Innovation over conservatism - The Kriegsmarine takes a different path

The pocket BBs were heavy cruisers, not battleships. That's why they were 10,000 tonnes (well, declared 10,000 tonnes).

Well the point is they are not coming out of the light cruiser budget, though I think they were counted as 'capital ships' for treaty assessment purposes as the 11" guns broke the rules for heavy cruisers. The idea was to limit the Germans to coastal defence battleships but limiting them to small large light cruisers would have likely seemed to folks as working equally well.
 
Oh, I don't think that long range artillery is a viable path to take.

But it might appear that way.

When I say long range what I actually mean is 'massive'. I mean possibly some bright spark hits on rocket boosted shells, a concept that should work for BB sized calibers, but I see more of an 'really big is better' approach.

So you end up with a ship mounting a monster gun, facing backwards.
The turret is extra fancy to allow both good elevation and speed up reloading, so thats a mechanical nightmare.
Armor is more an product of "The ship will shake itself apart if we fire the main gun" than "We might get shot at".

On the plus side all ranging shots are done with HE with a special fuze for underwater detonation, which for most targets turn out to be more worrisome than AP, owing to the fact that the HE charge rivals several depth bombs at once going off very close.

It's in theory a design that can outrun anything short of the nimblest DD and the odd cruiser but even those, so the vision, ought to close slowly that the maingun can take care of them.

In practice it's a design that can't run down anything (It needs to turn away to unmask the maingun), fires a shell that gets picked up by the AA radar (allowing evasive actions), still doesn't outrange carrier aircraft and needs enough steel and explosives that (assuming it has to refill it's magazine once) that the Ratte suddenly appears quite reasonable.

It's main result is a general up-gunning of all Navies that can and a lack of siege arty in Germany - relevant factories are mostly busy producing the monster gun and making it into a railway gun is... interesting.
 
Germany right now has no experience with aircraft carriers. Building one would be a waste of resources. It might be useful trying to get permission to visit foreign aircraft carriers (USA, Britain, Japan). Simply getting some ideas on their capabilities would be useful for naval plans.
If in 1937/38 foreign navies are wondering about the lack of battleships, a large dry-dock might be used to convert an older fast merchant or passenger ship into a training carrier. Should be relatively cheap compared to building a fleet carrier.

Destroyers will be needed. Especially for escort duty in the Baltic Sea and North Sea. As mentioned by other commenters the Elbing class fleet torpedo boats come to mind immediately. At 1,295 tons you could build 40 of them. Or build 8 of the larger destroyer class 1936 (2,411 tons) and 25-26 of the Elbing class.

The problem of course is that we are using hindsight here.
For example the "Elbing class" fleet torpedo boats had unsuccessful predecessors in the torpedo boat classes of 1935 and 1937. Without that experience...
You´d actually need a successful and secret German naval spying effort since the 1920s to identify successful foreign naval designs and avoid design mistakes.

that's a brilliant idea to fill docks with carrier conversions, recall one of the mooted Project Jade ships was later considered for troop (and tank) transport http://german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/zplan/carrier/gneisenau/index.html

so the "carriers" might not have to be finished as such?

the 1939 Elbing torpedo boats were actually, in my understanding, a more logical development than their predecessors of '35 & '37.

after constructing, by all accounts, successful 1920s TBs they followed diverging paths of (much) larger DDs of 1934 AND smaller TB of '35, both with major flaws.
 
Germany went to war with only 18 S-boats, so that would be an avenue, and one not covered by any treaty restrictions.

same with FW-200 Condor, only ramped up production in 1940.

The early Fw200 was crap in terms of bombing ability and was inferior to the Do26 in range and fuel consumption, because it used diesel engines. Getting an ASV radar early would have been perfectly doable if anyone thought to request it from the radar industry, as the basic technology was there until someone finally asked in 1941:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FuG_200_Hohentwiel

there was a commercial market for Condor which could both subsidize its construction and conceal/confuse its (future) military use.

nothing would preclude parallel development of DO-26 although it was not done so IOTL, maybe the selection of ungainly BV-138?
 
there was a commercial market for Condor which could both subsidize its construction and conceal/confuse its (future) military use.

But at the same time it was so appalingly weak in the fuselage that it required major reworking for military roles, and the strengthening required would eat into its performance.
 
there was a commercial market for Condor which could both subsidize its construction and conceal/confuse its (future) military use.

But at the same time it was so appalingly weak in the fuselage that it required major reworking for military roles, and the strengthening required would eat into its performance.

just suggested a (relatively) minor POD that Condor building program begins EARLIER not MORE of them.

replaced by Junkers JU-290 and in turn by FW-300
 
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