What if Germany used it U-boats instead using them enforce blockade

Careful with that headbanging, it kills braincells :p
Lots of things kill brain-cells, reading anything suggesting that Merchant submarines are a viable peace-time investment is one of them.

What is so expensive about instead of building 25 battleships, you build 150-200 U-Boats.
Special training programs are needed, you can pull battleship crew from just about any ship, but submariners require special training.

They wouldnt be able to run everything through the blockade but hundreds of thousands of tons a year, easy.
Going by the performance of the Deutschland's first trip, you're getting no more than 10 trips a year per sub, which is only about 7,000-7,500 tons per sub per year. With a merchant fleet of perhaps 30, that equates to between 210,000 and 225,000 tons per years, as opposed to the SS Wartburg, which alone would bring in probably the same as any 3 subs (with a capacity in excess of 5,000 tons one run is about 2/3 a Deutschland's yearly average).

Compared to building a massive fleet and stationing it in harbor for most of the war, except for a few incursions.
Thing is though, those ships sitting in harbour were the only things keeping the British from wrecking said harbours.
 
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While a long run plan to build a sub merchant fleet might have material impact on the German ability to blockade run, I would imagine that is highly unlikely to ever happen outside of an ASB or madman situation.

To research, build then maintain such a fleet in normal peace time would be a huge committment and one that is incredibly hard to justify to tax payers or other stakeholders, unless one is planning a long, hard war.

There are going to be a lot of other, more influential people or groups with competing demands on those resources in the central government who would say exactly this.
 

sharlin

Banned
Also you'd need to overcome horrific technical issues, the desils of the time were not reliable, to make a big enough sub you massively affect its performance, IE Diving speed and performance.

You would also have the RN building a counter, they would notice the building and possibly figure out whats going on. And if you made the RN start focusing on anti-submarine warfare before the war you can bet it would be more dangerious to be a German submariner.
 
Also you'd need to overcome horrific technical issues, the desils of the time were not reliable, to make a big enough sub you massively affect its performance, IE Diving speed and performance.

You would also have the RN building a counter, they would notice the building and possibly figure out whats going on. And if you made the RN start focusing on anti-submarine warfare before the war you can bet it would be more dangerious to be a German submariner.
The British hugely underestimated the danger of armed submarines. Merchant submarines would be even more ridiculed (and with reason).
 

sharlin

Banned
But common sense (probably not applicable to the admiralty in the early 1900s) would make me look at this new merchant fleet and devising a counter to it.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Couldn't the Germans have switched from building surface vessels like cruisers etc., which they still did after the outbreak of war to building merchant subs, alongside having them built in neutral countries like the USA ? Also cancel any combat subs and build merchant ones instead. That should bring the numbers up nicely. I'm guessing they would start this after an "eureka" moment in late 1914, when they would realize the war is there to stay.

Secondly, instead of importing food, wouldn't it have made more sense to import critical materials like nitrates etc, which they severly lacked ?

Yes, you could switch to building more subs. If you look at my TL, I give my best estimate of what happens if you cancel most of the BB construction and switch to U-boat production. I chose ocean going, combat U-boats with a few merchant subs. I would say a absolute max case would be 100 merchant U-boats for year, and this is a bit of stretch. These ships only have 700 tons of capacity per ship, and they are slow. Now 70,000 tons sounds like a lot per cycle. But the British were using around 14,000,000 per cycle. There is just too many missing zeros.

Now all this being said, I think Merchant subs made sense for many powers, and Germany would have benefit from having a few 3-7 in the inventory at the start of the war, but then, there is the Catch-22. Change the war mindset the war plan changes. The doctrinal shift of "we need to prepare for a long war" has a much bigger impact than anything that can be done during the war that was not done. Lets do Nitrogen.

The had a process for making Nitrogen before the war, and built at least a second plant during the war. If there is a need for secure food production, used as a justification for merchant subs, then they obviously look at food. Fertilizer would come up, so why just not order enough nitrogen factories to be self sufficient in 1912, instead of this gimmick sub that is a partial solution. On the P & K fertilizer, one is available in Ma'an, Jordan near a rail road. Why not improve the track, and then make securing the transportation route. In 1912, why not sign a treaty with Romania/Bulgaria that food/fertilizer shipments will not interfered with. Now the little guys will want something, but that is international relations. Ok, we get to 1914, and did not do this for whatever reason. Why not build more nitrogen plants? What was the limiting resource? I bet I can increase nitrogen production by just ordering the 3rd plant in September 1914. And the blockade was looser, so I can probably bring in the item through Holland, Scandinavia, Italy or Greece. Also on food, it is important to understand what happened, and why Germany reacted slowly. As soon as they advance into Belgium and France, the Germans looted the cattle/pig herds. Food prices were lower than they had been in years. It was only heading into the late winter of 1915 that Germany begins to take food security seriously and starts on rationing. A step as simple as a food plan section of the war plan probably adds 20%-50% to the calories available in 1915.

As to the other one P/K and trace farming elements, why not just build a warehouse? Why not keep a famine food reserve of say 25% of the grain harvest?

And for the Eureka moment, it took over 12 months on most sub builds, some near 24 months. So if the Eureka was say June 1915, lets build 100 merchant subs, the 100 sub is not completed to June 1916, and the 200 sub somewhere in 1917, and this assume it is very near the #1 priority of the Reich.


Side note: Now how would I justify them prewar? Blockade running of high value items and what we would now call special operations. A steady supply of weapons to say the Irish or Zulu could make a lot of sense. As would raids to cut the communication network of the British. As would just raids along the coast of the British Islands to tie up forces. They did do some special operation type things, even with submarines, but they did not have the full special operation mindset. For example, the used sub to move supplies to Libya, with a much larger merchant sub, each trip could carry 10 times more gear/men. Who knows, maybe with better weapons and a few more Arab speaking officers, maybe the Arab revolt against the British goes better. I find them invaluable in an ATL, and I think the GHQ would have found them the same. Such as running supplies to German East Africa. A 1000 tons of guns/ammo per month would help them a lot down there.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
IT is interesting if you put a POD in early 1900's.

Germany specifically starts building large hulled subs that have no weapons and have both extended underwater capacity as well as minimal crew compliments.

If they design these subs as fast dive large containers that are specifically designed only for:

Cargo size

Fast dive

Deep dive

Durability underwater


And they focus on building these instead of a large surface merchant fleet knowing that in war said fleet would be pointless anyway and focus on building smaller U Boats specifically as their equivelenat of a surface navy.

That would make an entirely different WW1

I went through several different POD before I started my TL. I had to work real hard to keep the butterflies manageable with a 14 year leadup. Lets go through your ideas.

1) Merchant subs. As in an earlier post, I can see a few large subs being built as test vehicles. Any more than this requires a doctrine shift which is either
A) Plan for long war, see post above
B) Special forces command - Now this would be a fun POD, but might have to be in the ASB section. I can see a test forces of a few hundred elite naval infantry trying to learn before the war. If we go to a fleet of large submarines, I now have many regiments of Navy Seals. Lots of fun, but probably best in ASB section of forum. You can make almost many ASB scenario realistic, but it takes a lot of work. I had to go 14 years early to move "want Germany to have twice as many subs, wave ASB" to "Germany has a U-boat fleet twice as effective as WW1 OTL.)

2) Fast Dive/Deep Dive - There were no depth charges, no real anti-sub weapons for surface ships in 1910. You are building expensive counter measures for weapons that don't exist.

3) The surface merchant fleet made a big profit, that is why it exists. Also, it could have been much better used with a plan. I think you are confusing the Navy did not have a realistic war plan with these ships were worthless. AMC were very useful, and with a real war plan, instead of having less than 20 for the entire war, the German Navy could have open with 100's of them and fortified ports to base them out of around the world. Look at my TL to see what I think AMC can do in large numbers. And my TL is far from a max effort AMC. I believe not only defending the African colonies would be likely, but I believe the knock of South Africa out of the war is quite possible. In the time before aircraft carriers and long range, land base naval aviation, an AMC escort by an U-boat or two is a quite powerful weapon that is dirt cheap. Most things that can handle it are either very vulnerable to U-boats or too short range to get to the AMC in the open sea lanes.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Careful with that headbanging, it kills braincells :p

Instead of building "High Seas Fleet" they build U-Boats and in peacetime run the convoy subs on the surface like any other ship.

What is so expensive about instead of building 25 battleships, you build 150-200 U-Boats. They wouldnt be able to run everything through the blockade but hundreds of thousands of tons a year, easy. Unlike the surface merchant fleet which was a deadweight the second any war with the UK started anyway.

Ignore most of the surface fleet, dont try to compete with UK or France in terms of surface ships. Focus on U-Boats and being 3rd strongest naval power in europe on paper and able to effectively go around the UK blockade of Germany as well as actually blockade UK is a sound plan. Compared to building a massive fleet and stationing it in harbor for most of the war, except for a few incursions.

You are doing apples to orange. Merchant fleet was private, warships were public. No sane businessman is going to build merchant sub convoy.

The High Seas fleet did protect the German North Sea Coast and did largely control the Baltic for the duration of the war. It just failed to live up the beat the UK part or break the blockade. With any BB, the British are likely shelling the German coast, and many German division will be needed to guard the long North Sea/Baltic coast to prevent amphibious operations.

I think it is closer to 25 U-boats per budget of one Dreadnought. Now Germany would have been better if it spend more of its Naval budget on submarines, and had a few less high end BB. The biggest reason would be less tension with the UK prewar. And the Germans would have a more useful, flexible fleet. But it had to have surface ships too. It is not an all or nothing type decision. All U-boats or all BB.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Also you'd need to overcome horrific technical issues, the desils of the time were not reliable, to make a big enough sub you massively affect its performance, IE Diving speed and performance.

You would also have the RN building a counter, they would notice the building and possibly figure out whats going on. And if you made the RN start focusing on anti-submarine warfare before the war you can bet it would be more dangerious to be a German submariner.

The UK had twice as many subs as the Germans, and the Germans only had 10% of the sub world wide. Germany likely could have built a larger fleet and not gotten any major reaction from the UK. Maybe up to even tripling the size of its fleet due to RN doctrine. The RN believe weaker powers would built sub/torpedo boats and great naval powers built Battleships. In a perverse way, a massive building program of U-boat by Germany would have likely made the RN feel safer, not more threatened, especially if it appeared Germany was partially giving up on the BB race.
 
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