WI: Kaiserliche Marine adapts Jeune Ecole

BlondieBC

Banned
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.


Not in this war. At the start of WW1, 1/3 of all merchant ships (10% of tonnage) were sail. Most ships did not have radios. The average response time to a report U-boat attack was over 12 hours. They UK lacked weapons to deal with a U-boat once it submerged. Air cover of merchant ships is basically unknown. You are confusing the WW2 tactics developed from the lessons of WW1 with the actual WW1 tactics, at least early in the war.
 

Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
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.


Do you have the number of times the BBs had to coal and the locations?
 
Submariners have always accepted more cramped conditions that surface fleets, AFAIK.

It's the same guys.

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 New York invasion scheme was mind bogglingly politically stupid (to the point that in other discussions I've cited it as evidence that the Kaiser's military needed more oversight on planning) and militarily even stupider (not at all clear what Moltke was going to do with New York surrounded by 80 million angry Americans), but the logistics of the plan were done by the German navy logistic experts. I recall one questionable feature - they planned to tow short ranged coastal defense battleships at least part way across the Atlantic, if necessary.

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.

The German navy assumed British belligerency in much of its planning from 1905 onwards, which is why it never bothered evolving detailed trans-Atlantic schemes against, say, the French colonies.

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 that link, the Kaiser Class was probably the first dreadnought with machinery (turbines) reliable enough to contemplate trans-Atlantic missions. I sort of think what the actual problem was, was that the technology came along too close to the outbreak of the war for the HSF to start to seriously alter its thinking patterns. If you take a look at the WW2 German fleet and 1940 raiding tactics, this to me was the evolution of post-war German naval thought on what the HSF "should have" done in WW1.

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.

Not sure on any of that, except that a German fleet with 100 submarines is in a stronger position than one with 15 (or whatever the total was). I think in WW2 it was decided they need - 222? - for a proper counterblockade.
 
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/

Okay, I can see your point. The British clearly did not take subs seriously enough (yet paradoxically, they had many quite silly scares, apparently spotting u-boats everywhere); and if they already assumed that every German merchant skipper was really a fire-breathing Evil Teutonic (TM) commerce raider just panting for his chance to kill something, then they have little reason to modify their approach.
 
The point regarding the long distance, peace time voyages of the Germans is that these are with a peacetime crew, thus making it possible. When you double the crew size (wartime crews are always larger) you reduce the amount of space and habitability, need to increase dramatically the stores needed and reduce the habitability of the ships. I don't believe submarines suffer from this as they are always minimum manned, with no extra space for an increased wartime complement.
 
The point regarding the long distance, peace time voyages of the Germans is that these are with a peacetime crew, thus making it possible. When you double the crew size (wartime crews are always larger) you reduce the amount of space and habitability, need to increase dramatically the stores needed and reduce the habitability of the ships. I don't believe submarines suffer from this as they are always minimum manned, with no extra space for an increased wartime complement.

I don't think any of this is correct - U-boats were more cramped than surface ships, not less. Ship crews were not "doubled" in wartime - they were about the same, (the Germans might have over-crewed their ships during North Sea missions). The Kaiser on its Atlantic voyage was probably stuffed to the rafters with provisions and coal. Not one German warship on a wartime mission was brought up short due to living conditions aboard. Enemy action for the most part, internal explosion for Karlsruhe, shortage of supplies in other cases, but living conditions? Never. Also, if on a wartime patrol, enemy merchant vessels would soon start to be captured, each requiring a prize crew if not scuttled and capable of being used for storage.

Note the return date of Kaiser to Germany after its long overseas voyage - June 17th, 1914, less than two weeks before Sarajevo. The problem was not the ships and not the crews. The problem was that there just wasn't enough time for the HSF to get "used" to sending its capital ships into the Atlantic. The officers of the Kaiser and Konig Albert needed the rest of the year and into 1915 to small talk with other officers to the effect that, "hey, we can do Atlantic missions...", and the HSF's pattern would have been incremental - maybe in 1915 they send 4 battleships on a world tour, and in 1916 they send 8. So, by 1917, the HSF command could start to absorb the idea of Atlantic capital ship operations as part of its strategy.
 
I've some time off this weekend, will have to look for crew figures. Not arguing on the U-boats, they are hellishly cramped. I must have stated my case badly in that. However I am pretty certain the wartime crews were very much larger, I'll see what I can dig up the next few days.
 

Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
No, unfortunately not.

OK - fair enough - neither do I ;)

Stating the obvious, the availability of coal, safe places in which to carry out coaling and the effective ranges at cruising &/or flank speed are the ultimate arbiters of whether a navy can conduct operations some distance from home bases. A peacetime cruise with little need to push above the most economic speed, and presumably the welcome given in nearly all "neutral" ports, is not a great guide as to how the HSF could conduct long-ranging operations in wartime. The nearest available base mentioned in this thread that would cope with a small but powerful squadron's needs is Douala in Kamerun, a distance of some 5,300nm from Wilhelmshaven - and that's going straight down the English Channel. Neutral ports are a boon and a problem - they pretty much announce your position to your enemy within hours of arrival.
 
OK - fair enough - neither do I ;)

Stating the obvious, the availability of coal, safe places in which to carry out coaling and the effective ranges at cruising &/or flank speed are the ultimate arbiters of whether a navy can conduct operations some distance from home bases. A peacetime cruise with little need to push above the most economic speed, and presumably the welcome given in nearly all "neutral" ports, is not a great guide as to how the HSF could conduct long-ranging operations in wartime. The nearest available base mentioned in this thread that would cope with a small but powerful squadron's needs is Douala in Kamerun, a distance of some 5,300nm from Wilhelmshaven - and that's going straight down the English Channel. Neutral ports are a boon and a problem - they pretty much announce your position to your enemy within hours of arrival.

Ships with coal as fuel needed a desolate place to coal far from prying eyes. OTOH, the Atlantic had plenty of such places available, and the HSF could have done more detailed surveillance and mapping of the region prewar. Not 'neutral ports', but coves and anchorages with no one around. Or, in the far north, even in the edges of the ice fields where the water is kept dead calm by the ice. Take Norway, for example. Get the proper agents in place and do the mapping, and maybe a hundred or two hundred possible places for covert coaling are identified. The other thing in HSF control was their ship design - Kaiser could carry about 4,000 tons of coal maximum. But what if they designed the ship to carry 8,000 tons instead? Yes, it would be a bigger ship and cost more for no more combat power, but as the navy without bases, that's a price of doing business and being in the game.
 
I've some time off this weekend, will have to look for crew figures. Not arguing on the U-boats, they are hellishly cramped. I must have stated my case badly in that. However I am pretty certain the wartime crews were very much larger, I'll see what I can dig up the next few days.

I'll check too. At Jutland the ships were above compliment, maybe by as much as 100 or 150 men each.
 
Not in this war. At the start of WW1, 1/3 of all merchant ships (10% of tonnage) were sail. Most ships did not have radios. The average response time to a report U-boat attack was over 12 hours. They UK lacked weapons to deal with a U-boat once it submerged. Air cover of merchant ships is basically unknown. You are confusing the WW2 tactics developed from the lessons of WW1 with the actual WW1 tactics, at least early in the war.

10% of tonnage and an even lower proportion of the value is sail. The high value targets are more likely to have radio, they are more likely to have predictable shipping schedules.

My point is that as soon as the RN decides that its high value merchies need to be escorted by heavy warships in the Western Approaches, those approaches get very dangerous for German raiders, even heavy German raiders. They'll be pushed off of the convergence points and towards picking off the singletons and the sailing ships.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
10% of tonnage and an even lower proportion of the value is sail. The high value targets are more likely to have radio, they are more likely to have predictable shipping schedules.

My point is that as soon as the RN decides that its high value merchies need to be escorted by heavy warships in the Western Approaches, those approaches get very dangerous for German raiders, even heavy German raiders. They'll be pushed off of the convergence points and towards picking off the singletons and the sailing ships.

Except IOTL, they weren't pushed off. You are projecting the capabilities of the Royal Navy in WW2 back into WW1. It took at least two years for the RN to begin effective countermeasures IOTL.
 

BooNZ

Banned
An Anglo-German rivalry based on the construction of very prominent capital ships is always going to be won by Britain. In 1900 submarines and torpedoes represent new technologies that Britain does not necessarily dominate. Along with mines they represent an asymmetrical threat to British sea power and commerce. Germany has the scientific muscle to be competitive in the development of new naval technologies.

This represents a genuine threat to maritime Britain, as opposed to an excuse to simply increase the Royal Navy budgets. Despite this, I don't think it will have the same level of impact on mainstream Anglo-German relations as the dreadnaught race.

To disguise spending, the Kaiser could also set up an institute to advance the science of small boat racing? Imagine, the triumphant return of the America's Cup to the European continent...
 
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).
If anything England overreacted during the first appearance of the torpedo. Which I have to say kudos to them for treating it with respect.
 

Deleted member 9338

The torpedo was a game changer, a subject I have studied and worked on. The British could see the potential, but many of there ships were older and defenseless to these new systems.
 
The point regarding the long distance, peace time voyages of the Germans is that these are with a peacetime crew, thus making it possible. When you double the crew size (wartime crews are always larger) you reduce the amount of space and habitability, need to increase dramatically the stores needed and reduce the habitability of the ships. I don't believe submarines suffer from this as they are always minimum manned, with no extra space for an increased wartime complement.

At Jutland (standard crew compliment/embarked)
Nassau Class 1008 / 1124-1139
Helgoland Class - 1113 / 1284-1390
Kaiser Class - 1084 / 1249/1278
Konig Class - 1136 / 1284-1315
 
My point is that as soon as the RN decides that its high value merchies need to be escorted by heavy warships in the Western Approaches, those approaches get very dangerous for German raiders, even heavy German raiders. They'll be pushed off of the convergence points and towards picking off the singletons and the sailing ships.

The British had merchant ships all over the Atlantic - yes they could form strong squadrons in the Western Approaches using their pre-dreadnoughts as well as by surrendering the North Sea by moving the Grand Fleet to Ireland, but they still couldn't be strong at every shipping choke point. I don't think surface raiding is winning Germany the war, but at the same time, if they overcame the logistics problems involved, the RN would be seriously stretched.
 
At Jutland (standard crew compliment/embarked)
Nassau Class 1008 / 1124-1139
Helgoland Class - 1113 / 1284-1390
Kaiser Class - 1084 / 1249/1278
Konig Class - 1136 / 1284-1315


So we are looking at roughly a quarter to a third more crew. Got these from Conways didn't you? :) I asked on another forum and a buddy pulled up the figures from his volume. Not as many as I'd thought but still substantial. I am starting to think the whole issue of habitability (or lack thereof) for the Germans is overstated. I'll repost the question over on Navweaps and see what comes of it. I trawled through old posts and it's been mentioned a few times in the past, but not a lot of substantive value was added. Fortunately there are now a number of native German speakers on that forum so perhaps we can get something close to original source info.
 
So we are looking at roughly a quarter to a third more crew. Got these from Conways didn't you? :) I asked on another forum and a buddy pulled up the figures from his volume. Not as many as I'd thought but still substantial. I am starting to think the whole issue of habitability (or lack thereof) for the Germans is overstated. I'll repost the question over on Navweaps and see what comes of it. I trawled through old posts and it's been mentioned a few times in the past, but not a lot of substantive value was added. Fortunately there are now a number of native German speakers on that forum so perhaps we can get something close to original source info.


German ships in the early 20th century were designed for Northsea operations only, which resulted in the relatve spartan cramped hability onboard ships of the Kaiserliche Marine. Normal practice was the ships would make a short sortie from their base and return within a few days, where crews normally were stationed in barracks, rather than the British practice of retaining them on board. Only a number of small cruisers and gunboats had their crews onboard at any time, mostly as these were designed to operate oversea in colonial purposes. Most capital ships, large cruisers and all torpedocraft housed their crews on land during both peace and wartime.
 
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