JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 937
In
the midst of a massive building campaign by Germany
and a building-response by England
the French journal L’Illustration published
these two side-by-side pictorial comparisons of their two navies. [Royal Navy, below]
Germany began a rebuilding campaign in 1902 and 1908/9
which was seen by the British Admiralty as a “Stab at the heart” of England’s
military supremacy, and thus the construction wars were undertaken. It’s a complicated period and a complex race,
which I just can’t get into in a short post.
Let’s just say that the Brits wound up the winners when these images
were printed in June 1912.
The
hidden element of some great importance, a trump yard that would played in just 750 days, would be the small
dot-like drawings labeled “sous marins”.
These would be the submarines, and it would be the subs that would be perhaps
the most significant aspect of the entire German navy.
This
was true in spite of what looks like an overwhelming preponderance of subs in
favor of the Royal; Navy, where the count was 68 to Germany’s 24. It was really a question the type of sub, and
as it turns out there were only 8 or 9 of the English count that could’ve been considered
for blue water ops.
Germany began
the war with 24 submarines in 1914; they recognized the ship’s importance and
by war’s end ramped up production, winding up with 351 in total production and
with 178 in action in 1918 alone. Of that overall number fully half (178) had
been destroyed in combat, with another 11% sunk via other means. There were more than 12 million tons of Allied
shipping destroyed by the German sub forces from 1914-1918 (half of that in
1917).
So
these two illustrations do portray an overwhelming Royal Navy, but they
certainly do not give any hit whatsoever to the coming importance of the German
submarine fleet.
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