Your alternative to the Z plan.
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Black Baron
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Your alternative to the Z plan.
I'd say jeep carriers, Pocket battleships & loads of U-boats. & more disguised Raiders. They would be not so costly.
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Black Baron
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Cruisers, CL and CA, operating from Norway under a Naval Bomber Umbrella. Thereby shutting out the PQ-convoys for real. Some radar bases on the North Norwegian shoreline would also be good.
More modern U-boats than historical would be good in the mix too, but more important is to boost the naval bomber part. Th u-boats could be of standard historical design.
The system should have been operative from the start of Barbarossa, thereby having the Kriegsmarine actually contributing to Wermacht's main effort.
More modern U-boats than historical would be good in the mix too, but more important is to boost the naval bomber part. Th u-boats could be of standard historical design.
The system should have been operative from the start of Barbarossa, thereby having the Kriegsmarine actually contributing to Wermacht's main effort.
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Black Baron
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The ships in a fleet should be tailored to perform a necessary function. There was no such function for a German aircraft carrier. Had the Germans completed an aircraft carrier, they would have been in the awkward position of trying to find a job to fit their tool, rather than the other way around.
By the way, you cracked me up, lwd.
By the way, you cracked me up, lwd.
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Paul Lakowski
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Since large warship construction takes 3-4 years depending on the size , any ships laid down in 1939 would not materialize until well after 1942/43, its too late. The changes needed to be made in the mid 1930s to have any impact by war time.
Barring that, only smaller faster production warships could be contemplated to keep up with demand. They also have the advantage of being produced within a year or so. Such surface ships have limited sea keeping and range so are defensive in nature except for Uboats which can range over several oceans provided they have sufficient re supply ships. So auxiliary tankers with similar disguise capacity of Auxiliary Cruisers could be helpful.
But historically ½ the German merchant fleet was trapped outside of reach of Germany and spent the war years interned or operating out of neutral ports providing some limited re supply to long range raiders. So some ability to covertly converting these into supply vessels could make sense.
German naval missions were coastal defense; Scandinavia/Baltic convoy escort and overseas commerce raiding. The Uboats were to fill the Commerce raiding function but without a similar effort from a surface fleet, sooner or later the allies would get the measure of the Uboat threat and defeat them. The coastal defense was filled with the thousands of S boot, R boot, KFK & MFP etc that were built during the war. These were all powered by Diesel and drained the KM fuel supply. The convoy escort was filled by dozens of Destroyers and Torpedoboot reinforced with couple hundred MBoot and the hundreds of converted VBoot. These also helped to fill the minesweeping role which occupied all coastal forces , but also further drained diesel and bunker oil supplies.
In terms of fighting other warships, none but the TBoot UBoot and Destroyers were of any merit. The MBoot & VBoot were too slow to battle allied escort warships and many of these armed fishing vessels fell victim to Allied MTB/MGB . The SBoot did well in so far as their missions allowed, but they were just too few , to short range etc to change the out come. While the Germans produced 200 Sboot the Brits had 1500 MTB/MGB built for them in the same time frame.
For the most part these vessels were 'punching the clock' in their roles and were in trouble without heavy Luftwaffe support. So there was massive waste in the construction of the wartime fleet. Coastal patrols were vital but didn't need new construction to be filled. Captured and converted fleets of small craft could have filled these roles just as well at a fraction of the cost. Given that most such construction was in batches [several constructed in the same yard at the same time] the ship construction could have gone for smaller runs of larger warships [order of magnitude bigger ships].
To get a better idea of whats possible you have to review Historical naval production during the war [not counting major prewar production that overlapped into the early war] to gauge what’s possible ….
Barring that, only smaller faster production warships could be contemplated to keep up with demand. They also have the advantage of being produced within a year or so. Such surface ships have limited sea keeping and range so are defensive in nature except for Uboats which can range over several oceans provided they have sufficient re supply ships. So auxiliary tankers with similar disguise capacity of Auxiliary Cruisers could be helpful.
But historically ½ the German merchant fleet was trapped outside of reach of Germany and spent the war years interned or operating out of neutral ports providing some limited re supply to long range raiders. So some ability to covertly converting these into supply vessels could make sense.
German naval missions were coastal defense; Scandinavia/Baltic convoy escort and overseas commerce raiding. The Uboats were to fill the Commerce raiding function but without a similar effort from a surface fleet, sooner or later the allies would get the measure of the Uboat threat and defeat them. The coastal defense was filled with the thousands of S boot, R boot, KFK & MFP etc that were built during the war. These were all powered by Diesel and drained the KM fuel supply. The convoy escort was filled by dozens of Destroyers and Torpedoboot reinforced with couple hundred MBoot and the hundreds of converted VBoot. These also helped to fill the minesweeping role which occupied all coastal forces , but also further drained diesel and bunker oil supplies.
In terms of fighting other warships, none but the TBoot UBoot and Destroyers were of any merit. The MBoot & VBoot were too slow to battle allied escort warships and many of these armed fishing vessels fell victim to Allied MTB/MGB . The SBoot did well in so far as their missions allowed, but they were just too few , to short range etc to change the out come. While the Germans produced 200 Sboot the Brits had 1500 MTB/MGB built for them in the same time frame.
For the most part these vessels were 'punching the clock' in their roles and were in trouble without heavy Luftwaffe support. So there was massive waste in the construction of the wartime fleet. Coastal patrols were vital but didn't need new construction to be filled. Captured and converted fleets of small craft could have filled these roles just as well at a fraction of the cost. Given that most such construction was in batches [several constructed in the same yard at the same time] the ship construction could have gone for smaller runs of larger warships [order of magnitude bigger ships].
To get a better idea of whats possible you have to review Historical naval production during the war [not counting major prewar production that overlapped into the early war] to gauge what’s possible ….