Hitler not obsessed with super heavy guns, what could have been instead

[BDV]

In return the navy could make all their big WW-I naval guns available for rapid conversion into railway guns.

I think wwi ship big guns were on the sea bottom at Scapa Flow.

[Paul Lakowski]

In return the navy could make all their big WW-I naval guns available for rapid conversion into railway guns.

I think wwi ship big guns were on the sea bottom at Scapa Flow.

no they had ~ 50 of them warehoused .During WW-II some were used as railway guns but the bulk were mounted in bunkers along the Atlantic Wall.

[BDV]

no they had ~ 50 [wwi big ship guns] warehoused .

How did they manage to hide them?

[thaddeus_c]

From 1934-1939 ,Hitler's navy laid down 23 large warships of cruiser size or larger. Since the KM was not expecting war for another 10-15 years, only a fraction of these warships were completed by 1939 war time and another fraction would be completed during the war. However even if a plan was put in place to crash complete those 23 WARSHIPS as cruisers by 1941/42, they could be completed with everything except the big guns, since there was insufficient big gun production.

On a shoe string , the guns could be found but not ideally what was needed. The gun tonnage invested in all those giant K-5 guns & other railway guns would go a long way to completing ideal surface raiders, rather than shoestring raiders. In return the navy could make all their big WW-I naval guns available for rapid conversion into railway guns. Historically it looks like > 50 railway guns were completed but only 1/2 were big guns [10"-11"] , while other half were 6-7" naval guns. With all the big WW-I naval guns roughly 56 x 11" SKL railway guns could be completed by war time.

are you stating to convert the 10" - 11" guns to railway guns while fabricating the same caliber or larger guns for cruisers? or smaller caliber new guns?

[Paul Lakowski]

no they had ~ 50 [wwi big ship guns] warehoused .

How did they manage to hide them?

No idea maybe they were secret in some warehouse; it could be they were allowed since they were just the guns with no mounts etc.

IAN HOGG includes them in his famous artillery book.

[Paul Lakowski]

From 1934-1939 ,Hitler's navy laid down 23 large warships of cruiser size or larger. .......

are you stating to convert the 10" - 11" guns to railway guns while fabricating the same caliber or larger guns for cruisers? or smaller caliber new guns?

Historically most of the railway guns up to 1940 were WW-I NAVAL GUNS mounted on newly built railway mounts often with new breaches for more powerful charges. These were army projects with the first batches using the navy guns. While these railway guns were underway, a whole newline of bigger longer range guns were designed and built featuring the K-5 RAILWAY guns along with several Bruno NEUF railway guns. Early in the war many 15-16" naval guns were completed as railway guns and later as shore batteries along the Atlantic Wall.

My idea was to continue the railway mounts utilizing WW-I naval guns and instead build all the guns as more 11-12" guns [maybe few 14" guns] to arm the 23 raiders in several waves.

[Paul Lakowski]

WITH OUT THE BIGGER ARMY GUN PRODUCTION Each of the 23 raiders could average out to 20,336t max displacement including 4222t armor & 2266t propulsion....but they would only get 319t guns.

That’s maybe 6 x 11” C34 guns in theory but the first waves of such a program would have to use existing designs/equipment from the early 1930s. So either 11”C28 guns or 6”C28 guns plus with AGS diesels and some extension of the Pocket Battle Ships hulls.

A logical move would be to build waves of warships using the available & BETTER equipment as time progresses. It would have to start with a AGS hull with triple 11” C28 turrets and 2 x quad diesels [56khp]. With 2 III 11” C28 turrets on a 14,000t smoother hull plus transom stern; such a raider could reach 28 kts deep & 30 kts standard [compared to 26kts deep & 28kts standard for the original PBC]. Emergency power should add ½ knot- but only for ½ hour.

Eight of these faster raiders could be completed by 1938 leaving two more waves of heavier raiders with more gun tonnage [average 15 x 23715t max disp + 4980t armor & 2500t propulsion with 335t guns each] .

Next short cut option would be to use the existing 18 * 12” SKL50 guns -warehoused since WW-I. Three of these heavy raiders could be completed by 1939, each with 3 twin 12”SKL50 gun turrets...leaving the last 12 raiders each with 418t guns [ 6 * 12 C-39 or 8*11”C34] . Further one could ‘rob Peter to pay Paul’ by stripping the turrets from the original 3 PBS to build 3 more of the first wave raider before 1939. That way the remaining 9 heavy raiders could have 557t guns each [6 * 14” guns; 8 *12”C39 guns or 9 *11”C34 guns] .

All these 9 follow on raiders should average 26953t max displacement with 5756t armor & 2666t propulsion and would be completed 1940 through 1942.

[sitalkes]

For the siege of Lenningrad, the Germans collected every large calibre rail gun they could find, including captured French guns; I wonder if the lack of these larger guns might have made a difference at all to German strategy there?

Following on from the previous post, perhaps the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau could have been equipped with 15" guns from the beginning, which would have made for some interesting opportunities (the larger guns were not available and were to be fitted later; also they were more heavily armoured than some of the British battleships of the time)

[thaddeus_c]

From 1934-1939 ,Hitler's navy laid down 23 large warships of cruiser size or larger. Since the KM was not expecting war for another 10-15 years, only a fraction of these warships were completed by 1939 war time and another fraction would be completed during the war. However even if a plan was put in place to crash complete those 23 WARSHIPS as cruisers by 1941/42, they could be completed with everything except the big guns, since there was insufficient big gun production.

On a shoe string , the guns could be found but not ideally what was needed. The gun tonnage invested in all those giant K-5 guns & other railway guns would go a long way to completing ideal surface raiders, rather than shoestring raiders. In return the navy could make all their big WW-I naval guns available for rapid conversion into railway guns. Historically it looks like > 50 railway guns were completed but only 1/2 were big guns [10"-11"] , while other half were 6-7" naval guns. With all the big WW-I naval guns roughly 56 x 11" SKL railway guns could be completed by war time.

not sure I understand this equation? use the warehoused 10" or larger guns for quick conversion to rail guns and build the same or larger caliber "modern" guns for KM surface raiders?

or the reference to "shoestring raiders" the converted commercial ships? equipped with what caliber guns?

[Paul Lakowski]

From 1934-1939 ,Hitler's navy laid down 23 large warships of cruiser size or larger. Since the KM was not expecting war for another 10-15 years, only a fraction of these warships were completed by 1939 war time and another fraction would be completed during the war. However even if a plan was put in place to crash complete those 23 WARSHIPS as cruisers by 1941/42, they could be completed with everything except the big guns, since there was insufficient big gun production.

On a shoe string , the guns could be found but not ideally what was needed. The gun tonnage invested in all those giant K-5 guns & other railway guns would go a long way to completing ideal surface raiders, rather than shoestring raiders. In return the navy could make all their big WW-I naval guns available for rapid conversion into railway guns. Historically it looks like > 50 railway guns were completed but only 1/2 were big guns [10"-11"] , while other half were 6-7" naval guns. With all the big WW-I naval guns roughly 56 x 11" SKL railway guns could be completed by war time.

not sure I understand this equation? use the warehoused 10" or larger guns for quick conversion to rail guns and build the same or larger caliber "modern" guns for KM surface raiders?

or the reference to "shoestring raiders" the converted commercial ships? equipped with what caliber guns?

The equation part is that railway guns would have to wait for new guns completed in the late 1930s or a selection of old WW-I NAVAL guns as an interim railway guns. Since the warship raiders could not be completed until waves in 1938/39/40/41 etc, THEY COULD WAIT for select calibre/guns to be built to fill missions. But with railway guns they mounted a range of old WW-I 6",7",9",10" & 11" NAVAL guns...only determining later they needed 11" or better.

So if instead the navy offers all its WW-I 11" NAVAL guns, the HEER had sufficient specialized railway carriages to complete 56 railway guns using these 11" WW-I guns BY THE END OF THE 1930S. In return the navy gets to build as many naval of there choice.

Here there was a unique opportunity for a deal to be struck that in turn leads to other deals allowing other capabilities to be had. Both sides get what they want.

The reference is to 23 large warships laid down in the prewar Hitler days. There is sufficient warship tonnage to build sizable raiders along with propulsion and even armor tonnage. But which ship size and range/propulsion depends a lot on how many guns of what size can be built to install on such warships. That's the limiting factor!

The KM needs to know all this in 1933-1936 period to plan out the warships to build and the tonnage etc etc.

[thaddeus_c]

However even if a plan was put in place to crash complete those 23 WARSHIPS as cruisers by 1941/42, they could be completed with everything except the big guns, since there was insufficient big gun production.

With all the big WW-I naval guns roughly 56 x 11" SKL railway guns could be completed by war time.

not sure I understand this equation? use the warehoused 10" or larger guns for quick conversion to rail guns and build the same or larger caliber "modern" guns for KM surface raiders?

The equation part is that railway guns would have to wait for new guns completed in the late 1930s or a selection of old WW-I NAVAL guns as an interim railway guns. Since the warship raiders could not be completed until waves in 1938/39/40/41 etc, THEY COULD WAIT for select calibre/guns to be built to fill missions. But with railway guns they mounted a range of old WW-I 6",7",9",10" & 11" NAVAL guns...only determining later they needed 11" or better.

So if instead the navy offers all its WW-I 11" NAVAL guns, the HEER had sufficient specialized railway carriages to complete 56 railway guns using these 11" WW-I guns BY THE END OF THE 1930S. In return the navy gets to build as many naval of there choice.

Here there was a unique opportunity for a deal to be struck that in turn leads to other deals allowing other capabilities to be had. Both sides get what they want.

thanks! (for dumbing that down for me!) they got pretty good use out of 11" guns, all large ships when Nazi regime came to power had those, that was limit Hitler imposed on "Twins" so it was probably a waste of time and materials to fabricate any larger caliber.