Operational Plan Three - Plan I

Plan I

Germany's first plan was to attack naval power on the US East Coast and thus gain a free hand to establish a German naval base in the Caribbean, and to negotiate for another in the Pacific. Naval Lieutenant Eberhard von Mantey (later Admiral and a naval historian) was assigned the task of drawing up the plans. Mantey, then 28 years old, began the work in late 1897, working through the winter into 1898. The secret plans were referred to as Mantey's "winter correspondence". Very likely the plan was guided and then approved by Alfred von Tirpitz who was newly appointed Navy Secretary, and who had just returned from a trip through the US. With support from the Kaiser, Tirpitz formed a plan to create a navy worthy of Germany's imperial ambitions, called the Tirpitz Plan. The Kaiser directed a series of naval expansions, collectively called the German Naval Laws, to bring his goal closer to fruition. The Imperial German Navy had already started building powerful new battleships such as the Kaiser Friedrich III class which was to be completed by 1902.

The first German invasion plan of the US called for a great German fleet to sail across the Atlantic Ocean and to engage and defeat the US Navy's Atlantic Fleet in a major battle. German naval artillery attacks would then be directed on the established Norfolk Naval Shipyard, the expanding Newport News Shipbuilding center, and all other naval strength in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. Von Mantey called this area the "most sensitive point" of American defenses, the reduction of which would force the US to negotiate. Another attack was to be aimed at the prominent Portsmouth Naval Shipyard at the junction of the states of Maine and New Hampshire. The New York Harbor facilities, von Mantey thought, were too much reinforced by fortifications holding powerful anti-ship guns to be considered a prime target. Once America's most important naval shipyards were reduced, the German naval task forces were to remain in commanding blockade positions while a German negotiating team met with American government officials to wring from them whatever demands were determined appropriate by the Kaiser.

The Kaiser found funding to be difficult for the expensive ships he wished for, and plans were delayed or shelved for the long-range armored cruisers necessary for supporting the fleet in a major engagement. Meanwhile, the Spanish–American War broke out in 1898, with the US in action in the Caribbean and the Pacific. A German flotilla, eight warships in Manila Bay, provoked the US Navy in the Philippines into firing warning shots but no damaging shots. Germany expected the US to be defeated by a guerrilla war in the Philippines and so they backed down from direct hostilities, electing instead to supply the guerrillas. However, by April 1899 the US had gained control of the Philippines, Guam, Samoa and Hawaii in the Pacific, and also Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. A soon-to-be independent Cuba came under American economic influence. German plans for a Caribbean base were obstructed.