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Carrier of the Kriegsmarine. World Naval Ships Forums Archive

Carrier of the Kriegsmarine.

Posts 1 to 28

I thought we already had a thread about the "Graf Zeppelin" but we don't appear to have. Here are a few pics of her. Cheers, Bob.
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thanks for those bob dont think ive seen such good pictures of her before

Did it see active service Bob..? if so where ? I didn't know they even had any carriers....2nd W.W.

No Ivor, she was never completed and came to a strange end with the Russians being involved. She has been found recently, try Google. Bob.

Not a molotov cocktail surely.........just jokeing ....don't put me in the brig

Hi Bob. Did the German navy have any carriers that took part in WW2. I've known a lot of veterans over the years, but can't remember any one ever talking about them. Kevin.

Definately not Kevin. Bob.

There is a good article on the GZ + other still-born Kreigsmarine CV projects in the latest issue of WARSHIP INTERNATIONAL. The Soviets used her as a sitting duck target and finally sank her with torpedoes. Her hulk was found sitting pretty much upright by, IIRC, a Polish expedition last year. She was actually quite close to completion when adolf stopped work on her......possibly could have made a difference if with Bismarck and PE, but............. Another waste was the almost complete CA Seydlitz: torn apart to be a CVL, never finished either. dummmkopfs! Attached is a small drg of the Seydlitz CVL conversion. DFO :D
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Thanks Bob. The one thing I can't understand is how The Germans were able to build up their navy after WW1. I often wonder what my grandfather thought when he had to go through it all again in WW2. Kevin.

I have uncomplimentary things to say about most German fleet designs in WWII, and GZ may well be the worst of the bunch. The policies driving German warship programs had already broken down, leaving the navy to build ships just for the sake of building ships. And having no experience with carrier requirements, designers were totally out of their league. Desperate for carrier data, the Germans sent a team to tour the Japanese carrier Akagi, in return for showing the Japanese the fire-control outfit for the cruiser Admiral Scheer. This was at the start of 1935; immediately after the tour, the Japanese took Akagi aside for a complete modernization. It's unclear if the Germans understood how outdated she was at the time of their tour. GZ ended up with casemate guns, a hopeless anachronism. And not just casemate mounts, but TWIN casemate mounts, a unique and bizarre arrangement. (The painting on the cover of WI shows single mounts--woops!) The twins have an interesting story. Originally the ship would have had eight single mounts; someone then suggested consolidating these into twin mounts to save space and weight. Somewhere along the line, the switch was made to twins but without halving the number of mounts. So instead of saving weight, they added weight; however, they never got around to adding accommodations for the larger gun crews or increasing the ammo loadout. If I get started on the flight-deck equipment, I'll never shut up, so I'll say only that the American assessment after postwar inspection pronounced the equipment neither efficient nor even safe. GZ's sister began construction but did not progress too far. This didn't stop the Soviets from trying to buy her. But part of the ship almost made it into service, as the Germans sent her elevators and flight-deck equipment for installation aboard Italy's own attempt at a carrier, the Aquila. You will sometimes see it printed that GZ's sister was named Peter Strasser; while this would have been a perfectly good name, there is no foundation whatsoever to this claim.

[QUOTE]The one thing I can't understand is how The Germans were able to build up their navy after WW1.[/QUOTE] The Versailles Treaty was very strict toward the German navy. Many people overlook the restriction that I think was most crippling, cutting the personnel force to a measly 15,000. If you look at fleet units, you see explosive growth in the run-up to war. Let's look at destroyers as an illustration. At the time of the Anglo-German naval agreement in 1935, Germany had no destroyers in service. In 1936, still none. By the end of 1937, the Germans had seven commissioned destroyers. The next year, they added nine more. By September 1939, six more, and that brings us to twenty-two all in the space of three years. Where did all these crews come from? From a hasty training program. And the folks who survived these ships may count themselves lucky as the German destroyer force was effectively gutted by the end of the Norway Campaign. Eighteen more destroyers were built before war's end. (I believe British yards completed thirty-five destroyers in 1942 alone.) So we see a strenuous build-up, teaming inexperienced designers with inexperienced crews. Then came some harsh war experience, and a slowdown as priorities shifted to focus on submarines. Though the German destroyers were massive (all were over 2100 tons, compared to "big" British ships like the 1850-ton "Tribal" class), they were not perceptably superior. So we can attribute the fleet's rapid growth partly to a laxity in quality control.

Gee....and how do you rate their handful of poorly designed Light Cruisers? The whole WW II Kreigsmarine was a rapidly and rather poorly built patchwork of designs that looked better on paper than they performed at sea. OTOH they were mostly handsome ships that appeal to my jaundiced Industrial Designers' eyes!! The wasted tonnage, manpower, room, etc that the lack of a proper DP mount (as the IJN and Italian Navy also suffered from...) put a further handicap into their big ship designs. Aaaahhh, lots to critique....with 20-20 hindsight and not having to worry about an industrial base that wasn't really capable of all that was INSTANTLY required of it! DFO :D

You know, when you build a cruiser that proves incapable of cruising--something fundamental has gone wrong. Personally, I don't see the use of a split secondary battery for AA and antiship duties as a serious flaw. As you noted, the Germans, Japanese, and Italians went that route. So did the Soviets in their capital ship designs. The French attempted genuine DP secondaries, but the engineering just wasn't there. The Dutch would have had DP secondaries if their battlecruisers had been built. The British actually adopted a suitable DP gun for the rebuilt Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, and Renown, a nice 4.5-incher; but then the caliber-critics began complaining and forced the new KGV class to mount the 5.25in gun, which was utterly inadequate in the AA role. The fact is that only the Americans put a truly DP secondary gun on their new battleships, so I'm not too critical of the Germans on this one point. [The postwar 5.25in gun on Vanguard was a fine weapon, much improved.]

No doubt that the USN had an excellent DP in the 5"38, which saved wt, manpower etc. OTOH the Jean Bart as COMPLETED despite 3 main caliber (15", 6", 3.9") guns + light AA was truly-for a brief time-a porcupine of offensive and defensive GUNpower with, apparently, adequate FCD to aim the weapons. She also was to my eyes, a most impressive looking BB! FRom everything I've read she was probably the best "35000" ton design given both offensive and defensive power....ok...so she grew a few thousand tons by completion, nobody was counting then! I would suspect the Jean Bart vs. Tirpitz would have been a bloody battering....fortunately never happened, but I'd put my $ on JB. DFO :eek::D Considering this is about carriers; here is yet another Navy that for all practical purposes had no EFFECTIVE carrier air arm during WW II.

The French are a mystery to me. When you look at their older dreadnoughts, you see a combination of homeliness and mediocrity. Then their next efforts, in the 1930's, the Dunkerques and Richelieus--these were superb designs, ton for ton, and fine lookers. The Richelieus were the best-looking of all modern battleships, in my opinion. There are some folks who will tell you the Bismarcks were useless hunks of junk. I'm not that extreme (at least they were better than the Scharnhorsts), but they were nothing special, and for 42,000 tons. Assuming a Richelieu had enough time to iron out its shell dispersion problems, I'd call her the favorite in a gun duel with a Bismarck. The French understood that Bearn had no real-world value as a carrier and had already consigned her to secondary duties before the war. The carrier planes were almost as unimpressive, which explains the orders for American Wildcats, Helldivers, and Vindicators. It would have been interesting to see the impact of Joffre's completion. The French had already committed to twin-engine bomber designs, quite avant-garde.

Yes, had Joffre's been built....almost as "strange" an answer as their goofy predreadnoughts. Definately must be the influence of the HEAD man in charge of the projects............ 4 very handsome BBs, and then...Joffre?????! duuuhh? DFO :rolleyes::D

The Joffre's were at least an advance on Bearn, but had they been completed prior to the fall of France and managed to join the Free French forces, they would probably have been rebuilt to a degree. The flight deck seems to have been almost an afterthought in the design, and didn't extend over the full length of the ship. Had they been refitted in America the flight deck would have been extended to the full length and width of the ship for a start. Addidng a deck edge lift abaft the island would have been fairly easy given the open hangar construction, and suitably upgraded they would have been welcome additions to the allied fleet, though they would have been a little too fragile for the Mediterranean theatre (no armoured flight deck, but that's a whole different thread!).
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I'll agree on the poor use of space and disagree regarding fragility. Their armor seems quite in keeping with their tonnage. Flightdeck armor was basically irrelevant in the Mediterranean.

[quote=Tiornu;42478]I'll agree on the poor use of space and disagree regarding fragility. Their armor seems quite in keeping with their tonnage. Flightdeck armor was basically irrelevant in the Mediterranean.[/quote] Excuse me! Excuse me! Irrelevent! Lets just ask HMS Illustrious about deck armour, shall we? I don't think it is even arguable that if it hadn't been for that 3" armoured deck this ship would have been lost. She survived a concentrated attack by 54 stuka dive bombers, dropping a mixture of 250 Ib HE (to knock out her AA guns) and 1000 Ib armour piercing bombs. The 1000 Ib bomb that dropped down the lift well seems to have done the most damage, but if this ship had been Ark Royal, Furious, Glorious, Courageous, Eagle, Hermes, et al, would it have survived? Umm. No. Yet, without her armored deck, it is quite probable she would not even have made it to Malta, let alone eventually return to duty. No other aircraft carrier took as many hits as she did - eight direct hits (five of 1,000 ponders) and seven near-misses - and survived. In fact, [I]no[/I] other warship survived such punishment. The value of her armor was demonstrated again several years later, in May 1945, when her sister ships [I]Victorious[/I] and [I]Formidable[/I] were both hit by two [I]kamikaze[/I] attacks, yet both were operational again with hours. Compare that with the USS Franklin.
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Illustrious's dramatic story has given rise to some misconceptions. How many bombs did her flightdeck armor defeat? None. Indeed, how many bombs hit her flightdeck armor at all? A single 500kg bomb. We can't even say that the flightdeck armor caused the bomb to explode away from the vitals, as the bombs that hit elsewhere got no deeper into the hull. If we move away from Illustrious, we have almost nothing to talk about, because she received in that one episode, more bomb hits than all other carriers in the Med combined. For the entirety of the Mediterranean war, the flightdeck armor defeated only a single bomb--an anti-personnel bomb dropped at low altitude by an Italian fighter. That's one success out of a sample pool of fifteen hits. The idea that the narrow waters of the Mediterranean were a shooting gallery for divebombers is utterly false. The Far East saw more dive-bomb hits on carriers in a single engagement than the Med did all war.

First thing is we are missing the whole train of thought of the naval designers up to the start of World War 2. If you look at the design's of the period up to the war they are all based on World War 1 design's, with a little modernization's thrown in. Most ship's, not all still had the casemate's in the hull's and superstructure's. Most if not all had very poor defense against aircraft let alone the threat the submarine posed! The german's on the other hand were playing a game of catch up once Hitler decided to renouce the treaty. There naval designer's were still in the last war as far as building warships. Regards Charles

Do current production warships have ANY armour? Is the theory to provide such defensive weapons systems that the enemy will not be able to hit them?

No, I suspect that current warships do not incorporate armour in their designs. I believe that they are able to project sufficient power to prevent anyone getting close enough that the armour is necessary. If you're splashing the in bounds 100 + miles away, who needs armour, its just surplus weight.

Thanks, that is what I had assumed, but I had no actual knowledge.

And if you think sir that a MASSIVE attack from multiple directions will STOP all incoming SUPERSONIC missles....good luck! DFO :eek:

Hold the phone, The current ship building program in the US with the Burk Class Flight IIA do have armour build in to the design. The rest of the armor is kevilar that is added to the superstructure. Most massive air attach's these day's do not happen with one warship, that would be a waste of the assets. Regards Charles

OK guys, question here: if Graf Zeppelin, had gone out with bismarck and PE, what woukld have happened, would he shill have been sank? or what would have happened. Nikki

The sea conditions were miserable; it's quite possible the Germans could not have operated their carrier planes. GZ's greatest contribution might have been in distracting from other targets.

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