Kriegsmarine in WWII

All,

I've been reading many books about the German Navy during WWII.

I do not believe the German's actually had good knowledge on how to "employ" their warships.

I know they were very small compared to the Royal Navy, but there is no excuse for using a "heavy cruiser" to transport infantry down a protected Fjord to invade a Norwiegen city.

If the US Navy were to do that, MANY senior officers would have been relieved.

Any thoughts about "if" the Germans were able to produce the "H-Plan" warships, would they have given the Royal Navy a good fight?

 

I doubt it. The KM was geared towards commerce raiding and not a deciisive battle. Even when the Bismark sank the Hood, Bismark was under orders avoid contact with enemy warships.

 

What's so strange about using a cruiser to carry an assault force? For small or medium size operations (up to regiment stregth) using fast warships to transport the assault force makes more sense than a slower ship especially if you don't have naval superiority. According to Roskill the aborted British Norway invasion force destined for Stavager and Bergen was loaded on Devonsire, Berwick, York and Glasgow (3 CA and one large CL) while the Trondheim and Narvik force, that were further from German bases, used transports.
If you want "strange" think of loading a couple of unfortunate light cruisers with aviation fuel drums .....
Mike IMO the pre-war KM was not geared for commerce raiding, a lot of effort went into BBs that are sea conrol platforms and not cost effective for commerce raiding though the Sharnhorst made some sense and were rather effective when used in that way.
But you can't hope for a decisive battle when you have a total 3 or 4 BBs against an enemy that can field twice that many, so given the historical situation commerce raiding was the only alternative to a passive "fleet in being" strategy.

 

No!
Germany may have had better traeined troops than Briton but briton RN were well traeined and more expereince than German Kriegsmarine navey!Even so germany built more ships,briton wuolde have done the same thing,after all Briton will never lete germany pass her with having the biggest navey.
Had no hope

 

Some of the early ones might have been pretty good ships. Some of the latter ones had drafts that would have kept them from leaving any yard in Germany where they were constructed without extensive dredgeing. I any case the Germans were well behind in both numbers and operational experiance.

 

And experience in building those ships. Things that both Britain and the US had.

 

Going into WW2, the British had one of the best navies in the world, centuries of experience in seagoing warfare, and a well-established tradition for naval excellence. As an island nation this had been their historical role and is solely what enabled them to seize their empire. As a densely populated nation in the middle of western Europe, with only guaranteed access to the Baltic and North Seas, Germany had little of this tradition to fall back on and limited resources to build all the ships that her ambitious Admirals wanted. (At the start of WW2 in 1939, Admiral Raeder had planned the Kriegsmarine ship building program would not be complete until 1950.) So the Navy may have been the least well prepared of Germany's armed forces to enter the war.

The Germany navy was thoroughly outclassed in almost all ways by the Royal Navy since the Kriegsmarine prewar plan to change this was never going to come to completion.

The one branch that gave Churchill serious worry was the U-boats. Doenitz was a highly talented and capable leader, and during the years 1940-1943 there were several months where the U-boats were sinking allied shipping faster than it could be built!

Only the advent of new radar, improved sonar, increased air reconaissance, and Doenitz' foolish insistence on keeping in touch with the U-boats by radio (using the Engima code, which had been broken, and using only short bursts of radio transmission that were thought by the Germans to be unlocatable, when they were) kept the British from dropping out of the war from lack of oil and other vital goods.

 

well folks it doesn't help when der Führer is not interested at all in the functions of his own navy, seriously how far do you think it could of gotten ~ the only thing worthy of the KM was the U-Boots and S-booten and then in the last months using all available shipping not previously sunk to save the German populace in the east an undertaking still mind-bogling if one were to study it at all in-depth. This last important step was probably the most successful campaign if you will of the Kriegsmarine.

E ~

 

Adm Raeder realised before the war that the Kriegsmarine could never hope to survive as an entity in a toe-to-toe fight against the RN with the units available to it so he had to employ it in a manner that would still hit Britain hard - her economic achilles heel of reliance on overseas trade. Any long term plans for building a huge surface fleet had to be abandoned in favour of increasing the production of U-Boats and attacking merchant shipping.

 

Could the KM Defeated the RN if they had all of there Z plan ships, Yes. The RN with all its 'power' was still spread out, They where still providing escorts for the merchant ships, As well as operating in the Med, How ever the germans didnt need to spread out, They could consentrate there forces,

The Bismarck , Tirpitz , Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst aswell as the Graf Zeppelin , Flugzeugträger B (2nd Graf Zeppelin class carrier), Schlachtschiff H, J, K, L, M, N, Schlachtkreuzer O, P, Q. Aswell as all of those cruisers and destroyers etc, Oh nad there was a plan for about 250 U boats. If Germany had that, Then the RN is in trouble, The RN carriers where old and carried as far as i know Bi-Planes, The German carriers had fighters and dive bombers, Modern.

Oh and RN just oh so easily building more ships?? Your dreaming, They still require resources from over seas, Germans use force to break out and go aroundin strong hunter groups, While there U boats flood the Atlantic, The British will have hard enought time with surface units beforethey can even deal with the U boats.

Hell, The Bismarck, Tirpitz and Schlachtschiff H, J, K, L, M and N alone would have been an issue, Considering they where all built or planned as double hulled, Pine wood and fuel tanks being located between each hull, Fact that british shots did NOT sink the Bismarck, She WAS scuttled by her crew. if one ship Gave the RN so much hassle, What could 8-15 capital ships do?

Sure the German ship building skills werent up to par with the British or Yanks, But i wouldnt delt there ability to win battles at sea when it was Hitler that gave the Allies there break from Capital ship battles in the NA.

 

Responding to you're last qoute-
The Kriegsmarine was only young,invented in 1935 -1946!before that germany was limited to a small navy,by the ww1 allies.
I believe cause of this lack of navy,that Germans had least limited knowledge compared to the Allies which were aloud to have a huge ongoing navy.


Even if germans did have the H-Plan warships and jets ,germans never had the expereince in using these fine weapons of destrution unlike there R/N counsins!
germans are not use to aircraft carriers and jets are raliable brand new weapons which the german pilots had to learn fast from!

I'll leave it up to you,who you think would win! i personatly think it is quite equal,but i am not sure.

 

By 1944 the day of the battleship was at an end, air power was the way forward (that's why the British & Americans never built any new-build battleships after 1945). And you seem to forget that by this stage Bismarck, Tirpitz, Gneisenau & Scharnhorst were already destroyed, so there are 4 ships out of the German Order Of Battle already. To of got such a large force into the Atlantic they would of had to of got through the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap and from the North Sea onwards they would of undergone constant air attack from dedicated ship attacking aircraft such as the Beaufighter & Mosquito, not to mention Bomber Command. The German's would of had problems defending their force in the Denmark Straits as the weather would of been too poor most of the time to launch aircraft from the carriers. Not only that but they would of been targets for British submarines and German defence measures against submarines were nowhere near as accomplished as the British or Americans - Stukas & Me-109's are not ASW aircraft!
And by 1943/44 British aircraft carriers were equipped with Seafires, Hellcats & Corsairs - more then a match for the German air defence aircraft, and obsolecent Stukas.
It is all very well having the carriers but it would of taken years for the Germans to of built up the experience of using them, both as a single entity and as part of an integrated force.
And while it is all very well having such a large force, once away from Germany where was the logistic support? No support ships to refuel from - a task group that size uses up a lot of fuel (ships & aircraft), oil, food etc and would of needed big logistical support - and once the support ships had of been identified they would of been targetted.

The British did sink the Bismarck - she was a shattered hulk by the time KG V & Rodney had finished with her, and the torpedos from Dorsetshire sent her on her way. Whether the seavalves were opened at the end is irrelevant - she was already sinking. And as the ship was a devastated wreck how would Lindemann of got the order passed to the necessary people to open the valves - if they & he were alive at that point obviously?

I do agree with your point about the U-Boats they would of been a problem, but with improved submarines comes improved anti-submarine defence and detection. By the time Germany had of built such a large force I'm sure the British & Americans would of been building more destroyers and dedicated anti-submarine ships. By 1944/45 the Americans were churning out destroyers & escort carriers at an incredible rate.And as you point out yourself - the German ship building skills weren't a match for that sort of output. How long would it of taken the Germans to of built such a large force - not just of U-Boats but of capital ships as well? The war would of been lost decades before and the British & Americans would of been flying jets from their Fleet carriers, protected by missile armed escorts and with dedicated ASW aircraft flying well ahead of the force working with dedicated ASW ships to sanitise the sea area of submarines. You seem to apply the war situation to one side but not to the other.
And how did Hitler give the Allies their break from Capital Ship battles - The only 2 major warships sunk by German Battleships/cruisers were HMS Glorious - a poorly defended aircraft carrier - and HMS Hood.
Graf Spee, Scharnhorst & Bismarck were sent to the bottom in battle. Tirpitz was negated by midget subs & air strikes (and turned away from the one opportunity she had of engaging a British naval force). Gneisenau bombed to the point of uselessness in port.

While your point about the submarines holds some weight, the rest is just wishful thinking in my opinion.

 

And in response to a German force of this size could have reconcentrated.

Well the German carriers would have been nearly useless. Indeed a CVE was about as capable as they would have been. Some of the BBs wouldn't have even been able to get out of port as their draft was too deep. Which shows that they were paper studies never intended to be built by the way.

If the Germans could build the above the British could certainly build or buy more. Look at how many capital ships they completed after the start of the war vs how many the Germans did.

[qutoe]planned as double hulled, Pine wood and fuel tanks being located between each hull, ...
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And you think this is a good idea? Wood and oil sounds like quite a fire hazard to me. The US removed post of the paint inside it's ships just to reduce the fire hazard, by the way.
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Not quite. The British reduced the Bismarck to a sinking wreck. While it's accepted now that the Germans did "scuttle" her or at least attempted to do so I've seen speculation that the scuttling may even have slowed down her sinking by preventing her from capsizing as quickly. To say the British didn't have a major hand in sinking her is simply incorrect and even if it was true they certainly pounded her into an useless, defenseless, unsalvageable floating wreck.

 

The only major flaw in this wishful thinking excercise is that the German's weren't a true maritime nation, and while they had a "tradition" of naval experience, they were really new-comers in that field. Compared to the RN, they were the weak sisters and had NO chance of ever either catching up or surpassing the Royal Navy and its Commonwealth allies.

They didn't have the shipbuilding capacity for a large surface fleet, and started to increase and improve their submersibles far too late.

For an eye-openeing survey of the Kreigsmarine vis a vis the Royal Navy:

Royal Navy, warships, WW2, battleships, battlecruisers, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, escorts

Where you will find a total of 885 warships which were "in service" in the Royal Navy from 1939-1945, is coupled with a loss of 278. That means at the end, the Royal Navy still had about 600 warships still afloat, from battleships to submarines. These are the Royal Navy numbers, not mine

Just for "fun" people might want to go down to your local book store and see if you can’t find the publication by Richard Worth (posting as "Tiornu") Fleets of World War Two which covers everybody from Albania to Yugoslavia in the time frame. I use my copy quite often, since while it is a well researched and authoritative work, it isn’t without a dry sense of humor coming through occasionally as well.

 

It's always interesting to read someone's opinion about the viability of Nazi Germany's "Z-Plan" for naval construction. It's almost always assumed that these ships could have been built in time for WW II, when, in fact, it was pushing reality to complete the plan by 1948, assuming Germany could come up with the ship-building capacity, steel, man-power, and not least, money. As if these assumptions were not daunting enough, the German Army and German Air Force would also be competing for the same funding! Considering which armed services came first in Hitler's list of priorities, it's difficult to imagine where the required spare 33 BILLION Reichsmarks would come from.

Then too, the Z-Plan envisioned only 249 U-boats, far fewer than Donitz claimed he needed to ensure victory in any war against British sea-going commerce. That would allow only about 80 U-boats at sea on active patrol at a time, IF no losses were incurred. This number was fewer than the historical numbers of U-boats which were eventually commissioned, and defeated, by Allied ASW during the war. Nor were the projected designs of the U-boats optimal; most would have been the either the very short-legged Type IIC's, or the somewhat less range-challenged Type VIIC's. Only 62 of the eventual 249 U-boats would have been Type IX's, which proved to be the statistically most successful U-boat in the German fleet.

Perhaps, the most flawed assumption of the German Z-plan was that such an ambitious naval construction plan would pass unnoticed by both the UK and the US. In the event, the first units of the Z-plan were laid down commencing in January, 1939. Nine months later, Germany found itself at war with Britain and France. Britain, especially, embarked on a crash naval construction program, while Germany suspended all work on the Z-Plan, in favor of other military projects. Just nine months after that, in June, 1940, the USN commenced a naval construction that dwarfed the Z-Plan. Had Germany somehow managed to continue with the Z-plan, the Allied response simply would have buried the comparatively insignificant number of naval warships Germany might have been able to produce.

As for the quality of the ships Germany might have been able to deploy as a result of the Z-Plan construction program, it would have been mixed. The Bismarck and the Tirpitz were decent capital ships, but certainly no more innovative nor well-built than comparable Allied vessels. The idea that the Bismarck was something special is ludicrous; it was battered to junk by British warships without ever landing a hit in return. Many of the Germany destroyers produced in the immediate pre-war period were over-gunned and practically useless in the North Atlantic and others were propelled by unreliable high-pressure steam plants. The Americans had pioneered high-pressure steam plants in destroyers and deployed warships with extremely reliable plants.

The single, nearly-completed, German aircraft carrier carried a tiny air group, and had a launching system that was awkward and cumbersome, allowing the launch of less than 20 aircraft at a time; it would have been easy prey for almost any Allied carrier, had it managed to get to sea. Despite studying British and Japanese aircraft carrier plans, the Germans produced a seriously flawed and practically useless carrier and lacked any viable carrier doctrine.

 

From what I've heard it's for all intents and purposes sold out and out of print. So keep an eye out for any copies if you are interested or bug the publisher about a reprint.

 

You might be able to get Mr. Worth to sell you a copy and mail it to you, that is how I got my copy a few years ago since I couldn't find it in any of our local book stores in Billings.

Just send him a PM from one of his posts. I think his last post was in "weapons" and concerned what made Battleships obsolete back in the middle of May. I got mine from him in the USPS complete with autograph.

 

I asked a while back and he said he was out. Now maybe it's been reprinted or he's come by a new stash so it could still be worth doing.