Interesting, I will have to look into those books. I am always on the look for good sources of WWII material!
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The only thing I want to stress here is the use of UBoats as measure of production is simply because [A] they are plentiful later on and thats all I had data for. Later the model can be refinded more. I also just got DK Browns "Nelson to Vanguard" and the other battleship book on USN. Both look excellent at first glance. In Browns book he has some interesting info on the number of 'man months' to build 'typical warships' but no way of referencing this to man hours. If man months are 30 days @ 24 hours per day , the man hours are many times that of german figures????
He reports
BB 45,000 man months & 54 months
CV 31,115 & 46
FIJI 15017 & 28
DIDO 8214 & 28
DD'M' 4991 & 28
HUNT 2944 & 15
CORVETTE 922 & 10
SUB 2700 & 20.
Source 'ADM 1 11968'
He also reports River class frigates took 350-400,000 man hours. River class boats took on average 13 +/- 4 months to build... so I would hazard a guess at 9480 hours x 42 workers. If we go on 8 hour day thats 1667 man months or 1315 man months based on 10hour day?
Using that guide, the early war German Uboats were 1645 "man months" [based on 10 hour day], to build while late war were about 1/2 that.
Okay I buy that, it would be possible at the cost of some fewer Uboats at the beginning of the war to have the S&G upgraded and the GZ completed. I am still unconvinced that the GZ would have been anything expert a target unless the Germans did much more with building up a carrier air arm in the 1920's and 1930's. Maybe something on the order of having German volunteers train in the Japanese military? Except I don't think there is anyway in $$^%^@ that the Japanese navy will accept German volunteers.
Other than that I can't think of any navy that has a carrier that would take German pilots in the 1920's or 1930's. So the Germans would need to do an early conversion of a merchant ship (like the USN Wolverine) for training which would really tip off the British and the French - since it would need to happen in 1932 at the latest. So lots of butterflies there.
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To speculate here we need to suspend history since it clouds most peoples judgment with ref to nazi & Hitler. In the pre Hitler days their was a directive to violate the ToV in any way possible without getting caught or with 'plausible denial'.
Defence minister Groener under the Stressmann admin shocked the Reichwehr into rebuilding the armed forces well beyond ToV levels starting in late 1928. For its part the Navy negotiated with successive governemnts and settled on a ship building plan in 1932 with a mission of breaking any Franco Polish Blockade of Germany controling the Baltic and commerce warfare against French ahipping overseas.
1 x 'HMS Glorious' stlye Aircraft carrier
6 x Panzerschiff
12 x Cruisers
44 x Destroyers
16 x Uboats.
plus a fleet air arm of upto 400 planes [mostly seaplanes?]
When Hitler took power 1/2 of this was in the pipelines [3 Panzershiff , 5 cruiser and 12 destroyers and plans were on for another dozen destroyers plus some Uboats]
At that time the KM had 30% of defense budge, but when Hitler took over he blocked further funding ordering the KM to be a simple coastal defense force with Baltic as its operating zone. He had plans for the UK and didn't want his navy wrecking this inititive. Hitler rebuffed any of Admiral Raeder attempts to redirect the KM to face the RN , so he had to spend the bulk of the 1930s just arguing Hitler back to the pre Hitler naval stategy against the French. That clouded all of the Navys and the Wehrmacht rearmament plans.
If you remove Hitlers infatuation with the Brits and leave naval matters to continued development, some kind of fleet air arm will develope through the 1930s. This will no doubt follow some path of an conversion of merchant ship in the deep resesses of the Baltic with worrying romors abounding. However since Auxiliary ships were never covered by treaty talks it might go unnoticed until late 1930s. By then the RN had already conceeded German carrier development to 1/3 of RN size.
True, true, but I think all you would have is convoys being used as bait, with much heaver escort pulled out of the home fleet. I could see the Brits using 2-3 BB's and 3-5 CA's plus DD's in escort to giant convoys. Which begs the question of would that work? and what the impact to the British economy be in the short run.
There is an interesting article that argues that the Uboat war didn't really effect the British economy that much so one would estimate that nothing could alter that outcome.
http://www.jmss.org/2003/spring-summer/documents/rev-weir-cdfai2.pdf
This is one of the reasons I have moved away from the Uboat war towards thinking of a strategy more inline with the basic German Blitzkrieg methods.