German Nassau's (Dreadnoughts)

[recon20011]

What if the Germans built the first all-big gun battleships, commonly known as dreadnoughts? Do the British attempt to answer? Can the British answer the Germans?
It has been said that by designing HMS Dreadnought the British gave up their overwhelming preponderance in pre-dreadnought battleships by making pre-dreadnoughts obsolete. So my question is, if the tables are turned, could the Germans have changed history by having more dreadnoughts in 1914?

[Sea Skimmer]

Ever heard of the French ironclad Gloire? You should really go look that ship up.

[Isolder74]

It's doubtful that Germany could win a Dreadnought arms race that they started. While it would make all previous battleships obsolete just like Dreadnought did they don't have the yard capacity to out build the British. They might have a short head start but just like with the French starting a Ironclad race it will not end well.

[Simon_Jester]

There were at least three countries all building the first recognizable dreadnoughts simultaneously, so it makes very little practical difference who comes out first by, say, six months. Having one dreadnought doesn't mean you can suddenly sink half a dozen enemy pre-dreadnoughts, the advantage in firepower isn't that big.

And by the time you can build up a decent battleline of, say, a dozen dreadnought... well, the question is how long it took you to build a dozen dreadnoughts, and how many your enemies built in that time. In which case your early lead is pretty much gone.

So very little changes unless we create an implausible what-if like "what if only the Germans are smart enough to build dreadnoughts while everyone else's naval designers are busy drooling, babbling, and walking into walls thanks to their alien-space-bat-administered lobotomies?"

[Eternal_Freedom]

The British had an advantage in building Dreadnought first, namely that they started the arms race and could continue development while everyone else caught up. But that advantage was only worthwhile because the British had the industrial and shipyard capacity to build and equip more ships.

Besides, the Germans tried to pre-empt HMS Invincible, the first battlecruiser with SMS Blucher, but they got it wrong (they thought Invincible would only have 8 inch rather than 12 inch guns. and essentially built a pointless ship.

[Simon_Jester]

The British didn't really gain development time- they didn't design Dreadnought before anyone else had designed an all-big-gun battleship. They just commissioned her faster, mostly by pulling some of the parts from other capital ships under construction, and by putting off doing some of the fitting and preparation work until after the ship was at sea.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The British didn't really gain development time- they didn't design Dreadnought before anyone else had designed an all-big-gun battleship. They just commissioned her faster, mostly by pulling some of the parts from other capital ships under construction, and by putting off doing some of the fitting and preparation work until after the ship was at sea.

True. Still, I suspect there was a public psychological effect, the "we're in the lead, we've got to keep it up" making it easier to allocate funds to more dreadnoughts.

[Sea Skimmer]

It would make it harder if anything to be in the lead politically, and politics decided how much money the RN got to work with. In the century prior to World War One the RN tended to be very advanced technologically, but only get funding to implement its ideas on a mass scale in reaction to foreign threats.

The reason was simple, as long as the RN looked to be and was the largest and most powerful navy on the planet it didn't seem terribly important to constantly upgrade it. Why would you? The moment that advantage seemed threatened though you got huge reactions, time and again with Dreadnought merely being the last in a line going back most obviously to Napoleon being commissioned as the first screw ship of the line, though actually earlier if in less obvious ships in construction. The British would have much preferred that nothing changed, because then only by matching the existing RN ship for ship, and man for man, could anyone really threaten them.

Besides, the Germans tried to pre-empt HMS Invincible, the first battlecruiser with SMS Blucher, but they got it wrong (they thought Invincible would only have 8 inch rather than 12 inch guns. and essentially built a pointless ship.

That's mythical. The design of Blucher well predates Invincible, though it was only finalized after she was known to have 12 inch guns. She was reaction to heavily armed ships like Minotaur and Rurik and a direct evolution of Scharnhorst. The Germans built her because her design was ready to be laid down, and waiting for a ship with 11 inch guns would mean building nothing at all for while which would mean the funds went unspent. As long as the British and French and Russia had giant armored cruisers steaming about she had a point, though in the end the main point of German armored cruisers was simply to show the flag overseas alongside those big foreign ships anyway.

While she was outdated by the time of Dogger Bank but its not like the Germans would have been doing better if they'd had fewer heavy ships in action. In reality the German fleet should never have been building large cruisers in the first place.

[Eternal_Freedom]

True. Ok, I suppose I should have said that she was pointless as a part of the battlecruiser force.

[Sea Skimmer]

IIRC she was going to be dispatched to the Far East by the end of 1914. Still better to loose her then Seydlitz, and its hard to see the Germans getting away from Dogger Bank or any similar battle without loosing at least one ship. The Germans just didn't have a good critical mass of fast heavy ships to work with. They had a damn lot of luck as it was.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Very true. Hell, if Beatty hadn't messed up his signals the Battlecruiser Fleet woudl have persued the German force and continued the action rather than mobbing Blucher. IIRC (based on Nigel Steel and Peter Hart's book Jutland) the near-loss of Seydlitz was a blessing in disguise, since it led the Germans to adopt anti-flash procedures in their ships whilst the RN didn't.

[recon20011]

The British didn't really gain development time- they didn't design Dreadnought before anyone else had designed an all-big-gun battleship. They just commissioned her faster, mostly by pulling some of the parts from other capital ships under construction, and by putting off doing some of the fitting and preparation work until after the ship was at sea.

True. Still, I suspect there was a public psychological effect, the "we're in the lead, we've got to keep it up" making it easier to allocate funds to more dreadnoughts.

This was sort of more what I was alluding to. Would the Germans have attempted to invest more into their navy if they had visibly seen proof that they now had, however briefly, technological superiority over the Royal Navy? Could the Germans have invested more?
I'm inclined to believe that the Royal Navy never really invested enough in its dreadnoughts to give it the overwhelming superiority necessary to crush the German High Seas Fleet, and because it never had enough powerful vessels to guarantee the crippling of the German fleet, the British never even ventured to try, other than trying to pick off isolated elements of the German fleet here and there.

[Sea Skimmer]

Very true. Hell, if Beatty hadn't messed up his signals the Battlecruiser Fleet woudl have persued the German force and continued the action rather than mobbing Blucher. IIRC (based on Nigel Steel and Peter Hart's book Jutland) the near-loss of Seydlitz was a blessing in disguise, since it led the Germans to adopt anti-flash procedures in their ships whilst the RN didn't.

Yes it did cause that, though by the time of Jutland not all battlecruisers, and a large number of dreadnoughts had not yet been fitted with the revised flash doors.

The RN, or more specifically Beatty meanwhile concluded that the Germans had escaped because the battlecruiser force had fired too slowly, issued orders to speed up ROF, and that laid the groundwork for the explosions at Jutland by overloading the turrets with ammunition. Even with improved anti flash precautions, its not like they had none... they just were pretty bad, its not certain they would have survived with so much ammo around. Even the best anti flash scuttles couldn't reliably hold up to a sustained ammunition fire, they were just supposed to prevent well, a flashover. You bought the time to flood the magazines, which took up to 30 minutes to complete, while slowing down the fire.

[Sea Skimmer]

This was sort of more what I was alluding to. Would the Germans have attempted to invest more into their navy if they had visibly seen proof that they now had, however briefly, technological superiority over the Royal Navy? Could the Germans have invested more?

Sure the Germans could invest more, at even greater cost to the German army and land defenses then was already the case. A number of German army divisions already lacked a full complement of modern artillery. The German navy was an entirely political creation driven by Tirpitz, the naval law system and a whole giant pot of stupid. It actually had no true military purpose at all according to German theory.

Of course meanwhile the British could have also spent more, and had no other major commitments to distract them. The Royal Navy was the life of the Empire and Britain. Nothing else really mattered.

I'm inclined to believe that the Royal Navy never really invested enough in its dreadnoughts to give it the overwhelming superiority necessary to crush the German High Seas Fleet, and because it never had enough powerful vessels to guarantee the crippling of the German fleet, the British never even ventured to try, other than trying to pick off isolated elements of the German fleet here and there.

Then you believe a bunch of BS and do not understand the war in the north sea at all. The British aggressively attempted to engage the Germans at every chance they had, while the Germans fled in terror every time they could because they knew they were certain to loose any major battle. They massively out built the Germans, and by 1914 had taken a massive lead in numbers and individual unit superiority with the first 15 inch ships. What on earth do you use as a source of information?

[Thanas]

well, the theory behind the fleet was that Britain would sooner or later engage in alliances to limit Germany (true) and given how already in 1904 people were clamoring for Germany to be Copenhagened I doubt anything but building a navy was an option at that point.

[Sea Skimmer]

Except that the naval plan was if we believe the risk theory was really the plan, never to do anything but build a fleet to loose, which was one of several blatant demonstrations that German did not understand sea power. End result, massively expensive fleet that is incapable of doing anything useful. In fact it couldn't even be relied upon to prevent a landing in Denmark, requiring that Germany build heavy coastal and land defenses in that area anyway.

Germany could have done just fine building coastal defenses in any defensive military terms for considerably less money, which was exactly what the Army wanted to do. Instead they ended up with the absurdity that projects such as converting the dangerously obsolete FK 96 field gun to the modern n.A standard being stretched out and heavier weapons simply never produced in the planned numbers to help pay for a navy. The British had every reason to fear the German fleet, it made no sense for anything unless it was going to be so massive it could directly take control of the seas from Britain.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'm inclined to believe that the Royal Navy never really invested enough in its dreadnoughts to give it the overwhelming superiority necessary to crush the German High Seas Fleet, and because it never had enough powerful vessels to guarantee the crippling of the German fleet, the British never even ventured to try, other than trying to pick off isolated elements of the German fleet here and there.

Amusingly, if you reverse the names that's not far off what the High Seas Fleet did.

[Sidewinder]

well, the theory behind the fleet was that Britain would sooner or later engage in alliances to limit Germany (true) and given how already in 1904 people were clamoring for Germany to be Copenhagened I doubt anything but building a navy was an option at that point.

By "Copenhagened," do you mean subjected to Copenhagenization, a term Wikipedia (I know, I know) defined as "the practice of confiscating the warships of a defeated enemy"?

[Eternal_Freedom]

It refers (AFAIL) to the Battle of Copenhagen in 1803 (IIRC) when Admiral Nelson pre-emptively destroyed the Danish fleet.

[Thanas]

well, the theory behind the fleet was that Britain would sooner or later engage in alliances to limit Germany (true) and given how already in 1904 people were clamoring for Germany to be Copenhagened I doubt anything but building a navy was an option at that point.

By "Copenhagened," do you mean subjected to Copenhagenization, a term Wikipedia (I know, I know) defined as "the practice of confiscating the warships of a defeated enemy"?

I mean "being attacked without warning and losing your navy and merchant marine", which is how Fisher used it. The wikipedia definition leaves out the "illegal surprise attack even with no provocation or threat" part.

Except that the naval plan was if we believe the risk theory was really the plan, never to do anything but build a fleet to loose, which was one of several blatant demonstrations that German did not understand sea power. End result, massively expensive fleet that is incapable of doing anything useful.

I think you are misunderstanding the risk theory. It meant to built a fleet so big that Britain would not dare attack without losing too much in the process. The idea was not to engage Britain. It is a glorified fleet in-being concept.

In fact it couldn't even be relied upon to prevent a landing in Denmark, requiring that Germany build heavy coastal and land defenses in that area anyway.

What defences are you talking about here? AFAIK most defences there were built way before the fleet building began.

Germany could have done just fine building coastal defenses in any defensive military terms for considerably less money, which was exactly what the Army wanted to do. Instead they ended up with the absurdity that projects such as converting the dangerously obsolete FK 96 field gun to the modern n.A standard being stretched out and heavier weapons simply never produced in the planned numbers to help pay for a navy.

Would any of that have had a positive effect on WWI? I mean, did the fleet actually prevent them from winning?

The British had every reason to fear the German fleet, it made no sense for anything unless it was going to be so massive it could directly take control of the seas from Britain.

Doubtful as it never was planned that way. The British also knew that there was no way the Germans would outproduce them.

It refers (AFAIL) to the Battle of Copenhagen in 1803 (IIRC) when Admiral Nelson pre-emptively destroyed the Danish fleet.

That is a nice euphemism and gives the false impression that the Danes were a threat.

[Eternal_Freedom]

True. Gratifyin to know I got the right event though.

[Sea Skimmer]

I think you are misunderstanding the risk theory. It meant to built a fleet so big that Britain would not dare attack without losing too much in the process. The idea was not to engage Britain. It is a glorified fleet in-being concept.

No I think you are the one who does not understand the implications of this theory at all. It was predicated on loosing, but making the loss hard. It assumed that the British would and could be cowed, and that a fleet in being could accomplish anything useful if it declined to engage. Both were entirely false. Germany might have understood this had it not just been trying to pull a fleet out of its ass as a political move, rather then as part of sound strategy. As it was they might have bothered to read British history and noticed all the times the Royal Navy willingly engaged a superior enemy.

Rationally that should have meant taking a minimalist approach to holding the Baltic, but then the Kaiser would be upset.

What defences are you talking about here? AFAIK most defences there were built way before the fleet building began.

Shore batteries were being upgraded through 1915, just not on a lavish scale, the land defenses in question are primarily the Sicherungstellung Nord, a heavy defense line built across Jutland during the war, and including 24cm turrets set in concrete, no small undertaking. It was built mostly with swarms of Russian POWs whom otherwise might have been used to say, grow food so the HSF didn’t mutiny over starvation. Absolutely nothing existed on this frontier prior to the war, but then the Germans realized the HSF actually couldn’t do a damn thing to stop an invasion of Denmark because it if came out to fight it would simply be destroyed. Thus the German fleet was pointless and incapable of accomplishing anything except to defend a narrow pocket outside its own bases… where much lesser forces could have done the same.

Now certain things were meanwhile not built to pay for the battleships, such as a plan to install at least two heavy sea forts on the North Sea approaches, and its very easy to theorize that a lavish system could have been put in place, to fully replace the various Gruson turret and ironclad batteries built from the 1870s onward and now entirely obsolete.

As it was Helgoland fortress was the only place really heavily fortified, and gives a good idea of what could have been done at every harbor, and for much less money.

It remains highly ironic that it was the British and not the Germans whom realized the tremendous capability of the submarine for coastal defense, and themselves ceased building high caliber coastal batteries over 9.2in, but only because submarines could do the same job. Ergo largest submarine fleet in the world in 1914. Germany never engaged in such deductive reasoning because the point was to build big shinny battleships to treat like artillery batteries at sea for the army navy, and the hell if this all made sense…

Would any of that have had a positive effect on WWI? I mean, did the fleet actually prevent them from winning?

A very strong argument can be made that it did, which I have made multiple times before here. The German army would have had considerable more firepower, considerable more ammunition for the weapons it did have, and potentially two or three more army corps in the field. The German fleet didn’t just cost the value of the ships, but a tremendous sum to build naval bases and enlarge the Kiel canal and then all the operating costs of the fleet.

You could buy and emplace twenty to thirty battleship caliber guns for the price of a battleship, and a gun on land was worth several afloat in a duel. The reckoning at the time was five to one, though that might be a bit optimistic. Either way when you add in the fact that basically all German harbors can only be approached down narrow channels it’s pretty easy to conclude that they could have been rendered entirely impregnable to direct attack with much less spending on arms.

In the Flanders the British never once managed to knock out a heavy caliber German shore gun in basically four years of sustained attacks. Nor did the German guns sink much, but this was largely because they declined to fire on the monitors the British used as it wasn’t worth shooting the barrels out to do so.

So now ask yourself. If the German fleet had been one quarter its historical size, scaled perhaps only to be utterly superior to the Russian Baltic Fleet. Would Germany have lost faster? Doesn't seem bloody likely does it?

Doubtful as it never was planned that way. The British also knew that there was no way the Germans would outproduce them.

Even if the British wished to believe this it means deciding that the enormous German investment in naval armaments is literally for insanely no purpose. You don’t build a centuries long empire by assuming your enemy is insane and going to waste his money on an unusable fleet. And of course, the Germans kept amending the naval law to make the navy bigger. As I recall German spending was under 2.8% of the GDP, typical of the era, so a sudden surge in spending was possible at any time. France was spending the most of anyone, some moderate fraction over 3% so we certainly know more was sustainable.

[Thanas]

I think you are misunderstanding the risk theory. It meant to built a fleet so big that Britain would not dare attack without losing too much in the process. The idea was not to engage Britain. It is a glorified fleet in-being concept.

No I think you are the one who does not understand the implications of this theory at all. It was predicated on loosing, but making the loss hard. It assumed that the British would and could be cowed, and that a fleet in being could accomplish anything useful if it declined to engage. Both were entirely false. Germany might have understood this had it not just been trying to pull a fleet out of its ass as a political move, rather then as part of sound strategy. As it was they might have bothered to read British history and noticed all the times the Royal Navy willingly engaged a superior enemy.

But the British only survived similar attempts to hold a fleet in being during the napoleonic wars due to them extracting that much resources from india. It was pretty much assumed that this would not happen the same in WWI. I am not saying it was the right theory, but this theory (and similar ones like the jeune ecole) pretty much had a fleet in being as the lynchpin of the strategy.

Shore batteries were being upgraded through 1915, just not on a lavish scale, the land defenses in question are primarily the Sicherungstellung Nord, a heavy defense line built across Jutland during the war, and including 24cm turrets set in concrete, no small undertaking. It was built mostly with swarms of Russian POWs whom otherwise might have been used to say, grow food so the HSF didn’t mutiny over starvation. Absolutely nothing existed on this frontier prior to the war, but then the Germans realized the HSF actually couldn’t do a damn thing to stop an invasion of Denmark because it if came out to fight it would simply be destroyed. Thus the German fleet was pointless and incapable of accomplishing anything except to defend a narrow pocket outside its own bases… where much lesser forces could have done the same.

Now certain things were meanwhile not built to pay for the battleships, such as a plan to install at least two heavy sea forts on the North Sea approaches, and its very easy to theorize that a lavish system could have been put in place, to fully replace the various Gruson turret and ironclad batteries built from the 1870s onward and now entirely obsolete.

As it was Helgoland fortress was the only place really heavily fortified, and gives a good idea of what could have been done at every harbor, and for much less money.

It remains highly ironic that it was the British and not the Germans whom realized the tremendous capability of the submarine for coastal defense, and themselves ceased building high caliber coastal batteries over 9.2in, but only because submarines could do the same job. Ergo largest submarine fleet in the world in 1914. Germany never engaged in such deductive reasoning because the point was to build big shinny battleships to treat like artillery batteries at sea for the army navy, and the hell if this all made sense…

I'll concede all of this, I had only read about fortress constructions against Denmark during the 1860s.

A very strong argument can be made that it did, which I have made multiple times before here. The German army would have had considerable more firepower, considerable more ammunition for the weapons it did have, and potentially two or three more army corps in the field. The German fleet didn’t just cost the value of the ships, but a tremendous sum to build naval bases and enlarge the Kiel canal and then all the operating costs of the fleet.

You could buy and emplace twenty to thirty battleship caliber guns for the price of a battleship, and a gun on land was worth several afloat in a duel. The reckoning at the time was five to one, though that might be a bit optimistic. Either way when you add in the fact that basically all German harbors can only be approached down narrow channels it’s pretty easy to conclude that they could have been rendered entirely impregnable to direct attack with much less spending on arms.

In the Flanders the British never once managed to knock out a heavy caliber German shore gun in basically four years of sustained attacks. Nor did the German guns sink much, but this was largely because they declined to fire on the monitors the British used as it wasn’t worth shooting the barrels out to do so.

So now ask yourself. If the German fleet had been one quarter its historical size, scaled perhaps only to be utterly superior to the Russian Baltic Fleet. Would Germany have lost faster? Doesn't seem bloody likely does it?

Yeah, agreed. Two or three corps would IMO have decided the marne in favor of the central powers.

As I recall German spending was under 2.8% of the GDP, typical of the era, so a sudden surge in spending was possible at any time. France was spending the most of anyone, some moderate fraction over 3% so we certainly know more was sustainable.

It wasn't due to a lack of shipyards. The number of slipways capable of producing dreadnoughts that were not occupied alreadyy with things like ocean liners in an advanced stage never was more than four to six and iirc Krupp was unable to produce more heavy ship artillery.

[Sea Skimmer]

But the British only survived similar attempts to hold a fleet in being during the napoleonic wars due to them extracting that much resources from india. It was pretty much assumed that this would not happen the same in WWI. I am not saying it was the right theory, but this theory (and similar ones like the jeune ecole) pretty much had a fleet in being as the lynchpin of the strategy.

It was a terrible strategy, the British had reason to think the Germans were smarter then that. For one thing India was replaced by something called banks in america as a resource of massive resources. The British could have afforded to blockade Germany for a very long time if they hadn't also had to pay for a massive land war in Europe. Its also not like Germany would not suffer from a blockade, but her warlords seem to have only been thinking in terms of 1870. Ironic too since the reparations France paid at the end of that war showed precisely how easily it would be for a major power to take out colossal loans to pay for a war ect. At least so long as the lines of trade were open.

It wasn't due to a lack of shipyards. The number of slipways capable of producing dreadnoughts that were not occupied alreadyy with things like ocean liners in an advanced stage never was more than four to six and iirc Krupp was unable to produce more heavy ship artillery.

When did I say a single thing about slipways? I didn't. Naval bases yes which is entirely different.

As for Krupp I have never seen any indication that they could not have delivered more heavy caliber weapons, they certainly had no problem making a bunch of different prototypes for the army followed by quite a lot of heavy weapons for land service in the war, and even if it were they could have always had the subsidy Grusonworks start making heavy guns again, or Rheinmetall could have begun doing so. The Germans really should have been doing this already as it might have driven down the rather high cost of Krupp artillery through competition. The US found the space for competition with a similar rate of building, the British had I think four suppliers. Constant German attempts to win export orders suggest that they could not have actually been at the limit of production. Generally guns were built intentionally slowly (by everyone) as it was, so as to ensure the machinery and workers always had something to do.

But to put things in perspective of what you could do if you wanted, when WW1 broke for the USA the US began building an entirely new plant in western Pennsylvania which was to do nothing but make fifteen new battleship guns per month! Oh and cast forty thousand shell bodies to go with them. While you needed specialist tools to build these weapons, its not like you couldn't go out and build more of them readily. They were in most respects simply larger versions of common devices, aside from the gun shrinking pits. Tolerances were to the tune of 1/1000th of an inch everywhere in the world too, high for the time but now we make car parts better then this.