It's a pity no one told them that then![]()
Told them that coastal artillery and mines were the primary means to defend coasts? They already knew that.
It's a pity no one told them that then![]()
. 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.
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.
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.
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
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,
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....
In the aftermath of the Dogger Bank debacle, the German Navy mistakenly believed that the reason as to why the British were so well prepared for them was because an enemy agent was relaying movements of HSF ships, although they also did consider the possibility that their codes had been breached. So, to me that is a 50/50 chance that the Germans might get it right.
Perhaps they decide instead of the erroneous idea that spies are watching the Fleet bases, that their codes are being read and they change them. That ups their game right there does it not? Although, perhaps the Brits will be more squeamish in facing Germany if they don't know what the HSF is up to and are afraid of getting caught in a trap. Or I could be wrong, and events will still unfold in some form as otl with Jutland. As I have mentioned before, sacking von Ingenohl was a stupid move on the part of the Kaiser; perhaps Tirpitz could intervene to save his career, convincing Wilhelm that the loss at Dogger Bank was not von Ingenohl's fault.
If they know their codes are being read, it presents them with a golden opportunity. Less so if they merely suspect it.
Maybe have something that occur that gives the German Admiralty 100% (or as near to it as possible) certainty that their codes have been broken and are being read by the British. Perhaps a British defector (however far fetched that is)
That way they could actually do what they'd always dreamed of, cook up a way to divide the British fleet and then destroy it in detail separately.
The German navy did not require dreadnoughts for those missions.
It's a pity no one told them that then![]()
Told them that coastal artillery and mines were the primary means to defend coasts? They already knew that.
They require some even if we see prestige as unimportant. Just not as many as were built. You can look at A-H versus her opponents in WW1 to see the need for these capital ships.
The German navy, without a single capital ship sortie in four years, managed to defend the Belgian coast with nothing but seaplanes, coastal guns and minefields. The approaches to and from the submarine bases there were never effectively blocked. This was accomplished because battleships were neither useful nor required for coastal defence. Conversely, the British *were* able to fortify the Dover Straights because, in 1914, when the German army had its only chance to take it, Moltke had no idea that Calais and Boulogne were important objectives. Why? Because the German navy had not done its job and told him. Why did the German navy overlook so obvious a positional advantage? Because its mission and doctrine were rubbish and it was not paying attention to crucial details, like Antwerp as a major forward base and the implication of coastal artillery covering the Straights of Dover.It also makes it much harder to clear minefields with smaller ships. There is a pattern where you tend to send in destroyers to cover the mine clearers. The other side can defeat you by bringing in cruisers. You can counter with the capital ships and fight major battle. At your advantage. You do need capital ships, just in case.
For capital ships, the problem was neither the range of the ships, (Kaiser's 8000nm cruise range in deep load was adequate) nor the numbers. The problem was that the German Navy had serious doctrinal problems from the top down and in many respects was not actually a fighting force, but rather a trophy or prize on display. People often think of the Kaiser's meddling and the fleet's timid inactivity, but it went deeper than that. In reading Massie's Dreadnought, it is striking that virtually !all! the technical and doctrinal innovations in the pre-war period were introduced by the British Royal Navy. There were no industrial or technical reasons for that. Rather, it went to the "trophy wife" nature of the political culture within the German Navy.Now the problem was the Germans built too much big stuff, not its short range. From memory, the Germans had about 55% of the size of the UK capital fleet, but only 30% in cruiser and smaller.
A war navy would have done well to shift tonnage to light cruisers, but a 'trophy wife' navy demands battleships. The way I see it, of the capital ships, the Deutchland Class was a huge mistake and should never have been built. The Nassau Class was acceptable with reciprocating engines as a transitional design, but should have been limited to two ships and 12" guns, while the Heligolands should have been with turbines. The ratio of BC's to BB's should have been 50/50. By the time of the Kaisers, Tirpitz had no doctrinal excuse not to have figured out that his dreadnoughts had to be both 2kt faster than a British dreadnought and with 13.5" guns, not 12" guns. Had one of the Kaiser Class been sacrificed, I think the navy could have taken on 8 ships of well rounded designs of 8x13.5" guns each,Move this to more like 45% capital and 40% smaller ships, and you get a much better fleet for the Germans. And lower tensions.
You don't need a POD 10 years beforehand. All you need is a navy that is willing to fight, and innovate to do so. Want more range and at sea refuelling? Remove Konig's center turret and replace it with a coaling facility, and convert an ocean liner to be able to conveyor coal straight into the hole while underway in the North Atlantic.I did not do it because I wanted a U-boat T-L, but I can write a TL where the Germans vastly overperform OTL with no extra U-boat capability by building fewer BB and spending the money on ALMOST anything else. Coastal guns, mines, marines, torpedo boats, long range cruisers, short range cruisers, air planes, etc. But you tend to have so many butterflies because you start out with a POD 10 years before WW1, you don't get OTL WW1.
The items you list alone will simply not work. You need the complete package for any hope of stopping a determined attack.
The UK simply would not have reacted to 2-3 additional fortified German ports in colonies. Each with a battalion or two of marines, 3-6 light cruisers, 12-24 torpedo boats and 6-18 submarines. In fact, you can look at the German ships at Tsingtao and the location of UK ships at the start of WW1 to see how little they cared about the Germans overseas ships. And the capital ships that ended up in the Ottoman Navy were on there way to China via the Suez. So even putting a few capital ships overseas would not always upset the UK.
Let's say the Germans get four capital ships out into the Atlantic. Let's further assume that the Brits send out twelve capital ships in return.
Okay...
Now the German plan part two comes into action. A battle with the Grand Fleet!
Except...
Why, precisely, does the Grand Fleet need to engage at the moment of greatest disadvantage, when at most a wait of two or three days will see things back to how they were?
What the christ?My guess would be along the lines of something like that the entire High Seas Fleet had just been sited closing in on Scapa Flow and would soon be within artillery range of the anchorage? (The idea of a landing is interesting, but why mess around with half measures? If the numbers said, 'go', and the HSF knew the numbers were favorable, then Scheer should just cut to it and go for the jugular at Scapa, shouldn't he?)
I take it then that room 40 has vanished into a vacuum never to be heard from???My guess would be along the lines of something like that the entire High Seas Fleet had just been sited closing in on Scapa Flow and would soon be within artillery range of the anchorage? (The idea of a landing is interesting, but why mess around with half measures? If the numbers said, 'go', and the HSF knew the numbers were favorable, then Scheer should just cut to it and go for the jugular at Scapa, shouldn't he?)
What the christ?
Why would they even...
Scapa's well defended!
Also there's the traditional advantages of operating close to base - torpedo boats as mentioned.