WW1 German Aircraft carriers break blockade
- Thread starter myr
- Start date
I doubt that would be possible, naval aviation just was not mature enough in WW1. You would need a torpedo you could drop from an airplane and an airplane capable of carrying that torpedo with a reasonable range. And then you would need to go through all the growing pains of building a functioning aircraft carrier (where does that island go?), and then the even more painful growing pains of developing effective aircraft carrier operations doctrine. Four years just isn't enough without very heavy ASB.
Well the British did have the Furious as a kind quasi-carrier in 1918. Technology wise, I am sure the Germans and just about anyone with a developed ship building industry could cut down the works and slap some sort of deck on a fast, large ship. If you did not want to use a battlecruiser because all the ones you had were useful warships and you didn't have any follies around, you could do it to a fast liner. To my mind, the difficulty is figuring out just what kind of deck you would need - hence the Furious with separate decks, and that's something you can only figure out through trial and error and the clock begins to tick.
The technology and tactics didn't exist yet. Furious could barely attack a unalerted zeppelin base.
Moving ships?
Good luck
Moving ships?
Good luck
I think more likely: they sally out with the HSF as escort, the GF is predictably waiting, a Zeppelin spots the GF before being shot down, the HSF decides to run home, the aircraft carriers try to launch an attack because their commander is enthusiastic to try the technology, most planes get lost and ditch at sea and some lucky aviators are picked up by British destroyers.
They did, they were called Zeppelins and it didn't work.
Submarines are more likely to sink the RN than aircraft.
Submarines are more likely to sink the RN than aircraft.
1914-1918 needed ten to fifteen years of extra peacetime development to get that coordination,
Jonathansouth
Banned
in WW1 Germany simply didn't have the industry to compete with the UK in shipbuilding aircraft carrier technology was so limited that the planes couldn't even carry a radio as it was too heavy. The first use of an aircraft carrier in battle was by the RN at Jutland, and it was used for recon and the planes literally had to ditch into the sea next to the Grand Fleet to give them a message. If by some miracle Aircraft technology was up to the task it is likely that both sides would have it as with the British having cracked German codes they would not have been able to keep it secret and with the massive advantage, the UK had in shipbuilding for every carrier the Germans built the UK could have built 3. During the Dreadnought race, the German shipbuilding industry went flat out and built 26 ships at the same time the UK built 42 ships for themselves multiple ships for foreign navies and still, several shipyards went bust due to a lack of orders with the UK having the potential due to vastly bigger shipbuilding industry to have built more than double what they historically did. During this period Germany was using 100% of its available slipways thus every Aircraft carrier built means another ship is not being built while the UK had a massive problem with overcapacity in its shipbuilding industry at the time.
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Jonathansouth
Banned
Gemany's best bet to break the blockade is to not go to war with a nation that has a shipbuilding industry over 6 times bigger than its own.
This is the answer. The Kaiserliche Marine could certainly have built an aircraft carrier of some description if they'd wanted to - they designed one during the war, and there were enough experiments going on world-wide pre-war that somebody wasgoing to do it eventually even without the war. It would have required Tirpitz having an unfortunate accident, but that's true of most suggestions to improve the KM.
The big problem is that Germany building a carrier is the equivalent of the French building Gloire. As soon as they take the plunge, the RN is going to respond with more, bigger, better carriers of their own (perhaps taking Beardmore up on their offer). "Better" is , of course, a relative term, and the early ships would have an array of "interesting" features (separate landing and take-off decks, twin islands, etc), but it's doable.
The Royal Navy sees the first carrier, copies it and then proceeds to out build the Germans.
The key thing is aircraft capability. In 1914 they would be marginally useful scouts. By about 1915 reasonable scouts and maybe some anti-scout fighters, and maybe by 1916 some limited bombers, then maybe torpedos or heavy bombers by 1918.
It would be hard to justify a dedicated carrier just for that, though a seaplane tender or something like an escort carrier might be useful. It's likely there would be high mechanical and landing losses early on, though later war aircraft were much more robust and relatively reliable.
It would be hard to justify a dedicated carrier just for that, though a seaplane tender or something like an escort carrier might be useful. It's likely there would be high mechanical and landing losses early on, though later war aircraft were much more robust and relatively reliable.
Garrison
Donor
Yeah four of years of war saw immense advances in aircraft technology. In 1914 dropping bombs mean throwing them out of a cockpit by hand. Carrying a torpedo is impossible and I shudder to think what would happen if someone decided to try dive-bombing. At absolute best a 1914 aircraft carrier could serve in the scouting role, except they won't be able to radio back their sightings and any reports would depend on them plodding back to their carrier to deliver the message. Also I wonder if any 1914-15 aircraft would have the power to weight ratio to get airborne in the length of a carrier deck?