Posted on 01/25/2011 5:12:09 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
That was what the Brits were afraid of (a submarine ambush) but if you stop & think about it the coordination of submarines & surface vessels was never really achieved.
Not only that, but a large warship is a lot tougher target for a sub to takedown than a slow, fat merchantman. Remember that the 3 cruisers sunk by the U-9 in 1914 were all pre-dreadnought era armored cuisers. Not vessels serving with the Royal Navy's battleline.
When the German High Seas Fleet did the "battle turn" Jellicoe's imagination got the better of him.
Jellico was described (by Churchill) as the only man who could have lost the war in an afternoon. Probably true.
The Spanish Armada ran into very bad weather
The German WW1 fleet fought the greatest navy in the world to a stand still.
Spain 1898, Spain had ceased being any kind of a military power long before 1898.
Russia 1904, when has Russia ever won a major naval engagement?
The U.S. should embrace assymetrical warfare, just like the Chinese. For the price of a Chinese aircraft carrier, we could build a LOT of long-range anti-ship missles.
The Germans had far better BBs and BCs than the Brits did; their BCs were as tough a as British BB and faster to boot. Their BBs were darn near unsinkable. They just weren’t willing to bet on this against the quantitative superiority of the Grand Fleet.
The only reason that the submarines and High Seas fleet couldn’t coordinate was that the Brits did a good bit of signals intelligence. Usually by the time the High Seas fleet cleared the harbor, the Grand Fleet was getting up steam, so they always got to the intercept early - in an area where the subs were not!
From what I’ve read, Jellicoe was a heck of a guy. I don’t think he would have ever lost. The worst he’d ever do would be bring it back to stalemate - which was a win for the Brits!
You should checkout the convoy actions in Norwegian waters in WW2 where the Germans tried, and failed, to coordinate surface raiders and U-boats. It was a tactic that held some promise in that it put the convoy screen on the horns of a dilemma — fight the U-boats or get blasted apart by the Scharnhorst, Tirpitz or the Lutzow. They never really got it to work.
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