1914-1924 'British interests; British honour; British obligations'

[Lord E]

Great update very filled with information Allenby. And they maps you are making are very good at showing both the situation of battles, but also regions
Hope to see the British in Baghdad next year then, and from there, will you continue north into Turkey or will you turn to Jerusalem and the areas around, anyway a strong attack is sure to push the Turks out of the war as soon as possible so just go for it

 

[unmerged(4277)]

Qurna the Garden of Eden? You said that rather matter-of-factly, sir! Here's another possible spot:

Good update, though.

 

[Semi-Lobster]

Oh god not Curzon, I just finished reading The General by C. S. Forester about him, and well... good luck with him. You're giving Constantinople to Russian though!?! I'd like to here the logic in giving it to the Ruskies then the Greeks who actually attemped to take it and spilled Greek blood over it.

 

[unmerged(28944)]

I completely overlooked the plan to give Constantinople and the Dardanelles to the Russkies! What's up with that? That's like a complete reversal of British policy all through the 19th Century!!

I have the feeling that there is a method to the madness and a rhyme to the reason..... but I haven't figured it out.

 

[Allenby]

When does Allenby move on Gaza?

No need to bring Sir Edmund over from France - his command of Third Army has been competent so far, and the C-in-C in Egypt has done little to justify being degummed.

Hope to see the British in Baghdad next year then, and from there, will you continue north into Turkey or will you turn to Jerusalem and the areas around, anyway a strong attack is sure to push the Turks out of the war as soon as possible so just go for it

Will the loss of Jerusalem and Baghdad drive the Ottoman Empire out of the war? I'd certainly hope so, but these campaigns against Turkey are motivated primarily by post-war imperial thinking - so would the capture of Baghdad and Jerusalem benefit the empire? Almost certainly.

Qurna the Garden of Eden? You said that rather matter-of-factly, sir! Here's another possible spot:

The Garden of Eden being in Qurna is normally the most oft-quoted contention, so it was the one I decided to use. Not that there aren't other credible theories, though. Some have claimed that they were around the Taurus Mountains, whilst some have even said that they were situated in modern day Missouri....

Oh god not Curzon, I just finished reading The General by C. S. Forester about him, and well... good luck with him.

It would seem that you are confusing George Nathaniel Curzon, the able imperial administrator and statesman with Sir Herbert Curzon, the very fictional character in C.S. Forester's very fictional book The General. The character is a composite of various actual generals, taking their bad traits and exaggerating them. Not that this is necessarily bad - although thoroughly unrealistic, Forester's book had to have an interesting story. It's useful for entertainment, but it makes very doubtful history.

You're giving Constantinople to Russian though!?! I'd like to here the logic in giving it to the Ruskies then the Greeks who actually attemped to take it and spilled Greek blood over it.

I completely overlooked the plan to give Constantinople and the Dardanelles to the Russkies! What's up with that? That's like a complete reversal of British policy all through the 19th Century!!

I have the feeling that there is a method to the madness and a rhyme to the reason..... but I haven't figured it out.

I can explain, gentlemen! I refer you to Part XXIII - 'Venizelos Intervenes' - in which Britain and Greece negotiate an alliance. It was agreed that Greece would receive parts of Asia Minor in the event of victory over Turkey if they entered the war - they had no territorial ambitions regarding Constantinople. I think Britain allowing Russia control over the straits in the post-war era can be explained primarily by the Russia's hint that she might begin negotiations with Germany and Austria-Hungary, and that ultimately receiving all of Poland and Galicia would not be enough to satiate her. Additionally, Russia agreed to give Britain (and France) a free hand in all other areas of the Ottoman Empire and to make the 'neutral zone' in Persia a British sphere of influence. Therefore, for losing out on the Straits, Britain managed to gain Russian backing for running the Middle East's primary source of oil.

 

[Allenby]

Part XLV – Battle of Texel

The invasion of Germany by an Allied Army in the early summer of 1915 was another humiliation for the German surface fleet. Confined to the Jade, she had taken no active part in interfering with Allied operations, such was the fear of destruction by the British Grand Fleet. Vice Admiral Hipper, commanding the German battlecruisers, was impatient, eager to take the fight to the Royal Navy. With the permission of the High Seas Fleet’s new commander, Admiral Reinhard Scheer, he devised an audacious plan – a raid on the River Thames. A powerful force of battlecruisers, light cruisers and destroyers would enter the lair of Harwich Force and shell the British coast – the Royal Navy would be disgraced, the German Navy’s morale would receive a boost. Scheer was of the same mindset as Hipper, and gave his assent to the operation. By 10th December 1915, Hipper’s 1st Scouting Group and Boedicker’s 2nd Scouting Group were sailing westwards towards the Thames. Thanks to Room 40, the Royal Navy was a step ahead of them – intercepted signals between German ships were decoded, revealing Hipper’s intentions. First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur Wilson, and First Lord of the Admiralty, Austen Chamberlain sprung into action, the latter signalling to Jellicoe, Beatty and Tyrwhitt (commanding Harwich Force):

“TOMORROW EVENING FIVE GERMAN BATTLE CRUISERS, FIVE CRUISERS AND NINETEEN DESTROYERS WILL SAIL TO RAID THAMES ESTUARY. VICE ADMIRAL LION SHOULD LEAD AVAILABLE BATTLE CRUISERS, LIGHT CRUISERS AND DESTROYERS FROM ROSYTH TO RENDEZVOUS POINT”

Tyrwhitt, commanding his force of cruisers and destroyers was tasked with confronting, and then leading the Germans into the jaws of Beatty’s battlecruisers, who would concentrate his force southwest of the Dogger Bank, near East Anglia. Jellicoe would also sail – the Grand Fleet was to intervene in the event of the High Seas Fleet venturing out of Wilhelmshaven. With a preponderance of naval artillery, Chamberlain was confident of victory. Beatty was just as self assured – he greeted the order to sortie with pleasure, and swiftly prepared his force, now christened the ‘Battlecruiser Fleet’, consisting of two squadrons. 1st Battlecruiser Squadron was composed of ships of at least twenty-seven knots – Lion, Tiger, Princess Royal and Queen Mary, commanded personally by Beatty. 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron, commanded by Rear Admiral Archibald Moore, consisted of three ships whose maximum speeds were twenty-five knots: Invincible – the oldest battlecruiser, Australia and New Zealand. The Battlecruiser Fleet raised steam, weighed anchor, and accompanied by Goodenough’s 1st Light Cruiser Squadron, began its journey southwards from Rosyth.

The Battlecruiser Fleet and the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron sail south​

Harwich Force was already venturing into the North Sea, led by Arethusa, Tyrwhitt’s flagship. In the evening of 11th December, it made contact with Hipper’s cruiser screen, commanded by Boedicker. There were brief exchanges, but Tyrwhitt was not looking for a fight – he turned his force round and headed west-north-west. Hipper scented the opportunity of destroying an inferior force and pursued through the evening. On the morning of 12th December, Hipper maintained contact with Tyrwhitt, looking to engage him at dawn; by now, Beatty and Goodenough were heading the opposite direction. Onboard Lion, Beatty estimated that Tyrwhitt would deliver Hipper to him by daybreak. Content, he decided to sleep, leaving Flag Captain Ernle Chatfield to guide the squadron in his absence. At 8:37am, Goodenough, on board Southampton, sighted a German cruiser in the distance and flashed recognition signals. No reply came from the ship, confirming it as German, and Goodenough’s cruisers subsequently began to open fire. Signalling “engaged with German cruisers” to Beatty, Goodenough, so engrossed in battle, failed to report the sighting of other German ships which had come within sight. When the four ships of the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron, Southampton, Birmingham, Nottingham and Lowestoft began to move in unison to engage the German cruisers, Beatty, wanting to keep at least two ships as a screen, asked his Flag Lieutenant to order the two rear ships in Goodenough’s line to maintain course. The Flag Lieutenant’s confused signal to Nottingham referring to her as ‘light cruiser’ resulted in her captain assuming that the signal was directed to the squadron as a whole, not just two ships. The signal was passed on to Goodenough, who followed the signal to its logical conclusion and broke off the engagement. Lion’s garbled orders had given the Germans breathing space, for Hipper was now aware that he was being lured into an unwanted battle with Beatty. Deciding that the Thames raid would now be fraught with danger, Hipper turned around and set course for home.

Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty​

Beatty, enraged that Goodenough had inadvertently broken off the engagement, decided to force the issue. He swung to port and increased speed, turning behind 1st Light Cruiser Squadron. Simultaneously, he had Tyrwhitt turn to the northeast to join the fray. Beatty was determined that the preceding blunder should not allow Hipper to slip from his grasp, and he set an east-south-easterly course that would put his fleet on Hipper’s trail. Eventually, Beatty spotted the German battlecruisers distantly on Lion’s starboard bow, and from intense gloom at the prospect of losing the Germans, the mood onboard Beatty’s flagship brightened considerably. The weather was still quite clear and Beatty’s ships steamed on a parallel course to Hipper, whilst Goodenough and Tyrwhitt followed to their southeast. Tentative attempts by Tyrwhitt’s destroyers to attack the German battlecruisers resulted in their bloody repulse – one destroyer was wrecked by the secondary armament of Blücher, and was lucky not to sink. Meanwhile, Beatty’s battlecruisers picked up speed, to the detriment of the German battlecruisers who were compelled to travel at twenty-four knots – the speed of Blücher, the line’s slowest ship. The furnaces of Beatty’s ships began to consume coal at a furious rate as blackened stokers laboured tirelessly in shovelling coal to maintain the speed of the battlecruisers. Their efforts were most productive – Lion’s speed increased from a calm twenty-three knots to a frenetic thirty knots within an hour. Lion and the other “Cats” of the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron were pulling away from the slower battlecruisers, ploughing through the North Sea heading nearer to the Dutch island of Texel, bringing Hipper’s ships to within range. Smoke billowed from their funnels and water splashed over their decks, whilst the heavy guns of Beatty’s leading ships were aimed at Hipper’s battlecruisers. Beatty, having left behind Moore’s slower battlecruisers, was now outnumbered by four to five – yet this did not deter him. His cavalier style and aggressive approach to command only encouraged him to take the fight to Hipper, and within minutes of coming into range, Lion, travelling at a frantic thirty knots (three knots above her design speed), opened fire from a range of 20,000 yards, straddling the rear ship, Blücher. In a superhuman effort by the ship’s stokers, Lion managed to maintain its speed for another half-hour, in which it exchanged fire with Moltke. Whilst Tiger and Princess Royal fired at the hybrid Blücher, inflicting superficial damage, Moltke was being meticulously reduced by the guns of Lion. 13.5-inch shells were sunk accurately into Moltke time after time, a remarkable achievement given Lion’s speed. Flames began to appear on Moltke’s deck, a sure sign of peril for the German battlecruiser, when simultaneously, an explosion could be heard behind Lion. Tiger, the immediate ship to Lion’s rear, had hit a mine laid by one of the German battlecruisers.

HMS Tiger struck a mine during the battle​

Beatty was overcome by a sudden sense of intense danger. He had overstretched his force to the extent that he was now outnumbered, and the explosion on Tiger’s hull led him to believe that the ship had been struck from a torpedo and the area was infested with German submarines. He decided to turn his leading squadron away, giving the Germans valuable time to make their escape, but Tiger was seemingly floundering, and Beatty was compelled to signal to Tyrwhitt and ask for the aid of destroyers, to prevent the new battlecruiser from sinking. By now, the weather had turned for the worse, with rain, high wind and heavy mist obscuring the German battlecruisers as they travelled further and further away from Beatty. The cruisers of the respective fleets continued to exchange fire as Goodenough tried to keep contact with the escaping Germans, and eventually, Moore’s 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron caught up with Beatty’s 1st Battlecruiser Squadron, and there was a renewed determination on the bridge of Lion to resume the chase. Despite the apparent submarine ‘scare’, Beatty gathered his vessels, less Tiger which was now under tow, and went in pursuit of his escaping enemy. Yet the stokers could not be asked to mount another phenomenal effort – they were exhausted, and Beatty was forced to proceed at twenty-five knots, which would eventually have been enough to catch up with Hipper. But the German commander took action to ensure that this would not happen – he split his force in two: Derfflinger, von der Tann and Seydlitz would travel at twenty-seven knots whilst the damaged Moltke and the slow Blücher would chart a different course under heavy protection from cruisers and destroyers. This move checkmated Beatty – the Battlecruiser Fleet searched in vain for Hipper’s vessels, whilst Moltke and Blücher continued unmolested. The move did not go unnoticed by the Admiralty, however. Here, Chamberlain and Wilson were plotting the German ships’ movement based on signals intercepts from Room 40 and projected courses judged from previous sightings by British ships. However, by the time accurate information as to the whereabouts of the German vessels could be confirmed and relayed to Beatty, the two German scouting squadrons were nearing home waters. Jellicoe was too far away to stop them. Despondent, Beatty gave up the chase, turning round and heading back to Rosyth with the damaged Tiger under protection from potential submarine attack. The Admiralty’s last hopes were invested in Commodore Roger Keyes, whose submarines were in the Heligoland Bight, ready to pounce – yet a blunder in transmitting details of Hipper’s course ensured that Keyes did not receive the message until six hours later, when it was too late.

Battle of Texel​

The War Committee was disappointed when Chamberlain told them the details of the battle of Texel. So too were the British people, but the fact that casualties had been relatively light helped to ease the pain of having not sunk a single German ship. The navy was disappointed in themselves – Beatty wrote later to Chamberlain that ‘it was a terrible failure. I had made up my mind that we were going to get five, the lot, and five we ought to have got’. Both sides lost a vessel for a few months – the mauled Moltke spent time in dry dock undergoing repairs, whilst Tiger was removed from Beatty’s order of battle to have her hull fixed. Goodenough was exonerated for his decision to break off action against the German cruisers – he had followed the orders that had emanated from Lion via Nottingham, although they had become distorted from the time that Beatty gave them to when Goodenough received them. Mild criticism of Beatty’s staff was implied when Jellicoe stipulated that signals should be clearer in battle, so as to avoid confusion – Beatty sacked his Flag Lieutenant after the episode. Luck, occasional British mistakes, the weather and a well placed mine had largely allowed Hipper to escape. Beatty cursed – he was determined not to allow him to escape next time.

The King visits Beatty after the battle – the Admiral’s disappointment at the outcome is evident​

 

[Zuckergußgebäck]

Better luck next time, old chap!

 

[unmerged(1020)]

So the Admiralty are actually listening to Room 40 in this world? That bodes well for when Jutland or it's equivalent rears its head.

 

[Mettermrck]

Poor Beatty...I thought he had it in the bag, too.

 

[Mr.G 24]

Finished the whole thing. Well atleast till now. I must say I'm suprised like I was at Metts AAR on the number of defeats. Very nice updates. I've played till 1915 in my first game. Wondering when the Russian Revolution will start. Historically or at all seeing how there has been initial sucess on moving on Berlin. Then again there last offensive seemed to kill them.

 

[Semi-Lobster]

It would seem that you are confusing George Nathaniel Curzon, the able imperial administrator and statesman with Sir Herbert Curzon, the very fictional character in C.S. Forester's very fictional book The General. The character is a composite of various actual generals, taking their bad traits and exaggerating them. Not that this is necessarily bad - although thoroughly unrealistic, Forester's book had to have an interesting story. It's useful for entertainment, but it makes very doubtful history.

Silly me, sorry about the mix up, I've been reading C. S. Forester booksfor the past month (doing a project on him) and as soon as I saw Curzon I got the two mixed up, this is obviously a sign that I desperatly need more sleep then I'm giving myself.

Wonderful update as usual Allenby. Does writing this well come naturally to you or would you say your writing ability was augmented somehow by years of practice or some kind of magical writing pill?

 

[unmerged(17780)]

Your describtion of naval combat is comparable to the best in the business, Allenby, I must say as a devotee of naval military history...

 

[unmerged(28944)]

I feel for Beatty, I really do. To be that close to bagging the German Battlecruisers and to lose 'em due to a communications blunder has got to drive a man to drink, eh?

Oh, thanks for the clearing of giving the Russians Constantinople confusion. I'm not sure I think its all that good of a long term idea, but I can undertand the reasonings. Then again, I'm still waiting for the Russians to lose their heads in the Revolution, so that may be coloring my thoughts.

 

[unmerged(28406)]

Can we see an update about Palestine ?

 

[HKFlash]

Central Powers

GERMANY

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY


Entente

FRANCE

RUSSIA

SERBIA

MONTENEGRO

BRITISH EMPIRE

BELGIUM

JAPAN

You forgot Portugal.

 

[unmerged(28406)]

Wrong,Portugal joined in 1917,I think ?

 

[Zuckergußgebäck]

You forgot Portugal.

You know, this isn´t a history book.

Here Portugal almost never joins the entente, and when they do, they do not join in 1914.

 

[HKFlash]

Wrong,Portugal joined in 1917,I think ?

Wrong Portugal joined in 1916. (joined the military way, because they were always politically allied with England.)

 

[HKFlash]

You know, this isn´t a history book.

Here Portugal almost never joins the entente, and when they do, they do not join in 1914.

Instead of starting provocations you could say something good but you only said cr*p.

As I explained before, Portugal joined the war (the military way) in 1916, and troops were sent to France in 1917, and fought in France in same year, in the battle of Lalys.

 

[HKFlash]

Em 1916 mais países entraram na arena. Entraram na guerra contra as potências centrais, Portugal em Março e Romênia em Agosto.

Translating....complete.

In 1916 more countries enter the "arena". Portugal in March and Romenia in August, enter in war against the central powers.