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.
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.
How many Light Cruisers can you build from the resources of an unbuilt Battlecruiser?
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
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.
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.
![]()
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?
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...
RLBH do you have a source for that?
Because that sounds incredible stupid to me.
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.
How many Light Cruisers can you build from the resources of an unbuilt Battlecruiser?
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.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.
I would think that they had at least a week of sea time before problems croped up.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.