Did The Dreadnought's Bankrupt WW1 Britain?

Knew GB invested a lot in a large navy. Did they build 30 dreadnoughts that were just good money after bad? ...In seeing the British WW2 tanks (2 pounder equipped) and some planes, is it possible WW2 British war material was lacking compared to other combatants, due to WW1 expenditures on Dreadnoughts?

 

Are you going off of this article? http://www.wired.com/2014/08/the-wwi-battleships-that-saved-and-doomed-the-british-empire/


As to the design of the 2 pounder I feel it came down to an erroneous assumption on the part of British tank strategists.
That being tanks are primarily to destroy tanks while CS versions deal with infantry. Leading to little call for a dual purpose gun.
Meanwhile the 2pdr was capable of defeating all contemporary armor "prior to 1940" save the heavy french tanks.

In addition no peace time government wants to put money into the military doubly so when replacing a design judged to be effective.
Even the Germans HC after the Spanish civil war considered the 37mm to be all that was necessary for current tank battles.
The 2pdr was never designed with Blitzkrieg tactics and formations in mind.

So in all, while the building of the dreadnoughts was a mistake I don't think it was responsible for the flaws in designs produced during peacetime.

 

Yes I was. How did you know? (you made me use a question mark)

So WW1 had no effect on the average British soldier in WW2. How was British individual kit compared to other nations- also wonder about the 17 pounder and why it took so long to implement. The 2 pounder was incapable of explosive shot ( I think ), which seems to be a large miscalculation in 1935 when it was developed.
Remember watching an Audie Murphy movie, when he enters the destroyed tank to fire at the enemy. Was hoping he'd pull a huge 75 or 105 round out to plug in the breach. He pulls out this embarrassingly tiny cartridge. Thinking: your going to what with that...
Er, may have strayed somewhat from original topic, but this is conversating. lol

 

They had the best bolt action of the war (I and II) with the SMLE III, no?

 

Yes. Good gun.
So how could dreadnoughts have effected Britain then - did the dreadnought have negative consequences for Britain.

 

The British had better tanks than we Americans...And more of them.
M-2 Light tank


M-2 Medium tank


Also, there are a lot of factors that go into tank design, expected enemy resistance is one of them. If the Germans are fielding their Panzer I and Panzer II tanks, the British are no going to be designing the 120mm Challenger to meet that kind of threat. 37mm - 45mm was roughly the "standard" AT gun of the time, as those rounds were capable of penetrating the vast majority of the armor out there. While these small caliber AT guns could not defeat the heaviest tanks designs, those heavy tanks still composed a small minority of the armored forces.

 

Originally was curious as to wether WW1 dreadnoughts had an effect on British WW2.
...Look at suspension. Christy revolutionized it, was stolen by the Soviets. The engines were not comparable to US tanks. The Honey was coveted by British tankers. Roomy, mobile, big crew, and protected by a ghost general.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haunted_Tank

 

The dreadnoughts certainly had great affect in that it gave the British and in part the rest of the world the impression that surface direct fire ships were the future of warfare. Just as it had been for centuries.If that money had been sunk into submarines instead I have no doubt Germany would have followed suit and either built more subs or concentrated more on ways to defeat them.Meanwhile the Admiralty which ordered them built their tactics around them. Which resulted in several being sunk due to lack of protection against aircraft.


As always perception plays a key role in design and implementation of weapons.
Considering the tank engines.

In Europe where you can drive through several countries over the course of an afternoon vs the US or Canada where the damn road just keeps going forever. Engine designers have different concepts of what an engines endurance should be. Everyone agrees it should work forever but for instance engines built in Italy and sent to Africa were not as prepared for the dust and sand as engines tested in the US south west.

 

No. The cost was small compared to that of waging unlimited land warfare.

 

If I can get back to the original post, there was an international banking crisis in 1914 that can't really be blamed on the Dreadnoughts-
http://blog.oup.com/2013/11/unknown-financial-crisis-1914/

Britain hasn't been self-sufficient in foodstuffs for example since before The Great War-
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=b7E83PeQAQMC&pg=PA115&lpg=PA115&dq=british+food+imports+from+1880&source=bl&ots=pqVp_Vbm5E&sig=Xpz-l21AdCSNpBN60CcYIJtzM7g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=H8l7VJznEoLlaLuqgegC&ved=0CCYQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=british%20food%20imports%20from%201880&f=false

 

Currently reading a book and just found out some of the first Australian army units trained using axe handles and were fitted with 1908 era military clothing, Id say the British kid was better then ours.

 

Britain? Nay, Europe!

 

This.

The cost for Dreadnoughts were a drop in very large bucket.

 

The very first one cost £1,783,883, so the later versions would be proportionately more expensive. Having difficulty finding data though-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dreadnought_%281906%29

A brief outline of British v German defence expenditure pre-1914-
http://historum.com/european-history/47769-arms-race-1914-main-powers-military-expenditure.html

 

UK defence spending from 1900 to 1920...

The dreadnoughts doesn't even begin to compare.

 

Good man, got that site bookmarked now.

 

Seems to be another example of a bright mind cherry picking a factoid to reach a seemingly credible conclusion, the the gullible public at least, that fails to stand up to detailed scrutiny.

I claim no expertise in the history of the British Empire, but it seems that it was fraying away well before the introduction of the Dreadnought class ships.

Former Crown colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand had acquired self rule. Ireland was leaning this way and many others were pushing for either Dominion status or out right freedom.This left Great Britain with the obligation to defend them without the full privilege to exploit them and many had been exploited to their (known) maximum already.

Gone were the days when the Monarch commanded and the Empire only asked how much. They had reached the point where public opinion within the Dominions and Colonies had to be taken into account before Prime Minister acted.

The defense spending chart posted by GS illustrates one of the reasons the Empire came to a end. The second being the huge cost in lives the war took, primarily upon the Western Front. The lost productivity of about 2% of her most energetic population could not be discounted. Twice that number suffered wounds, some lasting until death only reduced the productivity of its population. Third cause was the integration of several new marginally productive and deeply restive former German colonies which only added to the burden of Empire. Fourth and Fifth causes were the Great Depression which did not allow time to fully integrate these new colonies and a even more costly war which followed on this economic crisis. The final nail was a emergent America, to which Great Britain was economically beholding to, who felt the time of 'Great Empires' needed to come to a close.

The Empire might have withstood any one or two of these for a few generations, but collectively, they were too much for any Empire.

 

Britain had already reached the conclusion long before the Great War, that the cost of British commitments to most of the Empire was far greater than what was reasonable to bear.

Even though the British empire was pretty much of a shoestring budget all told.

This was one reason why the British Government was so reluctant to get involved in New Zealand during the 1830'sand 40's; it's experience with Australia had shown that distant colonies consumed a disproportionate amount of capital to maintain a reasonable presence, and feasible claim. India with it's wealth was about as far as Britain was really interested in going.

 

There were economic crises long before 1914, 1929 etc-
http://www.raphael-samuel.org.uk/sites/default/files/downloadables/events/Cain_Baring_Crisis.pdf
http://eml.berkeley.edu/~eichengr/research/goodhartfestschriftjan9.pdf

Regardless to how big the Empire was, it wasn't automatically immune from financial crises or crap management.

 

Excellent.