alternatehistory.com

Here's an idea I've been kicking around for a while now.

When Britain & France declared war on Germany towards the end of 1939, the Kriegsmarine should have known from their WW1 experience that while they'd get the best bang for their U-boat buck in the N. Atlantik, that's also where the Allies would institute convoys & concentrate their ASW assets. They also should have known that while surface warships are nice for showing the flag, U-boats make much better commerce raiders. OK-- so Hitler liked big surface warships, & he promised there wouldn't be a war 'til they had time to build up the fleet, & all that nonsense. So the KM is stuck with its 3 'Deutschlands', its 2 'Gneisenaus', the 2 'Bismarcks' being built, & its 'Hipper'-class heavy cruisers.

...but Germany also had 4 ex-Lufthansa catapult ships-- the 'Schwabenland', 'Westfalen', 'Ostmark' , & 'Friesland'. These ships had been used in the late '30s to operate a mail service carried by flying boats to N. & S. America. At the outbreak of war, under Goering's idiotic doctrine that 'everything that flies is mine', they were taken over by the freakin' Luftwaffe & used for basically nothing.

Well, I've never liked Goering much anyway. Let's have one of his hunting buddies shoot & kill him during a stag hunt in the summer of '39, before the outbreak of war. (I know there aren't any deer seasons in the summer, but then Goering never had to abide by the rules.) Bereft of his political influence, the LW can't take over the ships, which end up in the KM where they belong.

Now we have the basis, not for a core strategy, but for a nice little secondary strategy, peripheral to the main war effort. Not a war-winner, but still interesting.

The KM takes those 4 catapult ships & equips them with the same sort of self-disguising capability that it gave to commerce raiders like the 'Atlantis', the 'Orion', & so forth. Folding aircraft cranes, telescoping funnels, extra funnels, & plenty of different-colored paint. In place of their previous 2/Ha-139 float planes (38,600 lb. takeoff weight, 200mph, 3300-mile range) we give each ship about 5 to 8/Ar-196 float planes (7300 lb. takeoff weight, 200mph, 500-mile range) with extra fuel tanks (~750 mile range?). 3 operational & the rest in crates. Or maybe 3 BV-138 flying boats (32,000 lb. takeoff weight, 175mph, 2800-mile range). 2 operational & 1 in a crate. No guns, though. Instead, the catapult ships are refitted as U-boat tenders with repair shops, refueling capability, & torpedo reload facilities, & they're false-flagged as neutral Scandinavian merchant ships. Scientific research ships, even. (The 'Python' carried fuel & spare torpedos for U-boats, so equip the catapult ships with that capability too.)

Let's say the refit takes 3 to 6 months. Now, beginning around Jan. 1940, by rotating our catapult ships into the S. Atlantik, we'll have the basis for a remote U-boat base with float plane reconnaissance. If we want, then we can now operate even short-legged Type-VII U-boats in the S. Atlantik. But let's say we more urgently need 'em in the N. Atlantik, which is where most of the merchant shipping is & where their faster dive time makes 'em more survivable. So we end up with 4 to 6 Type-IX U-boats on extended patrol in the S. Atlantik, where they no longer have to waste half their time getting back & forth to their patrol areas & their effectiveness is now enhanced by float plane recon. The catapult ship just anchors at some remote islet like Trindade & Martin Vaz, St. Peter & St. Paul, Rocas Atoll, or Fernando de Noronha; or in good weather it just drifts on the open ocean. (The 'Atlantis' did this several times.) Your float planes & your U-boats should provide the catapult ship with enough advance warning of an Allied warship to get out of its way.

In fact, let's operate the catapult ships in pairs. That way, by the time the Allies suspect what we're doing, we can allow a suspected catapult ship to be seen in some area far away from where we're really operating & draw the enemy off in the wrong direction. Or we can hold one in reserve in the Antarctic in case we lose the other one. And if we do lose one, then in either case we can resume operations almost immediately with no loss of tempo.

Commerce raiders can also have their effectiveness enhanced by float plane recon, so let's say that we pair a couple of commerce raiders with each catapult ship. Commerce raiders were designed as long-range platforms-- the 'Atlantis' logged 622 continuous days at sea-- so they're unlikely to need to refuel, but they do provide a limited self-defense capability vs AMCs & they also benefit from the float plane recon. The catapult ship can also serve as a nucleus & command ship for a prize fleet. In OTL the 'Atlantis', the 'Orion', the 'Pinguin', & other commerce raiders did maintain prize fleets at sea for limited periods of time. Our 2 commerce raiders can rotate between the Indian Ocean & the S. Atlantik.

In OTL the 'Deutschland'-class raider 'Admiral Scheer' made a cruise to the Indian Ocean, & of course the 'Graf Spee' was active in the S. Atlantik until it got sunk. Had the 'Graf Spee' had a nearby cruiser, or even a U-boat or two, then it might well have survived, so putting a catapult ship down there to maintain U-boats on-station is good news for the pocket battleships too. So also keep a 'Deutschland'-class raider in the area. (And before you beat me up about underway refueling, both the 'Atlantis' & the 'Admiral Scheer' refueled at sea from the captured tanker 'Ketty Brovig'.)

The 'Gneisenaus' were kept out of the S. Atlantik by limited fuel tankage, but with a refueling capability down there we've now removed that problem. We can now rotate the 'Gneisenaus' with the 'Deutschlands' to protect the catapult ship.

The KM also had auxiliary ships to support the 'Deutschlands' & the Type-IX U-boats-- ships like the 'Altmark' & the 'Python'. Since we're using so much fuel to maintain not just our U-boats, but also our 'Deutschlands' & especially our short-legged 'Gneisenaus', maybe we want to pair up an 'Altmark' or a 'Python' with the catapult ship(s) too. They were essentially combination fuel tankers & stores ships anyway.

...so this leaves us with an active & a reserve catapult ship, 6 to 16 aircraft, an auxiliary stores ship, 4 to 6 (or more) Type-IX U-boats, a couple of commerce raiders, potentially a prize fleet, & either a 'Deutschland'-class raider or a 'Gneisenau'-class battleship-- or occasionally both.

Yeah-- you're right. The RN could have hunted 'em down & killed 'em all. In fact, it'd have to. A KM force like we're describing here could have practically shut off all commercial ship traffic thru the S. Atlantik & Indian Oceans, & possibly from the Caribbean too. (Thru the end of 1940 the UK imported most of its petroleum products from the Persian Gulf thru the S. Atlantik, although by early 1941 they got most of it from the Caribbean region.) But allocating resources to hunt down & kill these ships in the S. Atlantik would have diverted resources away from the N. Atlantik campaign, where the UK was fighting for its very survival.

Making the best use of very limited KM resources to spread the RN thinner & thinner was the KM's best chance-- if you don't think they can possibly win, then of prolonging the war.
Thegn.
Top