Innovation over conservatism - The Kriegsmarine takes a different path

[oldironside]

Taking the inspiration from Gudestein's current thread (and every other German carrier and Sealion thread ever), the purpose of this thread is to try to analyse how the Germans could have used new technology to overcome the RN's numerical superiority. Basically they have to accept in the early post-WW1 period that they will never be able to face down the big guns of the British fleet, so decide to give up on having a major surface fleet and instead concentrate on looking for a magic bullet to slay the beast.

One possible POD that occurs is Hipper's comment about Jutland that "It was nothing but the poor quality of their bursting charges which saved us from disaster".


So, maybe the Brits sort their shells out and the result of Jutland is far more one sided, leading the Germans to give up on a battle line altogether.


So, what sort of technology? Well, bigger and better mines, more advanced submarines, more effort into torpedo technology, a far greater interest in shore based anti-shipping aircraft to try to deny the North Sea to the RN, a further development of the Siemens torpedo gliders of 1918.

So, the question up for debate is: „Could the Germans have significantly changed the balance of naval power if they'd given up on conventional surface ships and instead concentrated on developing new technology?"


As a follow up: "What would the RN's reply have been to this?"

 

[ReactionaryLion]

What if the Germans take a Soviet-esque approach and become early adopters of massed submarine warfare and attempt to sink the British fleet in a similar manner as Otto Weddigen did in OTL.

 

[NHBL]

Battleships, prestige, and reactions

Whatever the Germans do, won't be in a vacuum. France and Britain, at the very least, will be watching and reacting--and reacting from a position of relative strength. Also, Germany can't really start re-arming for some time, until Versailles starts to weaken, and the time's right to get building new stuff.

I think the Panzerschiffe get built--at least two of them, minimum, They are vital as a political statement, saying, "W ARE a major power again..."

Likewise, a few destroyers and light cruisers are essential for the Baltic, at a minimum.

 

[Derek Pullem]

Torpedo gliders launched from zeppelins?

A night-time raid on Scapa flow?

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Don't have Raeder take over the KM; perhaps he dies of a heart attack in the 1920s or is killed during WW1.

 

[ReactionaryLion]

Don't have Raeder take over the KM; perhaps he dies of a heart attack in the 1920s or is killed during WW1.

Have Doenitz convince Hitler to build vast fleets of cheap and easy to build U-Boats, if we kill of Goering early enough the Kreigsmarine air arm may be salvaged as well.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Have Doenitz convince Hitler to build vast fleets of cheap and easy to build U-Boats, if we kill of Goering early enough the Kreigsmarine air arm may be salvaged as well.

Part of the issue is the AGNA, which limited Germany to 45% of 100k tons of Uboats in 1935.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-German_Naval_Agreement

Raeder could have done a lot more with what he had, but he didn't really consider them anything but eyes for the naval forces. In fact he was in charge of air deployed torpedoes from aircraft, which Germany had used in WW1 BTW, and the Naval Torpedo Department didn't have one by the late 1930s despite holding the license to make functioning Italian air torpedoes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeune_École
If you killed Raeder, who spent a bunch of money on gunnery research very little on mines or torpedo research, you'd avoid a lot of that problem provided the replacement wasn't just another Battleship admiral.
If you have General Wever with the Luftwaffe live you'd probably have a land based He111 wing for the navy by 1939, even with Goering.

 

[Athelstane]

Whatever the Germans do, won't be in a vacuum. France and Britain, at the very least, will be watching and reacting--and reacting from a position of relative strength. Also, Germany can't really start re-arming for some time, until Versailles starts to weaken, and the time's right to get building new stuff.

I think the Panzerschiffe get built--at least two of them, minimum, They are vital as a political statement, saying, "W ARE a major power again..."

Likewise, a few destroyers and light cruisers are essential for the Baltic, at a minimum.

All good points.

Really, the best option they have on the table for any kind of force equalizer is aggressively pursuing submarines. It's too late in the game to build a credible carrier force (as we have discussed in interminable threads on the subject), and even if Germany could, geography greatly limits what it could do with it. Likewise, there's not enough time for a big gun capital ship fleet, and in any event such a thing will be too vulnerable to airpower.

The Germans did interesting work with guided bombs, like the Fritz-X, and perhaps that could be accelerated a little; but that's going to be more of a defensive weapon, and serious use of such a thing really requires an independent KM air arm, which Goering of course resisted with all his might.

Subs are the way to go. Build to max capacity out of the gate (I suppose that does require getting Raeder out of the picture) and aggressively pursue more advanced capabilities, especially a snorkel. Build the panzerschiffe and maybe even your Hippers, and make much to-do over them, but keep the submarine program low key. Eventually Britain will react, but there's no need to startle Whitehall out of its aversion to major new military expenditures until it's necessary.

 

[Bob in Pittsburgh]

How wild do you want to get? What if Germany had developed nuclear propulsion? Eliminate Hitler an most of the nuclear expertise is in Germany, Austria and Denmark. The question probably is cost.

 

[oldironside]

Don't have Raeder take over the KM; perhaps he dies of a heart attack in the 1920s or is killed during WW1.

Maybe we can swap Räder for Peter Strasser. They were born in the same year, both reached the rank of Fregattenkapitän before the armistice, and Strasser was just the sort of headbanging über-nationalist who would have jumped at the chance of joining the Nazis.

"We who strike the enemy where his heart beats have been slandered as 'baby killers' ... Nowadays, there is no such animal as a noncombatant. Modern warfare is total warfare".
... as Wiki quotes him (and gives a citation)

That's not a man prone to doubt and introspection.

He was basically concerned with the development of strategic bombing during WW1 (which opens another potential timeline had he lived), but if we let him live and take Räder out of the equation (killed during a German disaster at Jutland) I can see him being a significant influence on the development of new technology.

As a bonus, if we kill Räder in 1916, we remove his highly effective criticisms of the work of Wolfgang Wegener, another Fregattenkapitän who advocated a more pragmatic course of commerce raiding due to superior British shipbuilding capacity. Wegener (who lived OTL until 1956) and Strasser together would have been powerful voices leading the KM away from heavy surface units.

It does beg the question of what the History Channel will fill itself with without the Bismarck.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Germany probably would have been better served by a defeat at Jutland in the long run; getting it cracked into the heads of the admirals that they just could never be a big fleet nation compared to Britain or the US was just what they need. However I doubt the British would be happy AT ALL if Strasser ran the navy postwar; they considered him a war criminal of the first order, so I think he'd probably not be acceptable. Not only that, but having a Jeune Ecole admiral in charge of the German navy would be politically tough for working with the Brits; they freaked out enough that the Germans were building the Scharnhorst twins. You'd probably be best off with Wegener replacing Raeder.

 

[oldironside]

Really, the best option they have on the table for any kind of force equalizer is aggressively pursuing submarines. It's too late in the game to build a credible carrier force (as we have discussed in interminable threads on the subject), and even if Germany could, geography greatly limits what it could do with it. Likewise, there's not enough time for a big gun capital ship fleet, and in any event such a thing will be too vulnerable to airpower.

I agree that submarines are a vital part of any KM that rejects the big gun dreadnought, but it seems to me that any ambitious and open minded service desperate for an answer to a conventionally superior enemy would explore every possible angle - subs, mines, airborne torpedoes, guided bombs, plus any crackpot idea that came along.
"If we drop a pattern of bombs from 18-20,000 feet, we're bound to hit one of their battleships sooner or later."
"If we drop a naptha bomb on their battleship we won't need to crack their armour. We'll start fires all over the superstructure."

 

[oldironside]

Germany probably would have been better served by a defeat at Jutland in the long run; getting it cracked into the heads of the admirals that they just could never be a big fleet nation compared to Britain or the US was just what they need. However I doubt the British would be happy AT ALL if Strasser ran the navy postwar; they considered him a war criminal of the first order, so I think he'd probably not be acceptable. Not only that, but having a Jeune Ecole admiral in charge of the German navy would be politically tough for working with the Brits; they freaked out enough that the Germans were building the Scharnhorst twins. You'd probably be best off with Wegener replacing Raeder.

And I think that Wegener (with far more sea experience in his CV) is a much better bet all round, and his record suggests he was just the sort of officer for this task. Strasser could have been a serious influence whether inside or outside the KM:

 

[tigercat]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_destroyer_Shimakaze_(1942)

Germans build their equivalent of the Shimakaze with 15 torpedo armament.

 

[Saphroneth]

If the Germans go with land based naval air, they need to basically turn a several year lag in tech/deployment into a several year lead.
This may just be doable...

What about some kind of Bouncing-Bom with an umlaut, or skip bombing invented in Germany because reasons?

 

[Deleted member 1487]

And I think that Wegener (with far more sea experience in his CV) is a much better bet all round, and his record suggests he was just the sort of officer for this task. Strasser could have been a serious influence whether inside or outside the KM:

This I fully agree with. Raeder was a smart guy, but way too arrogant and wrongheaded in his assumptions. Strasser would likely remain a major part of the military even if not still directly in uniform, though I think he'd probably end up as part of the Luftwaffe and one of Wever's guys, probably heading up the strategic bomber program had he lived.

If the Germans go with land based naval air, they need to basically turn a several year lag in tech/deployment into a several year lead.
This may just be doable...

What about some kind of Bouncing-Bom with an umlaut, or skip bombing invented in Germany because reasons?

Martin Harlinghausen developed skip bombing in the SCW: http://ww2eagles.blogspot.com/2012/04/martin-harlinghausen.html

Had this guy been given the resources to develop his Condor Legion naval bombing experience after that intervention they easily could have had a wing of He111 torpedo bombers for Norway in 1940. The He111 was navalized pre-war:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_He_111#Military_variants

He 111 J

The He 111's low-level performance attracted the interest of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine). The result was the He 111J, was capable of carrying torpedoes and mines. However, the Navy eventually dropped the program as they deemed the four-man crew too expensive in terms of manpower. The RLM nevertheless continued production of the He 111 J-0. Some 90 (other sources claim 60[37]) were built in 1938 and were then sent to Küstenfliegergruppe 806.[38] Powered by the DB 600Gshe engines, it could carry a 2,000 kg (4,410 lb) payload. But few of the pre-production J-0s were fitted with the DB 600G. Instead, the DB 600 was used, performance deteriorated and the torpedo bomber was not pursued. The J was used in training schools until 1944.[35] Some J-1s were used as test beds for Blohm & Voss L 10 radio-guided air-to-ground torpedo missiles.[39]

Get a navy more interested in developing it and one that develops a aerial torpedo and they would be good to go, rather than needing to use KG100, their pathfinder group, as naval bombers.

Of course they would also seriously benefit from using 10 years to develop working torpedoes:
http://uboat.net/history/torpedo_crisis.htm
http://www.uboataces.com/articles-wooden-torpedoes.shtml

And pressure trigger mines, which the British had before WW2. If the Germans had all that together and opted to build up their uboat fleet in 1939 instead of going with Plan-Z after cancelling the Anglo-German naval agreement they would have done the British massive harm in 1939-41.

 

[oldironside]

If the Germans go with land based naval air, they need to basically turn a several year lag in tech/deployment into a several year lead.
This may just be doable...

What about some kind of Bouncing-Bom with an umlaut, or skip bombing invented in Germany because reasons?

If you're just going to be cynical about it, what's the point in having a discussion?

The question is clear. You should know me well enough by now to know I'm not trying to wank a German victory. I'm simply asking: What do you think was possible if they had rejected the big gun battleship and looked for other answers?

 

[oldironside]

Strasser would likely remain a major part of the military even if not still directly in uniform, though I think he'd probably end up as part of the Luftwaffe and one of Wever's guys, probably heading up the strategic bomber program had he lived.

As I hinted earlier, this opens up a completely new can of worms. Wever dies, but Strasser sees the Do19/Ju89 programmes through. This could have serious repercussions for Barbarossa. I don't think the Germans could have won, but it could have evened it up a bit.

Terrible thought, really. Even more dead.

 

[tigercat]

They have no dedicated minelayers pre WW2 so maybe a class of fast offensive minelayers

We're basically looking at asymmetric warfare as the focus . So what can take out a battleship.

From wikipedia

German aerial torpedo development lagged behind other belligerents—a continuation of neglect of the category during the 1930s. At the beginning of World War II, Germany was making only five aerial torpedoes per month, and half were failing in air-drop exercises. Instead, Italian aerial torpedoes made by Fiume were purchased, with 1,000 eventually delivered.[27]

So earlier and greater emphasis on aerial torpedo development

Development of ASW assets to combat allied submarines.

 

[oldironside]

We're basically looking at asymmetric warfare as the focus . So what can take out a battleship.

That's essentially the point of this thread.