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

A second possible mission would be classic commerce raiding, either by sinking merchant ships or putting prize crews on them to return them to port. Could a prize crew sail a merchant ship into an American port and sell the products? What are the chances a prize ship could run the blockade to Germany or Norway with its cargo, either escorted or on its own?

Fuel concerns on German Ships?

640px-Buckau_Flettner_Rotor_Ship_LOC_37764u.jpg


Could be solved this way. Anton Flettner was trying a bunch of ahead of his time inventions at the German War Department
 
I saw an article on that sail device in the Economist. I think it can deliver about 10% fuel savings - it's actually being looked at again for modern merchant ships.
 
I saw an article on that sail device in the Economist. I think it can deliver about 10% fuel savings - it's actually being looked at again for modern merchant ships.
The Rotor Sail was then put through a year of strenuous checks: after the vessel’s baseline profile in normal operation was established it was activated and deactivated at random intervals in order to make sure any effects that showed up were due to the sail, and that any benefit was measurable across the vessel’s operating profile.


In fact it behaved beautifully says Mr Riski: NAPA’s trial figures showed an average verified fuel savings of about 2.6% for a single rotor sail.


Norsepower and shipower Bore say that the full two-rotor system on MV Estraden is achieving a touch over 6.1% fuel savings overall or 367kW: cutting to the nitty gritty, Mr Riski says figures (worked with MGO at US$400 tonne) put the payback for an installation with two rotors at five years. He adds that 20% savings could be reached on the same route with a number of bigger rotors.
 

BooNZ

Banned
How so? The command failed to use the weapons at their disposal as effectively as they could have.
The German Navy came very close to knocking the British out of the war - the German OTL use of weapons available (less the USW) would have likely sufficed, if the US had remained neutral.

Britain in WW1 had ample supplies of black coal, the economy basically ran in it, much of the RN used coal to a large extent as well. Reducing oil supplies will hurt but won't bring Britain to the negotiating table.
I respectfully disagree.

The British started the war in 1914 with a scarcity (if not a shortage) of dedicated fuel tankers, which progressively got worse through the war. Based on trends from 1914 the declining British naval fuel reserves were projected to be exhausted before the end of 1917. Even after the US entry into the war, the army fuel reserves were down to a few weeks by mid 1917. New dedicated fuel tankers were scheduled to come on line some time in 1918, so the obvious remedy to correct a mischief with origins in 1914, would take effect after the crisis had already passed. Ultimately OTL the mischief was remedied by introducing the use of double hulled vessels to carry fuel during 1917.

The above remedy was not explicitly reliant on the entry of the US, but the access to greater shipping resources did facilitate the alternative use of double hulled vessels. The British war effort had resulted in a number of ongoing problems that were projected to reach crisis during 1917. Technically, the remedy for most of those crises could have been remedied without US intervention, but given those potential crises developed while the British had access to finance, assuming appropriate solutions would be identified in an environment of absolute scarcity is rather optimistic.

OTL Entente decision making appeared to improve after it gained access to vast US resources and finance, probably because the Entente could afford to explore all potential solutions simultaneously. In an environment of scarcity (i.e. no new US funding) the Entente would need to make effective decisions on what not to do. Up until the US entry, a comparatively free spending and solvent Entente had repeatedly decided against convoys and effective management of naval fuel reserves. If Britain was to survive 1917, its decision making would need to improve on earlier years.

In contrast, a neutral US means the British blockade remains more porous, Imperial Russia falls a few weeks earlier and Germans are not quite as desperate.
 
a chippy but honourable campaign at sea would favorably influence neutral opinion.

I wholeheartedly agree. The abandoning of any pretence of contesting the sea if favour of sneak attacks on defenceless merchantmen made them look like underhand arseholes.

In December 1915 a force of German cruisers did a sweep up into the Skaggerak and conducted boarding and searching of a bunch of merchant ships. From what I can tell this was a very rare occurrence but really they should have been trying to do it all the time, whenever they could get away with it.

Similarly the handful of actions in the south of the North Sea after Jutland is both useful to disrupt British shipping and show that they not just a bunch of underhanded sneaks.
 
I wholeheartedly agree. The abandoning of any pretence of contesting the sea if favour of sneak attacks on defenceless merchantmen made them look like underhand arseholes.

In December 1915 a force of German cruisers did a sweep up into the Skaggerak and conducted boarding and searching of a bunch of merchant ships. From what I can tell this was a very rare occurrence but really they should have been trying to do it all the time, whenever they could get away with it.

Similarly the handful of actions in the south of the North Sea after Jutland is both useful to disrupt British shipping and show that they not just a bunch of underhanded sneaks.

I reread Strachan's take on the mess that was German naval strategy. Shit flows downhill, and the problem was with the Kaiser as the head of the navy. He liked divide and rule and treating his navy as a toy, and the fighting between different commands and departments, especially Tirpitz's Machevellian tendencies, made it even worse, such that by 1915 German strategy was squabbling, few ideas, and inertia. Ultimately, the fault was Tirpitz's, as the fleet he built had no strategic purpose in a war with Britain (his Risk Fleet thinking being nonsense, this the undeterrable Royal Navy after all). With no coherent chain of command to impose a new doctrine in the face of superior numbers and a fleet tailored to short ranged operations in a mostly abandoned sea, the drift of the surface forces into inaction seems inevitable.

On the raider front the big obstacle seems to have been the perception that these missions were suicide. Yet, it was the HSF itself that held to a doctrine of suicidal conduct when one or few vessels were caught by superior force. There was a demonstrated alternative - the Konigsberg and Dresden and in 1939 the Graf Spee, all destroyed, but none of the crews engaging Spee-like heroics to demonstrate personal honor. Enough cases of crews becoming POW's rather than killed in some hopeless last stand would have eased the perception of raiding tactics as suicide.
 
I reread Strachan's take on the mess that was German naval strategy. Shit flows downhill, and the problem was with the Kaiser as the head of the navy. He liked divide and rule and treating his navy as a toy, and the fighting between different commands and departments, especially Tirpitz's Machevellian tendencies, made it even worse, such that by 1915 German strategy was squabbling, few ideas, and inertia. Ultimately, the fault was Tirpitz's, as the fleet he built had no strategic purpose in a war with Britain (his Risk Fleet thinking being nonsense, this the undeterrable Royal Navy after all). With no coherent chain of command to impose a new doctrine in the face of superior numbers and a fleet tailored to short ranged operations in a mostly abandoned sea, the drift of the surface forces into inaction seems inevitable.

On the raider front the big obstacle seems to have been the perception that these missions were suicide. Yet, it was the HSF itself that held to a doctrine of suicidal conduct when one or few vessels were caught by superior force. There was a demonstrated alternative - the Konigsberg and Dresden and in 1939 the Graf Spee, all destroyed, but none of the crews engaging Spee-like heroics to demonstrate personal honor. Enough cases of crews becoming POW's rather than killed in some hopeless last stand would have eased the perception of raiding tactics as suicide.

Yes. For all its faults the Riskflotte strategy among other things did cause Germany to build a powerful fleet, once it was built it was incumbent on the German leadership to use it in pursuit of victory. I really don't think the Germans gave the Riskflotte and Klienkreig strategies a fair shake in WW1, due to the interplay of the atrocious command structure and a couple of early setbacks off Texel and Heligoland Bight.

Funnily enough Germany did have a decent command structure in the form of the Imperial Naval High Command between 1889 and 1899. The Admiral in this position commanded all the ships and shore stations under the (political) direction of the Kaiser, the same as the Commander of the Heer. However as part of the machinations surrounding the First Naval Law the High Command was disbanded and the Kaiser took direct command of the navy, the idea being the Admiral staff would go from an advisory body in peacetime to a High Command in wartime. Tirpitz supported this as it gave more power to the Navy Office in peacetime but raised the possibility that command could be rearranged in wartime around him. As it happed neither reshuffle occured and German naval command remained an unproductive shitfight throughout the war.

It would be an interesting PoD if the High Command position was retained after 1899 or the Admiralstab automatically became the professional head of the Navy with command responsibility upon the outbreak of war.
 
Yes. For all its faults the Riskflotte strategy among other things did cause Germany to build a powerful fleet, once it was built it was incumbent on the German leadership to use it in pursuit of victory. I really don't think the Germans gave the Riskflotte and Klienkreig strategies a fair shake in WW1, due to the interplay of the atrocious command structure and a couple of early setbacks off Texel and Heligoland Bight.

I'm a bigger fan of Kleinkreig than Riskflotte, but I think you have a point with both. In 1915, before the QE's were available but after the Konigs were in commission, to take the HSF out and fight the Grand Fleet directly to test the premise of Risk Fleet tactics. But, also, to have an escape plan to get to Germany if things went wrong. For example, the HSF tactics with submarines was to place them far ahead of the fleet in hopes of causing attrition before a battle. But if a true Risk Fleet battle were contemplated then at least some of the submarines would need to held some distance behind the HSF in order to form a patrol line over which the HSF could retreat over if needing to flee. Picture a line of perhaps 15 submarines maybe 20 miles wide and on the surface unless forced to submerge by approach RN warships. Assuming contact could be broken, a bad Risk Fleet outcome might be half a dozen dreadnoughts sunk for maybe 2-3 RN dreadnoughts lost. This was a tolerable result if once and never again. OTOH, a good Risk Fleet battle might see half a dozen British dreadnoughts sunk for 2-3 Germans. That outcome could find a repeat of the tactic. (Scheer had no choice, of course, to retreat at Jutland given tactical circumstances, but his willingness to reverse course and advance on the GF suggests that at least for a moment there was the idea of testing the Risk Fleet tactics).

Funnily enough Germany did have a decent command structure in the form of the Imperial Naval High Command between 1889 and 1899. The Admiral in this position commanded all the ships and shore stations under the (political) direction of the Kaiser, the same as the Commander of the Heer. However as part of the machinations surrounding the First Naval Law the High Command was disbanded and the Kaiser took direct command of the navy, the idea being the Admiral staff would go from an advisory body in peacetime to a High Command in wartime. Tirpitz supported this as it gave more power to the Navy Office in peacetime but raised the possibility that command could be rearranged in wartime around him. As it happed neither reshuffle occured and German naval command remained an unproductive shitfight throughout the war.

Tough to unravel the threads of failure without a lot more reading. I assign blame to Tirpitz but the coastal defense mentality was widespread in the German navy before the war - perhaps it would have taken an exceptional personality such as a Churchill or Fisher, to have broken this mould and moved thinking to where Germany needed it to be. That being said, I think Tirpitz was too wedded to an unproven (and somewhat questionable) theory and should have taken a more agnostic view by building a more flexible fleet more capable of adapting longer ranged missions, or in smaller task forces, with less emphasis on big Jutland style gun battles, and less reliance on dreadnoughts in general.

It would be an interesting PoD if the High Command position was retained after 1899 or the Admiralstab automatically became the professional head of the Navy with command responsibility upon the outbreak of war.

Without Tirpitz my impression is that the German navy would have been more innovative technically and gone to larger calibre guns sooner. Whether they'd have fallen into the "21kt North Sea ship" trap, I still think so.

One big question was the priority given to completing the Kiel Canal - I think I remember reading the cost of expanding it was as much as 3 dreadnoughts. I think the Germans would have been better off spending that money on cruisers and submarines, and making sure the Danes did not mine the Belts so that the fleet could go to the Baltic via the long way if necessary. (Yes, the British could also use the Belts in that case, but I think the Germans could have been able to place their defensive minefields outside the Belts in international waters off Kiel and still barred the RN entering the Baltic).
 
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I'm a bigger fan of Kleinkreig than Riskflotte, but I think you have a point with both. In 1915, before the QE's were available but after the Konigs were in commission, to take the HSF out and fight the Grand Fleet directly to test the premise of Risk Fleet tactics. But, also, to have an escape plan to get to Germany if things went wrong. For example, the HSF tactics with submarines was to place them far ahead of the fleet in hopes of causing attrition before a battle. But if a true Risk Fleet battle were contemplated then at least some of the submarines would need to held some distance behind the HSF in order to form a patrol line over which the HSF could retreat over if needing to flee. Picture a line of perhaps 15 submarines maybe 20 miles wide and on the surface unless forced to submerge by approach RN warships. Assuming contact could be broken, a bad Risk Fleet outcome might be half a dozen dreadnoughts sunk for maybe 2-3 RN dreadnoughts lost. This was a tolerable result if once and never again. OTOH, a good Risk Fleet battle might see half a dozen British dreadnoughts sunk for 2-3 Germans. That outcome could find a repeat of the tactic. (Scheer had no choice, of course, to retreat at Jutland given tactical circumstances, but his willingness to reverse course and advance on the GF suggests that at least for a moment there was the idea of testing the Risk Fleet tactics).

I think they're different, Riskflotte is a political/diplomatic strategic justification to expand the navy rather than battle/campaign tactics. KlienKrieg is an actual campaign strategy of chipping away at the enemy in order to weaken him. While Riskflotte theory didn't work on the face of it, Britain did abandon their splendid isolation and closely tie themselves with France and Japan and less so with Russia. On the other hand KlienKrieg was only tried in a half-arsed way because of the shit KM command structure, the likes of bombardments of Britain and the minelaying operation that lead to Dogger Bank are KlienKrieg but after Dogger Bank it was virtually abandoned apart of USW until Scheer came along and did a few HSF sorties in 1916 and sent destroyers to Flanders.

As for the placement of uboats, I was under the impression they were there as warning pickets and to sink and damaged ships on their way back. By late 1916 they were commanded from the HSF at sea when supporting HSF operations.

Tough to unravel the threads of failure without a lot more reading. I assign blame to Tirpitz but the coastal defense mentality was widespread in the German navy before the war - perhaps it would have taken an exceptional personality such as a Churchill or Fisher, to have broken this mould and moved thinking to where Germany needed it to be. That being said, I think Tirpitz was too wedded to an unproven (and somewhat questionable) theory and should have taken a more agnostic view by building a more flexible fleet more capable of adapting longer ranged missions, or in smaller task forces, with less emphasis on big Jutland style gun battles, and less reliance on dreadnoughts in general.

Given the widespread support for the navy in the Reichstag and with the Kaiser and other portions of society and the prevalence of Mahan's thinking I think another Navy Secretary would have done most of what Tirpitz did. Battleships were the arbiter of seapower, there is powerful logic behind building what every other country was building, otherwise the German cruiser force can't face even the Spanish battleships.

Without Tirpitz my impression is that the German navy would have been more innovative technically and gone to larger calibre guns sooner.

I don't know if that's either possible or needed. The first German BB classes had reciprocating engines, but had more efficient small-tube boilers, mitigating this to an extent so i don't know if they could have gone to turbines sooner. German guns are built on a different philosophy than British guns and built differently. German guns were 'built up' whereas British guns were 'wire wound', so German guns fired lighter shells at higher speeds from their longer guns whereas British guns fired heavier shells at lower speeds from their shorter (and heavier) guns. I don't think either is wrong; the Nelson and Rodney's 16" guns fired light, fast shells but the British at the time couldn't or didn't construct built-up guns so were stuck with big, slow shells.

As for the Belts, its a touch risky hoping the Danes won't mine the Belts and neither will the British. Even then a fleet or even detachment could be ambushed in the Skaggerak by a larger fleet when doing routine redeployments.
 

BooNZ

Banned
2.3 million tons sunk under cruiser rules in 1916, 6 million under USW in 1917, on pace for 3 million tons sunk under USW vs. convoys in 1918. Had the HSF not undertaken USW in 1917 and kept with cruiser rules, probably 2.3 - 3 million tons sunk in 1917 with cruiser rules. IE, much better than war with the US.
The Germans had increased tempo prior to the introduction of the USW - of the 2.3 million tons sunk under crusier rules in 1916, over a million tons were sunk in the last quarter (3 months) of 1916, which is similar to the shipping sunk in the last quarter of 1917.
 
The Germans had increased tempo prior to the introduction of the USW - of the 2.3 million tons sunk under crusier rules in 1916, over a million tons were sunk in the last quarter (3 months) of 1916, which is similar to the shipping sunk in the last quarter of 1917.

Wow, that I did not know. That suggests that the 1917 campaign would have been more like 4 million tons sunk if by cruiser rules and no US involvement!
 
I think they're different, Riskflotte is a political/diplomatic strategic justification to expand the navy rather than battle/campaign tactics. KlienKrieg is an actual campaign strategy of chipping away at the enemy in order to weaken him. While Riskflotte theory didn't work on the face of it, Britain did abandon their splendid isolation and closely tie themselves with France and Japan and less so with Russia. On the other hand KlienKrieg was only tried in a half-arsed way because of the shit KM command structure, the likes of bombardments of Britain and the minelaying operation that lead to Dogger Bank are KlienKrieg but after Dogger Bank it was virtually abandoned apart of USW until Scheer came along and did a few HSF sorties in 1916 and sent destroyers to Flanders.

I agree that of the two strategies, commerce warfare was the more sustainable and feasible. But, if trying the strategy of decisive battle, at some point the HSF had to sail out and accept battle at 2:3 odds and see what happened. If what happened was that they started to lose, there had to be some sort of plan to break contact and get back to port. Submarines in a line behind the HSF and sea mines that could be dumped into the sea to prevent direct pursuit come to mind as two possibilities, (along with TB swarm attacks as a third).

As for the placement of uboats, I was under the impression they were there as warning pickets and to sink and damaged ships on their way back. By late 1916 they were commanded from the HSF at sea when supporting HSF operations.

As for the Belts, its a touch risky hoping the Danes won't mine the Belts and neither will the British. Even then a fleet or even detachment could be ambushed in the Skaggerak by a larger fleet when doing routine redeployments.

My understanding is that the Dutch wanted to mine the Belts and the Germans wanted them to as well. But, I don't think the German navy was better off with the Belts mined. I think it was more advantageous that the Belts remained unmined, because the German offensive potential out of the Baltic was better than the British into it.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I wholeheartedly agree. The abandoning of any pretence of contesting the sea if favour of sneak attacks on defenceless merchantmen made them look like underhand arseholes.

In December 1915 a force of German cruisers did a sweep up into the Skaggerak and conducted boarding and searching of a bunch of merchant ships. From what I can tell this was a very rare occurrence but really they should have been trying to do it all the time, whenever they could get away with it.

Similarly the handful of actions in the south of the North Sea after Jutland is both useful to disrupt British shipping and show that they not just a bunch of underhanded sneaks.

Not enough cruisers to sustain this type of operation. Sure the Germans could do it more, but sustained action of this kind mean attrition versus the Royal Navy that means this type of operation stops.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I reread Strachan's take on the mess that was German naval strategy. Shit flows downhill, and the problem was with the Kaiser as the head of the navy. He liked divide and rule and treating his navy as a toy, and the fighting between different commands and departments, especially Tirpitz's Machevellian tendencies, made it even worse, such that by 1915 German strategy was squabbling, few ideas, and inertia. Ultimately, the fault was Tirpitz's, as the fleet he built had no strategic purpose in a war with Britain (his Risk Fleet thinking being nonsense, this the undeterrable Royal Navy after all). With no coherent chain of command to impose a new doctrine in the face of superior numbers and a fleet tailored to short ranged operations in a mostly abandoned sea, the drift of the surface forces into inaction seems inevitable.

The risk fleet made perfect sense. The UK war plans starting about 1907 or so were to attack the German Coast with amphibious operations. The Risk Fleet was a counter to this strategy that was 100% successful IOTL. The UK never serious threatened the German Coast and the Baltic Sea was a German Lake. It just happened that this fleet which was less than half the tonnage of the Royal Navy could not over come both the much larger surface fleet of the UK and its superior network of bases.

You have the causality backwards. It was not the Germans built a fleet and then the UK reacted. The UK practice invading the German coast, and the Germans then built a fleet. The fact the UK did the war games before the Germans had a navy capable of defending the German coast much less threatening the UK coast scientifically falsifies the position that the Risk Fleet cause UK hostility. The order of events is hugely important in determining causality.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Wow, that I did not know. That suggests that the 1917 campaign would have been more like 4 million tons sunk if by cruiser rules and no US involvement!

The sinking rate did not vary a lot by being on cruiser rules versus USW rules. The independent variable is number of subs on merchant patrol, and it so happens when the rules went to USW, more subs were sent out to sink merchant ships and fewer were hunting warships.

It is also worth pointing out that at no time did the Germans just use USW rules or just use cruiser rules. And there were areas such as north of Crete where USW was used the entire war and it created no problem. The USW issue in American came from two cause not closely related to how the subs approached ships. One was the tendency to print articles in the paper describing how USW was going to be done, the other was sinkings of a small group of ships likely to have a lot of American crews and/or civilians such as passenger liners.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Are there any figures on the 'sharpened' uboat campaign of early 1916?

German Submarine Warfare 1914-1918
in the Eyes of
British Intelligence

Looking further along in 1915: the tonnage sunk per patrol day shows no
correlation with the tactic used - torpedoed without warning or not. An able
commander and his well-trained crew, a good boat, good weather and visibility, and
good luck produced very different numbers.50. The same tendency can be seen for
results obtained in the Mediterranean, where better weather conditions and
visibility, much weaker defence forces, and generally less neutrals simply offered
more favourable sinking possibilities for the submarines. ...

A typical day of the first unrestricted submarine warfare in 1915, with 4
submarines cruising around the British Isles. This was not yet regarded as a deadly
menace in Great Britain. It seemed merely as a domestic German propaganda bluff,
to distract from the inactivity of the battleship fleet. ...

Again, it can be clearly seen in the Mediterranean: there was no correlation in
the sinking results between restricted and unrestricted warfare. ...

Viewing the 26 boats available during March 1916 and the average 7 on patrol
per day then, one can only characterise this statement by one of the leading
German Navy officers as phantasm, as pure wish-thinking. The highest level of
decision-making in Germany was based on ignoring reality.
The relative number of boats on Merchant War Patrol was not very high,
some 25-27% of those available were used in the Atlantic. The Mediterranean
boats, constantly growing in numbers, suffered from insufficient dockyard
capabilities for repairs and maintenance in 1916 and later.
The unrestricted submarine warfare had to be stopped in April, after the
sinking of the SUSSEX under heavy American diplomatic pressure. From now on
it was clear to the German Government that further unrestricted warfare would
mean a total break with America and, very presumably, war with the USA. ...

And for the glory of the High Sea Fleet, Scheer had stopped the submarine
war in the Atlantic for over 5 months, from May to mid October 1916. Had the
submarines available in the North Sea continued restricted merchant warfare from
May to October 1916, then at least another 1 Mio. BRT of ships would have been
sunk.65 This could have been the last straw for Britain in April 1917. A nice present
from Scheer to England. ...


Why resort to unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, when it didn’t correlate
with a greater rate of sinkings, but chanced a breakout of war with America?
“[...] the deterrent effect on the neutral powers, which was an essential factor of the whole
plan. 69
The German Navy hoped to frighten the European neutrals – Norway,
Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands – from carrying on further commerce with
Britain by means of a brutal threat of destruction in a declared ‘war zone’ around
the British Isles. This alone would have decreased British imports/exports by 20-
30%. However, Britain more successfully blackmailed the neutrals to continue their
merchant trade by only releasing a neutral ship out for every neutral ship coming in.
And somehow the neutral shipping companies had to earn their revenues and
profits, and the skippers and the sailors their daily lives, even risking it. After some
weeks in February 1917 it was clear, that the German deterrence didn’t work. A
first miscalculation.
And there was never a ‘total’ unrestricted war. The ships of the Belgian Relief
Commission had to be spared in any case. There existed special agreements
between Germany and the European neutrals allowing them a certain amount of
trade with Britain in exchange for trading with German. Hospital ships were
generally spared. Passenger liners, un-armed allied vessels in the Mediterranean, or
certain neutrals like Spain were treated according to the actual diplomatic situation.
Submarine commanders at sea received a confusing stream of orders regarding
their actions.70

But why to break with America by unrestricted submarine warfare, why not
continue with restricted warfare?
Birnbaum called the period of decision-making in Germany between Dec.
1916 and Jan. 1917 [...] a race between peace and unrestricted warfare [...]”71
And this race took place in the highest military and civil circles in Germany.
At the end of 1916, President Wilson tried to mediate peace between the Allies and
Germany. The diplomatic negotiations between Germany and the USA ran all over
December and January 1917. The German Ambassador in Washington, Count
Bernstorff, was quite sure in January 1917, that peace negotiations with Wilson as
mediator could start very soon, within weeks.
 
The UK practice invading the German coast,

With what? XD

IIRC it was said that the German response would be to "send the police to arrest them".

It was not the Germans built a fleet and then the UK reacted. The UK practice invading the German coast, and the Germans then built a fleet.

German First Naval Law was 1897, so it is difficult to see how this was prompted by British war plans in 1907. The British interest in the Frisian Islands only really started in 1903.;)
 
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