Farah said:Maybe the kriegsmarine cuts devlopment funds on u boats and focuses on "capital" ships and carriers and this may let england get more shipping thourgh helping in the end?
David S Poepoe said:Not quite so fast.
Aside from the Bismarck and Tirpitz the other German warships mount 11in guns, easily overwhelmed and outranged by even the old 15in guns of the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge classes, not to mention the 14in guns of the King George V class. The British even had greater experience using carriers and more carriers. The scenario still appears to be a British victory.
Abdul Hadi Pasha said:Also, the British will respond to anything the Germans do. Historically, they built thousands of anti-submarine escorts - if the Germans build carriers, British building will respond accordingly.
David S Poepoe said:Not quite so fast.
Aside from the Bismarck and Tirpitz the other German warships mount 11in guns, easily overwhelmed and outranged by even the old 15in guns of the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge classes, not to mention the 14in guns of the King George V class. The British even had greater experience using carriers and more carriers. The scenario still appears to be a British victory.
JLCook said:British carrier aviation certainly didn't recieve it's share of funding and the RN went to war using the SWORDFISH, a canvas covered BIPLANE as it's offensive arm!
If the KM had deleted all of it's capital warships from the SCHARNHORST on, and had built aircraft carriers, hopefully ships similar in size to at least the Japanese SHOKAKU or the US YORKTOWN in terms of carrying capacity, say something on the order of 80-90 aircraft, AND, if the KM had been able to secure control of it's own aircraft over the loud objections of Hermann Goering, then the KM MIGHT have had a useful, offensive arm.
Have the KM build twice, or even three times as many heavy cruisers for escorts, plus a lot of CLs and DDs, and they might have been able to do real damage!
Put IJN SHOKAKU, with her historical complement of aircraft, in the place of BISMARCK for example. Send along a pair of ATAGO cruisers instead of PRINZ EUGEN, and send along a half dozen FUBUKIs as escorts and let the RN just try and intercept with all of the Battleships they want! Let them send ARK ROYAL AND VICTORIOUS too, if they want! I'm sure that the Zeros would enjoy the encounter!
German aircraft, such as a navalized Stuka and bf109 would have liked to have met the Royal Navy carriers at sea as well! Of course, thei wouldn't have worked forever. After the first encounter, the RN would have had to quickly reequip with somethin more effective, probably American aircraft like the SBD, TBD and F4F, but the first encounters would have been ---"illuminating" to say the least!
Dave Howery said:If I'm reading this right, some of the posts here suggest that the Germans will build nothing but carriers? No support ships, no destroyer escorts? Realize that you can't just build carriers, you have to build a whole support fleet for them... can the Germans do that?
Brilliantlight said:Also what do the Germans give up for the carriers? It would all have to come out of the other branches, so you would have to have less infantry or less tanks or less fighters or something. By doing so Germany now has problems conquering France.