WW1 Breakout into the north sea?

sharlin

Banned
The German WW2 ships were for the most part (Hipper and Panzershiffes for example) designed with raiding in mind, they had full quarters aboard. The HSF of WW1 was in essence a short ranged force built to dominate the North Sea and Baltic, close to ports and home base.

Also coal as a fuel is far less efficient to burn than oil, it also gives your position away and increases maintenance (cleaning. ALL the cleaning).
 
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Well, yes, but I was more interested if there was any realistic use of the fleet the Germans had in 1914 than exploring a further digression. Building it just to sit in port for most of the war is just such a waste.

Fair enough. But this is what happens when you spend too much time reading Mahan.
 
Point: Do you (or anyone really) have a conversion table for range at various speeds? That would be something very handy.
I believe this would be so dependant on hull form, length to width ratio and the efficiency of the engines that you'd need figures from each individual ship.

the British blockade was crippling, and Jutland showed that brute force wasn't breaking it. You've got to try something that will force the British to commit elsewhere... that is predicated on being able to sortie out and hit the little merchant ships, which forces the British in turn to guard large swathes of area: The threat is far more powerful than the execution.
To be honest, it seems like you're kind of fetishizing the idea of a breakout. If the Germans manage to get capital ships out of the North Sea, the effect on the blockade is likely to be zero because the Royal Navy isn't going to take them on with redeployed AMCs from the Northern Patrol. If they send any ships after the Germans, it'll be capital ships from the Grand Fleet: however, the Grand Fleet will be facing a HSF reduced in numbers, and consequently the British will retain local superiority over both the HSF and the raiding force.

The German battleships won't be able to "sortie out and hit the little merchant ships" because they don't have a safe port once they're out of the North Sea. It's basically asking the HSF to commit suicide one ship at a time: either they get sunk trying to break the blockade, they get sunk roaming round the North Atlantic trying to find a convoy without radar or aerial spotting, they get sunk trying to break back through the blockade to reach a German port, or they run out of ammunition, fuel or provisions and spend the rest of the war in a prison camp. Killing civilians, which is what took place in the Yarmouth and Scarborough raids, is a much less risky job than going anywhere near Scapa Flow or sending capital ships into the narrow Channel.
 
I suppose it was a natural consequence for Wilhelm II, as a devotee of Mahan, to conclude that the Navy was a board game piece in the political sphere rather than weapons of war? The fleet - in - being concept, while tying down units of your enemy's navy, doesn't really accomplish very much.

Such a shame after the Germans spent so much money on those beautiful ships...they never got to be used as effectively as they could have been, and the crews were actually quite eager to go into combat. It was only after a lengthy stay in port that the mood of the men began to turn.

I think if von Ingenohl had remained in charge of the Navy it could have been a different game altogether.
 
I suppose it was a natural consequence for Wilhelm II, as a devotee of Mahan, to conclude that the Navy was a board game piece in the political sphere rather than weapons of war? The fleet - in - being concept, while tying down units of your enemy's navy, doesn't really accomplish very much.

Such a shame after the Germans spent so much money on those beautiful ships...they never got to be used as effectively as they could have been, and the crews were actually quite eager to go into combat. It was only after a lengthy stay in port that the mood of the men began to turn.

I think if von Ingenohl had remained in charge of the Navy it could have been a different game altogether.



Well, I wasn't sure whether or not to put it in a new thread or not, and I wanted to mull the idea over some more before I raised it here, but have you ever read Power at Sea by Lisle Rose? He offers as a possibility the idea of a suicide rush into the channel at the outbreak of the war with the High Seas Fleet, and at least one of the things I (who have very little other background when it comes to WW1) was balking at is whether or not the German navy would have actually carried out so patently suicidal an order.


Ignoring for the moment how effective such a sortie might have been and how quickly the British could and would respond, do you think they would have done it? Were they that itching to be thrown in that they wouldn't have minded the rather overwhelming odds against them? I mean, this would have been in August, when morale should be highest.
 

LordKalvert

Banned
As has been mentioned, the German ships had a limited range of action especially if they ever need to get up to full speed. Coal is a nightmare fuel aboard ships. Ships of the day would have to spend about 1 day in port taking on coal for every three days they were at sea

Oil fuel by contrast provided about 40% greater range and can easily be done at sea but Germany lacked oil and her ships were designed for coal.

Getting a raider out to sea would do little good as it is going to have to return home shortly because the Germans lacked any real overseas naval bases.

One of the big reasons that the Germans could come so close to the British in the naval race while spending much less on their navy is that they didn't have to spend huge amounts on bases. They could concentrate their fleet in the North Sea and take advantage of their central position to strike any potential adversary- Britain in the North Sea, France on her northern coast or Russia in the Baltic

The other reasons were they didn't need to control the seas but deny the seas to their enemy hence much less need for cruisers, the use of conscription and the ability to design ships for shorter range

The best hope for the Germans was to find an isolated British squadron that they could bring the full force of the High Sea Fleet against. The opportunity never arose
 
Ignoring for the moment how effective such a sortie might have been and how quickly the British could and would respond, do you think they would have done it? Were they that itching to be thrown in that they wouldn't have minded the rather overwhelming odds against them? I mean, this would have been in August, when morale should be highest.

I don't think the so called 'suicide rush' would ever come to pass. For one thing, to employ the Navy in such a fashion requires the permission of the Kaiser - although he was not a navy man and exercised no direct command over the Fleet, yet it was he who had made the Imperial Navy possible and as such he was (overly) protective. After all, the Grand Fleet still does outnumber Germany's navy in total number of dreadnoughts and battlecruisers. Even if they take a lot of losses, the bottom line is they have more than Germany does so it doesn't seem - to me at least - a very effective strategy.

Furthermore, Admiral Tirpitz and other high ups in the Navy might threaten to resign if the Navy is callously thrown away; then there is the strategic consideration. Although the High Seas Fleet did not do very much directly, indirectly it contributed to the defense of the nation - the congregation of Germany's heavy ships in the north sea ports prevented any gallipoli like campaigns taking place on Germany's coast. And who knows? Churchill was so damn crazy he might go for it if the HSF is sunk or severely beaten up.

The only really effective way for the Germans to challenge the Grand Fleet would be to force naval engagements when the odds are in their favor - and this is something I could see von Ingenohl going for. Imagine if he bagged the British battlecruisers? That would be quite a feather in his cap, as well as the HSF; a couple Jutland like scenarios that ended in German victory would put the Grand Fleet on the defensive and likely cause a shake up at the Admiralty.
 
snip about things I don't really disagree with.

The other reasons were they didn't need to control the seas but deny the seas to their enemy hence much less need for cruisers, the use of conscription and the ability to design ships for shorter range


But this is a bad plan. If the north sea is denied to shipping of both powers, it hurts Germany a hell of a lot more than it hurts Britain. And even to do that, you have to overcome an enormous RN advantage in existing material and a much longer naval tradition, and you do kind of need to control the seas if you want your own imports coming along.

The best hope for the Germans was to find an isolated British squadron that they could bring the full force of the High Sea Fleet against. The opportunity never arose

And the opportunity never arose because there's no compelling reason for the British to split up without the Germans providing some kind of distraction somewhere else that you'd need to commit capital ships for. It's not bad luck, it's bad planning. And that's what prompted the question to begin with: Short of a tactical blunder that Germany's going to have to detect and take advantage of in time to exploit, Britain is simply never going to expose its fleet in a manner that can be vulnerable to the HSF, unless you force them to do so in some fashion.


To do that, you'd need some kind of viable threat to the shipping lanes directly, and the sort of threat that requires a capital ship response. That means something big and tough enough that it can handle little boats, fast enough to slip a blockade, and long ranged enough to get into the Atlantic and operate for a while.

Now, such a wondership didn't exist and maybe couldn't exist. But unless you force the British to spread out and weaken their fleet in some manner, you're never going to get that opportunity. And the only way I can think of to force such a disproportional weakening is to threaten enough of a range at once that the British have to split up the fleet to cover a wider area.



I don't think the so called 'suicide rush' would ever come to pass. For one thing, to employ the Navy in such a fashion requires the permission of the Kaiser - although he was not a navy man and exercised no direct command over the Fleet, yet it was he who had made the Imperial Navy possible and as such he was (overly) protective. After all, the Grand Fleet still does outnumber Germany's navy in total number of dreadnoughts and battlecruisers. Even if they take a lot of losses, the bottom line is they have more than Germany does so it doesn't seem - to me at least - a very effective strategy.

Furthermore, Admiral Tirpitz and other high ups in the Navy might threaten to resign if the Navy is callously thrown away; then there is the strategic consideration. Although the High Seas Fleet did not do very much directly, indirectly it contributed to the defense of the nation - the congregation of Germany's heavy ships in the north sea ports prevented any gallipoli like campaigns taking place on Germany's coast. And who knows? Churchill was so damn crazy he might go for it if the HSF is sunk or severely beaten up.

The only really effective way for the Germans to challenge the Grand Fleet would be to force naval engagements when the odds are in their favor - and this is something I could see von Ingenohl going for. Imagine if he bagged the British battlecruisers? That would be quite a feather in his cap, as well as the HSF; a couple Jutland like scenarios that ended in German victory would put the Grand Fleet on the defensive and likely cause a shake up at the Admiralty.


Well, the point isn't to knock the Grand fleet out of action, which I don't think is ever going to happen. I don't have my book in front of me (lent it to a friend) and can't quote directly, but the idea is that the channel is closer for the HSF than the British, and that without British dreadnoughts to oppose the German ones, the Germans should have a small window of time where they control the Channel.

Then you sink any transport ships in the water, and more importantly, shell the harbors on both sides of the channel that are loading and unloading troops. Delay the BEF enough and suddenly that initial rush into France is looking very very different.

And yeah, Kaiser Wilhelm probably never conceived of such a thing. And it would certainly be idiotic to throw away your fleet if it turned out to be what everyone was kind of expecting in August of '14, a three month short easy war.

But let's say he gets a stroke of inspiration, this is an alternate history board. He suddenly forsees that it's going to be a long, terrible grind to get anything done on the Western Front if he doesn't win and win quickly. And that the sacrifice of the fleet might keep the British from landing troops on the Continent for a long while, if you can wreck the harbors badly enough.

I'm not even saying it would work, I'm saying that the possibility of enabling that first throw against the West is the justification for such an expensive and risky venture, not an attempt to draw the Grand fleet into an early battle in a situation that would favor them, not the Germans.

And if you present it in those terms, a noble sacrifice aimed at overrunning France quickly, do you think the plan could be sold to the bigwigs at the German Navy?
 
@cheesenose: I think if the Navy does have such a plan, they better have an "okay, we smashed some shit up, let's get ready to fight our way home, boys!" option. Nobody wants to be considered an irrelevant pawn, so if the officers and men of the Kaiser's ships clue in to the fact they are not supposed to come back...well there might be some 'splainin' to do...

However, I do believe that the Germans based light naval forces at Ostend in otl which highly concerned the British. Perhaps alternately the HSF might base a few dreadnoughts and battlecruisers (let's say Koenig, Helgoland, Seydlitz, and von der Tann) that periodically slip out and smash British shipping up as well as bombarding ports and unloading areas. They could control the Channel (at least early - ish on in 1914) with a small(er) number of ships just as easily as sending a large contingent of the HSF.
 

LordKalvert

Banned
But this is a bad plan. If the north sea is denied to shipping of both powers, it hurts Germany a hell of a lot more than it hurts Britain. And even to do that, you have to overcome an enormous RN advantage in existing material and a much longer naval tradition, and you do kind of need to control the seas if you want your own imports coming along.

Quite agree with that and actually meant to take it out (was still on a thought concerning French strategy) The Germans actually wanted sea control but that's a hopeless thought against Britain. It isn't against France and Russia

Ultimately, the Germans revert to the French plan of sea denial- submarines It wasn't the original plan but there's a lot of confusion in the purpose behind the German Navy but that's typical of all navies at the time. Countries have multiple opponents are potential opponents and plans are made against all of them.

If Germany could fight Russia and France alone, then the High Seas Fleet is an awesome instrument- it controls the North Sea allowing supplies in and can strike at the Russians in the Baltic

Against Britain, they seem to have been more interested in blackmail- which isn't a bad plan in the 1890's when they start. With a huge fleet, they could hold the balance between France-Russia and Britain, they could threaten Britain with such damage that they would be seriously weakened and vulnerable to a Franco-Russian attack. This is the kind of power the British understood and respected

Ultimately the German delimma is this: their central position allows them to achieve dominance and defeat enemies in isolation: France and Russia could never unite their fleets, had other coasts to defend and were easy to beat piecemeal.

Unfortunately, that central position also raises the suspicions of all her neighbors driving them together. Germany may build an army to defend against France, but that army threatens Russia as well. A German Navy designed to fight France and Russia also threatens Britain. The same goes for Germany defeating France and Russia on land. German hegemony in Europe raises the Napoleonic nightmare of a united continent that would sweep Britain aside

This is what leads to the Entente- the recognition that their disputes in Africa and Asia weren't as important as their common interests in Europe


And the opportunity never arose because there's no compelling reason for the British to split up without the Germans providing some kind of distraction somewhere else that you'd need to commit capital ships for. It's not bad luck, it's bad planning. And that's what prompted the question to begin with: Short of a tactical blunder that Germany's going to have to detect and take advantage of in time to exploit, Britain is simply never going to expose its fleet in a manner that can be vulnerable to the HSF, unless you force them to do so in some fashion.


To do that, you'd need some kind of viable threat to the shipping lanes directly, and the sort of threat that requires a capital ship response. That means something big and tough enough that it can handle little boats, fast enough to slip a blockade, and long ranged enough to get into the Atlantic and operate for a while.

Now, such a wondership didn't exist and maybe couldn't exist. But unless you force the British to spread out and weaken their fleet in some manner, you're never going to get that opportunity. And the only way I can think of to force such a disproportional weakening is to threaten enough of a range at once that the British have to split up the fleet to cover a wider area.

Very true. The Germans, unlike the French with their worldwide system of bases, couldn't force the British to divert huge amounts of ships to deal with a large fleet of commerce raiders and so the opportunity never comes

The British don't need to fight Jutland, they could have stayed at home at Scappa Flow and just waited for the Germans to return to port. Giving the Germans control over the North Sea for a few hours isn't going to do much unless the Germans have a massive landing force their trying to land on the Islands.

That's never going to happen with the French and Russian armies in the field
 

Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
Well, the point isn't to knock the Grand fleet out of action, which I don't think is ever going to happen. I don't have my book in front of me (lent it to a friend) and can't quote directly, but the idea is that the channel is closer for the HSF than the British, and that without British dreadnoughts to oppose the German ones, the Germans should have a small window of time where they control the Channel.

Then you sink any transport ships in the water, and more importantly, shell the harbors on both sides of the channel that are loading and unloading troops. Delay the BEF enough and suddenly that initial rush into France is looking very very different.

And yeah, Kaiser Wilhelm probably never conceived of such a thing. And it would certainly be idiotic to throw away your fleet if it turned out to be what everyone was kind of expecting in August of '14, a three month short easy war.

But let's say he gets a stroke of inspiration, this is an alternate history board. He suddenly forsees that it's going to be a long, terrible grind to get anything done on the Western Front if he doesn't win and win quickly. And that the sacrifice of the fleet might keep the British from landing troops on the Continent for a long while, if you can wreck the harbors badly enough.

I'm not even saying it would work, I'm saying that the possibility of enabling that first throw against the West is the justification for such an expensive and risky venture, not an attempt to draw the Grand fleet into an early battle in a situation that would favor them, not the Germans.

And if you present it in those terms, a noble sacrifice aimed at overrunning France quickly, do you think the plan could be sold to the bigwigs at the German Navy?

The Grand Fleet may not bar the road into the Channel, but they would have a pretty good chance of intercepting the HSF on the return trip.
 
If they send any ships after the Germans, it'll be capital ships from the Grand Fleet: however, the Grand Fleet will be facing a HSF reduced in numbers, and consequently the British will retain local superiority over both the HSF and the raiding force.

Let's say 4 German ships breakout. The Western Approaches are pretty big, so let's say the Grand Fleet decides to form two pursuit groups, and to make sure they win any battle they catch, of 6 ships each. If so, the Grand Fleet is down 12 ships while the HSF would be down 4 - a swing of 8 in the North Sea for the German navy. But let's say, just for giggles, that the raiders catch wind of the GF's move double back, and the HSF then offers battle with the GF detachments still in the Western Approaches. The HSF would be down 0 ships and the GF would be down 12.
 
Really? Because I mean, I can see the difference between oil fuel and coal as fuel between the two wars, but those heavy German cruisers of WW2 managed to go quite far without resupplying for sailor provisions. I mean, were there significant advances in refrigeration or otherwise packing things in? I would have thought fuel would be the real limiting factor.

That's because you've made the assumption that 200 tons of coal per day expended would be more than 10 tons of provisions per day for 1,200 men.

Point: Do you (or anyone really) have a conversion table for range at various speeds? That would be something very handy.
A fuzzy topic, but a consumption ratio (per unit of time) something like -

14kt - 1
18kt - 2
21kt -4

Might be close for a Konig dreadnought.

Well, yes, but I was more interested if there was any realistic use of the fleet the Germans had in 1914 than exploring a further digression. Building it just to sit in port for most of the war is just such a waste.
Logistically, operations in the Western Approaches were feasible. Doctrinally, they were considered a mission both not worthy of the battle fleet and too risky to be justified.
 
Let's say 4 German ships breakout. The Western Approaches are pretty big
The Fairitsle/Viking/N. Utsire area of the North Sea is pretty narrow, though. The fact that the British can read the German codes historically meant that they had advance warning of every German raid that was made, and to escape from the North Sea requires the Germans to venture further out of their comfort zone than they've ever come before.

the Grand Fleet is down 12 ships while the HSF would be down 4 - a swing of 8 in the North Sea for the German navy.
Of course, we can't expect the Royal Navy to flex the number of capital ships they're sending to maintain a particular margin of superiority over the HSF: it's not as if they only sent three battlecruisers to the Falklands.

But let's say, just for giggles, that the raiders catch wind of the GF's move double back, and the HSF then offers battle with the GF detachments still in the Western Approaches.
The Western Approaches are the area on the western coast of Britain and the HSF is the entire German force, so I'm not clear what you're suggesting here. There seem to be two possible scenarios from your text:

1) The raiders find out the British have detached ships from the Grand Fleet to catch them (using the crystal balls that all German ships seem to be issued with as required). They are able to navigate to meet them with perfect precision, and defeat the detachments at odds of between 3-2 and 3-1 without loss to themselves, despite the closest safe port for any damaged German ship being on the other side of Britain. They then sneak their way back, either past the Grand Fleet or up the Channel, and back to port.
2) Having passed four capital ships through the Northern Blockade without being identified, the entire High Seas Fleet sells the Grand Fleet a dummy, sends a dozen battleships down the Channel without being noticed, catches the Grand Fleet detachments in the Western Approaches, sinks the whole force of twelve battleships without loss to itself, joins up with its detachments without the use of radio alerting the Royal Navy to what they're doing and making it back through the Channel to Kiel.

If we're making the Royal Navy this stupid, wouldn't it just be easier to have the entire Grand Fleet ram and sink itself while out for a cruise?
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Well, yes, but I was more interested if there was any realistic use of the fleet the Germans had in 1914 than exploring a further digression. Building it just to sit in port for most of the war is just such a waste.

Yes , a large element of truth in this statement.

Oh, I don't disagree. But the German navy of WW1 was, to be blunt, a total failure. It didn't achieve any of the strategic goals envisioned and used as a justification for the resources spent on its construction. But the British blockade was crippling, and Jutland showed that brute force wasn't breaking it. You've got to try something that will force the British to commit elsewhere, and I admit, I was mostly looking at scaling WW2 to WW1, where a German fleet that was even more inferior vis a vis their British adversaries was able to keep the UK on the back foot for a long period of time. But that is predicated on being able to sortie out and hit the little merchant ships, which forces the British in turn to guard large swathes of area: The threat is far more powerful than the execution.

The Germany surface navy did exactly what it was designed to do. It controlled the Baltic, including quality amphibious operation. It keep the battleline RN away from the German coast for almost all of the war. It generally kept even smaller RN ships a good distance off. With its short range, that was all it was designed to do. It is a failure of the overall Germany strategic plans and thinking to not foresee the distant blockade. The whole theory was that the Dutch ports would have unlimited imports. And this was also the USN prewar analysis.

The British blockade did harm the war effort, but what was crippling was Lemberg and Pemberg. Then Brusilov Offensive. Along with the diplomatic/military failure of Italy entering the war for the Entente. WW1 was a war won by Russia and lost by Austria Hungary on the plains north and east of the Carpathians.

Now what can you do? Depends on the POD, but you can try to force battles in the North Sea between capital ships. And try to win them, but mostly to try to get the UK to overspend even more on capital ships and keep too many land units in England proper. There are just not a lot of good options for the High Seas Fleet. Probably the best use is to keep the more modern and finished ships in service. Take older ships and transfer the men to U-boats and AMC as they become available. Build boat loads of U-boats but follow reasonably close to cruiser rules. Try to win better port systems and infrastructure in the peace treaty.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Well, I wasn't sure whether or not to put it in a new thread or not, and I wanted to mull the idea over some more before I raised it here, but have you ever read Power at Sea by Lisle Rose? He offers as a possibility the idea of a suicide rush into the channel at the outbreak of the war with the High Seas Fleet, and at least one of the things I (who have very little other background when it comes to WW1) was balking at is whether or not the German navy would have actually carried out so patently suicidal an order.

Ignoring for the moment how effective such a sortie might have been and how quickly the British could and would respond, do you think they would have done it? Were they that itching to be thrown in that they wouldn't have minded the rather overwhelming odds against them? I mean, this would have been in August, when morale should be highest.

Germany basically had no naval war plan besides "fight RN very near our home port if the odds favor us". I was really shocked on how limited the planning was. It took them months to get the minefields and other details right.

Now if we assume you write a war plan just for surface warships after it is too late to modify, but you can train, what do you do? Say writing in early 1913. My ideas.

1) Probably best idea is to tie up Russia forces to help army in east. We want Russian on the Baltic coast, not moving towards Prussia. Do real or fake amphibious assaults. Bombardment of port or transport that can be reached. Try to get Russian fleet to come out. Aland Islands are undefended at this time (unfortified). Even if goes badly, still enough ships to defend coastline of Germany in North Sea and Baltic. To me, this is the high gain, low risk option. If you send out a powerful battle fleet with a transport fleet following, maybe even with a regiment or two of troops, it becomes real hard for the Russians to tell fake attack (diversionary) from serious attack.

2) You can try to fake amphibious assault of UK, but probably too difficult to fake and too risky when you do the main fleet surface engagement.

3) You can try to slow the English Channel transports. I would not actually go into the channel, but heads toward the channel. You might win the surface engagement. Win or lose, you might keep the UK transports in port for a while in the chaos of war. You still have the possibility of retreat. Once in the channel, it is a one way trip. In the North Sea, the German admirals have more options.

No reason to do suicide of man fleet, when you have a land war you should win on paper and would win if you avoid USW mistake.
 
The Fairitsle/Viking/N. Utsire area of the North Sea is pretty narrow, though. The fact that the British can read the German codes historically meant that they had advance warning of every German raid that was made, and to escape from the North Sea requires the Germans to venture further out of their comfort zone than they've ever come before.

The operational tempo of breakout operations was different than the HSF's historical pattern. Seasonally, the best time for breakout was during long winter nights in stormy weather, while the fleet preferred to operate in the North Sea more during summer months in good visibility, so that aerial and submarine support would be more effective.

The fact that the RN could read German codes would undoubtedly have led to the destruction of some raiders.

Of course, we can't expect the Royal Navy to flex the number of capital ships they're sending to maintain a particular margin of superiority over the HSF.
You had stated that the RN would maintain numerical superiority over both a raiding force and the HSF in the North Sea. This is not correct. A raiding force introduces a dynamic whereby either navy may suffer a battle at reduced odds due to the random luck of competing dispersion and concentration of a fluid campaign. Whereas, in the case of concentration solely in the North Sea, the RN would never have to risk such a disadvantage.

The Western Approaches are the area on the western coast of Britain and the HSF is the entire German force, so I'm not clear what you're suggesting here. There seem to be two possible scenarios from your text:
If a raiding force of, say, four capital ships passed into the Atlantic, it would compel the Grand Fleet to either react to that event in defence of Atlantic communications, or to ignore the threat in light of the balance in the North Sea. If a reaction was made, this would entail detachments from the Grand Fleet (1) of a size to defeat the raiding force (which might be unknown) and (2) enough detachments that at least one force stands a chance of intercepting the raiders. This is not a trivial operational problem, and whether or not the RN attempted to conceal its reaction in no way mitigates the fact that it would have to make a choice, that the HSF would be aware that some choice will have been made, and all choices available would entail danger.

Say, for example, that the correct number of chase groups is determined to be two, and the breakout squadron is unknown in strength and may be anything from 3 battlecruisers up to 5 battlecruisers and 4 dreadnoughts. An optimal response between the unknowns of 3 ship and 9 ship breakout would be tricky, correct? In one instance you might get away with two groups of 4 to 5 ships each, and in the other case that might be a formula for catastrophe.
 
The Germany surface navy did exactly what it was designed to do. It controlled the Baltic, including quality amphibious operation. It keep the battleline RN away from the German coast for almost all of the war.

The German navy did not require dreadnoughts for those missions.
 
You had stated that the RN would maintain numerical superiority over both a raiding force and the HSF in the North Sea. This is not correct.
The Royal Navy has more battleships than the German Navy. If the German Navy manages to get some of their battleships into the North Atlantic, the Royal Navy still has more battleships than they do. If the Royal Navy decides it now wants to put some battleships into the North Atlantic, they can have more in each ocean at the same time than the Germans do. The Germans might have a better chance of reducing the British numbers (though they've significantly increased their own chance of losing ships) but the fundamental dynamic hasn't changed. This strategy does not make battleships appear from thin air.

(The Entente has battleships other than British ones, of course, but let's leave that to one side temporarily)

A raiding force introduces a dynamic whereby either navy may suffer a battle at reduced odds due to the random luck of competing dispersion and concentration of a fluid campaign.... in the case of concentration solely in the North Sea, the RN would never have to risk such a disadvantage.
It seems odd, then, that the British suffer a battle at reduced odds due to the random luck of competing dispersion and concentration at the start of Jutland, and very nearly suffer a second at Dogger Bank when the Germans raid Scarborough. In fact, making the Royal Navy suffer such a disadvantage in the North Sea is the epitome of Germany's naval strategy: clearly experienced naval men thought there was at least an outside chance of it happening.

whether or not the RN attempted to conceal its reaction in no way mitigates the fact that it would have to make a choice, that the HSF would be aware that some choice will have been made, and all choices available would entail danger.
The HSF has no idea what choice has been made: They don't have an effective spy network, they don't have signal intelligence, they don't have anything but guesswork. For all they know, the British haven't bothered sending a single capital ship after the short-legged German vessels. As such, this isn't the fantastic advantage that it has been painted as. I'm trying but failing to think of a good way for the German admiral to admit to the Kaiser that he detached ships into the North Atlantic, sailed the High Seas Fleet into battle on the assumption that the Royal Navy would send three times as many after them, and found out he was outnumbered even more than he had been previously. "It was risky for the Royal Navy as well" may not cut it.

the breakout squadron is unknown in strength and may be anything from 3 battlecruisers up to 5 battlecruisers and 4 dreadnoughts.
Nope. The biggest ship the Germans managed to get through the Northern Blockade was a 23,000 ton passenger liner sailing on its own. If they try and send three capital ships plus destroyers and a fleet train, the British will notice: they're likely to have an extremely good idea of how many ships are there from close reconnaissance of German ports, from a lucky spot as they travel through the North Sea. But a German admiral would never wave goodbye to between three and nine capital ships by asking them to sail into the teeth of the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow: may as well just break them up for scrap and help the war effort on land. And if he takes the whole High Seas Fleet to try and help them break out, then he's just brought on the decisive battle of which the successful completion of the breakout plan was supposed to be a sine qua non.

The explanation doesn't actually clarify which if either of the scenarios you were talking about: it would have been nice to know what you meant by "HSF" and "Western Approaches", but I can live without it. One of the other bits of your scenario which I was struggling with is more pertinent: how the Germans are going to secure numerical superiority at any point, which at the moment seems to involve crossing their fingers and hoping to stumble upon a smaller number of British battleships somewhere in the North Atlantic. I don't envy them the position of trying to secure a decisive battle when they have barely any intelligence on your enemy's movements, their ships are running short of supplies, and they haven't got a safe port to anchor in. Particularly if the crew realises that the longer they stay out, the less chance they have of actually making it back.

Lower decks are a terrible place for rumours to spread: particularly one that says the Royal Navy's plan is to ignore the convoy raid and station a detached squadron of dreadnoughts at Plymouth to cover the Channel entrance, waiting to pounce on the German squadron as it attempts to return. A crew which has been operating in "long winter nights in stormy weather", for much longer than they are used to, is fully aware the fleet is running low on supplies, and can see the extent to which their ships efficiency has been degraded by the weather- maybe they balk when asked to try and make the run up the Channel, take command from the officers, and sail the ship to Spain to be interned instead.
 
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