The March of Time - 20th Century History

[Karelian]

The French interest to submersible warships had been waxing and waning before the determined phase around the turn of the century.

A key event took place in 1898, when the French Navy announced an open international submarine design competition. Maxime Laubeuf won with his Narval.

It was a double-hulled craft, with an inner hull strongly constructed to resist water pressure, while the outer hull was lightly built and optimised for surface performance.

The space between the hulls was filled with ballast and trim tanks. Conceptually a surface torpedo boat with the ability to submerge to make its escape after an attack or for a chance to launch an ambush from underwater, the Narval was built more of an evolution of an older idea rather than the revolution it turned out to be.

The 1901 French naval budgetary estimates called for the construction of 23 new submarines to add to the existing stock of about 14. During 1901 manoeuvres Gustav Zede independently transited a distance of 149nm from Toulon to Ajaccio, attacked the French Mediterranean Fleet as it departed, and the umpires concluded that it had successfully torpedoed battleship Charles Martel.

More trials followed in 1903. The French had been testing two types of vessels capable of diving underwater: the sousmarin had only electric motor propulsion powered by a large battery, and had to return to port to be recharged. Meanwhile a submersible had dual propulsion, and used either steam, petrol, kerosene or diesel power for surface travel. When underwater, it operated under battery propulsion.

In 1903 the two different submarine types were pitted against one another: the submersible Aigrette competed against sousmarin “Z.” Submersible was deemed better, and the French Navy decided to build only submersibles in the future.

Like most early French submarines, the early submersibles were mostly steam powered.
As it was, all potential surface propulsion systems for submersible vessels were riled with technical difficulties and disadvantages.

Steam plants allowed high surface speeds and the technology was mature, but they required long dive preparations which could last from 5 to more than 10 minutes. And once underwater, they could not dissipate the heat that the steam plants produced, quickly turning the insides of the boat too hot for the comfort of the crew.

Paraffin, known as kerosene in the US, combusted with heavy smoke. It required long ventilation pipes that had to be rigged for diving, thus slowing submergence considerably. The smoke was also highly visible from afar.

Gasoline did not have this problem, but gas fumes were much more volatile, and gasoline vapour explosions were not uncommon. In addition gasoline vapours were dangerous to the crew, who would risk nausea and even death if exposed to them for prolonged periods of time.

The solution to this dilemma was obvious in retrospect: Utopian socialism.

 

[Thomas Lloyd]

Its back! The rolls royce of timelines.

 

[Karelian]

“Noch kein menschlicher Motor hat das erreicht, was der meine ergab, und so habe ich denn das stolze Bewusstsein, in meinen Fache der Erste zu sein.”
Rudolf Diesel, 1897.

In 1880 Rudolf Diesel, residing in Paris, had focused his attention on the workers’ question. He studied the works of French utopian socialists, finding ideas such as cooperative factories most interesting. Diesel felt that what was missing from the equation in the industrial world was an inexpensive, small, and light engine. The size of a sewing machine, it would be able to work without water or electricity.

This invention would undoubtedly allow the existence of worker-run factories, with identification cards and contracts for the workers. The new cooperatives would act like beehives, each worker bee working for the greater whole, free to choose his own employment at will. He solified his ideas to a book called Solidarismus: Natürliche wirtschaftliche Erlösung des Menschen (1903)

“It is undoubtedly better to decentralise small industry as much as possible and try to get it established in the surroundings of the city, even in the countryside, instead of centralising it in large cities, where it is crowded together without air, light, or space. This goal can be achieved only by an independent machine, which is easy to service. Undoubtedly, the new engine can provide a sounder basis for the development of small industry than recent trends, which are false on economic, political, humanitarian and hygienic grounds.”

With a lofty cause to inspire him, Diesel produced the theoretical foundation for his new rational engine between 1890-1892.

After that things moved forward rapidly.
In 1893 he signed agreements with Maschinenfabrik Augsburg, the leading mechanical engineering enterprise of Germany. A deal with Krupp followed in 1983, and the industrial giant gave Diesel both an annual salary as well as an extremely generous royalty deal of 37,5% percent for every engine sold! After the two German sponsor companies agreed to share the developmental costs of the new engine and focus the R&D efforts to one laboratory, the conditions were suitable for further development.

Patent rights were sold to Frédérick Dyckhoff in France for 600 000 francs, with exclusive patent rights ceded in 1894 and Société Française des Moteurs R. Diesel was set up in 1897. Britain, Sweden, Russia and Denmark followed suit, and Danish Burmeister & Wain would soon pioneer marine diesel propulsion.

His biggest triumph came when Anheuser-Busch bought the rights for manufacturing in the US as the Dieselmotor Company of America.

It was all too much. Patent feuds and the stress related to his work drove Diesel to voluntarily check himself into Neuwittelsbach sanitarium near Munich in October 1898. Diesel left Paris in 1899 to act as Linde’s Berlin representative, but his sanity never fully recovered.

He was most bitter about the fact that Diesel would go to his grave seeing the small electric motors patented by Nikola Tesla in 1888 to take over the roles he had envisioned for his own Diesel engine, whereas the utopian book of Diesel sold only 300 copies out of the first print of 10 000. His career would ultimately end in financial tragedy and an early death, but by then his engines had transformed the world - but not in the way he had envisioned.

In 1903 Vandal, a small river tanker owned by the Nobel Petroleum Company used on the Caspian Sea and the Volga used a diesel engine in maritime traffic for the first time.

Just a year later Aigette was the first French submarine built with diesel engine for surface propulsion and electric engine for submerged operations, as Sautter-Harlé installed a four-cylinder 150-kW engine. The French tested both domestic and foreign engine designs: M.A.N. delivered their first four marine engines, 300hp four-stroke Diesel units, for the French submarines Circe.

Sautter-Harlé and Co. started the process of developing their engines further in 1904, and in 1906 they were fitted in the Emeraude and Opale. The engines were used on trial at 340 revolutions per minute and developed 395hp. In September 1907 Opale made a successful voyage of 550 miles, and a year later the Emeraude a voyage of 692 miles. While reliability continued to be a problem, the French had finally solved question of propulsion. But while they had been pioneering the submarine development, other naval powers had not been idle.

 

[Driftless]

Interesting developments! Might we see the OTL naval arms race that lead to the Dreadnaught rage, get partly offset by the nemesis of the submarine?

Of course, one of the wild cards is having useful torpedoes. Torpedoes that have some stand-off range and actually go "bang" when they are supposed to.

Then, especially for the RN, there's that dichotomy of detecting and defeating your enemies subs versus using your own subs on the offensive.

 

[Karelian]

Interesting developments! Might we see the OTL naval arms race that lead to the Dreadnaught rage, get partly offset by the nemesis of the submarine?

Every detail in the latest updates has been 100% as per OTL so far!

Of course, one of the wild cards is having useful torpedoes. Torpedoes that have some stand-off range and actually go "bang" when they are supposed to.

This will get further attention in future updates.

Then, especially for the RN, there's that dichotomy of detecting and defeating your enemies subs versus using your own subs on the offensive.

As well as doctrine of the various Powers.

 

[Karelian]

"Ah, you would attack the English battleships with submarines?"

"Sire, I would never go near an English battleship."

"And why not?"

"Because they might injure me, Sire."

"What, a sailor and afraid?"

"My life belongs to the country, Sire. It is nothing. But these eight ships - everything depends upon them. I could not risk them. Nothing would induce me to fight."

"Then what will you do?"

"I will tell you, Sire." And I did so.
~ Arthur Conan Doyle, Danger!

The Admiralty spent a lot of time and effort thinking about how the Royal Navy would deal with the submarines, and how their own submarines should be employed.

It had by now become common knowledge that Whitehead torpedoes and the new submarine torpedo boats provided an increasingly deadly threat to the world's navies and merchant fleets.
Early exercises and manoeuvres demonstrated that even the crude first submersibles with their limited range could “sink” major warships close to a port.

The main effect of the war in Scandinavia in this regard was to prove that this was a new fact of life in naval warfare from 1905 onwards, instead of a mere theoretical research paper. What had happened to Harald Haarfagre could happen to any warship.[1]

But no one of naval strategic note envisioned anything more, as far as the historical record is concerned. The idea of a major anti-shipping campaign was simply unthinkable, as the submarines lacked both range and endurance to conduct any type of cruiser warfare.

Besides, the international legal procedure called for stopping a merchant ship, inspecting it for contraband, and then either capturing it or sending it into a neutral port for adjudication. Sinking the vessel was only legal after the crew and passengers had been taken aboard the capturing vessel.

Admiral CC Penrose Fitzgerald wrote: "I do not myself think that any civilized nation will torpedo unarmed and defenceless merchant ships." Admiral William Hannam Henderson added: "I do not think that territorial waters will be violated, or neutral vessels sunk. Such will be absolutely prohibited, and will only recoil on the heads of the perpetrators."

However, the naval war at the fjords did inspire both admirals and authors. Arthur Conan Doyle, famous for his Sherlock Holmes-stories, was suitably impressed by the events of Norway to write a short story featuring submarines. It was at the same time eerily prescient and very much a product of its day.[2] Doyle wrote about the growing importance of British food imports, and the terrible threat that discriminate submarine attacks against civilian shipping would pose to the British Isles.

But while the Admiralty dismissed the Doyle work as yet another book to the growing pile of alarmist "invasion literature", First Sea Lord Fisher had turned out to be quite impressed by the growing capabilities of British submarines. By 1906 the Royal Navy had compiled a list of potential wartime uses for them:

1. Attacking enemy ships on the high seas. 2. The protection of friendly coasts; 3. Barring narrow passages, notably the Dover Straits. 4. Action against the enemy coast, primarily penetrating enemy ports; and 5. Intervening in a battle between squadrons.

Having set upon the tasks, the British now focused to build the ships capable of fulfilling them. Other Powers had done similar calculus of their own, and reached their own conclusions and technical solutions.

[1] In OTL the closest actual sinking of a ship by a submarine had been the H.L. Hunley attack against the USS Housatonic over 40 years ago, and no surface ship had yet been sunk by a submarine-launched automotive torpedo. As a result, the admirals all over the world persisted in thinking of the submarine primarily fit for observation duties and minelaying.
[2.] OTL version came out in July 1914, TTL in 1906. OTL version is freely available online here.

 

[Ombra]

I'm so happy it's back!

 

[Orcbuster]

Just want to comment on how massive an improvement in terms of writing your latest post have shown. Very impressive.

 

[Karelian]

The Russian Empire had been experimenting with the idea of submersible naval vessels since the time of Peter the Great, who had funded the oar-propelled projects of Yetin Nikonov. By the time of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 the interest has also produced tangible results. A Polish noble and a former nationalist rebel educated in Paris later on returned to Russia to achieve success as a naval engineer. Stefan Drzewiecki (known as Stefan Karloviy Dzehetskiy in Russia) invented a new device for torpedo use. The Drzewiecki drop collar enabled torpedoes to be held external to the hull on two collars. The collars were placed on a rotating pivot that could enable the compressed air engine Whitehead-type torpedoes to be angled just prior to launch. Since early torpedoes lacked settable gyros, the drop collar was the first technical solution that actually allowed the submarine commander to select proper firing angles to hit moving targets.

Proud of having pioneered the use of an invention that had been world-class at the time of its introduction, the Russians stuck with the drop collar installations long after they had become a liability. This was not out of a lack of effort. Just as was the case with their French allies, the Russian submarine research was extensive.

On 19th of December 1900 a special submarine committee of the Navy Technical Committee was established to evaluate foreign submarine designs. Chairman of the committee was the leading Russian submarine designer, Naval Architect Senior Assistant and future Mayor-General of the Naval Architect Corps: Ivan Gregorievich Bubnov. Bubnov sent Lt. Mikhail Nikolaevich to the US in 1901. Nikolaevich reviewed the Lake and Holland boats, reported back, and in May 1901 the Bubnov Committee started to work on a submarine based on the Holland design. The ship, Дельфин, was commissioned in 1903. The Russians had not been shy to buy foreign technology. The Nordenfelt IV bought from Barrow-in-Furness yard had been due to be their first submarine. The vessel, designed by the teams of George W. Garrett and Thorsten Nordenfelt had ran aground near the Danish coast and was thus lost during its delivery voyage. Undeterred by this, the Russians also bought two American Holland-type boats as well as German and French designs.[1]

Their entirely domestic design program ran in parallel to the work of the submarine committee. In 1901 a 20-ton, 50-feet long submarine carrying two torpedoes on drop collars entered trials. The operational concept called for the submarine to be transported aboard a surface ship, only launched when within submerged attack range. With nine separate watertight compartments, the vessel was driven by electric motors and batteries. Completed in 1902, the was moved from the Baltic to Sevastopol for further trials.

1906 the first internal combustion engine (diesel) ship, Минога, was ordered. It possessed variable pitch propellers, once again showing that the Russian naval designers were eager to adopt innovations ahead of other naval powers. Sometimes this pioneering spirit paid off, but there were also setbacks.

A new submersible, Почтовый, was built in 1908 as a test-bed for a bold new design. Compressed oxygen, stored in 45 cylinders, would permit the use of her gasoline engines when submerged, with the exhaust led overboard by a compressor to a perforated pipe under the keel. In practice the steam collection system inside the boat did not work, and after brief trials the whole ship was stricken.

The Russian submarine construction was part of the wider internal contest between conservatives and reformers, just like their battleship programs.
1. As per OTL.

 

[Driftless]

I could see early days, where the drop collar launch might have some appeal, but its usage would need to be short range and the sub itself probably couldn't dive too deeply, unless the torpedo is protected against deep water pressure. Then there's the issue of how many torpedos could the sub carry? two or four on bigger boats?

Still, probably a reasonable techincal answer for first days.

 

[LordCalner]

First time I heard about drop collar submarines!
Very good update!

 

[Karelian]

I could see early days, where the drop collar launch might have some appeal, but its usage would need to be short range and the sub itself probably couldn't dive too deeply, unless the torpedo is protected against deep water pressure. Then there's the issue of how many torpedos could the sub carry? two or four on bigger boats?

Still, probably a reasonable techincal answer for first days.

It was actually a widespread first-generation solution in the French and Russian submersibles and submarines. There was also an odd interim period where late prewar Russian submarines had both drop collars and torpedo tubes.

 

[Belka DNW]

How's the Pacific Fleet going for the russians? I would guess that without the russo-japanese war their aspiarations to be a pacific naval power still exist.

 

[Karelian]

How's the Pacific Fleet going for the russians? I would guess that without the russo-japanese war their aspiarations to be a pacific naval power still exist.

The aspiration is certainly there, but right now the naval funds are mostly used for the expansion of the Black Sea fleet.

The March of Time - 20th Century History

In S. M Chester, Life of Venizelos by Chester there is a claim that in OTL the Greek king would have indeed been consulted in the choice of the High Commissioner: Hm. And the source I had checked (Greece in Her True Light by Venizelos) agrees. Looks like I misread King George as Prince George...

www.alternatehistory.com

The March of Time - 20th Century History

If one could have spoken of any kind of a common “vision” of the fragmented opposition during the final days of Abdülhamid II’s reign in summer 1905, it could not have been anything more than a vague wish for a restoration of constitutional monarchy where the sultan’s powers would be held in...

www.alternatehistory.com

 

[Karelian]

Truite, the prototype submarine of Lorenzo D’Equevilley-Montjustin in sea trials during 1903.

The German Navy had initially seemed just as unimpressed about submersibles and submarines as the Royal Navy did. Tirpitz opposed submarines on principle, since he feared that his opponents in the Reichstag would seize every opportunity to present cheaper alternatives to his battleships. Technical problems of the early designs were also numerous, and their tactical uses seemed limited. Tirpitz had thus been content to wait until other powers had ironed them out before committing the German Navy to submarine construction.

The sales department of Krupp had had other ideas. Seeing potential for a new market, they aggressively stimulated development by seeking contracts with foreign designers. Raimondo Lorenzo D’Equevilley-Montjustin had been an early target of Krupp headhunting. D’Equevilley was a Spanish engineer who worked for Maxime Laubeuf, the pioneer of submarine development. D’Equevilley also had his own ideas. Much to the dismay of Krupp, the French Ministry of Marine granted D’Equevilley the funds to build his prototype design in 1901. As the design was later on deemed unsatisfactory for further development, it was sold to the Imperial Russian Navy in 1904.[1]

Krupp did not give up. Lack of US Navy interests led Simon Lake, the other notable American submarine technology engineer, to turn to Europe as a market for his boats. He attempted to negotiate a licence arrangement with Krupp, transferring much of his design information to the firm as an inducement. Krupp shrewdly retained the data when the deal fell through, and used it to produce a new design that found buyers in Russia, Norway and Austria-Hungary.[2]

The growing international attention towards submarines built in Germany was finally enough to overcome the bureaucratic resistance Tirpitz had established to German Naval bureaucracy. The Torpedo Department of the Kaiserliche Marine established a new Unterseebootkonstruktionsbüro in 1904. After Krupp struck a deal with Hans Techel in 1907, the cooperation with the German navy finally begun in earnest.

The first German Unterseeboot, U 1, was built in 1906. It had a crew of 12 men and a displacement of 238 tons. The vessel was a standard design with a single 18-inch bow torpedo tube, two Korting heavy oil (paraffin) engines and twin shafts. The next vessel, U 2, was completed in 1908. It had two TT forward and two aft. It was also the first German design with diesel engines.[3] As the Abdication Crisis and resignation of Tirpitz shook up the German naval establishment in 1908, the submarine program of the Kaiserliche Marine retained its initial experimental nature. It was now a navy forced to rethink its strategic posture and construction programs after the planned grandiose arms race with Britain had suddenly withered away in the face of fiscal realities.

Meanwhile Britain, France and Russia had all taken the new weapon system seriously almost half a decade earlier, and were all already building submarines in bulk.[4]

1. Unlike in OTL, where D’Equevilley-Montjustin was hired by Krupp, who financed the construction of the protype as Forelle.
Tirpitz actively ignored the design, and it was sold to the Russians were eager to buy during the Russo-Japanese War.
2. As per OTL
3. Unlike OTL, when this design still had kerosene engines. Germans had good naval diesel designs and directly reversible diesels were available already in 1906. They removed the need for a diesel-electric drive. In OTL the Germans were however slow to install them to their first U-boats.
4. German submarine program was started later, and only gathered clout during the last prewar years.

 

[Belka DNW]

Are you going to change the colonial development of the german possessions? Or is it going to be lost in a possible war?

 

[LeX]

My knowledge of this part of history is poor. Is the change ITTL that submarines are more widespread? Anyway, interesting updates!

 

[Karelian]

My knowledge of this part of history is poor. Is the change ITTL that submarines are more widespread? Anyway, interesting updates!

The main change here is that the Anglo-French Détente has been so far limited to case-by-case settlements of colonial disputes.
Technology and construction are so far nearly exactly per OTL, with the following differences:
France starts another naval arms race, Britain responds by outbuilding them yet again, while Russia is also eagerly expanding and experimenting.
Germany starts to dabble around with submarines just as late as they did historically.

And here the butterflies start to affect things. The Royal Navy strategic planning seeing French still as a likely enemy, the lack of Russo-Japanese War, less chaotic French naval construction program and the presence of Norwegian Secession War all start to affect naval warfare and warship design.
Key difference here is the first confirmed kill of a surface warship by submarine, since that did not happen in OTL until WW1.

 

[Karelian]

Are you going to change the colonial development of the german possessions? Or is it going to be lost in a possible war?

The largely middle class Pan-German themes of imperialist expansionism and navalist jingoism are not going to magically disappear along the abdication of Wilhem II.

 

[Karelian]

Technology and construction are so far nearly exactly per OTL, with the following differences:
France starts another naval arms race, Britain responds by outbuilding them yet again, while Russia is also eagerly expanding and experimenting.
Germany starts to dabble around with submarines just as late as they did historically.

France really did start this submarine naval arms race with Britain in OTL as well. Russia in OTL went along more because of the loss of Russo-Japanese War, while in TTL they simply follow their prewar procurement plans.

And the Germans initially built their first submarines mostly because all the other cool kids were doing it.