What If the Dutch Received Some of the German Ships Sunk at Scapa Flow

Just jumping in so Ill give my 2 cents..

Having a battleship or Battlecruiser would not affect the outcome of the japanese advances in the early days, Depending on it's location it would also be at a danger from Aircraft based in Vietnam, As the British found out.

Assuming the ship/s are not sunk or severly damaged and they are able ot make it back to Australia (possibly supportong evacuation of European nationals/Dutch soldiers in NEI, But thats all best guess) then the vessel could play a fairly decent role in future operations, Especialluy working alog with the RAN in the SEA area (proposed Invasion of Timor, But Australia would have needed 2 divisions and more naval support then they had.. a good portion of the Dutch fleet from NEI with a Battleship/cruiser or 2 could have changed that.).

 

IIRC the battlecruisers were mixed propulsion already, the battlesips were coal only, nothing wrong with refueling in peacetime or even wartime for the allies, IIRC the only coal driven fleet that had problems relocating was the Russian one in 1905 but that's because the British allies of the Japanese made a big effort to deny them coal. The ships would probably not go through the Med if Italy is at war, relocation is a matter of time, not fuel, and if we follow the historical timeline they would be in NEI unless cought immobilized refitting by the German attack.
A couple of battlecruisers wouldn't save ABDA by themselves but the IJN was overstetched to say the least in the initial stages of the war, and sometimes allocated insufficient forces for the job and the gamble failed disastrously, Wake is a good example, going for Midway without waiting for Shokaku and Zuikaku to refit, , limiting of the "Indian Ocean adventure" .... Providing additional forces for NEI would be problematical, if the BCs fought as well as the Dutch subs did the IJN is in a load of trouble.

BTW: I second splitting this thread into a what if.

 

You would think so, But while the Dutch sub's fought wonderfully, The allied surface units of the ABDA force were simply crippled. I dont think a couple extra Capital ships would have made the scale tip in the allied favor, Not early on..

Best bet is the Dutch vessel's hooking up with the RAN, would create a capable little force.. Especially if they managed to get there hands on a carrier or 2 from Britain or the US.

 

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thanks!
Briefly: ( 1990 dollars)
GDP Netherlands eastIndies alone: 1938 77.4 billion, &1,136 per person
Imperial Japan 169.4
imperial japan colonies 62.9
COMBINED 232.,3BILLION IN 1990 DOLLARS
http://books.google.ca/books?id=DoBrG1d1RNcC&pg=PR9&lpg=PR9&dq=netherlands+GDP+1938&source=bl&ots=qRa9WR5q5s&sig=H_qPH5oCIaFBXm9uPLQIndXoXZg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mDQFUL6PKs3cqwGSwozKCA&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=netherlands%20GDP%201938&f=false
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft4489n8wm&chunk.id=d0e838&toc.id=&brand=ucpress
http://books.google.ca/books?id=ZgFu2p5uogwC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=GDP+Netherlands+east+indies&source=bl&ots=5EdrRIrABQ&sig=jFnrLboH8gk9mFrTV-yE0QR2w4c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=s4QEUILqCZTbqQGj3MCxDA&sqi=2&ved=0CFIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=GDP%20Netherlands%20east%20indies&f=false
May I suggest the responders look up the size of the Imperial Japaneseforces & do the math…

 

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thank you! you nailed it
Actually, the Netherlands had not signed onto the Treaties, os legally they could do what they wanted.
As to wealth, inthe 1930's the Netherland East Indies alone had gotten quite wealthy for a 1930's colony ( see prev. post).
I suggest:
To Have and Have Not

Unfortunately, the Duchc forgot that their new found wealth made them prime pickings.
By late 1941, when few authorities any longer doubted the critical link between the United States' economic health and military developments in the Far East, national leaders could only regret that they had not acted earlier. As Senator Albert Barkley of Kentucky observed in October 1941:

Undoubtedly, we as a people have been short-sighted in the past, not only about manganese, copper, and chromium, and all those things which are now regarded as so indispensable, but we have been short-sighted as to steel, which we do produce in the United States, and we have been shortsighted as to aluminum, which we do produce in the United States. If, 10 or 20 years ago, we could have foreseen what we now know, I am satisfied that even if private
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[HR][/HR]

― 44 ―​

industry had not been willing or able to produce more than was being consumed currently, so as to create piles of stock against the day when they might be desperately needed, the Government of the United States would have taken some action toward that accomplishment. But it is just one of those situations in which everybody's business is nobody's business. Neither private industry nor the Government was farsighted enough to see that the time might come when we would be desperately in need of these things, and be in a terrifically great hurry, and resort to all sorts of expedients in order to get them.[SUP][57][/SUP]
[SUP]http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpress...489n8wm&chunk.id=d0e838&toc.id=&brand=ucpress[/SUP]
​

 

(Unfortunaltly,the 'no coal in the NEI/Indonesia " & the Germans aren't bothered by losing 900,000 children to starvation" are both rather silly arguments,& you both can do better).

I can't apologise for not automatically agreeing with you both....

 

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Gven that the NEI/ ABDA fleet at the battle of the Java Sea was up against Kongo class Battlecruisers escortign a badly strung out convoy at the Battle of the Java Sea -yes.
The Japanese in 1942 were dime store saumarais- badly overstretched.

 

Ok, Had ALL of the ABDA naval forces worked more closely together and had good air cover in the form of fighters, diver bombers and torpedo air craft then there is a good chance they would have stopped the Japanese.. However that requirement is not included in the thread, Just that the Dutch have an extra couple of ships that would also likely suffer from poor communication and support leaving more behind for the Japanese to wipe out.

The ABDA forces were actually fairly large, If I'm correct some where around 5-7 Capital ships (Battleships, Battle cruisers etc), 4 heavy cruisers, 6 Light cruisers and some were around 16-21 destroyers..

While on paper the ABDA force had more capital and cruiser class ships.. The Japanese had a larger force of destroyers... and If im correct they had I think at least 1 light carrier in the region.. They also had the Long lance..

So unless ABDA limited there area of operation to that that had available air power on station then i see no chance in the fall of NEI.

 

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Houston_(CA-30)
Battle of the Java Sea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I woudl re check your figures.
IF the NEI has a co-ordinated , trained to work together force INCLUDING the four battlecruisers SUNK at Scapa flow they would ,IN HIGH probability, have gotten through to the Japanese invasion convoy & DECIMATED it.
which has been my point....

 

Again, please explain what you are talking about? I never said there was "no coal", I said there wasn't a large enough coal industry to support a large fleet in the Dutch East Indies. I've addressed essentially every point you've brought up in detail in my previous messages -- messages that you chose not to reply to. Again, frankly, stop cherry-picking and lets have a coherent, mannered discussion. I feel that you are just trying to stir the pot by picking one weak point in any message and harping on it. Frankly (again), I feel that "you can do better", and I look forward to it.

Secondly, what are you talking about in regards to "900,000 children"? Seriously -- I have no idea what this is or why this is relevant. IF this is in regards to Versailles and post-WW1 Germany, re-read my rather long post explaining this. The figures don't lie. There is no ambiguity with statistics. And this has been studied in depth by thousands of historians -- its not just my opinion.

 

What about Force Z? Force Z was sunk with severe loss of life by land-based Japanese bombers. The Pacific War showed that the battleship was no longer the king of the seas. With no air support what-so-ever, a Dutch fleet (comprised of outdated WW1-era ships and limited escorts due to funding restrictions) would have been sitting ducks.

 

The only capital ships in the ABDA area were Prince of Wales and Repulse, which were sunk on Dec 10, before the ABDA command had been established. You may be thinking of the British Indian Ocean fleet, which by the time of Nagumo's raid in April 1942 had been built up to five battleships, three carriers, etc. The heaviest ships that fought under ABDA were the 8" cruisers Houston and Exeter and about six light cruisers (Boise, Marblehead, Perth, Java, De Ruyter, Tromp).

If the Dutch had a squadron of capital ships in the East Indies, the Japanese would have adjusted their deployments accordingly; they might have had to slow the pace of operations to provide sufficient cover to their convoys. They could bring forward the air units which sank PofW and Repulse; historically land-based air was one of their big assets against ABDA. They had the six battleships of their main fleet, which they preferred to retain in home waters for some future "decisive battle", but which could be used if there were Allied capital ships to deal with. And let's not forget that Kido Butai was in the East Indies before the Java Sea battle and could have been there sooner, if there was something more critical for the carriers to do in January than bombing Rabaul.

 

At this point , do we have, at least, some agreement that diverting the four New battlecruisers SUNK at Scapa Flow to the NEI in exchange for FOOD for Germany in 1919, Then upgrading WHEN the NEI was prosperous (1935 on) was feasible?

 

Considering the politics of the time No.
The ships were to go to Britain for reperations. The Dutch couldn't afford to pay for them and didn't have the food to ship to Germany either. So you have what Britain giving up ships for no reason, the Dutch taking ships that they may not be able to afford to keep in service, and the US donating food out of charity? Why not just leave it at the altter?

 

And I did agree that had they been better coordination and had aerial support that they could have won.. However I also stated that with out that aerial support and coordination that having a few extra Capital ships would not have changed the outcome..

So to put it in simplified terms:
Larger naval force, Aerial support and Proper Coordination equals a Victory

However they lacked proper aerial support and coordination.. A larger fleet would not have changed the outcome.

That was the point of my reply.

Cheers, von_noobie

 

I'm not clear on who exactly would be giving food to Germany in exchange for the Dutch getting ex-German warships? Holland itself was largely ruined by the war, even though neutral - are we proposing to ship rice from the NEI to Germany?

I'm also not clear about A decision that must have haunted the British off Malaya or in the Jave Sea in 1942. One can only be haunted by one's own decisions, but there was no British decision to scuttle the ships. Although it might have been their best interest, their policy was to prevent it, even to the extent of killing a number of the German sailors involved. The idea of giving or selling the ships to non-Allied countries never came up, let alone had a decision made against it.

The ongoing privation in Germany was due to the Allies' insistence on continuing the blockade until Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles, acquiescing on topics like war guilt, reparations, and territorial adjustments.

The disposition of the ships would likely mirror that of the remaining German and Austrian dreadnoughts:
Britain: Westfalen, Posen*, Helgoland, and the lone Scapa survivor Baden
Japan: Nassau*, Oldenburg*
United States: Ostfriesland
France: Thuringen, Prinz Eugen
Italy: Tegetthoff
Similar distributions were made of smaller ships.
* these ships and the decommissioned Rheinland actually did end up in Holland, sold to shipbreakers in Dordrecht. With their reciprocating engines and uniquely inefficient distribution of main armament, they were of little value to the Allies or anyone else (the Helgoland class IMO were also among the ugliest warships in history).

Had the Germans refrained or been prevented from scuttling their ships, and the Allies been willing to transfer some of them to the Dutch, and the Dutch been willing and able to man and operate a significantly larger fleet than they did historically, the ships' careers would have mirrored those of ~55 WWI-era dreadnoughts that served in various navies into the 1940s. As noted they were in need of maintenance, and it would take time for the Dutch crews to learn to operate them, but they were basically comparable to their contemporaries. Starting in the late 1920s, most of the WWI-era ships were modernized, in some cases undergoing major reconstruction. If Dutch naval policy - and funding - remained consistent, their ships going into WWII could be comparable to contemporaries like the Kongos or Queen Elizabeths.

Virtually every operational Dutch warship in 1940 escaped to fight on with the Allies, even some under construction were towed to Britain, and they were kept operational despite being cut off from the homeland. The nominally neutral United States was repairing British warships and providing other assistance and would presumably do the same for the Dutch, especially if we asked them to join us in an embargo against Japan.

Minor note, if the German ships had survived, I doubt the British would have had much interest in using them themselves. Within a few years, the naval treaties would make them dispose of more capital ships than there had been in Scapa Flow, 29 battleships and battle cruisers including fifteen with 13.5" guns. The Washington treaty included a prohibition on transferring disposed ships to other powers.

 

... the Japanese.

I don’t want to pisss on another “What-if”, but there are political issues here that have to be considered before you have ex-German WWI warships with Dutch crews fighting the Japanese in the Java Sea in 1942.

First, why would the British and French even consider giving anything of any value to the Netherlands, a neutral country the perception being it that had enriched itself, which had maintained a foot in the enemy’s camp counter to the economic blockade, a competitor in SE Asia, whose people still bore the British a measure of animosity over the Boer War???

Now consider the Japanese, still British Allies. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, a mutually advantageous arrangement to offset the power of both Germany, and Russia, which showed its worth to the Japanese early in the arrangement, and later to the British in WW1. Having the Japanese presence in the Pacific, and patrolling the water borne communications of the British Empire in its lieu, had allowed the RN to concentrate its strength in Home waters, largely negating the strategy of the Kaisermarine, keeping its battlefleet bottled up with overwhelming strength; in fact it was a Japanese squadron that patrolled Canada's west coast during the war, not the RN or USN. The RN during this period had a great deal of influence over the IJN in various facets of ship construction, employment, and policy etc.


Now if the Dutch were presented with ex-German warships of value post WWI, there was clearly no need for them in European waters to counter a prostrate Germany, and a Russia/Soviet Union besotted in internal turmoil, they could only go East, and would be clearly viewed by the Japanese as a slap in the face. In 1919 the Japanese were getting a deserved pat on the back, not a slap in the face, 2-3 years later, after the Imperial Conference decision was made to cozy up to the US to prevent a naval arms race, they became expendable, then limited by the Washington Treaty (which incidentally included clauses preventing the selling off warships), and by the 30’s when a few extra Dutch warships out East might’ve been nice, it was far too late.

No, sorry but this premise is a non-starter.

 

No. The Dutch did not have the money to acquire them in the first place and even if they did it would be politically impossible. The British would have been in the position to give the Germans food aid -- NOT the Dutch who were economically strained and suffering from their own food harships.

 

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thank you for a balanced appraisal - you have hit upon" a key point"
the presence of a Dutch capital fleet in being allows The United Kingdom TIME to bring air support, such as HMS Indomidable & perhaps ,USS Ranger to force Z, as Japan has to ' re- configure' its invasion plan to allow resources to battle on three invasion fronts at once. This , historically, made all the difference. A lack of Carrier support doomed Singapore.

Germany felt that the British manipulated the scuttling of the SHS fleet. Perhaos a subject for a thread

I am still waiting for an explanation from the responders on why the Netherlands east Indies, a colony with a 1938 GDP fully one third of the ENTIRE Japanese empire, & a per capita income four times as large, could not support four battlecruisers!
To Have and Have Not

 

Again, no. Force Z commander Adm Phillips declined to use air support. It was not an issue of the RN not having it -- it was an issue of them not wanting it (Tim Vigors - Telegraph):

When they finally did call for support, the Japanese were already one hour into their attack. Still, even if they had 453 Squadron as escorts, it doubtful that their 11 Buffalos would have done much. The allies constantly underestimated the Japanese in the early stages of the war -- with this in mind, why would the British decide to send in more support when the Germans were viewed as a much more serious threat?

As for the economics, I have explained that in previous posts (as have several others). Happy cherry-picking.