The Graf Zepplin's effectiveness

How effective would the Graf Zepplin have been had she been completed?

 

That's a good 'what if?'...

If the vessel had been completed in time for the outbreak of war, or at the least by early 1940, it would have posed an interesting threat.

But I think that the British would have fully realised this and would have spared no effort to destroy it, in much the same way as Bismarck .

Graf Zeppelin , as designed, would have needed good, close escort because her mix of armament was inappropriate ( 16 x 5.9" heavy guns as against 12 x 4.1" QF A/A ) rendering her extremely vulnerable to air attack.

If completed later in the war, the ship would have been easy meat for the RAF ; it would have become another 'threat in being' as was the case with Tirpitz .

 

This site (a GREAT site about the German Navy)
http://www.german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/ships/carrier/grafzeppelin/index.html

lists the planned weaponry as:
15 cm SK L/50: 16 guns
10,5 cm L/50: 12 guns
3,7 cm L/83 C/30: 22 guns
2 cm MG L/65: 28 guns

However, I was quite dumbstruck to see that it lists as the airpower:
Me 109 T: 4
Ju 87 C: 13
Fi 167: 20

Although I'm quite sure the number of Me-109's would surely got higher as both the Ju-87 and Fi-167 needed serious air cover if facing a british carrier with fighters.

Cheers,
Sami

 

Against Royal Navy the German battle ships definitely would have needed carrier protection and vice versa. One carrier alone sounds way too small a force for that! But together with Tirpitz and Bismarck and escort that sounds like Kursk on the Atlantic...

Anyway, some data in the net:

Messerschmitt's proposal for a shipboard fighter was designated Bf 109T (T for "Trager").

All work on the Graf Zeppelin was halted in May of 1940. Assembly of the 60 Bf 109T-1 fighters was also halted at the same time.

Fieseler Werke was instructed to complete the 60 Bf 109T-1s then under construction but to remove the naval equipment and deliver them as land-based fighter bombers suitable for operation from short strips.

Stripped of naval equipment and fitted with a rack for a 66 Imp gal drop tank, 4 110-lb bombs, or a single 551-lb bomb, the planes were redesignated Bf 109T-2. It was concluded that the Bf 109T-2 would be ideal for operation from small, exposed airstrips such as those from which the Jagdflieger were forced to operate in Norway. Several units operated with the Bf 109T-2 in Norway.

However, it never operated in its intended shipboard role. The short-field performance of the Bf 109T lead to surviving Norwegian-based Bf 109T-2s to be based on the tiny fortified island of Heligoland in 1943. The last of the Bf 109T-2s disappeared from the inventory at the end of 1944.

On May 13, 1942, orders were given that construction on the Graf Zeppelin be resumed, and that it should carry an air group of 28 bombers and 12 fighters.

By this time, the Bf 109T was considered obsolescent for shipboard operations, and proposals were solicited for new carrier-based fighters. The Messerschmitt company submitted the Me 155, which was basically a navalized Bf 109G. It had a fuselage basically similar to that of the standard Bf 109G, but with an entirely new wing. The undercarriage retracted inwards into wing wells, providing the wider track required for safe carrier landings. Standard naval equipment such as folding wings, catapult spools, and arrester hooks were fitted. The powerplant was a 1475 hp Daimler-Benz DB 605A-1 liquid-cooled engine. Armament was to be one engine-mounted 20-mm MG 151 cannon and two 20-mm MG 151 cannon and two 13-mm MG 131 machine guns in the wings. Estimated maximum speed was 403 mph.

The Me 155 project was to evolve into a design for a single-seat bomber, then into a high-altitude interceptor. In August 1943, the project was transferred to Blohm und Voss and was redesignated BV 155.

The site includes data on Ju-87 production as well:

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/baugher_other/grzepp.html

http://www.fact-index.com/b/bl/blohm_und_voss_bv_155.html

 

I would think that the contribution to the war effort would have been minimal. The KM pretty much fought a war against allied shipping. The area of operations would have been restricted in the North Sea attacking convoys headed for Russia and maybe the UK itself. It may have been able to perform this role well but as previously stated, the British would have gone all out to sink the ship whatever the cost.

Hitler was already fearful of using the KM because of the impact of losing such vessels. So even if it was build and operational, I really doubt it would have been put out to sea.

 

Yep, I agree Hitler was quite afraid of losing things that would make him look bad...

Anyway, I read of plan Z a while ago:

On 27 January 1939 Hitler ordered that the development of the navy he adopted was to take the highest priority, even before the army, air forces and exports. Thus he had finally shaped the shipbuilding programme outlined yet in the end of 1938. This programme, known as the Plan Z, foresaw that by 1948 the German navy should have achieved the following dimensions (including ships already existing or being built):


10 big battleships (including two of Gneisenau type),
12 pocket battleships (later - battle cruisers),
3 old battleships,
4 aircraft carriers,
5 heavy cruisers,
16 light cruisers 8000t and 6 light cruisers of 6000t,
22 scout cruisers,
63 destroyers,
90 torpedo boats,
27 oceanic submarines,
62 submarines IX-C, 100 submarines VII-C and 60 submarines II 4
Apart from that also minelayers, patrol boats, minesweepers, submarine chasers etc. - altogether about 300 ships.

http://wwnavy.tripod.com/Germany/planz.html

From the military point of view the small number of aircraft carriers foreseen by the Plan Z was its weak point.


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I myself have not heard much of it before, just knew it existed. Well, Hitler did have many plans going on at the same time....

 

Speaking of, wasn't there a ship that was named Deutschland but was later changed at Hitler's request because of the impact had it been sunk?

 

I think it was renamed "Lützow".

 

Lützow, light cruiser. Former cruiser Deutschland.

 

"II. (J)/186 arrived in Norway early June from Dunkirk. Still commanded by Hauptmann Heinrich Seeliger, this Gruppe was intended to bolster the coastal defences between Oslo and Trondheim. It was during the Gruppe´s eight-week sojourn in Norway, that work on the Kriegsmarine´s only aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin, which had begun as long ago as 1935, was drastically slowed due to further production difficulties. It was now tacitly ackowledged that II.(J)/186, formed back in 1938 as the Jagdgruppe spesifically intended for service aboard the vessel, faced continuing uncertainty about its future deployment. The decision was therefore taken to incorporate it into the Jagdgeschwader 77."

From Scandinavia Sideshow 1940-45 by Osprey

 

One Carrier would be (sorta) too easy to keep track of. You'd really need a bunch of em to be able to sneak up on someone. Cover enough area(s) to be a menace. You'd need a free-ranging, self-sufficient, Battle-group, or two, or three to be scary
To threaten an enemy (their plans) you really need to come out of nowhere, be where he doesn't expect you to be...with power.
It would've helped by delivering air-power out of the range of current land based resources, but then again would've used up other resources for her protection. The proverbial double-edged sword.
I believe their best ability (if they had the correct aircraft/enough fuel) would be to search areas of the ocean to direct wolf-packs to targets early on. The subs could definitely do more damage....if they could find them, and be directed (in mass) to intercede.
If they see you (the one Carrier) coming, or know where you're going, it's possible for them (your adversary) to make a mess out of your grand scheme.
Even Yamato had a sister.

 

My guess is, not much. Had the Germans built her back in the mid 1930's and managed to work out all of the troublesome bugs inherant in everyday carrier-air operations, then, I'd say that she'd give a good account of herself against her enemies. As it was, the Germans were trying to take a giant step and rival the Royal Navy's Aircraft Carrier effectiveness, in one fell swoop, without doing all of the homework and painstaking study needed to bring it all off. In short, they'd be making it all up as they went along and that could quickly become costly in combat against the RN.

 

This was a war of attrition. The first to run out of trained troops, fuel, ammo, and equipment, loses. For all of its unexpected early successes, The Axis would not have been able to make an impact with carriers unless they could field enough to control the seas.

 

My thoughts:
1) She had a small air group.
2) Due to power for her catapults being limited she could only launch a strike of less than 30 planes before having to wait a significant time to get steam pressure up again.
3) The catapults were complicated and represented a number of points where failure or damage could severely hamper operations. The catapults also severely limited rolling take offs.

As far as air ops she would have been inferior to a US CVL although faster and tougher (at least in regards to sinking perhaps more vulnerable as far as air ops goes). Overall as designed I don't think she would have been very effective. There's been a long thread on her over on the axis history forum where they've surfaced a lot of interesting details.

 

While this is on another board I found it very illuminating on the potential effectiveness of the Graf Zeppelin. It also shows the German penchant for over-engineering things to a point of complexity that makes the item totally unusable.

Axis History Forum :: Just how good or bad was the Graf Zeppelin

 

I noticed that there was a discussion on that thread about the Russians resurrecting the GZ and using it for awhile. I didn't make it through the end of the topic, and I think that part was dropped, but I think that was actually the Seydlitz. If I remember right, it was a sister to the Lutzow that early after the war started, it was changed and 90% completed as a carrier before the materials ran out in 1943.

When you consider what the Allies had by the end of the war, there is no way the Germans could contend with the shear numbers. I think the US had over 100 carriers of 8 different classes, losing 11 carriers during the war. The Japanese lost 23 carriers, and the British lost 9. As for an argument about the capabilities of the British carrier aircraft, the Seafire was a capable aircraft other than being too fragile to handle carrier landings. And after the US started supplying carrier aircraft, they had the ability to handle the 109s.

 

If they had the ship up and running and if they had won the Battle of Britain then the carrier would be useful during the invasion of Britain.

Anouther idea would be using the carrier to make a Dolittle type raid on the US. Bomb the US and land in Mexico and make their way back to Germany. If you can get B-25's off a carrier then you could get He-111 or Ju-88's off a carrier.

 

If they launch from a carrier would either of these planes have the range to reach Mexico? It's 1000+ miles from the Atlantic coast to Mexico mostly over the US. Also I suspect that the catapults would have made life interesting for the German bombers. The Germans used a cradle system not sure it would have even handled them.

 

They could have sailed to the Gulf of Mexico area, bombed a Texas port city and moved on to northern Mexico.

Early in the war U-boats operated there all the time.

The Dolittle raiders did not use cats, they just flew off the deck of the carrier.

 

About the only way I can one carrier being of use is in covering a surface ship raid into the North Atlantic. Lets imagine the Graf Z, the Bismarck or Tirpitz, and Prinz Eugene & one other of that size making a sortie out to the Iceland Gap. Its timed to intercept a possible convoy, or preferablly when two are between Ireland and Newfoundland. If the British discover it enroute, or if suprise is achived and a convoy is actually intercepted the result is the same. The convoy/s turn south towards awaitng submarines. If the Germans are lucky the Brits will react the same as with PQ17 and order the convoy to disperse to make it less vulnerable to the surface raiders. As with PQ17 the submarines will be able to have easier time of it with the convoy scattered.

Best case the German raiding group gets close enough to suprise a convoy and pick off some cargo ships and bang away at any escourting crusiers and battleships. The convoy is even more likely to scatter south toward the submarine ambush.

If the raiders have turn back empty handed then they will still have attracted British attention and they can rest assured the Brits will use up a lot of resources trying to track them down and sink them.