WI: Venezuela-British Guiana border dispute leds to war.

7) xchen08 and stevep should be encouraged to rant more for my personal enjoyment and eddification

Dure

I am be a devout idealist but even I've accepted that xchen08 is going to ignore the points I make so your going to have withdrawal symtoms.;)

Steve
 
I think it's fair that I actually propose what, IMHO, is a likely series of events in case of war.

1. The American intervention affects the situation in Venezuela not one iota. No coaling bases nearby, smaller fleet than the RN's Flying Squadron that can coal at Trinidad or Barbados. The American fleet stays home. American commerce is paralyzed, British commerce delayed, but doesn't experience much more than the occasional hiccup required when rumors of American warships crop up. Big business in New England and the Mid-Atlantic is furious with Cleveland. A couple American detachments on land prepare themselves, possibly execute minor raids barely worth mentioning.

2. If war persists for more than a month or so, the Flying Squadron and a small contingent from Britain numbering about 10,000 men concentrate at the very well-fortified harbor at Bermuda. Panic on the East Coast ensues, to a far greater extent than in OTL's Spanish-American War. Light-to-no action in the Pacific, as the British Pacific Squadron at Esquimalt and the American Pacific Station are relatively evenly-matched. Anyone's guess as to whether the slightly-outnumbered US Asiatic Squadron runs home, runs around China doing little damage, or gets caught and pounded by the British China Squadron.

3. If the Southern Democrats don't want to fight the war, Cleveland's adventure ends. Britain would be well-advised to make a brief descent upon a port in the South such as Charleston, which has very simple SLOC with Bermuda, with the added possibility of drawing out the American North Atlantic Squadron and defeating it.

4. The British Flying Squadron with small attachments of cruisers from the North American and West Indies Station and perhaps a few others that can be scrounged up fight a pitched battle against the American fleet, which they outnumber by a small margin. Both fleets' capital units consist of brand-new or recently-commissioned vessels, so expect some of the worst shooting in history. I give the probabilities of British victory-Draw-American victory as roughly 30-50-20. A draw works for the RN as well as a victory, as the raid and capture/destruction of Charleston will still go forward.

5. Assuming RN victory or draw, no one in America is interested in fighting anymore, especially when the pro-business Republicans sweep into office at the end of 1896. America sues for peace, pays indemnity of a tolerably low amount (probably that for destruction of any British materiel), the end.

6. America is slightly less buddy-buddy with Britain over the next two decades, but not overly so. American entry into WW1 takes place at roughly the same time.

In other words, a short, simple war is to be expected, interesting for naval historians perhaps, but little else.

Douglas

I would agree this is by far the most likely path that any war, unlikely as one to occur is, would take. Not sure that British commerce would escape undamaged given the long US coastline and ability to send out raiders. Unless lack of interest in the war and desire not to escalate it would be a reason for them staying their hands.

On the question of the RN not being able to send more than a mimimal amount of ships to the American stations relies on two things:

a) That the RN requirements for blockage were genuine rather than a way of claiming more money from Parliament.

b) That those rules would survive the outbreak of war. As you say there was no intent by either, let alone both Russia and France, to lunch a sudden descent on Britain if it withdrew more ships from the home stations. While some members of the population and even Parliament may believe such figures, if a shooting war starts elsewhere and especially if there was a clear need for more ships the situation could and probably would be fairly quickly re-assessed.

On the question of damage to the US economy I presume your assumption of minimal damage is after the relatively short war you projecting?

Stevep
 
Th older ships were refitted, but the real gutting was replacing the machinery and other bits. A lot of the older ships kept their heavy muzzle loading rifles to be sure.

The Hotchkiss and Nordenfelt QF were very small pieces, issued as needed to the fleet. If he's referring to the larger 4.7" and 6" QF, then these weapons were failures.

Those pieces were failures, but still better than having no QF at all.

However, the real crux of the argument is whether the older weapons were particularly obsolete at all. Cordite was only introduced in the 1890's and in 1896 virtually every naval gun was still using gunpowder as a propellent in various forms (except for a few French battleships using Poudre B, which tended to blow up of their own accord). The RML was actually still a reasonable weapon.

There is no question that a RML-carrying ship that takes five minutes to fire a shell that hasn't a prayer of hitting anything beyond a thousand yards in an era of quick-firing guns with smokeless powder is obsolete. Good against other, older ships, but certainly no match for a new battleship.

(To be fair, I'm using Inflexible's notoriously slow-firing guns as an example, but 10" and 11" MLR guns, while having greater rapidity of fire, aren't going to be penetrating top-line steel armor at anything but point-blank range.)

The French did have some problems with Poudre B, which was an excellent propellant, but no capital ships blew up IIRC until 1903.
 
Douglas

I would agree this is by far the most likely path that any war, unlikely as one to occur is, would take. Not sure that British commerce would escape undamaged given the long US coastline and ability to send out raiders. Unless lack of interest in the war and desire not to escalate it would be a reason for them staying their hands.

On the question of the RN not being able to send more than a mimimal amount of ships to the American stations relies on two things:

a) That the RN requirements for blockage were genuine rather than a way of claiming more money from Parliament.

b) That those rules would survive the outbreak of war. As you say there was no intent by either, let alone both Russia and France, to lunch a sudden descent on Britain if it withdrew more ships from the home stations. While some members of the population and even Parliament may believe such figures, if a shooting war starts elsewhere and especially if there was a clear need for more ships the situation could and probably would be fairly quickly re-assessed.

On the question of damage to the US economy I presume your assumption of minimal damage is after the relatively short war you projecting?

Stevep

British commerce may not escape entirely, but in the time period I'm thinking of (three months, give or take), raiders aren't going to be a huge factor, especially with the coastline threatened from Bermuda.

On the question of the limited units available to be sent to the North American station, it's pretty clear that nothing short of the French scuttling their fleet at its moorings is going to allow more than a handful of capital ships to be sent over, even in a longer war (not including new construction!). The source I quote earlier isn't an MP, but a letter from the C.-in-C. of the Admiralty to the commander of the North America and West Indies station, and the United States was never really used as a basis for additional funding for the RN: always France and Russia until c. 1900, then Germany.

The figures aren't "the public and some members of parliament" either, but the actual estimates made by the naval planners and admirals of the Royal Navy at that time: that's what they believed was necessary. France and Russia may not have planned for a sudden attack on the RN, but a war with America is not likely to make the Sea Lords think that such an attack is less likely with a further naval distraction when in OTL they were so pre-occupied with a sudden war with the Dual Alliance. The American war is going to be looked at as an unfortunate sideshow that ought to be wrapped up as soon as possible.
 
Dure

I am be a devout idealist but even I've accepted that xchen08 is going to ignore the points I make so your going to have withdrawal symtoms.;)

Steve

Hmm, curious how this withdrawal occurs shortly after I asked for some evidence for your wilder claims. In any case, I do agree that your purposeful obtuseness has rendered discussion increasingly difficult, and my last post on the matter stands in any case independently.

As a sidenote, I actually looked up turret elevations to accurately gauge your and Tigers claims on a possible U.S. disadvantage in this area. In summary, all U.S. battleship main gun turrets of the WWI era and earlier had a uniform maximum elevation of 15 degrees other than the Tennessee class at the very end which had a max elevation of 30 degrees. However, BB1-4 had unbalanced turrets, which limited their max elevation to 10 degrees in practice. For the British in the same period, their pre-dreads and first generation dreadnaughts had a maximum elevation of 13.5 degrees, some of which was upgraded to 16 degrees in WWI. Second generation dreadnaughts had a max elevation of 15 degrees. Superdreadnaughts, those with 13.5 or 15 in guns had a max elevation of 20 degrees. 12 in gunned U.S. dreadnaughts (~20,000 yards max range) had a 2000 yard range advantage over first generation British dreads, and were roughly equal with second generation ships. British superdreads including the QEs had a ~3000 yards advantage over U.S. 12 in dreads, but were roughly equal to U.S. 14 in dreads. In that case, the U.S. 14 inch has a somewhat flatter trajectory and lower flight time than British 13.5 and 15 in guns, which means somewhat better odds of hitting, but less odds of hitting vulnerable deck armor. In any case, as effective ranges in WWI were much lower than that, the whole question is academic, though Tigers was still wrong in claiming that the U.S. had any weakness due to insufficient elevation compared with Britain.
 
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