Both voting and tax reforms passed, right? I remember them passing by slimmest margins, yet I am wondering whether Junkers will have any power to stop it or not.
The March of Time - 20th Century History
- Thread starter Karelian
- Start date
We'll get back to German domestic politics eventually. I'll plan to cover the events in Scandinavia affecting them first, though.
If only there was a way to defend the shores of good ol'Blighty with a system cheap enough to allow the rest of the RN to hold the lead against the most likely would-be foes.
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Chapter 271: The Underwater Arms Race, Part XI: Nets and Harpoons
"Whom had we to deal with? No doubt some new sort of pirates, who explored the sea in their own way."
― Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
A blockade was the traditional Royal Navy strategy of defeating enemy fleets. It logically followed that neutralising the new threat that submarines posed to the larger British warships was the main aim of the early Royal Navy anti-submarine tests. Deterring submarines from getting within attack range was mainly seen as a tactical problem. First tests soon revealed a lot of vital information. Submarines attacking a moving formation of surface warships had to approach from ahead.
The faster the Royal Navy formation was, the narrower the lines of approach and the approach areas were for the submarines. In practice this still meant that a force moving 15 knots facing a submarine moving at 6 knots had to be covered over a ⅗-mile line ahead of it. And the longer the column of ships was, the easier it was for submarines to attack the formation further down after avoiding the protective screen in front of the formation.
The Admiralty conducted first trials between 8th and 18th of March 1904. While they raised widespread alarm, the umpires were quick to point out that with less artificial nature of the trials the results would have been even less encouraging. Ships were forced to manoeuvre at high speed to avoid torpedo attacks by the mere threat of a submarine off a blockaded port. Traditional close blockades had suddenly become effectively obsolete.
Eager to find "better horses" that would allow them to return to tried and true methods of naval warfare, the Royal Navy began to seek solutions to the submarine dilemma.
Periscopes became the main point for counter-attack, although submariners led by Captain Bacon were not shy to point out that the periscope might well not be seen at all, so that the first indication of attack might be an exploding torpedo.
Available weapons to counter the submarines were simple and primitive. Lasso nets and hand charges (7lb TNT charge mounted on a broomstick) were straight out of Jules Verne stories, while indicator nets and towing charges at least held some promise. The towing charges were fitted with a grapnel intended to foul the periscope of a submarine, with the detonation being set off by a firing key on board of the destroyer towing the charge. But the destroyers had to stop to use their grapnels. They were often within 400 yards of a submarine as tempting targets, proceeding dead slow or fully stopped.
After more than a year of trials (and errors)[1], by June 1905 a group of innovative young Destroyer Captains had developed the idea of an explosive sweep.
The idea formed the basis of the first major British anti-submarine weapon: an explosive charge in a depth-keeping kite. The device would explode on contact with anything, and the surface ships could do little but hope they’d hit a periscope or even the submarine itself with it. Two torpedo boats towed a single charge. The sweep speed was limited to measly six knots, but it was estimated that a high-speed sweep which an actual destroyer could tow could be developed in the future. However, this was at least a start.
1. This entire update is as per OTL. Initially the RN was utterly at loss on how to deal with submerged submarines - and they were the only OTL Navy to actually take this issue seriously!
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Driftless
Donor
Interesting lines of experimental thought. I can certainly imagine there was some logical and not so logical ASW theories put out there, in the absence of any real experience. Even the depth charge idea probably seemed a bit "out there" when first proposed. Or ASDIC/Sonar as well.
That hand charge on a stick - the granddad of the Hedgehog
That hand charge on a stick - the granddad of the Hedgehog
I'll get there eventually on both the depth charges and ASDIC/Sonar in the next updates. Research for these updates has been most entertaining: following the logic behind the gradual development of antisubmarine weapons and tactics is certainly amusing in many occasions - and officers with first-hand experience from submariners played a very large part in it in the Royal Navy.
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Well, if ITTL it it wouldn't be butterflied, then I would guess that Britain could take a more direct approach than OTL and either establish her own protectorate or would decide to back the Spanish claims and support them against the French ones...
Chapter 272: The Underwater Arms Race, Part XII: Aquatic Infernal Machines
In 1863, the War Office had established a committee to investigate the potential of controlled mines in defence of enclosed waterways. After a number of experiments and trials the best types of explosives, the amount of devices required, the depth of their deployment and the varied nature of the coastlines and tidal flow had been carefully examined and analysed.
The process had been markedly slow, but by 1870 the War Office had concluded that electrically controlled minefields should indeed be deployed to protect the Royal Navy bases and major commercial ports at home (at Portsmouth, Plymouth, Pembroke and Cork as well as Aberdeen, the Tay, the Forth, the Clyde, the Tyne, Hull, Yarmouth, Harwich, Falmouth, the Severn and Liverpool) and overseas at Bermuda, Malta, Nova Scotia, Jamaica, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Minefields placed 1000 yards in front of gun forts, protected by armored patrol boats were a novel invention. With paraller chains locking their electrical cables in position, with secret maps or charts marking their positions and electric lights to cover their night-time operations, the system relied on specially trained divers to examine and maintain the deployed minefields without the time and expense of raising and redeploying individual mines.
From the start it had been determined that "as the role of the Royal Navy was the active defence of Great Britain, no Naval vessels should be tied to the shore, so the sedentary defence of the sea and ports should be in the hands of the Army, and in particular the Royal Engineers.”
Thus the Royal Engineers Corps of Miners had been born. A highly technical specialist force mostly consisting of Volunteer units, they gradually perfected their methods and conducted new experiments, but had so far been mostly ignored by the War Office. Their role had been deemed largely symbolical in a world where the Royal Navy ruled the waves.
Admiral Fisher had been firmly aware of this when he had begun to reconsider the status of mines in the Royal Navy as the new commander of the premier fighting force of the Royal Navy, the Mediterranean Fleet. His request for contact mines to protect his capital ships from submarines had had the desired effect: the Royal Navy officers had been stirred out of their complanency, and forced to discuss the role of naval mines.
As long as mines had remained mere tools of port defence with dubious combat value, the British Admiralty had been happy to actively ignore them while at the same time keeping a close watch of foreign developments. The root of the matter was that mines at sea prevented all sides from using a specific sea area for any purpose. For a Navy with a cherished tradition as a guardian of the seas, this was an affront. Mines were deemed morally, culturally and legally problematic on a fundamental level. But as much as the Royal Navy would have preferred mines to remain infernal machines outside the scope of civilised conflict, mines as a weapon of naval warfare were gradually making their presence felt.
The matter was thus a perfect casus belli for yet another turf war between the Royal Navy and the British Army.
The process had been markedly slow, but by 1870 the War Office had concluded that electrically controlled minefields should indeed be deployed to protect the Royal Navy bases and major commercial ports at home (at Portsmouth, Plymouth, Pembroke and Cork as well as Aberdeen, the Tay, the Forth, the Clyde, the Tyne, Hull, Yarmouth, Harwich, Falmouth, the Severn and Liverpool) and overseas at Bermuda, Malta, Nova Scotia, Jamaica, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Minefields placed 1000 yards in front of gun forts, protected by armored patrol boats were a novel invention. With paraller chains locking their electrical cables in position, with secret maps or charts marking their positions and electric lights to cover their night-time operations, the system relied on specially trained divers to examine and maintain the deployed minefields without the time and expense of raising and redeploying individual mines.
From the start it had been determined that "as the role of the Royal Navy was the active defence of Great Britain, no Naval vessels should be tied to the shore, so the sedentary defence of the sea and ports should be in the hands of the Army, and in particular the Royal Engineers.”
Thus the Royal Engineers Corps of Miners had been born. A highly technical specialist force mostly consisting of Volunteer units, they gradually perfected their methods and conducted new experiments, but had so far been mostly ignored by the War Office. Their role had been deemed largely symbolical in a world where the Royal Navy ruled the waves.
Admiral Fisher had been firmly aware of this when he had begun to reconsider the status of mines in the Royal Navy as the new commander of the premier fighting force of the Royal Navy, the Mediterranean Fleet. His request for contact mines to protect his capital ships from submarines had had the desired effect: the Royal Navy officers had been stirred out of their complanency, and forced to discuss the role of naval mines.
As long as mines had remained mere tools of port defence with dubious combat value, the British Admiralty had been happy to actively ignore them while at the same time keeping a close watch of foreign developments. The root of the matter was that mines at sea prevented all sides from using a specific sea area for any purpose. For a Navy with a cherished tradition as a guardian of the seas, this was an affront. Mines were deemed morally, culturally and legally problematic on a fundamental level. But as much as the Royal Navy would have preferred mines to remain infernal machines outside the scope of civilised conflict, mines as a weapon of naval warfare were gradually making their presence felt.
The matter was thus a perfect casus belli for yet another turf war between the Royal Navy and the British Army.
Chapter 273: The Underwater Arms Race, Part XIII: Tug of War
Naval mines and Jackie Fisher shared a lot of history.
It was Fisher who had in fact started the whole naval mine debate in the Royal Navy as a young lieutenant with his 1868 “A Short Treatise on Electricity and the Management of Electric Torpedoes”, published during his tenure at the Royal Engineer mine school. Back then Fisher had promoted the cause of controlled mines used for harbour and coastal defence. In the following decade other voices had joined the chorus: Colomb (Great Britain’s Maritime Power, 1878), Sleeman, (Torpedoes and Torpedo Warfare, 1889) and Buckwill (Submarine Mines and Torpedoes as Applied to Harbour Defence, 1889). They pointed out that other naval powers were also researching the more discriminate contact mines, and experimenting their uses to blockade enemy naval bases. Germans had done so against the Danes and Russia had used their own infernal machines during the Crimean War. The examples from the Civil War in the United States were also brought up.
The Board of Admiralty would not have it.
In 1895 it was simply announced that blockade mines would not be adopted as a method of naval warfare. All experiments with blockade mines were thus to be closed. Fisher immediately crossed swords with the hidebound conservatives of the Board, and half a decade later his constant and spirited agitation had pestered the Board of Admiralty enough that in 1900 (after a Chinese contact mine had sunk a German destroyer and foiled the first attempt to storm the Taku Forts) two aspiring young Captains, Henry Jackson and Reginald Bacon, were sent to Italy to evaluate the naval mines produced in Genoa.[1] But this was as far as the Board was willing to go.
Just like with submarines, it was technological development abroad that ultimately forced the Board to make quick last-minute changes.
Increases in gunnery range meant that modern warships could now conduct a shore bombardment outside of the radius of old minefields consisting of emplaced observation mines. The abhorred contact mines were suddenly the only means of keeping the fixed underwater defences of home ports effective.
And worse yet, the Army had no problem with this state of affairs! In 1903 the new Secretary of War Brodrick stepped into a political minefield by casually informing the Admiralty that the Royal Engineer Corps of Submarine Miners intended to replace its current system of observation mines with contact mines.
Naval mines at defended ports, and the Royal Engineer Corps of Submarine Miners who oversaw their maintenance, were suddenly placed under close scrutiny, and carefully eevaluated by the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) throughout 1903 and 1904. Fisher wanted funds for submarines, and sought to spin submarines as a cheaper, mobile alternative to fixed minefields as the most cost-effective means of port defence.
Director-General of Military Intelligence, Lt.Gen. Sir William Nicholson led the last stand of soldiers at the CID. He fought a gallant delaying action by using a cunning strategy: he stated that the Army would be more than happy to comply with the ideas of a grand reform. In fact, he was more or less certain the War Office would be delighted hand over the base defences completely to the Royal Navy![2] First Lord of the Admiralty, Earl Selborne, was indeed reticent to accept responsibility for coastal defence at naval ports, believing that such an acceptance would lead to responsibility for all coastal defences, an expenditure the Navy could ill afford.
By making the Admiralty indirectly admit that they would rather not divert their limited funds to what they saw as "childish" and secondary activity completely at odds with their proud traditions, Nicholson managed to drag the matter on until the beginning of the war in Scandinavia. Fisher, who had by now become the new Naval Lord, was furious. The war soon offered both camps ample evidence to support their own views.
1. The visit happened in OTL as well. And yes, it's the same Bacon who later on became the leader of the submarine boat program.
2. Such proposals were used in OTL as well, but the Esher Committee swept all resistance aside.
It was Fisher who had in fact started the whole naval mine debate in the Royal Navy as a young lieutenant with his 1868 “A Short Treatise on Electricity and the Management of Electric Torpedoes”, published during his tenure at the Royal Engineer mine school. Back then Fisher had promoted the cause of controlled mines used for harbour and coastal defence. In the following decade other voices had joined the chorus: Colomb (Great Britain’s Maritime Power, 1878), Sleeman, (Torpedoes and Torpedo Warfare, 1889) and Buckwill (Submarine Mines and Torpedoes as Applied to Harbour Defence, 1889). They pointed out that other naval powers were also researching the more discriminate contact mines, and experimenting their uses to blockade enemy naval bases. Germans had done so against the Danes and Russia had used their own infernal machines during the Crimean War. The examples from the Civil War in the United States were also brought up.
The Board of Admiralty would not have it.
In 1895 it was simply announced that blockade mines would not be adopted as a method of naval warfare. All experiments with blockade mines were thus to be closed. Fisher immediately crossed swords with the hidebound conservatives of the Board, and half a decade later his constant and spirited agitation had pestered the Board of Admiralty enough that in 1900 (after a Chinese contact mine had sunk a German destroyer and foiled the first attempt to storm the Taku Forts) two aspiring young Captains, Henry Jackson and Reginald Bacon, were sent to Italy to evaluate the naval mines produced in Genoa.[1] But this was as far as the Board was willing to go.
Just like with submarines, it was technological development abroad that ultimately forced the Board to make quick last-minute changes.
Increases in gunnery range meant that modern warships could now conduct a shore bombardment outside of the radius of old minefields consisting of emplaced observation mines. The abhorred contact mines were suddenly the only means of keeping the fixed underwater defences of home ports effective.
And worse yet, the Army had no problem with this state of affairs! In 1903 the new Secretary of War Brodrick stepped into a political minefield by casually informing the Admiralty that the Royal Engineer Corps of Submarine Miners intended to replace its current system of observation mines with contact mines.
Naval mines at defended ports, and the Royal Engineer Corps of Submarine Miners who oversaw their maintenance, were suddenly placed under close scrutiny, and carefully eevaluated by the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) throughout 1903 and 1904. Fisher wanted funds for submarines, and sought to spin submarines as a cheaper, mobile alternative to fixed minefields as the most cost-effective means of port defence.
Director-General of Military Intelligence, Lt.Gen. Sir William Nicholson led the last stand of soldiers at the CID. He fought a gallant delaying action by using a cunning strategy: he stated that the Army would be more than happy to comply with the ideas of a grand reform. In fact, he was more or less certain the War Office would be delighted hand over the base defences completely to the Royal Navy![2] First Lord of the Admiralty, Earl Selborne, was indeed reticent to accept responsibility for coastal defence at naval ports, believing that such an acceptance would lead to responsibility for all coastal defences, an expenditure the Navy could ill afford.
By making the Admiralty indirectly admit that they would rather not divert their limited funds to what they saw as "childish" and secondary activity completely at odds with their proud traditions, Nicholson managed to drag the matter on until the beginning of the war in Scandinavia. Fisher, who had by now become the new Naval Lord, was furious. The war soon offered both camps ample evidence to support their own views.
1. The visit happened in OTL as well. And yes, it's the same Bacon who later on became the leader of the submarine boat program.
2. Such proposals were used in OTL as well, but the Esher Committee swept all resistance aside.
Chapter 274: The Underwater Arms Race, Part XIV: "The results are clear"
Having finally climbed all the way to the position of the First Sea Lord in October 1904, Fisher felt it was inevitable that controlled mines would be transferred from the Army to the Navy. He was worried that Esher had so far failed to deliver the decisive results he had promised, and feared for the future of British naval power under the new Liberal government. He knew that the Royal Navy needed massive reforms to remain competitive, and that budgets were already strained to the limit. Spending nearly 25% of annual state revenue for the Navy alone was not sustainable in the long-term, especially since Liberals now wanted to find funding for new social reforms.
As a result, Fisher was aware that he could ill afford to squander the financial or political capital with either the CID or within the Service to advance a low-priority issue when the matter was again brought into discussion, despite its presence on his list of immediate necessities. After all, controlled mines had played a part in the Swedo-Norwegian War.
When using the events of Scandinavia to promote their agenda, both the Army and Navy representatives tried their best to pretend that they were presenting a fair and impartial assessment of controlled mining in the CID. The destruction of Tordenskjold, a modern warship built by Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd, was used as a prime example of the inherent danger of contact mines used around friendly ports. The opponents pointed out the destruction was most likely caused by an extremely unlikely chain of events, and that such a single stroke of misfortune was merely anecdotal and could prove nothing. Meanwhile the proponents of mines were quick to point out the lack of protective minefields around Kristiansand as a key reason to the dramatic loss of Harald Haarfagre.
The events around Melsomvik fascinated British observers. The Royal Navy observers were impressed by the "properly Mahanian" aggressive tactics that both Dyrssen and Børresen had used in their brief but violent struggle for sea control. The Army reports pointed that Sweden had been able to conduct a strategic raid over "a distance that is similar than the one between Boulogne and Folkestone." Fisher countered by showing how the Norwegian torpedo boats had foiled the Swedish plans, and how a single Swedish submarine had managed to destroy a British-built modern Norwegian warship with impunity. He continued that it was also worthy to notice that torpedo-armed vessels had dealt most of the actual damage in the conflict - here Earl Selborne strongly disagreed, declaring that the overriding lesson of the war had been gained from the Battle of Skagerrak - and that it was the importance of naval gunnery and control of the seas.
Fisher echoed this sentiment, but from an entirely different angle. It was the fear of the torpedo that was now dictating the changes of naval tactics. Fisher insisted that the Norwegians had been wise to keep their distance, for not getting inside 4 000 yards of the enemy was the only way to avoid “the torpedo from getting in.” He continued to point out that the aggressive tactics of Norwegian torpedo boats both out in the open sea and at the shores around Melsomvik were worthy of closer attention. As the relative difference between the effective range of naval artillery and the torpedoes kept getting narrower, the numerous quick-firing guns of British capital ships were no longer a reliable counter to enemy torpedo boats. Gyroscopes had made torpedoes able to reach ranges over 2 000 yards. Destroying a torpedo boat at 1 200 yards was an entirely different feat than destroying one at 600 yards. And now the torpedo fired from 1 200 yards was more likely to hit than had been the case from 600 yards just a few years ago.
Better sight-setting instruments and more sophisticated fire control techniques would have to be taken to service as soon as possible to allow the Royal Navy to gradually strive to master the art of long-range gunnery. The ranges of effective naval gunfire simply had to grow to keep battleships viable, as heated air and other modern improvements were increasing the range of the torpedo at the same time when submarines were also making such a rapid technological progress.
Here Fisher was already leading the discussions at CID away from mines, and for a good reason. He could not fight both the War Office, Liberal politicians and the Board of Admiralty at once. In his mind the Board of Admiralty remained his worst opponent. They preferred to keep the Army paying the costs of base defences, and saw little need to divert limited funds to mines except for limited studies mostly focused on mine-clearing.
The new Secretary of War, Dilke, ultimately settled the matter in 1905. He was quick to assert his independent position and to show that he was not afraid of either Esher and Fisher. The largely Volunteer Naval Miners continued their operations as parts of the Royal Engineers. The Balfour Memorandum from 1904 and the following reforms Dilke pushed through were enough to satisfy Fisher for the time being, since his attention had by now been diverted from offensive mining to submarines and flotillas of light torpedo craft. The struggle for mines was thus over, after being mixed to the wider postwar analysis of a war fought at the shores of the North Sea. For Fisher, mines were now something he could live without, as long as nothing would hinder his new-found focus on submarines and light flotillas.
As a result, Fisher was aware that he could ill afford to squander the financial or political capital with either the CID or within the Service to advance a low-priority issue when the matter was again brought into discussion, despite its presence on his list of immediate necessities. After all, controlled mines had played a part in the Swedo-Norwegian War.
When using the events of Scandinavia to promote their agenda, both the Army and Navy representatives tried their best to pretend that they were presenting a fair and impartial assessment of controlled mining in the CID. The destruction of Tordenskjold, a modern warship built by Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd, was used as a prime example of the inherent danger of contact mines used around friendly ports. The opponents pointed out the destruction was most likely caused by an extremely unlikely chain of events, and that such a single stroke of misfortune was merely anecdotal and could prove nothing. Meanwhile the proponents of mines were quick to point out the lack of protective minefields around Kristiansand as a key reason to the dramatic loss of Harald Haarfagre.
The events around Melsomvik fascinated British observers. The Royal Navy observers were impressed by the "properly Mahanian" aggressive tactics that both Dyrssen and Børresen had used in their brief but violent struggle for sea control. The Army reports pointed that Sweden had been able to conduct a strategic raid over "a distance that is similar than the one between Boulogne and Folkestone." Fisher countered by showing how the Norwegian torpedo boats had foiled the Swedish plans, and how a single Swedish submarine had managed to destroy a British-built modern Norwegian warship with impunity. He continued that it was also worthy to notice that torpedo-armed vessels had dealt most of the actual damage in the conflict - here Earl Selborne strongly disagreed, declaring that the overriding lesson of the war had been gained from the Battle of Skagerrak - and that it was the importance of naval gunnery and control of the seas.
Fisher echoed this sentiment, but from an entirely different angle. It was the fear of the torpedo that was now dictating the changes of naval tactics. Fisher insisted that the Norwegians had been wise to keep their distance, for not getting inside 4 000 yards of the enemy was the only way to avoid “the torpedo from getting in.” He continued to point out that the aggressive tactics of Norwegian torpedo boats both out in the open sea and at the shores around Melsomvik were worthy of closer attention. As the relative difference between the effective range of naval artillery and the torpedoes kept getting narrower, the numerous quick-firing guns of British capital ships were no longer a reliable counter to enemy torpedo boats. Gyroscopes had made torpedoes able to reach ranges over 2 000 yards. Destroying a torpedo boat at 1 200 yards was an entirely different feat than destroying one at 600 yards. And now the torpedo fired from 1 200 yards was more likely to hit than had been the case from 600 yards just a few years ago.
Better sight-setting instruments and more sophisticated fire control techniques would have to be taken to service as soon as possible to allow the Royal Navy to gradually strive to master the art of long-range gunnery. The ranges of effective naval gunfire simply had to grow to keep battleships viable, as heated air and other modern improvements were increasing the range of the torpedo at the same time when submarines were also making such a rapid technological progress.
Here Fisher was already leading the discussions at CID away from mines, and for a good reason. He could not fight both the War Office, Liberal politicians and the Board of Admiralty at once. In his mind the Board of Admiralty remained his worst opponent. They preferred to keep the Army paying the costs of base defences, and saw little need to divert limited funds to mines except for limited studies mostly focused on mine-clearing.
The new Secretary of War, Dilke, ultimately settled the matter in 1905. He was quick to assert his independent position and to show that he was not afraid of either Esher and Fisher. The largely Volunteer Naval Miners continued their operations as parts of the Royal Engineers. The Balfour Memorandum from 1904 and the following reforms Dilke pushed through were enough to satisfy Fisher for the time being, since his attention had by now been diverted from offensive mining to submarines and flotillas of light torpedo craft. The struggle for mines was thus over, after being mixed to the wider postwar analysis of a war fought at the shores of the North Sea. For Fisher, mines were now something he could live without, as long as nothing would hinder his new-found focus on submarines and light flotillas.
The OTL mine debate was rather swift - the Esher Committee stormed through the War Office, and Fisher got what he wanted by 1904.
Within six months of the decision controlled mining was disbanded.
The results of Russo-Japanese War in OTL affected the British internal debates a lot.
British Naval Attachés (Pakenham at the Japanese fleet and Henry Jackson in Tokyo) and their reports were interpreted with extreme bias by both camps. Pakenham spent the war along the Japanese flagship, and he personally witnessed how the Petropavlovsk sank. From that point onwards he wrote detailed accounts on how much mines affected the war in the East, especially focusing on their psychological effect.
Meanwhile Jackson wrote dry, technical and completely strategically orthodox reports from Tokyo. He casually dismissed the Petropavlovsk as a "lucky hit" that wouldn't have been enough to sink a normal adequately protected (British) ship without the secondary detonation of the ship's magazine. Soon afterwards the Japanese lost two battleships designed and built in Britain to mines. Both Jackson and the Board of Admiralty were unmoved.
After all, Great Mahan himself had dismissed mines and torpedoes as irrelevant to the outcome of the war, and Tsushima was just the type of glorious modern Trafalgar that validated the finest Royal Navy traditions. Clearly modern naval warfare could only be decided by large ships contending the command of the sea. That's it, case closed, nothing to see here.
TTL is a different. Esher is not the gray eminence he was historically.
The underlying strong bias against mines is still there. TTL all reports from the naval part of the war are second-hand and postwar accounts.
Controlled minefields have a strong effect to the naval war due geography, while contact mines have nothing to show for their credit compared to submarines.
The Board focuses on long-range gunnery and tactics just like in OTL, but their case is much weaker without Tsushima-level results.
Fisher views the war as a clear lesson of the new supremacy of the torpedo-armed vessels and submarines in particular.
Meanwhile the Royal Engineers draw their own conclusions from the conflict, and seek to use their limited funding to remain relevant in the face of the new submarine threat.
Rashomon: Reports of the Russo-Japanese War Naval Attachés^^^ The train of thought for those various learned men made me think of this old parable:
(As presented in Wikipedia)
Chapter 275: The Underwater Arms Race, Part XV: The Sincerest Form of Flattery
“These last manoeuvres are the most misleading manoeuvres ever devised by the art of man! They really are the most misleading set of circumstances that the mind of man could have evolved! These original six, first-built, inadequately fitted, too-slow submarine boats competing against a powerful fleet and three flotillas of destroyers all at their prime, and the paucity of the submarines (we ought to have had at least 30 instead of 6!) rendering it impossible to make attacks as in actual war from a number of boats acting together, and then again there were the destroyers calmly laying over the submarines (so utterly out of question in actual war), fishing for them as if they were trying to catch whiting! The whole thing was ridiculous and misleading in the extreme!...However, YOU will be the person to be hung, and not I! As I have not disguised my opinion in season and out of season as to the essential, imperative, immediate, vital, pressing, urgent (I can’t think of any more adjectives!) necessity for more submarines at once, at the very least 25 in addition to those now ordered and building, and a hundred more as soon as practicable, or we shall be caught with our breeches down! I don’t blackguard you personally, it's the d–d cautious old age spirit that actuates and always has actuated and always will actuate the Board of Admiralty!"[1]
- Fisher to Rear Admiral William May, private correspondence, April 1904
Historians researching the evolution of the tactical thoughts of Jackie Fisher have often pointed out his Mediterranean experiences as vitally important for his latter ideas. In 1900 his most likely wartime opponent, the French Mediterranean Fleet, was a highly efficient force commanded by Admiral Gervais and later on by Admiral Fournier. Especially Fournier had a reputation as a formidable tactician willing to test radical theories and deployment schemes. Even more importantly Toulon was the main testing ground of French submarines. To maintain a good awareness of the situation Fisher avidly read French newspapers. He also employed British consular officials to spy on French naval manoeuvres. Gradually this informal intelligence network he established spanned the entire Mediterranean region.
In addition to their submarines, the French surface fleet also troubled him. The numerous French armoured cruisers made Fisher prefer destroyers as scouts of his fleet despite their poor suitability for proper cruiser work. Fisher was confident that unarmoured cruisers were rendered powerless and would only be sunk or captured by swifter armoured cruisers in a case of war. Meanwhile the growing number of French torpedo boats made Fisher doubt whether the RN Mediterranean Fleet would be able to keep an effective watch over Toulon. Worse still, the large French torpedo boat armadas might simply attack the main British fleet further out at sea together with their numerically weaker battle squadron.
The submarine, a counter to armored cruiser, and small torpedo-armed ships acting together as large flotillas.
The core building blocks of his latter strategic and tactical ideas could indeed all be traced down to the time he spent at the Med.
1. An OTL quote, with a single reference to Russo-Japanese War edited out.
- Fisher to Rear Admiral William May, private correspondence, April 1904
Historians researching the evolution of the tactical thoughts of Jackie Fisher have often pointed out his Mediterranean experiences as vitally important for his latter ideas. In 1900 his most likely wartime opponent, the French Mediterranean Fleet, was a highly efficient force commanded by Admiral Gervais and later on by Admiral Fournier. Especially Fournier had a reputation as a formidable tactician willing to test radical theories and deployment schemes. Even more importantly Toulon was the main testing ground of French submarines. To maintain a good awareness of the situation Fisher avidly read French newspapers. He also employed British consular officials to spy on French naval manoeuvres. Gradually this informal intelligence network he established spanned the entire Mediterranean region.
In addition to their submarines, the French surface fleet also troubled him. The numerous French armoured cruisers made Fisher prefer destroyers as scouts of his fleet despite their poor suitability for proper cruiser work. Fisher was confident that unarmoured cruisers were rendered powerless and would only be sunk or captured by swifter armoured cruisers in a case of war. Meanwhile the growing number of French torpedo boats made Fisher doubt whether the RN Mediterranean Fleet would be able to keep an effective watch over Toulon. Worse still, the large French torpedo boat armadas might simply attack the main British fleet further out at sea together with their numerically weaker battle squadron.
The submarine, a counter to armored cruiser, and small torpedo-armed ships acting together as large flotillas.
The core building blocks of his latter strategic and tactical ideas could indeed all be traced down to the time he spent at the Med.
1. An OTL quote, with a single reference to Russo-Japanese War edited out.
Chapter 276: The Underwater Arms Race, Part XVI: Vickers' A-B-C
The technical stats of British submarine designs are a good way to describe the lighting-fast speed which naval technology advanced during the first decade of the century.
Vickers developed these first submarines as a series of single-hull submarines, using the Holland design as a basis. The first Holland-type boats the Royal Navy used were the starting point.
Measuring 104/122 tons, armed with one 14” forward torpedo tube, they were powered by one 4-cylinder petrol engine, and propelled by one main motor. They were slow, capable of moving 8 knots on the surface and 7 underwater. The crew included only 7 men, and the vessel had an operational range of 500 miles.
The A-class of 14 boats followed in 1903-1905.
They were heavier, measuring 165/180 tons. The armament was improved to two 18-inch bow torpedo tubes. The new 12-cylinder petrol engine gave them top speeds of 11 knots on the surface, and the crew was doubled to 11-14 men. Surface range was now 310 miles at 10 knots.
Improved A-class was known as the B class (11 boats), built in 1905-1906:
The size had grown to 280/313 tons, but armament remained similar. The petrol-electric propulsion plants increased surface speed to 13 knots and underwater speed to 8. The crew consisted of 16 men. The range was improved to 1000 miles at 8.7 knots, finally making the boats capable of conducing wider-ranged coast defence instead of being limited to the outskirts of harbours and naval bases.
The next step was the C-class (38 boats), built in 1906-1908:
They were only slightly larger (290/320 tons), had similar armament, petrol-electric drive, same top speed and operational range. Main differences to B-class were the new fore-hydroplanes, and W/T equipment that enabled long-distance comms with Morse code while surfaced.
Petrol engines with their nauseating and potentially explosive vapours were still a standard feature with Vickers design. Despite the B and C class finally being able to leave coastal waters, it was not until the Office of the Director of Naval Construction started to design boats built in Pembroke Royal Dockyard that the submarine boat design really changed direction.
Vickers developed these first submarines as a series of single-hull submarines, using the Holland design as a basis. The first Holland-type boats the Royal Navy used were the starting point.
Measuring 104/122 tons, armed with one 14” forward torpedo tube, they were powered by one 4-cylinder petrol engine, and propelled by one main motor. They were slow, capable of moving 8 knots on the surface and 7 underwater. The crew included only 7 men, and the vessel had an operational range of 500 miles.
The A-class of 14 boats followed in 1903-1905.
They were heavier, measuring 165/180 tons. The armament was improved to two 18-inch bow torpedo tubes. The new 12-cylinder petrol engine gave them top speeds of 11 knots on the surface, and the crew was doubled to 11-14 men. Surface range was now 310 miles at 10 knots.
Improved A-class was known as the B class (11 boats), built in 1905-1906:
The size had grown to 280/313 tons, but armament remained similar. The petrol-electric propulsion plants increased surface speed to 13 knots and underwater speed to 8. The crew consisted of 16 men. The range was improved to 1000 miles at 8.7 knots, finally making the boats capable of conducing wider-ranged coast defence instead of being limited to the outskirts of harbours and naval bases.
The next step was the C-class (38 boats), built in 1906-1908:
They were only slightly larger (290/320 tons), had similar armament, petrol-electric drive, same top speed and operational range. Main differences to B-class were the new fore-hydroplanes, and W/T equipment that enabled long-distance comms with Morse code while surfaced.
Petrol engines with their nauseating and potentially explosive vapours were still a standard feature with Vickers design. Despite the B and C class finally being able to leave coastal waters, it was not until the Office of the Director of Naval Construction started to design boats built in Pembroke Royal Dockyard that the submarine boat design really changed direction.
Chapter 277: The Underwater Arms Race, Part XVII: My intellects proceed / With Diesel Power
Every submarine boat that Vickers, Limited, built was initially driven by a horizontal petrol engine. Captain Bacon was well aware of the inherent flaws of this approach, and the Admiralty had already ordered a 500hp four-cylinder Hornsby-Akroyd engine for trial.
However, it had been deemed unsatisfactory. A solution was found from abroad, after Vickers secured a license for the construction of engines of the M.A.N. type in 1904[1]. A German four-cylinder Diesel engine was fitted in A 13 as an experiment. This proved to be a challenge for designers, since heavier-oil Diesel engines required 50% more volume than equivalent petrol engines, while carrying only half of the energy content of petrol. The technology was still far from mature: the new engine produced only 100 BHP per cylinder.
As submarines were intended to be built in large numbers, keeping the cost low had been an initial priority.
Thus DNI Captain Ottley was initially reluctant to support any changes: why build something with less than half of the speed of a destroyer, with 2/3rds worse radius of action and “incomparably worse sea-keeping powers?”
But since the French 1905 and 1906 programmes included a total of 36 400-ton submarines, Britain simply had to “…retain the lead in submarines conceived to attack, given their size and general seaworthiness.” Inspecting Captain of Submarines, Lees agreed with this notion. Further increases in speed, size, radius of action and armament were needed, as without them “we shall be left helplessly behind the French.” An arms race, once started, could not be abandoned so easily.[2]
As the political situation changed with the new Liberal Government, the Admiralty now wanted Vickers to moderate their prices. The Admiralty did not want to break totally with Vickers, since that would entail the risk of having to build all the navy’s submarines in Royal Dockyards. "We cannot do better than cooperate with Messrs. Vickers Limited in building the number we want. They have experience which would take years for any other firm or the Dockyards to acquire."
In May 1906 Vickers finally licensed the Royal Navy to construct submarines in the Royal Dockyards. Vickers seemed to have caved in, but in reality their profit margins were still tremendous, over 70 percent per completed submarine. A financially beneficial treaty with Vickers enabled the British designs to avoid a prolonged legal action that could have jeopardized the testing of the new diesel-electric submarines.[3]
Satisfied with the trials of the prototype, the Admiralty Board agreed that all future submarine boats would use two six-cylinder Diesel engines with a total of 1200hp.
The new boat "doubled" a lot of features: it had twin screws, twice as much armament, two times as much fuel stowage, more accommodation for a larger crew.
Thus the new D class, when it received the Board Stamp in August 1906, was a 580-ton design.
It was powered by a pair of four-cycle six-cylinder diesels. As the practice was to aim the submarine at its target, the D-class was the longest design that could be practically maneuvered that way.
Now Fisher had submarines capable of blockading enemy coasts. With the ability to operate for up to two months at a time and with an operational radius of 2 500 miles and top speeds of 16 knots on the surface and 9 submerged, the D-class far exceeded the performance of other kinds of warships and previous submarines alike. It was "a torpedo boat for daytime."
And to counter its foreign kin while the surface fleet lacked working countermeasures against any type of submarines, Fisher and Bacon (who Fisher had lifted through the ranks as his personal assistant) agreed that the Royal Navy obviously needed more submarines to stalk enemy submarine bases.
A new type of submarine boat, a “Submarine destroyer” intended to run down any enemy submarines seen leaving port and destroying them on the surface before they could submerge was initially seen as the best way to counter the threat of enemy submarines.
1. As per OTL
2. As per OTL - being in good terms with the French was not an excuse to lose a naval arms race!
3. In OTL Vickers knew they had time on their side, and they merely waited until the Admiralty Board agreed on their terms.
TTL the different political situation gives Vickers an even better negotiation position, and the Admiralty is less willing to play for time.
However, it had been deemed unsatisfactory. A solution was found from abroad, after Vickers secured a license for the construction of engines of the M.A.N. type in 1904[1]. A German four-cylinder Diesel engine was fitted in A 13 as an experiment. This proved to be a challenge for designers, since heavier-oil Diesel engines required 50% more volume than equivalent petrol engines, while carrying only half of the energy content of petrol. The technology was still far from mature: the new engine produced only 100 BHP per cylinder.
As submarines were intended to be built in large numbers, keeping the cost low had been an initial priority.
Thus DNI Captain Ottley was initially reluctant to support any changes: why build something with less than half of the speed of a destroyer, with 2/3rds worse radius of action and “incomparably worse sea-keeping powers?”
But since the French 1905 and 1906 programmes included a total of 36 400-ton submarines, Britain simply had to “…retain the lead in submarines conceived to attack, given their size and general seaworthiness.” Inspecting Captain of Submarines, Lees agreed with this notion. Further increases in speed, size, radius of action and armament were needed, as without them “we shall be left helplessly behind the French.” An arms race, once started, could not be abandoned so easily.[2]
As the political situation changed with the new Liberal Government, the Admiralty now wanted Vickers to moderate their prices. The Admiralty did not want to break totally with Vickers, since that would entail the risk of having to build all the navy’s submarines in Royal Dockyards. "We cannot do better than cooperate with Messrs. Vickers Limited in building the number we want. They have experience which would take years for any other firm or the Dockyards to acquire."
In May 1906 Vickers finally licensed the Royal Navy to construct submarines in the Royal Dockyards. Vickers seemed to have caved in, but in reality their profit margins were still tremendous, over 70 percent per completed submarine. A financially beneficial treaty with Vickers enabled the British designs to avoid a prolonged legal action that could have jeopardized the testing of the new diesel-electric submarines.[3]
Satisfied with the trials of the prototype, the Admiralty Board agreed that all future submarine boats would use two six-cylinder Diesel engines with a total of 1200hp.
The new boat "doubled" a lot of features: it had twin screws, twice as much armament, two times as much fuel stowage, more accommodation for a larger crew.
Thus the new D class, when it received the Board Stamp in August 1906, was a 580-ton design.
It was powered by a pair of four-cycle six-cylinder diesels. As the practice was to aim the submarine at its target, the D-class was the longest design that could be practically maneuvered that way.
Now Fisher had submarines capable of blockading enemy coasts. With the ability to operate for up to two months at a time and with an operational radius of 2 500 miles and top speeds of 16 knots on the surface and 9 submerged, the D-class far exceeded the performance of other kinds of warships and previous submarines alike. It was "a torpedo boat for daytime."
And to counter its foreign kin while the surface fleet lacked working countermeasures against any type of submarines, Fisher and Bacon (who Fisher had lifted through the ranks as his personal assistant) agreed that the Royal Navy obviously needed more submarines to stalk enemy submarine bases.
A new type of submarine boat, a “Submarine destroyer” intended to run down any enemy submarines seen leaving port and destroying them on the surface before they could submerge was initially seen as the best way to counter the threat of enemy submarines.
1. As per OTL
2. As per OTL - being in good terms with the French was not an excuse to lose a naval arms race!
3. In OTL Vickers knew they had time on their side, and they merely waited until the Admiralty Board agreed on their terms.
TTL the different political situation gives Vickers an even better negotiation position, and the Admiralty is less willing to play for time.