Goering and close escort

There were a great deal of flaws in the German military, from the planning stages all the way through to the planning and execution of battle policy.

Look how advanced their battleships were, yet when it came to the carriers, it was as if they had no real grasp of the world's current carrier fleets, both in design and mission. And yet, they had adequate intellegence both on Allied and Japanese types. And even still, if the Graf Zepplin had been built, would it have been used to it's full potential? I seriously doubt it...it would have probably been tucked away, like the Tirpitz to languish and eventually be wasted without ever really having the opportunity demonstrate it's abilities.

parsifal said:

They did so extensively, and then chose to basically ignore Japanese experience. There were four GZ planned of which two reached some sort of stage of construction. German studies into carrier design began in 1933, and included investigations into the designs for the Furious as well as the brand new Hiryu class. They were planned after a thorough study of Japanese carrier designs; nevertheless, German naval architects ran into difficulties due to lack of experience in building such vessels, the situational realities of carrier operations in the North Sea and the lack of overall clarity in the ships' mission objectives. This lack of clarity led to features either eliminated from or not included in the carriers of other nations. For example the 8in guns of the Lexingtons and the Akagi types were already gone by the time the Germans decided they needed a significant low angle gunnery capability worked into their design. Its clear evidence of a total misreading of the tactical realities in carrier usage.

Japanese spot rates were good for a number of reasons. They had very simple deck procedures for example. The deck officer would simply dop a white flag and the deck strike would roll down the deck and take off one after the other. Because Japanese a/c were so light, most of the time they could do away with the need for any catapults. There were no batsmen to help guide in the returning flyers, from memory all the flyers got was streamers or smoke across the deck to indicate wind speed and strength.

Much of the GZ design was the Germans "best guess" on what they thought they might need plus a confused hotch potch of different ideas from different nations. The result was a design that failed to capitalise on a winning theme in its design, but retained many archaic and quite bad ideas from allover the shop.


As many nations today are finding out excellence in carrier operations requires experience, and experience requires time. Carrier aviation in the war required those nations wanting carrier fleets to have been working out the issues since 1920. Even a 1930 start in gathering the knowledge was too late. Look mat the French. They had one carrier completed in 1927, but really did not get a lot out of tyhat carrier. Germany was in an even worse situation. One cannot expect miracles. Germany really needed to abandon its dreams of a blue water fleet and build what it built best, Uboats. Another 30-50 Uboats instead of the capital ships was a far better investment they should have elected to follow.

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What if the Imperial German Navy built and used a carrier like they planes during the First World War? Would that have helped in the design of the GZ at all, or none since Germany couldn't build any carriers during the 20's thus limiting modern design, etc?

The first world war experiences of the RN opened their eyes to possibilities of carrier borne aviation. So quite possibly yes.

Ive always thought also that a better outcome might have been occurred if somehow treaty restrictions could have been relaxed to allow the Germans to borrow or lease something like the Hosho. Another possibility might have been a Zuiho or Junyo style extemporised conversion......build the hull as an easily converted mercantile hull say in 1934-5, convert 1935-6, practice 1936-7, and build more hulls 1937-8. 5 or 6 carriers like that would have made a difference. The US and Britain both toyed with the idea, but then settled on the escort carrier concept, the French and the italian both had plans for such a conversion and the italians actually tried to implement the strategy. The Japanese also famously introduced such a conversion policy. It might have worked for the germans.

stona said:

The Ju 87 had to attack from altitude. The most successful 'sneak raids' were carried out by the Bf 110s of Erprobungskommando 210 and one of the regular Kamfgeschwader operating at low level.

I agree that Ju 87s proved impossible to protect. It is often forgotten just how slow they were. Contrary to its own belief the Luftwaffe never established even temporary air superiority over the area in which it attempted to operate the Ju 87 against Britain. The fluidity of Park's defence meant that a squadron of single engine fighters was always likely to turn up when and where it was least expected. The results for the Ju 87 were disastrous. The Ju 87 had the additional disadvantages of pitiful defensive armament and that it was not at all resistant to damage, fuel tanks in particular were very vulnerable.

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I think I ended up playing devil's advocate a bit too heavily with my own argument over pros/cons for fighter-bombers vs dedicated dive bombers, particularly as I'd been trying to advocate the former more so.

It's this line that compromised the rest of my argument for fighter-bombers over the likes of the Ju 87 (let alone Hs 123).

kool kitty89 said:

Ju 87s obviously have the advantage in bombing accuracy and bombload (at least compared to Jabo 109Es) so plenty of potential advantages to escorting them over using fighter-bombers alone.

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The first half of that is true, but my comment about escorts being effective is far off base. Having roaming fighters around maintaining air superiority in an area where it's already been established is one thing, but applying escorts to vulnerable aircraft like the Ju 87 in hostile, well-defended territory, and it doesn't work.

That's where having a larger fighter-bomber force built-up pre-war would be significant. (and properly trained fighter-bomber units -and more likely transitioning former Hs 123 and Ju 87 pilots to Jabo 109s rather than adapting fighter units for the same) Funny thing about the Hs 123 is it seems like it would have also been the more effective 'fighter' in the LW arsenal for the brief period it was in service before the Bf 109B. (outperforming the Ar 68 in most/all respects)

GrauGeist said:

The Graf Zepplin's compressed air system was only good for about 18 aircraft before it had to recharge it's reservoirs.

If I'm not mistaken, the Kreigsmarine's capitol ships (Bismark, Scharnhorst, Prinz Eugen, etc) used a compressed air system based on the earlier German mailboat catapults of the 20's and early 30's, made by Heinkel.

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I imagine those latter catapults wouldn't be any better than those used on the GZ. Steam catapults would be a fair way off I suppose. (not that the chemical steam catapults used for V1 launching would be particularly relevant or efficient in this role compared to the compressed air ones)

kool kitty89 said:

I imagine those latter catapults wouldn't be any better than those used on the GZ. Steam catapults would be a fair way off I suppose. (not that the chemical steam catapults used for V1 launching would be particularly relevant or efficient in this role compared to the compressed air ones)

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Heinkel's compressed air system for the double-ended catapult worked remarkably well and provided a great deal of velocity to the launching aircraft.

Bear in mind, though, that this system was designed to launch aircraft one at a time and in groups no greater than three or four in a given period of time.

The designers of the Graf Zepplin were trying to base their catapult on Heinkel's design, which simply wasn't going to work for many reasons, the main one being a severely limited amount of launch actions before the system had to recover.

If the Graf Sepplin were caught in a major battle (of the scale of IJN vs. USN), then the Germans would have been in major trouble trying to get their full compliment up to engage Allied forces with no ability to relaunch or add supplimental aircraft to the battle for nearly an hour. At that point, the Graf Zepplin is extremely vulnerable and reliant on capitol ship protection, switching from asset to liability.

parsifal said:

Faced with shortages of steel, workers, dockyard capacity, they opted to suspend construction of all major surface warships except for a few here and there and concentrate on the production of Uboats. In retrospect that was the correct one for Germany, but should have been made in 1937, not 1940.

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Agreed, focusing more on a land based maritime air force would probably be the better investment too. (submarine + patrol + strike aircraft cooperation)

Ah yes, but highly unlikely to ever occur. Aircraft design and procurement for the carrier remained at all times firmly the prerogative of the LW, not the fleet, and the LW was never going to expend resources designing and developing a purpose built carrier design

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Which I believe was also the main hurtle to overcome for any sort of marine air arm: competition and general lack of cooperation from the Luftwaffe (and active resistance to development of an independent air arm).

I'm still thinking the Fw 187 might have been a better bet than a single-engine fighter as far as long-range coastal fighters capable of recon, escort, interception of anti-sumbarine aircraft, etc. More costly than potential long-ranged single engine aircraft but the 2-seater arrangement was important early-war for better radio operation (and potentially navigation and spotting purposes). The Jumo 210G also performed best at low altitudes more common with over-water operations. (a hypothetical Hispano 12Y powered version would also tend to be low/middle-altitude optimized -either way still engine choices reducing competition with LW resources)

I'd imagine getting support for a fleet of Maritime dedicated He 111s would be a bigger hurdle than long-range fighters as far as LW competition/infighting went. (along with Fw 200, and Ju 290 development/production and certainly marine air arm control over the likes of the BV 138 -possibly put more emphasis on HA 139 and BV 142 development, possibly Do 26 -obviously some of those would be redundant and better used in place of others)

Ah yes, that's correct, In relation to your second question, the answer is I don't know. A good discussion on the problems of the GZ including its catapult shortcomings can be found here https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/the-german-aircraft-carrier-graf-zeppelin.t6602/

Relevantly the discussion includes the following:

"It's elaborate trolley catapult system would almost certainly be unreliable and difficult to service in actual use"....which I have read elsewhere as well

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The Japanese also made do without catapults entirely for the early portion of the war. Making do with STOL capable aircraft and solid fuel RATO units instead.

GrauGeist said:

Heinkel's compressed air system for the double-ended catapult worked remarkably well and provided a great deal of velocity to the launching aircraft.

Bear in mind, though, that this system was designed to launch aircraft one at a time and in groups no greater than three or four in a given period of time.

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A sensible compromise seems like reserving use of the catapults only for specially overloaded aircraft while relying mostly on un-assisted take-off otherwise (and having both the aircraft and carrier deck designed for such). That, and/or using RATO to get overloaded aircraft off the deck.

Didn't most carrier-borne USN aircraft take-off under their own power outside of special overload conditions? And didn't the Doolittle B-25's take off under their own power as well?


Of course, they'd have actually had to heed the Japanese experience in developing any sort of carrier fleet ... not to mention heeding developing trends in American and British pre-war carrier tactics.

I wonder if a navalized Hs 123 might have been better suited to carrier operations given its STOL capabilities and smaller size and wingspan than the Ju 87. (granted, lower bombload and the range would need to be extended) That probably would have made more sense if there had been earlier carrier developments in Germany more heavily borrowing from Japanese experience. (it would have been the only really useful military aircraft to consider adapting to carrier service in the 1936 timeframe too) As a 'fighter' it also seems more attractive than what the RAF had to work with pre-war. (between the Skua and Sea Gladiator you've got a better multi-purpose aircraft ... slower but better climb rate than either and better maneuverability than the Skua at least -of course the Gladiator was cripled by its fixed-pitch propeller ... stick the Skua's prop on it and add some bomb racks and you might have a better fighter AND dive bomber too)

This is far off from the escort topic though, and focusing on submarine warfare with land based + seaplane air cooperation seems like it might have been the best investment of limited resources anyway. (still, 'pocket carrier' might have been a more interesting concept to pursue than 'pocket battleships' -I suppose that's what escort carriers ended up being for other countries)