Was the "starve them out" strategy ever really feasible?

True but we shouldn't have the idea that they didn't or couldn't have left the North Sea.

Also coal as a fuel is something that could be filched from target vessels and some coastal installations. It is however a very hand to mouth existence as Graf von Spee found out. The point should be recalled though the Germans did have a relative shortage of cruisers and that their capital ships tended to be short legged meaning they either needed the support of a lot of colliers or would have needed to spend a long time coaling up from prizes rather than hunting.
 
My point was not that the KM was a "coastal" force. Rather that their ships had, IN GENERAL, been optimized for operations in the North Sea and not the sort of long range operations that much of the RN (and USN for that matter) was designed for. German ships were slow in being shifted from coal fired to oil fired not because the German Naval Staff were blockheads or their engineers incompetent, but rather because Germany had lots of coal and little oil resources they controlled, and again the additional range per ton of fuel oil gave over coal (as well as the reduced engine room staff needed) was not as important for the Germans at that time. Its not just engine design that is important, and fuel storage, but also crew accommodations, food storage space, spare parts storage, magazines etc. You can only pack folks in so tightly before efficiency suffers, and you do need to feed them. You can take coal, and food, from a capture (if you get one) but not spare parts or ammunition. All of these are trade-offs in ship design like speed versus armor among others.
 
Oh pulease - neither Tirpitz nor the Kaiser would be prepared to risk frittering away their precious dreadnaughts in the mid Atlantic on raiding adventures.

Ok, but by 1917 Ludendorff, not Tirpitz, and not the Kaiser, was calling the shots. Would Ludendorff have been willing to risk the dreadnoughts if the Navy had not dangled the shiny trinket of USW in front of him?


As prevously stated, the increases in Entente shipping losses accelerated in the later half of 1916 and were already unsustainable and trending upward before the USW was introduced. I am curious about you conclusion that Entente shipping losses were not really a problem before 1917. If a tree falls in a forest... ...you still have one less tree.

The rate of loss prior to 1917 was more sustainable for the Entente, meaning they could anticipate winning on land before losing at sea. 1917 was the first time they had to face the chance that they might lose at sea before they could win on land.

No, that might have been the perception of some, but the reality was the Entente had already running out of financial liquidity and the pre USW shipping losses were unsustainable.

For purchases in neutral markets, but for its own national resources and production the Entente could just keep printing IOU's.​
 

BooNZ

Banned
Not specifically, but the US entry facilitated British borrowing which ballooned from about 2.5 billion pounds in 1916 to around 7.5 billion pounds in 1919 - Britain defaulted on around 4 billion $US in 1934. Further, the immediate availability of US escort vessels facilitated/eased the decision for the wider implementation of convoy systems.
See in the past I used to think whatever my disagreements with Boonz at least he knows a fair chunk about economic related details. Nowadays not a details poster at all. You act like a sudden increase in the national debt is unusual in war time and rather than try and present a valid argument for by example comparing borrowing in the course of the Seven Years war or the Napoleonic war you just stick in a word like "ballooned" and assume people will look no further. Large national debts following a war are not unusual and most of that debt was internal to British citizens and corporations while the US held merely the largest portion of the 18% of that wartime borrowing that Britain raised from foreigners or some 1,365 million pounds sterling. I have already discussed the nature of the default which IIRC should be dated to 1932 above, however these were technical defaults that were accepted (if perhaps grudgingly) by the bondholders.
...
I don't what has changed about you but something has changed and it has gotten really weird. You used to rely on solid numbers, the numbers might be open to interpretation, most data sets usually are because the context is not frequently selected for ahistorical examination but you used them as the basis for your claims. Now you make claims and try twist the world to fit those claims.

Fair enough...

I said the British debt went from about 2.5 billion pounds in 1916 to 7.5 billion pounds in 1919.

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_finance_great_britain_and_ireland states British debt went from 2.189 billion in 1916 to 7.481 billion in 1919

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.200.8263&rep=rep1&type=pdf states British debt went from 2,190 million pound in 1916 to 7,481 million pound in 1919.

I confess I tend to be a contrarian, but I lack the creativity to make stuff up. I misremembered the exact starting point, but given the data available (refer above) it is reasonable to claim British debt ballooned after the credit floodgates were opened following the US entry into the war.

Given the British performance up until 1917, it is reasonable to assume in an environment of absolute scarcity the British would not suddenly start making [only] good decisions.
 

BooNZ

Banned
How did Britain pay for their own war effort and both finance and subsidise the French and Russian war efforts until April 1917 without any financial liquidity? I understand that France had run dry by late 1916, but as I understand it Britain was still liquid in April 1917.
I don't have the resources at hand, but I would speculate the British position in relation to finances in late 1916 was similar to the German position in relation to nitrates in late 1914. Haber stated that without the German breakthroughs in the industrial production of Nitrates, the Germans would have been forced to the peace table in Spring 1915. Things ordinarily do not grind to a halt immediately, so long as there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel - and it not another train.

Tirpitz was the Secretary of the Navy, he held no command position to deploy ships. The Kaiser was the CinC of the KM, but of course he was pretty uninvolved, so the KM (2 major fleets, 2 naval stations, the MarineKorps Flanders and overseas ships) was not really commanded as such.

Also, the mid Atlantic isn't the only profitable hunting ground for an anti-commerce campaign. In 1914 coastal shipping was a crucial element to the British domestic transportation, Admiral Bacon opined that if the Channel was closed to through shipping 1/4 of the population would have to be evacuated.

Putting 2 and 2 together, if the KM was actively commanded by a professional Naval Officer with authority to move resources between fleets and direct operations then surface ships may have been used in the klienkrieg strategy to interdict the Dover straight.
Fair enough, but I was merely seeking to highlight the absurdity of using German dreadnaughts in an merchant raider capacity.

Again I would like you to back up your claim that the RN was outperformed by the Germans and hapless in WW1 but you continue to use tangental arguments of 'a Russian style' about other things instead so I am going to assume that you have a dislike of the RN and that the comment was a throw away remark.
To recap, the Royal Navy is frequently credited with imposing the blockade that chocked the CP war effort, yet without the US intervention the German navy would have achieved the same (or better) a year earlier. In most respects the British Navy was superior to the German Navy, but the British maritime trade and economy were especially vulnerable to wartime interdiction.

The Royal Navy had been the world champions for centuries, but the British economy and war effort was on the ropes by 1917.

Ok, but by 1917 Ludendorff, not Tirpitz, and not the Kaiser, was calling the shots. Would Ludendorff have been willing to risk the dreadnoughts if the Navy had not dangled the shiny trinket of USW in front of him?
Certainly not!

The rate of loss prior to 1917 was more sustainable for the Entente, meaning they could anticipate winning on land before losing at sea. 1917 was the first time they had to face the chance that they might lose at sea before they could win on land.
Mostly agree, but I was highlighting that shipping losses were cumulative and rate of Entente shipping losses in the months prior to the USW already exceeded what the Entente could continue to sustain. If the German navy had continued to raise the temperature without implementing an USW, how long before the Entente would have jumped from the pot? i.e. introduce convoys.

For purchases in neutral markets, but for its own national resources and production the Entente could just keep printing IOU's.
Agreed, but as previously stated, the Entente did not have the shipping to seek vest quantities of food and war materials from much further afield, so the US as a supplier was necessity.
 
Fair enough, but I was merely seeking to highlight the absurdity of using German dreadnaughts in an merchant raider capacity.

Looking at things in isolation, sure, but its the knock-on effects that are important.

If a something like the Goben and Breslau Task Group got out into the Atlantic (assuming that like early WW2 such ships could get out) it would virtually stop shipping in the North Atlantic until the ships were known to be back in port, regardless of how many ships they sunk or didn't sink. Convoys would have to be guarded by ships capable to handling a Battlecruiser, which means a modern captial ship or two with each convoy simply because of the threat of attack. Such ships would have to come from the Grand Fleet, which slims out the margin of superiority of the HSF and leave them vulnerable to open battle in the North Sea.

Its exactly the same as destroyers/escorts and uboats; stripping out destroyers from the GF to escort merchant ships leaves the GF vulnerable to German light forces/uboats in battle in the North Sea.
 
I don't see how Germany can prevent the US shipping enough food in US flagged ships to GB in WWI without pissing it off enough to push it into a war with Germany. A US entry into the war is game over for Germany. British Finances may be screwed after the war but if it is screwed then it is screwed. The British Government would far rather have to deal with a messy victory than a defeat or famine.
 
I would also add to this: The Nazi also needed to wear down and attempt to write off the community of Merchant Seaman . Obviously every ship you sink reduces the pool of skilled men further but also attack their homes ( and at this time the majority of men in the UK Merchant Navy came from dock towns), put their families under threat, give them no rest, destroy their homes and possessions, drive them away from the sea. Couple that with a black PR campaign pointing out these men are "skulking" cowardly civilians dodging the war in a cushy ship travelling the world with nice food, soft beds and lots to drink while you are getting the shit kicked out of you in some hole in the ground or risking your life every night attacking the enemy by air. Make out that no right minded man would volunteer for the merchant service.

As a further aside I think the men of the Merchant Navy ( and their allied colleagues) are often overlooked in all of this. They were civilians and they were in the front line. They battled, every day, not just the U-Boat threat but also terrible weather and seas to keep the SLOC open and keep Britain in the war. 30,248 UK merchant seamen lost their lives during World War Two, a death rate that was higher proportionately than in any of the armed forces. Most have no grave. They deserve our thanks.

How exactly do you conduct such a black PR campaign with wartime censorship? If it actually starts working to some extent how do you prevent GB from countering it with its own propaganda campaign ridiculing it as ridiculous enemy propaganda? You might have to do some pro merchant marine pictures in WWII but that is easily arranged. Propaganda campaigns rarely work and work best when it becomes apparent to your opponent that it is losing.
 
To recap, the Royal Navy is frequently credited with imposing the blockade that chocked the CP war effort, yet without the US intervention the German navy would have achieved the same (or better) a year earlier. In most respects the British Navy was superior to the German Navy, but the British maritime trade and economy were especially vulnerable to wartime interdiction.

The Royal Navy had been the world champions for centuries, but the British economy and war effort was on the ropes by 1917.

And...how does any of this make the RN Hapless?
 
Fair enough...

I said the British debt went from about 2.5 billion pounds in 1916 to 7.5 billion pounds in 1919.

I confess I tend to be a contrarian, but I lack the creativity to make stuff up. I misremembered the exact starting point, but given the data available (refer above) it is reasonable to claim British debt ballooned after the credit floodgates were opened following the US entry into the war.

No upward inflection point in 1917; rate of increase slowed in FY 6 April 1917 to 5 April 1918

ukgs_line.php
 
The only way to make the "hapless" argument, I think, is via the subsequent demonstration that convoy defeated the U-boat threat overnight (at least where it was implemented, it took a while to implement full convoy). The logic flows that the refusal to introduce convoy earlier was hapless.

Now, this claim has some merit, but it misses the bigger picture that zero merchant losses throughout the war would not have changed much about the British economy, war effort and Western Front. So linking RN "haplessness" to issues with the British economy and war effort is nonsense. This is an example of a flawed step from "detail" to "interpretation" and "big-picture strategic consequences" that was mentioned further up the thread.
 

BooNZ

Banned
No upward inflection point in 1917; rate of increase slowed in FY 6 April 1917 to 5 April 1918

ukgs_line.php
The British wartime GDP increased from 3,400 million pound in 1915/16 to 5,091 million pound in 1917/18 - an increase of approximately 50% over 2 years. Suggesting there was no real increase in British spending following the US entry is nonsensical, unless you are claiming wartime increases in British GDP were sustainable post war.

If the US remained neutral and US creditors remained wary of issuing new Entente loans, there would be significant declines in Entente spending in real terms and the Entente would be increasingly be paying more for less.

Looking at things in isolation, sure, but its the knock-on effects that are important.

If a something like the Goben and Breslau Task Group got out into the Atlantic (assuming that like early WW2 such ships could get out) it would virtually stop shipping in the North Atlantic until the ships were known to be back in port, regardless of how many ships they sunk or didn't sink. Convoys would have to be guarded by ships capable to handling a Battlecruiser, which means a modern captial ship or two with each convoy simply because of the threat of attack. Such ships would have to come from the Grand Fleet, which slims out the margin of superiority of the HSF and leave them vulnerable to open battle in the North Sea.

Its exactly the same as destroyers/escorts and uboats; stripping out destroyers from the GF to escort merchant ships leaves the GF vulnerable to German light forces/uboats in battle in the North Sea.
It's beyond the scope of what I was addressing, but any such German excursions would most likely be assumed to be a one way mission, since the British have significant geographic, numerical and qualitative edges. It's not really my area of interest/expertise, but based on my understanding (based on OTL reactions to mordern capital ships) the most likely scenarios are to for the British to either dispurse/redirect those convoys and/or reinforce those convoys with a one or two [surplus] pre-dreadnaughts to deter German adventurism. Once the German task group was identified/located, it would be hunted down and destroyed.

With the benefit of hindsight, it can be argued it might have been a better use of German naval resources than OTL, but the OTL German Naval efforts were surprisingly effective - until those efforts contributed to the US entry into the war.
 
I don't see how Germany can prevent the US shipping enough food in US flagged ships to GB in WWI without pissing it off enough to push it into a war with Germany. A US entry into the war is game over for Germany. British Finances may be screwed after the war but if it is screwed then it is screwed. The British Government would far rather have to deal with a messy victory than a defeat or famine.

If the Germans were willing to accept heavy losses in their surface fleet to enter the North Atlantic, then how pissed off could the US get when food ships were captured and diverted to Norway, with the crews being returned unharmed to the US? Was it not actually the case that, in 1914, when German merchant raiders such as Emden behaved bravely and with chivalry, that the propaganda payoff in the neutral powers was considerable?

Also, if the US had plenty of money and German Americans that sympathised with the Central Powers, then what prevented the German government from organizing blockade runners of US ships manned by ethnically German Americans? Also, when Germany decided on the resumption of USW at Pless, why exactly didn't their entire overseas merchant fleets (bottled up in harbors in the Americas and elsewhere), scuttle in order not to be taken over by the Entente for its own shipping?

Yes, the British had the position and political advantages in Washington. That still doesn't exclude the fact that the German government and surface navy played an incompetent game in the war at sea.
 
BooNZ Fair enough, but I was merely seeking to highlight the absurdity of using German dreadnaughts in an merchant raider capacity.

You said that battleships were compact for the crews and not optimalized for long range missions. Ok, what would be needed to do to make them capable of long range missions? Three things that come to mind would be (1) to carry more coal, even at the expense of armament or armor; (2) have about 2-3 boilers per ship capable of burning oil or diesel so that as much of the cruising consumption as possible could be absorbed by liquid fuels; (3) a more robust system of supply, using as much as possible enemy captured ships. (In terms of how packed the crews were, the U-boats were even more cramped but still functioned fine at sea for weeks or months on end.)

Mostly agree, but I was highlighting that shipping losses were cumulative and rate of Entente shipping losses in the months prior to the USW already exceeded what the Entente could continue to sustain. If the German navy had continued to raise the temperature without implementing an USW, how long before the Entente would have jumped from the pot? i.e. introduce convoys.

1916 saw 2.3 million tons sunk, primarily by U-boats. Assuming no USW for 1917, I think you might be right. Perhaps the U-boats could have sank 3 million tons under the normal rules as the numbers of U-boats increased. That's only half of the USW numbers, but more importantly, also no war with the USA in 1917. Could the German surface navy had made up the other half of sinkings, such that in 1917 the German navy scores the historical 6 million tons of enemy shipping sunk, but not using USW and therefore without war with the USA?

the most likely scenarios are to for the British to either dispurse/redirect those convoys and/or reinforce those convoys with a one or two [surplus] pre-dreadnaughts to deter German adventurism. Once the German task group was identified/located, it would be hunted down and destroyed.

About 4 or 5 convoy battles betweeen '1-2' surplus pre-dreadnoughts vs. 4 German dreadnoughts and the RN will have no more 'surplus' pre-dreadnoughts. Isn't this tactic just setting up any number of Battle of the Coronels, for which each will serve as a propaganda victory for the Central Powers domestically and in the US?

Also, in terms of hunting down a squadron, to do that the pursuing squadron would have to move at high speed - 20kt+, for days on end. Too much fuel burned!


 
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How exactly do you conduct such a black PR campaign with wartime censorship? If it actually starts working to some extent how do you prevent GB from countering it with its own propaganda campaign ridiculing it as ridiculous enemy propaganda? You might have to do some pro merchant marine pictures in WWII but that is easily arranged. Propaganda campaigns rarely work and work best when it becomes apparent to your opponent that it is losing.

However the Merchant Navy were considered unfavorably by many in society at the time. It wouldn't take much to make thoughts worse.
 
Why would surface forces (assuming they can get out of the North Sea, perhaps because the German army captured the French channel coast) need to wander around the Atlantic when there are plenty of ships between Cornwall and Ireland? The HSF could sortie like OTL Jutland which the RN cannot ignore, while a single fast capital ship and a cruiser races along the Channel and attacks shipping off southern Ireland. Pre-dreads are too slow to stop them, and to have a single modern BC to deal with a single German BC means stripping the GF of 3 BCs to ensure 1 or 2 is available 24/7 .
 
Why would surface forces (assuming they can get out of the North Sea, perhaps because the German army captured the French channel coast) need to wander around the Atlantic when there are plenty of ships between Cornwall and Ireland? The HSF could sortie like OTL Jutland which the RN cannot ignore, while a single fast capital ship and a cruiser races along the Channel and attacks shipping off southern Ireland. Pre-dreads are too slow to stop them, and to have a single modern BC to deal with a single German BC means stripping the GF of 3 BCs to ensure 1 or 2 is available 24/7 .

Yeah it is almost as if there were reasons the HSF did not do that?

First off of course finding ships even in the Irish Sea or the Channel pre-radar is a little complicated. Secondly The Germans were not entirely sure where the defensive minefields were. Third a convoy escort does not need to match a raider, it merely needs to provide sufficient threat so that it can delay any attack while the convoy disperses meanwhile the Wireless operators arte signalling their position and the nature of the force that is attacking them. A force that is far from home and with the hunters between them and safety...
 
What's the German for "Damn the torpedos"

.. (assuming they can get out of the North Sea, perhaps because the German army captured the French channel coast)

All talk about large surface ships, from myself and others, is moot in OTLs naval geography which is why I qualify it at the start.

However that's not to sat OTLs naval geography didn't offer substantial opportunities that the Germans didn't exploit.
 
All talk about large surface ships, from myself and others, is moot in OTLs naval geography which is why I qualify it at the start.

However that's not to sat OTLs naval geography didn't offer substantial opportunities that the Germans didn't exploit.

You're not trying to argue the Kaiserliche Marine were hapless and outfought are you?

Seriously though the German naval officers were professionals who applied themselves with vigour and often personal physical courage to their jobs but there were very real geographical and operational impediments in the way of their neatly cutting the British sea lanes and bringing perfidious Albion (not the board member) to its knees.
 
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