Lack of German Aircraft Carrier

[Lucky13]

How come??

[syscom3]

Among the reasons were its lack of aircraft capacity, doctrine and tactics had to be learned from scratch and the need for it to operate in a task force (more targets being bunched up for mass destruction)

[Lucky13]

Got ya.....cheers!

[Seawitch]

Originally Posted by Lucky13

Nice looking girl.....odd shape on the flight deck though.

Nice looking girls tend to have curves like that! I wonder where the Broom cupboards....I mean hangers were?
No, seriously, I've been astonished by this thread, I never realised it had got so far as launching a ship that only needed fitting out and a regime to go with it.
Thanks everyone!

[Heinz]

The Graf Zeppelin just died really because of in fighting aswell. Theres an article about it the carrier in Aeroplane, April this year I think. She was scuttled by the Russians in 47 after being a target drone.

Also the Germans ended up using the Zeppelin as a storage area, sad really as it was rather beautiful.

[Lucky13]

Any line drawings?

[Heinz]

Not in that article.

[antoni]

The article was in the March 2007 copy of The Aeroplane.

There is a book published by AJ Press on this subject with plans:

AJ Press EOW 42 - Graf Zeppelin (książka) - 65,00PLN : Jadarhobby

The wreck was discovered by Polish divers in 2006.

[102first_hussars]

shes a beauty

[Maharg]

This is interesting German Carrier-Based Aircraft

[delcyros]

Dear R Leonard,

this time I need to adress some points of Your post, which I find questionable. You tend to underestimate potential, which is something I cannot agree in after having studied this case for some time. Of course, this is not ment to upset You, as You have well reasoned cases and thus, Your opinion is founded, so we just might enjoi to discuss this properly.

At the root of the problem is the plain fact that the Kriegsmarine had no naval doctrine that included carriers. Great Britain, Japan, and the US, the major players in the aircraft carrier business, had been operating pure aircraft carriers since the 1920’s in case of the later two and, without looking it up, about 1918 for Great Britain

.

Have You any source, which can confirm the claim that there was no tactical doctrine for an Aircraft carrier? I have some time spend in archives, Freiburg and the Berlin ones and so far, most sources regarding Graf Zeppelins tactical use disappeared. They had existed as the tech.Div. numbers eloquently proof. Just wondering if You had access to them or not.
Germany had plenty of experience with aircraft mother ships going back into ww1. Those had a flightdeck to launch 3 planes but not to land them. SMS STUTTGART was the first prototype. Experience with them was good and casualties are two (total losses) for 283 launchs. Plans to convert the old cruiser SMS ROON were dropped for a more radical design.

"It was then planed to convert the incomplte Italian passenger ship Ausonia - under construction at the Blohm&Voss shipyard in Hamburg - into a Flugzeugdampfer, a design which was a mixture between a aircraft mother ship and an aircraft carrier. This ship was projected to carry up to 19 float planes and 10 land based aircraft. Like other contemporary carrier designs, it had two flight decks, one large landing deck at the stern and a shorter start deck at the bow, where the aircraft could start out of the hangar directly(call it Battlestar Galactica). In difference to the exisiting British carrier, the Ausonia was planed to bet a island-type superstructore on the lfight deck, a feature that was later used on all aircraft carriers."
Ausonia History

In the interwar period, Germany was not allowed to upkeep carriers and armed aircrafts anyway, You cannot blame them for this. Despite this, R&D went forward. As a matter of fact, Heinkel contributed largely to japanese carrierplanes, including all technical details of launching catapults, fuselage strengthening and launch&recovery procedures. The Lufthansa kept three Aircraft motherships in the Atlantic in the late 20´s and early 30´s for postal services. The technical personal of those "experimentators" later can be found in design environment of german carriers.

By "pure carrier" I mean carriers whose airplanes are wheeled, are recovered aboard ship by some sort of arrestor arrangement (however primitive in the early years), and could also be operated from land bases.

They indeed had no aircraft carriers in commission matching Your definition. But this doesn´t deevaluate the steps they had already done.

Further, the aircraft in use (again except for the very early models) were specifically designed for carrier operations. The navies of these three nations worked out the problems and challenges of carrier operations in the 20’s and 30’s and became, each in their own way, the best in the business. The feeble attempts of the Germans (and the Italians) to, first of all, develop aircraft carriers, much less carrier aircraft, were, frankly, laughable in retrospect.

Germany was leading in float planes. The Do-D torpedo bomber of the 20´s was - as a matter of fact- superior to the Swordfish in use by RN in ww2. The Do-22, which emerged just before outbreak of ww2, was competetive to the worlds finest torpedo & bomber planes. The Do-22W was build with wheeled undercarriege and it was proposed to use this plane in case the Fi-167 doesn´t become operational in time as carrier attack plane. The Do-22W arguably is one of the finest planes for this purpose by 1940.

All you have to do is look at the main guns and their placement aboard Graf Zeppelin and it’s obvious that the Kreigsmarine considered surface vessels as the major threat to their carrier. Imagine, eight 5.9 inch guns in hull mounted barbettes. Probably great for banging away at some British destroyers as they come boiling over the horizon, but since that was a bit unlikely, here was wasted ordnance (read: weight penalty) for no apparent gain

.
The 16 x 5.91"/55 QF are indeed misfortunate. But they are necessary! Unlike the RN, IJN & USN, the DKM had not enough escort vessels to protect a ship like Graf Zeppelin on independent missions. The DKM was building from almost zero. The geographically problematic situation assured that escorts with proper range & speed would almost certainly have been cruiser sized (but underarmed) and thus become impossible. That´s why Graf Zeppelin was armoured and armed like a large cruiser, with good hull protection & excellent underwater protection. It had substantially more staying power than f.e. british or US carriers.

Even pre-war, the RN, IJN, and USN could have told them that that was a waste of time and effort; that the real threat to the ship was in the air.

Not before 1941. Experience showed that a large cruiserforce was avaiable to the RN. Whether or not the 5.91" would be useful in the intended role is unclear. but they give some credible self defense against ships, which were considered indeed a big thread.

Unlike the dual-purpose 5 inchers on the Essex types (and they were, in the reality of their usage, single purpose AA guns) the Graf Zeppelins 5.9’s were not optimized for antiaircraft defense and would have been essentially worthless for that purpose.

The 5.91"/55QF had an elevation of -10 /+ 37 degrees and thus were no high angle weapons. But they have been used against torpedoplanes by Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Prinz Eugen and Tirpitz. Against dive bombers, they are virtually useless, agreed. The general benefit might be questioned due to the low rate of fire (6-8rpm) and the low rate of training. The navy worked on it´s own 5.91"DP gun, but development was abandoned when Graf Zeppelin was cancelled in 1940.

The USN went down that road with Lexington class and their 8” turrets. By the mid 1930’s it was recognized that those guns were so much dead weight. Note that as soon after the Japanese attacked Pearl the 8-inchers were removed and replaced on Saratoga with 5-inch dual purpose and on Lexington with temporary 1.1 in AAA mounts (Lexington was scheduled to receive 5-inch mounts, but she was sunk at Coral Sea before that could happen).

Upgrades are thinkable for Graf Zeppelin as well. You cannot say whether or not the armement would have remained identic. The 5.91" twin deck mounts were anyway replaced by 4.1"/65 DP´s.

Another major failing in the Graf Zeppelin design was in an incomprehensibly low avgas storage capacity. The smallest and oldest carrier in the IJN, Hosho, had a capacity of 98,000 gallons and carried but 22 planes. Essex class carrier contemporaries of Graf Zeppelin had up to 240,000 gallons avgas capacity and, in practice, were replenished every three to four days during combat operations. And Graf Zeppelin . . . carried a paltry 65,000 gallons. How do you suppose they were planning on replenishing their avgas supply, not to mention their bunker fuel?

If You check the number of planes and the relevant fuel load, you will see that Graf Zeppelin isn´t worser. The replenishment was tasked to the Etappendienst.


Which brings us to the following 3 questions:

1.)was the carrier technically feasable?
2.)was it logistically feasable?
3.)Did it make strategic sense?

Let me examine these questions in detail:

[The Basket]

I think that the 109T would have suffered a huge accident rate.

Just like the Seafire.

[delcyros]

1) Was it technically feasible?

Unlike ships of the first world war, german capital ships in the second world war were designed to act independently in the open ocean. Crew accomodations were mediocre, working environment excellent (except very congested machinery spaces, a side effect of minutelike subdivision as those executed in Graf Zeppelin). Graf Zeppelin was subject to several innovative shipbuilding techniques, such like extensive use of welding instead of riveting. Much intention was put to keep the vitals "safe" and Graf Zeppelin is one of very few carriers with a good metacentric height (for that matter better than even Shinano) and thus good stability and less listing in heavy seas(altough not as good as a BB, of course).
However, while this was an advantage in the enclosed waters of the North Sea or Baltic, this characteristic would normally lead to great personnel discomfort in open ocean seas and therefore reduce their efficiency and endurance in stormy weather (while the maximum list is LESS, the roll period is SHORTER).
That does not mean that they were limited out of confined waters, Graf Zeppelin was fully able for extended voyages in rough seas. Her high freeboard and the good stability made her dry in even heaviest weather, altough uncomfortable.
Data for Graf Zeppelin give a range of 8000nm @19 Kts and about 6.500nm @ 24 Kts, which not only give a significant advantage in high speed cruise range over japanese,british & US carriers of that time but also give a range for independent atlantic operations.
The degree of mechanical safety in the launching & recovery plants of Graf Zeppelin exceeded the necessary figure by a large margin. Much emphasis is put on the twin compressor catapults slips, which allow starting planes to retract their gears (in this case the Bf-109 only) before take off & giving them a much superior speed advantage over common procedures. It would also allow to start overloaden planes and the mechanical reliability of these devices is prooven on the aircraft mother ships Falke & Bussard, which both used that slip to launch Do-18, Do-22 and BV138, planes with up to 20 metric tons take off weight(!). It is technically entirely possible start overloaden Do-217/317 medium bombers with them. That gives a significant potential for future development on Graf Zeppelin.
The ship had three main elevators and a sophisticated damage controll system with much emphasis put on fireproof construction and fire countermeasures. One reason why the total avgas load was reduced is the deliberate limitation for a higher degree of survivability, esspeccially against possible surface ship encounters.

My answer to question 1 is Yes, it was feasable.

[syscom3]

Del,

The purpose of an AC carrier is to perform aircraft operations.

If it has a limited av gas store.... or a limited aircraft capacity, then its not performing that role.

Events in the Pacific proved that the carriers were better served in the long run by carrying more AC and less armor and guns.

[delcyros]

I partly agree, Syscom. But the Pacific is very different to the Atlantic. If You file down carrier operations in the North Atlantic, You will see what I mean.The Avgas on GZ was only low in absolute numbers, not in relative ones. The Essex could carry fuel for up to 120 planes, GZ for only about 40. It would be better to compare her in this respect to british carriers or US escort carriers, which had a comparable airwing.

The limitation on AC was a tradeoff. Not ideal for an CV but necessary in the strategic environment. Comparable thoughts lead to a lower AC numbers for later british carriers. As I said, the Atlantic was very different.