WI: Kaiserliche Marine adapts Jeune Ecole

Deleted member 9338

How many Light Cruisers can you build from the resources of an unbuilt Battlecruiser?
 
How many Light Cruisers can you build from the resources of an unbuilt Battlecruiser?

Small scout cruisers such as those found in the 1900 - 1910 period were relatively cheap and simple to construct, compared to capital ships and even complex destroyers. Four every german battlecruiser, around 10 to 20 light cruisers could be produced in terms of material and budget. Problem was that the "Grosser Kreuzer" was a must have, so a lot of resources still went into this type still.
 
Small scout cruisers such as those found in the 1900 - 1910 period were relatively cheap and simple to construct, compared to capital ships and even complex destroyers. Four every german battlecruiser, around 10 to 20 light cruisers could be produced in terms of material and budget. Problem was that the "Grosser Kreuzer" was a must have, so a lot of resources still went into this type still.

Would those scout cruisers have enough range to spend three months at sea with minimal logistical support? And that support is coming from a few chartered merchant ships meeting off the beaten tracks to refuel, re-arm and revictual?

I am speculating wildly now but the ideal cruiser force composition would be a couple of large armored cruisers/light battlecruisers that force the RN to dedicate very heavy (and obsolete) ships to escort and then a plethora of 6,000 to 8,000 light cruisers with maybe 4 127mm or 152mm guns (enough to beat down an AMC or a destroyer, not enough to be tempting to fight a real cruiser), a few lighter guns and a max speed of 25 knots but the capability to go 14 knots across the ocean and back where they could pick on the singletons and the very lightly escorted rear area convoys that are covered by an AMC with half a dozen four inch deck guns.

The RN response would be more battlecruisers instead of battleships to hunt down the light battlecruisers, and then an early evolution of the Hawkins class for the hunting groups while spreading their pre-dreads and older armored cruisers to provide direct cover. The RN would attempt to impose an attritional tax on each crossing of the Scotland/Norway North Sea gap and the crossing of hte G-I-Faroes-UK gap. They would not kill every raider breaking out or breaking in, but they could kill enough to give quite a few convoys a free pass.
 
Would those scout cruisers have enough range to spend three months at sea with minimal logistical support? And that support is coming from a few chartered merchant ships meeting off the beaten tracks to refuel, re-arm and revictual?

I am speculating wildly now but the ideal cruiser force composition would be a couple of large armored cruisers/light battlecruisers that force the RN to dedicate very heavy (and obsolete) ships to escort and then a plethora of 6,000 to 8,000 light cruisers with maybe 4 127mm or 152mm guns (enough to beat down an AMC or a destroyer, not enough to be tempting to fight a real cruiser), a few lighter guns and a max speed of 25 knots but the capability to go 14 knots across the ocean and back where they could pick on the singletons and the very lightly escorted rear area convoys that are covered by an AMC with half a dozen four inch deck guns.

The RN response would be more battlecruisers instead of battleships to hunt down the light battlecruisers, and then an early evolution of the Hawkins class for the hunting groups while spreading their pre-dreads and older armored cruisers to provide direct cover. The RN would attempt to impose an attritional tax on each crossing of the Scotland/Norway North Sea gap and the crossing of hte G-I-Faroes-UK gap. They would not kill every raider breaking out or breaking in, but they could kill enough to give quite a few convoys a free pass.


Small scout cruisers of the erea were much smaller than the ones you suggest, moslty around 2500 to 3500 tons at best with small QF guns only and minimal protection. These ships were self supporting in this period of history, relyuing on coal as fuel, easily taken from captured prices and food and supplies, equally taken form captured ships, just as SMS Emden did in history. There is no need to go large, as large is equal to more expensive. The typical German light cruiser of the 1900 to 1910 period had ten to twelve 105mm QF guns and a number of mg's at best, besides torpedoes. The only real limmitation was amunition for these ships, though at this period a supplyship for oversea cruisers was likely to be available, just for this task.

Tactically the raiders would hunt on their own, operating against single cargoships and occasionally raiding an undefended port, using bluff and cunnign to capture targets, rarely using guns at all, to save ammunition. The royal Navy would likely respond in sending more cruisers out to hunt them down, but keep the battlecruisers in the North Sea, just to check the German fleet on the other side of the North Sea.

So forget operations of squadrons, but let these german cruisers do what they could do best, operating alone as lone wolfs, just as they were intended to be.
 
But those 4 battlecruisers now have given the RN a firm position fix, one or two have some damage. The most likely spots for the interception to be made are in confined waters near to RN bases. The RN will trade 2 predreadnoughts and 10 mercies to get 3 or 4 battlecruisers S those BCs either have to run the Channel, Gibraltar/Adriatic or the GIUK gap to get home. The biggest problem the RN has is finding the raider to mob it

No point arguing fine details in a massively fluid combat environment where the outcomes are unlimited. Generally speaking, BC raiders would be a problem. Would they be a war winning strategy? Hardly.

In terms of catching a BC, remember I said that one of the costs of a raider strategy for Germany should be that you have a 30,000 ton ship with the combat power of a 22,000 ton battle cruiser - you lose out on the total number of ships possible in order to gain operational flexibility with the ships you have. This allows much more fuel on board, which in turn effects pursuit dynamics.
 
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Sometimes contenders seem to forget a major issue: the raider cannot accept any damage, while the defender can. While Dreadnought type battleships and dito cruisers are seriously more capable ships compared to the expensive and limmited pre-Dreadnought types, they cannot risk damage to their own while at sea hunting commerce, so will retire when facing any form of a sort of strong deterent, as they have no base to back on, unless you controll much of the seas with bases located there as well. The point is: Battlecruisers are not teh best form of commerceraiders, beeing far too rare in the navy and far too expensive to operate outside the normal fleet jobs. Smaller cruisers are more expendable and can be better suited to this form of commerceraiding, though they will prey on single ships, not convoys with escorts.

Commerce warfare was probably synergistic, meaning that the sum of the individual parts are less than them operating all together. Submarines have advantages and disadvantages. Light cruisers have their own advantages and disadvantages, battle cruisers did as well, and so did disguised merchant raiders. The downside of U-boats was convoys. Light cruisers demonstrated in WW1 that even a couple CL's can wipe out a poorly defended convoy where a U-boat might only attack one ship before falling behind. BC's could attack more heavily defended convoys.

In terms of damage, this was an operational risk to the raider strategy. You build large numbers of raiders precisely because some of them (like Graf Spee in 1939) could be damaged and lost. As more and more are sunk, the remainder could get more and more cautious.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Then Britain probably builds slightly fewer dreadnoughts, and invests enough money in destroyers, cruisers and subs to contain the threat.

The hegemonic naval power got that way by being able to out-build and out-spend other contenders. Its superior resources can be used to build ships other than massive battlewagons.

The only way a Jeune Ecole approach can work is if Britain simply refuses to take note of the torpedo and/or commerce raiding threat altogether. Historically, it didn't do that (unless perhaps very briefly, during the torpedo's infancy).

Jeune Ecole?

Well, the coastal defence portion of it won't cause any problems.

The commerce-raiders, however, will send the Admiralty through the roof. Instead of walking from Rosyth to Kirkwall on an unbroken chain of dreadnought battleships, you'll be able to walk from Berehaven to Gibraltar on an unbroken line of dreadnought armoured cruisers.

640px-HMS_Invincible_%281907%29_British_Battleship.jpg

Concerning the commerce raiders. Prewar, the UK believed many (most) German merchant ships kept guns in crates in many (most) merchant ships. Here, you have an issue where the Germans will actually just be doing what the British thought they were doing. We will see, at most, minor changes to the UK fleet composition.

As to talking torpedo from subs seriously, the UK prewar weapons were ramming subs, a harpoon much like a whaling harpoon, and a hand thrown harpoon. Additional subs being built by the Germans will be either ignored or will lower tensions. The UK believe there were first rates navies (UK, maybe US, and France) These navies had big battlefleets. Then there were (should be) second rate navies that focused on things such as cruisers, torpedo boats, and submarines. Since the proposed strategy in this thread fits into the UK stereotypes, it will both lower diplomatic tensions and not trigger naval countermeasures. For this reason, I chose to avoid reducing the German surface fleet excessively in my TL.


https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/prince-henry-of-prussia-the-rise-of-u-boat.225455/
 

BlondieBC

Banned
If the KM went all torpedo boatey cruiser happy would they still stand out or would the British just assume that is what Continental Navies did?

Yes the counters are pretty much the same but the big advantage by this stage was that Britain already had the round the world string of bases (the bases upon which the sun never sets) for their cruisers. So suppose if the Germans went Jeune Ecole would they also go Bob the Builder or to put it more straight forwardly would they actually invest in bases in their colonial possession for their cruisers to operate from?

They would assume it is what lesser powers did. It is important to not look at post war literature where many admirals are simply writing CYA books to cover mistakes. You will get a totally different perspective if you only read pre July 1914 literature. I happened to chose this route for my TL and an I read/scimmed over 10K worth of source documents. Simply put, there is no reference or thought of a commerce war by U-boats as happened in OTL in naval circles. It was just unimaginable. The closest I could come was a minor book by a German woman with no naval background who simply wrote that if there was a major war, all the rules of war would be ignored. As I have posted in other threads over the years, if you have a pre-August 1914 book either written (or endorsed) by a Royal Navy Captain or higher that foresees unrestricted submarine warfare (or anything close), please give me the title and author. I can find may post 1915 books where people claimed to have foreseen OTL type submarine warfare, but none from prewar.

As to German basing, it is also fascinating. For the Germans, as strange as it may foresee, they never really had plans to fight the UK. They really were more focused on France and Russia. The German fleet was well strong enough to keep the Russians in port. And IMO, well strong enough to keep the French out of the North Sea if the UK is neutral. So then you get to where to setup the bases. The infrastructure in the colonies was quite poor, and it would require building ports. The most logical place to build a base in West Africa since France is the likely enemy. Cameroon makes the most sense due to a workable natural harbor. Togoland has a very poor harbor and is hard to defend over land. A base in SWA is quite workable, but why put one there if you want to fight France and South Africa. East Africa makes sense if you are trying to build a chain of bases to China. So does arguably one in the Pacific possessions.

And I want to emphasis that you are starting from ZERO infrastructure. In Dar es Salaam (East Africa), you could hunt lions by climbing on the roof of the taller buildings in the port and shooting the lions. And if you look at my TL with the link in the prior post, you will see how wildly WW1 diverge in Africa from OTL. It was not that I wanted to write about battles in Africa in towns I did not know exist. It was once I put enough personnel to man a naval base for a couple of old cruisers and squadron of submarines along with port facilities, I had accidentally created the strongest army in Africa outside of South Africa proper.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Would the Germans also beef up coastal forts & artillery on the relatively short North Sea coast? If so, that might further encourage a Fisher/Churchill Baltic notion. Then, you might get a "Battle of the Belts" between a German coastal defense fleet and Fisher's (revised) Follies. That could be a fun tale - a Surigao Strait turned completely inside out...

Sure, the Germans might add some forts but it is not likely. The way the German military budgets passed the parliament, odd things could happen. For example, the Germans almost authorized a couple of extra regiments of truck transports a few years before WW1, so all type of odd things could pass. As to the UK responding, it is again unlikely. Why should the UK respond to German guns or mines that in a best case scenario would merely keep the UK fleet a few 10's of miles outside of a German port. No real danger to the UK here.

As to UK defenses, they were still oriented towards France. The Royal Navy is a big organization, and it responds slowly to change. After at least a century of France being the enemy, the funding was still setup that way. The big defense program was to fortify Portsmouth, so the Royal Navy could keep France out of the channel. This was being done as tensions with Germany was increasing. And when you look at Scapa Flow setup in August 1914, it is pretty clear the UK had spent very near Zero Pounds fortifying bases to handle Germany. And to be fair, Germany never seriously threatened any harbor in the British Isles.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
RLBH do you have a source for that?
Because that sounds incredible stupid to me.

It is true despite me not having a handy source. The Germans capital ships had shorter ranges. By carry less fuel, the German freed up tonnage for armor/guns. They also had poor to no sleeping arrangements, so long deployments are not really practical even once you find a fix to refueling issue.

And it was a reasonably smart move, if you think from the German perspective. The ships had more than enough range to get to St Petersburg from either a north Sea port or more likely Danzig. And they had more than enough range to defend the North Sea. I have never seen a pre-WW1 plan for fighting down the English Channel and defeating the main French Fleet. Probably because every German Admiral knew the UK would not watch idly as German Navy sailed up and down the channel.

And it is also important to note that the Germans expected the Dutch neutrality to be respected, so merchant shipping would simply unload in a Dutch port. Combined with the German Navy keeping the North Sea and Baltic free of Entente warships, this is more than enough to allow the Army to win its quick victory.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Pre-dreadnoughts would be mechanically unreliable for escort duty, and they were exceptionally vulnerable to torpedo attack, so I'm guessing the wear of constant duty would be brutal on availability rates, but theoretically if the British were willing to strip the Channel of its defences then they could form some pre-dreadnought squadrons capable of escorting convoys in the Approaches, and maybe one periodically off New York. The number of pre-dreadnoughts per convoy would be crucial, since against 1 BC raider as few as 2 pre-dreadnoughts might do, but against 4 BC raiders two pre-dreadnoughts would be sunk and the convoy still rolled up.

This is from memory, so there is some danger of error. But I believe the UK used pre-dreads to escort troops from the ANZAC area in 1914 and 1915. Seems like the reason was mostly speed. The cruisers were out hunting commerce raiders or the SMS Emden. The slower dreads have more than enough speed to keep up with Troop transports, and obviously have enough fire power to deal with any surface threats. So I think this gives us the likely parameters for using Predreads as escorts - High Surface threat, low submarine threat.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
How many Light Cruisers can you build from the resources of an unbuilt Battlecruiser?

One capital ships = 6 cruisers = 20 submarines = 20 destroyers (heavy torpedo boats). This rule of thumb is based on construction cost in currency, not unit of steel or the like.
 
No point arguing fine details in a massively fluid combat environment where the outcomes are unlimited. Generally speaking, BC raiders would be a problem. Would they be a war winning strategy? Hardly.

In terms of catching a BC, remember I said that one of the costs of a raider strategy for Germany should be that you have a 30,000 ton ship with the combat power of a 22,000 ton battle cruiser - you lose out on the total number of ships possible in order to gain operational flexibility with the ships you have. This allows much more fuel on board, which in turn effects pursuit dynamics.
Agreed, but given British shipping patterns the area where there would be a large number of high value targets routinely passing through are fairly predictable by both the raider and the escort commanders. Heavy escorts, local covering forces, rapid response forces etc can be used to force the raiders to choose to operate in far safer but far less valuable waters. A lot of this is the same strategy the UK used against u-boats. Each day further into the Atlantic ever expanding air cover forced the U-boats to operate was a net victory as that decreased the amount of effective time on station for a U-boat by 2 days. Forcing battlecruiser raiders to operate in the Caribbean or off of West Africa is a net win for the RN even if they lose merchies down there.
 
Thanks BlondieBC.
But the thing I did not belive was that the ships could only keep some days at see, here the relative post:
Except they can't, because the German capital ships weren't capable of sustaining themselves at sea for more than a couple of days. The handful of times they did it, it required heroic efforts akin to the Russian Baltic Fleet sailing to Vladivostok in 1905... we know how that ended up.
I would think that they had at least a week of sea time before problems croped up.
 
It is true despite me not having a handy source. The Germans capital ships had shorter ranges. By carry less fuel, the German freed up tonnage for armor/guns. They also had poor to no sleeping arrangements, so long deployments are not really practical even once you find a fix to refueling issue.

German U-boats were quite cramped and this did not prevent long voyages.

I have never seen a pre-WW1 plan for fighting down the English Channel and defeating the main French Fleet. Probably because every German Admiral knew the UK would not watch idly as German Navy sailed up and down the channel.

I'd have to review, but before the formation of the Ententes German naval planning was a bit more adventurous - too adventurous, one might say. Around 1904 there were plans to fight a war against the United States by sending the fleet to Caribbean waters and invading New York. I think there were plans to fight Japan in the Far East. After 1905 planning sort of ground to halt as British belligerency was assumed. IIRC, around 1913 war against France and Russia alone was again contemplated.

And it is also important to note that the Germans expected the Dutch neutrality to be respected, so merchant shipping would simply unload in a Dutch port. Combined with the German Navy keeping the North Sea and Baltic free of Entente warships, this is more than enough to allow the Army to win its quick victory.

If the German navy really believed that neutral rights would be respected by the power with overwelming sea strength then there was little point to having a German navy, since sea lawyers could then do everything a fleet could be reasonably expected to do.
 
Thanks BlondieBC.
But the thing I did not belive was that the ships could only keep some days at see, here the relative post:

I would think that they had at least a week of sea time before problems croped up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Kaiser_(1911)

Kaiser was selected to participate in a long-distance cruise to test the reliability of the new turbine propulsion system. The ship was joined by her sister König Albert and the light cruiser Strassburg in a special "Detached Division". The trio departed Germany on 9 December 1913 and proceeded to the German colonies in western Africa. The ships visited Lomé in Togoland, Duala and Victoria in Kamerun, and Swakopmund in German South-West Africa.[6] From Africa, the ships sailed to St. Helena and then on to Rio de Janeiro, arriving on 15 February 1914. Strassburg was detached to visit Buenos Aires, Argentina before returning to meet the two battleships in Montevideo, Uruguay. The three ships sailed south around Cape Horn and then north to Valparaiso, Chile, arriving on 2 April and remaining for over a week.[7]

On 11 April, the ships departed Valparaiso for the long journey back to Germany. On the return trip, the ships visited several more ports, including
Bahía Blanca, Argentina, before returning to Rio de Janeiro. On 16 May the ships left Rio de Janeiro for the Atlantic leg of the journey; they stopped in Cape Verde, Madeira, and Vigo, Spain while en route to Germany. Kaiser, König Albert, and Strassburg arrived in Kiel on 17 June 1914.

A voyage from December 9th 1913 to June 17th 1914.
 
Agreed, but given British shipping patterns the area where there would be a large number of high value targets routinely passing through are fairly predictable by both the raider and the escort commanders. Heavy escorts, local covering forces, rapid response forces etc can be used to force the raiders to choose to operate in far safer but far less valuable waters. A lot of this is the same strategy the UK used against u-boats. Each day further into the Atlantic ever expanding air cover forced the U-boats to operate was a net victory as that decreased the amount of effective time on station for a U-boat by 2 days. Forcing battlecruiser raiders to operate in the Caribbean or off of West Africa is a net win for the RN even if they lose merchies down there.

A raider strategy could compliment a strong U-boat strategy, but is in and of itself no threat to decide the war at sea without the U-boats being the main effort. That being said, I wouldn't get too conclusive on the RN being able to 'force' Hipper to do anything on any given day at any given port - on an average day 70% or 80% of the RN will be sitting in port, and the other 20-30% might be nowhere near the point of attack. If Hipper shows up with a strong squadron and Entente defenders are lacking then he owns those waters that day. In WW2 German raiders were held at bay by British land based airpower. Here, there is no airpower meaning that until coastal defenses are built up, (and the British pooched even Scapa Flow for the longest time) there's more likely than not little stopping Hipper from going right up to or even into any given port and running amok.
 
A raider strategy could compliment a strong U-boat strategy, but is in and of itself no threat to decide the war at sea without the U-boats being the main effort. That being said, I wouldn't get too conclusive on the RN being able to 'force' Hipper to do anything on any given day at any given port - on an average day 70% or 80% of the RN will be sitting in port, and the other 20-30% might be nowhere near the point of attack. If Hipper shows up with a strong squadron and Entente defenders are lacking then he owns those waters that day. In WW2 German raiders were held at bay by British land based airpower. Here, there is no airpower meaning that until coastal defenses are built up, (and the British pooched even Scapa Flow for the longest time) there's more likely than not little stopping Hipper from going right up to or even into any given port and running amok.

Hipper's raids IIRC were conducted against lightly defended targets that were far outside the reach of heavy covering forces and his force was usually backed up by having at least a squadron or two of dreadnoughts at sea or at least at 4 hours notice to steam. Furthermore, his mode of operation was quick in and out strikes where his ships would be at sea for less than 48 hours and seldom below 18 knots and he knew exactly where his targets would be as towns have a habit of not moving.

None of that applies to raiders in the Western Approaches or the approaches to the St. Lawrence river system or Gibraltar etc.

A BC captain or a BC division commander has no distant covering force, he does not know where his targets will be in 12 or 24 hours at best he has uncertainty circles and possibility areas, his targets may or may not have 12 inch armed escorts, they most likely have torpedoed armed escorts etc. He is a week or more from a shipyard. He can't cruise at 18 knots much less 24 knots as that eats into his escape fuel margin too much. And finally, his targets have the ability to scatter while the local escorts mob the raider to buy an hour or three for the scatter order to be effective.

If the target is a troop convoying moving a Canadian Corps, those constraints could produce heavy damage that could be strategically wortwhile. If however the raider is engaged in attritional warfare, the probability of an empty bag or critical mission killing damage is high.

Finding targets outside of Imperial convergence points gets harder but the defenses and sustainability of the raider gets better.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
German U-boats were quite cramped and this did not prevent long voyages.

I'd have to review, but before the formation of the Ententes German naval planning was a bit more adventurous - too adventurous, one might say. Around 1904 there were plans to fight a war against the United States by sending the fleet to Caribbean waters and invading New York. I think there were plans to fight Japan in the Far East. After 1905 planning sort of ground to halt as British belligerency was assumed. IIRC, around 1913 war against France and Russia alone was again contemplated.

If the German navy really believed that neutral rights would be respected by the power with overwelming sea strength then there was little point to having a German navy, since sea lawyers could then do everything a fleet could be reasonably expected to do.

Submariners have always accepted more cramped conditions that surface fleets, AFAIK.

On the naval plans, while the Kaiser and associated people may have had dreams of such adventures, I have not seen the actual plans by actual admirals. IMO, you can take a lot of the Kaiser stuff as grandiose dreams. If you see actual detail war plans done by officers and reviewed by flag officers, then I think you have serious planning. It is easy to sit and dream of invading NYC if you are talking to the Kaiser at a social event. It would quickly become apparent to any Army or Navy staff officer that invading NYC is logistically impossible.

The German Navy was too keep German ports open and prevent close blockade by French. Remember, they generally did not plan for the UK to join the war for whatever reason. And you get the added benefit that the German fleet can enforce a blockade of Russian Baltic ports, support land operations in the Baltic. And to be fair, a lot of the German buildup was for national pride.

In a very ironic way, the advice given to the Germans pre-WW1 by British Admirals would have actually given the Germans an easy naval victory. Add around 60 to 100 U-boats to the German fleet combined with some serious thought into how to use them come a war, and the u-boat war would have been quickly decisive. It would be a boring TL to write and be a total German wank. At some point in this ATL, the Germans switch to merchant warfare. The UK lacks effective counter measures, and quickly the UK economy collapses.
 
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