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Strategies for Germany and Japan

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Originally posted by ewright
Yeah thats a great point Olivier! Had the Z-Plan been allowed to run its course, that would change things. But honestly, that plan was much too ambitious for Germany assuming the war starts before 1942-1946 when it was to near completion. At that point, the Germans would have more than 2 Bismarck class ships, plus the H-class "super-battleships" which would have been the most powerful, technologically advanced warship of their type, even considering the Japanese Yamato class.

On top of that, they'd have at least the 2 Graf Zeppelin aircraft carriers that were already laid down, and more were planned. The premature (at least in the Kriegsmarine's eyes) start of the war caused the Zeppelins to be either refitted as heavy cruisers (Seydlitz) or scrapped for materials.

But your real point, that the player will have control of these decisions, is the beauty. If I can speed up production of the Z-Plan fleet, I can have some hope of pulling off Sealion. But IRL, Hitler told the navy to get ready and then tied their hands...
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In addition to this didn't the German Navy also want 300 or more U-boats? When WWII started Donitz had only 60 operational boats, and look what was accomplished with those few subs.

Imagine the devastation if he had had 300!

Britain might very well have been brought to her knees. . .
 
Also a great point Fed. During the "Happy Time", Churchill said that 6 more months like that and Britain would starve to death. But one day Hitler would tell Donitz to get cracking on that production plan, and the next he'd say the materials and industrial capacity were needed for more important things, ie, the army.

As for its effect on Sealion; imagine the tiny German surface fleet trying to herd a bunch of unarmed & unarmored transports across the Channel. Sitting ducks. Now imagine them flanked on either side by large u-boat picket-lines. Hehe.

Hell, even understrength, they sunk the battleships Royal Oak & Barham, the carriers Courageous, Ark Royal, Eagle, Avenger, Block Island, & Audacity, the cruisers Dunedin, Hermione, Naiad, Penelope, & Galatea, 34 destroyers, 2 subs, and a number of corvettes, sloops, armed merchant cruisers, plus over 5000 merchant ships!

So would a full-force u-boat fleet have made a difference in Sealion? Definitely. But would most or all of those transports still be sunk. Maybe. If not, how many would reach the beach to grapple with the British Army? I guess I'll find out for sure when HoI comes out...:D
 
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Originally posted by ewright
If not, how many would reach the beach to grapple with the Royal Army? I guess I'll find out for sure when HoI comes out...:D [/B]
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Not to be anal, but it's the British Army, not the Royal Army. The Army belongs to Parliament (thanks to Cromwell & co.) and the Navy technically belongs to the monarchy. Hence the British Army and the Royal Navy/Marines. :)
 
Originally posted by ewright
Also a great point Fed. During the "Happy Time", Churchill said that 6 more months like that and Britain would starve to death. But one day Hitler would tell Donitz to get cracking on that production plan, and the next he'd say the materials and industrial capacity were needed for more important things, ie, the army.

As for its effect on Sealion; imagine the tiny German surface fleet trying to herd a bunch of unarmed & unarmored transports across the Channel. Sitting ducks. Now imagine them flanked on either side by large u-boat picket-lines. Hehe.

Hell, even understrength, they sunk the battleships Royal Oak & Barham, the carriers Courageous, Ark Royal, Eagle, Avenger, Block Island, & Audacity, the cruisers Dunedin, Hermione, Naiad, Penelope, & Galatea, 34 destroyers, 2 subs, and a number of corvettes, sloops, armed merchant cruisers, plus over 5000 merchant ships!

So would a full-force u-boat fleet have made a difference in Sealion? Definitely. But would most or all of those transports still be sunk. Maybe. If not, how many would reach the beach to grapple with the Royal Army? I guess I'll find out for sure when HoI comes out...:D
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Just looking at a map of the English Channel makes strategic U-boat placement quite easy: send in dozens of U-boats and clear out all British inter-channel harbours; then "seal" both ends of the channel with dozens of U-boats.

Next, send the barges across the channel covered by hundreds of Me-109s. . .

Follow this up with a huge paratroop drop to seize vital bridges and crossroads. . .

BTW, after Dunkirk, only a single Canadian infantry division was on the British Isles to protect it from invasion. I mention this because, although hundreds of thousands of troops had escaped Dunkirk, they had lost all of their military equipment and their morale was at a low point. The Canadians had the only fully equipped division on the islands as far as I know. . .

Those Canucks - they pop up everywhere ;)
 
I think Churchill mentions their lack of equipment as well. However supplying the German troops in Britain won't be easy...
 
Originally posted by ewright

On top of that, they'd have at least the 2 Graf Zeppelin aircraft carriers that were already laid down, and more were planned. The premature (at least in the Kriegsmarine's eyes) start of the war caused the Zeppelins to be either refitted as heavy cruisers (Seydlitz) or scrapped for materials.

But your real point, that the player will have control of these decisions, is the beauty. If I can speed up production of the Z-Plan fleet, I can have some hope of pulling off Sealion. But IRL, Hitler told the navy to get ready and then tied their hands...
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The balance between fighting the Soviets and the British is definately something that will interesting for the German player. The Japanese faced the same decision, they decided to tie up more Army forces to defend against a Soviet backstab than to use against the British and the Dutch. The required defense against the Soviets also tied up resources needed elsewhere...
 
Originally posted by ewright
In 1939, the Japanese invaded Mongolia and were stopped by Zhukov at Nomonhan. Although Russia was their traditional enemy and they had totally humiliated them in 1904-1905, they at that point swore off any further invasions of Russian territory. But what if they had invaded in the winter of 1941 when all the Siberians and Far East troops were rushed to the west to defend Moscow? It wouldve been a cakewalk. The commies barely survived the German onslaught; there's no way Stalin couldve stopped both Germany and Japan attacking from west and east simultaneously.
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The Japanese Cabinet at the time refused to provide the Kwantung Army with the required reinforcements, as a lesson to them, during the Mongolia campaign. Of course the player might chose a different course of action...
The Japanese were also divided on what to do about the Soviets after the German invasion, some like foreign minister Matsuoka wanted to Japan to go north, the Navy wanted to go south and Prime Minister Konoe wanted peace at any cost. Matsuoka lost the fight with Tojo, Sugiyama and Konoe, so Matsuoka had to leave the government. Again a "hinge of fate" decision to make for the player...
 
Originally posted by ewright
Yeah thats a great point Olivier! Had the Z-Plan been allowed to run its course, that would change things. But honestly, that plan was much too ambitious for Germany assuming the war starts before 1942-1946 when it was to near completion. At that point, the Germans would have more than 2 Bismarck class ships, plus the H-class "super-battleships" which would have been the most powerful, technologically advanced warship of their type, even considering the Japanese Yamato class.

On top of that, they'd have at least the 2 Graf Zeppelin aircraft carriers that were already laid down, and more were planned. The premature (at least in the Kriegsmarine's eyes) start of the war caused the Zeppelins to be either refitted as heavy cruisers (Seydlitz) or scrapped for materials.

But your real point, that the player will have control of these decisions, is the beauty. If I can speed up production of the Z-Plan fleet, I can have some hope of pulling off Sealion. But IRL, Hitler told the navy to get ready and then tied their hands...
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If you started to build this kind of Navy which would require 3 years plus to build, shake down and work up to operational efficiency I think you might see a teensy weeny bit of a reaction from the UK and the USA.

Remember the arms race leading to WW1. You can't hide construction of battleships and carriers and they are aimed at the maritime powers. UK and USA could afford to appease / ignore Germany for longer so long as they only built up their land based resources. They ignored the air force (wrongly) and the U boats as they didn't believe they would be strategically important. But start building carriers and battleships and that would get attention and quickly.
 
Originally posted by Derek Pullem


If you started to build this kind of Navy which would require 3 years plus to build, shake down and work up to operational efficiency I think you might see a teensy weeny bit of a reaction from the UK and the USA.
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Excellent! That's what HoI should be all about. Add to this a little spy spice where obviously Germany would emphatically denied any building up of a Navy, and you've got yourself a great What If to play with! What more can you ask in a game such as HoI?
 
Originally posted by Derek Pullem


If you started to build this kind of Navy which would require 3 years plus to build, shake down and work up to operational efficiency I think you might see a teensy weeny bit of a reaction from the UK and the USA.

Remember the arms race leading to WW1. You can't hide construction of battleships and carriers and they are aimed at the maritime powers. UK and USA could afford to appease / ignore Germany for longer so long as they only built up their land based resources. They ignored the air force (wrongly) and the U boats as they didn't believe they would be strategically important. But start building carriers and battleships and that would get attention and quickly.
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The German airforce, submarines, and armoured units were all built in secret with the help of other countries, including USSR, Holland and Spain. . . By 1935-6, the first U-boat completely surprised the world. . .

The question then becomes: Will pacifist, isolationist western countries engage in expensive naval build-up to match Germany? Especially, if Germany pleads for a navy that will allow it to be an equal among the world's powers?
 
Originally posted by The Federalist
The question then becomes: Will pacifist, isolationist western countries engage in expensive naval build-up to match Germany? Especially, if Germany pleads for a navy that will allow it to be an equal among the world's powers?
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The fact that Germany is building a navy should only be of particular interest to Britain, and maybe the USA to a small extent. It hardly harms France for Germany to divert resources to building battleships. The overall level of German rearmament should be of interest to everyone, of course.

But it's likely the Germans could have managed to build four or five battleships and carriers before Britain accelerated its own building program. Britain was already building new warships in the late 1930s, and they probably would have believed themselves more or less secure -- especially since a lot of military planners didn't believe that battleships were all that vulnerable to air attack.

In practice, I think it would be OK for AI Allied alarm to be raised in proportion to the overall strength of the German military, and just ignore the question of what force mix Germany chooses to build.
 
Originally posted by AlanC9


But it's likely the Germans could have managed to build four or five battleships and carriers before Britain accelerated its own building program. Britain was already building new warships in the late 1930s, and they probably would have believed themselves more or less secure -- especially since a lot of military planners didn't believe that battleships were all that vulnerable to air attack.
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I doubt that this is true. Look at the British response to the (failed) German naval rearmament. King George V class series of battleships plus 2-3 fleet carriers and host of escort carriers. If Germany chose to delay the war by 2-3 years to build her fleet then I think you could expect to see a whole series of Vanguard battleships and Unicorn / Ocean class carriers.

Germany could not build its Z plan fleet without a bigger fleet being built by Britain. That's why it (correctly) concentrated it 's naval resources on U boats. But it's also why a Sea Lion style invasion could not work unless Fighter Command had been destroyed. Even then the invasion would have been a reckless gamble. Which is not to say that Hitler wouldn't have rolled the dice. He had done up till 1940 and won so why would he stop.

With regards to spy and "secret" rearmaments. Most of the "secret" army developed by Germany was actually only the prototypes of the weapons they would fight WW2 with. They could be hidden in friendly nations. My point re the fleet was that you can't hide a 30,000 tonne + battleship so the Allies would know that they were building a fleet. They did not relaise the state of German tank, sub and aircraft design advances in 1930's
 
Originally posted by AlanC9
But it's likely the Germans could have managed to build four or five battleships and carriers before Britain accelerated its own building program.
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This was pretty much the rationale behind Tirpitz's 'risk fleet' naval construction plan. It didn't work in the Edwardian era, and it wouldn't have worked in the 1930s either.
 
Originally posted by ewright
On top of that, they'd have at least the 2 Graf Zeppelin aircraft carriers that were already laid down, and more were planned.
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It would have been a huge advantage to the RN for the Kriegsmarine to waste its finite resources on these redundant, vulnerable follies.
 
Originally posted by The Federalist
The question then becomes how will a country know what another country is building?

Will there be fog of war? Embassies? Spies? Traitors? Codes? Code breakers? etc. . . ?
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Please forgive this repetition, but how will we know what another country is building?

During WWII, before D-Day, the Allies fooled the Germans into believing the invasion was coming at Pas de Calais. . .
 
Originally posted by The Federalist
Please forgive this repetition, but how will we know what another country is building?
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Well, it depends on the political situation and on what's being built. In peacetime it wasn't really possible to disguise the construction of capital ships from other powers, although the details of their tonnage, armament, armour etc. could be withheld or misleadingly leaked. In wartime security can obviously be tightened up, but enemy aerial reconnaissance will still spot activity in naval dockyards. Battleships are great hulking things and it's not easy to keep their existence or location a secret.
 
I agree that the construction of battleships & carriers would be seen. And the only operation I can think of where the 2 Zeppelins wouldve come in handy was Norway for obvious reasons. Used in Sealion, theyd be the first juicy fatties to attract 15" gun vollies, and carriers are generally easier targets for aircraft than even battleships (especially a flat-top with a big swastika on it).

To imagine them breaking out into the Atlantic is almost ridiculous. Paired with Bismarck & Prinz Eugen they couldve provided air cover and better recon, but they simply lacked the speed & armament to escape once detected, & if they couldnt turn into the wind in time, they were easy pickings (HMS Glorious). Judging by the war in the Pacific, lighter units that could easily escape would instead sacfrifice themselves trying to protect the carriers. So for Germany, they would indeed be a waste of precious resources that could be better spent on several destroyers, u-boats, a heavy cruiser (Seydlitz), etc. Despite that, they were part of the Z-Plan; two were laid down and more were planned. But I think their effective use presumes a much larger surface fleet than Germany had.

Arguably, the Italians would get more use out of them. Their fleet was much bigger and capable of protecting carriers or herding them to safety. The several times they bumped into the British and decided to run mightve happened differently since the Italians wouldve seen them coming. Especially after Taranto, its a wonder they didnt make the attempt. Certainly it wouldve helped on Crete & mightve changed things for Malta. But I guess the truth is that the Regia Marina wouldve been as reluctant to commit them as they were the battleships, and lets face it, they couldnt have done as well as Fliegerkorps X!

But there's a difference between history & the game; the Italian "fear" of risking their heavies is not a factor if Im playing the Axis! Therefore, even if historically theyd be duds, in my hands they'll be much more useful than the Zeppelins would be for Germany...
 
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