And the land campaign was such a brilliant success that it was preferable?
Nitpick: it wasn’t snipers. The reason the British made such an impression on the Germans was the high standard of marksmanship training for ordinary riflemen. In other words, almost everybody was a crack shot. That’s why it felt like machine guns to the Germans.
While you are right, Tirpitz was exactly wrong. It turned out that the German navy was the one that shrank from risk of serious losses. The British may indeed not have been able to afford a defeat, but they were willing to risk one to keep the Germans bottled up and avoid loss of British naval reputation.
Well, The Brits were supposed to encounter submarines and small auxiliary craft at Jutland too, it just didn’t work very well.
Okay, I’ll buy that German-run railroads would have worked MUCH better to deliver troop concentrations than an amphibious landing force. Remember this was before airpower could interdict effectively, too.
On the other hand, 30% casualties seems tame by WWI standards. This link says:
That’s a 55.5% loss rate overall.
More to the point it was not only was the land campaign possible, whereas a landing on the German coast was impossible, but as soon as the BEF had landed the Empire was committed to fighting on the Western Front for the duration.
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While you are right, Tirpitz was exactly wrong. It turned out that the German navy was the one that shrank from risk of serious losses. The British may indeed not have been able to afford a defeat, but they were willing to risk one to keep the Germans bottled up and avoid loss of British naval reputation.
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Indeed, although I think Tirpitz’s “Risk Theory” was intended to deter Britain from entering into a war with Germany in the first place, thus allowing Germany to prosecute a war in Europe free from British intervention on land, and perhaps more importantly, blockade at sea. But once Britain declared war the commanders of the High Seas Fleet realised that the numbers just wouldn’t work in their favour. Hence the various operations intended to lure a part of the British fleet into battle against the whole German fleet to whittle down their numbers.
As for the torpedo boats - I don’t think they had the range to be a part of the Jutland plan, fair point about the submarines though.
Finally in relation to relative casualty rates - the Zeebrugge raid was a proto-Commando raid - sweep in by surprise, blow stuff up and get out rather than a sustained assault on the German lines. I suspect that any attempt to land and hold ground would have casualty rates as high, if not higher than the figure you cite.
Canadians as well.