reccecrewman said:
who knows what could have happened had the British made a serious attempt to move into the Baltic to destroy the German fleet and land troops behind German lines.....
Gallipoli North?
First of all the RN would have had two options:
To land in the teeth of
the German Navy based at Wilhelmshaven on the Frisian Coast of Jutland - It fought two battles there, Heligoland Bight in 1914 and Jutland in 1916 - I suggest that the German Navy was more than capable of busting up a landing in that area let alone the ease with which Germans could have moved troops to that front.
To force its way round Sjaelland by either the narrows between Elsinore and Elsingborg (a 3 km gap between Neutral Sweden and Neutral Denmark)
of or to push through the shallow national waters of (still) Neutral Denmark.
The Germans had the Kiel Kanal connecting the High Seas fleet in Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea to Kiel on the Baltic. This short-cut gave the Germans an internal line of communication that allowed them to rapidly shift their capital ships from flank to flank. Interestingly it paralleled the original Hansa trade route from Hamburg to Lubeck which is the source of wealth for one of the oldest royal families in Europe - the Oldenburgs.
At Gallipoli the RN managed to put ashore, on the first day, 2 Divisions on 2 beaches from a jerry-rigged assortment of rowboats, steam tugs, trawlers, transports, battleships and destroyers. There were no D-Day type landing ships available.
The troops were put ashore in brigade waves of half-battalions (all the battalions of a brigade contributed two companies to the first and second waves).
I find it difficult to accept that we could successfully land a viable force on those shores.
The Germans had enough naval force to contest the North Sea with the RN at least a few times:
In addition to Heligoland and Jutland there was also Dover Straits, Dogger Bank, Whitby and Hartlepool. That presence would have been enough to disrupt any landing attempt, IMHO.
Jellicoe is often given the benefit of the doubt at Jutland by those that argue that he didn't lose the fleet.
On the other hand, he finally had a chance to destroy the German Fleet that was protecting Germany from an Amphibious landing - and he failed.
With that success, and some more initiative along the lines of those that developed the tank to develop assault transports, then perhaps an amphibious assault might have worked. But with that failure to destroy the Kaiser's flank protection on 1 June 1916, one month before the Somme - Haig was faced with only a long, hard slog against entrenched German positions.
Edit: Who writes this stuff? He really should get an editor.