|
Thanks for replying. As noted a notional bombing run on NYC using Zeppelins has been kicked around different websites. This forum had a short lived thread on it back: Dan had the interesting and ingenious idea of putting a Zep base in Mexico.
As a plan it was no less crazy than known plots to kick off mutinies in Ireland and India, or blow up Black Tom's Island in New York harbor. The Germans also have a history of technologically brilliant but military pointless stunts like the super gun that shelled Paris, or the world war II era Gustav cannon or V weapons.
I just can't nail down the documentation that says the Germans saw the possibility as opposed to a scifi plot dreamed up at a later date.
Maybe I been drinking to much cool-aid but let me tell you where I am heading with all this...Air power-Zeppelins-could have proved divisive in World War 1. By 1915 both sides desperatly needed raw materials and food. The Royal Naval blockade and later the neutrality act cut Germany off from the world in general and America in particular while allowing the allies to use American industrial and financial resources for themselves.
This is where the gas bags, with their intercontinental range come in to play, Instead of strategic bombing they should have been used as strategic airlift, running the blockade (actually floating over it), flying the flag in foreign ports, telling Germany's side of the story, (Britain cut Germany's underseas cables in the first days of the war, allowing British propaganda to go unchallenged) enabling intelligence operations and the like the Zeppelin could have maintained limited German access to the wider world.
Mexico would have been the ideal place to focus such operations. Prior to America's formal entrance into the war British agents could subvert the neutrality act by working through Canadian firms, some of which were affiliated with American companies. A Mexican base would have give the Germans roughly the same ability.
After America's entrance into the war was declared between the US and Germany any such base would have been a threat to America forcing, at the least, troops and equipment be diverted from the front. The squids talk about a fleet in being, A zeppelin base would have been the aviation equivalent. Once war
And if you really want to go there, Zeppelins, converted into bombers, operating out of Mexico would have been able to hit every strategic target in North America as well as disrupt convoys headed to Britain.
A final thought, at the level of grand strategy, Germany is often knocked for not having a glue, which is untrue. The krauts were in contact with a major French politician named Joseph Caillaux who was willing to form a "peace now" government, signing an armistice and ordering the exit of the Anglo-american forces.
what Caillaux need was for events at the Front to become dire enough to unseat the government of George Clemenceau. Looked at from this perspective the Spring 1918 offensives make a lot more sense. Had the Germans succeeded in taking out Britain's 5th Army, which would have forced Haig to withdraw to his ports, Clemenceau's government would certainly have been on the chopping block.
Had the Zeppelins given German's a bit more material, forced the Americans to divide their efforts between France and Mexico, and denied the convoys their success perhaps the spring offensives might have been a marginal success, giving Caillaux his opportunity to end the war on German terms. (This last point is not a given, clemmenceau could have had his world collapse and still had Caillaux and his followers for lunch.) If this had happened in the form of airlift the decisive factor in the war.
|