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Britannia Rules The Waves - A HOI3 AAR

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El Pip said:
I must first repeat my ongoing complaint, why are the Independent Scone Conservatives allowed more than one policy, and one that isn't even scone based? This is clear electoral fraud.
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Depth of character is indeed a very suspicious thing to find in a potential councillor. They are supposed to be basic non-entities that serve almost entirely as popularity points for the national parties. Barely anyone votes in local elections and most don't know who their personal councillors are. And, to some extent, it makes some sense outside of cities. UK is very centralised after all.

El Pip said:
On Collridge, can you clarify which of the 57 variety of inter-war Liberal he is? Liberal, Independent Liberal, National Liberal, Liberal National? What are his views on Scone Tariffs? Is he one of those Scone Free Trade heretics? Such madness will see the country flooded with inferior subsidised German pumpernickel, mark my words.
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Entirely possible he's just a nice man with a clever idea. Those tend to crop up quite a lot in the inter-war period too, and by and large were criminally underused by the British.

Wraith11B said:
Being an American (colonial to you pompous windbags),
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Vague, more like. The Americas are absolutely gigantic continents with many different countries and cultures housed within. Even if we were to assume you were from the US, that's still a continent-wide, if fortunately non-continent short nation. :)
 
Wraith11B said:
Being an American (colonial to you pompous windbags), I stand with El Pip and vote for delicious delicious scones. Now, does one cut them open to eat or just apply butter on top?
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As a colonial you should just dip it in peanut-butter and put extra sugar on top :)
 
The votes so far
Conservative: 3
Labour: 1
Liberal: 1
Independent Scone Conservative (ISC): 4


El Pip: your a bit out of date sheep are so 30 years ago, cows are the main industry now, he is a Liberal for people who can't decide between Labour and the Conservatives, vote noted

Wraith: vote noted (although El Pip actually voted against scones), it seems like Americans got the short end of that particular revolution

Voting closes tonight (or tomorrow if I don't get around to it)
 
Hey, some of us are cultured, thank you very much.
 
My father was from the Isles. Soctland or England. One of the two (son of a foreign service guy, my grandfather was US State Dept).
 
I gotcha. Just sayin'. Not fully some colonial hack, yeah?
 
Farmer again
 
Hightemplar said:
El Pip: your a bit out of date sheep are so 30 years ago, cows are the main industry now, he is a Liberal for people who can't decide between Labour and the Conservatives, vote noted
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Well you've still got six sheep each, which is enough to make any Welshman jealous (they have to make do with barely three each).

On that description Collridge appears to be a proto Lib Dem (i.e. the very worst sort of Liberal) so I am relieved he has finished joint last.
 
Despite the lack of popular demand I give you:

Part 6b-i Interlude: The Royal Navy Part One: Battleships

Extract from Floating Castles: A History of Battleships

To recreate the composition of the battle line of the Royal Navy it is necessary to go back to August 1913, two months after the launch of HMS Queen Elizabeth (1). On that day the top brass of the admiralty met with the First Lord of the Admiralty (a Mr Winston Churchill) at the Admiralty to discuss the next round of dreadnaught construction. At that meeting a radical proposal was made by a junior officer from the Third Sea Lord's staff: instead of producing the Revenge Class, why not produce five more ships of the Queen Elizabeth Class. Churchill as could be expected was thrilled by this idea as he (like everyone else in the room) had read the initial reports on HMS Queen Elizabeth's sea trials. The Third Sea Lord on the other had was furious, the officer Commander James Mcadder (2) had made the proposal to him the week before and had been turned down on grounds of cost. When The Third Sea Lord pointed out to Churchill that the Royal Navy could not afford to construct the more expensive Queen Elizabeth. Legend has it Churchill replied with the following "you build the ships Admiral, I will pay for them" (3).

Needless to say however the Third Sea Lord was right, the Royal Navy's budget was stretched to breaking point already, more expensive battleships could not be afforded. However at this point fate (and an overzealous German captain) intervened. The Capricorn incident occurred two days after the meeting at the Admiralty, when the British flagged steamer SS Capricorn was ordered to heave-to and prepare to be boarded by the German light cruiser SMS Leipzig. Unfortunately for the Germans their navigation officer had fallen ill and the man's deputy had made a basic error by putting his compass next to a magnet. Hence the incident occurred not ten miles of the coast of German South West Africa as Leipzig's captain believed, but fifteen miles off (well into international waters). Capricorn's captain refused with a heated argument breaking out over wireless. The German captain, by now thoroughly angry ordered a shot fired across the bow of Capricorn. However (4) the German gunnery officer decided to teach these 'arrogant English' a lesson and decided to fire as close to Capricorn's bow as he could, with tragic results, the shell hitting Capricorn killing two crew members. The gunnery officer then ordered all guns to open fire (we do not know why to this day), resulting in another two hits on Capricorn. The German captain now realising that something had gone horribly wrong, ordered the ship sunk to avoid it reporting being attacked by a German ship. Due to some terrible gunnery by the Germans however it would take over two minutes to sink Capricorn, more than enough time for Capricorn to transmit an SOS to nearby British ships. The Royal Navy was nowhere to be seen during this incident.

London woke up the next morning to newspapers reporting the sinking. The famous Daily Mail headline "Cowards", came to symbolise public anger at the Royal Navy, after all what was the Royal Navy there for if not to protect British shipping. People began calling for Churchill's head. Churchill however did not see the Capricorn incident as a crisis but as an opportunity. He personally invited the representatives of every major newspaper in Britain to his office, there he gave them a statement blaming the treasury for budget cuts that had caused the Royal Navy to have to cut back on patrols in the area. He even showed the assembled newspapermen (carefully selected) communications with HM Treasury showing the Royal Navy pleading for large numbers of extra cruisers and destroyers (5). With the release of the Treasury documents as they would become called public opinion quickly turned against the treasury. Churchill made use of this sudden miraculous (documents released years later showed that Churchill was coordinating with Viscount Northcliffe (6)) change in public opinion to press the treasury for increased funding for the Royal Navy. The following two weeks would become known by bean counters across Britain (7) as the black fortnight. Not only did Churchill secure funding for five new Queen Elizabeth class battleships but dozens of new cruisers and destroyers were also funded and among other things cutting edge wireless sets were installed (with backups as well as backup batteries for them) onto all Royal Navy vessels (9).

This last point contributed to the annihilation of the German Fleet by David Beatty 1st Marquess (10) Beatty at the battle of Dodger Bank where six British battlecruisers (HMS Lion, Tiger, Princess Royal, New Zealand, Australia, Indomitable) and supporting ships destroyed a German taskforce made up of three battlecruisers (SMS Seydlitz, Moltke, Derffinger), an armoured cruiser (SMS Blucher) and a number of smaller craft. In the initial exchange of fire the British heavily damaged SMS Blucher and lightly damaged other German ships while the Germans managed to knock out power on HMS Lion (the flagship). When the Germans began to withdraw Beatty ordered his ships to "engage the enemy rear" (meaning attack the retreating Germans), however the rest of the fleet took it as an order to break off pursuit of the Germans and engage (the now dead in the water) SMS Blucher, however thanks to the wireless facilities on HMS Lion (now running on backup power) the mistake was swiftly corrected and the British soon caught up with the slower German ships and sank all of them. The only blemish on the British record was the damage to HMS Lion and HMS Australia running aground (11) when returning to port requiring her to be in dry dock for the next year, missing Jutland.

The battle of Jutland was another success for Beatty. His battlecruiser force successfully engaged the German vanguard, sinking one (a lucky shot from HMS New Zealand) and damaging several more. Several turrets were knocked out however but because of good damage control procedure (12) none were sunk. This however bought time for the five Queen Elizabeth class super dreadnaughts in his command to come in and destroy the remainder of the German vanguard (13)(14). The Main German force then made contact with Beatty's force, who withdrew towards the main body of the Grand Fleet with the Germans in hot pursuit. The Queen Elizabeth class ships formed the rear-guard with their heavy deck armour more than able to shrug off the German shells (at that range). The British were more than fast enough to escape (the Queens being the first real fast battleships) but did not go to their top speed in order to draw the Germans in. The German admiral was no fool however and suspected a trap, as soon as his lookouts spotted the Grand Fleet he ordered a withdrawal back to Wilhelmshaven. This was the signal for Beatty's force to attack and the Queens nipped at the Germans heels (with their 15" guns). The Germans lost two pre-dreadnaughts and a dreadnaught before the threat of mines and submarine attacks forced the British to break off the pursuit. The battle of Jutland was an overwhelming victory for the British with seven German capital ships sunk for only minor losses. It did have one other impact on the British, the commander of the Grand Fleet Admiral Sir (later Earl) John Jellicoe was criticised (15) for 'not capitalising on Beatty's success' and 'letting' the German fleet escape, resulting in him being 'promoted' to Governor General of New Zealand (16). This lead to Beatty being made the commander of the Grand Fleet (17)

The German fleet would not challenge the Grand Fleet again after Jutland and there was no action for British battleships for the remainder of the war (apart from shore bombardments on the western front and the ramming and sinking of the submarine U-47 by HMS Royal Oak). After the war came the Washington Naval Treaty which resulted in the Royal Navy scrapping all of their capital ships apart from the ten Queen Elizabeths, Renown, Repulse and the mighty Hood (18), the three Courageous class large light cruisers (19) were earmarked for conversion to carriers. HMS Australia and HMS New Zealand were turned into museum ships in their respective capitals. This still left room for two new Battleships of the Nelson class.

The Nelson Class was an oddity as it had all nine guns forward of the superstructure mounted in three turrets (named A turret, B turret and C turret), this was done to reinforce the idea of the Royal Navy never runs away (20). It was decided to arm the class with the trusty BL 15" Mark I navel gun that had proven itself at Jutland (instead of a proposed 16" gun, this also helped to save weight). The original design proposed having C turret not be capable of superfiring over A and B turrets in order to save weight. However the one of the diplomats who had negotiated the Washington Naval Treaty (a man by the name of John Sntylan) knew of the Navy's problem and inserted a clause at the bottom of a footnote in the smallest font he could find(that read "the weight of the gun mount of the third turret in front of the superstructure shall not count towards the total tonnage)and prayed no one else would notice. They didn't and by the time the Stnylan clause was discovered by the Admiralty (21) the treaty was already signed. Therefore the Nelson class had a superfiring third turret and a reported treaty weight of 35,000 tons

In 1936 the Baldwin government (after passage of the Navy Act 1935) asked the Sea Lords what kind of future construction would be required in order to preserve Britain's naval strength. With the gun school still ascendant a request was made for battleships. Cunningly the admiralty proposed that most of the major construction work be done in either marginal constituencies, or the seats of cabinet members, ensuring strong Tory support. These new battleships (now called the King George V class (KGV)) would possess 15 inches of belt armour with 14 inches on the turrets and 5-6 inches of deck armour (22). They would be capable of 29 knots and possess ten 15 inch guns in two quad turrets (mounted fore and aft) and a twin turret (superfiring over the forward quad) known as A,B and Y turrets. When built these 45000 ton warships would be the most powerful afloat (23). Six were ordered and were laid down in early 1936 due for launch in mid 1938.


(1) in TTL HMS Queen Elizabeth was launched 4 months ahead of OTL
(2) he would later go on to write music in the interwar period becoming known as the Butterfly Composer, one of his lesser known works 'The Sands of the Sahara' would go on to become the national anthem of independent Algeria (he may be featured again)
(3) not the most epic I know (you should have seen the earlier versions)
(4) do I use the word however too often?
(5) as most militaries do the Royal Navy at the time asked treasury for far more equipment than they actually needed in order to be able to make cuts later in order to appear fiscally prudent
(6) then Baron Northcliffe, owner of the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and The Times
(7) Churchill's rampage through the treasury's accounts is still spoken about with fear in the halls of HM Treasury to this day
(8) in TTL it is often said that the German defeat at sea in WWI can be traced back to the sinking of the Capricorn
(9) except HMS Victory
(10) only one higher than he goes in OTL (Earl) and I figure that in TTL he gets lionised for a big win at Dodger Bank and no stuff up at Jutland
(11) couldn't resist (no crashing into HMS New Zealand now)
(12) I figure with success at Dodger Bank there is no leaving blast doors open on the BCs to achieve a higher ROF therefore no catastrophic ship destroying explosion
(13) the effects of 15" shells on battlecruiser design philosophy will be covered in a later part (probably lumped in with aircraft carriers)
(14) this marks the combat debut of the Queen Elizabeth class
(15) rather unfairly as he had achieved all his objectives
(16) which he was in the 1920s in OTL, his name is on a stone built into the main building of my school
(17) I didn't mean for this update to be so pro Beatty, all I meant for it to do was that Churchill securing more funds would reverse an embarrassing mistake at Dodger Bank that I then realised could prevent some ships exploding at Jutland. I then worked out that if Beatty won at Dodger Bank and covered himself in glory at Jutland he would probably be the most lionised naval commander since Nelson (maybe even an HMS Beatty in TTL)
(18) horary for the Hood
(19) so called by Fisher to get around wartime regulations on no new capital ships
(20) unlike the hated Germans at Jutland
(21) by John Stnylan telling them
(22) slightly thicker than OTL
(23) at least until an Iowa or a Yamato is launched
 
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Churchill in his element
 
As every other bugger got a cameo but me I was tempted not to comment at all. But that would be childish and petty so I decided to do so.

A triumph for the Royal Navy, Churchill and Beatty. What will be the butterflies elsewhere in the war though? The Dardenelles was a damn close run thing, if there are more light forces about the place (all those extra destroyers and cruisers the navy has) then it's entirely possible the minesweepers will succeed. Or at least continue for long enough to reveal the Turkish forts have run out of ammunition and the Fleet can operate with impunity. Get that done and put a pair of those new Queen Elizabeth battleships offshore from Constantinople and that's the Ottomans out of the war, grain convoys running to/from Russia and the Tsar brought a few more months in power, maybe decisive extra months. So many possible changes.

On less grand matters, what names did the 5 additional QE class ships get? They would be follow on ships so couldn't use the 'R' names, so what are the new names?
 
The names from the KGVs?
 
Wraith11B said:
The names from the KGVs?
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The original HMS King George V (1911 flavour) would still be in service when the follow up QEs were being laid down. In fact the entire class would have only just entered service, be a bit odd to rename a basically brand new ship. HMS Prince of Wales (1902 flavour) would also be in service and less than a decade old, a pre-Dreadnought admittedly but a good one. Howe, Anson and Duke of York are all OK though.

For the rest though, the problem is a huge amount of "good" names are tied up in the 'current' fleet. Conqueror, Temeraire, Superb, Thunderer, Vanguard, Formidable, Leviathan, Drake, Warrior, Vengeance - all unavailable. Churchill will push for a HMS Cromwell, he always did, and it will be vetoed by the King, because it always was, so that's out.

Assuming the new QEs get designated as their own sub-class, it's possible the Fleet Naming Committee might adopt an Admiral theme (so I've borrowed some names from the future Hawkins class);
Howe
Anson
Hawkins
Effingham
Raleigh

Or they go with just a continuation of the class, in which case I've picked the best I can from the names available;
Devastation
Trafalgar
Empress of India
Duke of York
Royal Sovereign

I'd add on HMS Capricorn as a wildcard choice if the public are still particularly enraged and the Admiralty wants to play to the gallery. They could do a HMS Revenge if they want to do the same, but slightly subtler.

Another wildcard is getting the Canadian Naval bill of 1913 passed due to Butterflies, that would have funded 3 new QE class ships, notionally named Acadia, Quebec and Ontario. Maybe it get's partially funded TTL and that's enough to get Canada naming rights for one or two of the new QEs. As the OTL proposed names are crap, I'd go with HMS Wolfe and HMS St Lawrence, as those are much better names with solid Canadian links.

I may have spent far too much time on this.
 
It's alright... I think we enjoy the system, versus how the US Navy does their naming conventions... which they conveniently turned on their head when the 774s came out (SSN, Virginia-class... boomers used to get state names) and then the LCS of both types getting city names (originally the domain of SSNs from the 688s or Los Angeles-class)... ugh.
 
El Pip said:
Churchill will push for a HMS Cromwell, he always did, and it will be vetoed by the King, because it always was, so that's out.
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Wraith11B said:
It's alright... I think we enjoy the system, versus how the US Navy does their naming conventions... which they conveniently turned on their head when the 774s came out (SSN, Virginia-class... boomers used to get state names) and then the LCS of both types getting city names (originally the domain of SSNs from the 688s or Los Angeles-class)... ugh.
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There's a story in here I think.
(I originally mistyped and put 'tory' instead but that doesn't seem inaccurate either...)

Technically, as head of state you could conceivably name a ship after Cromwell. But...well, hmm. It would be a courageous decision. Especially before 1916.
 
TheButterflyComposer said:
There's a story in here I think.
(I originally mistyped and put 'tory' instead but that doesn't seem inaccurate either...)

Technically, as head of state you could conceivably name a ship after Cromwell. But...well, hmm. It would be a courageous decision. Especially before 1916.
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A decent version of the story here - https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/hms-cromwell-naming-warships/

Two things come out; 1. A typically Churchillian obsession with something despite it being obviously a bad idea and 2. He was crap at picking ship names and the King had a busy job stopping him from lumbering the Royal Navy with some utter clangers.
 
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