WI German carrier aircraft
- Thread starter Pangur
- Start date
People are forgetting here, that Germany initially planned to go to war in 1944-46. That's what the whole planning was based on. So, it the GZ was just the first carrier with only the available fighters at that time point. Had the war not started in 1939 and Germany found the money to keep going, they would have had their carriers ready at 1944 with other air wings.
I've toyed with the idea of the Nazis coming up with Pykrete and their own version of Project Habakkuk - I know that one expert on the material was a prominent German scientist who, had he maybe renounced his Jewish heritage (as his father had), may have become an 'honorary Aryan' and proceeded in the creation of the material, which the Nazis might then exploit to build their own line of ice-ships. If you're interested, his name was Max something. I guess the Nazi desire for big shizz would push them to build the largest possible aircraft carrier with their own Pykrete.
I don't remember the precise numbers, but Habakkuk would have used up a perceptible fraction of all the woodpulp produced in Canada (a country known for its extensive lumbering industry). I doubt Nazi Germany had the wood/pulp to spare.
Just for the record, how long did it take the RN, USN and IJN to get to the point where carrier operations weren't just a novelty but something that they could assemble into a threat. Most of the 1920's from recollection.
For that matter how long did the Russian navy take to get to that point with the Kuznetsov?
For that matter how long did the Russian navy take to get to that point with the Kuznetsov?
Cook
Banned
Consider how the Bismarck’s mission would have gone if, in addition to the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, it had had a carrier with it to provide air cover; Bismarck was hit by a torpedo dropped from a biplane fighter who’s top speed was barely a third that of the BF-109’s.
As far as the RN was concerned, it isn't unrealistic to say late 1940.
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Or we could look at Canada's record operating carriers during WWII. Of course, they could rely on American and British expertise, while the Germans would have to rely on whatever they could get out of the Japanese.
Both the Canadian and Australian navy's needed large amounts of help from the RN to get their carrier programs successfully working.
The RAF can take a lot of "credit" for that.
Frankly it's hard for me to see how Germany could muster much of a Navy at all given the POD is any time after OTL end of WWI and the Versailles treaty. They would always be starting from too far behind. The trouble with building up a big Navy would be, it would be seen as a direct threat by the British and they'd get serious about enforcing the Treaty on Germany.
It makes no sense to me whatsoever that Hitler was intending to hold off all war until 1944. He had neither the inclination to wait that long nor much choice about starting it sooner.
However I certainly have heard here and there that he had no intention of going to war with Britain until such a late date. So this statement might stand as true enough just regarding the Kriegsmarine. Certainly if Hitler's plans for conquest worked out the way they did in his head, with the Reich becoming master of territories comparable to what Germany was conceded in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in the east, the British could complain all they wanted and not stop him from having time and resources to make a big, diverse modern navy.
It's that first step that was the problem; I'm very skeptical that even if the British and French had reneged on their treaty obligations to Poland and sat it out while Hitler and Stalin divided first Poland between them and then split Eastern Europe up into spheres of influence, that when Hitler turned on the Soviets (who would not have gained much beyond their allotted portion of Poland, because essentially no Eastern European governments in power except maybe the Czechs had any intention of allying with the Soviet Union) he'd still lose in the end, even if the Western nations still sat back and did nothing.
So insofar as it was true that the Kriegsmarine's turn would not come until Russia, or at least European Russia, was subdued, then it's all paper anyway; the ships would never be built.
And of course it's fatuous to think that the British would have sat it out forever until a big German Navy came calling. After the Anschluss Hitler was clearly becoming the dominant Continental power British diplomacy traditionally would seek to form coalitions against; I for one interpret Chamberlain's "Peace in our time" speech in the light Churchill put it in his memoirs--at that point, or at any rate once Hitler reneged on his promise to leave the shorn and humbled Czechoslovakia alone once he'd been granted the Sudentenland, the then-PM knew Britain was in for a fight with him sooner or later, and was just trying to buy time for Britain's current modernized rearmament program to have some effect. In that light, it was very disingenuous of him to claim "peace in our time," but technically he'd have been right--if Hitler had kept his promises.
But Hitler I believe did think he could persuade the British to stay out of the war, and have time for a suitable navy later.
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Honestly if one wants a mighty Kriegsmarine to go head to head with the RN in the 1940s, I think we need a POD where the resolution of the Great War is more of a truce and less of a collapse of one side or the other, the so-called "White Peace." Such a ceasefire, either with neither alliance strongly victorious or with the Germans winning on land but completely unable to challenge Britain on the high seas, would lead to a situation where both sides were free to build up a new Navy, and then I can imagine the Germans participating in the interwar evolutions that would give them among other things, carriers and their associated task forces come 1940 or so.
All of this is quite aside from the AH cliche of the Germans having lots of war Zeppelins, which in my view could only hope to be war craft if they were themselves carriers. Perhaps one could even imagine the Germans building up squadrons of Zeppelin aircraft carriers in secret, and springing them as a fait accompli on the British before they could object. But the logistics are admittedly daunting!
Well, merits or demerits aside the top Nazis generally hated Zeppelins so if it is a Nazi Kriegsmarine one is talking about that option is clean out anyway.
Aside from U-boats, I just don't think that Hitler could have built up much of a Navy without the British cracking down on the Reich while it was still too weak to prevail, and for that reason Hitler did discourage the Navy from anything ambitious until a later phase in his plans for conquest--a phase that could never arrive.
It makes no sense to me whatsoever that Hitler was intending to hold off all war until 1944. He had neither the inclination to wait that long nor much choice about starting it sooner.
However I certainly have heard here and there that he had no intention of going to war with Britain until such a late date. So this statement might stand as true enough just regarding the Kriegsmarine. Certainly if Hitler's plans for conquest worked out the way they did in his head, with the Reich becoming master of territories comparable to what Germany was conceded in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in the east, the British could complain all they wanted and not stop him from having time and resources to make a big, diverse modern navy.
It's that first step that was the problem; I'm very skeptical that even if the British and French had reneged on their treaty obligations to Poland and sat it out while Hitler and Stalin divided first Poland between them and then split Eastern Europe up into spheres of influence, that when Hitler turned on the Soviets (who would not have gained much beyond their allotted portion of Poland, because essentially no Eastern European governments in power except maybe the Czechs had any intention of allying with the Soviet Union) he'd still lose in the end, even if the Western nations still sat back and did nothing.
So insofar as it was true that the Kriegsmarine's turn would not come until Russia, or at least European Russia, was subdued, then it's all paper anyway; the ships would never be built.
And of course it's fatuous to think that the British would have sat it out forever until a big German Navy came calling. After the Anschluss Hitler was clearly becoming the dominant Continental power British diplomacy traditionally would seek to form coalitions against; I for one interpret Chamberlain's "Peace in our time" speech in the light Churchill put it in his memoirs--at that point, or at any rate once Hitler reneged on his promise to leave the shorn and humbled Czechoslovakia alone once he'd been granted the Sudentenland, the then-PM knew Britain was in for a fight with him sooner or later, and was just trying to buy time for Britain's current modernized rearmament program to have some effect. In that light, it was very disingenuous of him to claim "peace in our time," but technically he'd have been right--if Hitler had kept his promises.
But Hitler I believe did think he could persuade the British to stay out of the war, and have time for a suitable navy later.
----
Honestly if one wants a mighty Kriegsmarine to go head to head with the RN in the 1940s, I think we need a POD where the resolution of the Great War is more of a truce and less of a collapse of one side or the other, the so-called "White Peace." Such a ceasefire, either with neither alliance strongly victorious or with the Germans winning on land but completely unable to challenge Britain on the high seas, would lead to a situation where both sides were free to build up a new Navy, and then I can imagine the Germans participating in the interwar evolutions that would give them among other things, carriers and their associated task forces come 1940 or so.
All of this is quite aside from the AH cliche of the Germans having lots of war Zeppelins, which in my view could only hope to be war craft if they were themselves carriers. Perhaps one could even imagine the Germans building up squadrons of Zeppelin aircraft carriers in secret, and springing them as a fait accompli on the British before they could object. But the logistics are admittedly daunting!
Well, merits or demerits aside the top Nazis generally hated Zeppelins so if it is a Nazi Kriegsmarine one is talking about that option is clean out anyway.
Aside from U-boats, I just don't think that Hitler could have built up much of a Navy without the British cracking down on the Reich while it was still too weak to prevail, and for that reason Hitler did discourage the Navy from anything ambitious until a later phase in his plans for conquest--a phase that could never arrive.
Cook
Banned
In 1935 the British signed an agreement with Germany that allowed Germany to build a fleet equal to 35% of the tonnage of the Royal Navy (and more when it came to submarines), the Royal Navy was at the time the largest fleet in the world. The treaty of Versailles was dead.
Imagine Italian carrier planes if they had the chance to get the ball rolling on that. I'll bet they would have been stylish.
Yeah, in 1935. I.e. the other poster is right, too far behind (15-20 years) the Furious, Langley and Hosho.
If you read the expanded version of Battleship Bismarck, a Survivor's Story, by Baron von Mullenheim-Reichberg (senior surviving officer), he has some remarks from the British Naval Attache in Berlin, which basically say that he expected Hitler to discard the Anglo-German Naval Treaty as soon as it was convinent for him to do so.
Z plan only called for two GZ class carriers. There were possibilities on a second phase of two adicional carriers, but this would either be light (15 aircraft) or converted from existing ships. The core of the battle fleet would be two groups with three H class BB and one GZ class CV each.
Geography seriously limits the German Navy use of carriers, since they must operate in the Baltic and North Sea. This is the same problem the Soviet Fleet faced in the cold war.
Not really. Aquilla was expected to carry Re2001 fighter bombers. There was never a study of, for example, a navalized G55...