Hitler is not a naval person. Like anything else with him, if the right person get his ear and tells him to forget the battleships we need to have carriers with our Luftwaffe on them to bomb the enemy from sea, he will have them start on them. Given Goring being one of the faithful you could have him have a way to bring more of the military under his command. He reads that the US makes their carrier commanders be aviators first, he sees a way to get more under the Luftwaffe banner like he did with his own panzer and infantry divisions other than Fallschirmjager divisions.
Carrier based kriegsmarine
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Even if that was a possibility and didn’t face a react from the other factions within the Nazi’s you are still stuck with timeline issues, even hand waving away the need for trainers and development and assume a jump straight to the GZ in 1935 instead of the twins and another one of the same type is laid down as well, you still get a couple of questionable carriers that at best will only be working up by 1939.
I’m aware of that however the Twins saw action long before that from raids to the Norwegian invasion, which means those carriers are going to either do similar (and risk losses) or those missions don’t happen with butterflies anyway.
Another butterfly of course is with German carriers around it’s unlikely that the anti submarine patrols happen so Courageous isn’t lost.
HMS Ark Royal was laid down in 1935 (same as the Twins) and Commissioned in December 1938 and then worked up, this from a navy with multiple carriers in operation and a large knowledge base even if hamstrung by the Air Ministry. I find it questionable that Germany would match that build period when they haven’t built any carrier before but even if they did given they have zero carrier knowledge it’s reasonable to suggest that their working up period would be longer. So when would they be fully operational? Then you get into the question of how they are used, if like the OP suggested the GZ and sisters armament is changed from OTL, then using them as raiders risks the HMS Glorious result (and again require much more logistical support than the OTL Raiders. How would they affect the Norwegian campaign, for example?
It commerce raiding, search, minimal CAP, shoot down shadowers.
What was German navy, pre Z plan goals, a solo German French, or German Russia war???, match up with the sort of crappy French Carrier maybe? A Shoho might be able to do that? Or a low cost test bed for a future Z plan carrier.
But yes, the POD is difficult.
Do you mean carriers that can go underwater [1] or carriers that can submerge in a controlled manner and also resurface afterwards?
Slightly more seriously, what missions would a sub/carrier be used for that couldn't already be done well enough by land based air [2]?
[1] I'm sure the RN will help out here if they get the chance.
[2] Other than making Goering feel important, which may be sufficient given OTL decisions.
Build a ‘private’ aircraft carrier on Lake Constance and conduct training there in Austria or Switzerland.
Atlantic is a rough and stormy sea making early carriers as existed pre-war not really suitable for operations there. The visibility was often limited, making enemy approach hard to detect as well as finding targets near impossible. Aircraft operations of the time are more or less coordinating a blind launch of aircraft in a certain direction, which in pacific with its relative calm and openness made for ideal carrier use. If you look at Japanese and American Battleship designs and then compare them with British and German you’ll notice how different the bows are, that is because of the Atlantic regularly spraying the sea all over the ships decks while sailing, a non issue in the pacific.
Between Japanese and American areas of operation there is a vast empty sea. For Germans to get out into the Atlantic they’d be under enemy air cover from Hour 1 of operation, meaning that carriers are at constant risk of attack. They would have to stand ready to launch their own patrols to defend, which again - limited visibility means it may be too late once they find you to do anything about it. Especially since carrier has to turn into the wind to launch or recover.
There would also not need to be an over-commitment of naval assets in terms of Britain. A pack of destroyers, a light cruiser or heavy cruiser would easily catch up and dispatch a carrier in the Atlantic with relative safety. German battleships required outsized response by Britain because they had no 30kt capable ships able to go toe to toe with Germans aside from the Battlecruisers, which were all obsolete and in dire need of updating.
Overall it would be a poor choice.
Between Japanese and American areas of operation there is a vast empty sea. For Germans to get out into the Atlantic they’d be under enemy air cover from Hour 1 of operation, meaning that carriers are at constant risk of attack. They would have to stand ready to launch their own patrols to defend, which again - limited visibility means it may be too late once they find you to do anything about it. Especially since carrier has to turn into the wind to launch or recover.
There would also not need to be an over-commitment of naval assets in terms of Britain. A pack of destroyers, a light cruiser or heavy cruiser would easily catch up and dispatch a carrier in the Atlantic with relative safety. German battleships required outsized response by Britain because they had no 30kt capable ships able to go toe to toe with Germans aside from the Battlecruisers, which were all obsolete and in dire need of updating.
Overall it would be a poor choice.
thaddeus
Donor
the KM needed a more coherent fleet, not to become solely a battleship, submarine, or carrier fleet (the last being something they have almost no knowledge about.) it seems impossible for the KM to give up on BBs & BCs even if they embarked on a risky carrier building program?
agree with @Vabasion who gave a thoughtful reply
as an experiment or training project the KM could have converted the ocean liner SS Columbus which was nearly identical to the Italian carrier project SS Roma, send it to the Med or Italian East Africa (pre-war) might be an interesting scenario.
further out in "left field" could be production of helicopters, which they toyed with but never gave much priority? https://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/flettner_kolibri.php
they could have made good use of helicopters as a spotter on merchant raiders and as sort of liason aircraft to reach u-boats. almost any of their ships could have added handling capacity for those.
agree with @Vabasion who gave a thoughtful reply
as an experiment or training project the KM could have converted the ocean liner SS Columbus which was nearly identical to the Italian carrier project SS Roma, send it to the Med or Italian East Africa (pre-war) might be an interesting scenario.
further out in "left field" could be production of helicopters, which they toyed with but never gave much priority? https://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/flettner_kolibri.php
they could have made good use of helicopters as a spotter on merchant raiders and as sort of liason aircraft to reach u-boats. almost any of their ships could have added handling capacity for those.
Germany does not need a large aircraft carrier, a small carrier built on the hull of a Dithmarschen-Klasse tanker will suffice. Relatively small ship with 26-28 aircraft. One training vessel built in 1935 and another in 1936/1937. In OTL, the Kriegsmarine wanted its aircraft carriers to be the eyes of the fleet, they needed to find their targets in some way. Remove Raeder from command of the Kriegsmarine and the navy has a different commander, it is realistic that Germany has two small aircraft carriers before September 1939. One for training and one for combat. The Raeder/Göring hatred in OTL prevented any cooperation. If the Kriegsmarine is headed by someone more politically flexible, some cooperation between the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine is possible.
Combat operations with an aircraft carrier are not doomed to failure, quite the opposite. If the fleet has eyes that seek targets, it is possible that some raids in the OTL that suffered from a lack of support from the Luftwaffe may end up more successful. At the beginning of the war, it is Unternehmen "Nordmark", a sortie by the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper and two destroyers into the sea area between Shetland and Norway from 18 to 20 February 1940. Marschall had no support from the Luftwaffe, he could rely on only to their seaplanes and xB-dienst radio operators.
If he was accompanied by an aircraft carrier, locating targets would be much easier. I don't know what kind of aircraft such a ship would have available, maybe the Heinkel company would dominate here as @Nell_Lucifer wrote. Armament 12 He 112 and 12 He-118...?
An even better chance to succeed is Unternehmen Juno, the original orders for the entire operation were a political order. Raeder felt that the Kriegsmarine had to do something to help Dietl and his soldiers. The original plan for the operation was suicide, as the fleet was required to sail directly into Harstad/Narvik and sink the Allied ships there. Marschall understood that this was madness and defied the order. Instead, he decided to hunt down Allied ships fleeing Norway. When he set sail, he had no idea that an Allied evacuation was taking place. He understood this only later, thanks to his seaplanes he discovered several allied ships, but that was not enough. Intelligence on board the flagship - xB-dienst, revealed the call signs of many British ships, including two aircraft carriers, but not their exact location. Now with the aircraft carrier, his Kampfgruppe has a good chance of locating targets before his escort runs out of fuel and is forced to comply with Hitler's order to withdraw to Trondheim. Almost three hours elapsed between the sinking of the first victim, the tanker Oilpioneer (5,666 grt)/(05:55) and the sinking of the transporter Orama (19,840 GRT)/(08:40). By 13:00 then Marschall could not find the targets and was forced to send his escort away to Trondheim.
It wasn't until 16:45 that the twins found the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and her escort...
Marschall followed his instincts throughout the operation, not knowing exactly where the British fleet was. If he had more reconnaissance aircraft he could have used the time between 09:00-13:00 and found HMS Glorious or HMS Devonshire much earlier which was about 80 miles from the carrier. There were many more targets in the area, including two large evacuation convoys. Marschall knew they were there because the xB-dienst had picked up their call signs and radio communications. However, he did not know the exact location, thanks to the aircraft carrier there would be a good chance of finding any of these targets before 13:00. Moreover, it is very likely that if he had located at least one convoy, he would have refused to comply with Hitler's order and not send Rear Admiral Hubert Schmundt to Trondheim.
The British were unaware that the German fleet was at sea for the duration of Unternehmen Juno. They only found out when HMS Vanoc and HMS Veteran fished out survivors from HMS Glorious.
Garrison
Donor
You mean something akin to the USS Wolverine?
USS Wolverine (IX-64) - Wikipedia
Go with the He 112 plus the Fi 167. Have 12 of each on board the ship, the 112's for defense/CAP and the Fi 167 for patrol/naval attack. You could also have 4 to 6 more aircraft that might be along the lines of a Ar 196 with conventional landing gear for the traditional scouting role. For the training CV at the start you could use the HE 51 modified for carrier use and then move on to more advanced types like the 112 and 167.
Not consulting the rest of the designers on a project is not unique to the Kriegsmarine.Think Hunt class destroyers and the Iowa's turret rings.Well there's this story (although that includes Bismarck):
I don't think it's likely they will build her without guns, because they will see her as a raider (especially since they're not building battleships in your scenario, so they arenot able to operate taskforces) and she needs to defend herself if the weatheris too bad for airoperations.
Also there's this:
Graf Zeppelin the German aircraft carrier
German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin was the lead ship in a class of two carriers ordered by the Kriegsmarine. She was the only aircr...secretweaponsoftheiiireich.blogspot.com
Thta's just hilarious and shows the incompetency of the German designers. It's quite hard the imagine that this design team will suddenly become supercompetent and design a carrier that's ahead of its time withour any prior experience of building or handling carriers.
It's a whole different order to turn a suggestion to save weight by putting two guns in a casemate into doubling the amount of guns and thereby gaining weight.
If the British know the Germans have aircraftcarriers, it's very likely they'll do some things different from OTL.
There are some branches of military that are, per this board, allowed to became more dangerous for their opponent as far as alternate history goes.
Kriegsmarine and ww1 Imperial German navy are never allowed to improve, same for anything that Italians make, as well as anything the Japanese make.
In the meantime, the 2pdr and BP Defiant are the next best thing after the sliced bread.
Kriegsmarine and ww1 Imperial German navy are never allowed to improve, same for anything that Italians make, as well as anything the Japanese make.
In the meantime, the 2pdr and BP Defiant are the next best thing after the sliced bread.