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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 21, 2018 19:11:27 GMT -6
There have been numerous discussions on various threads in both RTW and RTW2 about the Royal Navy and its ships, tactics etc. I thought we should move the interesting subject to the Military History forum and let her rip.
The Royal Navy was the keep of Pax Britannica for almost one hundred years, but it began to fade around 1900. While it was a potent force during World War 1, its real slide began after the war and the Washington Naval Treaty and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.
So, let’s try to figure out why this occurred, why did the Royal Navy change its whole modus operandi in and around 1900. We will need to include economics, industrialization, geography and the rise of other wealthy nations.
Let the games begin.
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Post by bcoopactual on Sept 21, 2018 19:56:43 GMT -6
I have to disagree with ramjb at least about Jutland. I don't think you can claim victory when you are the one who had to flee the field to avoid annihilation. Plenty of battles in the American Civil War where the Union lost more troops but won the battle because the traitors were forced to retreat from the battlefield and give up the strategic objective. The Union could more afford to replace those losses so from a manpower percentage they actually lost a smaller fraction of their available pool even if it was more men in raw numbers. Same with the British at Jutland. If I recall, 24 hours after the battle the capital ship discrepancy was actually more in favor of the British than it was before the battle, despite having lost the three battlecruisers, because the German fleet survived but many ships, the battlecruisers in particular, were so mauled that they were not available to sail again for a month or more. Plus the British had more new construction coming down the ways so the numbers post Jutland were even worse for the Germans than before. That's not a victory in my mind in any way except that they survived total destruction. Of course it's understandable for the Germans to call it a victory publicly for morale and propaganda purposes and for the British to be disappointed it wasn't a second Trafalgar but removed from the emotions I don't see how it could be called anything other than a British victory if maybe not a decisive one.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 21, 2018 20:27:01 GMT -6
Please forgive me, but I just haven’t had time to read the piece referenced in your post yet, but I will tonight or early tomorrow. However, let me say this. For the Germans, their boast of victory was based on men and major warships lost, so the German’s claimed a major victory. But this was not valid, since their goal was always to reduce the crushing superiority of the Grand fleet however after Jellicoe returned to Scapa Flow, he could still claim superiority in numbers. Scheer had been lucky, and the North Sea stalemate continued and was really confirmed beyond any doubt. Strategically, nothing had changed for the German’s and tactically neither side could really claim a victory. Scheer had had his T crossed twice and through good tactics survived. That does not bode well for the future for the German Navy.
When you have endured the losses in men and ships such as the British Royal Navy endured, and your nation has had such high expectations that this was going to be another Trafalgar, the aftermath can be very bad for all concerned especially if most of the critics were not there. The Grand Fleet’s new strategy was now to avoid a major action with the enemy and just contain him in his bases. This is how the war ended. Jutland only proved what everyone had already known, that the High Seas Fleet in numbers and geography was no match for the British Royal Navy. Keep in mind, the German’s had built a great fleet… but had no naval experience to back up their strategy. They were amateurs.
If we want to understand what occurred at Jutland, we must investigate how the Royal Naval was changed by Fisher as the First Sea Lord, because the answers and the investigation of Bismarck and Tirpitz along with the Kaiser's amateurish way of handling his fleet must be explored also.
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Post by aeson on Sept 21, 2018 22:01:46 GMT -6
I have to disagree with ramjb at least about Jutland. I don't think you can claim victory when you are the one who had to flee the field to avoid annihilation. Plenty of battles in the American Civil War where the Union lost more troops but won the battle because the traitors were forced to retreat from the battlefield and give up the strategic objective. The Union could more afford to replace those losses so from a manpower percentage they actually lost a smaller fraction of their available pool even if it was more men in raw numbers. Same with the British at Jutland. If I recall, 24 hours after the battle the capital ship discrepancy was actually more in favor of the British than it was before the battle, despite having lost the three battlecruisers, because the German fleet survived but many ships, the battlecruisers in particular, were so mauled that they were not available to sail again for a month or more. Plus the British had more new construction coming down the ways so the numbers post Jutland were even worse for the Germans than before. That's not a victory in my mind in any way except that they survived total destruction. Of course it's understandable for the Germans to call it a victory publicly for morale and propaganda purposes and for the British to be disappointed it wasn't a second Trafalgar but removed from the emotions I don't see how it could be called anything other than a British victory if maybe not a decisive one. I could see calling it a tactical victory for Germany; despite the unexpected presence of pretty much the entire Grand Fleet, the High Seas Fleet did successfully accomplish its objective of inflicting heavy losses upon the British battlecruiser force, and did in an absolute sense inflict heavier permanent losses on the Grand Fleet than it sustained. That said, as the engagement failed to materially affect the balance of naval power, as I'm inclined to feel that Lutzow was about as valuable to the High Seas Fleet as Queen Mary, Indefatigable, and Invincible put together were to the Grand Fleet, and as the High Seas Fleet was never really able to follow up its arguable success at Jutland in any particularly meaningful way, I can't say that I really feel that the battle was better than a draw for Germany or worse than a draw for Britain, and as the naval situation already favored Britain a draw favored Britain more than Germany.
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Post by ramjb on Sept 22, 2018 0:40:08 GMT -6
I always have some issue with people who say that if a battle didn't change the strategic outlook of a war, it coudln't be a win for the force that came out on top. That's just not true. For instance, let's consider Market Garden, one of the most resounding allied defeats of the 2nd half of the war, and the last big victory of the Wehrmacht in the western front. That battle had absolutely no influence on the strategic statu quo on the western front, like ,at all, because the war was lost for the Germans anyway by that point. So do we qualify it as a "strategic victory" for the allies?. Do we call it a draw?. Do we try to paint pictures to disguise reality?. Or do we remain objective and name things by their name?
We do the latter: we call it by it's name. Market Garden was an unmitigated disaster for the allies and a big victory for the wehrmacht, even if it did nothing to change the strategic picture of the western front (the very much repeated mantra that "it ended the hopes of the war ending in 1944" isn't true by repeating it, had Market Garden succeeded, there was no way it'd have meant an end of the war before 1945 anyway, specially not given how miserable the logistic situation was for the allies at that particular moment in time).
Same in many other wars and fights. There were british victories during the Independence War. Do we call them "draws" because the americans still won the war?. How about in the napoleonic wars?. the french were still grasping some victories even while being pushed in all fronts. Do those count as "draws" too?. Or strategic victories for the allies?.
Etc etc etc.
In Jutland is the same. The war was undecided by that point (on the land at least), but was unwinnable for the germans in the sea, at least not in a full fledged fleet vs fleet encounter. So it's all a matter of keeping feet on the ground and taking reality in account. Everyone knew during WW1 that a straight up fleet encounter between the HSF and the Grand Fleet couldn't end up in a strategic victory for Germany - for all intents and purposes the HSF was so outnumbered that such a fight would involve fighting in such an inferiority that getting out of it alive would've a victory for the HSF on itself.
That's exactly what happened at Jutland. Scheer sortied in order to try and lure part of the Grand Fleet (or better yet, Beatty's battlecruisers) into a fight to destroy them in detail, thus reducing the overall correlation of forces. The whole strategic plan of the German Fleet since war began (and until the Kaiser demanded a stop to it after the loss of SMS Blucher at Dogger Bank) had been just that, conduct offensive operations in the north sea with the hopes of luring only part of the british battleline to fight in inferiority of numbers, defeat them in detail, and thus improve the correlation of forces in order to turn a prospective all-out battleline action between the german and british fleets a winnable strategic scenario. Because as things were, such a strategic victory was out of the reach of the German fleet in an all out battlefleet vs battlefleet honest punch-by-punch battle.
The problem was that Scheer's trap turned into a british trap. British sigint knew the HSF was afoot and the whole lot of the British battlefleet sortied to catch it off-guard. And catch it off-guard it did, Scheer's post-battle accounts all remark that as soon as he realized that he faced the whole Grand Fleet he thought losing the whole German Battlefleet was a distinctive possiblity. And his concerns were more than well founded, for what was exactly what the Grand Fleet was after: nothing short of the anihilation of the German Fleet - something that was well within it's grasp given how lopsided the british numerical advantage was.
So keeping that in mind that the german HSF sortied, met the Grand Fleet on a straight up gunnery contest and not only got out of it alive, but having given far more than what they took in return was nothing but a spectacular victory. Not a strategic one simply because that battle had no possible outcome where the Germans would've come strategically on top (it'd required for half the Grand Fleet to collectively blow up to bring the correlation of forces to a 1-1 relationship, while the german ships losing none in return). But it was indeed a resounding success because the Germans had slugged it out in a straight fight with the (reportedly) allmighty Queen of the Sea at her full power, and had blooded her badly while coming out relatively unscathed themselves.
The feeling of elation and success was well justified, actually. Not only had the germans given more than what they had taken; had things been different (and they weren't far from being so), the HSF might have ended existing that very same day so avoiding that was a success on it's own. The tactical victory was cream on top of the cake. On top of that those were very much needed outstanding morale news in a moment where morale wasn't that great: the eastern front was a mess, things were going as we all known in the trenches of the Western Front, the blockade was being deeply felt by the german population, the delivery of such a success (if you don't want to call it a victory, don't, but a success it was, and a huge one at that), was very much welcome.
Conversely the public opinion in britain was in disbelief. They all thought that if both battlefleets were to meet, a Trafalgar-like outcome was to be the inevitable end of it. Instead they had to hear that, not only the british fleet had failed to destroy the germans, but that they had sustained far worse losses in the process. How could that be?. The Admiralty was outraged and, initially, Jellicoe was under exceptional criticism (which soon receded as soon as the findings of the different investigation commitees began briging out the results of their investigations. The blame wasn't on Jellicoe at all).
So from the british side, strategic situation being the same norwithstanding, that battle was seen as a resounding defeat because the Royal Navy had failed to do what it was expected to do, and worse, it had actually suffered grievous losses while in the process of failing.
Again, you can't weight the battle of Jutland on strategic grounds because on the strategic scene the British numerical superiority was so overwhelming that even losing 1/3 of the battlefleet and battlecruisers with no german losses would've still kept the statu quo unchanged. You had to value that battle, and it's outcome, it it's proper context to understand why it was a German victory (And quite an outstanding one at that)
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Post by aeson on Sept 22, 2018 2:25:00 GMT -6
Market Garden isn't at all analogous to Jutland. Jutland is essentially a German naval offensive operation and a British naval defensive operation whereas Market Garden was an Allied military offensive operation and a German military defensive operation. An offensive that fails to alter the tactical or strategic situation is a failure; a defensive engagement that preserves the status quo is successful. Britain could've sunk the entire High Seas Fleet without significantly improving the Allied position in the First World War - sure, it would've released some resources which instead historically went to the Royal Navy, but unless the destruction of the High Seas Fleet broke German morale or caused a panicky overreaction that lead to the deployment of a significant number of troops to guard the coast against the extremely-unlikely event of an Allied amphibious assault or something like that a clear-cut German defeat at Jutland doesn't significantly change the strategic picture. The Allies did not at that point in the war have the capability to mount a major amphibious assault against the German coast and wouldn't have been in a significantly better position to mount amphibious assaults along the Belgian coast to try to outflank the German trench lines than they were historically, and German light forces would probably still be sufficient to keep the Baltic pretty much closed to Russian merchant traffic even without the threat of the German capital ships keeping the major Russian warships on the defensive. An Allied success in Market Garden would have out-flanked the Siegfried Line and threatened or cut off the Ruhr industrial area, simultaneously bypassing a major obstacle on the way to Berlin and further crippling an already-tottering Nazi Germany's industrial base.
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Post by ramjb on Sept 22, 2018 3:34:24 GMT -6
By that standard (which I don't share at all, but to explain it would require to go far off topic in a naval discussion board) the Royal Navy then couldn't be neither victorious nor defeated. Nor could be the german HSF.
The strategic meaning of a victory according to your standard means that the Royal Navy couldn't win a naval battle (because it would make no strategic difference because, as you correctly state, UK was in no position to conduct any kind of major amphibious operations in the North Sea so all it would've accomplished would've been sinking a lot of ships but almost negligible consequences for the global scope of the war), nor could they, short of scuttling half their own fleet, lose a naval battle (because short of losing half their fleet for no german loss, there was no way the naval blockade could be lifted. And there was no way they could sustain those losses in a straight up fight, much less without inflicting losses in return).
Conversely the Germans had no way of winning a battle because short of insta-vaporizing the Grand Fleet with no own losses, the correlation of forces was just too damning to contest the blockade. And they couldn't lose a battle because even if they got all their ships sunk, the strategic landscape of WW1 as a whole wouldn't have changed at all compared with what actually happened.
One wonders what kind of stuff was going on in the North Sea during WW1 then, given that neither side had any reason to fight, because neither side, seemingly, had any chance to win or lose a battle.
It doesn't make the slightest sense, I'm afraid. Victories and defeats are victories and defeats; and that is regardless that the strategic general picture of a front or a theater of operations means said victory (or defeat) has limited or negligible consequences in the grand scope of things.
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Post by bcoopactual on Sept 22, 2018 5:14:51 GMT -6
I don't agree that war at sea would not affect the outcome of the war on the continent. As long as the British blockaded the North Sea the German war machine would be slowly starved of the materials they need to prosecute the war. Germany wasn't self sufficient. The Royal Navy wins the war as long as their blockade of the North Sea holds even if neither fleet ever sortied if the German army can't force a victory before their resources run out. (which they didn't).
You are trying to create a wall of separation between tactical results and strategic results but tactical results are meaningless if strategic goals aren't met. As long as the Germans couldn't break the British stranglehold on the North Sea they were going to slowly starve of the resources they needed to maintain their land forces which would cause their inevitable defeat.
The German navy goal was to cause losses to the British capital ships until they had close enough parity that they believed they could win a decisive battle. If they win that decisive battle they can break the blockade and possibly even invade England itself. They failed to do that at Jutland. Yes they sank 3 British battlecruisers but only at great loss to their own forces in the loss of one battlecruiser and the heavy damage taken by the rest or most of the rest. The British replaced two of those three losses within 6 months with the superior ships of the Renown-class while the Germans only completed one further battlecruiser of the Derfflinger-class (Hindenburg) almost a year after the battle.
The German navy was farther away from their goals post-Jutland than they were pre-Jutland even in the immediate aftermath. And the result led to the German high command to change strategies and fully embrace unrestricted submarine warfare which ensured that the USA would eventually enter the war against them. And that was the end.
So by what standard would the battle be considered a German victory? The Germans didn't hold the field post-battle, they were forced to retreat or face annihilation. They didn't accomplish any of their strategic goals or come closer to breaking the british blockade, in fact they were worse off after the battle than before. They sank more ships but the British could (and did) replace the losses where as the Germans did eventually replace their losses but not in a timeframe that made the advantage in ships sunk useful. Even calling survival a victory is a bit dubious because their fate was to slowly rust away in port because their leadership refused to set out to face the Grand Fleet again. At least not until the end when they decided that suicide by British gun was better than surrender. And by that time morale and conditions in the German navy was so low that crews mutinied rather than throw their lives away for their German commander's honor. The results of the battle set the German high command on a course which ensured the USA joining the war against them sealing Germany's fate.
Tactically the run to the south was a definite German victory but the run to the north was a draw and the actual encounter between the High Seas Fleet and the Grand Fleet has to be seen as a British victory by any meaningful measure. Even with the loss of Invincible.
So the tactical German victories of sinking the three battlecruisers has considered in the context that it ended up doing nothing to satisfy their strategic goals because their own losses prevented taking advantage of the tactical success. And post battle, the Germans were farther from accomplishing their goals not closer.
I'm not claiming the overall battle was a decisive British victory but it was a British victory because all they needed to do to win was maintain the status quo and they actually did better than that.
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Post by ramjb on Sept 22, 2018 6:01:54 GMT -6
As long as the British blockaded the North Sea the German war machine would be slowly starved of the materials they need to prosecute the war. that's the whole point. The germans could do nothing to stop the british from keeping the blockade in place. Their fleet was outrageously outnumbered. Had Scheer lured a whole battle division of the Royal Navy and sunk it in detail without loss for himself (say, he sinks five dreadnoughts and escorting forces and returns home without a scratch), the blockade would STILL be in place. According to you that scenario would still be a british victory and a german defeat because the strategic Statu Quo would've been unmoved (as even after lossing five dreadnoughts the Grand Fleet still outmatched the HSF by a wide margin). Sorry, but that just doesn't hold at all. It just makes no sense. The German HSF fought a war under unwinnable strategic circunstances, and in those circunstances achieving what they did at Jutland was undoutedly a victory, regardless it didn't change the naval strategic situation. Because **nothing** the HSF could reasonably do would change that. As for your analysis of the battle - the run of the south was a british defeat, the run to the north was a draw, the main fleet engagement was ,if anything, a german victory (being able to withdraw from a tactically desperate situation facing far numerically superior numbers and executing three well executed full battle turns under enemy fire to extricate themselves from such an exposed position while preventing the GF from cutting them off their retreat path, and all without losing any major assets). And the night engagement was without discussion a german victory (being able to literally cross the British line without having their position and intentions reported saved the German Fleet from destruction the next day). and the overall results of the battle speak for themselves: Jutland was a fight won by the germans. They faced overwhelmingly superior numbers, taken by surprise, in a tactically inferior situation, they inflicted worse losses on the enemy than what themselves suffered, and were able to return safely to port when there was a significant and present risk of being cut off from their retreat path and destroyed in detail.
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Post by dorn on Sept 22, 2018 7:12:11 GMT -6
I have to disagree with ramjb at least about Jutland. I don't think you can claim victory when you are the one who had to flee the field to avoid annihilation. Plenty of battles in the American Civil War where the Union lost more troops but won the battle because the traitors were forced to retreat from the battlefield and give up the strategic objective. The Union could more afford to replace those losses so from a manpower percentage they actually lost a smaller fraction of their available pool even if it was more men in raw numbers. Same with the British at Jutland. If I recall, 24 hours after the battle the capital ship discrepancy was actually more in favor of the British than it was before the battle, despite having lost the three battlecruisers, because the German fleet survived but many ships, the battlecruisers in particular, were so mauled that they were not available to sail again for a month or more. Plus the British had more new construction coming down the ways so the numbers post Jutland were even worse for the Germans than before. That's not a victory in my mind in any way except that they survived total destruction. Of course it's understandable for the Germans to call it a victory publicly for morale and propaganda purposes and for the British to be disappointed it wasn't a second Trafalgar but removed from the emotions I don't see how it could be called anything other than a British victory if maybe not a decisive one. It depends on the point of view. If you look at Jutland alone just by ship losses, than Germany won as has less capital ship lost. However if you look at Jutland as whole picture (as it should be!), which is that RN blockaded Germany and Germany need to dramatically weakened RN to break blockade than Germany did not achieve this target at all. Loosing 3 battlecruisers and other old ships has no fighting impact on the RN at all. And this is what ramjb do not want to see. Enemy losses are irrelevant if you cannot achieve your targets and Germany did not achieved them at all. So Germany could declare tactical victory however strategic defeat which was important.
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Post by bcoopactual on Sept 22, 2018 7:23:06 GMT -6
that's the whole point. The germans could do nothing to stop the british from keeping the blockade in place. Their fleet was outrageously outnumbered. Had Scheer lured a whole battle division of the Royal Navy and sunk it in detail without loss for himself (say, he sinks five dreadnoughts and escorting forces and returns home without a scratch), the blockade would STILL be in place. According to you that scenario would still be a british victory and a german defeat because the strategic Statu Quo would've been unmoved (as even after lossing five dreadnoughts the Grand Fleet still outmatched the HSF by a wide margin). You are exaggerating my position. If the Germans had fought a battle where they sink several British ships with no or very few losses and little damage to the survivors (For instance if the Grand Fleet had been too far north to rendezvous with Beatty and the British lose 3 or more battlecruisers with maybe an additional QE because of a lucky hit that slowed it down to be caught be the High Seas Fleet) and then the HSF turns south before Jellicoe can get involved then that is a clear victory and a major one for the Germans. Not only because of the numbers of losses but because they actually achieved their short-term objective of reducing the enemy numbers to get closer to parity. Just because the blockade is still in effect or the Germans might need another such victory or two to achieve parity to force the final battle doesn't mean they didn't achieve a major victory although it could be argued that it wasn't a decisive one because more work needed to be done to get to the final battle. The short-term strategic objective of that hypothetical battle was met even if the long-term goals of the war were not yet. No one is arguing that the war has to be won in a day for it to be considered a victory. At Jutland, neither short-term or long-term strategic objectives were met by the Germans and both were farther away from being met the day after than they were the day before. There was nothing orderly about the second turn away from the British line. Desperation, courage and darkness combined with a conservative British doctrine (turning away from a mass torpedo attack) saved the Germans from complete defeat. Running away from certain destruction without having achieved your goals is not a definition of victory I've ever seen written down anywhere. One could call it a relief for the Germans to have survived and a disappointment and an opportunity for decisive victory lost for the British but neither of those make it a German victory overall. I will concede that tactically, being able to cross the British lines at night was a German victory but the overall result of the battle remains the same.
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Post by ramjb on Sept 22, 2018 8:34:02 GMT -6
And this is what ramjb do not want to see. Enemy losses are irrelevant if you cannot achieve your targets .... You just erased a crapload of victories from history books. Preciselly all those battles won by nations engaged in an irremediably lost war. There are literally dozens of big victories like that. You just deleted'em all. Gonna tell my finnish friends about it. They won no battle against the USSR during the Winter War, because in the end they couldn't stop the hordes of the Red Army from forcing them to an armistice. I'm sure they'll love your point of view. (Just giving a single instance here). Seems some guys are somewhat bent on rewriting history no matter what, just to save national face. But whatever.
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Post by britishball on Sept 22, 2018 8:45:41 GMT -6
There was nothing orderly about the second turn away from the British line. Desperation, courage and darkness combined with a conservative British doctrine (turning away from a mass torpedo attack) saved the Germans from complete defeat. Running away from certain destruction without having achieved your goals is not a definition of victory I've ever seen written down anywhere. One could call it a relief for the Germans to have survived and a disappointment and an opportunity for decisive victory lost for the British but neither of those make it a German victory overall. Couldn't agree more, and this statement goes double for every Yank who thinks they won the War of 1812. The onerous is always on the aggressor, for the defender anything less than the Status Quo is a loss. As Market Garden was mentioned it also shows this, Market Garden changed nothing, XXX corps made some ground, more than they would have without the Operation so technically it was a success, but they lost so many men and equipment that to try and retake all the German territory at that ratio would be untenable. Really all it was was 30,000 people dying for nothing at all, which sadly was just a Tuesday at some points in WW2. I'll try and steer this back towards why Britain seemed to slack off between wars and went in so unprepared, offer a British perspective on the whole thing. Of course we know how the British got through, our luck is the devil's own and we had the stiffest of upper lips, but that was just as well. WW1 had left Britain with a large amount of debt, a shortage of manpower, a changed view of our armed forces and most importantly changed political opinion. The debt was supposed to be serviced by German reparations but we all know how that went, global economic collapse meant that operating at a deficit and designing new expensive ships was going to be a problem, we'd come out of the war with much the same ideas as we went in in terms of doctrine, Battleships were still the most powerful weapon on the seas and they cost a lot of money to build. Ignoring the thorny issue of treaties and whether or not to stick to them, Britain broadly decided that the Americans weren't so bad after all and perhaps they might also share the expense of maintaining a large Naval fleet capable of defeating whatever Alliance be arrayed against us. Being the leading power always means you want to conserve it and that leads to conservative thought, the ones under will always look to rise up by exploiting new weapons whilst the top dog remains relatively idle for fear of change, this seems to be being averted in today's hopefully more intelligent times (though its taken thousands of years and many different top dogs to work it out) and the US is pumping more money than ever into military research, but who knows perhaps Belgium is about to announce they've weaponised magnets or sound waves or something and they'll hold the world to ransom. This blindness is why the RN wouldn't look into developing aircraft carriers until much later than would have been ideal, due to them deciding in 1918 that carriers had limited potential in anti surface warfare based off of as far as I can find one attempt to hit a German ship with a bomb, missing and then realising that they probably couldn't have carried a large enough bomb to hurt a ship anyway. The shortage of manpower hampered industry and military alike, the changed view of the armed forces was that although the Navy had continually blockaded the Germans it hadn't really won the war and that the Army was by comparison underfunded and worth investing in. Finally the changed politics; by far the biggest reason, in this country we really did honestly believe it was the war to end all wars, certainly we thought there would continue to be minor wars with rebels and tribes but that the great powers of the world would never again engage in such a disastrous conflict. As such only the most token effort was made to improve the Armed forces, "those tank things were quite useful we should probably have some of those, and turns out planes with only one set of wings are much better so we'll have a few of those and oh dear this is quite expensive..." we got rather than improved ships (thanks to the Naval treaties) just more replacement ships. For the first time since the...what... 1850's ship design was treading water, so to speak. If a Naval Arms race was what almost certainly forced war between us and Germany then it should be avoided lest it force war between us and America (War Plan Red) ignoring that of course a complicated string of alliances in Europe was what caused WW1 and that the one thing we held onto during the interwar years was...a complicated string of alliances in Europe. The people had no interest in fighting another war and creating more weapons was doubly unpopular due to the expense from the subsequent taxes and from creating weapons suggesting we might need to use them again at some point. Ironically trying to avoid war was only going to make it more likely. I've said before one thing I think RTW2 really must have is at least some simple, abstracted way of letting AI nations fight eachother, independent of the player nation but perhaps also there could be some way implementing this "conservative doctrine" effect, whereby research of new technology (all the event technology that has been leaked so far like RADAR, Carriers, ASM or doctrine revolutions like Wolfpack submarines) is slowed/less likely to fire if you are determined the "dominant power" just a thought. I know that "just a thought" can be easy on paper but hellish to implement...
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Post by britishball on Sept 22, 2018 8:48:50 GMT -6
And this is what ramjb do not want to see. Enemy losses are irrelevant if you cannot achieve your targets .... You just erased a crapload of victories from history books. Preciselly all those battles won by nations engaged in an irremediably lost war. There are literally dozens of big victories like that. You just deleted'em all. Gonna tell my finnish friends about it. They won no battle against the USSR during the Winter War, because in the end they couldn't stop the hordes of the Red Army from forcing them to an armistice. I'm sure they'll love your point of view. (Just giving a single instance here). Seems some guys are somewhat bent on rewriting history no matter what, just to save national face. But whatever. Winter War was defensive, doesn't matter if you kill 20,000 Soviets today but retreat one mile because tomorrow the Soviets will have another 20,000 men but you might not have another mile.
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Post by ramjb on Sept 22, 2018 9:07:43 GMT -6
You just erased a crapload of victories from history books. Preciselly all those battles won by nations engaged in an irremediably lost war. There are literally dozens of big victories like that. You just deleted'em all. Gonna tell my finnish friends about it. They won no battle against the USSR during the Winter War, because in the end they couldn't stop the hordes of the Red Army from forcing them to an armistice. I'm sure they'll love your point of view. (Just giving a single instance here). Seems some guys are somewhat bent on rewriting history no matter what, just to save national face. But whatever. Winter War was defensive, doesn't matter if you kill 20,000 Soviets today but retreat one mile because tomorrow the Soviets will have another 20,000 men but you might not have another mile. and the HSF in WW1 was exactly how in an offensive position?. For them it didn't matter if they sank a coupe british dreadnoughts at any given time because the british would still have double the number of dreadnoughts as the germans anyway. So ,if Jutland was a german defeat, the Finnish achieved not a single victory during the Winter War. Again I'm sure some finnish friends I know will love the concept.
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