WI: German aircraft carriers?

The Graf zeppelin wasn't the only the attempt to build a aircraft carrier in the second world war. The Germans decided aircraft carriers were a good idea in march 1942. They had plans for 5 ships, mostly passengers ships. These are quite unlikely after Hitler gave orders to scrap all service ships in 1943.

Could be possible in the 1930's that the Germans could have decided to build a smaller carrier to test out carrier operations, a bit like a escort carrier, or the Kreigmarine is more carrier friendly and the Graf zeppelin gets finished?
 

Garrison

Donor
The Graf zeppelin wasn't the only the attempt to build a aircraft carrier in the second world war. The Germans decided aircraft carriers were a good idea in march 1942. They had plans for 5 ships, mostly passengers ships. These are quite unlikely after Hitler gave orders to scrap all service ships in 1943.

Could be possible in the 1930's that the Germans could have decided to build a smaller carrier to test out carrier operations, a bit like a escort carrier, or the Kreigmarine is more carrier friendly and the Graf zeppelin gets finished?

have you seriosuly not looked up the endless threads that already exist on this topic?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Very bluntly:

A single carrier is a waste - as are two.
Germany is starting twenty years behind the curve on carrier aviation and will have to learn on the job - while their most likely enemies are the world joint experts as of 1940, being pioneers of the port strike among other things.
An aircraft carrier cannot be explained away as a shore-defence ship - you don't need aircraft carriers for shore defence, they are a power projection weapon. This almost certainly abrogates the Anglo-German Naval Treaty early, which means (all else being equal) that two or three big nasty battleships are coming off the ways for the UK beforehand and also means that Britain will take a harder line towards Germany.

That last point assumes that Britain reacts with restraint.
If Britain does not act with restraint and goes full naval build in the early-mid thirties, then it will not look good for Germany. Quite apart from anything else, there might well be a short and rather truncated Munich War.
 
have you seriosuly not looked up the endless threads that already exist on this topic?

Its his fourth post so i guess not. New members never know its a good idea to look up old threads first.

ANyway, i agree with everything Saphroneth said.

The british outnumber them in the sea on all fronts except subs. Where would they deploy carrier(s)? Why? Its a waste of resources and time. Better use those materials for subs, assault rifles and strategic bombers.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
We might also get to see a Lion .vs. Yamato duel a few years later :D
That's the interesting thing about this path. It doesn't only screw over Germany, it also screws over Japan independently.

Dear lord, though, the things the RN could do with a complete budget unlock in the mid-thirties. Especially if the RAF gets the lead out on the Hs.404 at the same time... you could end up with fleet carriers flying cannon-armed interceptors with Spitfirish performance in 1942, and a half-dozen modern fast battleships with 15" and 16" guns to go with them.
 
What I've always found interesting is how the Soviet Navy may have turned out if they'd decided to make use of the various incomplete hulls for themselves.
 
The Graf zeppelin wasn't the only the attempt to build a aircraft carrier in the second world war. The Germans decided aircraft carriers were a good idea in march 1942. They had plans for 5 ships, mostly passengers ships. These are quite unlikely after Hitler gave orders to scrap all service ships in 1943.

Could be possible in the 1930's that the Germans could have decided to build a smaller carrier to test out carrier operations, a bit like a escort carrier, or the Kreigmarine is more carrier friendly and the Graf zeppelin gets finished?

(Reads. Eye twitches. Runs from room screaming incoherent nonsense about Scapa Flow.)

Right, now that I've got that out of my system, yes it's perfectly possible for the Kriegsmarine to have done so. The problem is that it's not very probable. Hitler never understood naval issues and when he briefly took an interest it was more on the lines of always wanting something with big guns. And in the mid-30's (1933-35) an aircraft carrier for Germany makes no sense for what passed for German strategic thinking at that time. German aircraft carriers are primarily an offensive naval weapon which could only ever have one target - the UK. At this period Hitler did not want to alienate the UK. Graf Zeppelin was started in December 1936 and she was never really finished.

The primary problems (other than the fact that Hitler didn't understand naval matters) were that Goering interfered with the construction of the navalised planes needed for the GZ, plus Raeder never really placed much priority on finishing the ship prior to 1942, when it had become obvious that aircraft carriers were far more important than people had previously thought. Hell, work on the GZ was repeatedly postponed because her fricking 15cm guns were requisitioned off her and their fire control mechanism had been sold to the Soviets.

You'd need a Kriegsmarine with a plan for carriers. It's a bit like the chicken and the egg. You'd need officers with experience of carriers to push for a carrier - but you'd need a carrier to get those officers.
 

Garrison

Donor
There's also the point that in the mid 30s it isn't at all obvious that carriers are the wave of the future and it would be odd for the Germans to throw much more in the way of resources into carriers than thet did.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
There's also the point that in the mid 30s it isn't at all obvious that carriers are the wave of the future and it would be odd for the Germans to throw much more in the way of resources into carriers than thet did.
Being fair, it's at least a plausible PoD for someone to realize that (or to be obsessed by that idea, cough cough Goering...). It's also, however, plausible for the UK to go "You know what, there has to be some reason Germany's building so many CVs. Let's build a few more ourselves."
 
In fairness to the OP, I do not think it is totally out of bounds for the Germans to develop a carrier in the late 1930s as sort of a monkey see monkey do thing and because it is a shiny object (heck even the French have one).

Granted this is not a totally rational (in terms of militarily useful) line of thought. Just the Nazi deciding that they need to have a carrier because the other cool countries have them. Heck, that is pretty much why Brazil has one today.

What that carrier would do I have no idea. If it survives 1940 and 1941 without getting sunk, it probably gets stuck in the Baltic where it is used as an aircraft ferry for the northern part of the Eastern Front or something mundane like that.
 
Very bluntly:

A single carrier is a waste - as are two.
Germany is starting twenty years behind the curve on carrier aviation and will have to learn on the job - while their most likely enemies are the world joint experts as of 1940, being pioneers of the port strike among other things.
An aircraft carrier cannot be explained away as a shore-defence ship - you don't need aircraft carriers for shore defence, they are a power projection weapon. This almost certainly abrogates the Anglo-German Naval Treaty early, which means (all else being equal) that two or three big nasty battleships are coming off the ways for the UK beforehand and also means that Britain will take a harder line towards Germany.

That last point assumes that Britain reacts with restraint.
If Britain does not act with restraint and goes full naval build in the early-mid thirties, then it will not look good for Germany. Quite apart from anything else, there might well be a short and rather truncated Munich War.

How would the run-up to that look? The Kriegsmarine just keeps building and finally the UK says "ENOUGH" and goes to war to stop German expansionism? How many years/how much construction d'ya think that'd require?
 
How would the run-up to that look? The Kriegsmarine just keeps building and finally the UK says "ENOUGH" and goes to war to stop German expansionism? How many years/how much construction d'ya think that'd require?

Given Britain's reaction the last time round (pre-WW1) was to build more ships, you would certainly see a naval race in the 35-38 range, as well as a much worse reaction to things like the Rhineland. Also as others have said since CV's only have one real possible target in the RN's minds (them) you'd see Germany considered a full scale enemy a bit earlier, probably soon enough to drop the hammer at an ATL Munich if not earlier.

Also Germany's economy was in a crappy state before the war in OTL (only stealing from the Austrian's and Czech's and the later conquests kept things rosy after '38) due to all that arms spending. Its possible the economy could come apart before any war even happens, at that point Hitler probably gets bounced out of office by the army.
 
Yes, this question has been beaten to death here

...though I will add that a German decision to dig into aircraft carriers in the 30's (or earlier) makes the most sense in a timeline where World War I never happens, and Germany keeps her colonial possessions in Africa and the Pacific.

At that point, power projection makes some (limited) sense for a German Navy - certainly nothing like it does for the naval powers that actually did develop carriers with any real intensity (U.S., U.K., Japan).

Of course, it would almost certainly need to be in the context of some naval agreement with the U.K., so as to avoid triggering another naval arms race Germany could not afford. And it would be, perforce, a more limited carrier force.

All that said, even in this scenario, submarines make the most sense.
 
In fairness to the OP, I do not think it is totally out of bounds for the Germans to develop a carrier in the late 1930s as sort of a monkey see monkey do thing and because it is a shiny object (heck even the French have one).

Granted this is not a totally rational (in terms of militarily useful) line of thought. Just the Nazi deciding that they need to have a carrier because the other cool countries have them. Heck, that is pretty much why Brazil has one today.

What that carrier would do I have no idea. If it survives 1940 and 1941 without getting sunk, it probably gets stuck in the Baltic where it is used as an aircraft ferry for the northern part of the Eastern Front or something mundane like that.

Gotta remember though what carriers are for. France, the UK, Japan and America all had Empires and territories overseas which made carriers a practical option. No point having carriers if you don't have a large sea area to defend, you can simply launch planes from air-bases. It would have to be a vanity project, but again as others have said, the expertise and interest in Germany wasn't there. If they ever did produce them, I doubt they'd last long, they just don't have the experience that the UK, Japan or the USA have considering those three basically pioneered the concept. Better to produce more submarines, the Germans were good at that and they are far more useful for protecting German interests.
 
Yes this subject comes up every month, or week. I post my stock response.

The only practical use a German carrier or two might have would be on operations in the North Sea, Arctic, and to a lesser extent in the Baltic. In the North Sea the carrier task force could do ambush sorties designed to pick off Brit aircraft on recon & ASW missions. these would complicate Brit reconissance/ASW ops & support submarine or surface raider sorties. Certainly the Brits would counter ambush the German carrier group, but the Germans could double counter with their own heavy ships, thus creating some interesting material for wargame scenarios a quarter century later ;)

In the Arctic the carriers could extend air recon and strike a bit further, complicating things for the other team. Again there would be counter ambush against counter ambush. None of this wins the war for team Facists, but it would generate a entire genre of WWII history books.
 

elkarlo

Banned
Biggest odd ball thing here. What was the point of German carriers? If England is still in the war then they have to go the northsea route where england can hit them with land based planes. If they sneak into the NA ala Bismarck its no good. As that area sucks for carriers
 

thaddeus

Donor
Very bluntly:

A single carrier is a waste - as are two.
Germany is starting twenty years behind the curve on carrier aviation and will have to learn on the job - while their most likely enemies are the world joint experts as of 1940, being pioneers of the port strike among other things.
An aircraft carrier cannot be explained away as a shore-defence ship - you don't need aircraft carriers for shore defence, they are a power projection weapon. This almost certainly abrogates the Anglo-German Naval Treaty early, which means (all else being equal) that two or three big nasty battleships are coming off the ways for the UK beforehand and also means that Britain will take a harder line towards Germany.

thought they were allowed carriers under the Anglo-German Naval Treaty? and considering the learning curve (known to them) wouldn't the British welcome the KM building carriers?
 

Cook

Banned
There is a tendency in some quarters to insist that “they didn’t do that, therefore they wouldn’t and couldn’t do that”, particularly amongst people who haven’t bothered to check into the details of a subject; hence the bulk of the dogpile of comments above.

Could be possible in the 1930's that the Germans could have decided to build a smaller carrier to test out carrier operations, a bit like a escort carrier?

Your question is a good one and by no means out of scope of either the requirements or capabilities of the Kreigsmarine, nor in fact far beyond what they did indeed do. It is firstly important to consider the German Navy’s doctrine and mission, and how a light carrier would have conformed to, and enhanced, that mission.

The capital ships of the Kriegsmarine’s surface fleet were not intended to form a battle fleet to challenge the Royal Navy’s control of the Atlantic; such a mission was recognised in 1935 as being well beyond the scope of the KM for the foreseeable future. The 1939 plan for the expansion of the Kriegsmarine (Plan Z), which was for expansion of the fleet to the point where it could challenge the Royal Navy in battle, wasn’t expected to be completed until 1948, none of the major surface vessels proposed in Plan Z were completed, most weren’t even laid down, so we need not consider that further. The role anticipated for the Kriegsmarine prior to 1939, which was its primary role during World War Two, was to interdict Britain’s merchant fleet and force Britain to the negotiation table by disrupting British maritime trade and sinking cargo ships. All of Germany’s warships were designed around this mission; even the Bismarck, despite being the most powerful battleship afloat, was first and foremost a commerce raider. This was KreuzerKrieg: Cruiser Warfare.

The principal problem of cruiser warfare was simply finding a ship to attack in the enormous expanse of the Atlantic Ocean to begin with. This was encountered by the Germans in the First World War, and the building program of the 1930s included efforts to cope with this. Prior to 1935, the German navy was prohibited from building aircraft carriers, and the warships it was permitted were restricted to 10,000 ton displacement; despite this size restriction, the Deutchland-class cruisers (generally referred to as "pocket battleships") each carried 2 x Ar 196 floatplanes, which represents a considerable allocation of resources considering the small size of the ship. Prior to 1935, the Germans also gained experience operating aircraft as sea through the use of Lufthansa catapult vessels. These were ships that had large catapult on the aft deck to launch two and three-engine flying boats; generally the Dornier Do 18. So clearly the requirement for a maritime aviation was both recognised and given a reasonably high priority. Nor is this surprising, since the North Atlantic is four times larger than Europe from the Urals to the French coast: reconnaissance was indispensable.

In 1935 the Baldwin Government, in an effort to avoid a naval arms race with Germany, negotiated and signed the Anglo-German Naval Treaty in 1935. This “restricted” Germany to a fleet 1/3 the tonnage of the Royal Navy, including aircraft carriers and submarines. (A provision of the treaty even permitted Germany to build up their submarine fleet to match that of Britain "should they so desire".) In fact the treaty was no restriction at all; Germany’s shipyards would have been fully occupied for ten years turning out a fleet equal to a third of the Royal Navy, and would have tied up enormous amounts of German resources; all of the ships completed between 1935 and the end of World War Two came under the Anglo-German Naval Treaty. The treaty simply gave official British approval for Germany to tear up the naval provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.

The importance of naval aviation for reconnaissance by this time is reflected in the fact that the new Hipper-class heavy cruisers and the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst all carried 3 x Ardo Ar 196 floatplanes, armed reconnaissance aircraft that could vastly increase the frontage of ocean that the battleship could sweep in its search for prey. The larger Bismarck and Tirpitz both carried 4 x Ar 196 reconnaissance aircraft. In addition the Kriegsmarine built and operated a string of seaplane tenders; Krischan I (commissioned in 1934), Krischan II and Krischan III (’35), Grief (’37), Hans Rolshoven (’38), Karl Mayer (’40), Max Stinsky (’41), Immelmann (’41), Drache (’41) and Boelcke (’42). These ships launched the Do 18, DV 138 reconnaissance flying-boats and the He 114 floatplane. Finally there was the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin, laid down in 1936 and launching it in 1938. Given the small overall size of the Kriegsmarine, clearly a significant proportion of it was in fact involved the use of maritime aviation.

The Graf Zeppelin was 85% complete when work on it was halted at the end of April 1940; priority being given to other vessels. Graf Zeppelin displaced 33,500 tons, making it slightly larger than the Scharnhorst-class battleships that it was intended to accompany on commerce raiding missions; by comparison, HMS Ark Royal displaced 22,000 tons.

Clearly, for Germany to have had an operational aircraft carrier in World War Two, it would have had to be completed prior to the beginning of the war, so something smaller laid down in 1936 instead of Graf Zeppelin. Optimally this would be a vessel of the Hipper-class in size, and built using the keel of the Prinz Eugen or Seydlitz. At 17,000 tons, this would be slightly larger than the Royal Navy’s HMS Hermes, so a complement of 20 aircraft would be reasonable.

For aircraft, the Me 109 would have been out; not only would its undercarriage have been far too unstable and easily damaged for deck landings, but its priority as the front-line Luftwaffe fighter would have made it unavailable anyway. Fortunately there was an aircraft available which did suit the requirements of the Kriegsmarine for a carrier-borne fighter: the Heinkel He 51. (At the start of the war, the best FAA fighter was the Gloster Sea Gladiator, so for naval aviation purposes, the otherwise obsolete biplane fighter was still valuable.) The durable undercarriage of the Heinkel, as well as its slower landing speed, would have made it quite desirable for carrier operations in the early war period, later the Fw 190 would have been desirable, but hard to gain priority for. In the reconnaissance/torpedo bomber role, the Fieseler Fi 167 was available, this was capable of carrying a torpedo of similar size to the Fairey Swordfish, but had both greater speed and greater range.

The potential of such a vessel, accompanying the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst in their hunt for convoys, would have been considerable, not to mention accompanying the Bismarck. In fact the threat posed from even a light carrier accompanying a battleship would have greatly disrupted British convoying; battleships began to be used to escort the convoys in 1941 because of the threat posed by the German battleships, but a battleship, rather than being able to provide protection to a convoy, would itself become a major target to torpedo bombers.
 
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I opened a discussion on this at one point, and the general consensus was that it would need a POD at the latest during WW1 to pull off, and preferably before WW1.
 
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