KMS Seydlitz

[TPMM]

Hi there.
Was there any sense in rebuilding Seydlitz into an aircraft carrier? How would one, small carrier with unexperienced crew (and command not-knowing how to use it properly) influence the war? If they had 3 or more Seydlitz-class CVL, I think it would have been something, but one changed nothing. And building next CVL from the keel was far out of reach of German Industry then.
So the question is: was there any sense at all in such a late rebuild of cruiser into o CVL? Wouldn't it be better if they just dropped the construction if they didn't want to have a next cruiser?

[hucks216]

I would imagine that one reason for the build was more political then military, along the lines of 'Here is the resurgent German Navy' which was expected to compete with the Royal Navy after a major rebuilding plan, and given that if the war had continued for much longer and more in Germany's favour a new build carrier would of been a possibility. But even with two carriers they would of been destroyed not long after venturing on a mission. Hiding one battleship / cruiser in the middle of the ocean is one thing but hiding a carrier and all it's escorts and logistic supply vessels is another. Even if the task group consisted of a carrier, both Tirpitz & Bismarck (if she had of survived), a couple of cruisers & a host of screening destroyers it may of provided a potent strike group but the Royal Navy (and after 1941, the US Navy Atlantic Fleet) would of made it's destruction a priority either by assigning the majority of it's surface & subsurface fleet & Coastal Command as,what are now called, surface action groups to hunt them down or to sink all the supply vessels forcing the group to return to a port that could be watched and then bombed while the ships were alongside. The chances are that such a large group of German ships would never of made it through the Iceland - UK gap without detection, or even up the North Sea for that matter.