BlondieBC
Banned
I only have Influence of Sea Power on History 1660-1783. I'd be interested in getting some of those other books too.
Read this.
Naval Strategy Compared and Contrasted ... A. T. Mahan. 1911
I use him as the least biased prewar expert. He is not trying to gain funding such as British or German Admirals would be trying.
If you go to page 129-130, you will see Mahan talk about how you can't supply surface ships. He talks about how SW Africa makes a good base for Germany in relation to raiding UK merchants. While Mahan tends to focus on USA/UK/Germany/Japan, the logic works well for a war against France. Again the key is the German attitudes and intentions, which the UK will see through over time. Place a lot of ships in German East Africa and constantly do drills that look like practicing cutting the Suez Canal will drive the UK crazy. Place ships where they can hurt France such as West Africa and the Pacific Islands (Rabual), and the UK can also accept some deployments in the Indian Ocean. To hurt the UK, i would want most of my forces in the Indian Ocean to deny access to India (Jewel of Empire) and Persian Gulf Oil. France lacks important colonies in the region, and to hurt France I need a much more West Africa/Pacific focus. Just imagine a WW1 type war, but with the UK neutral and the Germans having a major naval base in SWA or Kamerun. The French navy would have fits trying to neutralize cruisers and AMC operating out of these bases.
If you go to page 145, you will see Mahan praise mines as weapons to keep ports open. Page 146 talks about how you need coastal guns defending ports. Page 147/148 starts talking about torpedo ships (torpedo boats and U-boats). Submarines/torpedo boats are a weapons to keep cruisers away from ports to enable surface ships to get out of port. In other parts of the book he analysis the Russo-Japanese war, so the lessons should be obvious about Tsingtao. It was screaming for U-boats and torpedo boats. So one very easy solution that the Kaiser would love is for the German Navy to send existing ships (6 U-boats and 6 newer torpedo boats) to Tsingtao. By ignoring urgent military needs to keep ship in the North Sea, the Germans look agressive against the UK as opposed to protecting German merchant interest. The key is getting your mind around what U-boats and torpedo boat do. When combined with coastal naval artillery and minefields, they keep crusiers and battleships 20-50 miles away from your ports. Torpedo boats patrol at night, and day-time torpedo boats (U-boats) patrol in the daytime. Unlike the main battle fleet which tends to be concentrated, the U-boats and the share of torpedo boats allocated to port defense should be spread around all ports, both military and civilian.
So how do you switch to smaller ships and make the UK happier at the same time. Merely building 20 U-boats/Torpedo boats instead of one dreadnought may make the UK more nervous. But if you share with the UK leaders that these new boats are being designed for tropical/colonial conditions AND actually design them with these uses in mind, the UK will accept. It will make sense to the UK. The UK used mostly cruisers for this role, but they would understand the Germans taking the cheaper route to defend their overseas ports. For the super win for the Germans, you immediately begin transfering the extra ships overseas over a 1-2 year time frame, and then build the replacement ships over a 2-3 year period. Now I know i keep hammer the point, but it is critical not to read too many post war books when working on ALT. You end up with too much post knowledge. U-boats were not see as a potentially decisive weapon. Neither were torpedo boats or light to medium cruisers.
p. 336/337. He states that Heligoland makes the "blockade of their coast extremely hazardous". This begs the question for why the High Seas Fleet is even kept in the North Seas, not the safer Baltic. An easy answer, if one did not know the history of the early days of WW1, would be the Germans intended to do a "Copenhagen" attack on the British.
If you look at the totality of this book, and think about just how the UK using Mahan like ideas would analyze the German budget, the UK would be delighted if the Germans spent more money on the network of ports need to fight France, and build fewer dreadnoughts capable of ambushing the Grand Fleet. While in retrospect, we know these changes would be disasterous for the UK in WW1, we should look at what the prewar beliefs are when doing political what ifs.
Ask your self the simply question: If the UK had allowed the High Seas Fleet in the English channel and stayed neutral as long as German did not do amphibious operations in Channel, how is Germany going to maintain a close blockade of French ports? Or a distant blockade? Where do the cruisers get more coal? men? ammo? etc. Providing answers to these question to the UK would provide reassurance, as long as we don't do something stupid like try to get a German naval base in Morocco.
I hope this is helping, I have not yet found the source that summarized it so well.
And read this thread.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=189376&highlight=mahan&page=6
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