German Naval Rearmament With A Twist

One obvious error in OTL's Washington Naval Treaty was the limitation on cruiser guns to 8 inches, a hole which the pocket battleships and other vessels were intended to exploit.
 
One obvious error in OTL's Washington Naval Treaty was the limitation on cruiser guns to 8 inches, a hole which the pocket battleships and other vessels were intended to exploit.

The Pocket battleships were too slow to be effective against standard cruisers which could easily out run them. Plus only having (6) 11 inch guns as opposed to (9) 8 inch guns negated a lot of their advantage in fire power.
 
In Fact the Brooklyn Class CL was build to hunt down the Pocket Battleships and destroy it in Gunfire with 15 x 6 in naval Guns . with a rate of fire of about 4 rounds off to the Pocket Battle ships 1 .
 
Nope.
Not even close.
Read the Wages of Destruction, it destroys a load of the myths concerning German production.

I read it and I'm afraid not. Its just another book in the on going dialetic. There are alot of problems with the data his math formula is based on. resent German publications have altered the landscape considerably.

Do you know for instance that the socall resource crunch of the late 1930s was fabricated by the traditional peace time steel consumers, themselves as they hoarded steel well into the war, leaving insufficent quantities to carry out the various armaments building programmes.

The last thing they wanted to do was to lose their traditional market shares , for some short term industrial boom that 'if Hitler was correct' , would all be over in a matter of a year or two anyway. So they refused to mass produce anything military, if it upset there traditional industrial product line and kept putting the governement off.

When Hitlers governement put pressure on them, they reliqiushed a little bit and agreed to build weapons only if it fit into their existing factory structure. This was Speers main contribution because he finaly was able to [with Hitlers enabling], wrestled control over these companies and force them to devote the bulk of their factory space to the armaments programme of his choosing.

read more in...
Christoph Buchheim, "German Industry in the Nazi Period" , 2008. ISBN 978-3-515-09150-3
 
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I read it and I'm afraid not. Its just another book in the on going dialetic. There are alot of problems with the data his math formula is based on. resent German publications have altered the landscape considerably.

Do you know for instance that the socall resource crunch of the late 1930s was fabricated by the traditional peace time steel consumers, themselves as they hoarded steel well into the war, leaving insufficent quantities to carry out the various armaments building programmes.

The last thing they wanted to do was to lose their traditional market shares , for some short term industrial boom that 'if Hitler was correct' , would all be over in a matter of a year or two anyway. So they refused to mass produce anything military, if it upset there traditional industrial product line and kept putting the governement off.

When Hitlers governement put pressure on them, they reliqiushed a little bit and agreed to build weapons only if it fit into their existing factory structure. This was Speers main contribution because he finaly was able to [with Hitlers enabling], wrestled control over these companies and force them to devote the bulk of their factory space to the armaments programme of his choosing.

read more in...
Christoph Buchheim, "German Industry in the Nazi Period" , 2008. ISBN 978-3-515-09150-3

Hmm, quite a few factual errors in your comments there.

'refused to mass produce anything military'. Like what? They certainly tried to plan mass production of aircraft, and u-boats...tanks too, with less success.

I'm also more than a little dubious about all this hoarded steel (it isnt exactly inconspicuous, you know, a big pile of steel...) when it was needed. One would have suspected that anyone from the military or government visiting the factories would have become just a trifle suspicious (and if you dont think such people visit, and crawl all over, regularly, you've never been in industry..they're a bloody nuisance...).

Traditional market share? Of WHAT, exactly? It wasn't consumer products...or are you referring to their export markets? certainly Germany did export during the war, as did Britain, for similar (although different) realpolitik reasons.

And while you claim errors in the math, the data in WoD does match up with the figures for German production.
 
Hmm, quite a few factual errors in your comments there.

'refused to mass produce anything military'. Like what? They certainly tried to plan mass production of aircraft, and u-boats...tanks too, with less success.

I'm also more than a little dubious about all this hoarded steel (it isnt exactly inconspicuous, you know, a big pile of steel...) when it was needed. One would have suspected that anyone from the military or government visiting the factories would have become just a trifle suspicious (and if you dont think such people visit, and crawl all over, regularly, you've never been in industry..they're a bloody nuisance...).

Traditional market share? Of WHAT, exactly? It wasn't consumer products...or are you referring to their export markets? certainly Germany did export during the war, as did Britain, for similar (although different) realpolitik reasons.

And while you claim errors in the math, the data in WoD does match up with the figures for German production.

I belive Germany was still makeing autos for the Civilian market up untill 1943 .
 
In Fact the Brooklyn Class CL was build to hunt down the Pocket Battleships and destroy it in Gunfire with 15 x 6 in naval Guns . with a rate of fire of about 4 rounds off to the Pocket Battle ships 1 .

Apparently the Brooklyn class was designed and built to counter the Japanese Mogami class, not the pocket battleships. That they would have been used in that role is possible, but that was not the reason they were created.
 
At the time of the designing of the Deutschalnd class heavy cruiser, no such thing was even conidered as a large light cruiser with 15 or more QF 6 inch guns, so this is irrelevant to discuss. Only with the comming of Mogami, the type of large light cruiser with the same size as the already present Heavy Cruiser was beginning. Normal contemporary cruisers, in the same period of design of the Deutschland, were either the Large 10,000 ton Heavy 8 inch cruiser, or the much smaller 6 inch cruiser, normally around 5,000 to 7,000 ton, with between 6 and 8 main QF guns.

First to note is that the Deutschland Class heavy cruiser was to be controverial to start with, being designed to bypass the limmitations of the Versailles Treaty. As a long ranged heavy cruiser, rather than a short ranged coast defense ship, which was actually thought of on the treaty, the ship posed serious troubles in the minds of the most likely opponments, especially the UK and France. No one at that time knew the type actually was a quite traditional modern cruiser with a slightly slower speed than contemporary ships and an abnormal heavy armament. This also meant the ship was equally to other cruisers in protection, being only partially armored to defeat shelling from cruisers, with most of the hull vunerable.

Difference in armament to a heavy cruiser is not that great, as both the 11 inch and 8 inch gun had a slow rate of fire, at best for both 2 rpm. (although the British 8 inch gun could in theory fire op to 5 rpm) The general point was: who scored the first hit. Since the German firecontroll was far more superior to those of other in the days before radar existed, the german cruiser outgunned the opponent.

With the smaller light cruiser the german design was less well capable to defend itself, as even the smaller light cruiser with 6 or 8 QF guns could shell much faster, opposed to the german cruiser. Since the light cruiser also was normally smaller and more manouvreble, it offered a slightly more difficult target, so once it got into range and could use its QF 6 inch guns, the most likely outcome would be a defeat of the German Cruiser. The River Plate Battle is a clear proof of this thinking, as Graf Spee was hit by two or three 8 inch shells and some 20 or so of 6 inch, forcing her into Montevideo to fix her damage. (besides being running low on ammo.)
 
I belive Germany was still makeing autos for the Civilian market up untill 1943 .

Not quite, they were making civilian cars. As were the allies.
For use by the brass, senior people who needed transport, essential workers (eg vets). There is still a need for numbers of these, if not the huge numbers pre-war.
 
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