jasonsnow
Sub-lieutenant
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Post by jasonsnow on Apr 21, 2018 15:15:30 GMT
The Z-Plan is an undisputed mess, but I really believe proper naval strength is the key for a successful Third Reich. What could Hitler do differently? Build submarines and a lot of them before the war and nothing bigger than a cruiser as surface ship. Okay... but I believe the Allies will just eliminate them as OTL. They developed a lot of technologies and methods to hunt down the U-Boats, rendering them useless to the Nazis. Soon, the waters became so infested with Allied ships the Nazis could no longer deploy their U-Boats. Also, keep in consideration that Britain did had large battleships, able to easily crush cruisers and leave the whole Kriegsmarine in shambles. Hitler would have to focus a lot of more resources into the Kriegsmarine in order to produce something capable of countermining the British. But he was so focused with the blitzkrieg the Kriegsmarine slowly ended up with the scraps and bits of whatever the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht obtained. |
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raunchel
Commander
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Post by raunchel on Apr 21, 2018 18:40:35 GMT
One thing that might have helped for a relatively low cost would be working with the Italians on torpedo bombers and aerial torpedoes. That could have helped a little. And it would also have been possible to make a few not so obvious savings on the battleships and the like. But changing everything to light forces tips your hand to the British (and the French), because that clearly points to a war in the West. And in the end, the naval war only matters once the land war is won or at least contained.
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steffen
Ensign
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Post by steffen on Apr 22, 2018 17:12:22 GMT
The Z-plan was a death child, born out of the mad mind of some outdated planners, ignoring completly the priorities of the german reich in 1939. Could they have build these ships? Sure, why not. But to do so they need to enlarge their ship-building infrastructure, need to concentrate 90% of its military spending (that was unhealthy and could not kept without war) for this. But the germans build nearly so many ships - or more - in war time. With less priorities... so doable it is, but not in OTL. For such plan you need the CP win the 1. Worldwar and this with significant use of the heavy ships. Then you get the continous financing of the navy... so around 1940 they would plan such building program. But the military spending of that germany would be - in percentage - not big, because that germany would have had twice or tripple the economic power the nazis had in the same time. Also they would build ships that work, would have ressources - from their allies like the osmans - and bases around the world. Complete different fish to fry. it was typical for the oldstyle-navy-officers, they demanded such ressources (for the Z-plan) to wage war against the british, knowing that the actual navy was way to weak to fight the british one. They were forced by the nazis to fight with the ships they had, basically training destroyers (who were nearly useless because of lack of knowledge to build "right" destroyers), useless light cruisers (again, lacking ressources, the newest got lost early) and overbuild CA, who were "needed" to beat other nations competitors... if you want a true navy, you build single ships, optimize em and - after you have bugged out the design, start to build numbers. The nazis had a fight between the branches - who get the best soldiers, more money, fuel, material... it was a huge mess. The Z-Plan is an undisputed mess, but I really believe proper naval strength is the key for a successful Third Reich. What could Hitler do differently? There is no path to succsess with a nazi-state. That was a really bad kleptokratie... that mean all who had some power cheated and steal as much as they could. They also lie to the others about their "potentials" and overall Hitler caused em all to fight each other in the same way they fought the "enemy".... Add in the utterly bullshit bingo between Hermann Goehring, the Navy (far behind because of the "treacherous moment of the revolution in the fleet") and the army, with their hate against the "fat boy" and the internal struggle (tanks vers. cavallery, tanks vers. artillery) with newcomers (Rommel, Guderian, Manstein) trying to implement modern warfare and these had to fight REALLY hard the old ww1-veterans... add in the parteibonzen, who fought for their Gau, so they got more prestige, could be the "best lapdog" to the Führer and you get a really mess. in this pre-war situation the only sane people were the ones who showed that the state ruined itself in the next 3 months (that was in august 1939), so the war was needed to not declare the fault state. So, yes if you only shift the ressources the navy got you could - with hindsight have a better prepared navy... but the navy had allways declared that they ONLY could hope to fight (not win!) the Royal Navy with the Z-Plan that was never to come true - as everybody in the navy knew. Basically it was a plan to make clear that there NEVER should be a war with the Royal Navy. Unfortunatly they underestimated Hitler and so they fought in ww2 with even less prepared ships as in ww1... what they achived under these circumstances is a "miracle", but still the fate of the KM was sealed at september 1st. 1939. Nothing the nazi state does could change this. they could come out better if they a.) push the Radar instead of backstepping it (so they had 10cm-radar in 1934, but it did not work properly, so they dropped it. Instead of "solving the problem"... this could have been a HUGE fallout for the war) b.) prepare the naval sites to really fight a war in 1938... build and rebuild AMC, lots of them, send em out so you have 10-20 out in september 1939. This could help the navy a bit. For the money of 1-2 destroyers you could do that. c.) build more coastal subs, that could be used as training boats - all in the 1935 treaty with the british... if they have 20 more Type-2-boats, they could train more crews in shorter times... d.) push the yards from day 1 to build as much subs as possible, round the clock! Also push the MAN-factories to build enough heavy diesels and push the battery factories to build much more batteries. They changed that OTL, but that costed lots of time - time the nazis do not have. e.) understand that a sub is not a Tauchboat... try to improve the speed below the sea, talk to Herr Walther, because the design of the sub isn´t a high tech weapon. Just add more batteries to this design instead of the revolutionary new engine/fuel (that never will work) and you get XXI-boats in early 1941 - not as good but basically a sub-type with around 1200ts, 14kn submerged, a range of 12-16.000nm, 6+2 torpedo tubes, 18 torpedos,.... if you add radar and radar warning... voila, the british face a huge problem. So with all these things life is worse for the british, more succsess for the germans. But - big but - the end is the same... some day the british and americans will have so many escorts, so many merchant ships that the germans could not sink so many of them. It is so easy... maybe the germans sink in that war 30 million tons of merchant shipping, maybe 35 mio... the USA will just build more ships... if the subs sink more, they double even the huge production capacities... also the older subs of the germans will be worthless much earlier... because the airforce will look for any single german sub more intense... You still need a few big boys, to keep the allies in uncomfortable proportions to defend their convoys against these ships... that is very effective... You just cannot win that naval war... never. |
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steffen
Ensign
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Post by steffen on Apr 22, 2018 17:21:46 GMT
Build submarines and a lot of them before the war and nothing bigger than a cruiser as surface ship. Okay... but I believe the Allies will just eliminate them as OTL. They developed a lot of technologies and methods to hunt down the U-Boats, rendering them useless to the Nazis. Soon, the waters became so infested with Allied ships the Nazis could no longer deploy their U-Boats. Also, keep in consideration that Britain did had large battleships, able to easily crush cruisers and leave the whole Kriegsmarine in shambles. Hitler would have to focus a lot of more resources into the Kriegsmarine in order to produce something capable of countermining the British. But he was so focused with the blitzkrieg the Kriegsmarine slowly ended up with the scraps and bits of whatever the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht obtained. yes and no... if you use our hindsight, you need lots of training subs - Type 2... lots of trained crews - type 2 were perfectly usuable for this modern subs - some early TypeXXI would cause the british gigantic problems. The snorkel they could use in 1940 (captured dutch boats), so the areal search is not succsessfull till early 1943... the german subs are truly invisible... for the first 3,5 years. Even the older subs (type 7 and 9) had a new "succsess" (in survivability) with the snorkel... at last against airplanes... because even the centimeter radar had a significant reduced detection range... I wrote some points that could be done without much changes to the ressources that cause the british huge headaches, cost em extra 2-6 million tons of shipping (20 AMC instead of 0 at the first day of ww2 out), extra 5-15 mio tons of shipping (if they use an early 21er-type - not with all the technical stuff, but basically a boat, 150m diving deep (nothing extraordenary for the germans), 14kn submerged, with snorkel, greater range (15k nm) and more torpedos. Even if the counter is to send out much more planes - with snorkels the subs are less easy to find and if detected escape more often. That is an accumulation effect. Say germany use 100 subs - from these 33 are out, 33 are in transit and 33 in port. If you have 20 damaged and 10 sunk (OTL) and now you have 10 damaged and 5 sunk... this mean that you have - 12 months later 60 subs more that are not sunk and around 80-100 subs more that are out - ready to find enemy ships. Also the enemy gets less training and succsess in destroying subs (if you do not find em), their needed ships are more expensive and they couldn´t build so many (if you need faster ships that use more fuel, better ASW (because if the sub is submerged faster as your hunter group the chance to destroy it is smaller)) If you add better radar (my last point), the german subs "see" the airplanes earlier and could dive undetected... again an enemy you do not see is an enemy you can´t destroy. We do not even start to improve the G7e-Torpedo... only this (as a full workable torpedo) would cost the british some carriers, battleships and lots of cruisers.... all these ships destroyed, their crews killed mean they have harder times to win the battles. |
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