Unfinished projects (Germany)

[Ariecho]

The goal of this post is not to present individual classes of ships in details, but to get players acquainted with projects that were started but never finished.  I'd take credit from the idea, but the truth is that I got the list from one of my favorite French sites.  

 

However, I did some heavy modifications as there were some "holes" and contradictions in the original post, and I am adding a link whenever I could find some references to "verify" that the concepts were not just "alternate reality" ships.  

 

If you are building your own tech trees and are looking for ships to fill the blanks, you may find them here.  Note that I am not including submarines or any other boat that I don't believe will be in the game.  

 

I'm starting with the Kriegsmarine, and will continue with other navies, if you are interested.

 

 

Germany:

Battleships and battlecruisers:

• H Class (battleship): scheduled to replace the Bismarck

• O class (battlecruiser): scheduled to replace the Admiral Graf Spee

Aircraft carriers:

• Graf Zeppelin class

• Seydlitz (conversion from German heavy cruiser Seydlitz)

• De Grasse (conversion of French cruiser)

• Europa (conversion of passenger ship Europa)

• Kleiner Flugzeugträger (CVL): Porte avions d'escorte de convois

• Gross Flugdeckkreuzer: Hybrid BB/CV (includes projects A II, A III, A IV, A IIa)

• Flugdeckkreuzer: Hybrid CA/CV (includes projects E IV and E V)

Heavy cruisers:

• Kreuzer P: (scheduled to replace the Deutschland)

Light cruisers:

• Kreuzer M: Includes modified M

Destroyers:

1936C: anti-aircraft destroyer

1938A/Ac: Large destroyer

1938B: Coastal water destroyer

1942: Prototype

1944: Ordered but never built

1945: Prototype

Spähkreuzer: Large destroyer, also labeled as a reconnaissance cruiser.  Only the engines for these ships were ever ordered.

Some pictures:

Graf Zeppelin

Seydlitz

http://alternativefo...d/saeffer_1.jpg

H Class

http://www.chuckhawks.com/hclass.jpg

O Class

http://www.chuckhawks.com/opq_clas.jpg

Spähkreuzer

http://warandgame.fi...2007/12/z40.jpg

 

 

Ari

EDIT: Graf Zeppelin's picture edited to remove svastika

[Mathayus]

Nice read Ariecho!

Didn't read everything yet but will spend some time to read some more!

[JeeWeeJ]

Great post Ari, that pretty much sums up Plan Z of the kriegsmarine.  :Smile_smile:

[Ariecho]

Yes, pretty much.  I'll admit that I didn't know of the O Class.  Again, I'm sure that you (or others) could present all these ships one by one ... (hint hint)!

[JeeWeeJ]

Ariecho, on 25 October 2012 - 07:46 PM, said:

Yes, pretty much.  I'll admit that I didn't know of the O Class.  Again, I'm sure that you (or others) could present all these ships one by one ... (hint hint)!

Well, possible problem with that was that most of them didn't make it very far on the drawing board. Hardly any keels had been layed for the plan Z ships (ony a few H-39's i believe).

So not a whole lot to write about them i think... :Smile_unsure:

[Jracule]

Excellent read Ariecho. +1 :Smile_great:

 

Always was interested by the Graf Zeppelin. In 1935, Germany was allowed to inspect the Japanese carrier Akagi as well as attain blueprints for certian carrier features. Would probably explain why the ships bear certian resemblances with each other.

 

Cool photo of the ship showing it under construction. (In case you are wondering, Geheim is German for "Secret")

[Ariecho]

Jracule, on 25 October 2012 - 07:54 PM, said:

Excellent read Ariecho. +1 :Smile_great:

Always was interested by the Graf Zeppelin. In 1935, Germany was allowed to inspect the Japanese carrier Akagi as well as attain blueprints for certian carrier features. Would probably explain why the ships bear certian resemblances with each other.


Cool photo of the ship showing it under construction. (In case you are wondering, Geheim is German for "Secret")

Wow, nice picture!  Yep, first part of the word "Gestapo" (Geheime Stadt Polizei)

[Jracule]

Interesting fact, the Graf Zeppelin's two catapults actually extend and retract from its deck. In the photo, the one on the far side is extended slightly out.

[Carrier_Enterprise]

The number of things Germany had started and never finished is just staggering.

[Ariecho]

I was amazed finding out (I learned a lot researching this thread) that in 1945, they were still trying to develop new ships!

[bezzar]

Ariecho, on 25 October 2012 - 11:56 PM, said:

I was amazed finding out (I learned a lot researching this thread) that in 1945, they were still trying to develop new ships!

yeah, hitler was always looking for a good super weapon to turn the tide, say what you will about him, he did not give up easily.

fortunately for the west he was also a bit of a megalomaniac, while his naval commander was calling for more u-boats hitler wanted big battleships.

[Haguro]

Note the twin 5.9 inch case mate guns in the picture.  As the Akagi would have still been carrying her twin 8 inch turrets and casemate 8 inch guns in 1935, the threat of surface attack to a carrier was still considered serious.  However, after the Akagi and Kaga conversions, the IJN went with strictly 5 or 3.9" DP guns.  The Germans must not have had early access to the Soryu or Hiryu designs.

[Erebia]

Ariecho, on 25 October 2012 - 11:56 PM, said:

I was amazed finding out (I learned a lot researching this thread) that in 1945, they were still trying to develop new ships!

One of my history teacher joked that the reason was that, at this point of the war, German engineers developed crazy things only to prevent themselves being drafted in the army to fight the soviets. "Look sir, this new war-thing will lead us to victory over the red hordes. But I need time to finish it..."

[Coldt]

Well, that's it guys.  We have a German tree now XD

[JeeWeeJ]

Fun fact: the O class design wasn't much loved by the men of the Kriegsmarine due to the lack of armor. The class was called "Ohne Panzer Quatsch" (roughly translated into: without armor nonsense) after the three planned hulls (O, P and Q). I'd still like to have one though...they look dead sexy! :Smile_glasses:

[esmaerla14]

The big error of the kriegsmarine was the big concentration in battleships over the aircraft carriers. If germany builded more aircraft carriers the germans would win the north altlantic war

[Crag_r]

esmaerla14, on 01 November 2012 - 09:40 PM, said:

The big error of the kriegsmarine was the big concentration in battleships over the aircraft carriers. If germany builded more aircraft carriers the germans would win the north altlantic war

Yes and no... the style of fighting meant that if the Germans used their battleship correctly they could have won the war. Plus north Atlantic weather is for the most par horrible, not something you want to rely on as much. Plus it was way past German capabilities to compete with the Royal Navies carrier force. A combined effort of BB's and carriers may have changed that, but that would have only come into its own in the need for an invasion of England, something really pushing the capabilities of the Germans with the loss of the battle of Britain and the invasion of Russia. Again though if they had gone to war in the planned 1946, with both the H class Battleship and carrier support this could have been a different story.

[jojokla23]

Great ariecho that post was nice!! :Smile_smile:

[Ariecho]

esmaerla14, on 01 November 2012 - 09:40 PM, said:

The big error of the kriegsmarine was the big concentration in battleships over the aircraft carriers. If germany builded more aircraft carriers the germans would win the north altlantic war

Let's put it this way...  The moment the USN appeared in the Atlantic, it would have been game over anyway.

[xthetenth]

The USN wouldn't have needed to show. The RN gets maligned as a carrier power (in many regards rightly so), but they had a significant number of aircraft carriers and a huge advantage in operational art over the Germans. Especially given the tasking of the Kriegsmarine as a fleet in being, the Battleships made more sense since they were less fragile as a combat unit, depended less on new technologies like planes and above all depended on operational experience that the Germans simply weren't going to get. They weren't going to do anything like the wargames the US and Japan and even the UK had done. The British had better electronics for managing a battle, more decks, more ships, and a better idea of how to run the battle.

 

Plus, the North Sea is not very good carrier water at all. The USN needed to make some changes to make their fast carrier task forces work in the North Sea postwar, and the USN carrier mission early postwar was radically different and not nearly as weather dependent as hunting and killing ships. There's a reason tracking the Bismarck was so difficult.

[Ariecho]

I still believe that without the USN, the Kriegsmarine (especially its submarine component) would have slowly but surely crippled the Royal Navy.

[xthetenth]

A distressingly large fraction of key ASW advances were British. The main things I can think of the US contributing were shipbuilding and the VLR liberator. Granted, the escort carriers were an amazing help, but a lot of the rest of the key ASW discoveries (or rediscoveries, the British lost a stupid amount of knowledge between wars) were British in origin. There is most certainly an issue with numbers in the ASW war, but that's the main axis the germans can attack successfully on. The surface Kriegsmarine is significantly numerically inferior to the Regia Marina, and if push came to shove, the British had a vast preponderance in numbers against the Kriegsmarine.

 

I think the issue at hand is less whether the Germans could cripple the RN without US numbers and more whether they could cripple the UK itself. The main German successes with submarines against RN capital ships all occurred very early in the war when British ASW capabilities were desperately in need of improvement. I don't think such successes could be repeated on a scale enough to cripple the RN in the face of better ASW procedure.

[JeeWeeJ]

[WHAT-IF-MODE]

Well, no USN would (in)directly mean no Clemson destroyers and probably no Liberty ships, leaving the British with a severe lack of convoy escort ships and transport ships themselves. No convoy escorts means enormous losses to subs (like in the first and second "happy times"), which would cripple the UK's economy and industry. I'm sure that without plan Z Germany would be unable to invade the UK, but they can deliver an economic knockout punch. Just deny them the means to make war (as was the whole plan with the unrestricted u-boot warfare) and they'll come down eventually. As it was quickly proven that -especially at the beginning and middle of the war- the British were unable to have enough warships afloat to counter Germany's u-boot wolfpacks.

 

And if the Germans were able to field the type XXI u-boot earlier in the war, i'd probably be speaking fluent German right now. :Smile_hiding:

[/WHAT-IF-MODE]

[Ariecho]

JeeWeeJ, on 05 November 2012 - 09:50 PM, said:

[WHAT-IF-MODE]
Well, no USN would (in)directly mean no Clemson destroyers and probably no Liberty ships, leaving the British with a severe lack of convoy escort ships and transport ships themselves. No convoy escorts means enormous losses to subs (like in the first and second "happy times"), which would cripple the UK's economy and industry. I'm sure that without plan Z Germany would be unable to invade the UK, but they can deliver an economic knockout punch. Just deny them the means to make war (as was the whole plan with the unrestricted u-boot warfare) and they'll come down eventually. As it was quickly proven that -especially at the beginning and middle of the war- the British were unable to have enough warships afloat to counter Germany's u-boot wolfpacks.

And if the Germans were able to field the type XXI u-boot earlier in the war, i'd probably be speaking fluent German right now. :Smile_hiding:
[/WHAT-IF-MODE]

JeeWeeJ was faster than I was.  Without the TREMENDOUS help from the US, Britain was like a fruit ready to fall.  Without the destroyers, and economic help, she would have had a lot of shortages, and the Home Fleet would have had to spread between defense against German raiders, as well as the U-boat menace.

[xthetenth]

For sure. However, I think that before the Royal Navy stopped being a serious power, Britain itself would fold. Maybe this means full up fleet carriers doing ASW, but Britain still has a stupidly large battle line and a lot of smaller combatants.