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Old 08-16-20, 11:07 PM   #6
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Quote:
(1) No longer be able to enforce its blockade of Germany
This is incorrect because it was a Distant Blockade for a reason.

The blockading ships were mostly in the Atlantic and beyond the reach of the German fleet. After the old Naval Defence Act protected cruisers were deleted, it was conducted by the armed merchant cruisers and boarding steamers of the 10th Cruiser Squadron. The Grand Fleet supported these ships but the reality is that they were mostly stationed too far from Wilhemshaven for the Germans to attack them. Even had they solved the problem of fuel and the inability to coal at sea, the anti-blockade forces would still have to have run the gauntlet of British submarines in the Helgoland Bight. Twice.

The RN subs in the Bight choke-point torpedoed German capital ships no less than six times across the course of the war. Although none were sunk, the victims needed dockyard attention in every case. The U-Boats failed against the Grand Fleet dreadnoughts although they did score some light cruisers and a few pre-dreadnought battleships. Part of the problem was that the British could always evade the U-Boat traps until they got close to their own coast when destroyer sub-hunting groups and the Royal Naval Air Service could keep the U-Boats submerged. U-Boats did sink a number of AMCs and boarding steamers but arguably these boats attacking the blockaders meant that they were not attacking the all-important merchants.

Quote:
(2) Not have the resources to stop the German sub menace
Sorry but this makes zero sense.

Less than half of the British destroyer fleet was screening the dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet and the latter were useless in fighting the U-Boats. When Rosslyn Wymess replaced Jellicoe at the Admiralty, Beatty free gave up many of his destroyers for the anti U-Boat war. After August 19th 1916 the Grand Fleet was at sea in its entirety exactly twice. Once in April 1918 in a vain attempt to catch Scheer's Stavanger operation and once in November to accept the High Seas Fleet surrender. A big reason for this was that destroyers had been detached to protect trade.

Quote:
That would put Britain and Germany at around parity. It's highly questionable whether the Royal Navy could have maintained its "distant blockade" strategy without the immense superiority it enjoyed over the High Seas Fleet.
In order for this to be true you need to demonstrate how the High Seas Fleet can operate in the Atlantic and close Britain's west coast ports. Precision is essential here since coal-burning battleships needed to coal weekly at a minimum and sailing to blockading positions off Western Approaches would take at least two full sailing days. Remember you cannot refuel at sea and each sortie generally means a week of maintenance. Crunch the numbers, they fail for Germany completely.

According to Mahanian theory, losing a major battle at sea meant loss of sea control but the Great War at Sea did not conform to Mahan's dictum's. rather Julian Corbett had foreseen the naval war in 1912 and it pretty much played out according to his predictions. The decisive naval theatre was Western Approaches and the GIUK Gaps not the North Sea. Wilhelmine Germany could not exert sea power west of the British Isles, only sea denial with U-Boats. Geography ensured that no German surface fleet could impose a blockade on the UK given the means available at the time.

The High Seas Fleet was strategically irrelevant and in the unlikely event that it had inflicted a punishing tactical defeat of the Royal Navy, the results would have in all probability been exactly the same as actually happened. Sorry, the last time that battleships would affect the fate of nations at war was in 1904-05 when Japan fought Czarist Russia.

Beatty's "When you're winning, risk nothing" was exactly the same strategy used by Jellicoe 1914-16 and proposed by Callaghan even before him.

-C
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