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

I would agree with the premise that a starvation strategy is viable and is indeed the only realistic one for the Germans in either world war but this thread has turned in a caricature of trying to argue that said starvation strategy is easy. When in fact it was far from easy and very resource and personnel intensive with enormous attrition rates among those personnel, something like 75% did not return from their last patrol in World War 2.

In WW2, resources needed for a succesful starvation strategy via U-boat and surface offensive are insufficient - unless the war goes on and on as UK-Nazi Germany fight, and even then it would take years. There's no way Germany can knock out Britain out of the war before DEC 1941. If by hook and crook the US stays neutral, not giving lend lease and credit, Britain is knocked out financially rather than by starvation. If the US goes in a lend lease approach, there's no way Germany can realistically knock out British sea lines of communication.

More viable strategy would be to invest more in Luftwaffe and just enough in Kriegsmarine to keep the convoying going on, with perhaps a tint to littoral warfare in British East Coast. Luftwffe could bomb ports, though. The German resources invested in Kriegsmarine were rather large and mere numbers do not tell all the tale as the Kriegsmarine sucked some of the best manpower and best industrial efforts.
 
They also had no plans to mass produce aircraft carriers. It goes against the RN building plan. The RN always did some test work, then would generally stop. Since the RN could build ships much faster, the RN then wanted others to pay most of the development cost. The RN could then rapidly catch up. Also the last thing the RN wanted was something like CV meaning their BB were no longer as useful.

This isn't supported by contemporary history. They didn't seem to have any qualms about obsoleting every other battleship with Dreadnought, then raising the stakes repeatedly with the Orions, QEs, Hood (however flawed!) and the G3s. If you're thinking that the idea of the dreadnought was floating about, and the first US dreadnought was laid down first, and only then did the RN respond, then your argument is still undermined by a) the RN-driven obsolescence of the armoured cruiser by the dreadnought armoured cruiser and its battle cruiser successors, and by the failure of the other countries to gain any actual advantage from the RN's "tardiness". It also isn't supported by the actual history of the aircraft carrier, where it was Britain who led development and incurred most of the development costs, in terms of figuring out what worked, in the 1920s.

An absence of plans to build carriers therefore reflects not RN grand strategy, but, presumably, an assessment of Fleet needs (battle-line-centric), the (limited) capabilities of naval aircraft, and their (poorly understood) contribution to ASW.
 
For the OP are you looking at the ground situation not changing? I know it has been mentioned earlier but WWI Germany could do better on the blockade if they can push further along the coast for naval bases closer to the Atlantic, that and also forcing the barrage and mine laying to be stretched further (read either thinner or more resources dedicated to it).

The effect of more naval bases to sortie from even if they keep the same tempo as OTL is going to force the RN to be at see more often patrolling and I recall from OTL they had to ask the Americans not to send any dreadnought squadrons initially due to low fuel reserves. Anything forcing the RN to cruise more is going to make that situation worse.

Plus with WWI if you can sink or damage the RN BC and fast BB then German BC can launch raids against shipping and the distant blockade assuming ports in the channel. At that point German BC against RN cruisers is not a good matchup for the RN. So at that point you can have both U boats and BC conducting a partial blockade of UK which can only make the situation worse.
 
It is not ASB. Generally speaking it is the official war plan of the RN from the 1906-1914 time frame. Sometimes the plan was to invade Jutland or the German coastline. IOTL, the BEF moved to Belgium before the RN could get approval to execute its plans, and without an army, you can't invade. For whatever reasons, the Sea Lords did not feel the need to get its war plans approved by the cabinet prewar. My guess is the Sea Lords just assumed the PM would do what the Sea Lords recommended come war.

OK but it being a plan at some point (and there are always lots of plans) doesn't mean the RM are going to do it in unfavourable circumstances and get themselves conveniently sunk for this TL.


I'm not saying such an attack is likely: just that it's not ASB if the right set of circumstances play out. One critical factor for allowing the HSF to remain a fully concentrated Fleet in Being in Whilhelmshaven is the fact that it allows the Germans to have their entire fleet (which is superior in designs for tactical engagements close to home waters relative to the British, albet at the cost of crew comfort and cruising endurance) to be in the condition to strike out at once, while the Royal Navy needs to spread out and cycle to maintain the distant blockade. If the Germans manage to get in a fewer minor successful attacks on elements of the blockade by sailing out in force before retiring back to refit,then you could very well cause worry by the First Sea Lord and naval brass that there's a risk of the Home Fleet getting reduced in detail to unacceptable margins if they don't change tactics. At the very least, give them a reason to be worry of sailing too far afield. This could very well lead to an overconfident blunder or bad luck in an effort to draw the Germans into a more decisive showdow, sailing in closer to coastal craft range than they ought to or getting out manuvered.

Or the RN just keeps the KM bottled up in the baltic, the blockade isn't really that distant it's a relatively easy thing for the RN to do. Cycling isn't an issue because the RN is so much larger than ateh KM. The KM doing small scale sorties against the blockade risks getting destroyed in small amounts. The RN has far greater numbers than the KM so can absorb the loses better. Look at the Jut, by the numbers the KM wins that hands down, but what was the actual result they went home and stayed home while Germany starved!


As for the raiding, I wasn't talking about the inflow of goods. I was talking about the flow of British goods domestically via commercial craft up and down the eastern seaboard. If I recall correctly, that played a pretty big roll in internal logistics.

Not really we have roads, and a whole other seaboard. Don't get me wrong ATL it might have an effect but the reality is if the KM get's to a position where it controls the Eastern coast of Britain, then Britain's got a bigger problem than lack of access to Hartlepool

First, if you go full convoy, you lose roughly 1/3 of capacity. This is hidden IOTL due to the American merchant fleet arriving. The whole key is key is to avoid the USA entering the war. Easy in WW1. Extremely hard in WW2.

And even with convoy, losses don't go to zero, they just go down.

The Entente winning WW1 was a big upset, so merchant warfare can break the UK.

Merchant warfare only happens if the KM beats the RN and there is no sign of that happening. Moreover merchant warfare is what bring America into the war so you are basically done either way.
 
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Even more importantly a submerged U-boat has a much lower observable horizon and is thus likely to miss ships entirely a surfaced hunter would have detected. These numbers add up.

Yep there is I think a bit of a myth about how deadly U-boats were In WW2 and certainly in WW1.
 
What is routinely ignored is the occupation of the continent by any european power effectively blockades Britain from 100% european trade,


Right and while that is an economic concern in peace time (and why Britain does it's best to prevent a European hegemony), it sort stops being relevant when Europe is largely at war with itself including Britain i.e european trade is already pretty disrupted!




even before said european power dips its toes into blue waters. Britain is forced to access almost all its imports across oceans and most of its colonies (and friendly dominions) are even further away. .



Right but by 1918 Britain has just spent best part of two centuries creating a system to not only do that but profit by it. Also you say forced, but what it actually mean is Britain has other avenues for trade that say central european powers fighting on east, south and west fronts and being blockaded in the north, don't have.


Britain is has to fund higher prices, fund additional transport/ transaction costs, and fund the additional costs of the war. While half its available resources are dedicated to fighting a war, it will struggle to raise export currency to pay the price of war to profiteers. .

everything get tougher and more expensive in war it's true, but again it snot like german was saying "Whew thank god we're completely cut from trade i'd hate to think how much we'd be paying for grain on the open market right now"

If Britian stood alone (including with the dregs of empire), Britain would have fallen. However, the reality was the British war effort in both wars was ultimately propped up by American commercial interests.

It's dregs of empire in 1918:

Riseandfall1.PNG


I mean yeah, blink and you'd miss it!
 
Not really, as once the RN sucks it up and adopts convoy, unrestricted submarine warfare falls apart.

The German navy in 1918 was on pace to sink 3 million tons of shipping at the point they called off their U-boat war - and that was with convoys. Not sufficient to dent Anglo-American production, true, but hardly a total that is "falling apart" either.
 
WW1 U boats are killers but not the deadly killers of WW2, they are in comparison , small, coastal , having limited underwater abilities and few torpedoes ( many kills were by deck gun ). With ASDIC and air coverage (a lot of blimps and sea planes ) , convoys were a lot harder to attack in WW1 ( Room 40 reading the U-boats orders most of the time did not help either )

By the summer of 1918 I seem to recall that over half of all U-boat attacks were made on the surface at night. This was, of course, countered by radar, which in 1918 would have been available in sufficient quantities and quality a mere 24 years later.
 
While the WW2 300 submarine rule was calculated on WW1 numbers, there are issues with the rest of your post. Convoying reduces shipping capacity by about 1/3 even if nothing is ever sunk. There are only two errors related to the 300 ship rule. The Nazi did not start with the 300 submarines and the WW1 calculation is based on the USA not being in the war, i.e. doesn't have the USA spamming out merchant shipping.

As a part of my ATL, I went back and calculated these numbers using British records. 300 U-boats at the start of WW1 would have quickly broken the back of the UK ability to fight, and cause a German win.

BTW, you have to start your modeling with historical data, so the Nazi had to prepare plans based on WW1 data.

First mention I see yet that American production of 16 million tons in 1943 alone might have had something to do with it. You get a like. Lotta posts about the effect of convoys in 1917, but US intervention was the decisive factor in both wars.
 
By the summer of 1918 I seem to recall that over half of all U-boat attacks were made on the surface at night. This was, of course, countered by radar, which in 1918 would have been available in sufficient quantities and quality a mere 24 years later.
And exactly where did I mention use of radar? If you are going to attempt to do putdown's at least read what was written. Everything I mentioned was in use in 1918 OTL, the limited time the boats could submerge meaning they could not hide as well during the day and hence preyed mainly on stragglers and ships traveling outside the convoy system.
 
For the OP are you looking at the ground situation not changing? I know it has been mentioned earlier but WWI Germany could do better on the blockade if they can push further along the coast for naval bases closer to the Atlantic, that and also forcing the barrage and mine laying to be stretched further (read either thinner or more resources dedicated to it).

The simplest move the Germans could make to improve their lot in the sea war in WW1 was to not have pursued the French south of Paris in late August 1914, but instead to have used 1st Army to take Amiens and won the race to the sea before it began. The other thing - more risky - was to have occupied the south bank of the Scheldt (ie, Terneuzen) so that Antwerp could become a fleet base. That, however, could backfire if the Netherlands declared war.
 
The German navy in 1918 was on pace to sink 3 million tons of shipping at the point they called off their U-boat war - and that was with convoys. Not sufficient to dent Anglo-American production, true, but hardly a total that is "falling apart" either.

When the German command called an end to USW on 24th Oct 1918 it was because losses to Uboats had become unsustainable - with sinkings of shipping (there was still a lot of unescorted/unconvoyed ships) in 1918 less than half the monthly totals of 1917. And the main result of all this USW was creating more enemies making winning the war even harder. Yes the Uboats were still sinking ships but the strategy had failed hard with regards to its principle goal.
 
Merchant warfare only happens if the KM beats the RN and there is no sign of that happening. Moreover merchant warfare is what bring America into the war so you are basically done either way.

When the Twins sortied into the Atlantic in 1940 on a successful merchant shipping raid, had the KM beaten the RN in order for them to do that, or did they simply ignore the RN and just went and did it?
 
The simplest move the Germans could make to improve their lot in the sea war in WW1 was to not have pursued the French south of Paris in late August 1914, but instead to have used 1st Army to take Amiens and won the race to the sea before it began. The other thing - more risky - was to have occupied the south bank of the Scheldt (ie, Terneuzen) so that Antwerp could become a fleet base. That, however, could backfire if the Netherlands declared war.

Yes but that only makes sense in hindsight - capture/invest Paris and everyone is home by Christmas!
 
And exactly where did I mention use of radar? If you are going to attempt to do putdown's at least read what was written. Everything I mentioned was in use in 1918 OTL, the limited time the boats could submerge meaning they could not hide as well during the day and hence preyed mainly on stragglers and ships traveling outside the convoy system.

You stated that attacking convoys were "a lot harder" to attack in WW1, meaning presumably, harder than attacking convoys in WW2. The problem in WW1 was U-boat tactics and doctrine from the fall of 1917 to the fall of 1918 - convoys presented different challenges that required different tactics, and the evolution of the U-boat arm to meet the challenge ran out of time about a year beforehand. The submarines themselves were not that much different. The big problem in WW2 was that once radar entered into it, the tactic of attacking on the surface at night after gathering ahead of the convoy no longer worked. So attacking convoys in WW2 was harder and more dangerous than in WW1.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
This isn't supported by contemporary history. They didn't seem to have any qualms about obsoleting every other battleship with Dreadnought, then raising the stakes repeatedly with the Orions, QEs, Hood (however flawed!) and the G3s. If you're thinking that the idea of the dreadnought was floating about, and the first US dreadnought was laid down first, and only then did the RN respond, then your argument is still undermined by a) the RN-driven obsolescence of the armoured cruiser by the dreadnought armoured cruiser and its battle cruiser successors, and by the failure of the other countries to gain any actual advantage from the RN's "tardiness". It also isn't supported by the actual history of the aircraft carrier, where it was Britain who led development and incurred most of the development costs, in terms of figuring out what worked, in the 1920s.

An absence of plans to build carriers therefore reflects not RN grand strategy, but, presumably, an assessment of Fleet needs (battle-line-centric), the (limited) capabilities of naval aircraft, and their (poorly understood) contribution to ASW.

Even on the BB, the more budgetary minded Admirals and Sea Lords had a great deal of qualms about making ships obsolete. In fact, you can see it in the entire Naval treaty strategy of the UK in the interwar years. And they had even more concerns about a new class of ships making an entire type of ship obsolete. And this fear was not irrational if one looks at the budget issues in the interwar years and the naval mutiny.

So yes, the UK did one big leap frog effort with the Dreadnought, but even then there were fears of budget issues. And the UK did everything possible to avoid high spending, that is why even in the prewar years the UK wants other countries to agree to naval ratio favorable to the UK. Take the UK 2 to 1 advantage it wanted from the Germans. Since the UK had more than twice the ship building capacity, it was physically impossible for the Germans to have a fleet more than half as big as the UK IF the UK spent the funds. So why was the UK so keen on the naval agreement with Imperial Germany? To avoid spending the funds.

As to the 1920's aircraft carrier, that does not refute my point about the 1912 aircraft carrier. The UK wanted another nation to pay most of the development costs. Once WW1 made the UK pay the development cost and learning curve of the first few carriers, then this budget logic went away by the 1920s.

You always start with limited budgets if you are an Admiral. Then these limits overlay strategy, politics, diplomacy, and a whole lot of other areas. You are figuratively looking at one chopped down tree (Dreadnought leap frog) and ignoring the other scores of trees still standing (choice to save budget by not advancing new technology). The UK focused on the main fleet, large number of smaller but proven cruisers and the like, and a good R&D department. The UK slashed heavily the new technology development department as a choice. If the modern USA DoD did the same thing, we would have Darpa. We might research anti-ballistic missile tech if cheap enough, but we would not deploy them. The US Air Force would have researched stealth technology but kept spamming out F-15 and wait for the Soviets to deploy the first stealth fighter.
 
By the summer of 1918 I seem to recall that over half of all U-boat attacks were made on the surface at night. This was, of course, countered by radar, which in 1918 would have been available in sufficient quantities and quality a mere 24 years later.

In the last nine months of the war, 37% of attacks in home waters were on the surface at night, and 67% in the Med. Yet, "in very few convoys was more than one ship sunk", suggesting that surface night attacks by single U-boats against convoy were of limited effectiveness. Hence the development of the wolf-pack for WW2.

The standard escort could handle single U-boats well enough; radar was required to defeat the wolf-packs rather than single boats.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
OK but it being a plan at some point (and there are always lots of plans) doesn't mean the RM are going to do it in unfavourable circumstances and get themselves conveniently sunk for this TL.


Merchant warfare only happens if the KM beats the RN and there is no sign of that happening. Moreover merchant warfare is what bring America into the war so you are basically done either way.

What stopped the RN from deploying its Baltic plans was the BEF was in Belgium before the RN gots its act together. If one looks at Gallipoli, the possible other landings on Turkey Med coast, Basra, East Africa, it is pretty clear the RN had an pro amphibious strategy.

Merchant warfare refers to sinking merchant shipping, and the German navy focused on that for about half the war. As I went over in other posts, it was under 10 sinkings that really angered the USA, and which ships these were was predictable. Also, again, the sinking rate did not decline if subs followed cruiser rules, i.e. let people go to life boats. And every month of the war, the Germans used USW in areas.

The data does not support your position.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
First mention I see yet that American production of 16 million tons in 1943 alone might have had something to do with it. You get a like. Lotta posts about the effect of convoys in 1917, but US intervention was the decisive factor in both wars.

How does that disagree with anything I wrote?
 
When the Twins sortied into the Atlantic in 1940 on a successful merchant shipping raid, had the KM beaten the RN in order for them to do that, or did they simply ignore the RN and just went and did it?

And did the twins defeat the entire British merchant Navy in one raid? basilly the occasional raid by the occasional ship is not a long term strategic naval plan.
 
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