Paul Lakowski wrote:
The commitment to coastal protection for fortress Europa consume the bulk of all German naval construction and a good deal of its operations.
That's certainly true, and it also burned a good deal of the bunker oil, but this was also true
because there was not much activity of the 'main battle fleet' - which was quite small in the first place.
If one introduces a large battle fleet like the Z-plan in the picture, then the relative size of the main fleet vs coastal forces changes, because once you have "enough" coastal forces, there is no more need to increase their size.
There are thus two possibilities :
- either it is intended to start large operations with the main fleet, which will overturn the ratio of oil burned by coastal forces vs main fleet
- or it will sit in harbor, not altering the oil problem - but then, why build sucha fleet in the first place.
As an illustration of what kind of oil resources are required for active operations, during the first two months of Forager, the US Navy brought foward
4.5 millions barrels (715000 cubic meters) of bunker oil .
Admittedly, even the Z-fleet would have been smaller than the 5th Fleet, but it's quite illustrative of oil consumption during active large operations.