German Navy's Aircraft Carrier

[Andy H]

They didnt save anything by not finishing and using her

What about the expense and time for training her crew, and lastly the actual human cost when she was sunk!!!!!

[phylo_roadking]

CY, the U boat fleet from '42 on was staffed by culling out men from EVERY docked warship in the Kreigsmarine that didnt dare leave port. One the Second Happy Time was over, these lives were basically thrown away, thousands of trained personnel. the Graf Zeppelin needed finishing and commissioning yes - but what cost compared to the cost of Uboats laid down, built launched and sunk...or OTHER wasteful development programmes like the huge Blohm und Voss five and six-engined flyingboats that rarely flew but ended up hidden on Alpine lakes.

On December 7th 1941, at least Yamamoto knew what he'd done, "awakened a sleeping tiger", Donitz NEVER learned or appreciated that the USA could outproduce ANYTHING his Uboat fleet threw at them. The 2nd Happy Time was perhaps the falsest of false dawns, in that he THOUGHT it meant further changes in technology would change the gameboard again...and again if necessary after that. But even with KM resources and fuel drying up, and no manpower reserves left he continued the creation of newer classes - as discussed in detail elsewhere.

And what would these have done? More of the same. Sunk shipping until technology or tactics changed AGAIN in the Allies' favour. Theres a thread hereabouts about what single weapon contrbuted the most to Germany; in it i said that the submarine is actually a VERY limited weapon - it has TWO weapons - a deck gun or torpedoes; It has TWO methods of attack - alone or in a pack; It has TWO operating environments - on the surface or underwater.....
And thats it; VERY highly limited. Disturb ONE factor of that - like good airborne surface radar - and theyre out of the equation en masse, with irreplaceable casualties.

The GZ if finished would have achieved so MUCH, without even sailing; look at the resources the Bismarck, Graf Spee, Scharnhorst etc kept dedicated to patrolling and countering their threat; look at the repeated air raids; the special forces' ops; the Resistance resources that monitoring them soaked up. One major asset with the ability to fight beyond its weight - which is basically what an aircraft carrier is, a battleship with an airborne reach of hundreds of miles - and that threat would have to be countered, and everry second and minute taken up doing that would have been taken away from othe fronts and enterprises. As long as it remained unfinished and the Allies knew it, it didnt require another thought.

Lets take a parallel - look at the Ark Royal and how the Germans were paranoid about HER. Imagine if the Allies had had to be as paranoid about the GZ?

phylo

[Andy H]

The GZ if finished would have achieved so MUCH, without even sailing; look at the resources the Bismarck, Graf Spee, Scharnhorst etc kept dedicated to patrolling and countering their threat

The RN would have to add zero to there containing force that already existed for a possible German capital ship sortie.

Just what do you think the RN would have requested specifically to counter the GZ that it didn't alreay have ready and waiting?

[phylo_roadking]

Nothing - but as the count of KM Capital ships declined, they released more and more vessels to convoy escort and invasion bombardment duties. Dont forget that was the cry in the first years of the war, before technology made it possible for little ships like Flower class corvettes to punch abpve their weight, that the RNs light and heavy cruisers weren't available for convoy escort agsint commerce raiders, and that the battleship count of the Home Fleet couldn't be reduced to firm up Cunningham in the Med. A finished GZ, like a lingering Tirpitz, would have pinned these resources in the North Sea and Western Approaches like the first 3 years of the war.

phylo

[Andy H]

Apologies but I haven't read all the previous 7/8 pages, but just exactly when, date wise are you proposing that the GZ is completed in relation to your last post.

[phylo_roadking]

GZ could have been completed and equiped any time after work stopped on it in 1941. It was within four months of full sea trials at that point.

phylo

[Paul Lakowski]

GZ could have been completed and equiped any time after work stopped on it in 1941. It was within four months of full sea trials at that point.

phylo

According to the "Z Plan" GZ was due to be completed in 1940 with "B" model completed in 1941 [Oxford Companion to World War II,pp374]. But the scheduled plan underwent revisions and tampering. The late 1930s armaments crunch forced hard choices to be made by the Wehrmacht. But Blomberg had long since given up tring to exercise any control , since Hitler had all the service branches come independantly to him for projects and desicisions. This had little concern for the capability to actually build the projects being planned.

In this interservice struggle the Kreigsmarine lost out and the budget for the Heer trippled while they gobbled up the lions share of the resources being allocated to the state. So ship building schedules fell behind more than one year for most warships and 22 months for carriers A & B.

When the war began Hitlers government decided that their blitzkreig was much more effective than they thought and realised the war would be won soon so most projects were terminated....including most long term large scale warship construction.


BTW; according to that same source, the Kreigsmarine personnel rose from 190,000 in 1940, to 404,000 in 1941 and 570,000 in 1942. So most crews would have come from new recruits, not from existing ship crews.

[Paul Lakowski]

Any one who truely wishes to understand german naval strategy in WW-II and how it related to German naval history would do well to read the following article. It explains the role of the GZ in such a strategy and how even one could have made a difference.


http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/review/20 ... t5-a05.htm

[Andy H]

Any one who truely wishes to understand german naval strategy in WW-II and how it related to German naval history would do well to read the following article. It explains the role of the GZ in such a strategy and how even one could have made a difference.

http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/review/20 ... t5-a05.htm

Hi Paul

The article was interesting, and though it stated that the role of a A/C was to operate within a small battle group, I didn't see that the article stated in any catogoric terms how a A/C could have made a difference. Also the article didn't mention any possible British/RN responses if the Zplan was invested in.

Regards

[Andy H]

From 'The Wages of Destruction' by A Tooze:-

"and similar problems haunted the navy's Z Plan. Given time, labour and steel, the German dockyards could probably have built Hitlers BB's. The truely prohibitive obstacle was ensuring their fuel supply. Under the Z Plan the navy's heating-oil needs were expected to rise from the 1.4million tons per annum originally envisioned in 1936 to 6million tons by 1947-8, and its requirements for diesel fuel to rise from 400,000tons to 2million tons. Even the most optimistic assumptions, domestic production was not expected to exceed 2million of oil and 1.34million tons of diesel fuel by 1947-8. The German Navy would therefore have to rely on accumalated stocks, which in 1939 amounted to less than 1million for fuel oil and diesel combined. To provide even 12months of unlimited operations it was calculated that the KM would need to construct no less than 9.6million cubic metres of protected storage capacity"

Regards

[Paul Lakowski]

The role of the GZ would be to help the battlegroups to seek out enemy merchant shipping[especially convoys] while avoiding enemy warships [especially battleship/carrier groups]. It was never intented to go head to head in confrontation with RN...that was Wegeners and Tirpitz WW-II approach . Admiral Raeder was correct in employing French Admiral Raoul casteex medium navy strategy, emphasising the avoidance of a Manhanian climatic clash. The most important aspect is the connection between oceans and his inovation was replenishement at sea.

We will never know what Raeder was possible had he been given free reign in Reichmarine/Kreigsmarine development because successive leaders down played RM/KM strategic role. Most wanted a purly coastal defense force and its absolutly to Admiral Raeders credit to knit Scheers cruiser squadron to Hippers Battlecruiser raid in terms of diversionary manuvers oceans apart. Clearly the AOE concept was critical.

In WW-I German exploited 16 auxiliary cruiser conversions and given half a chance Raeder could easly have followed the british idea and converted them by the dozens per year [50-100 fleet]. With operational ranges of 120 days [compared to couple of weeks for warships], keeping such auxiliary merchants at sea in numbers enough to cripple UK overseas trade on multiple oceans would not have been that difficult. Tied to KM performance during WW-II would have been "Karin Hall fuel" type production program which was cannceled due to Goerings short sighted ness.

The manpower steel and financing would easly have come from scaling back the various fortification programs like Westwall/Atlantic wall. Nazie party wasted billions of RM and millions of tons of construction and hundreds of thousands of labors on short sighted construction projects. If anything Strategic fuel storage was on the order of 2-3 million tons at the start of the war and was planned to expand to 6 million tons by 1943...but construction industry was being wasted on the Atlantic Wall etc.

"Karin hall" would have topped 11 million tons by 1944 and the end product was dependant on the procees so it could easly have been adapted to more diesel fuel /bunker fuel requirements. If you calculate the Fuel needs and take short cuts [like only using coalfired steam ships for coastal protection with ~ thousand coal fired "Vorpostenboote" and several hundred coal fired steamers as tenders and colliers], that leaves the strategic fuel requirements at about 4 million tons diesel /bunker fuel and 1/2 million tons of aviation gas.

That force would have covered home defense fleet of 1000 Vorpostenboot/Tenders ; an overseas fleet of 100-150 auxiliary cruisers /Auxiliary seaplane carriers , while also allowing main battlefleet of 6 battle groups with Carrier Battleship/Heavy Cruiser and up to 10 fleet destroyers.Anything was doable with enough time and planning. But time was exactly the thing Raeder was not given and in this reguard Raeder was a victum of his own philosophy of de politising the Navy....no questioning of political leadership, no matter how stupid it was. Raeder knew back in 1934 that Hitlers naval approach was doomed.

From 'The Wages of Destruction' by A Tooze:-

"and similar problems haunted the navy's Z Plan. Given time, labour and steel, the German dockyards could probably have built Hitlers BB's. The truely prohibitive obstacle was ensuring their fuel supply. Under the Z Plan the navy's heating-oil needs were expected to rise from the 1.4million tons per annum originally envisioned in 1936 to 6million tons by 1947-8, and its requirements for diesel fuel to rise from 400,000tons to 2million tons. Even the most optimistic assumptions, domestic production was not expected to exceed 2million of oil and 1.34million tons of diesel fuel by 1947-8. The German Navy would therefore have to rely on accumalated stocks, which in 1939 amounted to less than 1million for fuel oil and diesel combined. To provide even 12months of unlimited operations it was calculated that the KM would need to construct no less than 9.6million cubic metres of protected storage capacity"

Regards

[Epaminondas]

the problem is commerce destruction follows from control of the seas; a naval force that tries to conduct commerce destruction on the cheap via raiders has NEVER won a naval war.

Mahan's Influence of Seapower on History is a tough nut for a non Martime power to crack; but the fundamentals are there.

You can argue that alot of surface raiders might help... but it never has. A merchant conversion would be slaughtered by a regular warship, and with proper convoys, raiders will have to go head to head with warships.

[Paul Lakowski]

the problem is commerce destruction follows from control of the seas; a naval force that tries to conduct commerce destruction on the cheap via raiders has NEVER won a naval war.

Mahan's Influence of Seapower on History is a tough nut for a non Martime power to crack; but the fundamentals are there.

You can argue that alot of surface raiders might help... but it never has. A merchant conversion would be slaughtered by a regular warship, and with proper convoys, raiders will have to go head to head with warships.

The ultimate aim would be to spread the British so thin you could invade the country directly. The key weakness of the RN was it was tied to Ports having failed to develope its own effective Replenishment at sea. ...that and the primary threat was just across the water. Invading the country directly would cost hundred of thousands of lives and 100 Auxiliary Merchants along with thousand smaller invasion boats/trawlers. But it would have shut down the Western Front for years and year, allowing the Germans to invade USSR with full force.


In terms of the auxiliary raider the concept could be made to work provided you don't try to make it into a warship and instead treat it as a mother ship dispatching smaller attack craft [LSB/KM/Seaplanes and eventually helicopters]. As it was by pure stealth these handfull of raiders remained on average 450 days at sea before taken out of the war. That was 8-10 raiders. Imagine the effect of 100....especialy when 3/4 of all merchant ships sailed the war years un escorted.

[Njorl]

I didn't read whole thread (maybe it was thorougly discussed), but I'd like to share this piece of fresh information.

Today's Polish newspaper(s) and Internet services published an article that "gigantic wreck of aircraft carrier" was found yesterday off Leba (Poland). "Something" that is 265 m long, 30 m wide, 30 m high and has flat deck lies at depth of 80 m.

Looks like it's Graff Zeppelin.

If anyone can read Polish: http://wiadomosci.onet.pl/1360947,69,1, ... ,item.html

[Andy H]

The ultimate aim would be to spread the British so thin you could invade the country directly

I think that's a idealistic viewpoint to justify there value.

Though the British were hard pressed in reality, the RN still kept significant forces stationed specifically to counter any invasion.

Any increase in raider numbers doesn't mean that the number of convoy escorts or hunter groups would increase, because the RN would have a critical minimum number of ships that they would request be kept back to counter any invasion.

Regards