Fleets in Being

Interesting post from UltimaRatioReg:

When built, Tirpitz was one of the most powerful units afloat. Slightly larger than her more famous sister, Bismarck, KMS Tirpitz displaced more than 43,000 tons. She was 824 feet long, armed with eight 38-cm (15”) guns, and had exceeded 31 knots on trials. The British had tried desperately to destroy her before she was even completed, and between the RAF and Royal Navy, many air, surface, and subsurface attacks had been only moderately successful, and had often paid a heavy cost for their efforts....

It has been estimated that the “fleet in being”, of which Tirpitz was the centerpiece and eventually the only significant unit, tied down ten times its own combat power in Royal Navy battleships, carriers, cruisers, and destroyers. Many of these powerful warships were desperately needed in other theaters of war, most notably in November/December of 1941 in the Pacific.

First a technical quibble; the idea that Tirpitz was one of the most powerful units afloat can't be allowed to sit uncontested. Debates on the relative capabilities of WWII battleships are about as helpful as arguing about the merits of Lennon vs. McCartney, but advocating for Tirpitz is about as sensible as defending the idea that Ringo was the most important Beatle. She was large, yes, but inferior to foreign contemporaries in many respects, including armor, main armament, and anti-aircraft protection. Had Tirpitz encountered a North Carolina or South Dakota class battleship, or even a King George V on equal terms, there's no question I'd rather be on the Allied vessel; recall that Prince of Wales, even crippled by teething problems in her main turrets, inflicted more damage on Bismarck than she received at the Battle of Denmark Strait.

As to the "fleet in being" as purely historical concept, the "10 times" figure seems pretty hyperbolic, especially in reference to fall 1941. First, the German Navy had several major units in addition to Tirpitz (Scharnhorst and Gneisenau both remained operational, as did two pocket battleships and three heavy cruisers) which in fact limited the number of warships the British could deploy to the Pacific, but by nothing approaching a factor of ten. The only fast battleships that the RN had, apart from Repulse and PoW, were King George V, Duke of York, and Renown. The slower R, Queen Elizabeth, and Nelson class ships were effective in the Med, and as convoy escorts, but were thought to be of limited utility in either the Pacific or in the role of commerce raider chaser. Thus, the RN didn't have a tremendous advantage over the forces available to Germany; indeed, to confirm advantage the USN deployed Washington and North Carolina to the Atlantic for the first six months of US participation. So while it's true that the Allies maintained heavy forces in the ETO because of the German units (and battleships, of course, aren't the entire story), it's important not to overstate the leverage that the Germans earned from their "fleet in being".

The other issue was the Italian Navy. We tend to remember the Italian Navy as a joke, but in 1941 it was a force to be reckoned with. Even post-Taranto, the Italians possessed three modern fast battleships, as well as a number of older units that had been effectively updated. The RN did not dominate the Med in 1941; if the German Navy hadn't existed, the forces thus freed up would more likely have been used against the Italians than in deterrence of the Japanese. The continued presence of several powerful French units, and the possibility that Vichy might join the Axis, also limited the Royal Navy's ability to deploy to the Pacific.

Thus, the idea that the German Navy represented a major drain on Allied resources isn't quite wrong, but there's a significant danger of overstating its impact. The Royal Navy seemed overstretched in 1941 because it was genuinely overstretched; it was utterly incapable of fighting the Germans, Italians, and Japanese all on its own. This matters, because the Tirpitz example leads URR to ask:

Could a burgeoning Chinese Navy become a “fleet in being”? What implications does that hold for the United States? In each historical example, a “fleet in being” that threatened vital interests was countered by one of two approaches. The first was the dedication of naval combat power in excess of that which such a “fleet in being” could bring to bear, ensuring a reasonable chance of victory. The second was an attack (pre-emptive in some notable cases) on that fleet from the air while the critical elements of that fleet were in harbor.

For this parallel to make sense, we would have to posit additional naval powers that would stretch the USN beyond its breaking point. The German Navy was ineffective in the face of British superiority in the absence of the Japanese and Italian navies; the "stretching" of British forces was strategically useful only in that it left the Royal Navy unable to fight effectively in other theaters. The Royal Navy was also demonstrably inferior in naval capabilities to the coalition of Japan, Italy, and Germany. There is no comparable modern counter-coalition to the USN, unless you imagine simultaneous hot wars against China, Russia, Japan, and the EU. Thus, until the United States faces the potential of such a coalition, I doubt that it's helpful to think in terms of pre-emption; overwhelming superiority will do.