all of their forces to defend the Bight and not to diminish their command.

Largely True. There was a clear mission to keep enemy fleets off the German coast, and at this mission the HSF won. They way the HSF supports the war effort is to keep enemy land forces well away from Germany allowing the German Army to win its decisive victory in the first 90 days.

As to destroyers and cruisers, the Germans just did not have enough. If the looks at the ratio of tonnage between the UK and Germany, then the UK will never be worried about the German fleet since it stayed well below the 2:1 ratio the British wanted. And this lack of ships quickly shows up in the nature of the war plans, to the extent there were war plans.

As to the wider plans, I am not even so sure they are doable in the west. If we assume the UK is neutral, it is pretty clear we can't keep a large fleet in the channel with marines ready to land, and keep the UK neutral. So IMO, operations like directly attempting to take Calais or Ostend by landings are not practical. Neither is attacking Antwerp because of Dutch Neutrality. I think the opportunity is in the east where the Germans have and can sustain naval dominance. The goal would be to tie up Russian land forces by forcing the Russian to react to the German Navy. You end up with operations in western Finland, Aland Islands, or perhaps somewhere like Riga.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Interesting possibility - what if the HSF gets orders to sail and the later mutiny happens? The crews know it’s a suicide mission and the breakdown in discipline didn’t happen overnight...

I don't know that it changes that much really. There will be some court martial of a few sailors, but I just don't see any big impacts. It will scare the German leadership, but lets assume the Kaiser decides to "really take the gloves off on land". What additional steps can the Kaiser or his military leaders do? The war ended because the Germans ran out of infantry reserves. The only other possible available reserves are the A-H empire. They sent a full army IOTL that was in the line against France. Maybe there is another available and they Austrians can be persuaded to use it? Maybe there are a few Turkish corps that might be available. And maybe the Germans could attack with a half dozen or so extra corps. And maybe they accidentally take a critical objective.

So just step back a bit. It is January 1918, and we have a time machine. You and I go back in time to help the Germans by changing strategy only. What do we do to win the war? Or to get a good peace deal? We easily help the Germans do better by doing things such as having clear military objectives in their Spring Offensive. We can probably help them be a little more efficient with the food issue, but we will have to end up doing things that will be seen as immoral such as run the 1941 Hunger Plan in 1918. I guess we could simply strip 100% of the food out of Poland, for example. But does any of that win us the war? To the navy, we can probably get a few more U-boats and torpedo boats out of ship yards. We can not worry about losses since we know that everything gets lost at the end of the war anyway. We can certainly find a bit better way to sink ships. But what can we do to win the war?

The best plan that I can come up with to use the surface ships to win the war is not to suicide the channel. It is to try to make the British think I am going to run the Dover blockade, and maybe, just maybe the British will suspend merchant traffic. We could do a covering sortie with the main fleet, and use it to run the battlecruisers and faster battleships to Ostend along with all the cruisers. If I have credible fire power that is just a few hours from the Dover blockade, maybe the UK will panic and suspend merchant shipping. But i really doubt this one. The UK lost 2 BB in a single day to a single sub near Gallipoli, and AFAIK, it had no impact on the supply pattern to land forces.

The only other idea that I can give you is crazy. You assign two corps to the German coast line. You assemble enough merchants ships to carry all these troops. Under the cover of darkness, you rail out these corps to attack in Flanders. That next morning, all the merchant ships leave in convoy towards the Eastern Coast of England. These ships will be empty except for merchant seamen. The HSF sails to cover. Maybe I don't even tell the admiral in charge that the merchant ships are empty. The UK would be forced to react with everything it had. But the problem with this ATL is that I am relying on knowledge the Germans don't have, at least not widely enough. I am counting on the British being able to see me assemble the land units with spies and pickup the naval intercepts. And then the British keeping a dozen or more extra division in England, not Flanders.
 
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