Battle of the Atlantic.....

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.
 
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.
You would get a much heavier escort (as was occasionally done OTL), & if necessary, convoys would be stopped temporarily. There would most certainly be more attention paid to finding & destroying raiders in the interim; convoys must, must continue (tho the linked PDF suggests maybe not...).
 
If man months are 30 days @ 24 hours per day , the man hours are many times that of German figures????


Well in general I was taught to estimate a man month at either 160 working hours or 200 working hours (40 hours/week x 4 weeks/month or 50 hours/week x 4 weeks per month) so I would expect that your calculations are high for the number of man hours.
 
You would get a much heavier escort (as was occasionally done OTL), & if necessary, convoys would be stopped temporarily. There would most certainly be more attention paid to finding & destroying raiders in the interim; convoys must, must continue (tho the linked PDF suggests maybe not...).


I do think that the author of the PDF missed part of the picture...he covered actual economic impact but there is a psychological impact. If the Brits though they were losing then they were losing. If they thought they were winning then they were winning.

So having some number of German ships running around the north Atlantic blowing up convoys makes them feel more like they are losing - even if the actual economic impact is small.
 
i think we are giving gz too much credit again its aircraft had zero specialization
the me109t with 10 minutes at full throttle for combat and a reserve for take off and landing would have had at best a range of 125-150nm with a aux fuel tank.
against a sea hurricaine or seafire it is at a severe disadvantage and its landing gear is not suited to carrier ops
goering always said what flys belongs to me so guess what no special naval air units even if the pilots are well tried they cant overcome the fact that their planes stink.

if gz bismark and tirpitz break out they are going to have a rough go maybe they successfully attack a couple convoys but they can only hunt in the middle of the atlantic far from bases and resupply... the brits will use catalinas and radar and guess what if they destroy a couple convoys the americans will also send some cats from their coast as well and send reports to the brits just like they did with the uboats before pearl harbor
the brits detach the home fleet and force h with their decent radar sets and suffer a few losses and sink the germans completely the whole idea is a non starter
 
So having some number of German ships running around the north Atlantic blowing up convoys makes them feel more like they are losing - even if the actual economic impact is small.

The effect of large surface units was to scatter convoys for smaller units to destroy. Whereas in the Arctic the Luftwaffe was available to join the U-Boats that would not be the case in the Atlantic.
 
The effect of large surface units was to scatter convoys for smaller units to destroy. Whereas in the Arctic the Luftwaffe was available to join the U-Boats that would not be the case in the Atlantic.

Well except for the Condors and the fact that the GZ is available in this TL. So the large surface units would kill some, scatter the rest which gives the U-Boats a target rich environment and the strikes off of the GZ could pick off the high value targets (Escorts and Tankers).

I expect that the actual impact on any individual convoy would be devastating, but the likelihood of intercepting a non-escorted convoy would go down as the British moved ships around - not a lot of point to keeping a large static home fleet to keep the Germans bottled up if the Germans are already out killing convoys!
 
the only way it could possibly work would be a pod much earlier... like mid 1930's the germans would have to have navalized aircraft with increased range and goering would either have to die or lose a lot of ego
also a stuka is terrible carrier bomber ( i do understand the work they did against ships ((single ships)) around crete
the stuka is terribly slow and vulnerable to aa fire and you want to send it against battleships, cruisers, aa cruisers, and carriers with defending fighters

maybe if they navalized a ju88 that could have some possibilities at least it wouldnt be a turkey
 
I do think that the author of the PDF missed part of the picture...he covered actual economic impact but there is a psychological impact. If the Brits though they were losing then they were losing. If they thought they were winning then they were winning.

So having some number of German ships running around the north Atlantic blowing up convoys makes them feel more like they are losing - even if the actual economic impact is small.
Absolutely right. In about April '43, just as the tide was turning against U-boats, there was a big convoy battle (HX.229?) where the losses were about as bad as they ever got, & the senior Brits seriously considered abandoning convoy as ineffective.:eek::eek: They were winning--slowly, but winning--yet were nearly convinced to throw it away...
 
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