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A 600-ship Navy in an Axis Cold War TL?

varyar

giver of existential dread
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Inspired by a thread (USN vs Kriegsmarine in 1950) I posted at the other place, I'm suddenly imagining a '600-ship Navy' being proposed by a newly elected US President

/consults In and Out of the Reich for the list of post-POD presidents...

1940-1948 Thomas Dewey (Republican)
1952-1960 Estes Kefauver (Democrat)
1964-1968 Earl Warren (R)
1968-1972 Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (D)
1972-1980 George W. Romney (R)
1980-1988 Roman Strzechowski (D)
1988-1992 Mario Cuomo (D)
1992-1996 Robert Rambin (R)
2000-2008 Fury Nolan (D)
2008-2012 Thomas Priestly (D)
2012- Lena Fanning (Federalist)

Roman Strzechowski, as a Polish-American, might possibly have issues with the Third Reich and support a large-scale military build up against them.

Since this TL's Fulda Gap is the English Channel, it seems likely the 600 ship target is met and sustained into the 2020s when the Reich collapses.

But what do you, the experts at home, think?
 
So, not really that much unlike the OTL Soviet navy, especially early on, the 3rd Reich's naval threat is going to consist mostly of submarines and aircraft. The US, presuming it still fought Japan, will initially have a big navy just for sunk-cost reasons, and it traditionally kept large navies in peacetime even when it demobilized its army. And of course, pork for the shipyards.

Granted, "600 ships" can be achieved by a lot of sleight of hand (oh, these Coast Guard cutters count as ships! Oh, these mothballed ships are still technically in service, so they're on the list! Etc...). But I can see it happening.

(As for the threat profile, I'd actually suggest having the Reich's naval threat be weaker than the OTL USSR at this time period pound for pound, as interservice rivalry limits its ability to make properly coordinated attacks.)
 
Don't forget the SS has a Navy* in TTL, too.

* it's a glorified Coast Guard**

** shh, don't tell Congress, they'll cut our funding


More seriously, I think in the 1950s (the 'golden age' of the Reich here), something resembling Plan Z will be completed, and an expensive replacement of the aging Kriegsmarine in the late 1970s leads America to bulk up the Navy in response. Armchair strategists begin to dust off old WW2 plans for an amphibious attack on NW Europe and it becomes a popular technothriller concept.
 
Don't forget the SS has a Navy* in TTL, too.

I'd actually have the SS fleets be assessed as better than their Kriegsmarine counterparts overall because while the Kriegsmarine ships, Luftwaffe aircraft, and Heer land missile batteries will almost never sync properly, the SS missile boats, helicopters, and land launchers will.

One of the ideas I've had for my own Axis victory scenarios is to have a lot of the Channel operations and low-intensity stuff be conducted by French/Benelux puppet state troops and/or SS foreign legion units. They're already there, they give a tiny necessary amount of deniability ("Oh, that Degrelle"), and every SS-Charlemagne amphibien in harms way is one less actual German.
 
I'd actually have the SS fleets be assessed as better than their Kriegsmarine counterparts overall because while the Kriegsmarine ships, Luftwaffe aircraft, and Heer land missile batteries will almost never sync properly, the SS missile boats, helicopters, and land launchers will.

One of the ideas I've had for my own Axis victory scenarios is to have a lot of the Channel operations and low-intensity stuff be conducted by French/Benelux puppet state troops and/or SS foreign legion units. They're already there, they give a tiny necessary amount of deniability ("Oh, that Degrelle"), and every SS-Charlemagne amphibien in harms way is one less actual German.

Oh, I like that a lot.

I was originally thinking the SS Coastal Fleet was something more like Iran's Revolutionary Guard Navy - nothing bigger than a patrol boat - although something more substantial might fit the Reich's hydra style better?
 
I was originally thinking the SS Coastal Fleet was something more like Iran's Revolutionary Guard Navy - nothing bigger than a patrol boat - although something more substantial might fit the Reich's hydra style better?

Well, ships the size of a patrol boat can carry missiles, you know...

Patrol/torpedo/missile boats, maybe a few converted civilian ships, helicopters with search radars and maybe lighter ASMs, and defensive batteries for their land formations. Maybe not submarines, which the Kriegsmarine clings to ferociously.
 
Well, ships the size of a patrol boat can carry missiles, you know...

Patrol/torpedo/missile boats, maybe a few converted civilian ships, helicopters with search radars and maybe lighter ASMs, and defensive batteries for their land formations. Maybe not submarines, which the Kriegsmarine clings to ferociously.

Sounds solid to me.

(Crazy idea - Goring wants in on the game, so he extends Fliegerführer Atlantik's reach deeper into the North Atlantic by converting a civilian ship into a 'Mobilflugplatz'. It's totally not an aircraft carrier. It also lacks much in the way of escorts, admittedly.)
 
Well, ships the size of a patrol boat can carry missiles, you know...

Patrol/torpedo/missile boats, maybe a few converted civilian ships, helicopters with search radars and maybe lighter ASMs, and defensive batteries for their land formations. Maybe not submarines, which the Kriegsmarine clings to ferociously.

Maybe some converted civilian ships for covert operations and surface commerce raiding? The threat environment for surface raiders is only going to get worse and worse over time, it was already suicide by the early 1940s (see the fates of the German surface raiders in WW2), but if you're going to be sufficiently insistent about wanting something, and the Kreigsmarine isn't going to give you a submarine, well...
 
A victorious Axis is likely to have a much larger Navy than the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War in this scenario, and significantly more advanced in terms of actually deployed equipment. NATO in the late 1940s and early 1950s was incredibly worried about hundreds of Soviet Long-Range submarines based on the Type XXIs. A victorious Germany (judging by what I remember about @varyar's timeline I believe this happened as a result of Britain during for peace in 1940) is likely to to to emerge from the war with a growing fleet of conventional submarines, without snorkels or streamlining, but on the other hand their economy will be considerably less damaged than the 1950s Soviet Union so they can build considerably larger numbers of them. Existing Destroyer Escort and Frigate designs and Escort Carrier Airwings can deal with these fairly easily once all the right technologies and tactics are in place.

However, something like a Type XXI (or worse a Type XVIII HTP-powered submarine) will appear, although in peacetime (and without wartime experience of Allied ASW tactics) this will probably happen slower, but the submarines are unlikely to anywhere near as crippled by the contingencies of wartime production like the OTL Type XXIs were.

At that moment all existing ASW escorts will effectively become obsolete, as they will no longer be able to catch up with their quarry, and in the case of Escort Carrier Airwings, will not be able to detect submerged submarines. This is going to have the same effect on ASW-specialised warships as it did in OTL, but as per OTL, nothing like the USS Norfolk (DL-1) is going to able to be built in numbers, so we will be looking at conversions of wartime destroyer designs like the DDKs, Type 15s, 16s and 18s. Escort Carriers will eventually be replaced by wartime Fleet Carriers, as the former were not large enough to carry single-package ASW aircraft like the S-2 Tracker (which are the only aircraft capable of carrying the necessary equipment to detect submerged submarines).

It should be noted that one of the rationales for the USS United States (CVA-58) was Anti-Submarine Warfare, to be achieved through "Attack-via-Source" which would involve attacks on their home-ports with Nuclear Bombs or even 12,000lb earthquake bombs (both CVA-58 and the earlier 1945 Fleet Carrier design were required to have bomb-lifts capable of lifting 12,000lbs of ordnance). I expect Attack-via-Source would also be achieved through offensive-minelaying by aircraft (both land and carrier-based) and by submarine.

Surface raiders will be a significant threat in North Atlantic weather conditions until the late 1950s, where a combination of miniaturised nuclear warheads, Nuclear-Powered Submarines and All-Weather Strike-Aircraft like the Buccaneer and A-6 Intruder enter service. Given this, I expect significantly more investment in surface-ship anti-ship torpedoes like the Mk 17 and Barmaid (a proposed surface-ship equivalent of the Mk 12 Fancy) with the Mitschers (or their OTL equivalent) looking much like their earlier design studies, with centerline quintuple torpedo tubes and larger numbers of 5"/54 guns. The high seakeeping-speeds required either to chase down enemy surface combatants or to screen the Aircraft Carriers will drive up surface combatant size as per OTL, even before the volume requirements of early missiles and their radars (Project Bumblebee was in part started to counter German Anti-Ship Missiles, so the Talos, Terrier and Tartar family are also likely to be developed, and something like Typhon or Aegis will follow when the limitations of the Three-Ts become apparent).

Gun-armed Cruisers and Battleships will probably still be built at least into the late 1940s, most likely to wards the end with auto-loading guns, and their successors will be missile armed (the large volume requirements for early missiles will require large hulls, whether those will be conversions of existing ships as per OTL, or clean-sheet designs I don't know).

The Italians are going to be a fairly significant issue. If I remember correctly, in @varyar timeline they control North Africa, and so probably also have control of East Africa. OTL pre-war they had fairly ambitious plans to base raiding fleets of Aircraft Carriers, Fast Battleships, long-range cruisers, oceanic scouts (either large destroyers or small cruisers), fast tankers and long-range submarines. This was massively overambitious even pre-war, but Post-War I expect them to build at least a portion of that, especially the cruisers, oceanic scouts (some of which were built OTL), tankers and submarines (again some built OTL). This will require significant forces in the Indian Ocean to counter, (furnished either by Britain, the US, and/or an Allied-aligned independent India).

For the 1940s and 50s, a 600 ship navy is probably slightly too small, (Arleigh Burke in 1957 wanted the US Navy to consist of over 900 ships by 1970, but this would not be achieved OTL or in TTL given how expensive Missile-Amred ships become, combined with a Polaris-equivalent competing for funding), but is very likely to be a reality by the 1980s. OTL the US Navy shrank fairly significantly in the 1970s due to spending a decade without the construction of large surface combatants (due to a combination of Polaris, Vietnam and the failure of Typhon) and the withdrawal from service of conversions and life-extended Second World War ships (this bit would happen TTL), but a 600-ship Navy would probably already be a reality in world with a surviving Nazi Germany.
 
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Gun-armed Cruisers and Battleships will probably still be built at least into the late 1940s, most likely to wards the end with auto-loading guns, and their successors will be missile armed (the large volume requirements for early missiles will require large hulls, whether those will be conversions of existing ships as per OTL, or clean-sheet designs I don't know).

The answer to "conversions of existing ships or clean-sheet designs" is "Yes". Especially if there's a (totally legitimate given jets and ASMs) need to get SAMs in quickly, you have big hulls in older heavy cruisers and battleships, and they can be made. IOTL, besides the Iowas and Alaskas, there were also missile proposals for the South Dakotas. There it was a quixotic paper ship that was doomed because it was too slow and expensive, but ITTL it'd make sense as a missile escort that could free up faster ships for other duties.
 
Also, if you want the "wunderwaffe excess" mixed with each service wanting its own forces, there's always something like the real proposed Soviet submarine landing ships (which are exactly what they sound like) .

Fascist Italy's attack on post-British Malta was an unconventional one...
 
I've got my own Axis victory scenario which mainly exists in my head, but I've given some thought to how British defence policy might develop post war.

Effectively, with France a member of the Einheitspakt or whatever you call it, the main concern of the British government is going to be preventing a Sealion in a cost effective way. So plenty of pre laid minefields, coastal guns (Probably from old battleships and cruisers with modernish fire control fitted), attack aircraft and MTB in the immediate post war period, with ground to sea missiles and other fun coming online in the 1960's.

The Royal Navy is going to have three main roles
1. Close quarter fights the Kriegmarine in the North Sea and the Channel with MTB, gunboats and Destroyers
2. Keeping sea lanes open with the USA, very much the same as the Cold War
3. East of Suez and Expeditionary capabilties

The USN is going to be similar, depending on who is in the OFN or UN, with maybe a greater focus on 2 and 3 rather than 1.
 
The Italians are going to be a fairly significant issue. If I remember correctly, in @varyar timeline they control North Africa, and so probably also have control of East Africa. OTL pre-war they had fairly ambitious plans to base raiding fleets of Aircraft Carriers, Fast Battleships, long-range cruisers, oceanic scouts (either large destroyers or small cruisers), fast tankers and long-range submarines. This was massively overambitious even pre-war, but Post-War I expect them to build at least a portion of that, especially the cruisers, oceanic scouts (some of which were built OTL), tankers and submarines (again some built OTL). This will require significant forces in the Indian Ocean to counter, (furnished either by Britain, the US, and/or an Allied-aligned independent India).

Something like the OTL modern Fifth Fleet would be tasked with countering the Italians in the Red Sea/Indian Ocean.

(Oh boy, since the Italians IOTL loved things like minisubs and torpedo boats, being able to plop tons of them in Eritrea and hold the Red Sea/Suez Canal hostage would be be a huge problem in its own right)
 
Effectively, with France a member of the Einheitspakt or whatever you call it, the main concern of the British government is going to be preventing a Sealion in a cost effective way. So plenty of pre laid minefields, coastal guns (Probably from old battleships and cruisers with modernish fire control fitted), attack aircraft and MTB in the immediate post war period, with ground to sea missiles and other fun coming online in the 1960's.
The abortive 16" Mk IV designed for the clean-sheet 1945 Lion design was designed to have a much higher chamber pressure to enable cross-channel firing with special lightweight shells. However Pre-War Britain only had enough gun-pits to manufacture 21x 16-inch guns a year, which would only be enough to build 2-3 Battleships a year (depending on which 1945 Lion study would be built, as they had 9-6x 16-inch guns), so any that are going to be used for Coastal Artillery will reduce those available for naval construction. There were attempts to obtain 16-inch Mk 2 Guns from America during the war but this fell through.

Super Heavy Coastal Guns would certainly be a priority. There were only 2x 15-inch guns (cobbled together from reserve naval slides unlike the purpose-built mountings at Singapore), the 14-inch Winne and Pooh (the mountings for which were cobbled together from the No 26 Proof Structure and from a former Monitor 18-inch gun mounting respectively) and 3x 13.5 Mark V guns mounted on railway mountings intended for the 14" Mk I* and Mk III guns which were disposed of in the Interwar period.

Against this the German had 3x 40.6cm guns, 4x 38cm guns, 3x 30.5cm guns and 6x 28cm Coast Defence Guns, backed up by another 6x 28cm K5 railway guns and a 21cm K12 railway gun.

As for medium-calibre guns, from the 1950s to the 80s Sweden had a number of interesting Coastal Guns ranging from 75-120mm in caliber, which were water-cooled, fired base-bleed ammunition and were capable of high rates of fire (20 to 40 rpm depending on the gun).

OTL Britain had a very large number of automatic medium gun concepts, including Ratefixer and Longhand (both applied to 3.7 inch guns, the US 90mm equivalent to which was originally intended to have a secondary role as an anti-MTB gun), the 3"/70 QF Mk N1 and 6" QF Mk N5 guns on the Tiger class, and the abortive wartime 5.25" Mark III mounting (allegedly intended to produce 70rpm) which evolved Post War into the 5 inch Medium Calibre Dual Purpose project which originally intended to produce a 70-calibre gun firing at 66 rpm, eventually being downgraded to a 62 calibre gun and then to a 56 calibre gun firing at 40rpm. OTL slower-firing 5.25 inch guns were used, so perhaps the work that went into the MCDP project could also be used for Coastal Artillery.

Britain also had a separate twin 6pdr 10 cwt gun which was used in the anti-MTB role (and performed this task fairly effectively when Malta was raided by MAS Boats in 1941) which should be fairly effective. During the war there were a number off attempts to produce a medium anti-aircraft gun, including a 6pdr 6cwt gun in a variety of guises (including twin and single mountings and with or without auto-loading). If development continues Post-War we could possibly see a weapon akin to the German 5.5cm Gërat 58, Soviet 57mm S60, or Bofors 57mm which would also be capable of replacing the 6pdr 10cwt.

As for really modern fire control, the Swedes started using Digital Fire-Control Computers coupled with Laser-Rangefinders and Low-Light Television for their Coastal Artillery from the 1970s onwards, and Britain had already started using digital computers to control weapons on surface ships from the 1960s onwards in the form of ADAWS. Perhaps that technology could find its way ashore.

The Royal Navy is going to have three main roles
1. Close quarter fights the Kriegmarine in the North Sea and the Channel with MTB, gunboats and Destroyers
I wonder if more long-hulled MTBs/MGBs like Bold Pioneer and Bold Pathfinder would be built?

OTL this wasn't done due to cost in spite of showing superiority over short-hulled types like the Gay and Dark classes, whilst the only two of the compromise medium-hulled Brave class were built before the Coastal Forces were run down.

Something like the CFS 1 or CFS 2 (standing for Coastal Forces System, CFS 1 being a stabilised 4.5-inch 8cwt, and CFS 2 being a stabilised 17 or 20pdr depending on what sources you read) would likely be in service, meaning any E-Boats will be very roughly handled given that the point of these weapons was to guarantee a single-hit kill on any coastal craft they were to be used against.

As for destroyers, most of the wartime Fleet destroyers are likely to be converted into Anti-Submarine Frigates , whilst new-construction ships will likely be too expensive to risk for coastal work.

OTL the abortive Type 42 Frigate (not to be confused with the 1960s guided missile destroyer) were intended for this role, and eventually morphed into the Common-Hull Frigate, which eventually became the Type 81, intended mainly for overseas use rather than coastal combat in the North Sea and Channel.

This role was also included in the original specifications for what became the Type 41 and 61 Frigates. Certainly the early designs with heavy gun and torpedo armaments could perform the same role as the Hunt class destroyers, and there was even a proposal for a flagship version to coordinate Convoy Defences and Coastal Forces.
 
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