Lack of German Aircraft Carrier

[delcyros]

The GZ needed a few more years to realy get going, but realy the program was doomed.

GZ certainly would have been a historic carrier if S&G were not massively damaged off Norway by torpedoes (and thus requiring GZ´s dockyard capacity). How many years she need to get operational is speculation. I remmeber that equal concerns were expressed on the early ww2 escort carriers (how the hell could anyone attempt to land on such unstable platforms? It would require years to train this!), esspeccially on HMS Archer. But such obstacles were overcome. GZ was a comfortable seaboat, very stable (for a carrier) and not overly cramped. Plus it had the largest flightdeck of all european carriers (795 x 120 ft. compared to 760 x 95ft on HMS Implacable), so I cannot agree that it was doomed from begin.

I would have to say she had to meny guns on the decks that appear to be more for surface actions then AA.

The 4.1"/65 DP on deck are true DP guns with emphasize on AAA. The surface action 5.91"/55 QF are casematte mounted below the flight deck level and do not interfere with flight deck ops. They are wasteful in terms of weight, agreed, but such guns could be removed during refits and it is unconvincable why US and japanese carrier would remove such guns following experiences while the DKM would not remove them...

All I wanted to stress is that the powers found solutions, which probably fit best their purposes. British CV´s do have an airwing as small or smaller than GZ, a comparable avgas sorage and good protection. They have less endurance and speed, primarely a consequence of the generally smaller size compared to Graf Zeppelin. The european carriers (except the italian and french example) tended to emphasize stability and steadiness and protection, mainly because of the raw nature of the North Atlantic as the prime area of deployment.

The US and japanese carriers are more efficiant, lightly build and they have larger airwings. They tended to be more "extreme" designs, which are suited best for the conditions of the Pacific.

Below attached a well known picture showing german aviators with japanese ones. The IJN trained several german pilots and technician in the details of carrier flight operations in 1935-38.

 

[Watanbe]

fascinating read guys, top effort with you replies Delcyros. Syscom3 your replies were also good.

Personally I think Germany didn't really need it. It would only have been sunk anyway losing pilots and planes. The U-Boats arguably could have done the same job anyway, if not for the dominance of the Navy by the Allies, which would have hampered any German carrier operations anyway.

Delcyros you present a really good scenario and one which is very believable, if used in this role, it would have definitely been sunk yet could of proven quite a nuisance/distraction for the Allies.