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Post by aeson on Aug 19, 2018 21:48:41 GMT -6
The year 1919 opened with a fleet action near Hiiumaa on the fifth of January in which the Russian dreadnought battleship Sisoi Veliki was severely damaged, but the arrival of night cut the engagement short and the fleets parted without the loss of anything heavier than a pair of Russian destroyers. Two days later, the Deutsches Heer launched an attack on Russian positions around Warsaw, seizing several key strongpoints before the Imperial Russian Army could launch any strong counterattacks. For the rest of the month and continuing into February, the Imperial Russian Army attacked into the newly-German positions and was bled until it broke, with many divisions in the area mutinying and refusing to obey orders to attack after the sixth of February. Control of the army having been lost, Tsar Nikolas II was convinced to abdicate and a nominally-democratic government was formed under Prince Georgy Lvov. The new Russian government sued for peace and felt compelled to accept harsh terms, surrendering Kamchatka to Italy, the Caucasian States to France, and much of Russian Poland to Germany in addition to paying stiff reparations but preserving the Navy. Unfortunately for the Tripartite Pact, the Italian government was displeased with the division of spoils at the peace conference, feeling that their negotiators had been 'duped' into taking Kamchatka, which had little strategic value for Italy situated, as it is, on the far side of the world and quite far from the preexisting possessions of the Italian Empire, while France and Germany took larger shares of the reparations, and in March Italy declined to renew membership in the Pact. Despite the dissolution of the Tripartite Pact and the substantial war reparations, the end of the war brought with it significant budget cuts for the Kaiserliche Marine and plans for a new class of battleships had to be shelved as work on Furst Bismarck and Prinz Eitel Friedrich, the third and fourth Mackensen-class battlecruisers, was suspended, and continuing disinterest in increasing naval funding saw the suspension of work on Graf Spee, the second Mackensen-class battlecruiser, in June, though work on Graf Spee would resume shortly before the completion of Mackensen at the end of the year.
Meanwhile, the Russian political situation was deteriorating, and by May Minister-Chairman Prince Georgy Lvov felt compelled to request that the occupying French, German, and Italian armies assist with the suppression of Communism within the Russian Empire. This move created a public backlash against the Duma, and by July Prince Georgy was forced to step aside, being succeeded as Minister-Chairman by Alexander Kerensky, but the damage was done and the so-called 'Bolshevik' movement began to make significant gains. By November (October in the Russian calendar), mutinies within the Russian Army and Navy broke out into civil war, and Italy, fearing its hold on its newly-acquired territory of Kamchatka might be endangered by this Russian instability, entered negotiations with France and Germany which lead to the reformation of the Tripartite Pact at the end of the month.
Initially, the French, German, and Italian occupation forces attempted to remain uninvolved in the Russian civil war, but as the fighting became more widespread it became apparent that the Provisional Government's forces were not likely to defeat the Bolsheviks any time soon, and with the governments of France, Germany, and Italy concerned by Bolshevik rhetoric it was decided that it would be expedient to prop up the Provisional Government. Despite support from the occupation forces, however, the Provisional Government continued to falter, and by February it had fragmented into a number of factions, the two most prominent being a group of monarchists pushing for the restoration of Nicholas II and a group of republicans pushing for the formal and permanent dissolution of the monarchy. This fragmentation of the Provisional Government allowed Bolshevik forces to seize those parts of the Russian Navy which had remained under the Provisional Government's control, leading the Reichstag to restore much of the Kaiserliche Marine's funding, allowing work to be resumed on the battlecruisers Prinz Eitel Friedrich and Furst Bismarck, and direct the Navy to begin so-called Nonintervention Patrols in the Baltic intended to prevent arms from reaching the Bolshevik forces.
Continuing deterioration of the Russian situation, Bolshevik rhetoric suggesting a new naval program, and an appeal by a major German shipbuilder would lead the Reichstag to authorize construction of the Hertha-class cruiser Scharnhorst in July, but also lead the government to begin considering withdrawing the occupation force and washing its hands of the Russian civil war, and by 1921 Germany and its Tripartite Pact allies would withdraw direct military support for the remnants of the Provisional Government, the so-called 'White' Russian factions, though material aid was continued, with the German Empire and the Kingdom of Italy mostly supporting the monarchist factions while the Republic of France mostly supported the republican factions. Even so, 1920 passed largely uneventfully for those outside of Russia. As 1920 drew to a close, the battlecruiser Graf Spee was completed and the Kaiserliche Marine began drawing up plans for the next generation of German capital ships. After due consideration, it was decided that these would once again be battlecruisers, despite Germany's lack of dreadnought battleships, and the design selected was a slightly-enlarged Mackensen with significantly-improved underwater protection, and Blucher, the first ship of the new class, was laid down in January 1921. The next month, there was much public consternation when the Kaiserliche Marine made public the news that the Bolsheviks were building a new 14,500t first class cruiser, and the outcry lead to the Riechstag authorizing the construction of a new German first class cruiser, the first since the Danzig class ships commissioned c.1905. As the Kaiserliche Marine's funds were tight due to work on Blucher, the new cruiser, to be named Gneisenau, was designed on just 10,000 tons despite its unusually heavy armament of six 11" guns. Still, naval experts voiced concern over its thin armor and its relatively low speed. Blucher would be followed by Moltke in May, after the commissioning Mackensen-class battlecruiser Furst Bismarck, but no additional Gneisenau-class first class cruisers would be laid down.
In July, the Tripartite Pact was once again dissolved, this time by the French Republic, which declined to renew its membership due to the dissension within the alliance over which White Russian factions to support against the Bolsheviks and the resultant deterioration of the situation of the White Russian forces. France would soon end its involvement in the Russian civil war, except inasmuch as it was necessary to prevent the fighting from spilling over into the Caucasian States and Sakhalin. Bolshevik rhetoric of world revolution and their continuing successes against the disunited White Russian factions would soon bring Germany a new and much more powerful ally, however, for in August concerns over the rise of Communism would lead Warren G. Harding, the recently-inaugurated 29th President of the United States of America, to begin supporting White Russia against Red. Nevertheless, American support would come too late for most of White Russia, and by the end of 1921 the Bolsheviks controlled all of Russia but for Ukraine, where German and Italian materiel support continued to prop up a powerful monarchist force. When the Marinenachrichtendienst discovered that the Red Navy planned to transfer the cruiser Almaz to the Black Sea to support operations along the coast, the German government offered asylum to the former Tsar and his family, sending an armored train to Lvov to collect them, and began considering the resumption of direct military intervention in the Russian civil war and invited representatives of the American and Italian governments to begin discussing plans for such. Meanwhile, within the Admiralstab, plans for unauthorized and covert interventions were being formulated, and in May, soon after the cruiser Almaz arrived in Sevastopol, one of these may have been set in motion, for Almaz was destroyed by a 'mysterious' explosion. Soon, Bolshevik investigators declared that the explosion had been caused by a limpet mine attached to the cruiser's hull by unknown saboteurs. Despite the destruction of Almaz and the increasing German, Italian, and American materiel aid, the position of the White Russian monarchists in Ukraine continued to deteriorate.
In the midst of this activity, the Undine-class cruisers were recalled from the colonial areas for a reconstruction and modernization which drastically altered their appearance and replaced their eight individually-mounted 5" guns with six superior 5" guns in two turrets, likewise consolidating the six individually-mounted 4" guns into two turrets, allowing the fitting of mine rails, a torpedo tube, and a catapult for a seaplane.
Out-of-'character' notes: Despite what it may sound like, Germany is not actually at war with Russia past the first paragraph of this post. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get the chance to take any of Russia's ships, but on the other hand I'm pretty sure that none of Russia's post-Treaty battleships or battlecruisers had yet been completed, looking at them in the Almanac I don't know that I'd have wanted them anyways, and I don't think Russia had anything else that I might've actually wanted to take.
Gneisenau's a bit of an experiment; I've never built a Deutschland-type cruiser in the game before, though I've known that it was possible to do so for a while. Just one probably isn't really enough for a fair trial of the type, but between the in my opinion concerningly-light armor and the lack of CAs currently under construction (just the one 14,500t Russian) or in service (a handful of leftovers from the 190X period in service with Britain, Italy, Japan, and the USA) I don't see any real reason to lay down more ships of the type right now. I have a feeling that it's a cruiser that doesn't really have a place in the game, being more suited by size and armor to hunting CLs but more suited by armament to fighting the larger CAs, but I suppose we'll have to see.
The Undine reconstruction is probably unnecessary and excessive, costing about three times as much per ship as a simple fire control refit or about a quarter as much as building a similar cruiser from the keel up, but I felt like doing it. I'm also unsure that a seaplane is entirely appropriate for such a small cruiser. I think Almaz might be the first time I've had a covert operation successfully blow something worthwhile up, and doing so didn't even (immediately) start a war.
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Post by ieshima on Aug 20, 2018 6:01:05 GMT -6
The ship is a little small for a catapult float plane, though it would certainly benefit from having one overseas. The biggest problem would be the new avgas fuel tanks for the plane. Where could you fit them without tearing out a large chunk of the ship?
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Post by aeson on Aug 20, 2018 7:38:29 GMT -6
The biggest problem would be the new avgas fuel tanks for the plane. Where could you fit them without tearing out a large chunk of the ship? Since the number of 5" guns was reduced from eight to six without increasing the ammunition stowage per gun, I'd be inclined to think that there's a space on the ship which was a 5" magazine, or a part thereof, in the original configuration which now serves as an avgas tank. It is also plausible for the cruiser and the seaplane to both be capable of running on the same fuel, in which case the seaplane could draw from the ship's main fuel tanks, though I don't know if such would've been done so early historically.
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Post by ieshima on Aug 20, 2018 8:17:33 GMT -6
The biggest problem would be the new avgas fuel tanks for the plane. Where could you fit them without tearing out a large chunk of the ship? Since the number of 5" guns was reduced from eight to six without increasing the ammunition stowage per gun, I'd be inclined to think that there's a space on the ship which was a 5" magazine, or a part thereof, in the original configuration which now serves as an avgas tank. It is also plausible for the cruiser and the seaplane to both be capable of running on the same fuel, in which case the seaplane could draw from the ship's main fuel tanks, though I don't know if such would've been done so early historically.
Replacing a magazine is certainly viable, but it would be a very bad idea to try and use ship grade fuel for a plane engine.
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Post by aeson on Aug 20, 2018 8:41:44 GMT -6
it would be a very bad idea to try and use ship grade fuel for a plane engine. I don't think it was done on vessels of this size until much later historically, but it is possible to make ship engines which run on avgas or other high-grade fuels, and it is also possible to make aircraft engines which run on (slightly) lower-grade fuels than avgas.
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Post by ieshima on Aug 20, 2018 9:04:31 GMT -6
it would be a very bad idea to try and use ship grade fuel for a plane engine. I don't think it was done on vessels of this size until much later historically, but it is possible to make ship engines which run on avgas or other high-grade fuels, and it is also possible to make aircraft engines which run on (slightly) lower-grade fuels than avgas. I would hate to be the mechanic for that plane if it was run off low grade.
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Post by rimbecano on Aug 20, 2018 12:45:04 GMT -6
Using heavy fuel oil in a gasoline aircraft engine would likely be completely impossible.
Large marine diesels generally use heavy fuel oil just like steam powerplants, so in principle it would be possible to build an aircraft diesel engine that did the same. However, heavy fuel oil needs to be heated to maintain pumpability and atomize properly when injected into the cylinder, and this would add weight to the fuel system, exacerbating diesels' existing power/weight issues in aircraft applications.
Now, in the modern day, non-nuclear warships generally use airliner-derived gas turbine engines, and the US military now uses JP8 (JP5 in the Navy for reduced fire risk) for everything from aircraft to diesel ground vehicles to camp stoves.
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Post by cuirasspolisher on Aug 20, 2018 16:18:27 GMT -6
Well done to your saboteurs; my boys usually only manage to blow up Garbage Scow No. 11 or the like. I'm a little confused by the heavy secondary and tertiary batteries on the Blucher, which seems optimized for fighting at long range. Are they intended to compensate for the light main battery if an enemy battlecruiser gets close in darkness or bad weather?
I appreciate your account of the Russian political situation. That kind of embellishment makes an AAR feel less like a game playthrough and more like real history.
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Post by aeson on Aug 20, 2018 19:15:18 GMT -6
The secondary and tertiary batteries are intended to stop or at least punish destroyer torpedo attacks, especially in darkness or bad weather, though if they help out against a heavy ship that gets close under such conditions I certainly won't complain. 16-24x5" secondary batteries for this purpose are typical of my late-game capital ships, though I do not normally include a tertiary battery.
Reasons why I included a tertiary battery in this game: - Historically, most German dreadnought-type battleships and battlecruisers had ~4" tertiary batteries larger than the one to four guns typical of early heavy AA batteries, though not nearly so large as the one I've included in this game.
- I used 6" secondary guns on the Rheinland, Deutschland, and Von der Tann classes. 6" guns have an accuracy penalty against small destroyers, and small destroyers were still reasonably prevalent at the time I laid those ships down, so I included a large 4" tertiary battery on those ships for anti-DD work.
- Until Blucher, none of my capital ships had anything better than Torpedo Defense 1, which made me a bit uncomfortable considering that low-visibility conditions are somewhat common in the North and Baltic Seas and especially considering that I don't intend to retire the Lutzow- and Mackensen-class battlecruisers, so I retained the large 4" tertiary battery of the first three classes of dreadnoughts I laid down even though I had reduced the secondary caliber to 5" (starting with Moltke) and larger destroyers were becoming more prevelant.
- Retaining the tertiary battery with each new class helps show continuity of design, not that my capital ships in this game are particularly eclectic.
- I wanted to see if including the tertiary battery would significantly improve my ships' ability to stop destroyer attacks over just the secondary battery. Based on the engagements I've had, I feel like the tertiary guns have at least slightly improved my ships' ability to punish destroyers for attempting to launch torpedo attacks against my capital ships and might have helped stop one or two such attacks before the destroyers could launch torpedoes, but I don't know that I feel that they've done enough to really justify their inclusion.
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Post by aeson on Aug 21, 2018 23:06:38 GMT -6
By July 1922, as the last White Russian forces in Ukraine began collapsing, the German, Italian, and American governments were finally moved to military intervention, but despite the planning councils it soon became apparent that the Deutsches Heer was unready to rescue the White Russian front, and so it fell to the Kaiserliche Marine to make the first move - a raid on Red Russian shipping in the Gulf of Riga. Two small Russian coasters were sunk in the raid, but as the German torpedo boats approached the Irbe Strait to withdraw they encountered a Red Navy destroyer flotilla racing into the Gulf in response to the coasters' distress calls, and in the ensuing engagement two German torpedo boats were sunk and another two damaged while one Russian destroyer was sunk and four others were damaged. While this raid alarmed the Red Navy and produced a temporary reduction in Russian coastal shipping in the Baltic, it had no significant impact on the fighting in Ukraine, and two days later the White Russian leadership declared Kiev an open city and evacuated to Lvov while 275 miles to the south the remnants of the White Russian Second Army surrendered in Odessa.
As the end of July approached, the Reichstag approved funds for the construction of Thetis, the third Blucher-class battlecruiser to be laid down, and the Deutsches Heer and Regio Esercito Italiano (REI) began to move into Ukraine in sufficient force to begin stabilizing the White Russian front. By August, German and Italian armies had established a line running roughly through Rovno and Vinnica, behind which the White Russian forces were able to begin to regroup, and for the remainder of the month the only fighting consisted of minor skirmishes on land and clashes between Red Navy submarines and German, Italian, and American ASW forces at sea, leading British papers to disparage the German-American-Italian intervention as a 'phony' war. As September rolled around, however, the fighting heated up, and the Red Navy sent the treaty battlecruiser Chesma, escorted by several destroyers, to attack German shipping near Danzig. Unfortunately for Chesma, however, it encountered the battlecruisers Mackensen and Prinz Eitel Friedrich as these ships were returning to Danzig from a fleet exercise in the Heligoland Bight, and the 19,800t Russian battlecruiser soon succumbed to the 16" shells of the two 35,000t German ships. Smarting from this defeat, the Red Navy would hold its ships in port for the remainder of the month and much of October, until news of the arrival of the first units of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) at Emden, Bremerhaven, Wilhelmshaven, and Cuxhaven prompted them to take action in an attempt to stem the flow of American forces across the Atlantic. Meanwhile, on land, the Red Army launched a drive at Kovel meant to split the front at a junction between German and White Russian units and then push down the Polish border to cut off the German, Italian, and White Russian forces deeper in Ukraine. The Red Army offensive drove the German and White Russian forces back upon Kovel, but soon bogged down in urban warfare and rapidly-expanding German and White Russian fieldworks around the city, and by the end of October the Red Army's commanders called off the offensive - inadvertently releasing REI units moving to reinforce the lines around Kovel for a counterattack aimed at taking Brest to the north. Also in October, the Reichstag approved funds for the battleship Zahringen, Germany's first dreadnought battleship to be laid down since the Deutschland class was cancelled by the British-imposed treaty. In November, several Red Navy cruisers steamed from their Baltic bases for the North Sea and the Atlantic, where they could threaten the flow of American reinforcements and supplies to German ports. One of these, the Voevoda-class second class cruiser Posadnik, was intercepted and sunk on the twelfth by the Hertha-class second class cruiser Yorck after US Navy ships escorting a convoy reported encountering it north of Ireland. On the same day, the REI launched its offensive towards Brest, and managed to break through the Red Army's lines in several places, exploiting these openings with units released by the end of the Red Army offensive towards Kovel until abnormally cold weather led to the suspension of field operations in late December.
December 1922 also saw perhaps the most significant naval engagement of the war, the Battle of Friesland, which occurred on the afternoon and evening of the 23rd. A Russian fleet comprised of the Hotin-class superdreadnought battlecruiser Tendra, the Rymnik-class dreadnought battlecruisers Rymnik and Fokshani, the Imperator Pavel I-class superdreadnought battleships Imperator Pavel I, Evstafi, and Imperator Aleksandr I, the Borodino-class dreadnought battleships Borodino and Imperatritsa Mariya, and the unique dreadnought battleship Sisoi Veliki encountered a detachment of the Hochseeflotte comprising the Mackensen-class superdreadnought battlecruisers Mackensen, Prinz Eitel Friedrich, and Graf Spee and the Weissenburg-class battleships Weissenburg, Deutschland, and Hannover north of Hollum in the Netherlands at about 1320. The German battleships and battlecruisers formed into a single battle line and engaged the battlecruisers Rymnik and Fokshani while the Russian battleships and the battlecruiser Tendra approached from the east. At around 1400, the battlecruiser Rymnik abruptly turned away from the German ships and, covered by its sistership Fokshani and the arriving Russian battleships, withdrew to the south due to heavy flooding caused by a 16" hit in the bow and another 16" hit which penetrated the belt roughly amidships. While the ship would survive, it did not rejoin the battle. For most of the next several hours, until twilight shrouded the combatants at about 1635, eight Russian and six German capital ships exchanged fire, leaving the battlecruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich and the battleships Hannover, Sisoi Veliki, and Imperatritsa Mariya heavily damaged - Sisoi Veliki and Imperatritsa Mariya so severely that they would either sink of battle damage (according to the official war history of the Hochseeflotte) or be scuttled (according to the official war history of the Red Navy) later that evening.
Just ten minutes after twilight stopped the firing, the Russian battlecruiser Tendra mistook the German battle line for the Russian battleships she had been accompanying and maneuvered to parallel the German column. Lookouts on the German ships took notice, and soon Tendra was smothered by a storm of 4", 5", 12", and 16" shells; the few survivors of the sinking, recovered the next day from the lone boat which survived the hailstorm of shells reasonably intact, reported that the captain ordered the ship abandoned just six minutes after the German battle line began firing upon it. Not long after Tendra's destruction, the German fleet commander aboard Weissenburg received a report from E-Dienst indicating that radio direction-finding had discovered the presence of a Russian force to his south; post-war investigations would reveal that this was Rymnik, reporting that her flooding had been brought under control and that she could likely reach Riga without sinking. German and Russian ships would encounter one another three more times during the night of 23-24 December, though in none of these brief encounters would any additional ships be seriously damaged.
The Hochseeflotte's success in this battle also enabled the Kaiserliche Marine to secure funding for an additional two Zahringen-class battleships, Hessen and Schwaben, before the end of the year.
1923 would be a slow year for the Kaiserliche Marine, with only four engagements between German and Red Russian warships. The first of these, on 23 January, saw the recently-rebuilt third class cruiser Undine sunk by the Russian second class cruiser Ameytst of the eponymous class when Undine attempted to prevent the heavier Russian cruiser from breaking out through the blockade into the North Sea. Two months later, on 15 March, the Russian and German Baltic Squadrons fought an indecisive fleet action off Latvia, in which the Russian Rymnik-class battlecruiser Fokshani was heavily damaged while her sister Rymnik and the Kinburn-class battlecruiser Navarin escaped with moderate damage. Three months later, on 19 June, the German first class cruiser Gneisenau fought its first and only engagement of the war when it intercepted the Russian AMC Kamchatka two days after the second class cruiser Hertha had reported Kamchatka as a suspicious vessel but was unable to pursue the contact due to the lateness of the hour and the need to remain with a convoy. Not quite three weeks later, on 7 July, the final naval engagement of the year took place when the Hertha-class second class cruisers Scharnhorst, Freya, and Prinz Adalbert raided Russian shipping near Hango, sinking the Russian second class cruiser Ameytst and an accompanying destroyer, as well as six minesweepers, a patrol boat, and two merchantmen of approximately 3,000 tons each before withdrawing to the south under cover of darkness. Unfortunately, the German ships ran into a Russian minefield just to the north of Hiiumaa, and the G38-class torpedo boat S59 struck two mines, broke in half, and sank, though surprisingly most of her crew survived and was recovered at dawn by another German torpedo boat, which had become separated from the cruisers in the night. Closing out the year for the Kaiserliche Marine, four torpedo boats of the new S16 class were laid down, two in November and two in December.
On land, however, there was much more activity. Over the winter, the front lines were reorganized, with the Deutsches Heer withdrawing from Ukraine to hold the Russo-German border north of Brest, the AEF assuming responsibility for the ~150-mile front in the Brest-Kovel-Rovno sector, the REI taking ~140-mile front in the Rovno-Vinnica sector, and the reorganized White Russian forces assuming responsibility for the ~70 miles of front from Vinnica to the Austro-Hungarian border, and preparations were made for a general offensive along the entire front. By March, preparations were complete, and the AEF, REI, and White Russians commenced the offensive while the Deutsches Heer awaited better weather to the north. Unable to establish a solid line across so large a front, the Red Army found itself fighting a war of movement against the American and Italian armies, whose armored cars the Red Army found itself ill-equipped to counter owing to the devastation of the Russian industrial base in the civil war and the damage done by the blockades of the current and previous war, though these vehicles' difficulties crossing rough terrain and soft ground would lead to the Americans introducing an armored caterpillar tractor in small numbers by midsummer, which would soon be copied for the German and Italian armies and supplied to the White Russian forces. In mid-July, after Italian forces entered Kiev and White Russian forces had retaken Odessa, a constitutional monarchy under Nicholas II was proclaimed for Russia, and he was induced to tour the front with Kaiser Wilhelm, though this nearly ended in disaster when a heavy artillery shell embedded in the road outside Odessa exploded just after the royal cavalcade passed. The general offensive came to a close with the end of summer, having gained much ground in Ukraine and Belarus, though the Red Army managed to hold the line against the Deutsches Heer in Lithuania, and as autumn set in the Deutsches Heer, AEF, REI, and White Russian armies began preparing for a winter campaign.
The winter campaign of 1923-1924, fought from November to April, would in combination with the blockade bring the Red Army and the Bolshevik government down. The last naval engagement of the war, the sinking of the Russian AMC Amur by the Roon-class second class cruiser Victoria Louise near the Great Fisher Bank, was fought on 22 February, and a month later the British liner RMS Aurania became the last ship to be sunk by a Russian submarine during the war, leading to the British government issuing an ultimatum that resulted in the Russian submarine fleet being laid up in port for what little remained of the war. The restored Tsar Nicholas II and his government were compelled to grant granted Italy extensive basing rights in the Ukraine, transfer transferred the lease of the Liaotung Peninsula to the United States, and surrender gifted the Red Navy battlecruiser Sinop to Germany in gratitude for their assistance in freeing Russia from the Communist menace. Out-of-'character' notes: If I decide to keep Sinop, I'll probably end up rebuilding it to improve the turret armor, but the least expensive reconstruction which gives Sinop adequate turret armor still costs about 33M and requires the removal of R turret (which I don't particularly mind, except that 8x14" is in my opinion a little on the light side at this stage of the game) and would still leave me with a ship that has only 2.5" deck and 9.5" belt armor. Also, somewhat oddly, Sinop has long range, which I don't think I've seen before on the computer's battlecruisers.
My Goeben-class battlecruisers were filling station tonnage requirements when the war broke out because some of the Undine reconstructions were incomplete and those ships whose reconstructions were complete hadn't yet gotten back to their stations. One of the Goebens broke down in the Mediterranean (where, fortunately, it was repaired by my Italian allies rather than being scuttled or interned), and as a result I discovered that my 19,800t battlecruisers each counted only 9,702 tons (49% of nominal displacement) towards station requirements. I'd known that ships with cramped accommodations or short range had penalties to how much they counted towards station requirements, but I don't think I'd realized it was that severe when you had both of them. Of course, I also don't think I've ever used ships with both (or, for that matter, either) cramped accommodations and short range to try to fulfill station tonnage before. Still, that tells me I'm definitely not retiring any of my second class cruisers to the colonies before scrapping them, because all of them have short range and cramped accommodations as well and so would be worth little more than my Undine- and Hela-class third class cruisers on station despite costing almost three times as much.
Other new ship classes mentioned in this post:
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Post by aeson on Aug 26, 2018 0:37:33 GMT -6
After the end of the war against Bolshevik Russia and the restoration of the Tsar, the Admiralstab conducted a review of the fleet to evaluate the suitability of existing ships for continued service and make recommendations for the development of the fleet. Unsurprisingly, the review board's report suggested that the battlecruisers Goeben and Derfflinger and the battleships Weissenburg, Deutschland, and Hannover be withdrawn from service, as it was thought that these ships were highly vulnerable to the 15" and 16" guns commonly found on modern capital ships and would be unable to effectively reply with their six 12" guns. The board further suggested that the battlecruiser Sinop be evaluated by the Reichsmarineamt for reconstruction to improve its protection, as the Russian-built battlecruiser was considered to be as vulnerable as the Goeben- and Weissenburg-class ships were, and that the existing Hela-class third class cruisers be reconstructed similarly to the Undine-class cruisers. As to the future development of the fleet, the review board recommended a ten-year construction program of at least twelve Zahringen-type battleships and six Blucher-type battlecruisers in addition to the three then under construction, eight improved Hertha-type second class cruisers, and eight additional S16-class torpedo boats for the Hochseeflotte as well as three Gneisenau-type first class cruisers, eight second class cruisers of a new type suitable for overseas service, and an additional sixteen third-class cruisers similar to the rebuilt Undines be constructed for service in the colonies.
The Admiralstab accepted this report, put the war prize Sinop into drydock at the fleet base at Wilhelmshaven, and ordered the Reichsmarineamt to evaluate possible reconstructions of the Russian-built battlecruiser. After a thorough week-long examination of the ship and a further week of discussions, the Reichsmarineamt presented its report to the Admiralstab, having found that it was possible to rebuild the battlecruiser, but that doing so would cost about a quarter as much as building a new ship, and that as a new ship would be significantly better-protected than the rebuilt Sinop it could not recommend that the ship be reconstructed. Nevertheless, the report included two possible reconstructions which would significantly improve the protection of the main battery turrets - the first, retaining the 14" guns, would remove the midships 'R' turret and use the tonnage thus freed to thicken the turret face armor to 17" and the turret top armor to 5" on the remaining four turrets, while the second and slightly less expensive reconstruction would replace each pair of 14" guns with a single 16" gun, saving enough tonnage to improve turret armor to 18" on the face and 6" on the top.
With these reports in hand, the Admiralstab went to the Reichstag to secure a new Naval Law which would commit the government to such a construction program, but the Reichstag was unwilling to authorize such an extensive naval expansion program and instead, without committing to the construction of any replacement vessels, required the Kaiserliche Marine to sell Sinop, the two Goeben-class battlecruisers, and two of the Weissenburg-class battleships to the breakers while Weissenburg itself was to be expended as a gunnery target. As a final blow for the Kaiserliche Marine, Weissenburg proved its vulnerability to 15" fire and prevented the Navy from examining the damage it sustained to evaluate the effectiveness of its armor scheme and the Lutzow class's artillery when used as a target in an exercise by the Lutzow-class battlecruisers, capsizing only 15 minutes after the battlecruisers began firing upon it and sinking soon afterwards.
Despite the Reichstag's unwillingness to commit to the outlined fleet expansion program, however, it permitted the Kaiserliche Marine to lay down the battleship Pommern to an improved Zahringen design after the Blucher-class battlecruiser Moltke commissioned in July of 1924, and then approved a second unit of the Pommern class, Weissenburg, in March 1925 after Thetis, the third Blucher-class battlecruiser, was completed, and a third unit, Wettin, in June after the three Zahringen-class battleships were completed, Hessen and Schwaben in May and Zahringen in June, despite cutting the Kaiserliche Marine's budget so as to fund social programs for veterans of the war against Bolshevism. In September, the Reichstag approved funding for a pair of new second class cruisers, Amazone and Ariadne, to be built to an enlarged Hertha design, and in October approved a third unit, Medusa, after an appeal by a major shipyard which said it would otherwise need to lay off staff. Finally, in December, after a revolution in Guinea-Bissau stranded several German nationals who had to be rescued by the new battleship Zahringen (oddly, the German Foreign Office was reportedly unaware that any German nationals had been in Guinea-Bissau at the time of the revolution and the only German nationals anywhere to be seen when Zahringen arrived at the city of Bissau were sailors of the Kaiserliche Marine on liberty, which, when discovered, would lead to accusations that the crisis had been manufactured by the Kaiserliche Marine to bring about its proposed construction program despite the Reichstag's refusal to commit to so significant an expansion of the fleet, which of course is almost completely true false), the Reichstag approved funds for the reconstruction of the Hela-class cruisers and a significant expansion of the overseas cruiser fleet, with the first two of an eventual twelve Nymphe-class third class cruisers being laid down.
In January of 1926, the retired Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz gave a speech before the Reichstag on the threat posed by Great Britain and the Royal Navy to the German state, which secured funding for a third Nymphe-class cruiser and a commitment by the Reichstag to fund nine more to be laid down by the end of June. Admiral von Tirpitz would go on to give several similar speeches over the next several years, even at events where the Navy and Great Britain were not typical subjects of discussion, eventually leading to the production of series of political cartoons in which the aging admiral was portrayed Cato the Elder while giving speeches, ending every speech with "and in conclusion, Britannia delenda est." In the midst of this, a disarmaments conference was held at the Hague, but, under pressure from the Kaiserliche Marine and the retired Admiral von Tirpitz, the German government refused to commit to any reductions in naval expenditures and derailed the conference, antagonizing the governments of Great Britain and Russia in the process.
The battleship Pommern was completed in February of 1927, followed by the Amazone-class Medusa and the Nymphe-class Nymphe and Arcona in May and the Amazone-class Ariadne in June. With the completion of these ships, the Kaiserliche Marine found itself able to lay down a new battleship, Hannover, in July, followed by Posen in August and Deutschland in September. Amazone, the Pommern-class battleships Weissenburg and Wettin, and nine more Nymphe-class cruisers would complete by the end of the year, leading the Kaiserliche Marine to begin planning another new class of capital ships to be laid down in early 1928, though voices in the Reichstag suggested that the Kaiserliche Marine would have trouble securing funding for such a project. Before 1927 was over, however, events in the Pacific would silence the Navy's opponents - an uprising in the Dutch colony of Nusa Tenggara provided Japan with an excuse to seize the territory, and the Reichstag asked the Admiralstab what the Kaiserliche Marine could do in the event of war with Japan. The exact reply that the Admiralstab made to the Reichstag is unknown, but the Reichstag committed to funding the construction of three new battlecruisers to be laid down in 1928 by a unanimous vote taken soon afterwards.
The first two of these battlecruisers, Derfflinger and Rostock, were laid down in February 1928, with the third planned to follow later in the year. However, after a politically-motivated murder of an Austro-Hungarian official in the Balkans in June brought on a crisis with Britain, the government of France invited the British Prime Minister and the German Chancellor to meet in Paris to discuss a detente. Under French mediation, and over the objections of both the Kaiserliche Marine and the Royal Navy, the German and British governments agreed not to lay down any further capital ships in 1928, which delayed the laying down of the third Derfflinger-class battlecruiser, Graudenz, and the second British Australia-class battlecruiser until March 1929, and also caused the Royal Navy to cancel plans for a second and third Royal Oak-class battleship.
1929 passed almost without incident but for the sinking of a supposed Russian fishing boat by German torpedo boats in restricted waters near Danzig in May and the renewal of the alliance with Italy in June. In December, rumor began to spread that the health of the elderly Admiral von Tirpitz was failing, supported by a spate of speech cancellations in January and February 1930, and on 7 March it was announced that the 80-year-old admiral had died in his sleep the preceding night. Several members of the Admiralstab attempted to secure the approval of the Kaiser and the Reichstag to name a new battleship or battlecruiser in honor of the deceased Admiral, but the Chancellor, perhaps fearing British backlash, convinced the Reichstag to withhold approval, and when new battlecruisers were laid down in September and October of 1930 they bore the names Regensburg and Elbing. With the commissioning of Derfflinger in January 1931, the Admiralstab reopened the depate with the Reichstag on naming a battlecruiser after the recently-departed Admiral von Tirpitz, but once again the Chancellor prevented this and instead the third Regensburg-class battlecruiser was laid down as Weisbaden. In March, the alliance with the United States was renewed, and in April the Kaiserliche Marine pressured the Reichstag into making symbolic concessions to Japan. The remainder of 1931 passed without incident, and January 1932 opened with commissioning of the battlecruiser Derfflinger ... and yet another disarmaments conference at the Hague. Out-of-'character' notes: I keep trying to provoke a war with Britain, but no luck so far, despite tensions going to 12 for a turn (down to 11 on the next turn, and then down to 5 or 6 a couple turns later), which is a little unfortunate since I'm probably about as strong as I'll ever be relative to Britain. I might pick up more battleships and battlecruisers, but they ought to be replacing their treaty battleships and battlecruisers soon enough.
Despite the war scare with Japan, Gneisenau, my 28 third class cruisers, and my five most modern destroyers (the four S16s built at the end of the last war, and V29) are the only ships in my fleet which could move beyond Northern Europe in wartime - even the battlecruisers currently under construction have short range. The Reichstag probably won't be too impressed with how the Kaiserliche Marine spent its funds if another war scare with Japan pops up, but I'm really not that interested in fighting Japan.
Britain finally retired the Rheinland-class battleship and the two Hansa-class second class cruisers it took from me. Not too much longer and they'll start retiring their treaty ships.
There are starting to be enough large CAs that I might consider laying down a couple more Gneisenau-type first class cruisers.
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Aug 28, 2018 10:34:59 GMT -6
Very enjoyable detail and tone, as well as your presentation of ships.
Hopefully if action is the intent, hostilities with Britain can be provoked, as the time when you have new builds and the opponent still maintains treaty ships is the prime time for a significant result.
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Post by aeson on Aug 28, 2018 11:03:03 GMT -6
Hopefully if action is the intent, hostilities with Britain can be provoked, as the time when you have new builds and the opponent still maintains treaty ships is the prime time for a significant result. I'm not sure that the continued existence of Britain's Treaty ships really mattered all that much; only about 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 of Britain's capital ships were Treaty ships - 2 of 8 battleships and 7 of 34 battlecrusiers, if I recall correctly. Certainly still better for me than them having no Treaty ships, but not a high enough density of Treaty ships that I was that likely to regularly encounter them towards the beginning of a purely-hypothetical war that's certainly not going on right now.
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Post by cuirasspolisher on Aug 28, 2018 13:02:42 GMT -6
34 battlecruisers?! I pity the British taxpayer. Fisher must have some real dirt on members of Parliament for them to give him practically infinite funding.
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Post by aeson on Aug 28, 2018 13:45:01 GMT -6
34 battlecruisers?! I pity the British taxpayer. Fisher must have some real dirt on members of Parliament for them to give him practically infinite funding. Actually, I tend to feel that Britain's fleet at that point was on the small side; by this stage of the game I generally expect that the US and Great Britain will have about 40 to 50 capital ships mostly in the 35,000- to 45,000-ton range, but Britain had only about 42 capital ships, and nine of them were merely 18,000t Treaty ships while a few more were leftover early dreadnoughts in the 20,000- to 25,000-ton range.
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