in WW2 context, they did pretty well for a navy built from a dilapitated manufacture and knowledge base, but not quite enough to warrant the humongous cost of the entire thing, not that they could afford to completely dump navy either.
they were stuck in the same situation as the IJN vs USN, they have to fight that big empire breathing down their neck no matter what even though it can easily curbstomp your country several times over with change.
its best case scenario would be one where it doesnt exist: the soviet arent big on their navy, as are their landlocked neighbours, the two big countries in the east are in cahoots with each other, and can potentially hook another literally imprevious empire with pratically infinite resources and manpower to bring to bear. but the brits only regarded the soviets as fairweather friends, so there was potential to avoid kicking the hornet's nest while being able to direct your long-overstretched war economy to bear and reaps the dividends.
The problem is that Navy's are kind of an all-in thing.
Post-War Germany was both too poor and under miltiary restrictions to build up a real navy that could have challenged Britain. However you had two camps- the Submarine wing led by Donitz who argued submarines were cheaper and faster to make, and asymmetrical warfare was needed and the old guard who wanted a massive battle fleet to defeat the British. The problem was Hitler didn't care much for the Navy, and instead took a middle approach that couldn't full commit to asymetrical naval warfare, nor open-seas warfare, and was the lesser of both parties as a result.
The problem is that Navy's are kind of an all-in thing.
Post-War Germany was both too poor and under miltiary restrictions to build up a real navy that could have challenged Britain. However you had two camps- the Submarine wing led by Donitz who argued submarines were cheaper and faster to make, and asymmetrical warfare was needed and the old guard who wanted a massive battle fleet to defeat the British. The problem was Hitler didn't care much for the Navy, and instead took a middle approach that couldn't full commit to asymetrical naval warfare, nor open-seas warfare, and was the lesser of both parties as a result.
Didn't they still managed to hold the Baltic longer than they held against the Reds out on land?
I don't know exactly. I do know they held Norway until the end of the war, but I think that's more cause Norway would have been hell to invade, and there was no real reason to once they started seriously penetrating into France.
After the war, the world's largest and most competent navies were fielded by the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Every other navy was blown the fuck up or completely dysfunctional. The French fleet had been scuttled, the Axis powers' fleets had been destroyed, scuttled, or disarmed, and the Soviets never focused on huge shipbuilding projects during the war.
Russia is just screwed on the navy front. Even under the USSR, they have to split their navy amongst four coasts (Arctic, Baltic, Black Sea, Pacific) and it's pretty unfeasible to pump out a large enough Navy to defend all of those adequately.
Uboats were effective, but nowhere near enough to win the tonnage war. Weren't as good as in WW1 and no, building more early wouldn't have worked because the Allies would have focused more on ASW ships that they neglected in our timeline.
Capital surface ships were okay, but oversized for what they actually offered due to outdated designs.
Graf Zeppelin fucking sucked.
Cruisers and destroyers weren't great, weren't horrible.
to be fair, the germans were unaware of the extent of the coastal defences and whether or not they were operational. in particular, the secret torpedo tubes loaded with whiteheads caught the germans completely by surprise and, even if they had known of their existence, probably wouldn't have expected the 40-year-old torps to actually function. it was bad intelligence gathering mostly
>to be fair, the germans were unaware of the extent of the coastal defences and whether or not they were operational.
But they knew they existed. They should have prepared for them being operational. Just because the shore batteries are obsolete, doesn't mean they can't harm you. They're still 11 inch guns.
The whole invasion of Norway was such a clusterfuck. It was miraculous that they didn't loose their entire surface navy. They only managed to pull it off by the incompetence of the British and even then managed to loose half of their destroyers in one day.
How would you rank the navies at the start of the war? (By the end it is obviously the USA > everyone else combined).
Seems like in terms of skill the Japs were way ahead. Their % hits on torpedo runs early in the war were the highest in the entire war, even with huge tech advances. The Zero really wasn't a good fighter ever, it's just that high quality Jap pilots shredded Brit and US aviators.
I would say: >Japan >US >British
Gap >French (on paper) >German >Italian
Gap >Soviet
The Italian navy was always better than the German navy. They at least managed kept their fleet intact.
The problem is that Navy's are kind of an all-in thing.
Post-War Germany was both too poor and under miltiary restrictions to build up a real navy that could have challenged Britain. However you had two camps- the Submarine wing led by Donitz who argued submarines were cheaper and faster to make, and asymmetrical warfare was needed and the old guard who wanted a massive battle fleet to defeat the British. The problem was Hitler didn't care much for the Navy, and instead took a middle approach that couldn't full commit to asymetrical naval warfare, nor open-seas warfare, and was the lesser of both parties as a result.
The problem with Germany's navy was that it was created by the Kaiser to wave his dick against his cousins in England. They still kept that attitude while not having the same capabilities of the Kaisermarine.
That's true, but I think she's was primarily meant for operation in the Baltic/North sea area and a large compliment of aircraft wasn't the main goal. She was meant to be more of an auxiliary/back-up to the other ships than be a strategic asset on her own. Given Germany inexperience with aircraft carriers, she would never be as good as a USN or IJN carrier.
I do question why Germany went with that design though instead of a sort of raider carrier like the allied escort carriers but far faster to be able to strike convoys regardless of their escorts and the retreat before any overwhelming opposition arrives
going into this everybody on all sides was expecting a more advanced version of WW1. Completely logical too as it had only been 20 years between the two. Difference of 2003 vs 2023 of today.
In this contect expectation was germans being locked in the north and baltic sea area with blockade supporting immediate ground operations. With the big decisive war operation being on the frenchies border
instead due to the french imploding so fast they suddenly now had access to all of the west coast of france with its naval ports. Similarly blocking germany on sea was now unfeasible with the north sea route alone by the RN, which shifted toward defending the isles and securing convoys. This is also illustrated with how unprepared the germans were in dealing with the isles themselves as all they really came up with was completely unrealistic air campaign without ground support and even naval cover. As they simply did not expect they had to actually get into britain itself somehow
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
The Luftwaffe deserves the blame, they had excellent tactics mostly because only that had fought an air campaign at a decent scale in Spain. But the organization was shit, Goering as a top notch pilot and squadron leader but that doesn't make a top notch commander of an entire arm of the military.
She had an armored deck and sub-deck and 16 150 cm guns because why not. Although the Lexington-class carriers originally mounted 8 8" guns. The world was denied the kino of carrier-on-carrier gun battles.
>16 150 cm guns because why not
For the dumbest reason imaginable; it was supposed to only have eight. The chief designer suggested putting them in twin mounts to save space, the naval ministry misunderstood that as "make every gun a twin mount"
There was the time they sailed up the channel with minimal damage because the A*glos were too incompetent to bomb a couple of battleships off their own coast.
How would you rank the navies at the start of the war? (By the end it is obviously the USA > everyone else combined).
Seems like in terms of skill the Japs were way ahead. Their % hits on torpedo runs early in the war were the highest in the entire war, even with huge tech advances. The Zero really wasn't a good fighter ever, it's just that high quality Jap pilots shredded Brit and US aviators.
I would say: >Japan >US >British
Gap >French (on paper) >German >Italian
Gap >Soviet
After the war, the world's largest and most competent navies were fielded by the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Every other navy was blown the fuck up or completely dysfunctional. The French fleet had been scuttled, the Axis powers' fleets had been destroyed, scuttled, or disarmed, and the Soviets never focused on huge shipbuilding projects during the war.
>Their % hits on torpedo runs early in the war were the highest in the entire war
this is a product of their torps actually functioning, not of a higher hit %. which is to their credit, but not in the way you claim
>in terms of skill the Japs were way ahead
In a few niche areas.
Most of their early success was because they started preparations years before everyone else was aware and took the initiative early. The Allies caught up fast.
>The Zero
It was the early Mustang, the fighter that could fly to you and fuck you up. It was a better dogfighter than any opponent, so the opponents went to BnZ.
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau did pretty well with merchant raiding. Operation Berlin was successful enough to make the Kriegsmarine plan a larger sortie (which ended up only as Bismarck and Prinz Eugen.) They also bagged HMS Glorious during the Norway campaign.
>They also bagged HMS Glorious during the Norway campaign.
The loss of Glorious, Ardent and Acasta was more of a massive shitshow on the part of the Royal Navy rather than a Kriegsmarine success, the circumstances for Glorious to be caught in that position should never have come about in the first place.
>cool stories
Great granduncle was on a destroyer in the Mediterranean, they got shit rations while docked in North Africa so they used explosives [he probably meant depth charges?] for blast fishing
Als got to fuck French hotties in Bonifacio, Corsica and apparently a friend had a bad case of ND with the 5 inch gun [although that could have been just a cope for the guy being a jackass]
I kinda regret never asking him any more detailed questions, especially the specific dates or technical data
>be the royal navy >have more capital ships in the home fleet than the kriegsmarine has surface ships total >be completely terrified of this force to the point that you conduct 0 (zero) offensive operations in your own back yard >somehow let unescorted transport ships invade norway
I've never understood why they didn't commit to more coastal raids on German assets in france simply by shelling rather than landing as they did in so many cases. It's like the British upper class were addicted to some dashing infantry raid shit, similarly to how they refused to murder officers and slaughter troops in their sleep during raids in Africa. Meanwhile American irregulars were burning people to death in their beds in Asia. I just don't get it, murder works you retarded bongs.
Largely incompetence and the RN admiralty being terrified of another Jutland scenario where they'd get called out politically.
It's pretty crazy because Germany had virtually no maritime strike throughout the entire war yet the RN just allowed Wilhelmshaven and the Kiel Canal to sit unmolested until the RAAF put work in near the end.
They managed to lose a major naval battle to a Royal Navy force that didn't actually exist, and lost half their competent flag officers to a single battleship salvo.t08mv
Thank you
I want to read a book which gives the following
Firstly I want a general context about everything related to the navy leading up to WW2
Secondly I want an explanation of the kind of situation that German naval planners and thinkers inherited at the time, for example what effect did WW1 have on their thought?
How did Nazi Germany have the technology to build the ships that they did? How did the Kriegsmarine organisation come to be? How did they train the officers?
Thirdly I want to know what the reaction was to the above situation with regards to planning
For example what kind of war did they think they'd be getting into, what conditions, limitations, etc did they think Germany would be subject to and how did that affect the planning of the navy and the design of the ships?
To what degree did political decisions from above alter the above work?
Fourthly I want to see how the above worked out and what changes had to be made during the course of the war
I would appreciate a book with nice maps
The most successful arm of the Kriegsmarine in terms of return on investment was by far the Hilfskreuzer program, represented in your image here by Kormoran.
Originally merchant ships, they were converted for use in military service by installing hidden deck guns, torpedoes, and extra accommodations for prize crews. Then before they would go out, were given a cargo of mostly munitions so they could resupply each other as well as friendly U-Boats on long patrols. Using a combination of often changing paint schemes and false flags, they would hunt merchant shipping with the primary goal of capturing them whole, or sinking them if that wasn't possible.
Kormoran herself had quite a successful career spanning most of 1941, resulting in 10 merchant ships sunk and 1 captured before meeting her fate with the light cruiser HMAS Sydney. Unable to adequately answer questions from the warship about her identity, she opened fire from point blank range in a surprise attack. Despite being massively outgunned, the engagement ended up being a mutual kill for both vessels.
This in combination with more panzershifs, not because they were good commerce radiers but because they were swift bombardment ships and the Soviets naval aviation, even when based off land was shit so they'd be insulated from the worst attacks. That and they could fuck with British forces in the North Sea while still being able to flee untenable engagements.
nah
in WW2 context, they did pretty well for a navy built from a dilapitated manufacture and knowledge base, but not quite enough to warrant the humongous cost of the entire thing, not that they could afford to completely dump navy either.
they were stuck in the same situation as the IJN vs USN, they have to fight that big empire breathing down their neck no matter what even though it can easily curbstomp your country several times over with change.
its best case scenario would be one where it doesnt exist: the soviet arent big on their navy, as are their landlocked neighbours, the two big countries in the east are in cahoots with each other, and can potentially hook another literally imprevious empire with pratically infinite resources and manpower to bring to bear. but the brits only regarded the soviets as fairweather friends, so there was potential to avoid kicking the hornet's nest while being able to direct your long-overstretched war economy to bear and reaps the dividends.
The problem is that Navy's are kind of an all-in thing.
Post-War Germany was both too poor and under miltiary restrictions to build up a real navy that could have challenged Britain. However you had two camps- the Submarine wing led by Donitz who argued submarines were cheaper and faster to make, and asymmetrical warfare was needed and the old guard who wanted a massive battle fleet to defeat the British. The problem was Hitler didn't care much for the Navy, and instead took a middle approach that couldn't full commit to asymetrical naval warfare, nor open-seas warfare, and was the lesser of both parties as a result.
Didn't they still managed to hold the Baltic longer than they held against the Reds out on land?
I don't know exactly. I do know they held Norway until the end of the war, but I think that's more cause Norway would have been hell to invade, and there was no real reason to once they started seriously penetrating into France.
Russia is just screwed on the navy front. Even under the USSR, they have to split their navy amongst four coasts (Arctic, Baltic, Black Sea, Pacific) and it's pretty unfeasible to pump out a large enough Navy to defend all of those adequately.
Uboats were effective, but nowhere near enough to win the tonnage war. Weren't as good as in WW1 and no, building more early wouldn't have worked because the Allies would have focused more on ASW ships that they neglected in our timeline.
Capital surface ships were okay, but oversized for what they actually offered due to outdated designs.
Graf Zeppelin fucking sucked.
Cruisers and destroyers weren't great, weren't horrible.
>We'll just sail our newest heavy cruiser right into their capitol's port, what could go wrong
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to be fair, the germans were unaware of the extent of the coastal defences and whether or not they were operational. in particular, the secret torpedo tubes loaded with whiteheads caught the germans completely by surprise and, even if they had known of their existence, probably wouldn't have expected the 40-year-old torps to actually function. it was bad intelligence gathering mostly
Wasn't it a norwegian fort where they could only fire the guns once because there wasn't enough crew present to reload them?
>to be fair, the germans were unaware of the extent of the coastal defences and whether or not they were operational.
But they knew they existed. They should have prepared for them being operational. Just because the shore batteries are obsolete, doesn't mean they can't harm you. They're still 11 inch guns.
The whole invasion of Norway was such a clusterfuck. It was miraculous that they didn't loose their entire surface navy. They only managed to pull it off by the incompetence of the British and even then managed to loose half of their destroyers in one day.
The Italian navy was always better than the German navy. They at least managed kept their fleet intact.
The problem with Germany's navy was that it was created by the Kaiser to wave his dick against his cousins in England. They still kept that attitude while not having the same capabilities of the Kaisermarine.
>loose
Fucking illiterat zoomers.
I agree with most of what you said, but
>Graf Zeppelin fucking sucked.
Graf-chan never saw combat and because Göring's cuckery it never got the independent air complement it needed to function properly.
But it also weighted as much as a long hulled Essex class (Ticonderoga subclass I think) and only carried 42 aircraft
That's true, but I think she's was primarily meant for operation in the Baltic/North sea area and a large compliment of aircraft wasn't the main goal. She was meant to be more of an auxiliary/back-up to the other ships than be a strategic asset on her own. Given Germany inexperience with aircraft carriers, she would never be as good as a USN or IJN carrier.
I do question why Germany went with that design though instead of a sort of raider carrier like the allied escort carriers but far faster to be able to strike convoys regardless of their escorts and the retreat before any overwhelming opposition arrives
going into this everybody on all sides was expecting a more advanced version of WW1. Completely logical too as it had only been 20 years between the two. Difference of 2003 vs 2023 of today.
In this contect expectation was germans being locked in the north and baltic sea area with blockade supporting immediate ground operations. With the big decisive war operation being on the frenchies border
instead due to the french imploding so fast they suddenly now had access to all of the west coast of france with its naval ports. Similarly blocking germany on sea was now unfeasible with the north sea route alone by the RN, which shifted toward defending the isles and securing convoys. This is also illustrated with how unprepared the germans were in dealing with the isles themselves as all they really came up with was completely unrealistic air campaign without ground support and even naval cover. As they simply did not expect they had to actually get into britain itself somehow
The Luftwaffe deserves the blame, they had excellent tactics mostly because only that had fought an air campaign at a decent scale in Spain. But the organization was shit, Goering as a top notch pilot and squadron leader but that doesn't make a top notch commander of an entire arm of the military.
She had an armored deck and sub-deck and 16 150 cm guns because why not. Although the Lexington-class carriers originally mounted 8 8" guns. The world was denied the kino of carrier-on-carrier gun battles.
>16 150 cm guns because why not
For the dumbest reason imaginable; it was supposed to only have eight. The chief designer suggested putting them in twin mounts to save space, the naval ministry misunderstood that as "make every gun a twin mount"
There was the time they sailed up the channel with minimal damage because the A*glos were too incompetent to bomb a couple of battleships off their own coast.
>minimal damage
Gneisenau never sailed again.
How would you rank the navies at the start of the war? (By the end it is obviously the USA > everyone else combined).
Seems like in terms of skill the Japs were way ahead. Their % hits on torpedo runs early in the war were the highest in the entire war, even with huge tech advances. The Zero really wasn't a good fighter ever, it's just that high quality Jap pilots shredded Brit and US aviators.
I would say:
>Japan
>US
>British
Gap
>French (on paper)
>German
>Italian
Gap
>Soviet
After the war, the world's largest and most competent navies were fielded by the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Every other navy was blown the fuck up or completely dysfunctional. The French fleet had been scuttled, the Axis powers' fleets had been destroyed, scuttled, or disarmed, and the Soviets never focused on huge shipbuilding projects during the war.
>Their % hits on torpedo runs early in the war were the highest in the entire war
this is a product of their torps actually functioning, not of a higher hit %. which is to their credit, but not in the way you claim
>in terms of skill the Japs were way ahead
In a few niche areas.
Most of their early success was because they started preparations years before everyone else was aware and took the initiative early. The Allies caught up fast.
>The Zero
It was the early Mustang, the fighter that could fly to you and fuck you up. It was a better dogfighter than any opponent, so the opponents went to BnZ.
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau did pretty well with merchant raiding. Operation Berlin was successful enough to make the Kriegsmarine plan a larger sortie (which ended up only as Bismarck and Prinz Eugen.) They also bagged HMS Glorious during the Norway campaign.
>They also bagged HMS Glorious during the Norway campaign.
The loss of Glorious, Ardent and Acasta was more of a massive shitshow on the part of the Royal Navy rather than a Kriegsmarine success, the circumstances for Glorious to be caught in that position should never have come about in the first place.
Norway was a big clusterfuck for every side involved. Full of mistakes and bad luck, or good luck depending whose point of view. Fascinating, really.
They also got BTFO'd by a literal Jutland Battlecruiser. A SINGLE Battlecruiser. Which should have been food to either one of the German ships.
>cool stories
Great granduncle was on a destroyer in the Mediterranean, they got shit rations while docked in North Africa so they used explosives [he probably meant depth charges?] for blast fishing
Als got to fuck French hotties in Bonifacio, Corsica and apparently a friend had a bad case of ND with the 5 inch gun [although that could have been just a cope for the guy being a jackass]
I kinda regret never asking him any more detailed questions, especially the specific dates or technical data
Most of their interesting stories (outside of the U-boats) are based around their proficiency for retardation
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wikinger
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rhein%C3%BCbung
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dr%C3%B8bak_Sound
They had some chad commanders who performed well in the first years of the war.
>be the royal navy
>have more capital ships in the home fleet than the kriegsmarine has surface ships total
>be completely terrified of this force to the point that you conduct 0 (zero) offensive operations in your own back yard
>somehow let unescorted transport ships invade norway
how did they fuck up that bad?
Considering what the Norwegians did to the German fleet, the Bongs probably thought the Nords had things well in hand
Too scared of Jutland 2.0 even though that was the entire reason they had a home fleet in the first place.
I've never understood why they didn't commit to more coastal raids on German assets in france simply by shelling rather than landing as they did in so many cases. It's like the British upper class were addicted to some dashing infantry raid shit, similarly to how they refused to murder officers and slaughter troops in their sleep during raids in Africa. Meanwhile American irregulars were burning people to death in their beds in Asia. I just don't get it, murder works you retarded bongs.
Largely incompetence and the RN admiralty being terrified of another Jutland scenario where they'd get called out politically.
It's pretty crazy because Germany had virtually no maritime strike throughout the entire war yet the RN just allowed Wilhelmshaven and the Kiel Canal to sit unmolested until the RAAF put work in near the end.
They managed to lose a major naval battle to a Royal Navy force that didn't actually exist, and lost half their competent flag officers to a single battleship salvo.t08mv
Thank you
I want to read a book which gives the following
Firstly I want a general context about everything related to the navy leading up to WW2
Secondly I want an explanation of the kind of situation that German naval planners and thinkers inherited at the time, for example what effect did WW1 have on their thought?
How did Nazi Germany have the technology to build the ships that they did? How did the Kriegsmarine organisation come to be? How did they train the officers?
Thirdly I want to know what the reaction was to the above situation with regards to planning
For example what kind of war did they think they'd be getting into, what conditions, limitations, etc did they think Germany would be subject to and how did that affect the planning of the navy and the design of the ships?
To what degree did political decisions from above alter the above work?
Fourthly I want to see how the above worked out and what changes had to be made during the course of the war
I would appreciate a book with nice maps
The most successful arm of the Kriegsmarine in terms of return on investment was by far the Hilfskreuzer program, represented in your image here by Kormoran.
Originally merchant ships, they were converted for use in military service by installing hidden deck guns, torpedoes, and extra accommodations for prize crews. Then before they would go out, were given a cargo of mostly munitions so they could resupply each other as well as friendly U-Boats on long patrols. Using a combination of often changing paint schemes and false flags, they would hunt merchant shipping with the primary goal of capturing them whole, or sinking them if that wasn't possible.
Kormoran herself had quite a successful career spanning most of 1941, resulting in 10 merchant ships sunk and 1 captured before meeting her fate with the light cruiser HMAS Sydney. Unable to adequately answer questions from the warship about her identity, she opened fire from point blank range in a surprise attack. Despite being massively outgunned, the engagement ended up being a mutual kill for both vessels.
This in combination with more panzershifs, not because they were good commerce radiers but because they were swift bombardment ships and the Soviets naval aviation, even when based off land was shit so they'd be insulated from the worst attacks. That and they could fuck with British forces in the North Sea while still being able to flee untenable engagements.
Don't forget the Atlantis got the British plans for the far east. The captain was given a samurai sword.