Were German Surface Ships Good Designs

[mescal]

Looking just at what is reported to have happened allows us to remove personal bias from the equation.

But you're looking only at part of the story in such a case.
Namely by "looking at what is reported" you do not take into account what is not reported.
In this case of sea lanes interdiction, what is not reported is the convoys doing "business as usual", i.e. the UK making use of its control of the sea.

To make things clear :
Considering only operation Berlin, there were 72 convoys which were at sea during the time of the operation (19/01 to 18/03) along the HX, SC, SL, HG, OB and OG lines (yes, I know I lack data on smaller series, but I have enough to be statistically significant).
These convoys comprised 2134 ships. Of those, 112 were sunk by German forces, and 123 aborted or were marine casualties.
Thus 88.99% of the ships went through as scheduled, 5.76% suffered problems unrelated to enemy action and 5.25% were sunk by German forces.

By "looking at was is reported", you thus neglect 94.75% of the traffic.

[Urmel]

And of the 112 ships sunk or aptured by German forces, 22 were sunk or captured by Operation Berlin, 20%. Or about 1% of all he ships at sea during the operation, compared to 4% by other German forces. While that may seem significant, it really is just a drop in the bucket if you look at it on a year-long basis. Which you really have to do to avoid cheery-picking your data.

[Paul Lakowski]

Do you know that a strategic failure rate of over 3% is considered unsustainable. Here we have the allies suffering 11% failure rate over a period of 2 months or 5-6% per month.

According to Freedman the Nazi detection rate on convoys was merely 12% during the first year of the war and increased to 18% as more Uboats took to the seas finally skyrocketed to 55% by early 1942. This was due to their traffic pattern analysis conducted by B-Dienst .While straight U-boat detections rose in proportion to increasing "Front Boats"; most of this increase came from comparing notes from the various land and sea detachments to better under stand the allied convoy plans. All large ships at sea- like the Twins - had such B-Dienst sections and made vital contributions .

The real problem after this plateau was attacking detected convoys. Apparently a pair of surface raiders had as much chance of intercepting a 'detected convoy' as did a Wolf Pack of 10 U-Boats. Their was a vital contribution to be made by surface raiders but their were no where near enough built prewar to address this need.

I stumbled across an section in Gerard Koop's Hipper class book. In this he details an 1957 paper submitted by some Ex members of the KM warship construction team. They compared the cost of building the 4 Battleships and 5 Hipper cruisers using funding /ship yard labor and resources.

They concluded the KM was poorly directed and could have instead completed 21 Deutschland type Pocket Battleships or up to 375 type VII Uboats instead BEFORE THE WAR BEGAN. Either option would have been preferable to the Historical mess they started the war with.

[SpicyJuan]

Do you know that a strategic failure rate of over 3% is considered unsustainable. Here we have the allies suffering 11% failure rate over a period of 2 months or 5-6% per month.

According to Freedman the Nazi detection rate on convoys was merely 12% during the first year of the war and increased to 18% as more Uboats took to the seas finally skyrocketed to 55% by early 1942. This was due to their traffic pattern analysis conducted by B-Dienst .While straight U-boat detections rose in proportion to increasing "Front Boats"; most of this increase came from comparing notes from the various land and sea detachments to better under stand the allied convoy plans. All large ships at sea- like the Twins - had such B-Dienst sections and made vital contributions .

The real problem after this plateau was attacking detected convoys. Apparently a pair of surface raiders had as much chance of intercepting a 'detected convoy' as did a Wolf Pack of 10 U-Boats. Their was a vital contribution to be made by surface raiders but their were no where near enough built prewar to address this need.

I stumbled across an section in Gerard Koop's Hipper class book. In this he details an 1957 paper submitted by some Ex members of the KM warship construction team. They compared the cost of building the 4 Battleships and 5 Hipper cruisers using funding /ship yard labor and resources.

They concluded the KM was poorly directed and could have instead completed 21 Deutschland type Pocket Battleships or up to 375 type VII Uboats instead BEFORE THE WAR BEGAN. Either option would have been preferable to the Historical mess they started the war with.

That's insane, would you mind posting a picture/scan of the book please?

[mescal]

Do you know that a strategic failure rate of over 3% is considered unsustainable.

Considered by who ? Can you please source this claim, because the SC convoys kept sailing with the following loss rates
Aug40 to Dec40 : 9.78%
Jan41 to Dec41 : 3.86%
Jan42 to Dec42 : 2.59%
Dec42 to Jun43 : 3.86%
NB : I only count the losses to enemy action here (see my next point)

Here we have the allies suffering 11% failure rate over a period of 2 months or 5-6% per month.

No, you cannot compute things that way.
Among the 11% failure rate, the large majority of ships which aborted resailed within a short time.
The definitive losses were only the 112 ships sunk by the Germans plus the handful which sank as a result of collisions/weather/etc.
That's not more than 5.5% of the ships which sailed.
And since the numbers I gave were based only on the ships which sailed in the above listed convoys, to compute a "failure rate per month", you need to factor in the possibilities by the Allies to replace the ships on those sea lanes - be it from reallocation of existing shipping or new construction.
As an example, the SC convoys sustained 9.78% losses in 1940 with an average start size of 33.9 ship/convoy. But in 1941 they had an average 43.3 ships per convoy, despite the previous losses (and no, it's not because the number of convoys per unit of time diminished).

[Paul Lakowski]

\

I stumbled across an section in Gerard Koop's Hipper class book. In this he details an 1957 paper submitted by some Ex members of the KM warship construction team. They compared the cost of building the 4 Battleships and 5 Hipper cruisers using funding /ship yard labor and resources.

They concluded the KM was poorly directed and could have instead completed 21 Deutschland type Pocket Battleships or up to 375 type VII Uboats instead BEFORE THE WAR BEGAN. Either option would have been preferable to the Historical mess they started the war with.

That's insane, would you mind posting a picture/scan of the book please?

That was Koop's book "The Hipper class", but references are made to the same article in other books of that series.

Sorry I don't have a scanner.

[SpicyJuan]

\

I stumbled across an section in Gerard Koop's Hipper class book. In this he details an 1957 paper submitted by some Ex members of the KM warship construction team. They compared the cost of building the 4 Battleships and 5 Hipper cruisers using funding /ship yard labor and resources.

They concluded the KM was poorly directed and could have instead completed 21 Deutschland type Pocket Battleships or up to 375 type VII Uboats instead BEFORE THE WAR BEGAN. Either option would have been preferable to the Historical mess they started the war with.

That's insane, would you mind posting a picture/scan of the book please?

That was Koop's book "The Hipper class", but references are made to the same article in other books of that series.

Sorry I don't have a scanner.

Would you please consider using a camera?

[thaddeus_c]

So Naval Plan 1932 envisaged building 30-40 Zerstörer 1932 -1500 tons @ 35knots + 3 x 5" guns & 6 Torps... like the FTB 1939. Instead the plan morphed into 16 Zerstörer 1934 - a 38 knot 3000 ton overweight super destroyer with poor sea keeping and strength ; just to counter fast French super destroyer's. The remaining contracts was filled building a dozen 1000ton fast torpedo boot 1935 and some "Flottenbegleiter" escort boats.

To achieve the increased speeds and displacement ... new high-tech lightweight high pressure ; high temp propulsion systems . Like most such high tech they were high cost / high risk failure a head of its time. Just as bad -these ships had poor endurance, almost 1/3 of original specs in some cases.

Other navies had considered these 'super destroyers' but dismissed them in favor of fewer numbers of more capable light cruisers.

thanks for the informative post, had never connected the dots on the early 30's destroyers/TBs/escorts (47 ships and not a winner in the bunch)

always consider the Bremse diesel powered training ship a good design and candidate for escort class.

probably a little too "out there" but the state yacht Grille was a test bed for the high performance steam engines, would that type of profile have helped in rougher seas?

[Polar bear]

hi,

The response at the Were German Surface Ships Good Designs is simply NO

Let me (as a former FPB driver) add a small contradicting YES against your NO
The "small ships" were well designed and recognized as that by the Allies, too : E-boats, M-boats, R- boats and (largest) the TB 1939 (Elbing-class)

greetings, the pb

[thaddeus_c]

was the lack of quad turrets a product of German philosophy or lack of resources to design and build them?

since they mirrored so much of French building program, wondering if the concentration of the main armament would have reduced weight of S/G and B/T?

[nebelwerferXXX]

Bismarck.jpg (41.86 KiB) Viewed 1408 times

How good of a design were German surface ships, especially compared to the RN?

[Nautilus]

SH/GN were pure political ships, after the wish of Adolf Hitler. He ordered the 11inch guns.
Anyway they were built as direct counter parts of the Dunquerke class and here they fulfilled their design goals.
They were better armoured, faster, had a longer range and most important their artillery was functioning very good, without the despersion and RPC problems of the Dunquerke class.
I would bet my money at all time, at any direct fight between this two classes, on SH/GN.

Scharnhorst class was flawed, despite their superiority in long range artillery and heavy armor, because they were a stop-gap design. A square plug in the round holes left by Treaty limitations. Built to fill the gap left by two unbuilt Panzerschiffe, as envisioned in 1932.

So the hull design was overweight, wet, pitchy, even with multiple modifications over time. Bismarck, by comparison, was an excellent gun platform, steady, with little roll and pitch, close in speed and manoeuvrability, while being much heavier and sturdier and able to carry 4 x 15-inch turrets.

Building the planned Panzerschiffe, either in original form, or D-project form, and saving funds, labor, slipways and steel to build 4 Bismarcks instead of 2 was a far more logical strategy. Even better if the Panzerschiffe could be rearmed with Scharnhorst's 28 cm SK C/34 instead of the 28 cm SK C/28, as the shells for the 1934 design performed much better.

This way, in 1940 Germany could roam the oceans with 5 Panzerschiffe able to beat up cruisers from 26000 yards with impunity, and confront a sortie from the RN with 4 Bismarck class battleships and 5 Hipper class cruisers. Which were tough nuts to crack even one-on-one, and in a smooth-running formation raised many eyebrows in the Admiralty.

But for this to happen, the naval strategy had to be set in stone already in 1933. While Hitler had to juggle between the Versailles Treaty, Washington Naval Treaty and yet inexistent Anglo-German Naval Agreement. Unless he invented telepathy and time travel, this was not going to work.

[Paul Lakowski]

Get rid of Hitler's influence and let the 1932 naval plan play out building the 6 stretched PBS each with 3 triple 11"C28 guns [up gunning to the C34 can wait] ....like the Deutschland they will get faster with each completed ship past 30 knots...then build the follow on 6 Kreuzers as improved heavier armed/armored versions of this design -using the improved V12-V24 Diesels so they can manage 31-32 knots. You could start the war with a core of capable super Kreuzers to terrorize any thing short of a BB/BC. The aim was to support the war against the convoys.

To hell with Battleships they are a waste of money/resources etc . You know that some of the left over Krupp KC/NC armor has enough priceless Chrome & Nickel to allow early jet engine development to work . With help of similar supplies of special armors to the WEST WALL & ATLANTIC WALL they could have manufactured tens of thousands of jet engines through out the war instead of some existing engines like the Jumo 211 and later Jumo 213!

[Nautilus]

Square Cube Law: a Panzerschiff ran 54000hp from 4 Diesel engines. To get the required 160000-165000hp for a vessel the size of a battleship, it required at least 12 Diesels of the same size. Triple the weight, plus auxiliary machinery, which weighs down the hull and eats from the required space for armor, gun machinery and stores. From a certain size up, geared steam turbines are much lighter compared to a Diesel of the same size. A Diesel in the required size and weight for roughly 50000hp barely could be built from the 1980s onwards.

[Paul Lakowski]

So the hull design was overweight, wet, pitchy, even with multiple modifications over time. Bismarck, by comparison, was an excellent gun platform, steady, with little roll and pitch, close in speed and manoeuvrability, while being much heavier and sturdier and able to carry 4 x 15-inch turrets.

how do you know this?

serve on the ship?


From what I read [KOOP /GRONER ] the V-12-24 Diesels were 35kg/hp x 150,000 hp = 5250 mt which is twice the mass of the Bismarck propulsion but the compartment for 4 x 12500hp diesels is the same as the Deutschland 13 x 31m.....so three times that area. That is less than the Bismarck turbine/boiler area. TOTAL hull mass was roughly 12,700t with 14,000t armor plus 3000t propulsion and 7200t bunker fuel. Substitute 5250 t diesel motors for the 3000t boiler/turbine is offset by reduction in fuel from 7200t oil to 5000t diesel but while bunker fuel is 1.2 nm/ton at this scale - diesel fuel is over 2.5nm per ton...so diesel Bismarck should be able to manage >12,000nm @ 19 knots compared to 8640nm@19 knots with bunker fuel.


BTW each Bismarck required 19,500t Krupp armor plus 8 x 107.7 t BIG guns [3446t] , when the max historical prewar was 76,000 Krupp armor and 2808t BIG guns.... No Panzerschiffe or Hipper Kreuzers.