develop and build aircraft Carriers have 6 each carry 100 aircraft by 09/1939 to start as Germany and Japan have 12 at least by 12/1941 battleships are useless against them in most cases
Is it possible to beat British navy with planes and subs?
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OH Ya subs can't sink Battleships go tell the crew of the BB Barham 3 torpedo hits from a U-boat and Royal Oak 1939 !
I try to be more clearly:Britain cooperated heavily with the USA and France in the inter-war years, sharing carrier and other technology. I can't recall (ie, it may be the case, but I think it'd be handy to have some evidence for it) seeing anywhere anything that suggesting the RN was concerned about either as a possible threat, and it's behaviour towards both would have been pretty odd if it did.
Germany, Japan, Italy and the SU were the four naval threats that the UK is likely to have had on its 'radar' (obviously not quite at the start of the game). The SU was still very much underdeveloped (and the SU would need to project past the Baltic or Black Sea if it had put together a fleet dangerous enough to be a concern), so I'd argue that Germany, Japan and Italy are the 'big three' nations to worry about.
The Interwar years are not yet the bipolar world of post-WW2.
In the cold war, Britain was pretty free too ignore any American, French or german Naval programm because they would be on the same side in any conceivable scenario.
That is not the case in the Interwar years.
Yes, France and the USA were friendly.
But they were also competing Great Powers.
And over the lifetime of a Naval Build programm there could very well be tensions arising to change that.
So American and French Naval programms, while of secondary importance, could not be ignored.
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Aye, although up until everyone started to re-arm in 1937, the US and France hadn't really made much of an effort to build anything, and the US didn't lay down the first of Yorktown and Enterprise (the last two CVs to take up it's Washington Treaty tonnage limit) until 1934 (and the first of it's new BBs until 1937). France never came close to using up its treaty tonnage and was also didn't come close to using what it had been allowed under the treaty to modernise it's BB fleet. I'm not saying that they couldn't have potentially done something crazy and become potential enemies with the UK again, but that in the context of a historical progression, both nations didn't do anything to 'set off' a UK rearmament - it was the prospect of war with Japan and Germany (and the removal of some treaty restrictions on 31 December 1936) that got ship-building going again (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/rearmament-plans.htm). In that context, Germany going gung-ho on subs would be expected to lead to some kind of response from the UK in terms of their naval build plans. Just my angle on what I've seen of course, I wasn't there
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OK, but we're talking about Hearts of Iron, right? Germany is the number one concern for Britain.
Not to mention that we seem to be quite content to completely tailor Germany's strategy for the purpose of beating Britain to the exclusion of all else - it seems unfair to pretend that Britain isn't allowed to respond to such a strategy.
It has nothing to do with fairness.
Britain has defense commitments on multiple continents. If she loses control of the sea lanes around Africa and Asia, or loses control of territory in those regions, she could be seriously undermined. Losing Egypt and the Suez is unacceptable. Losing Singapore, Brunei, or India is also unacceptable. Even in a historical scenario, the Royal Navy has to fight Italy, Japan, and Germany. Germany is not and cannot be the only threat Britain considers.
Germany, on the other hand, has a different set of priorities. She does not have overseas commitments, so she has some flexibility in choosing her approach. If she chooses u-boats, she can use them against multiple enemies. U-boats are effective against France or Britain. Against the Soviets, they have marginal usefulness, but in any war with the Soviets, someone could argue that the Army will neutralize the Soviet fleet. After all, the Soviet Baltic and Black Fleets are not in a position to do much of anything if the entire Black and Baltic coastline are occupied by Axis forces. (Soviet submarines can be neutralized by German destroyers without capital ships.)
If Germany drops the capital ships, she faces problems invading Norway, but the British can have fun securing Norway from attack while the French still collapse and German u-boats scrub the sea lanes.
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Absolutely, but the UK also starts the game's time period with very low military spending, and far greater scope to increase it than Germany or Japan. Increasing it is politically difficult without a clear threat, but if Germany is stocking up on U-boats, it would make it politically much easier to justify greater defense expenditure earlier (IRL - in-game we have no idea how it works, it could potentially be good if WT was increased by military build-ups by the Axis, but would depend how it all worked). At least according to http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/past_spending, UK defence spending didn't crack 5 per cent of GDP until 1938, and 10 per cent until 1939, compared with Germany's (apologies for the fast and loose Googling, but I'm confident about the general trends between the two - here's the source for the German figures http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nazi-germany/nazi-germany-military-expenditure/) was 13 per cent in 1936 (over three time's the UK's defence expenditure at the time), and 17 per cent in 1938 (still twice the UK's).
If Germany re-arms in a way that sets off UK rearmament stronger and sooner (which I'd argue building u-boats in numbers would do) then I'm not sure how it would look come 1940-41 - the UK was building 5 BBs, 4 CVs and a bunch of smaller vessels in 1938 with her historical defence budget - depending on her scope to increase naval production, a 50 per cent increase in the naval budget (which is plausible with greater threat - the UK's defence spending nearly doubled between 1938 and 1939) in 1938 would build a lot of escorts and fund substantial amounts of research into ASW. I'm just not sure how it would play out - would the extra escorts/better ASW still struggle more against more u-boats, so Germany is better off, would it just result in a more intense submarine war earlier but similar results, or would it mean the u-boats are decimated and Germany has a harder time in France because the UK's been spending more on defence?
Of course, if in-game AI UK looks at Germany building a stack of U-boats and say "no worries", then it's absolutely the right strategy
.* Note - I'm not sure if this would be possible, but expect it would be in 1938, particularly if the focus was on building more smaller escort craft.
@Axe99:
There was a recognition in Britain that Germany had a right to prepare herself to defend against Britain.
And so it would come down much more to diplomacy (how well can Germany parse that she desires the u-boats as deterent rather than as a way of preparing for war).
We also had the discussion already in a different thread but i would also still content that while battleships and cruiser are almost impossible to hide, the same is not true for u-boats.
The Type VII was 70 m to 5 m.
That is not much and quite easily hidden.
The same goes for the expenditure and the resources.
To be clear:
Would Britain react to a 300 strong German u-boat fleet aimed at her jugular?
Sure.
But for that she needs the information, the clear motivation (of germany) and the strength of intent (in her own government).
If any of those is missing the u-boat threat will be minimised and the building programs remain on course as is, with ASDIC waved around as a wunder weapon able to destroy any u-boats anyway.
There was a recognition in Britain that Germany had a right to prepare herself to defend against Britain.
And so it would come down much more to diplomacy (how well can Germany parse that she desires the u-boats as deterent rather than as a way of preparing for war).
We also had the discussion already in a different thread but i would also still content that while battleships and cruiser are almost impossible to hide, the same is not true for u-boats.
The Type VII was 70 m to 5 m.
That is not much and quite easily hidden.
The same goes for the expenditure and the resources.
To be clear:
Would Britain react to a 300 strong German u-boat fleet aimed at her jugular?
Sure.
But for that she needs the information, the clear motivation (of germany) and the strength of intent (in her own government).
If any of those is missing the u-boat threat will be minimised and the building programs remain on course as is, with ASDIC waved around as a wunder weapon able to destroy any u-boats anyway.
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I dunno.
Hiding some of them would be feasible, but he construction and completion of all 300 in a four year period? The boats have to train and take shake down cruises.
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Agreed, but I'd argue the best guide for what the UK thought was reasonable for Germany in this regard would be the AGNA. The AGNA (I'm going from the Wiki page) has Germany allowed 45 per cent of the submarines of the Commonwealth (at the time, the UK was the only nation with submarines - and it had 50, and it laid down around 28 more before 1938 - once we get to 1939, it's all prewar build programmes so not that indicative of 'normal' peacetime play), with permission to go up to 100 per cent after a 'friendly discussion' between the two of them. I'd assume Hitler would have done his usual charm offensive and got the parity on submarines, but once Germany start making a play for over 100 (well shy of the 'we really want 300 to really give the UK a good smashing once war breaks out) I'd expect it's well past the "we're comfortable with this" stage for the UK.
As Secret Master posted, hiding the information of that many u-boats is a tough ask. I could imagine Germany successfully hiding 10-20 per cent (very rough number, but that kind of thing) of her submarine programme, but she needs to hid 100-200 per cent to get the job done, and that becomes a far harder task. You're type VIIC is around 796 tons, but 100 of them is 76,900. They took around a 10 months to a year to build in peacetime (very rough estimate - let me know if you want better) and early on (later boats were a bit quicker to build, both because of greater intensity of production during wartime and because Germany had built so many it had got better at it), so if Germany wants 300 ready for 1939 it needs at least 60 or so on the go at any time. That's an awful lot of industrial activity to hide, and the specific technical requirements of u-boats would likely make finding out that there were a stack in production easier. I don't think there's a plausible way for Germany to surprise the UK with an extra 200 (or even an extra 50) u-boats at the start of the war.
So I'd argue (it's all counterfactuals, so not suggesting anything I'm saying is beyond a shadow of a doubt) that the information would be there, and that by breaching the AGNA and by some margin, particularly after pretending to be friendly (assuming they built up to 100 per cent of Commonwealth subs before the breach, but that sounds like the way Hitler would have played it), that Germany's intent would have been fairly clear.
Given the UK had stepped up re-armament before Munich (peace in our time and all that), I'd argue the intent would have been there as well, and unlike the complicated political situation of selling a "we might want to get into another European war to preserve the balance of power, so taxes are going up", it's far, far easier to politically sell "Germany is building scores of u-boats so they can hold us to ransom, we need more escorts, give us an expanded defence budget to smash out a few hundred destroyers, frigates and corvettes to keep ourselves safe". So, flowing from that, I'd argue in a plausible set-up game, a substantially enlargened u-boat building programme, in a world where the UK and Germany aren't in the same faction, should set off greater defence spending in the UK (with most of it going to small ships and u-boat tech).
I wonder if it'd be possible to put in events or similar both warning Germany it was about to risk raising the UK defence budget by it's u-boat build (basing the numbers on the in-game ratio, rather than hard-coding), and then giving them a choice about it, and maybe add some random chance in there (so every 'threshold' of percentage over the Commonwealth sub ratio, Germany has a choice to keep going, with a percentage chance this sets off aUK event)? Just thinking out loud from a modding perspective. You could also make the UK reaction have a potential percentage downside (so the UK gets an event, where there's a chance that increasing the defence budget hits popularity of the current ruling party, or NU, or something)?
That's the thing about a submarine building program. The countries it can be used against set off alarm bells for Britain.
Even though we all know Bismark and surface raiders are designed to kill convoys, Germany could legitimately claim that they exist to secure the Baltic, particularly against the Soviet Union.
Germany could argue that 100 submarines are needed to cut off the Soviets from trade in her western harbors (it's a stretch, but it might fly). If it boils down to "We're sitting at 100% of Commonwealth submarine forces per the AGNA," then Germany should be able to skate along.
300 submarines are really only something you direct against France, Britain, and the United States. And if they are Type VIIs with no French bases in play, then they are clearly directed against Britain and France, not the United States (not enough range to do serious damage).
I should also point out that the Admiralty wanted Germany to build a "balanced fleet," because they could defeat it more easily. It was the Admiralty's contention that, when negotiating the AGNA, that if Germany built a balanced fleet, it would be something they could handle ton for ton (decisive battle and all that jazz). While the Admiralty also thought that ASDIC had rendered submarines largely ineffective, they were still worried about smaller ships as convoy raiders and whatnot.
Even with the AGNA not in play, building hordes of u-boats should set off alarm bells in Britain once it is discovered. It is a legitimate question to ask if Germany crosses the threshold for too many submarines by, say, Munich, if it matters any more.
Maybe a submarine build up could be hidden well enough until world tension was already too high to matter. If Hitler has just annexed the Czechs, the discovery of 150+ u-boats the British didn't know about isn't really going to change Britain's foreign policy at that point.
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There we go.
The AGNA is very important and I will be building BBs just to simulate it when I play Germany.
If Germany doesn`t play ball UK will figure things out far more earlier.
What I would have done in return is to build 3 extra Scharnhorst class instead of 2 Bismarck class battleships.
The Bismarck class while very impressive didn`t know what it wanted to achieve, it was very massive so that it can take on other battleships but it was kind of slow for a raider.
All in all I think that the Scharnhorst class should have been made 1936 battlecruisers and be given a focus that reduces research by 100% so that construction can start in 1935.
We will have to wait for expansions and mods to fix it.
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I think it still matters at Munich, but not after Hitler has annexed the Czechs. At Munich, the political rhetoric was "peace in our time", which probably isn't the best byline for raising taxes to pay for large-scale re-armament. Later in '38, when Britain and France drew their line in the sand after the Czechs were annexed, they had the political ammunition to pain Hitler as a threat politically and could (and did) raise spending substantially.
Historically, British intelligence/espionage was very good, so I'd expect them to work out what was going on at around the 100 u-boat mark, so maybe a 'best play' by Germany would be building to 70-80 at about the time of the Czech annexation (assuming historical playthrough, but in a sandbox there's all sorts of other factors that may not make u-boats the best strategy) and then going hell for leather afterwards? I'm not sure it'd be possible to have 300 by September 1939 (it downright wouldn't be possible historically, but it looks like we'll be able to build ships faster in HoI4 than historically, and by some margin) but there'd still be enough to cause the UK a substantial amount of pain, without setting off much higher defence spending (although they might build more small ships and put less focus on some of the larger ships, and would also be building ships at 'HoI4 speed' as well).
Even 200 would be far better than what they actually started the war with.
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Absolutely, no question about that, but it's still difficult to assess how much better/worse it would be. Building all those subs is likely to have an impact on the Admiralty's opinion of ASDIC and the limited capacity of anti-submarine weapons. If they know Germany are building all those subs, then there's more than a small chance that something like Hedgehog will be developed prior to 1942 and ASDIC refined to be more effective, and there'll have a lot more boats to put them on (the first Flower class corvettes were laid down in September 1939, and launched nine months later - if they start being built in bulk in 1938 then the UK could start the war with substantially larger numbers of escorts).
I definitely agree, on balance, that if Germany time it right (hit the 100 u-boats or so at the time they annex the rest of Czechoslovakia) and the UK waits until they're 30-50 per cent above the 'safe limit' before they notice and respond that it would help Germany early, but I'm still not sure it's best for Germany in the long run (not considering the extra pressure on Italy and Japan of having more of the RN to deal with), as the UK starting the Battle of Atlantic from a position of concern and with greater assets could mean that instead of the worst stage of it occurring in the middle of 1943, it reaches this point in 1942 or earlier, and so by 1944 the Allies could potentially be stronger than they were historically, because the u-boat wanes more quickly. All coulds, of course, and you're quite right in that building subs hard early could work out very well for Germany (particularly if the UK doesn't respond at all, but also even if it does).
With an adequate efficient (like in range and in numbers) naval bomber force (escorted by long range fighters if ENY air opposition is actual) you can be really good at sinking warships. With of course specifics naval bombing training doctrines and weapons (like torpedoes + good aiming equipment).
German U-Boots, beside an expendiency to sink an encountered warship, are far more better to be used to set a blockade of Great Britain's naval supplies lines, early as possible = as soon as war is declared.
OK so I went back to check the original post, which mentioned losses in mediterranean. There were other losses elsewhere.
The bottom line is, navies should not try to sail where enemy has air superiority (if they have enough CV's, then enemy no longer has air superiority, so the rule stands).
Subs are an annoyance, they are generally slower (at that period) than surface fleet, can't contend on surface (and have to surface relatively often) and are generally vulnerable to destroyers. They can inflict losses ; they cannot defeat reasonable surface fleet acting reasonably.
So in the end, it boils down to air superiority, and afterwards subs can start making contribution.
Mind you, noone will send battleship on convoy escort duty if the threat is only submarines - battleships were sent along with convoys because of threat of Italian surface fleet.
Contrary to some beliefs expressed here, mediterranean was in this period not at all that crucial for UK that is couldn't afford to lose it - Singapore was far more important, but politics made North Africa battle where disproportional resources were sent. The problem that loss of mediterranean would present would be not much worse then what they had to deal with anyway, because for about a year all the convoys had to go around Cape of good hope anyway. The difference in needed cargo tonnage is not trivial but they could obviously deal with it.
So->Mediterranean more or less irrelevant(for that matter, how would those hundreds of submarines made it there, where would they operate from, etc.)?
Atlantic->Irrelevant for the question (Royal Navy would not be defeated there, because it would not need to commit it's heavy units to such fight at all and escorts would still rape the subs.)
That leaves only channel for the purpose of invasion -> Subs may be able to hold off royal navy arrival, _if_ Germany has air superiority and is able to effectively bomb royal navy for extended period of time to take the ships down.
So my best guess is still that unless enemy makes stupid choices, answer is no.
The bottom line is, navies should not try to sail where enemy has air superiority (if they have enough CV's, then enemy no longer has air superiority, so the rule stands).
Subs are an annoyance, they are generally slower (at that period) than surface fleet, can't contend on surface (and have to surface relatively often) and are generally vulnerable to destroyers. They can inflict losses ; they cannot defeat reasonable surface fleet acting reasonably.
So in the end, it boils down to air superiority, and afterwards subs can start making contribution.
Mind you, noone will send battleship on convoy escort duty if the threat is only submarines - battleships were sent along with convoys because of threat of Italian surface fleet.
Contrary to some beliefs expressed here, mediterranean was in this period not at all that crucial for UK that is couldn't afford to lose it - Singapore was far more important, but politics made North Africa battle where disproportional resources were sent. The problem that loss of mediterranean would present would be not much worse then what they had to deal with anyway, because for about a year all the convoys had to go around Cape of good hope anyway. The difference in needed cargo tonnage is not trivial but they could obviously deal with it.
So->Mediterranean more or less irrelevant(for that matter, how would those hundreds of submarines made it there, where would they operate from, etc.)?
Atlantic->Irrelevant for the question (Royal Navy would not be defeated there, because it would not need to commit it's heavy units to such fight at all and escorts would still rape the subs.)
That leaves only channel for the purpose of invasion -> Subs may be able to hold off royal navy arrival, _if_ Germany has air superiority and is able to effectively bomb royal navy for extended period of time to take the ships down.
So my best guess is still that unless enemy makes stupid choices, answer is no.