Kriegsmarine with aircraft carriers?

Karlos said:
The germans did not need carriers, but a strong naval-air force, land based. I I think they could never impose a real blockade to the UK, with the USA eager to enter the war and willing to escort their convoys. But if the germans can keep the Royal Navy outside channel waters, they have a chance, at least in 1940. I wonder what could they have done with a decent torpedo bomber or their Ju87 properly trained against ships.
Generally speaking, I don't think carriers would have done much for the Germans, but as you post, Karlos, naval bombers AND, probably more important, special pilot training for naval operations, might have given the Germans some victories at sea and the Brits a few rather nasty shocks. Dunkirk and Norway could have been especially bloody, had the Germans possed better trained and equiped naval aviators or ordinary Luftwaffe fly-boys.

Actually the Germans had some pretty decent naval planes, the elderly Hs-59B-2 and the newer Fieseler Fi-167 torpedo bombers and, of course, the famous FW-200 Condor naval bomber and long range reconnaissance plane, but they never quite got the attention they deserved (problably because German all in all was a land power and the Luftwaffe thus focused on fighting a land war).

I more or less based my The Death of Herman Göring and the Victory of the Luftwaffe-thread on the premise that without Der Dicke, naval air operations along with a stronger focus on fighters would win the the day for Germany in regards to its conflict with Britain (The installment "Dunkirk, bloody Dunkirk" should be up in a week or so).

Best regards!

- Bluenote.
 
What about German Escort Carriers.

What if Germany had build Smaller Jeep Carriers, the type the U.S. Navy used for escort missions during WW2. Also the escort carriers are smaller hull ships, so they would cost about the same as a destroyer. That is why the U.S. Navy build so many of them during the War. They could have been build on merchant ship hulls, and they could have been build very fast without British knowing. This would require a major break in the navel thinking of the German Navy leadership. But German aircraft builder had seen what Billy Mitchell had done to they old WW1 battleships in the 20's. Could have seen the reports from U. S. Army and Navy evalutation of Battle Plans for Pamma Canel and Pearl Harbor. Also what about information from there allies in the Far East. This would require major POD from OTL, and likely the removal of some leadership of Nazi Party. As for funding and cost of building Carriers in Germany, stop the building of Large floating Gun platforms, the battleships, and build more U-Boats and land based Patrol Aircraft. This would require very little in material and funds from Land Air forces, or armies. With better trained Naval personnel, with there own Naval Air Force, under Naval command, germany would have done much more damage in the early part of the war. Still couldn't win the war.
 

Kadyet

Banned
CVE's would have been a waste of resources. No more than 30 planes each and slow (only about 19 knots), they were suited for the job that they were put to by the Allies: Convoy escort. Furthermore, a CVE had about four times the displacement of Fletcher-class destroyer from World War II. Even the new JMSDF Kongo-class destroyers are only about a thousand tons larger than a WWII CVE. The Battle off Samar was an abberration, and the Germans would not have been able to build 18 CVE's, plus escorts. Furthermore, the Allies would have continued attacking, as that would have been the main fleet (Kurita retreated due to a lack of tactical control, lack of formation, and the fact that he wasn't attacking the Third Fleet as he thought he was thus putting him in danger of attack from the fleet carriers).
 
blockade of Britain

David S Poepoe said:
Your first post wonder if a carrier would make the blockade of Britain better, now you are saying that with a carrier not only will Britain get more ships through the blockade (probably 'what blockade?' in TTL) but also imply that defeat will be sooner.


The Kriegsmarine's capital ships are virtually bottled up in the North Sea where they have to worry about land based as well as carrier based aircraft. The Graf Zeppelin is fairly useless unless it can breakout into the Atlantic, but it would be a very expensive means to enforce the blockade. U Boats get the job done better.

A agree. To improve the chances of Germnay in the Battle of Britain, one needs a different PoD: development of mid-/long range bomber as the late Gen. Weaver (spelling?) planed or at least drop-tanks on Bf-109.

An aircraft carried can have one advantage in comparison with the OTL situation - the British bases in the North could become reachable.
 
I agree land based four engine Patrol/ Bomber, would have been a more effective answer, than carriers. And ME109 with drop tanks would have been a nightmare for British Airforces. The Larger Number of Heavy Patrol/Bomber with range to attack merchant shipping in the Atlantic, and with the with command and control system would have been difficult for the British and later the U.S. forces to destroy. Still a Carrier group coming out of the North Sea heading for the shipping lanes, would have been more of a threat than, a Large Battleship surface group. It would have done to bottom of sea, in the end, but would be interesting ATL.
 
I will echo Germany carriers would be a good thing due to making them easy to beat.
Just look at Britain's reaction to the German capital ships- we went crazy to try and sink them. They got lucky and had good armour so managed to sink a few of our ships first, with carriers though the likelyhood of them being lucky was lower and the armour would not be as good.

Also the swordfish was a good plane. You are thinking too 2 dimensionally to say it was bad because its a biplane. Its like those people who say the US civil war navy was better then the British navy due to havign ironclads. Being a biplane gave the swordfish more stability which is what you need when torpedo bombing, not ability in a dog fight.
 
Leej said:
I will echo Germany carriers would be a good thing due to making them easy to beat.
Just look at Britain's reaction to the German capital ships- we went crazy to try and sink them. They got lucky and had good armour so managed to sink a few of our ships first, with carriers though the likelyhood of them being lucky was lower and the armour would not be as good.

Also the swordfish was a good plane. You are thinking too 2 dimensionally to say it was bad because its a biplane. Its like those people who say the US civil war navy was better then the British navy due to havign ironclads. Being a biplane gave the swordfish more stability which is what you need when torpedo bombing, not ability in a dog fight.

I would agree that a biplane is a stable flying platform, and that Swordfish was very good at its mission of torpedo bombing. But it was not designed for warfare against modern aircraft. And the same time it was used other aircraft were being developed which were very good bombing platforms, both for torpedo/low level attack, and for Patrol missions, American Naval Aircraft, Japanese Naval Aircraft, were designed to do several different type of missions. The aircraft carrier can hold only so many planes, having planes which will only do one job, limits the flexiable of the carrier group.
 
Burton said:
The Fiesler 167 was going to be the Graf Zeppelin's biplane torpedo bomber and had excellent performance
http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/fi167.html



Thank you for the information, still the Fiesler 167 wasn't a front line aircraft, with production of very few planes, Still a very interesting designed, and if used in a carrier group, could have been very Good Low Level Attack bomber. Couldn't have defended the carrier from British Modern Aircraft in 1940, was too slow and stable, for air combat.
 
They could build light cruisers, AA ships and destroyers. A heavy cruiser escort is only a qualitative advantage if your opponent is not a heavy cruiser, so in essence having enough lighter cruisers would do the same job. A battleship escort for a carrier group seems unnecessary, and thus not building Bismarck and Tirpitz would provide the materiele required for the construction of these carriers.

Of course, what they then DO with them is another point entirely...

Grey Wolf

Lets assume that the Germans had to build Battleships because of Hitler, and in the 1930's when the plans for future naval construction was being set in stone the evidence was far from clear that the battleship's day's were numbered.

Remember early war bombers did little damage to Bismarck or Tirpitz during raids in port, sometimes missing their targets by miles and seldom doing more then scratching the paint on the hull when they did score a direct hit. Torpedo Bombers had to catch a battleship in port or be lucky enough to catch a battleship on the high seas to be effective, and it was only at the end of the war when strategic bombers became a clear and present threat to the battleship with the development of the Grand Slam bomb and other high yield explosive, and even then the Tirpitz was only sunk by dumb luck by the British so presume that Germany goes through with the historical construction of the Scharnhorst Battleship and Bismarck Battleship classes.
 
Eight years?!? Is this a new record for thread necromancy around here?

"Arise from the dead, and walk the world once more...
Your time is not yet done. With blood and salt I summon thee!"
 
Eight years?!? Is this a new record for thread necromancy around here?

"Arise from the dead, and walk the world once more...
Your time is not yet done. With blood and salt I summon thee!"

I'd rather necromancy here than have the rotted corpse of Ovaron's The Raid on Scapa Flow staggering around shedding brain cells everywhere.
 
the reason why The Third Reich had no active carriers?

It was a battle of competence between Großadmirals and Reichsmarschall Göring !
while the Kriegsmarine wanted four aircraft carrier under there control
while the Reichsluftahrtminsterium (RLM) keep control on ALL Aircraft in third reich.

Göring insist at Hitler that Naval planes too must be under Control of RLM and they can operate from land bases.
and He refuse all kind of compromises, like the carrier under the control of the Kriegsmarine while the Aircrafts under RLM control.

so remain the Graf Zeppelin-class aircraft carrier a prototype, lying in a Shipyard at town Kiel
they had to carry:
10 × Messerschmitt Bf 109T fighters
13 × Junkers Ju 87C or -E dive bombers
20 × Fieseler Fi 167 biplane torpedo bombers

from 1938 the RLM order a study a fast twin engine multirole combat aircraft for the Carrier
Fieseler Fi22 and Arado E 566 were consider, until Goring started the battle of competence...
 
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