WW-I in mid 20s

informationfan

By plan I mean a set programme of multi-year construction as Germany had. I'm not aware of any other nation that had something like that and I know Britain didn't.

You are also wrong about the comparison between Britain and Germany as in Britain's case it was an elected parliament that decided the naval spend, often after heated debate.

Steve

well,
if you look to tirpitz and his big problems to found his fleet you understand his methods

the idea of a fleet with so and so much ships - and 20years replacement rate lead to a plan....

in uk it was less democratic (no joke, the first sealord had more liberty as the german großadmiral), so more easily...

the usa had - as last as i know - such plans too, but only the battleship-race made them rethink it seriously...

the naval race lead to huge ship-buildments in any nations, not only gb and germany...
i think all had a plan, hadn´t they?
 
French Naval Laws

informationfan

By plan I mean a set programme of multi-year construction as Germany had. I'm not aware of any other nation that had something like that and I know Britain didn't.

You are also wrong about the comparison between Britain and Germany as in Britain's case it was an elected parliament that decided the naval spend, often after heated debate.

Steve

Best I can find quickly on the French

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...&resnum=8&ved=0CF8Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false

The French had seemed on the road to recovery with the passage of the naval law of 1900 which would have provided for a fleet of 28 battleships, 24 armoured cruisers, 52 destroyers, 263 torpedo boats, and 38 submarines.

I could detail the tables out of the back of Ropp if you like

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
well,
if you look to tirpitz and his big problems to found his fleet you understand his methods

the idea of a fleet with so and so much ships - and 20years replacement rate lead to a plan....

in uk it was less democratic (no joke, the first sealord had more liberty as the german großadmiral), so more easily...

the usa had - as last as i know - such plans too, but only the battleship-race made them rethink it seriously...

the naval race lead to huge ship-buildments in any nations, not only gb and germany...
i think all had a plan, hadn´t they?

Every major nation had a plan of sorts. That was the madness that the Washington treaties was supposed to end. But he plans were mostly of the "I want more than he has " variety rather than maintaining a force level.

The first half a dozen British dreadnoughts were nearing obsolescence by the end of the war so it's likely in a war beginning in 1925 that the UK would have scrapped the Indefatiguable BC and all dreadnoughts before the King George V class (the first one not the 14" WW2 version :D) and replaced them with G and N class ships (although not the same designs).

Likewise the Germans would have to modernise their fleet - the 12" and below main gun ships would all be in need of retiral

To be honest I'm not sure the germans could afford to compete in the naval arms race up to the mid 1920's
 
informationfan

By plan I mean a set programme of multi-year construction as Germany had. I'm not aware of any other nation that had something like that and I know Britain didn't.

You are also wrong about the comparison between Britain and Germany as in Britain's case it was an elected parliament that decided the naval spend, often after heated debate.

Steve


please read about tirpitz and his struggle to get the money for the ships. it was there, but the german parliament wanted to save this money.

do you really not know that in germany they had a free elected parliament, too? Maybe you should inform yourself a little bit more about the kaiserreich and its political structure?
please do not mix prussian election with german election system... maybe that is your error?

next to germany the austrians had one plan, the japanese and the french, also the russians and the italians... it seems nearly everybody had one plan... oh, i forgot the americans - in 1916... but still they had a plan.
right?

greetings
 
Every major nation had a plan of sorts. That was the madness that the Washington treaties was supposed to end. But he plans were mostly of the "I want more than he has " variety rather than maintaining a force level.

The first half a dozen British dreadnoughts were nearing obsolescence by the end of the war so it's likely in a war beginning in 1925 that the UK would have scrapped the Indefatiguable BC and all dreadnoughts before the King George V class (the first one not the 14" WW2 version :D) and replaced them with G and N class ships (although not the same designs).

Likewise the Germans would have to modernise their fleet - the 12" and below main gun ships would all be in need of retiral

To be honest I'm not sure the germans could afford to compete in the naval arms race up to the mid 1920's

hello,

the germans (because of tirpitz (looking for the money) and the kaiser (to fear that the big ships cannot cross the kaiser-wilhelm-channel or dock in wilhelmshaven) had mostly smaller ships and tried to keep their guns smaller
they could do this cause a german 11inch had the same punch as a british 12inch, a german 12inch was nearly equal to british 14inch... only the 15inch-guns were far superior, so the germans needed it too.. but then again it had the same or more punch as a british 16inch gun...

so the germans did not force the "bigger, larger"-trip, but tried to keep the ships smaller.

the brits would not scrap the older dreadnoughts... maybe the old predreadnoughts... but a ship with 20 years (would be in 1926) age would be still in the navy.

sure, the brits thought about the old useless ships in 1918... AFTER the war. But without they keep em and also do not learn about their weakness... you need a war to do this - like the germans learned only late about the weakness of subwater-torpedos (this caused the loss of the lützow...) without this event the germans will not give up this "smart" idea, the same is for the british...

they developted with the r-class a good battleship, so they could improve it - instead to waste the money with the renown/repulse and the hood.

the trend went to bigger guns and faster ships... so still weak armor. the same is true for the mackensen-class - the same mistake, cause if you keep the ship small you can´t arm and armor it as hell and make it fast.

the idea of a battle-line was way to fix in the mind of any admiral... for big fast battleships (that are well armoured, too) you have to give up this.
without big defeats you will not learn this.

the thing with the plan - sorry, this is stevep who deny it, not me :)

explain it to him
 
Derek Pullem

That's why I defined plan as I did. I would say what you're describing as more of a policy of keeping a strength compared to potential rivals. Such as the famous former British one of the two power standard. I'm not terming it as a plan, by my definition, as it doesn't stipulate a set total strength or production rate.

Steve


Every major nation had a plan of sorts. That was the madness that the Washington treaties was supposed to end. But he plans were mostly of the "I want more than he has " variety rather than maintaining a force level.

The first half a dozen British dreadnoughts were nearing obsolescence by the end of the war so it's likely in a war beginning in 1925 that the UK would have scrapped the Indefatiguable BC and all dreadnoughts before the King George V class (the first one not the 14" WW2 version :D) and replaced them with G and N class ships (although not the same designs).

Likewise the Germans would have to modernise their fleet - the 12" and below main gun ships would all be in need of retiral

To be honest I'm not sure the germans could afford to compete in the naval arms race up to the mid 1920's
 
Derek Pullem

That's why I defined plan as I did. I would say what you're describing as more of a policy of keeping a strength compared to potential rivals. Such as the famous former British one of the two power standard. I'm not terming it as a plan, by my definition, as it doesn't stipulate a set total strength or production rate.

Steve

just think about the "replacement"-ships... all nations had some ships they needed to replace... so they make a plan
a.) ship a was build in (say 1898)
b.) ships lifetime is 22 years (so you need a new ship in 1920)
c.) build a new ships as replacement from 1919-1920, so in 1920 the old ship can be decommisioned and the new one is in the navy

if you call this no plan then most nations had no plan... but also the germans have no plan either... :)
 
just think about the "replacement"-ships... all nations had some ships they needed to replace... so they make a plan
a.) ship a was build in (say 1898)
b.) ships lifetime is 22 years (so you need a new ship in 1920)
c.) build a new ships as replacement from 1919-1920, so in 1920 the old ship can be decommisioned and the new one is in the navy

if you call this no plan then most nations had no plan... but also the germans have no plan either... :)

We could just be arguing over definitions. What I mean by a plan is the sort of thing Germany had were their committed to maintaining x number of ships and renewing them at set dates. This was to prevent the Parliament having any say on actual production rates and force levels.

There are other alternatives. A country can decide to delay replacement, possibly with minor refits, if money is short, threats appear to be less than feared or simply the government is unwilling to spend the money on the navy. Or its decided that because the threat is less than when the ships were initially built, you don't need to replace some/all of the old ships with new builds. I.e. you have a policy of discussing and thinking what you need at the time rather than being tied to numbers by a plan which is not revalued due to changing circumstances.

Steve
 
We could just be arguing over definitions. What I mean by a plan is the sort of thing Germany had were their committed to maintaining x number of ships and renewing them at set dates. This was to prevent the Parliament having any say on actual production rates and force levels.

There are other alternatives. A country can decide to delay replacement, possibly with minor refits, if money is short, threats appear to be less than feared or simply the government is unwilling to spend the money on the navy. Or its decided that because the threat is less than when the ships were initially built, you don't need to replace some/all of the old ships with new builds. I.e. you have a policy of discussing and thinking what you need at the time rather than being tied to numbers by a plan which is not revalued due to changing circumstances.

Steve

Hi,

so you decide what is a "plan"... and only you?
sorry - but this is a problem... you think your definition of a plan is the only one... so we agree we see "plan" different... fine :)

for the germans, you still lack the real difficulties and why they did it this way.

germany started to build a navy... so they had less ships.
they - tirpitz - decided that the german fleet should number these or that ships.
they also thought about the usefullness of these ships... to build more ships (cost money they did not get from the german parliament) these ships (Neubauten) had to be parted from the replacements (Ersatzbauten)

you think the german großadmiral could order at will? wrong - he was seriously limited by the parliament... for them the big ships had no purpose, to expensive and not useful.

the brits got the money and could do what they wanted to do.

do you see the difference?

the germans need also to build continously, cause the german docks needed to be used all the time... compare this with the brits, that build in one year 2 and in another 7 (or 8?) battleships...

the german "plan" was much smarter as the behaviour of other nations... but still failed in its political parameter... if your enemy has 60 ships, 40 are enough... but if you plan 40 and he has 90...
 
This is a very well-considered post. However, I tend to believe you have overestimated the ability of the British to emulate German Zeppelin technology - or to develop their own industry. I know that OTL is different from this TL, but arguably, the British never built any rigid airships that were reliable or effective without directly copying German designs - designs that would not be available without downed airships to study in WW1 or obtained as war booty. On the otherhand, as you point out, Britain, more than any other nation, had the real need for large airships to establish commercial air links in the Empire, and provide a scouting force for the RN.
OTL, Barnes Wallis at Vickers did pretty well with hands that were largely tied. The key to success for the British might have been delaying the war, and for the faction in the Admiralty who were looking with some alarm at German progress in the field to quietly promote the development of commercial rigids by concerns like Vickers, as ostensibly private ventures (with some quiet Admiralty funding) as a means of testing and expanding British capability. If a British commercial line to the East and/or South Africa and to Canada or New York could be successfully launched, then there might be action on purchasing a few of the hulls from the company for Naval use, as scouts and conceivably scout aircraft carriers, and as fast (relatively!) means of physical communications with ships at sea.

By the way, if one considers how hampered the British efforts were from above OTL they did not do so badly. One of their ships managed a transAtlantic crossing shortly after WWI; unlike the Brown-Alcock Vickers Vimy biplane that beat them to the record of first aircraft of any kind to do it by mere weeks, the rigid managed the crossing in both directions (starting with the difficult east-west journey) without crashing (as the Vimy did on landing in Ireland); it went a greater distance, from somewhere in eastern England all the way to Long Island and back again versus the Vimy's ultra-short Newfoundland-Ireland crossing, and it carried a significant payload of crew and passengers again both ways (including one stowaway who only went west, being put off in America). That ship was arguably a "copy" of a wrecked Zeppelin, true. And some British extrapolations of what they could reverse-engineer from wreckage, defectors, and hostile Germans post-war were disastrous. But other innovations were sound (such as the practice of eliminating the complication of the weight-distributing "keel" and instead situating weights on the ring structures), and Wallis's designs in particular were both unique and successful.

What hampered them was undue dependency on Admiralty patronage; when the war started one might suppose this only helped as it would secure them some priority, but the countervailing demands of other war needs tended to override the experimental rigids. Furthermore Churchill, as Sea Lord, was one of those people who hated rigid airships (rigids tend to evoke either love or hatred in people for some reason) and he did what he could to terminate the expense. Post-war, Britain was of course in a bad way financially, and the reorganization of aircraft assets took them out of the Admiralty (where the program had friends as well as foes) and into a cash-strapped Air Ministry/RAF system. Much loss and delay resulted.

I hardly think it's a sure thing that a commercial program could go from being a barely-considered notion to an operational reality within 9 years or so from 1914. But I do think this route of development holds more promise, grudging as it is, than the reality OTL of development in wartime.

ITTL, if rigids are indeed established in transport service, and the Admiralty has acquired modified versions of these designs, I do think that in a mid-to-late 1920s context they could distinguish themselves both as transports and naval scouts enough to secure their institutional place.
I do like your point that commercial competition between the Zeppelin and Schutte-Lanz firms might have let both firms advance quicker than in WW1 and steal each others' innovations. The end result might be "zeppelins" that were very different from the zeppelin-derived types we know from our timeline.
I guess I did not make myself clear enough; surely competition will be a somewhat useful spur, but also the proprietary nature of the rival inventions, protected as they would be under peacetime civil law, would be a barrier to the rival firms sharing each other's innovations.
I also think you have downplayed the possible American role. In a TL where advances in airplanes are somewhat retarded, rigid airships would be very useful linking together a large continental nation and its (not insubstantial) overseas territories. Also, the US "monopoly" on helium would not be lost on US mlitary planners. Finally, the USA would not have been a member of the European alliance structure and might be able to negotiate deals with both Britain and Germany to keep abreast of airship technology abroad.

I'd like to imagine something equivalent to the "Great White Fleet's " early 20th century circumnavigation ... the "Great Silver Fleet's" airborne circumnavigation in 1923!

Don't bet too much on helium; OTL by the end of the 1920s the government procurement system (which relied on private firms to do the actual extraction) could barely keep one big rigid afloat at a time! By the early '30s they were briefly able to keep both Los Angeles and whichever ZRS ship was flying at the time going, and meanwhile all along a handful of blimps were being kept aloft (though one year in the later '20s, the Army, which had the blimps for the most part until the later '30s, generously gave its share over to the Navy so they could operate their rigids). By the late 30s the Navy (having acquired all the blimps in a reorganization) could contemplate keeping many blimps going and during the war the number climbed to something well over 100. But these blimps of course, though generally large by modern advertising blimp standards, were quite small compared to a rigid, something like a 20th their volume or less. By WWII I suppose if the Navy needed 4 or 5 or even 10 times the helium it did OTL that would have been forthcoming.

But in 1924? I doubt there would be even one helium-lifted rigid anywhere; if there were one I suppose it would be American. The reality facing everyone, including Americans, would be to either use hydrogen or not fly airships.

If there were this successful British venture I hope for, I don't doubt that Americans would extend it in cooperation (as a quid pro quo for making New York, and American destinations in general, available for the British lines, and possibly as a formal partnership) and have our own experience and expertise. In wartime I'd expect American hangars to produce a lot of the aerostatic tonnage launched by the Allied side. Even if the USA doesn't join, I imagine that as OTL we'd be "neutral" largely on the Allied side, and supply that side with materiel. By the end of the war, the number of USN and perhaps American-flagged commercial ships using helium will have risen from zero or one to say four or five, maybe ten. Meanwhile hydrogen-lifted ships will be flying in greater numbers. I hope.

Great American contributors to the aerostatic arts of OTL like C.P. Burgess would probably make themselves known and valued; postwar, Americans could lead the field.

But I just don't see the scope for their doing so before the war; helium frankly might prove more of a hindering will'o'the'wisp than a help.
 
Another consideration is that the plans for the modernization of the Belgian army, which were adopted only very late in 1913, will have borne their full effects. Expect a much larger Belgian army, and fully modernized forts in Liège. Might want to give the Germans pause for the Schlieffen plan.
 
Another consideration is that the plans for the modernization of the Belgian army, which were adopted only very late in 1913, will have borne their full effects. Expect a much larger Belgian army, and fully modernized forts in Liège. Might want to give the Germans pause for the Schlieffen plan.

Shortly after 1914, the Schlieffen Plan should be dead anyways. The German General Staff was fully aware that it was an emergency plan on the brink of lunacy; that is the reason why Moltke the Younger had started watering it down.

The Germans had a keen eye on the rising efficiency of the Russian railway network and thus Russian mobilisation. Once this one is deemed to be too fast to allow time for a decisive offensive in the West, the situation would have been re-assessed. In this scenario, a lot would depend on the way how Germany perceives the British standpoint.
 
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