Better German naval strategy 1930-1945? (6 Viewers)

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That is an attractive little ship. I'm having trouble reading her name. A little help?
 
If you plan to have a flex fuel (HFO and Diesel) in your boiler, it is relatively easy.

Of course. My parents house, like many other houses in my country, had an oil burning boiler for hot tap water as well as for pumping through radiators. Since replaced by a heat pump, but anyway. It used light fuel oil, which except for a lower tax rate, is (or at least a few decades ago, was) identical to road diesel.

If you heat diesel under pressure it starts separating into even lighter petroleum products...and as the Japanese found when they tried to burn diesel in unmodified boiler, they explode!

My understanding is that the problems the IJN encountered were due to using raw crude oil, after the Allies destroyed their refineries. Crude oil contains all the light volatile fractions that are refined to petrol, (LPG even?), so that's an entirely different kettle of fish than using diesel oil.
 

Sure, I was thinking of the time when they laid down the Hippers, when the AGNA was in effect.

I understand the motivation for scrapping the D's was that they thought they were too weak against the Dunkerques, and they wished to get started with the Scharnhorsts ASAP. In retrospect, a couple of D's could have been useful in WWII, even if that would have meant the Scharnhorsts and Bismarcks were delayed. But I guess they couldn't foresee that at the time.
 
Bunker C is about one grade thinner than asphalt. Slight exaggeration
It needs to be heated, usually with steam pipes in order to get it to flow, especially in ships operating in cold water.

Yes, i know. But that was somewhat mature technology at the time, since heating the fuel was also required for spraying it into steam boilers. So whatever the challenges with running diesel engines on HFO were, figuring out that you need to heat the fuel so you can pump it wasn't one of them.

Pushing the boundaries does not always work so well even though the goal does get reached.

That's of course true. It's easy to say which approach works in retrospect.
 
Not all crude oil is the same. Some of the oilfields in the DEI produced crude that, while not ideal, could be used in ships' boilers.

Japanese use of crude pre-dated the damage to their oil refineries in the DEI. They started using it before the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944. It was the end of that year before the bombing campaigns against DEI facilities really got going. In early 1944 they moved most of their fleet down to the Singapore area to be near their oil supplies. But come mid-1944 the problem seems to have been accumulating enough fuel oil in time for the major battles they knew were coming up. The oilfields were still producing and the refineries were refining all that they could, but it still wasn't enough. Then add in the fact that the IJA & IJN didn't pool their reserves most of the time.

The story of Japan's oil woes in WW2 is not easy to follow and their are a number of myths about what went on. This study is the best I've thus far found on the subject. Reasons for using crude start about p70

 
The Hippers were ordered before the AGNA; technically, they could have been built under Versailles as Panzerschiffe D & E (instead of Kreuzer G & H).

I still don't understand scrapping "D". If they hadn't started, i.e. Panzerschiffe "E", then there is an argument, but with all the material ordered (guns, boilers, turbines); knowing redesign to Schlachtschiff would set both the 'treaty cruisers' and the battleships back 18-24 months, and that the 28cm guns might not be able to penetrate Dunkerques armour (basically round may penetrate caliber so rumours of 280 mm belt would have required perfect hit; actual armour was 240mm, so 28cm gun turns out to be OK) it seems like dumb decision.

That Z-plan included P class Kreuzers Panzerschiffe which were more/less warmed over D class says Raeder still wanted the basic ship. Germany wasn't so wealthy that they could afford the scrapping.
 

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