Better German naval strategy 1930-1945?

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GrauGeist said:
It was a dead heat between HMS Hermes and IJN Hosho - the USN was a few years late to the party.
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Yes, Hosho was the first purpose built carrier. The RN was flying aircraft off ships, in some cases winching them down to sea level, since 1916 at least. I believe HMS Argus predates U.S.S. Langley. Rather than look that up I'll wait for the inevitable corrections.
 
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GrauGeist said:
I believe the French beat everyone to the punch with their pre-war seaplane carrier.
(Pre-WWI, I meant)
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I would have said USN beat everyone with the landing/take off from USS Pennsylvania (ACR-4) on 18/Jan/1911. But they never followed up on it.

French certainly led the way with seaplane carrier NM Fourde. Operating seaplanes starting in 1912, participating in fleet exercises in 1913 and adding a flying off deck in 1914. But again they stopped everything with start of the war.

HMS Argus - 1918 beats USS Langley 1922 by more/less 4 years, Hosho is 1922 as well.
NM Fourde, HMS Argus, USS Langley were all conversions, IJN Hosho was planned from the keel as an aircraft carrier.​
 
Purpose-built aircraft carriers, meaning not conversions.
HMS Hermes - laid down 1918, commissioned 1924
IJN Hosho - laid down 1919, commisioned 1922.
USS Lexington - laid down 1921, commissioned 1927.

Again, purpose-built aircraft carriers, not repurposed from oilers, cruisers, passenger ships or what-not.
 
The Lexingtons were laid down in Sept 1920 and Jan 1921 as battlecruisers. It was the terms of the 1922 Washington Treaty (Washington Conference was Nov 1921 to Feb 1922) that allowed their CONVERSION to aircraft carriers as a matter of economy. Otherwise the hulls would have been scrapped like those of 4 sister ships.See Article IX.


Work on them as battlecruisers was not suspended until Feb 1922, after the Treaty was signed and it was July 1922 before the decision was made to complete them as aircraft carriers.

Lexington-class battlecruiser - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

The IJN Akagi & Kaga took advantage of the same provision.

The first US carrier designed as such from the keel up, was CV-4 Ranger, finally laid down in Sept 1931.

Hermes initial carrier design was drawn up in 1917 and she was laid down in Jan 1918. Her completion was delayed and the design modified several times as the RN gained experience with trials on Argus from late 1918 and the partially complete Eagle in 1920. IIRC there were about 4 major design revisions during that time and work on her was suspended for a period after her launch in Sept 1919 pending the outcome of the Eagle trials.

Hosho's original design was as a seaplane carrier with a flying off deck forward. After seeing Furious a landing on deck was added and after seeing Argus the design was modified to a flush deck before she was laid down in Dec 1920. At this time Japan was an ally and there was much contact and exchange of information between the two navies from which Japan benefited greatly in creating her naval air arm. That only began to change in 1922.
 
The German Z class (Narvik to the allies) had design problems;

The propulsion system as already noted which also lowered the operating range.

Seagoing was bad in Atlantic conditions as the bow design and weight distribution wasn't
good.

Stability was also a problem leading to fuel not being allowed to go to less than half as it made the
vessel too light and prone to rolling.

Fire control - the fire control station was outside and was fairly primitive.

Out of the fifteen produced the last seven had changes to the propulsion system to make it cheaper.
This last batch also finally got the forward double turret as it had not been ready for the first eight.
 
USN
14 Nov 1910 Eugene Ely took off from a ramp on the USS Birmingham off Norfolk, Virginia (technically the ship was underway as her anchor had left the seabed, but she had no forward motion). With the natural wind over the deck only 10 knots, his propeller clipped the surface as he reached flying speed. He landed ashore.

18 Jan 1911 Ely landed on the stern platform fitted to USS Pennsylvania while she was at anchor in San Francisco Bay. Later that day he took off from that same platform.

26 Jan 1911 Glenn Curtis became the second man to take off from and land back on water in an aircraft fitted with floats.

March 1911, the 1912 Naval Appropriations Act included $25,000 for aviation.

1913 an Aviation Detachment shipped to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to publicise aviation.

RN
March 1911, the RN took up the offer of the use of 2 civilian Short Bros pusher biplanes to teach naval officers how to fly by the holder of UK Pilot Certificate Number 5. The Admiralty only paid for running costs, repairs and £20 per pilot. 4 pilots were trained this way and another 4 paid at their own expense by the end of 1911.

18 Nov 1911 first British aviator takes off from water, but crashed trying to land! Mix of pilot inexperience and marginal performance of aircraft when fitted with floats.

1 Dec 1911 first British aviator landed on water (But had to be put ashore to take off, due to the float design!)

Dec 1911 approval given for a trial take off from a ship. HMS Africa fitted with 2 parallel downward sloping troughs on her bow.

10 Jan 1912 Commander C R Samson became the second man in history to fly from a ship's deck while Africa was at anchor. He landed ashore.

2 May 1912 Samson took off from HMS Hibernia underway at sea off Weymouth. This was repeated from HMS London in July.

1912 saw the Beardmore shipbuilding company propose an "aircraft parent ship" design. Probably the earliest proposal for a dedicated aircraft carrier. Design not taken up as it had too many features not proven in practice.

Autumn 1912 Admiralty decide to adapt the protected cruiser Hermes into a seaplane carrier. Sloping deck fitted forward in place of gun and a canvas hangar rigged between that and the bridge. Second hangar on quarterdeck with boom on mainmast to lift a seaplane on and off the ship. Provision for a third, unprotected, aircraft. Recommissioned May 1913 and used in various exercises to prove the concept of aircraft operating at sea with the fleet. Trials lasted until Oct.

1914 Admiralty design the first ship to be built as a seaplane carrier (as opposed to conversions of existing ships). HMS Ark Royal II, laid down Nov 1913 and acquired in May 1914 before construction had proceeded too far, allowing a complete redesign of her original layout.

HMS Ark Royal (1914) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

France
1911 Foudre, a torpedo boat tender, fitted out as a seaplane carrier. Her previous role meant she had much of the necessary equipment, including booms to lift seaplanes on and off the water. She was fitted with a canvas hangar, another first. She embarked her first aircraft on 27 May 1912, a Voisin floatplane. She was then used in various trials and exercises from 1912 to 1914.

In 1914 she was fitted with a short flight deck on the forecastle for take-offs by wheeled aircraft. First take-off was on 8 May 1914. A second attempt by another pilot resulted in a crash.

Germany
Began building its naval air arm from 1911 with the formation of its Naval Flying Detachment, receiving its first seaplanes in May 1912. Shortly after the outbreak of WW1 it converted a number of ships as seaplane carriers for use against the Russians in the Baltic.

IJN
Sent officers to examine Foudre in June 1912 and later that year visited the USA. 2 seaplanes purchased from each country, but after trials the French Farman design was preferred and a licence obtained.

Autumn 1913 the IJN acquired a merchantman and converted her to a seaplane carrier. Wakamiya completed Aug 1914.

Japanese seaplane carrier Wakamiya - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org
 
Germans had a lot of trouble designing ships in the 1930s, in part because of the enforced delay due to peace treaties.
In part because they were trying to push the treaty limits to the limits and beyond.
In part because they had limited ocean going experience, running commercial ships through bad weather is not the same. Merchants can slow down, divert, delay.
Machinery was changing constantly, something was changing every few years. Germans skipped a lot of the 20s, this is on top of not staying on top of things in the late teens. Germans had to stay with coal or mixed firing when others were going to oil. Not everything the US and Britain did was oil powered but they were building a lot more oil powered ships than German was in 1916-20. Sometimes you fail but that helps earning.
Germans could copy what others had done but that means you are one-two generations behind. Germans tried to leap-frog everybody else but when you are jumping from an unsteady base using weak legs??
Germans seemed to be a bit split-personality in their tactical thinking/gunnery (they were not the only ones).
In WW I they liked high velocity guns which simplified fire control at medium ranges (ranges in the mid teens of yds/meters), allowed for smaller openings in the faces of the turrets and allowed for good penetration using slightly smaller caliber shells. There were problems with this approach, like greater dispersion and short barrel life.
As far as Destroyers go, just about everybody screwed up the type of guns/mounts they needed. They went for the high velocity low angle guns for surface fire but failed to take into account the problems of firing from a 'lively' small ship compared to large heavy ships. Same gun on a destroyer deck does not have the same effective range as it does on a battleship deck. They also under estimated the amount of fire control needed (weight/size of directors) and also the amount of ammo needed for more than one short engagement per cruise/mission.

A lot of the the German ships look good on paper but they didn't work well in practice. Unless a lot of the problems were fixed changing from BB/BC to Carriers just means carriers with the same problems. Same for cruisers and Destroyers. Germans were proponents of air power but their naval AA was not really that good. Again the paper specs were good (sometimes) but the actual effect was a bit lacking. The Germans with the destroyers were only a bit behind some other nations (the US was in a class of it's own with the 5in/38 despite not having proximity fuses when coming up with the idea). The German 5in destroyer guns had less elevation than most British 4.7in guns. The German 37mm AA guns were pretty much rubbish.

In a calm sea, in good weather, with ammo close at hand, they might reach 30 rounds per minute per barrel.
The ranges given are an illusion, Tracer burned out at 4800 meters which is about 1/2 the max range and trying to control fire by watching tracer at that distance is futile. Later in the war they increased the HE payload by 4 fold by cutting the tracer back to 1200 meters burn out.

In 1938-40 the idea that a carrier should devote hundreds of tons to a battery of 15cm guns needed a rethink. What were smaller German carriers going to do? with hindsight we can say get rid of the 15cm battery, but given the thinking of the time? Small carrier gets only 12 guns or even just 8 guns?
Germans have an AA problem. The 10.5cm AA gun is a decent gun for AA (?) but it is too light for anti-ship work. 15-16kg shells don't give the effect desired. British 4.5in AA guns fired 25-26kg shells. Not great but in a night attack by enemy destroyers/light cruisers? Germans don't have a lot of choice. The 12.7ch/5in destroyer gun doesn't fire fast enough to make a good AA gun and it needs new mounts/turrets, etc.
The Saratoga and Lex had their 8in batteries but that was in the late 20s. 3 years after completion of the carriers the US only had 5 cruisers with 8in guns (in 1930) in commission.
In the next 10 years with lots of cruisers and modern destroyers the 8in cruiser battery made a lot less sense (they could rely more on escorts) and plans were made to take the 8in guns off and replace them with 5in/38s to beef up the AA battery. This took a while.

Some of these alternative strategies rely on not just changing the types of ships the Germans built, but rely on changing their propulsion technology. Their knowledge of sea keeping,
Their perspective on naval gunnery and their perspective on AA armament and their perspective/perception of ASW. The Big German destroyers carried between 18-30 depth charges most of the time. Not enough for escorting raiding forces in the NA. You can fit more, what do you want to take-off? The reload torpedoes? one of the 5in guns? a few 20mm AA guns?
What do people want the "small" 2000 ton destroyers to carry for armament? surface armament, AA armament, torpedo armament, ASW armament.
The German 12.8cm/5in gun first went to sea in 1932. Maybe you don't need that long but developing guns (ammo) takes time.
 

This is all true. But to a large extent it also applies to heavy gunships. Still, the Germans needed, or at least thought they needed, a blue water navy even if it wasn't going to be the biggest and scariest on the planet.

I'm interested in hearing good arguments what they could have done better, as in the most cost effective investment to further their strategic goals (untenable as they may be after the US industrial machine goes BRRRT). If you think they'd had been better off with a small coastal navy (or whatever is the minimum needed to capture Norway?) and spend all those resources on tanks and trucks, sure go ahead!
 
The ripple effects get huge. A British R class BB could hold 3400 tons of fuel oil as built, max load. Parking 2-3 of the Rs for extended periods of time is a huge fuel savings. Or send them into the med to help deal with the Italians (with associated cruisers and destroyers.)

Germans not only need to take Norway, they need to keep it. With a crap (or crappier than historic) navy that is part blown away during the initial invasion can they hold on to it or the parts they want to keep?
 
In June of 1940 the "home" fleet had
2 Aircraft carriers, Ark Royal and Furious
4 Battleships, Nelson, Rodney, Barham and Valiant
3 Battle cruisers, Hood, Repulse, Renown
4 heavy cruisers (and 2 under repair)
3 light cruisers (and 5 more under repair) These are modern Cruisers not WW I left overs.
0 AA cruisers (Cairo was under repair)
24 Destroyers including 8 Tribals with 8 more Destroyers under repair,
2 Hunts
2 Black Swans
with 44 minesweepers, depot ships, survey and Admiralty trawlers and drifters and other odds and sods.

Please note that the home fleet was pretty much Scapa Flown and these numbers do not include ships at many of the bases/commands further south.

Without the threat of the 2 sisters would the British held Narvik?

Without the 2 sisters and the Bismarck what could the British have sent elsewhere in the Summer of 1940 and kept there?
Ark Royal, 2 BBs, 2 BCs 2 heavy cruisers and 16-20 Destroyers show up in the Med the late summer of 1940 to help deal with the Italians?
Adjust as needed for the left overs to deal with German left overs from the Norwegian campaign/operation Sea Lion (or operation Barking Squirrel )

No heavy units (or 1 Deutschland and one Hipper) to threaten the Russian convoys in the fall of 1941 and 1942?

People are very quick to write off the benefits the Germans got from their "fleet in being".
 



There was a debate in the USN about the necessity or otherwise of the 8" battery from their completion until early 1942. Initially the aviators wanted them removed, but by 1940 even they were arguing to keep them.

The modernisation plans for the Lexingtons drawn up in 1938 did not include removal of the 8" armament amongst the 24 groups of necessary works identified. BuShips argued that, given how US carriers operated (apart from the battlefleet with a few cruisers as escort) then at night or in bad weather when aircraft couldn't fly there was a chance that they might have to defend themselves from enemy cruisers. That required the 8" armament retained. These discussions were had in 1935/36 and again in 1940. Saratoga actually received 2 gunnery radar sets in Nov 1941 to improve her surface fire capabilities.

Both ships had put on weight from completion and that, along with a need for more AA, eventually drove removal of the 8" turrets. Lexington lost hers in early 1942 at PH in exchange for more light AA, but the instructions issued specifically noted that the hoists were not to be removed.

The decision to replace Saratoga's 8" turrets with 5"/38 twins was not taken until after she was torpedoed in Jan 1942, when it was decided to take the opportunity to do a lot of the work planned in 1938 but not then carried out, so extending her refit time.

During the design process for the Midway class in 1940/41, designs with 8"/55, 6"/47DP and 5"/54 were initially considered. Ultimately Midway grew out of an 8"/55 design but sacrificing the big guns for more flight deck armour.

How much the loss of Glorious, or Formidable at Matapan was being taken into consideration in determining the need for guns is not known. But the increase in flight deck armour came about after the USN saw the effects of dive bombing on Illustrious & Formidable

Britain retained the 6"/5.5" guns on Eagle & Hermes right up until their loss.
 
Shortround6 said:
The ripple effects get huge.
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Indeed they do! No objection there. But that doesn't automatically mean that it's a bad plan that would have resulted in German defeat sooner than historical.

(It does mean that with such big implications there's lots of butterflies flapping their wings, and a lot of things that can happen, so such scenarios are hard to analyze comprehensively.)

A British R class BB could hold 3400 tons of fuel oil as built, max load. Parking 2-3 of the Rs for extended periods of time is a huge fuel savings. Or send them into the med to help deal with the Italians (with associated cruisers and destroyers.)
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Fuel oil wasn't particularly scarce for the US & UK? Particularly for NA convoys if the BB escorts can refuel on the US Eastern Coast?

But yes, if the RN is able to move a large part of the home fleet to the Med, I can see that having quite big implications. Does the Italian North Africa front collapse due to inability to supply them from Italy even before the Afrika Korps get shipped over to help them out?

Germans not only need to take Norway, they need to keep it. With a crap (or crappier than historic) navy that is part blown away during the initial invasion can they hold on to it or the parts they want to keep?
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True. I think the big problem with a "minimal navy needed to conquer Norway" scenario is that when and how are they going to build that navy? AFAIU the Norway invasion wasn't something that was planned years and years in advance. So if Germany before the war only builds a minimal coastal navy, the Norway invasion might never be on the table, they can't will an invasion fleet into being on short notice.

Shortround6 said:
Without the threat of the 2 sisters would the British held Narvik?
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Wasn't Narvik mainly evacuated because the UK thought those troops would very soon be needed in France?

But in any case, it does seem that the Narvik operation was hanging on a pretty thin thread for the Germans in many ways, one can easily imagine it ending up in disaster for them very easily, with or without the ugly sisters hanging around.

People are very quick to write off the benefits the Germans got from their "fleet in being".
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Indeed they got benefits from that, but it also cost them. They spent somewhere close to a million tons of steel on their major surface combatants and u-boats alone, plus manpower, fuel, ammunition etc. Of course for that investment, in the battle of the Atlantic they sent something like 17 million GRT of Allied shipping to the bottom (which, VERY roughly, might mean something like 30+ million tons of steel?). Plus they tied up a bunch of Allied resources chasing them. Resources well spent? Then again, had they allocated half a million tons of steel to tanks and trucks, could they have knocked out the Soviets?
 
We might have to define "particularly scarce".
It is a little short of 450 miles (statute) from Halifax to Boston and for periods on time in 1939-41 there were two Rs based out of Halifax. There was a lot of cruising around with those two ships as being in Halifax meant they were pretty much useless to if any large German ships broke out. They were not fast enough to reach the mid-Atlantic even with 4-5 days notice. From Wiki
"...on conversion to only oil-fired boilers, the storage capacity was 3,400 long tons of oil. This enabled the ships to steam for 7,000 nautical miles (13,000 km; 8,100 mi) at a cruising speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph), which fell to 2,700 nautical miles (5,000 km; 3,100 mi) at full speed"
I have no idea of how much fuel two Rs burned in a number of months of convoy escorting. Two of them were used in the South Atlantic to search for the Graf Spee. Part of around 20 (?) ships that participated. Surface raiders tied up very large numbers of ships.
It could take 2 years for the Germans to build a Z class destroyer. So yes, they needed some sort of Fleet in existence to even contemplate such operations.
Number of troops involved in Norway compared to France was minimal. Might have delayed the Germans a couple of hours?
Allies decided to withdraw around 1 week before the Glorious was sunk. The whole adventure was badly planned and executed.
As to the fortunes of war, Both of the sisters here hit by torpedoes by June 20th which took them out of action for the rest of the summer.
We have to be careful with statics. German only spent around 300,000 tons on major surface combatants, defined by me as anything larger Z class destroyers and a few minelayers.
40 Z class destroyers at 2500tons each only gets another 100,000tons
They did spend a lot of tons of steel on the U-boats but that is another topic. Not using U-boats really makes things simple for the British/allies.

Also even major warships are only around 30% armor by weight. German heavies are a little over, German Cruisers are under. Granted a lot of warship construction steel is better stuff than I beams in buildings but it is not armor.

Germany was really gambling as Germany depended on imported Iron ore for a lot of it's production. Just before WW II Germany used 22 million tons of iron ore but only 10 million tons were from Germany, the rest was imported. And German iron ore was not high quality stuff and it had to mixed with imported ore to make high quality steel and other elements to make armor quality steel. Germany got 9 million tons of ore in the year before the war from Sweden. Germany had gotten some of it's iron ore from Sweden even in the 1st WW so this was not new and it was well known. What should Germany do to help protect it's supply? and the problems with the Baltic freezing over for 4-6 months depending on year and where in the Baltic were also well known and that is the reason for the port of Narvick which was ice free all year (or mostly) and the reason for the railroad connecting Narvik to Sweden (but not to the rest of Norway). After the fall of France Germany just swiped a lot of French domestic Iron ore. Swedish ore stayed a major source for Germany until some time in 1944.

What kind of fleet should the Germans build to help insure the flow of Iron ore from the Swedish mines to Germany? It doesn't have to be deep sea/blue water but until aircraft prove them themselves the Germans have to plan on stopping British small ships from hitting the ore convoys coming down the coast of Norway. Or at least laying mine fields and other harassment.

WW II warfare was very expensive in steel. British fired almost 16,000 tons worth of just 7.2in Howitzer shells by the 21st Army group from D-day to VE day.
 
See the highlighted statement. That conversion was undertaken while they were under construction, so they were wholly oil fired from completion. From earlier in that Wiki article:-

"As an economy measure they were intended to revert to the previous practice of using both fuel oil and coal, but First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher rescinded the decision for coal in October 1914. Still under construction, the ships were redesigned to employ oil-fired boilers that increased the power of the engines by 9,000 shaft horsepower (6,700 kW) over the original specification.[4]"​

The figures you quote for range etc were the figures as completed in WW1. That machinery remained unchanged through their lives but they gained weight from various improvements, including adding bulges of different designs at different times which slowed them down a bit.

From Burt's "British Battleships 1919-1945" in 1939 the figures were:-

6,000nm @ 10 knots burning 5.1 tons per hour
5,500nm @ 12 knots burning 6.7 tons per hour
4,650nm @ 14 knots burning 9.2 tons per hour
3,850nm @ 16 knots burning 12.7 tons per hour
3,050nm @ 18knots burning 18.0 tons per hour
2,250nm @ 20 knots burning 27.4 tons per hour

Max speed by 1939 was around 20 knots with Ramilles unable to exceed that in 1940.Ramilles. If out of dock for a while, or in tropical waters, as in 1942/43, they struggled to reach 19 knots. In tropical waters in 1942 it was found that their range was limited not by fuel consumption but by freshwater required for their boilers, a function of having been designed for the North Sea.

On the outbreak of WW2 Royal Oak was in the best condition having been more extensively modernised around 1934, while Revenge was in the worst condition. All the pre-war plans I've seen have her being taken out of service first as the KGVs began to complete.

Edit:- the RN maintained oil stocks at Bermuda (storage for 16,000 tons), Jamaica (16,000 tons), Falkland Is (16,000 tons), Sierra Leone (60,000 tons), Cape of Good Hope (96,000 tons), Gibraltar (51,400 tons). And It had a fleet of RFA tankers to keep that storage topped up as required. Then add to that what the Canadians could provide at bases like Halifax, St Johns etc.

Edit 2:- after July 1940 the RN established refuelling facilities from tankers at 2 places in Iceland.
 
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