10 Jan, 1919-
The earliest new-year batch of US-supplied wooden steamships, led by the S.S. Accomac, arrived in British ports. These January deliveries served as a show of strength and resolve, as Anglo-American forces continued to fight the Great War without France.
It was a long and winding road from the German Spring Offensive of 1918, which had captured Paris and convinced France to stand down her exhausted forces and accept a position of strict neutrality for the remainder of the war. In truth, France had been suffering more and more mutinies by front-line troops who saw the lives of their fellow soldiers being thrown away in wasteful assaults on the front lines. German troops remained in control of Paris to convince the government to comply with its neutrality ceasefire agreement.
In this case, the German offensive had struck just to the south of the American section of the front lines, and, as they widened their breakthrough advance the American and British forces, had withdrawn north and west. Over the following three weeks, the lines had stabilized with the English-speaking forces holding the former Duchy of Normandy and the westernmost sliver of Belgium. Also, the retention of this coastal strip enabled the US-reinforced Royal Navy to maintain complete control of the North Sea.
France studiously followed the ceasefire and neutrality agreement and formally requested the Americans and British to vacate Normandy; however, the remaining allies refused to do so as it would have left just the sliver of Belgium in their hands, and that was too small a foothold to be worth keeping.
In the USA, the Emergency Fleet Corporation had placed an order shortly after the declaration of war with a score of shipyards to build an emergency cargo fleet to counteract the effects of unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic. The first step had been to nationalize the 431 cargo vessels of under 5,500 tons already under construction or on order from US building yards. The next step was to face the fact that USA steel industry simply lacked the capacity to build both the navy ships, mostly destroyers, refit the 431 already seized cargo ships, and construct the additional 1,000 ships planned for the war cargo fleet expansion program.
To get around this limitation, the maritime architect Theodore Ferris fell back on the techniques of the 1880's, designing a 3,500 ton steam powered cargo ship with a wooden hull reinforced with steel to provide the needed strength with a minimum of metal in the design. These so-called Composite-type ships had been developed in the second half of the 19th century to permit ships larger than a purely wooden frame could support in rough seas. Using steel beams and bracing also reduced the need for extremely large wooden structures that used up a lot of the internal cargo volume of a purely wooden vessel. Best of all, the USA had a surplus of lumber because the war had effectively halted house construction, and all the lumber already seasoned and stockpiled for building construction was now available for emergency ship hull material instead. While it would take a year or two for all 1,000 wooden hull ships to be delivered, there was never any doubt they were within the capacity of many boatyards on both sea coasts and around the Great Lakes.
Germany tried three times to break into the "Anglisch Enclave" in Normandy and Belgium but were repulsed by the ever growing number of fresh American troops arriving weekly through the late spring and all the way to Christmas from across the Atlantic. As Christmas arrived in Europe, three new American weapons started arriving in large numbers at Cherbourg in Normandy. The first of these are the Thompson sub-machine gun, which could fire out 75 rounds from its drum magazine in either automatic or aimed fire single shots. The second weapon was the modified 1903 Mark I Springfield Rifle with a semi-automatic pistol mechanism in place of the standard bolt action in the breech. This allowed the rifle to be fitted with a 40-bullet capacity magazine firing pistol ammunition down the long rifle barrel one bullet for every pull of the trigger. This Pedersen device option gave the rifle an immense magazine capacity compared to the 5-bullet internal magazine the rifle had been originally designed to use. The Winchester Model 1897 shotgun fired each time the action closed with the trigger depressed, allowing soldiers to empty the entire 5-shell magazine in "slam firing" with such intensity that it earned the nickname "trench sweeper" and faced international outcry from the German government, saying it violated the Geneva Convention and that any American soldier captured with one would be executed.
British tanks in the 1919 Spring Offensive and breakout, however, turned out to be a major disappointment as the German army had spent the winter months perfecting several anti-tank devices mostly in the form of 20mm anti-tank artillery pieces and special heavy armor-piercing sniper rounds for the regulation sniper rifle version of the Mauser.
France studiously followed the ceasefire and neutrality agreement and formally requested the Americans and British to vacate Normandy; however, the remaining allies refused to do so as it would have left just the sliver of Belgium in their hands, and that was too small a foothold to be worth keeping.
In the USA, the Emergency Fleet Corporation had placed an order shortly after the declaration of war with a score of shipyards to build an emergency cargo fleet to counteract the effects of unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic. The first step had been to nationalize the 431 cargo vessels of under 5,500 tons already under construction or on order from US building yards. The next step was to face the fact that USA steel industry simply lacked the capacity to build both the navy ships, mostly destroyers, refit the 431 already seized cargo ships, and construct the additional 1,000 ships planned for the war cargo fleet expansion program.
To get around this limitation, the maritime architect Theodore Ferris fell back on the techniques of the 1880's, designing a 3,500 ton steam powered cargo ship with a wooden hull reinforced with steel to provide the needed strength with a minimum of metal in the design. These so-called Composite-type ships had been developed in the second half of the 19th century to permit ships larger than a purely wooden frame could support in rough seas. Using steel beams and bracing also reduced the need for extremely large wooden structures that used up a lot of the internal cargo volume of a purely wooden vessel. Best of all, the USA had a surplus of lumber because the war had effectively halted house construction, and all the lumber already seasoned and stockpiled for building construction was now available for emergency ship hull material instead. While it would take a year or two for all 1,000 wooden hull ships to be delivered, there was never any doubt they were within the capacity of many boatyards on both sea coasts and around the Great Lakes.
Germany tried three times to break into the "Anglisch Enclave" in Normandy and Belgium but were repulsed by the ever growing number of fresh American troops arriving weekly through the late spring and all the way to Christmas from across the Atlantic. As Christmas arrived in Europe, three new American weapons started arriving in large numbers at Cherbourg in Normandy. The first of these are the Thompson sub-machine gun, which could fire out 75 rounds from its drum magazine in either automatic or aimed fire single shots. The second weapon was the modified 1903 Mark I Springfield Rifle with a semi-automatic pistol mechanism in place of the standard bolt action in the breech. This allowed the rifle to be fitted with a 40-bullet capacity magazine firing pistol ammunition down the long rifle barrel one bullet for every pull of the trigger. This Pedersen device option gave the rifle an immense magazine capacity compared to the 5-bullet internal magazine the rifle had been originally designed to use. The Winchester Model 1897 shotgun fired each time the action closed with the trigger depressed, allowing soldiers to empty the entire 5-shell magazine in "slam firing" with such intensity that it earned the nickname "trench sweeper" and faced international outcry from the German government, saying it violated the Geneva Convention and that any American soldier captured with one would be executed.
British tanks in the 1919 Spring Offensive and breakout, however, turned out to be a major disappointment as the German army had spent the winter months perfecting several anti-tank devices mostly in the form of 20mm anti-tank artillery pieces and special heavy armor-piercing sniper rounds for the regulation sniper rifle version of the Mauser.
Germany was in much better shape in 1919 as over the fall and winter V.I. Lenin had shipped a million tons of grain west to Germany as part of their peace agreement more than compensating for the food shortages caused by so much of the farm labor being in the service. At sea, the U-boats had considerable success sinking cargo ships causing a loss of almost 2,000 ships in 1918 alone. British, Canadian, American, and third-party countries like Brazil were barely able to replace the number of ships lost. Even as the new wood-hulled freighters were joining the convoys starting in July, 1918, fully a quarter of ships never finished a round trip from North America to the UK and back for a second load of cargo.
To combat this loss, allies ramped up the massive production of Wickes class destroyers, which had soaked up most of the ship-building steel with the first being commissioned in April, 1918, and the 125th being completed in March, 1920, a few months after the peace treaty. While they never stopped the U-boat attacks entirely, they did reduce losses to a rate which could be compensated for with new construction. Ironically, the last of the 1,000 composite wooden hull cargo ships joined the convoys just a week before peace negotiations began in earnest in 1920.
The "Anglisch Enclave" was a pocket that restored a miniature version of the stalemate on the Western Front before the French collapse. Neither the attackers could occupy, nor the defenders break out. Despite the flood of goods and men from the USA, the British public was tired of the war by 1918 and finally, in November 1919 a return to Status Quo Antebellum was agreed to in Europe and Africa. Anglo-American Forces were evacuated as German forces withdrew, but the reconstruction of French sovereignty, and repair of relations with London and Washington, would take many years to accomplish.
Germany lost its colonies in the Pacific and Papua New Guinea to Japan, New Zealand, and Australia but resumed its colonies in Africa. In compensation, and to ensure peace, the Western allies had no choice but to endorse the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. France and Brazil oversaw the vote in the areas allowed to choose their own government mainly in the Ukraine and Belorussia, Finland, Estonia, and Livonia (Latvia). Edward, Prince of Wales, gained international prestige for reaching out to his cousin the future Wilhelm III in back-channel negotiations that led to an acceptable peace.
Author's Note:
In reality, Paris did not fall, and it was the exhausted German Army that capitulated.
To combat this loss, allies ramped up the massive production of Wickes class destroyers, which had soaked up most of the ship-building steel with the first being commissioned in April, 1918, and the 125th being completed in March, 1920, a few months after the peace treaty. While they never stopped the U-boat attacks entirely, they did reduce losses to a rate which could be compensated for with new construction. Ironically, the last of the 1,000 composite wooden hull cargo ships joined the convoys just a week before peace negotiations began in earnest in 1920.
The "Anglisch Enclave" was a pocket that restored a miniature version of the stalemate on the Western Front before the French collapse. Neither the attackers could occupy, nor the defenders break out. Despite the flood of goods and men from the USA, the British public was tired of the war by 1918 and finally, in November 1919 a return to Status Quo Antebellum was agreed to in Europe and Africa. Anglo-American Forces were evacuated as German forces withdrew, but the reconstruction of French sovereignty, and repair of relations with London and Washington, would take many years to accomplish.
Germany lost its colonies in the Pacific and Papua New Guinea to Japan, New Zealand, and Australia but resumed its colonies in Africa. In compensation, and to ensure peace, the Western allies had no choice but to endorse the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. France and Brazil oversaw the vote in the areas allowed to choose their own government mainly in the Ukraine and Belorussia, Finland, Estonia, and Livonia (Latvia). Edward, Prince of Wales, gained international prestige for reaching out to his cousin the future Wilhelm III in back-channel negotiations that led to an acceptable peace.
Author's Note:
In reality, Paris did not fall, and it was the exhausted German Army that capitulated.
One of the consequences of the abrupt end of hostilities was over-supply, an excessively large amount of shipping needing to be scrapped. The U.S. Navy did not want the ships, which were stored in the James River at the cost of $50,000 a month. They were soon sold to the Western Marine & Salvage Company. The company moved the ships to the Potomac River at Widewater, Virginia, and, in 1925, they were towed to Mallows Bay. When Western Marine went bankrupt, the ships were burned and remained where they lay. Among the most prominent ships seen at Mallows Bay is the S.S. Accomac. In total, 230 United States Shipping Board Merchant Fleet Corporation ships are sunken in the river.
Provine's Addendum:
With the world at peace, eyes in Europe kept furtive glances to the east as Russia continued its experiment with communism. German support for Lenin dried up as soon as the Western Front fell quiet, leading to a dragging civil war with numerous fronts between Bolsheviks, anti-communist Whites, and separatists seeking to move beyond the historical Russian Empire's grip. In fall of 1920, the Tambov Rebellion of peasants striking out against the Bolsheviks added to the chaos with a new Green Army. Allied leaders like Winston Churchill argued that Bolshevism should be "strangled in its cradle," leading to further volunteer armies coming from the West, many of them veterans of the Great War. Gradually during the severe famines of 1920 and '21, the Bolsheviks lost their momentum, and, by 1925, were driven out of the last strongholds as Kaiser Wilhelm and King George V helped the young George Mikhailovich onto the throne of a rump Russian state, frustrating the plans of Kirill Vladimirovich. The former Russian Empire was considered a new China or Africa with European powers clamoring to gain political influence over newly independent nations like Belarus and Ukraine as well as economic colonies with German railways heading eastward and British influence spreading northward into Central Asia from India. Japan seized Russian territory on the Pacific, sparking turmoil with the United States over sovereignty and laying the groundwork for the next great war.
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