AHC: improved Deutschland-class cruisers.

Part of that might be due to German Captains being under orders to preserve their ships at all costs. This would make them extremely cautious in ship identification. If you misidentify a heavy cruiser as a battleship, it's embarrassing. But you survive. But if you do it the other way around, you're dead.

That and heavy cruisers were identified as battleships numerous times during the war by all sides.
 
What about just rebuild the Deutschland battleships, might be significantly cheaper for defending the Baltic and use the saved money to buy usefully merchant ships for the export trade especially fast banana boats to bring fresh food to Germany....
 
what is meant by YMMV?


Rader had a hand in this. (My opinion only, YMMV.) He really did not understand the naval trends and professional naval thought too well. I think he to a certain extent was reading British naval thought and might have picked up on how the British were trying to integrate the carrier into traditional battle-line tactics as a scouting element, but missed out on how the British were also thinking about independent raiding with this unit.

That tracks well, but does not explain Rader's continued insistence on the Z-plans.

That is interesting. It explains so much about why the ships the KM receives after 1936 make no sense at all considering the likely naval war they should have planned to fight.

In effect, this is the kind of planning one might find in a dictatorship, where the flavor of the month drives the procurement decisions. This hurts a navy that has to have some kind of stable long-term planning, which is kind of why I think ATL mods to the pocket battleships would have been pointless. The PBS's were designed by the Weimar regime's planners. They had a vision of 19th century commerce raiders that makes a kind of cockamamie sense and designed surprisingly well to it. Quibbles about bulbous bows and transom sterns are nice speculations. Wishing for dual purpose armament is nice, but seriously? The best improvements the Germans could have implemented with this class of ship is crew training. The captains especially, as they are the ones who have the independent raider ship conundrum. That is not a criticism. The German of 1940 navy was schizophrenic in its expectations and desires from these captains. That it, the surface fleet, as a fleet, could be effective (Norway) when it had a clear purpose and mission is clear. Materially, for a small surface fleet, it pulls off some quite impressive early operations. Nothing wrong with its fighting spirit.

But that is not what the panzer ships were designed to do or what the captains assigned were supposed to do. These are hit and run singletons. The captains have to be bold timid like Raphael Semmes. The raider design adopted might have been a bit oversized for the mission. If I suggest technical improvements, it is in the margins, such as engines (diesels put a lot of noise into the water which British hydrophones can pick up at almost 30 km, whereas turbines only show up on sound gear about 5-7 km away.) Mechanical reliability uber alles. Shells and torpedoes need to work. At the Platte they didn't.

The battlegroup theory seems at first glance to resemble the task force concept, but the failure to take into account the need for a fleet trains or fleet logistics in general, shows that the thinking here is rudimentary. When even the British fail to understand this fundamental feature of carrier operations, it is not a harsh criticism of Rader. The Americans took a couple of years themselves to figure it out.


Best I can figure Raeder is summed up in a online paper by Canadian officer WAGNER VS RAEDER , but can't find it online!!!! If I could summarize- Raeder wanted to combine the effects 'Scheer's 1918 battle-cruiser raid' with the effects of Spee light cruiser raid in 1914'. He reasoned that any ship committed to southern hemisphere is one less than he has to face in the North Atlantic and in WW-I the allies had to send 10 warships for every raider committed overseas.

A British publication B4 WW-II on effects of WW-1 surface raids by the KL, confirmed that for every German warship deployed south , they had to deploy up to a dozen warships to hunt them down, during which time the average raider sunk ~ 10 allied merchants. A case had always been made for investing in U-Boats, but there was little though given to surface warships. Its a good read certainly worth the time.

https://archive.org/stream/ReviewOfGermanCruiserWarfare19141918#page/n1/mode/2up

German experiences from WW-I taught them that overseas raiders could be made to be more effective if they had sea planes to scout a wider area and relied on replenishment at sea [yes re-coaling at sea @ couple knots, always kept them on the move , thus making them harder to hunt & locate] . Just as important the greater the endurance of the raider the easier to escape. The raiders with these assets did well lasting for years, while most of the rest were located and neutralized quickly.

Applying these lessons to all surface raiders made eminent sense. Diesel could reach 3 NM per ton fuel [@ 18-20 knots], while their turbine counter parts were managing just over one NM per ton fuel. For the Germans diesels were a no brainer. These diesel warships had endurances of 17,000nm @ 13 knots or 8 weeks at sea and with replenishment at sea- nearly double that.

They drew up plans to use their civilian tanker fleet during war and then designed a fleet warship tankers able to sustain 15 knots @ 15,000nm and 21 knots top speed plus provide replenishment at sea. Each "Dithmarschen Tanker" could support a AGS sized warship for months.

http://www.german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/ships/auxships/index.html


With regards to British hydrophones - the warships of the day mounted short range high frequency sonar that are unlikely to have more than couple miles range at most - even the hydrophones ....so little risk there.
 
What about just rebuild the Deutschland battleships, might be significantly cheaper for defending the Baltic and use the saved money to buy usefully merchant ships for the export trade especially fast banana boats to bring fresh food to Germany....

According to the OXFORD COMPANION TO WW-II the Germans started the war with 4.5 million tons [gross] of merchant shipping or 1000 bigger merchants plus 500 smaller vessels. They did not need any more merchants...they just needed to clue them into there plans before the war begins.
 
The German Navy needs to be able to either pin in place or occupy a disproportionate amount of enemy vessels to relieve the ASW campaign against the submarines with a better means of scouting for the submarines. Ideally LPMP aircraft would scout but that is not practicable in this era for Germany before fall of France. Until true battleships are built these are the fleet in being.

It might be better to devote more space on this long ranged "Cruiser" to seaplanes for scouting, even better if they can attack merchants themselves at distance or engage enemy LRMP aircraft. These "pocket BBs" would draw out the RN heavies to guard convoys and force more Cruisers to search them, if they are speedy they can just keep moving, using their aircraft to cover enough ocean to be useful in the role of communicating convoy locations to submarines for ambush, picking off single ships as targets of opportunity. Thus these ships need to look very scary but I would sacrifice armor for speed first and range next, get them provisioned for long distances and extended operations from home, devote more space to the aircraft, and if possible build a seaplane fighter/attack/scout at least good enough to shoot down the British scouts. My improvement would be to build them as is, ersatz battleships, but faster than anything afloat and looking like they will gun all before them when they really just scout out the convoys and avoid battle.


Finally some one who understands the nature of the problem!

Friedman book NETWORK CENTRIC WARFARE articulates the problem quite well. Up until late 1943 German code crackers were listening into allied merchant traffic locating 1/2 of the convoys at sea from 1941-43, however -at any given time - they had nothing but a few wolf packs in the vicinity to find and attack such convoys. Further by then allied ASW was finally working and every convoy attack was increasingly costly.

The real problem was , while traffic pattern analysis allowed the KM to locate these convoy routes and crack the codes, the U-Boats had to conduct absurd levels of radio coms to gather the wolf-pack and attack. This ran against instructions that ordered all radio coms to be limited to just 3 characters. British study showed average of 100 Transmissions per hour at peak points. That allowed the British to eventually break the naval enigma and read these transmissions in near real time, thus knowing where to divert the convoy and then send in the ASW attack groups. Maybe more important it allowed the WALLIES to use HF/DF to immediately counter attack any attacking U-Boats.

What the KM needed was a remote platform to zero in on convoy route - find and shadow these convoys and broadcast their locations to the listening wolf packs, thus removing the need for massed communications and thus delaying any naval enigma cracking and limiting any direction finding counter attacks making HF/DF much less successful .
 
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That and heavy cruisers were identified as battleships numerous times during the war by all sides.

The best known is probably HMS Hood mistaking the Prinz Eugen as the Bismark at the start of the Denmark Strait battle. An error that might have contributed towards the destruction of Hood by not combining the fire of Hood and Prince Of Wales at the start.
 
what is meant by YMMV?

Your mileage may vary. My opinion (McPherson's) is not gospel and should not be accepted as such.

And to that end...

Best I can figure Raeder is summed up in a online paper by Canadian officer WAGNER VS RAEDER , but can't find it online!!!! If I could summarize- Raeder wanted to combine the effects 'Scheer's 1918 battle-cruiser raid' with the effects of Spee light cruiser raid in 1914'. He reasoned that any ship committed to southern hemisphere is one less than he has to face in the North Atlantic and in WW-I the allies had to send 10 warships for every raider committed overseas.

Here.

A British publication B4 WW-II on effects of WW-1 surface raids by the KL, confirmed that for every German warship deployed south , they had to deploy up to a dozen warships to hunt them down, during which time the average raider sunk ~ 10 allied merchants. A case had always been made for investing in U-Boats, but there was little though given to surface warships. Its a good read certainly worth the time.

https://archive.org/stream/ReviewOfGermanCruiserWarfare19141918#page/n1/mode/2up

By 1939, the long range maritime patrol aircraft (USN, IJN) handwriting was on the wall.

German experiences from WW-I taught them that overseas raiders could be made to be more effective if they had sea planes to scout a wider area and relied on replenishment at sea [yes re-coaling at sea @ couple knots, always kept them on the move , thus making them harder to hunt & locate] . Just as important the greater the endurance of the raider the easier to escape. The raiders with these assets did well lasting for years, while most of the rest were located and neutralized quickly.

Two comments? Coal in 1939? These raiders could not afford the time for scuttles and buckets in 1939. One must not underestimate the effect of British cable station networks and radio listening posts.

Same for a seaplane. Unmarked seaplane is an open RRR broadcast. Home in on me is a guaranteed bullseye.

Applying these lessons to all surface raiders made eminent sense. Diesel could reach 3 NM per ton fuel [@ 18-20 knots], while their turbine counter parts were managing just over one NM per ton fuel. For the Germans diesels were a no brainer. These diesel warships had endurances of 17,000nm @ 13 knots or 8 weeks at sea and with replenishment at sea- nearly double that.

If the diesels work. Big qualifier.

They drew up plans to use their civilian tanker fleet during war and then designed a fleet warship tankers able to sustain 15 knots @ 15,000nm and 21 knots top speed plus provide replenishment at sea. Each "Dithmarschen Tanker" could support a AGS sized warship for months.

This worked for two years.

http://www.german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/ships/auxships/index.html


With regards to British hydrophones - the warships of the day mounted short range high frequency sonar that are unlikely to have more than couple miles range at most - even the hydrophones ....so little risk there.

Explain Prinz Eugen and how she escaped.

British hydrophones were not as good as the GHG arrays, but the hydrophones were capable of listening into the first convergence zone surface duct. That is about 15-30 km.

============================================

MichaelWest said:
The German Navy needs to be able to either pin in place or occupy a disproportionate amount of enemy vessels to relieve the ASW campaign against the submarines with a better means of scouting for the submarines. Ideally LPMP aircraft would scout but that is not practicable in this era for Germany before fall of France. Until true battleships are built these are the fleet in being.

There is no alternative to LRMPs. The recon has to be by four engine aircraft. Where the Germans fail is the exploitation of traffic analysis. Those FW Condors do not conduct radio intelligence. HuffDuff is as important as code cracking.

It might be better to devote more space on this long ranged "Cruiser" to seaplanes for scouting, even better if they can attack merchants themselves at distance or engage enemy LRMP aircraft. These "pocket BBs" would draw out the RN heavies to guard convoys and force more Cruisers to search them, if they are speedy they can just keep moving, using their aircraft to cover enough ocean to be useful in the role of communicating convoy locations to submarines for ambush, picking off single ships as targets of opportunity. Thus these ships need to look very scary but I would sacrifice armor for speed first and range next, get them provisioned for long distances and extended operations from home, devote more space to the aircraft, and if possible build a seaplane fighter/attack/scout at least good enough to shoot down the British scouts. My improvement would be to build them as is, ersatz battleships, but faster than anything afloat and looking like they will gun all before them when they really just scout out the convoys and avoid battle.

Alternate proposal. The stupid plane can be refueled by submarine tanker.

Finally some one who understands the nature of the problem!

One might be able to define the problem, but some of the proposed solutions may not work.

Friedman book NETWORK CENTRIC WARFARE articulates the problem quite well. Up until late 1943 German code crackers were listening into allied merchant traffic locating 1/2 of the convoys at sea from 1941-43, however -at any given time - they had nothing but a few wolf packs in the vicinity to find and attack such convoys. Further by then allied ASW was finally working and every convoy attack was increasingly costly.

This situation was more a lack of preparation than a lack of capability of the means to hand.

The real problem was , while traffic pattern analysis allowed the KM to locate these convoy routes and crack the codes, the U-Boats had to conduct absurd levels of radio coms to gather the wolf-pack and attack. This ran against instructions that ordered all radio coms to be limited to just 3 characters. British study showed average of 100 Transmissions per hour at peak points. That allowed the British to eventually break the naval enigma and read these transmissions in near real time, thus knowing where to divert the convoy and then send in the ASW attack groups. Maybe more important it allowed the WALLIES to use HF/DF to immediately counter attack any attacking U-Boats.

Radio discipline is a laxity shared by everyone. Burst transmitters (`1944) and listen only orders (* 1924), plus a directed vector attack system (* 1945) that changes daily combined with independent attack tactics helps mitigate. And let us not forget that the Germans were not the only ones to screw up this way in the submarine war. Japanese kills and American kills were radio intelligence supported.

What the KM needed was a remote platform to zero in on convoy route(s) -- find and shadow these convoys and broadcast their locations to the listening wolf packs, thus removing the need for massed communications and thus delaying any naval enigma cracking and limiting any direction finding counter attacks making HF/DF much less successful .

See above.
 
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Finally some one who understands the nature of the problem!

Friedman book NETWORK CENTRIC WARFARE articulates the problem quite well. Up until late 1943 German code crackers were listening into allied merchant traffic locating 1/2 of the convoys at sea from 1941-43, however -at any given time - they had nothing but a few wolf packs in the vicinity to find and attack such convoys. Further by then allied ASW was finally working and every convoy attack was increasingly costly.

The real problem was , while traffic pattern analysis allowed the KM to locate these convoy routes and crack the codes, the U-Boats had to conduct absurd levels of radio coms to gather the wolf-pack and attack. This ran against instructions that ordered all radio coms to be limited to just 3 characters. British study showed average of 100 Transmissions per hour at peak points. That allowed the British to eventually break the naval enigma and read these transmissions in near real time, thus knowing where to divert the convoy and then send in the ASW attack groups. Maybe more important it allowed the WALLIES to use HF/DF to immediately counter attack any attacking U-Boats.

What the KM needed was a remote platform to zero in on convoy route - find and shadow these convoys and broadcast their locations to the listening wolf packs, thus removing the need for massed communications and thus delaying any naval enigma cracking and limiting any direction finding counter attacks making HF/DF much less successful .

Thank you for the compliment, but as another critic adroitly observed, to see the problem is but half the battle. My understanding of the U-boat war is that it needed to surge early and cut the British lifeline, and keep it cut long enough to make Britain yield thus it makes sense to argue for more U-boats, indeed they needed many more to effect the strangulation of Britain, but then that depends on insight as to when do we go to war. My wish list would be rather long but a command and control cruiser seems about the best bet in this era looking forward from past experiences rather than jumping with hindsight. The window is closing for slow nearly blind submersible raiders, it is closing for lone surface raiders, aircraft are not quite the solution alone and many other tools are still primitive in the realm of radar, sonar and sigint. Taking aircraft to sea makes sense for this ship but those too have a finite window. And here I wonder if the Airship might have had a better part to play in getting a high altitude relay point in an era before satellites are even dreamt of. It should have spurred looking at how to search large areas from the third dimension, airborne radar and snooping for signals aloft. But that is another rabbit trail.
 

FBKampfer

Banned
The trouble with airborne radar was its limited range. For night fighters, for example, the range was less than the MkI eyeball in daylight.

Stick the gear for a truly effective AWACS in a Condor, and it would take up just about every inch and pound of its practical load capacity.

Additionally you have the problem of submerged U-boats not being able to receive the transmissions.
 
So, how could the Deutschlands be improved, with the constraint that Germany was going to pursue surface warfare. So no canceling them for destroyers to support the U-boats, or capital ships. The goal is to improve the three Deutschland class panzerschiffe, Deutschland, Admiral Graf Spee, and Admiral Scheer, as combat ships, with the missions of commerce raiding, patrolling areas of German maritime interest, and engaging enemy surface combatants.

Additional rules are that they must use the 28cm C/28 guns (but not necessarily in the 2x 3 gun turrets fore and aft), and must remain officially tresty compliant (noting they were over weight OTL, and may be so here as well), so no early AGNA.

Dirty tricks, deciet, and lying are all highly encouraged.

Come on boys, wank the hell out of these boats.
Seems most have forgotten the rules. Id say cheat them from 10 to 12000 tons, use nickel steel as much as possible, have an internal splinter armor belt and only install a future underwater armor belt (see below). Install with steam and save space for a lot of extra diesel engines or vice versa. Make acrediculously High freeboard and shallow draft.
One day you decide Versailles dont apply and take the weight to 15-16000 tons with armor and propulsion installation. Not sure it could take a third turret as suggested, but speed is more important.
Its gonna look like an outrageous provocation (as the OTL ships), but what Can the French do. They abide to the treaty. At least officially.
 
One day you decide Versailles dont apply and take the weight to 15-16000 tons with armor and propulsion installation.
Would it still not look like a much larger ship very early on I'm not sure how to hide its size if everybody thinks its 50% over in early 30s it might well course problems for Germany and different reactions from GB/Fr?

Remember that the first ship was not very far over in OTL as its VT not WT so its not 10,000t standard its 10,000t what ever Germany likes as its not defined in the text and WNT is later so it can perfectly legitimately go for 10,000t super light and not count a lot of bits that are counted in standard displacement.

She had a Design displacement of 12,630t but that might be 11,630 standard or 10,630 light and that's to close to really be able to tell if its cheating as reading RN sources about others navy's they unofficially agreed that 500t on the 8" CA was acceptable accidentally.
 
Would it still not look like a much larger ship very early on I'm not sure how to hide its size if everybody thinks its 50% over in early 30s it might well course problems for Germany and different reactions from GB/Fr?

Remember that the first ship was not very far over in OTL as its VT not WT so its not 10,000t standard its 10,000t what ever Germany likes as its not defined in the text and WNT is later so it can perfectly legitimately go for 10,000t super light and not count a lot of bits that are counted in standard displacement.

She had a Design displacement of 12,630t but that might be 11,630 standard or 10,630 light and that's to close to really be able to tell if its cheating as reading RN sources about others navy's they unofficially agreed that 500t on the 8" CA was acceptable accidentally.
My point is that they would squeeze in 2000 tons as OTL as you described and that is more or less it. It would not look heavier, it would look like a design meant to be heavier when it finished getting the armor and engines installed. But it would not be in obvious violation of Versailles-yet.
 
A better choice for the KM might be the Do-26. It used four JU-205 diesel engines in two push-pull configuration. In 1939 279 of these engines were mounted on two different flying boats. IF combined they should allow for 70 x DO-26 seaplanes to be built followed by 86 x Do-26 float planes in 1940 [344 diesel engines] and 71 in 1941 [285 engines]; plus 56 in 1942 [222 engines].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_26

These remarkable float planes could manage 208mph top speed and still cruise for 4400-5500miles @ 180 to 190mph [24 to 29 hours]. Scouting for convoys each patrol plane could sweep at least 21nm x 180 mph -each hour; amounting to about 100,000 nm^2 swept. As a rule every 26 planes built per year should enable one daily sortie. Thus this force should be able to sweep about 300,000nm^2 daily out to Iceland/Greenland and back. Enough to cover the GIUK gap daily from 1939 to 1942 .

The rest of those engines were the BMW-132/323 , and the CONDOR FW-200 is the obvious choice. 315 CONDORS could be made instead of all the Arado-196; the HE-115 and the DO-24. With top speed of 225mph and 14 hours @ 180mph, these can sweep 180 mph x 21 x 14= 52920 nm^2 per condor
1939 = 75 condor 300 BMW engines
1940 = 65 condor 260 BMW engines
1941 = 27 condor 108 BMW engines
1942 = 61 condor 245 BMW engines
1943 = 87 condor 347 BMW engines

In addition to the above 286 CONDORS were also HISTORICALLY built for LW- the combined fleet should look like.

1939 = 1+ 75 = 76 condor or roughly 154,700 nm^2 per day swept [254,000= 409,700]
1940 = 38 + 65 = 103 condor or roughly 209,600 nm^2 per day swept [312,000= 521,600]
1941 = 58+ 27 = 85 condor or roughly 173,000 nm^2 per day swept [257,645 = 430,600]
1942 = 84 + 61 = 145 condor or roughly 295,100 nm^2 per day swept [203,213= 498,300]
1943 = 76 + 87 = 163 condor or roughly 345,000 nm^2 per day swept

Combined with the Do-26 patrols this should average ALMOST 1/2 million nm^2 for the first half of the war.

North Sea is 195,000nm^2
Norwegian Sea is 470,000nm^2 [half way to Greenland]
English Channel is 25,670nm^2
GIUK GAP is 100-200,000nm^2

choices choices.
 
The trouble with airborne radar was its limited range. For night fighters, for example, the range was less than the MkI eyeball in daylight.

One guesses that this is in reference to state of the art in 1939? A mention of radar dirigibles has already been made. Aside from the large slow target and the curvature of the earth problems, and considering the means to hand for the Germans and the British (Do-24s and Condors versus Sunderlands and Catalinas, the emphasis should have been on radio listening gear in a suitable patrol aircraft. It still would have been a large payload, but the state of the art was good enough for that kind of ELINT, either to hear enemy fighter or attack plane chatter, or to listen in on yakking enemy shipping. The British catch on. The Germans apparently did not, or not so that it mattered before the British swept their air assets away from the mid Atlantic.

Stick the gear for a truly effective AWACS in a Condor, and it would take up just about every inch and pound of its practical load capacity.

Might want to see about a small surface search radar. That opportunity comes late in 1941 when the British lose an ASV set from one their own patrollers which was force landed. This results in the FuG 200 Hohentwiel which sees installation into FW Condors Ju-88s and several different types of German seaplane torpedo bombers around 1942. The set could detect a freighter at ~ 80 km and a surfaced U-boat at 40 km. (Convoys~ 150 km) It could not be easily adapted for air search/intercept, but the set formed the basis for a type of German U-boat radar similar in function to the American SJ series. The problem with this radar, as with many of the period radars was its slow paint rate, which meant that enemy receivers could generate bearing on it before it could generate a positive target echo.

Additionally you have the problem of submerged U-boats not being able to receive the transmissions.

This is difficult to solve with 1936-1940 technology. The obvious solution, a jettisonable throwaway float buoy aerial with a burst receiver/recorder/transmitter is trialed in 1955 and is the current today solution. In `1939 the only nation with tech that even approaches that kind of capability is Holland. The US, Germany, Japan, and the UK can get there, but it requires better recorders, (the US has wire loop recorders, for example.) some kind of analog signal compression (Thank you Heddy Lamarr.) and a saltwater resistant (that means plastic encased) aerial of the proper design. It is not easy to do and keep it small. Second best is to put the Funk aerial into the periscope farm and run at snort depth. Does anyone in 1939 understand that diesel electrics give off short ranged radio noise?
 
A better choice for the KM might be the Do-26. It used four JU-205 diesel engines in two push-pull configuration. In 1939 279 of these engines were mounted on two different flying boats. IF combined they should allow for 70 x DO-26 seaplanes to be built followed by 86 x Do-26 float planes in 1940 [344 diesel engines] and 71 in 1941 [285 engines]; plus 56 in 1942 [222 engines].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_26

As with any such maritime scheme; (The Russians try this presently.) one must look at the fighter/radar coverage.

GIUK_1945.png


These remarkable float planes could manage 208mph top speed and still cruise for 4400-5500miles @ 180 to 190mph [24 to 29 hours]. Scouting for convoys each patrol plane could sweep at least 21nm x 180 mph -each hour; amounting to about 100,000 nm^2 swept. As a rule every 26 planes built per year should enable one daily sortie. Thus this force should be able to sweep about 300,000nm^2 daily out to Iceland/Greenland and back. Enough to cover the GIUK gap daily from 1939 to 1942 .

The rest of those engines were the BMW-132/323 , and the CONDOR FW-200 is the obvious choice. 315 CONDORS could be made instead of all the Arado-196; the HE-115 and the DO-24. With top speed of 225mph and 14 hours @ 180mph, these can sweep 180 mph x 21 x 14= 52920 nm^2 per condor
1939 = 75 condor 300 BMW engines
1940 = 65 condor 260 BMW engines
1941 = 27 condor 108 BMW engines
1942 = 61 condor 245 BMW engines
1943 = 87 condor 347 BMW engines

In addition to the above 286 CONDORS were also HISTORICALLY built for LW- the combined fleet should look like.

1939 = 1+ 75 = 76 condor or roughly 154,700 nm^2 per day swept [254,000= 409,700]
1940 = 38 + 65 = 103 condor or roughly 209,600 nm^2 per day swept [312,000= 521,600]
1941 = 58+ 27 = 85 condor or roughly 173,000 nm^2 per day swept [257,645 = 430,600]
1942 = 84 + 61 = 145 condor or roughly 295,100 nm^2 per day swept [203,213= 498,300]
1943 = 76 + 87 = 163 condor or roughly 345,000 nm^2 per day swept

Combined with the Do-26 patrols this should average ALMOST 1/2 million nm^2 for the first half of the war.

North Sea is 195,000nm^2
Norwegian Sea is 470,000nm^2 [half way to Greenland]
English Channel is 25,670nm^2
GIUK GAP is 100-200,000nm^2

choices choices.

Evasion routing and low/low/low flight profiles to avoid surface based allied radar, aboard ships and on land could chop those numbers in half.

Now some questions can be asked with this additional planning information:

1. Can Junkers, Dornier, and FW allocate sufficient resources to meet the numbers speculated?
2. Will the Allies allow it? They have a bombing campaign in progress.
3. Will the Allies allow it? The antidote in the mid Atlantic is the F4F Wildcat. Plenty of those available.
 
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NoMommsen

Donor
@PSL though your proposal is kind of ... "off topic", as it does not improve the "Deutschlands" ... ANY proposal including the Do 26 is worth considering ... IMO one of the most bautyfull seaplanes ever
 
Reluctant Allies about naval cooperation with Japan (or lack thereof) had Raeder wanting to send Leipzig light cruiser out as raider, does not seem like a very good plan but at least a window into their thinking at the time.

keep the Panzerschiffe as escorts of sort for the 4 large BBs in home waters? sacrifice an enlarged fleet of auxiliary cruisers and light cruisers while maintaining a fleet-in-being (on steroids)

in that scenario they would want to modify the Panzerschiffe with DP guns simply to streamline the size of the crew?
 
Now I agree that these ships were ersatz-Battleships, probably worth only their impact at holding the British battle fleet in home waters. The hurdle is to get the surface fleet to leverage itself to fight the war of attrition versus British industry. As a command and control vessel would it not be on the run so to speak, needing scant armor, virtually no defense against the torpedo and only using its guns to finish lighter foes and subdue the occasional merchant? This is a rapier in the sword's sheath. So again I think the Germans need a way to get airborne eyes out into the Atlantic.

And I know it is often commented that Germany does not need aircraft carriers but I think the side discussion regarding the importance of aerial reconnaissance shows that Germany needed an aircraft carrier to put her planes on the other side of the UK. Until one can assume that there are bases in France to fly to out into the Atlantic the Germans can best use air only over the North Sea and Baltic. I have tried to find some insight into average sea state in the Atlantic and better understand if sea planes are truly ruled out. I assume if weather is that bad the plane cannot fly, but is that often enough to make taking them to sea not worth it?

The Germans simply ran out of time and did not over come the hurdles to field an effective carrier, but would a batch of fast liners capable of conversion to light carriers focused to take a scout and maybe fighters to sea be a better bet? Here our heavy is a fast escort, keeping any other cruiser from killing the carrier.

And to further add an off-topic, where Germany is constrained by time, resources and diplomacy, why not build a true commerce raider? My thinking is that the Panzerschiffe simply were too few in number to draw away enough forces to spread the RN thin enough to give the U-boats freedom to hunt, thus e need something to bugger the math. Can we build a merchant faster than the RN cruisers it will encounter, give it enough armor to protect it from a strafing or merchant's guns, allow it space to operate a sea plane and give it mighty endurance? These wolves hidden in the flock of German merchants might simply be her modern Clippers, running fast to tropical ports for bananas, at war they can run down merchants and escape patrols sufficient to commit too many cruisers to distant seas. Freeing the few heavies to threaten Britain in the home waters.
 
Now I agree that these ships were ersatz-Battleships, probably worth only their impact at holding the British battle fleet in home waters. The hurdle is to get the surface fleet to leverage itself to fight the war of attrition versus British industry. As a command and control vessel would it not be on the run so to speak, needing scant armor, virtually no defense against the torpedo and only using its guns to finish lighter foes and subdue the occasional merchant? This is a rapier in the sword's sheath. So again I think the Germans need a way to get airborne eyes out into the Atlantic.

The British have too many cruisers and too many good cruiser captains to make a "command ship" such as described viable. The German has to be able to take on a County and maybe accompanying Tribals to escape. Speed will not do it.

And I know it is often commented that Germany does not need aircraft carriers but I think the side discussion regarding the importance of aerial reconnaissance shows that Germany needed an aircraft carrier to put her planes on the other side of the UK. Until one can assume that there are bases in France to fly to out into the Atlantic the Germans can best use air only over the North Sea and Baltic. I have tried to find some insight into average sea state in the Atlantic and better understand if sea planes are truly ruled out. I assume if weather is that bad the plane cannot fly, but is that often enough to make taking them to sea not worth it?

Aircraft carriers need bodyguard ships. The usual 1930s ratio was at least two cruisers and four destroyers plus tanker support. Where is Germany going to get the spare ships? Also aircraft carriers need to operate in pairs. One covers the other with a CAP during deck cycles. This is stuff the Germans do not know and cannot know until they go operational. The USN knows this by 1938. The British by 1930. That German carrier's life expectancy in the North Atlantic is therefore mere hours. If nothing else, British T boats and US subs will be hunting as soon as allied LRMP patrollers get a radio fix. Did I mention that 1930s aircraft carrier operations at sea are radio intensive? Air to ship chatter means HUFFDUFF and a visit by some Swordfish or even torpedo carrying Catalinas or Sunderlands soon thereafter.

The Germans simply ran out of time and did not over come the hurdles to field an effective carrier, but would a batch of fast liners capable of conversion to light carriers focused to take a scout and maybe fighters to sea be a better bet? Here our heavy is a fast escort, keeping any other cruiser from killing the carrier.

See above.

And to further add an off-topic, where Germany is constrained by time, resources and diplomacy, why not build a true commerce raider? My thinking is that the Panzerschiffe simply were too few in number to draw away enough forces to spread the RN thin enough to give the U-boats freedom to hunt, thus e need something to bugger the math. Can we build a merchant faster than the RN cruisers it will encounter, give it enough armor to protect it from a strafing or merchant's guns, allow it space to operate a sea plane and give it mighty endurance? These wolves hidden in the flock of German merchants might simply be her modern Clippers, running fast to tropical ports for bananas, at war they can run down merchants and escape patrols sufficient to commit too many cruisers to distant seas. Freeing the few heavies to threaten Britain in the home waters.

That makes a great deal of sense.

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Some comments about U-boats; ASDIC and submarine warfare as it really was in the 1930s.

The snort is not some game changer or magic cure-all for what remains an air breathing diving torpedo boat. What it does is actually make the U-boat noisier when recharging batteries, because now the diesels are in the water rather than above it, thus extending acoustic leakage well into the first convergence zone. That means British hydrophones have a nice loud certain bearing fix about 10-15 kilometers distant instead of an iffy radar fix at 5-10 km. Snorts allow a max semi-submerged speed of about 5 m/s (~ 9 knots).

Suicide in the open ocean if the snort is misused.

What the Germans need is a submarine radar with a good air search feature before they ever think about snorting. They never get a good one. Also, while it seems ludicrous (even in modern times we do not have good ones) a silenced charging engine for the battery bank is something they should have crash researched. That is what the modern AIP sub is really about.
 
During WWI American Shipbuilding Corp. designed a "blockade runner" merchant vessel. All I've ever gotten ahold of is picture of the design, no particulars. However, knowing AmShip were no rank amateurs, that they COULD design such a vessel during WWI, there seems no reason the DKM couldn't get a design like this from German sources.
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