WI: Kriegsmarine continues construction of surface ships

The Germans had to choose between a fully motorized but smaller army or an army nine-tenths using foot and horse and the panzer divisions.

Having made the choice, a similar choice between a modest naval improvement and a much more impressive army improvement comes as no surprise.
Actually, in 1933 the Germans had to choose between a Jeune École-style navy (which would have been a particularly good fit) or a useless hodge-podge of ships. Due to Hitler's delusions about a partnership with Britain (whose admirals broke in cold sweats at the thought of a Jeune École Kriegsmarine), and some geriatric fossils' dreams of the old Imperial Navy, they got the latter.
 
Where did the resources to build those ships go to instead?


Apparently ~ 9 million tons concrete and 3/4 million tons of iron/steel was invested in the West Wall building 11,800 bunkers and concrete command/OB posts.The break down in Iron and steel is instructive. Of the first 640,000 tons allocated up to 1938 ,208,000 went to Rebar and another 135,000 into reinforcing girders.Another 170,000 went to 'wire obsticals' and "dragons teeth" etc. This leaves about 127,000 tons of armored steel for the 'bunker doors' and 'armored turrets' ; 'armored loopholes' & 'observer cupola' etc. As a rule these were thick armored steel , most were in the region of 2-8" thick, but some were emence , with thickness ranging from 10-23" thick.

Its hard to know how much of this armored steel could have gone to more tank production or more warships. Warship production seems to be much more efficent in using such sheets of steels, while the AFV have to be made of shapes cut out of the sheet resulting in alot of wastage. But to give you some comparions, the armor component on armored warships was often 1/4 to 1/3 of the total mass. The Bismarck was about 51,000 tons and used 17,000 tons armor, while a tank usually uses 1/2 of its mass as armor, so a Panzer IV of 24 tons should be 12 tons armor and 12 tons structural steel, wheels, tracks etc. But then to get the intrict shapes cut ,you may waste 2/3 of the steel sheet. One of the main reasons Speer was able to boost production so much, later in the war, was his drive to reduce wastage. This allowed a 4 fold increase in production ,with essentially the same supply of steel.
 
As Admiral Donitz had Hitlers ear, he was able to convince Hitler when the war started, that accelerated Uboat production was Germanies only naval option. At that time all the unfinished capital ships were to be completed and the emergency naval programme Jukra mentions was to be implimented. By 1939 they would have laid down 24 destroyers and 48 torpedo boot along with the 100 + Uboats and 130 minesweepers. Combined this programme would consume about 1 million tons of ship building up until 1942, compared to about 800,000 tons of historical building. The difference apparently was all the steel wasted rebuilding and retooling the ship yards for massive Uboat production....which as pointed out could not arrive in the fleet until late 1942.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt_Report

Now, this is a very technical question but as far as I know building submarines differed quite much from building surface ships. There was need for better quality steel (surface ships for wartime could be built from mild steel as British did. US didn't have to and thus some of their WW2 ships still serve), much better quality control and tolerances (a leak in a surface ship is an annoyance, in submarine a catastrophy) etc. Do you know what was the difference in working hours etc? I'm fairly sure submarine tonnage during WW2 was much more expensive than surface warship tonnage.
 

Tellus

Banned
Apparently ~ 9 million tons concrete and 3/4 million tons of iron/steel was invested in the West Wall building 11,800 bunkers and concrete command/OB posts.The break down in Iron and steel is instructive. Of the first 640,000 tons allocated up to 1938 ,208,000 went to Rebar and another 135,000 into reinforcing girders.Another 170,000 went to 'wire obsticals' and "dragons teeth" etc. This leaves about 127,000 tons of armored steel for the 'bunker doors' and 'armored turrets' ; 'armored loopholes' & 'observer cupola' etc. As a rule these were thick armored steel , most were in the region of 2-8" thick, but some were emence , with thickness ranging from 10-23" thick.

Its hard to know how much of this armored steel could have gone to more tank production or more warships. Warship production seems to be much more efficent in using such sheets of steels, while the AFV have to be made of shapes cut out of the sheet resulting in alot of wastage. But to give you some comparions, the armor component on armored warships was often 1/4 to 1/3 of the total mass. The Bismarck was about 51,000 tons and used 17,000 tons armor, while a tank usually uses 1/2 of its mass as armor, so a Panzer IV of 24 tons should be 12 tons armor and 12 tons structural steel, wheels, tracks etc. But then to get the intrict shapes cut ,you may waste 2/3 of the steel sheet. One of the main reasons Speer was able to boost production so much, later in the war, was his drive to reduce wastage. This allowed a 4 fold increase in production ,with essentially the same supply of steel.

Thats actually a good suggestion - once you have hindsight. In hindsight the westwall was a huge waste - akin to the Maginot line or almost.

But without any westwall, the possibility of a strong French offensive during the fall of 39 gains serious momentum, so alot of these materials would have to go to a stronger land army, in order to check that threat more credibly. If it all goes to the Navy, things could get ugly before the ships are ever put to use.
 
Now, this is a very technical question but as far as I know building submarines differed quite much from building surface ships. There was need for better quality steel (surface ships for wartime could be built from mild steel as British did. US didn't have to and thus some of their WW2 ships still serve), much better quality control and tolerances (a leak in a surface ship is an annoyance, in submarine a catastrophy) etc. Do you know what was the difference in working hours etc? I'm fairly sure submarine tonnage during WW2 was much more expensive than surface warship tonnage.

Submarines are more expensive per ton, but are smaller. A WW2 sub has a similar cost to a WW2 destroyer, with a much smaller crew. The materials used are somewhat different.

Incidentally, crewing all those destroyers is not an insignificant problem. german destroyers had very large crews - at 300+, and the Germans didnt have a large pool of trained seamen to use to crew them. So they also have to ramp up their training program
 
Incidentally, crewing all those destroyers is not an insignificant problem. german destroyers had very large crews - at 300+, and the Germans didnt have a large pool of trained seamen to use to crew them. So they also have to ramp up their training program

True, but AFAIK, submarines needed higher caliber manpower to operate efficiently. Majority of Allied navy surface warships were manned by "hostilities only" men with fairly short training time and in general did splendidly, even those navies (such as RCN) which had to expand very fast. In OTL Kriegsmarine had to find manpower for some 1000 submarines with some 50 men each, some 50 000 men for combat duties. A torpedo boat had crew of some 200, destroyer some 350. Half of the manpower used to man submarines would be enough for 33 destroyers and 66 torpedo boats, assuming 1:2 ratio as in OTL. Additionally Kriegsmarine in OTL did commission 63 torpedo boats and 21 destroyers during the war (counting captured ships in both counts).
 

Redbeard

Banned
Before WWII the British initiated the largest naval expansion programme ever seen in GB, even bigger than that pre WWI. That included the Lion class BBs, numerous classes of carriers, cruisers, destroyers etc. All in all a classic big navy to take command of the seas and wipe out any enemy fleet, incl. the IJN

As the German Navy by 1939 was no match for the already existing RN, the expansion programme was for most halted to give priority elsewhere, after the fall of France not at least anti-sub warfare.

If the German navy instead of building U-Boats continue building surface ships the pre-war expansion plan of RN probably is continued to a much larger extent. That first of all will cause trouble for the Japanese - as the British now soon will be able to have a creditable presence both in European waters as well as Far Eastern. Not really by 1941, so we might still see a Japanese conquest in 1941-42, but it will be realistic that the British mount a reconquest on their own of South East Asia. That might have important implication on how the post-war world is put together.

The German capital ships will not be completed in time to influence anything but drain on German resources. The smaller surface forces might try to make a presence in NW European waters, but the RN will have no serious trouble handling them, especially as they now don't have to divert resources to a anti-sub campaign.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard
 
True, but AFAIK, submarines needed higher caliber manpower to operate efficiently. Majority of Allied navy surface warships were manned by "hostilities only" men with fairly short training time and in general did splendidly, even those navies (such as RCN) which had to expand very fast. In OTL Kriegsmarine had to find manpower for some 1000 submarines with some 50 men each, some 50 000 men for combat duties. A torpedo boat had crew of some 200, destroyer some 350. Half of the manpower used to man submarines would be enough for 33 destroyers and 66 torpedo boats, assuming 1:2 ratio as in OTL. Additionally Kriegsmarine in OTL did commission 63 torpedo boats and 21 destroyers during the war (counting captured ships in both counts).

But the Germans didnt put high calibre crews into their submarines, they didnt have them available. They just drafted in as necessary.
 
Thats actually a good suggestion - once you have hindsight. In hindsight the westwall was a huge waste - akin to the Maginot line or almost.

But without any westwall, the possibility of a strong French offensive during the fall of 39 gains serious momentum, so alot of these materials would have to go to a stronger land army, in order to check that threat more credibly. If it all goes to the Navy, things could get ugly before the ships are ever put to use.



Yes as long as we remember that the West Wall was Hitlers plan and not the General Staff...most of the cost was due to Hitlers demand that it be completed in a few years when it should have been planned over a decade time....Hitlers demands have a lot to do with why German rearmament cost so much and achieved so little.

The German General Staff had already concluded the French were mostly defensive in stature and could not really threaten Germany too much. More to the point extensive fortifications didn't figure in their doctrine. Even in the extremely lean times of the 1920s they envisaged mobile divisions counterattacking enemy spear heads as the best way to halt enemy advance.

I looked into two options for how the West Wall resources could have been spent. One army and one navy.

Main resource is armament related ;129,000 tons armored steel and 135,000 tons Stuctural Steel, and the 1.5 billion RM to spend.

Secondary resource is constuction related: 9 million tons concrete with 200,000 tons of rebar plus 170,000 tons of steel girders for dragons teeth and barbed wire etc.

Navy; Naval construction efficency was quite good, with end product equalling about 1/3 of initial input tonnage. But that covers all costs , factory & port related etc at a time when the ship yards were being forced to transition from producing a balanced fleet of surface and subsurface armaments and munitions, to one based mostly on Subs. The actual efficeny on ship construction was on the order of 1/2 to 2/3.

So you end up with about 145,000 to 178,000 tons displacemnt of armored ships from 1937-1940. During this period the naval slow down cost them the Bismarck Tirpitz Graf Zeppelin & Peter Strauss, and the three heavy cruisers Prince Eugen , Seydlitz and Lutzow . There should still be left over tonnage to complete the two planned M class light crusiers, and complete the 9 x Type 1937 Torpedoboot plus 6 -8 x Type 1936 mod Destroyers by 1940. There is still sufficent funding to pay for the construction of about 300 aircraft for these ships , mostly Seaplanes but including some Carrier planes.

The prefered option would be to boost the army , however small tanks are quite wastefull in construction and one can't expect more than 1/3 efficency in input tonnage to out put product. I estimate they could produce ~ 4400 Panzer III/IV type tanks during this time , however the cost of building the 8 additional panzer divisions to house these tanks would be 1.7 billion Rm so a more likely option would be to purchase the 4400 Panzer III/IV [2/3 billion RM] and exchange them with the Panzers I, II & 35/38t in the 10 Panzer divisons raised by 1940 . The displaced 3000 Panzer I/II/35/38t could be reconditioned and integrated into the now motorized infantry divisions in place of either the divisional AtGun battalion or parts of the Recon Battalion. They could even be reconditioned as mechanized guns AKA previous doctrine to give these divisions SturmPanzers/ Panzer Jagers.

The Naval option was proposed to fit in with the ATL of this thread.
 
Now, this is a very technical question but as far as I know building submarines differed quite much from building surface ships. There was need for better quality steel (surface ships for wartime could be built from mild steel as British did. US didn't have to and thus some of their WW2 ships still serve), much better quality control and tolerances (a leak in a surface ship is an annoyance, in submarine a catastrophy) etc. Do you know what was the difference in working hours etc? I'm fairly sure submarine tonnage during WW2 was much more expensive than surface warship tonnage.

All the Subs and warships were made with ST-52 and ST-44 type steels[and St-37 if memory serves]. In modern ballistic tests and research, St-52 is used as RHA targets. In fact the Uboats also used Chrome-Molydinum-Vandinam steel alloy which was a strategic metal and in short supply. The alloying was used in Rochling projectiles , Helicopters and other armaments. The UBoats started out costing 1/2 million manhours but after they had produced them in the hundreds and hundreds, they were able to whittle that down to neary 1/4 million manhours each. The cost prewar was 2 -4 & 8 Million RM for the Type II -VII - IX, but by mid war these prices had pretty much been cut in half.


BTW Type 1939 Torpedo boot was ~ 6 MRm but heavier than UBoats 1250 tons empty compared to 800 tons for the Type IX. The Prewar Type 1935/37 were about 8-9 MRm and were closer to the Type IX uboats in mass [~ 844 tons empty] .

http://www.warshipsww2.eu/lode.php?language=E&period=&idtrida=341

German naval personnel counted 200 K in 1940 and 400K in 1941 ; raising to 600-650K for the rest of the war.

The actual seamen numbers would be roughly 150,000 personnel in 1940/41 and closer to ~ 200,000 in late war period.
 
Last edited:

The Sandman

Banned
Of course, the Germans don't really need battleships and fleet carriers. The fact is that they can't build enough of them to seriously threaten the RN, and if they don't then the handful they have are just enormous targets.

What they need are small, fast ships, in large quantity. If they can build them for endurance as well, that's great, but the primary goal of the German surface fleet should be to operate in the waters around Britain.

If they do want to build something to go commerce raiding on the open seas, a group composed of one or two light carriers and suitable escorts would be a better option than battlecruisers or pocket battleships. Planes would be designed with the primary goal of outranging anything the British have, as the Germans have to operate under the assumption that if the RN devotes enough force to the task the KM will lose once the British get within range.

A German version of the Tone class might provide scouting for this force, especially if their planes are equipped with proper radar. The light carriers would focus on combat aircraft to actually deal with targets. Escorts (light cruisers and destroyers built for extended range) would focus mainly on ASW and air defense. You would also want to have this group operate in conjunction with a U-boat wolfpack if possible, with the U-boats taking care of targets that the surface force can't handle (for example, fleet carriers that aren't operating alone)
 
Of course, the Germans don't really need battleships and fleet carriers. The fact is that they can't build enough of them to seriously threaten the RN, and if they don't then the handful they have are just enormous targets.

What they need are small, fast ships, in large quantity. If they can build them for endurance as well, that's great, but the primary goal of the German surface fleet should be to operate in the waters around Britain.

If they do want to build something to go commerce raiding on the open seas, a group composed of one or two light carriers and suitable escorts would be a better option than battlecruisers or pocket battleships. Planes would be designed with the primary goal of outranging anything the British have, as the Germans have to operate under the assumption that if the RN devotes enough force to the task the KM will lose once the British get within range.

A German version of the Tone class might provide scouting for this force, especially if their planes are equipped with proper radar. The light carriers would focus on combat aircraft to actually deal with targets. Escorts (light cruisers and destroyers built for extended range) would focus mainly on ASW and air defense. You would also want to have this group operate in conjunction with a U-boat wolfpack if possible, with the U-boats taking care of targets that the surface force can't handle (for example, fleet carriers that aren't operating alone)


Yes I think this is the general idea behind this main thread. The main line of prewar reasoning was a combined arms of long range marine patrols locating Convoys issuing reports allowing U-Boat flotillas to concentrate their searches. Into this surface raiders would be dispatched on high speed sortie to break up the convoys making it easier for the Uboats to work and making them even more effective.

If I was to recomputed my simplistic calculation for ATL re diverting the West Wall resource/financing/labor etc into just the smaller warships instead of completing the surface giants..... we could see the normal completion dates on the historical capital ship fleet plus 37 new Type 1936 mod destroyers or 77 of the highly effective Type 1939 Torpedo boat , which was essentially a destroyer by RN standards.....or maybe some mixture of the two. 77 Type 1939 Destroyers at 5.8 Million RM each , should be about 1/2 Billion RM .

Both the Type 1923/24 and the Type 1939 Torpedoboot could cruise 3500nm @ 17 knots, although some sources claim 5000nm @ 19knots for the Type 1939.

http://www.warshipsww2.eu/lode.php?language=E&period=&idtrida=343
Perhaps that’s supposed to read 5000 nm @ 15knots?

Since these new warships would be non armored ships, this would still leave the armored steel component left over. This could be channeled into the existing tank industry from 1937-1940 , to mass produce couple thousand more tanks. Alternatively the entire AFV industry devoted to light tanks, SPW [APC] , and even Sd Kfz [Armored cars] , could be combined with the unused armored steel to instead produce 4000-5000 Panzer II/III/IV. That could cost ~1/4 Billion RM.

BTW this still doesn't address the secondary construction industry used in the building of the West Wall, what to do with it?

One possibility is to enlarge the growing synthetic fuel industry that was so central to the lighting war. Going on the USSBS, it looks like synthetic fuel plants cost about 1/4 billion RM to build with capacity of 300,000 tons annual fuel production. Also the amount of new fuel plant capacity is said to be 1 ton fuel for every 0.6 tons of steel devoted to this industry. The left over West Wall resource is ~ 378 ,000 tons steel , which should translate into about 630,000 additional annual synthetic fuel plant capacity @ cost of 1/2 Billion RM. The annual cost of fuel production for that additional capacity should be in the ~120-140 million RM region.


Summarizing between 1937-1940 instead of the West Wall , we have potentially....

1/2 billion RM of new warships
1/2 billion RM of new synthetic fuel plant capacity
1/4 billion RM of Panzer instead of the Sd Kfz/SPW/light tanks etc
That should leave about 1/4 billion RM for about 1.1 million tons of additional fuel actually produced.

At the start of the war the Germans had 1.5 million tons of fuel stockpiled , when their strategy called for at least 2.5 million tons. By the time they went into Russia in 1941 this was supposed to over 3.5 million tons fuel stockpiled, but they actually only had 1/2 million tons stockpiled.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Now, this is a very technical question but as far as I know building submarines differed quite much from building surface ships. There was need for better quality steel (surface ships for wartime could be built from mild steel as British did. US didn't have to and thus some of their WW2 ships still serve), much better quality control and tolerances (a leak in a surface ship is an annoyance, in submarine a catastrophy) etc. Do you know what was the difference in working hours etc? I'm fairly sure submarine tonnage during WW2 was much more expensive than surface warship tonnage.

In 1941 the U.S. build time for a Gato Class sub was ~15 months, by late in the war a Balao was taking around 7 months. A Bagley Class DD took 23 months for the U.S. to construct in 1935, a Fletcher Class was 16 months in 1941. Submarines were in the ~$2.4 million dollar range, Fletcher Class DD were $6 million while light cruisers were +$20 million and heavy cruisers were in the $30+ million range. South Dakota Class Battleships (the closest U.S. design to the proposed German "H" class) were $77 million a copy. RN construction time for destroyers was around 18 months in 1939.

The Germans were at 25 months for the Type VIIC in 1941 and were at 26 months in 1943 (this might be a material supply issue). German destroyers of the Narvik Class were around 20-22 months in 1940.

Overall it cost 2.5-3 times as much to build a destroyer and 9-12 times as much to build a cruiser as it costs to build a single submarine. Additional cost is mainly in material and the much larger number of construction workers required. Subs are cheap, take less material and much smaller crews. You could crew 15 boats for that needed for a single Hipper. The Germans also didn't sweat the whole "hand-picked crew" thing too much either. Mid-war the Germans more or less mothballed most of their surface force and put the crews onto subs, will they, nil they.

Germany was also seriously lacking in proper shipyards. Destroyers and cruisers need more yard space (especially cruisers) and require heavier capacity cranes in their construction. The cold facts were that Germany could not win a building race with the UK, the Reich had four yards that could turn out surface combatants and the UK had well over a dozen and each British yard was more efficient and generally larger than its Reich counterpart. The U.S. had around 20 that could build destroyers and a half dozen for cruisers and BB.

If the Germans had wanted to build surface ships to compete with the RN, London would have sent cake.
 
But the Germans didnt put high calibre crews into their submarines, they didnt have them available. They just drafted in as necessary.

In general in most navies those best qualified out of manpower pool go to seagoing tasks while those less talented or more physically impaired go to shore duties. AFAIK, until the end of the war the standards for U-boat crews were higher than those for surface ships. Surface ships, having more room and better habitability in general, allow also those less talented or more physically impaired to do their bit. (Of course, being Second World War era this wasn't the case if one had wrong amount of pigmentation in US case or wrong parents in British case, or wrong mumbo-jumbo "racial" background in Nazi-Germany case.)
 
In 1941 the U.S. build time for a Gato Class sub was ~15 months, by late in the war a Balao was taking around 7 months. A Bagley Class DD took 23 months for the U.S. to construct in 1935, a Fletcher Class was 16 months in 1941. Submarines were in the ~$2.4 million dollar range, Fletcher Class DD were $6 million while light cruisers were +$20 million and heavy cruisers were in the $30+ million range. South Dakota Class Battleships (the closest U.S. design to the proposed German "H" class) were $77 million a copy. RN construction time for destroyers was around 18 months in 1939.
The Germans were at 25 months for the Type VIIC in 1941 and were at 26 months in 1943 (this might be a material supply issue). German destroyers of the Narvik Class were around 20-22 months in 1940.

Overall it cost 2.5-3 times as much to build a destroyer and 9-12 times as much to build a cruiser as it costs to build a single submarine. Additional cost is mainly in material and the much larger number of construction workers required. Subs are cheap, take less material and much smaller crews. You could crew 15 boats for that needed for a single Hipper. The Germans also didn't sweat the whole "hand-picked crew" thing too much either. Mid-war the Germans more or less mothballed most of their surface force and put the crews onto subs, will they, nil they.

Germany was also seriously lacking in proper shipyards. Destroyers and cruisers need more yard space (especially cruisers) and require heavier capacity cranes in their construction. The cold facts were that Germany could not win a building race with the UK, the Reich had four yards that could turn out surface combatants and the UK had well over a dozen and each British yard was more efficient and generally larger than its Reich counterpart. The U.S. had around 20 that could build destroyers and a half dozen for cruisers and BB.

If the Germans had wanted to build surface ships to compete with the RN, London would have sent cake.

If you take the time to study this site and tabulate the build length of each sub , you will notice that in 1941 the Germans built 183 Type VII Uboats that averaged about 391 days each to build or about 13 months to build. In 1943 the same figures were 114 x Type VIIC took an average of 335 days or 11 months.

http://www.warshipsww2.eu/lode.php?language=E&period=&idtrida=595

This site confirms in the destroyer and Torpedoboot sections, that in 1940/41 they built 11 destroyers for an average of 612 days each or 20 months. In Rossler’s Uboat book, every thing was sacrificed to produce more and more Uboats, every thought they had lost their edge by the time quantity production was achieved in 1942/43.

By comparison in the USN section the Fletcher Destroyer batch production resulted in 45 destroyers built in 1941 at a rate of 481 days or 16 months. In 1942 the average went down to 347 days or 11 months. In 1943 the figure was down to 51 destroyers @ 276days or 9 months average. This is the expected benefit from 'multi year fixed price contracting' when the Government is driving for the best deal.

As to ship yards Germany had 25 ship building companies in WW-II distributing 110 slipways, down from the WW-I high of 191 slipways.

In WW-I the German navy had
107 small slipways [<100m]
34 medium slipways [100-150m]
27 large slipways [150-200m]
11 large enough for capital warships [>200m].


They also had 5 small dry-dock and 9 medium to large dry-dock. In addition they had 22 small floating docks , 8 medium docks and 4 large floating docks.


By WW-II [1941] this had changed to

28 slipways able to build small UBoats or Torpedoboot/Mboot etc
20 slipways able to build large Uboat or Torpedoboot
39 slipways able to build large Destroyers
4 slipways able to build light cruisers
15 slipways able to build Panzerschiff size warships
6 slipways larger enough to build capital warships.

They also had 13 small dry & floating docks; 8 medium and 7 large dry & floating docks.
 
Last edited:
The cold facts were that Germany could not win a building race with the UK, the Reich had four yards that could turn out surface combatants and the UK had well over a dozen and each British yard was more efficient and generally larger than its Reich counterpart. The U.S. had around 20 that could build destroyers and a half dozen for cruisers and BB.

In long term that's exactly the case, but changing the direction of construction takes time as RN found in case of destroyers, frigates and corvettes and the KM in case of submarines. But what really counts, in hindsight, is what happens between 1939-1941. Sub threat is on exactly the same level as in OTL, requiring as much ASW escorts for the Allied navies (or more willingness to take more casualties.).

After 1942 the construction race is definitely lost for KM and if the US enters the war as in OTL it's the end as there's hundreds of excellent surface ships ready to enter the war. This is what happened in OTL with expanded German submarine construction program. The hundreds of submarines imagined by Dönitz to be the war-winners only came in service in 1942 when they were on brink of obsolescence and about to be swallowed by increased escort numbers and US merchant construction. By mid-1943 it was clear that their days were definitely over.

Naturally if Germany decides to have more focus on surface warfare the submarine warfare against merchants can be fought according to London Treaty rules. But I don't think even in an ATL the young U-boat skippers are smart enough to think about political consequences, as displayed by fate of Athenia on first day of the war.
 
If you take the time to study this site and tabulate the build length of each sub , you will notice that in 1941 the Germans built 183 Type VII Uboats that averaged about 391 days each to build or about 13 months to build. In 1943 the same figures were 114 x Type VIIC took an average of 335 days or 11 months.

http://www.warshipsww2.eu/lode.php?language=E&period=&idtrida=595

This site confirms in the destroyer and Torpedoboot sections, that in 1940/41 they built 11 destroyers for an average of 612 days each or 20 months. In Rossler’s Uboat book, every thing was sacrificed to produce more and more Uboats, every thought they had lost their edge by the time quantity production was achieved in 1942/43.

By comparison in the USN section the Fletcher Destroyer batch production resulted in 45 destroyers built in 1941 at a rate of 481 days or 16 months. In 1942 the average went down to 347 days or 11 months. In 1943 the figure was down to 51 destroyers @ 276days or 9 months average. This is the expected benefit from 'multi year fixed price contracting' when the Government is driving for the best deal.

As to ship yards Germany had 25 ship building companies in WW-II distributing 110 slipways, down from the WW-I high of 191 slipways.

In WW-I the German navy had
107 small slipways [<100m]
34 medium slipways [100-200m]
27 large slipways [>200m]
11 large enough for capital warships.

They also had 5 small dry-dock and 9 medium to large dry-dock. In addition they had 22 small floating docks , 8 medium docks and 4 large floating docks.


By WW-II [1941] this had changed to

28 slipways able to build small UBoats or Torpedoboot/Mboot etc
20 slipways able to build large Uboat or Torpedoboot
39 slipways able to build large Destroyers
4 slipways able to build light cruisers
15 slipways able to build Panzerschiff size warships
6 slipways larger enough to build capital warships.

They also had 13 small dry & floating docks; 8 medium and 7 large dry & floating docks.

remember that a considerable proportion of available space is taken up by ships undergoing repair or refit. It isnt all available for building.
 
remember that a considerable proportion of available space is taken up by ships undergoing repair or refit. It isnt all available for building.

KM was able to conduct most of the repairs and refits in shipyards of occupied countries. French dockyards were in fact more productive than Germans until the tide of war started to turn against Germany. This was the case especially until Barbarossa as French communist trade unions were, until Barbarossa, instructed to sabotage Allied war effort but to help German war effort.
 
KM was able to conduct most of the repairs and refits in shipyards of occupied countries. French dockyards were in fact more productive than Germans until the tide of war started to turn against Germany. This was the case especially until Barbarossa as French communist trade unions were, until Barbarossa, instructed to sabotage Allied war effort but to help German war effort.


Yes and since slipways are above sealevel and at incline they can't easily be used to drag a ship back up the slipway to repair. It would cause more damage than it repaired. The dry and floating docks would be used for repairs. Through out the war German did build another 170 or so merchant ships in these yards but they usually only take a year to build each, so there was plenty of excess yard capability. That was what was being retooled in the early war period to produce hundreds of Uboats per year. Its just a question of reversing the historical trend from the late 1930s and re computing the potential production out put.


Re strategy. This is an allied concern not a German concern. Interwar studies had repeatedly shown that Germany could never win a economic based war or attrition against the rest of Europe & USA. So their strategy was not to go there in the first place. Under the original strategic vision before Hitler hyjacked the whole process in 1936, the Wehmacht was to build up and stockpile all the armaments supplies and forces to wage 12 months of continuous campaigns of maneuver that would sequentially overrun France & Poland and the rest of Europe if possible. That should place them in a position to win the wider European war. Since their base was WW-I experience this includes UK & USSR. The KM had been outcast since the mutiny of 1918/19 and was still hanging on to the out dated notion of strategic economic war with the west. What was needed was a strong CinC that could drag it kicking and screaming into the modern world. Hitler was a very weak CinC since he had no military strategy just a racial one, he stumbled from situation to situation.

one thing I have to correct is the slipway lengths were

Capital ships >200m
large 150-200m
medium 100-150m
small <100m

I'll edit my orginal post accordingly.
 
Last edited:
Top