What if Hitler made fighting Britain a serious consideration from the start..

[T. A. Gardner]

If you build a carrier-centric navy instead, you don't need surface raiders. You send your carrier groups out and they sink everything in sight within 200 miles of the carriers. If enemy warships show up you give as good or better than you get. The British also can no longer use single, or pairs of cruisers unsupported to defend commerce. A cruiser or two is simply target practice for a couple of carriers.

This changes the entire dynamic of the war in the Atlantic. It means that British commerce and merchant ships can't sail anywhere without the very real threat of being attacked by a carrier. Their surface combatants will need air support, and a CAM merchant with a single fighter, or some decked over merchant carrier with half a dozen planes won't cut it. It also means a convoy escorted by 2 or 3 DD and a couple of corvettes with no air cover is likely to see all the escorts sent to the bottom or seriously damaged in air attack after air attack.

This is a strategy that cripples Britain at sea because they lack a high quality carrier fleet of their own.

[Paul Lakowski]

I agree entirely ; in-fact Admiral Carls proposed exactly what you suggest in 1934/5 as an adjunct to expanding navy , however his proposal was to build four carrier battle groups to enhance the U-Boat/Wolf Pack war overseas.

Trouble is production was already underway for a larger navy including plans for 300 U-Boats plus dozed Panzerschiffe to chase down convoy contacts and scatter the escort. All this was on top of a program to build hundreds of coastal defensives forces with dozens of destroyers and Torpedoboot.

Since 1920s & depression fleet was so limited in size - exploding out into any larger fleet was going to be difficult at best. The right people had to be in charge to open the right doors in a timely manner. Raeder Goring and Hitler were the wrong people.

[sitalkes]

Well Goering had a "parachute panzer division" why not a Luftwaffe navy? He was in charge of the 4 year plan... Actually the Luftwaffe did build some boats - the Siebel ferries. Yeah I like the idea of a revolutionary Germany taking on the idea of a revolutionary navy that used new ideas to beat British supremacy at sea and attempted to get rid of the "Christian" navy. In other areas the Germans did adopt revolutionary concepts, I guess you just need the right man at the right time to do it (a sort of Guderian of the seas).

[Paul Lakowski]

Well Goering had a "parachute panzer division" why not a Luftwaffe navy? He was in charge of the 4 year plan... Actually the Luftwaffe did build some boats - the Siebel ferries. Yeah I like the idea of a revolutionary Germany taking on the idea of a revolutionary navy that used new ideas to beat British supremacy at sea and attempted to get rid of the "Christian" navy. In other areas the Germans did adopt revolutionary concepts, I guess you just need the right man at the right time to do it (a sort of Guderian of the seas).

.....and the one thing that Raeder promised Defence minister Groner in 1928 when he took over chief of the navy was that the KM would be 'apolitical' and always do what the government ordered them to dooooooo. ALL because of the mutiny at the end of WW-I.

[Kingfish]

Two KM CV operating 100+ first-line aircraft between them would be going up against similar numbers of British carriers flying obsolete or obsolescent aircraft in smaller numbers.

Why is this a given?
The British, US and Japanese navies all had far more experience with carrier ops and they still entered the war with obsolescent aircraft, yet Germany is somehow exempt from this?

And doesn't a German shift towards a carrier-centric navy prompt a similar response from Britain?

[T. A. Gardner]

Why is this a given?
The British, US and Japanese navies all had far more experience with carrier ops and they still entered the war with obsolescent aircraft, yet Germany is somehow exempt from this?

And doesn't a German shift towards a carrier-centric navy prompt a similar response from Britain?

It isn't an absolute given. But, the FAA had serious issues both with production and with design. With production, the RAF got priority so the FAA had to go to the little guys for manufacturing aircraft, so-to-speak. They were limited to companies like Fariey, Blackburn, etc., so they weren't going to get volume production regardless of what they decided to use.
Then there were design issues. Pre-war, the FAA assumed any aircraft they would be using needed a dedicated navigator aboard to allow the plane to operate out of sight of land and the carrier. This meant any fighter aircraft had to be a two seater. While the FAA knew by early 1939 that the Sea Gladiator and Skua were obsolete as fighters (the Roc doesn't even qualify as obsolete), the replacements on the drawing board were the Fulmar and Firefly. The later had a long development period going through engine and airframe changes only to be produced when it was already obsolescent at best.
The same goes for a torpedo bomber. The Albacore was hardly a big improvement over the Swordfish.

So, even if the Royal Navy and FAA were to have more incentive to put more planes in service, their carrier designs weren't going to radically change due to design preferences and treaty restrictions on tonnage, and their planes were still going to, putting it politely, suck.

Against that, we have a German KM that has developed and put a first-line single seat fighter on their carrier (variously the Me 109, He 112, or maybe something similar), a top notch dive bomber in the Ju 87, and a torpedo plane (the Fi 187 or maybe another design). They've gone the way the US and Japanese did in building the best carrier planes they can and getting performance that can rival land based aircraft.
Germany is exempted on the basis of two reasons:
1. The Luftwaffe and the German aircraft industry have the designs in place to build top notch carrier planes. Their rivals are still largely in a peacetime mode, versus gearing up for war like Germany.
2. The Kriegsmarine knows what they intend to do and has a pretty good idea of how to do it. They aren't starting from scratch either. They are building off US, Japanese, and British experience.

The combination would give them the edge over British lethargy in the mid 30's.

[Kingfish]

It seems your suggestion is going the way most WI do on this board, with the Axis fast-tracking their way through design and development issues while the allies are stuck in neutral.

[T. A. Gardner]

It seems your suggestion is going the way most WI do on this board, with the Axis fast-tracking their way through design and development issues while the allies are stuck in neutral.

In this case, there is a valid argument for that. The FAA historically did exactly what I claim. They designed mediocre aircraft that languished in development too long making them near worthless when they finally got into service. This includes the:

Fairey Fulmar
Fairey Firefly
Blackburn Firebrand
Fairey Albacore
Blackburn Roc
Blackburn Skua

The FAA ignored dive bombing after the Skua, in part because of the lack of size in air wings opting instead for one that had fighters and torpedo planes only. The problem there, was the choice of just torpedo bombers was horrid when it came to attacking anything with air cover, or that wasn't a ship.

The Albacore only was entering service in 1939 and slowly replacing the Swordfish but never completely did. The Firefly was first proposed in mid 1939, just before the war started. The Fulmar was proposed in 1934 and the prototype didn't fly until 1937, nearly three years later.

In carrier design and development the RN was equally slow. Their first new carrier was the Hermes. She was laid down in mid 1917 but not completed until nearly 7 years later in 1924. At that point, the RN had three other carriers of the Courageous class there were pretty marginal carriers themselves. All four had air wings on the order of 30 to 40 aircraft at most.
These are pre-Nazi and would have had to be retained simply on the basis of needing numbers and cost of replacement, not to mention the slow rate of new construction in peacetime.

Next, you get Ark Royal. While this carrier had a huge hanger bay on two decks and could carry upwards of 75 aircraft theoretically, the practical flaws in the design limited her to about 50 at most. The lower hanger bay was difficult to access due to the elevator design. The size of the elevators was another issue, these being long and narrow.

As war approached, the RN chose the armored flight deck carrier and based its size on remaining WNT tonnage they were allowed.

I can't see any of that changing. The Germans did actually lay down two carriers and there really was no reaction to that from the RN. There certainly was no urgency to match or improve the FAA or RN carriers to ensure they could fight the German ones.

The French likely would have pushed forward the construction of a replacement carrier for the Bearn, and maybe thought about giving that ship an overhaul or rebuild as well. I could see them starting to develop new aircraft for their carrier(s) in the late 30's too, but being a low priority compared to the French Air Force, these wouldn't be ready when the war starts, just as they historically weren't.

So, here the Germans lay down destroyers, 15 cm gun cruisers, maybe a few panzerschiffe for coast defense, and start building a half dozen carriers. I doubt that would have raised an eyebrow at the Admiralty. That the Germans were training aircrew to fly from carriers wouldn't be a surprise given the Germans are building carriers. If the Germans are using US and Japanese developments as their template, I can't see a problem with them devising better aircraft either.

How would the British do something different? They couldn't even fund decent rebuilds of their old battleships and cruisers in the mid 1930's. The RAF was grabbing the lion's share of funds for aircraft development and the FAA was the last thing on their agenda, if it was on it at all. Britain would have "bean counted' that they had four carriers in service against the, say, four Germany was initially building.
Even if Germany early on converted some large merchant to a trials carrier for building experience, I doubt Britain would have responded in some alarmed way over it.

This is one time where the Allies (British and French) were likely to do little to respond.

[Kingfish]

So, here the Germans lay down destroyers, 15 cm gun cruisers, maybe a few panzerschiffe for coast defense, and start building a half dozen carriers. I doubt that would have raised an eyebrow at the Admiralty.

I honestly can't see how you can arrive at that conclusion. Just a cursory look at allied naval design in the pre-war years and you will see numerous examples that were in response to proposed axis hulls.

Here you are suggesting the German embark on a monumental building program, one who's purpose is clearly to challenge the Royal Navy's dominance of the Atlantic and North Sea - and the British just shrug it off???

[T. A. Gardner]

So, here the Germans lay down destroyers, 15 cm gun cruisers, maybe a few panzerschiffe for coast defense, and start building a half dozen carriers. I doubt that would have raised an eyebrow at the Admiralty.

I honestly can't see how you can arrive at that conclusion. Just a cursory look at allied naval design in the pre-war years and you will see numerous examples that were in response to proposed axis hulls.

Such as? Certainly nothing the British built was a direct response. Their cruisers even devolved from the 8" County class to 6" types. And, most of those were smaller ships with just 6 or 8 6" guns. They wanted numbers for overseas duty in commerce protection. The same goes for destroyers. The one class where they jumped up in size was the Tribals prewar.

In battleships, they built to the 35,000 ton limit and accepted the 14" gun. There was zero effort put into building a carrier fleet that could have mounted a credible challenge to Japan or the US. So, what "numerous examples" are there?

On the other hand, the French built their two battleship classes as direct responses to the Scharnhorst / Gneisenau and Bismarck classes. Their 5.5" DD were also a response to German Z class DD.

Here you are suggesting the German embark on a monumental building program, one who's purpose is clearly to challenge the Royal Navy's dominance of the Atlantic and North Sea - and the British just shrug it off???

I am suggesting the Germans change the equation with a paradigm shift in technology. Building say 180,000 tons (30,000 each) of carriers (6 initially) is well within their capacity. It amounts to 4 more carriers than they actually laid down. That's less tonnage than the battleships they did build.
They build 3 panzerschiffe. They did that historically. They also build say a dozen 6" cruisers. They historically built 7 6" and 8" cruisers by 1939 with a couple more that didn't get finished.
Building say 24 destroyers with 10.5 to 12.8 cm guns for main armament is also quite within their capacity.

Then starting in early 1939 when war is approaching, they take in hand 6 large liners / merchants that were already tagged for conversion to carriers, so all the design stuff is done and much of the material stockpiled, and begin quick conversions to light carriers to supplement the ones they have in service.

There's nothing in any of that that stretches their capacity beyond what they did historically. It's simply a change in what gets built.

But, the real shift is now they're going to sea in 1939 with carrier battle groups of 2+ carriers with destroyer and cruiser escorts rather than battleships for commerce raiding and naval warfare. Two of their carriers have 100 + aircraft aboard total and their modern types. The RN gets creamed because their carriers are smaller, have fewer planes, and the types in service are crap.

Sure, the British response on getting smashed once or twice like that early on will invoke a very massive response, but that's going to be a year or more away at the minimum. The Germans actually have a shot at winning a naval war because they shifted the extant technology to a new and different one, just as the US and Japan did in the Pacific.
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[Paul Lakowski]

It seems your suggestion is going the way most WI do on this board, with the Axis fast-tracking their way through design and development issues while the allies are stuck in neutral.

That's hardly surprising since UK had its own concerns related to protecting overseas commerce. They 'believed there ASDIC neutralized the U-Boat threat , they believed large numbers of long range German surface raiders would be a threat, so they could measure their capability relative to the KM surface ship production. No surface raiders= no threat.

From what I read the RN carriers were mostly to be used to catch fast moving German BB - slowing them enough for his slow battleships to catch up.

As to the Germans , their use of carriers was planned around escorting & scouting for Panzerschiffe /battleships to enhance their chance to find & attack enemy convoys and avoid enemy warships. But since the main effort was in building these Panzerschiffe /battleships in the first place, the carriers would have to be converted from old or captured warships of cruiser size or larger.

To change this strategic thinking , the KM would have to get a carrier early enough for them to be used in trials and exercise. Only then could they 'evolve' a more advanced strategy of use along the lines Admiral Carls proposed in the mid 1930s. Depression navy could only afford to build either more Panzerschiffe or carriers not both and they are not going to abandon the Panzerschiffe.

Historically an Aircraft Carrier was ordered in 1928 under the new naval plan, but this met with resistance and seems to have been forced on them from above. A realistic cheap compromise could be to use an existing commercial tanker converted into an elementary flat top? At this time any air-force was split between the navy and army...with LUFTHANSA becoming the de-facto air-force in the early 1930s and the Luftwaffe by the mid 1930s.

[Kingfish]

In battleships, they built to the 35,000 ton limit and accepted the 14" gun. There was zero effort put into building a carrier fleet that could have mounted a credible challenge to Japan or the US. So, what "numerous examples" are there?

One could argue that the building of the Nelsons and KGVs was evidence of Britain 'staying ahead of the game' in terms of the naval arms race that was heating up in Europe and the Far East. They saw BBs coming off the slip ways, so it reasonable that they responded in kind.

I am suggesting the Germans change the equation with a paradigm shift in technology. Building say 180,000 tons (30,000 each) of carriers (6 initially) is well within their capacity. It amounts to 4 more carriers than they actually laid down. That's less tonnage than the battleships they did build.
They build 3 panzerschiffe. They did that historically. They also build say a dozen 6" cruisers. They historically built 7 6" and 8" cruisers by 1939 with a couple more that didn't get finished.
Building say 24 destroyers with 10.5 to 12.8 cm guns for main armament is also quite within their capacity.

Then starting in early 1939 when war is approaching, they take in hand 6 large liners / merchants that were already tagged for conversion to carriers, so all the design stuff is done and much of the material stockpiled, and begin quick conversions to light carriers to supplement the ones they have in service.

There's nothing in any of that that stretches their capacity beyond what they did historically. It's simply a change in what gets built.

Production capacity is not in dispute, it's the anticipated British response that is.

[Kingfish]

It would also be interesting to see how this new shift affects Weserubung.

Germany relied on almost its entire surface fleet as fast transports for the initial landings, leaving only the twins as the sole maneuver units. A pair of carriers would require a significant share of escorts, and thereby a reduction in either the invasion force or landing sites.

[T. A. Gardner]

A more interesting variant would be the Germans start the war with say, 4 carriers and they "Pearl Harbor" the Home Fleet at Scapa...

[antwony]

Two KM CV operating 100+ first-line aircraft between them would be going up against similar numbers of British carriers flying obsolete or obsolescent aircraft in smaller numbers.

Why is this a given?
The British, US and Japanese navies all had far more experience with carrier ops and they still entered the war with obsolescent aircraft, yet Germany is somehow exempt from this?

And doesn't a German shift towards a carrier-centric navy prompt a similar response from Britain?

The Stuka was a deathtrap, if intercepted, the Fiesler torpedo bomber was no better than the Albacore and the Me109, as well as the first two, had never operated from a carrier. The British had huge troubles with the Seafire. Can't remember ever reading about the Spitfires having trouble at take off and landing, while I'm certainly heard that said about the Me109. Also, the problems the Seafire had with a narrow, weak undercarriage were both present on the Me109. If FAA, with its over 20 years of experience, took so long to develop a navalised Spitfire I'd be pretty confident in predicting the carrier variant of Me109 would be a turkey.

The combination would give them the edge over British lethargy in the mid 30's

Are you Admiral King grandkid of something ? What's with hate for RN/FAA ? I've always thought you a sensible poster, but you so wrong about this one.

Pre-war, the FAA assumed any aircraft they would be using needed a dedicated navigator aboard to allow the plane to operate out of sight of land and the carrier. This meant any fighter aircraft had to be a two seater. While the FAA knew by early 1939 that the Sea Gladiator and Skua were obsolete as fighters, the replacements on the drawing board were the Fulmar and Firefly.

For a start, the Sea Gladiator was single seated. I'd describe the Skua as the world's most advanced aircraft at the outbreak of the war. The first truly effective fighter- bomber. While talking about it as a fighter, is a bit laughable in comparison to say a Corsair of Sea Fury, it would murder Stukas and, apart from combat with a truly modern fighter i.e. Me109, it performed well as a fighter. In addition, it was the world's first monoplane dive- bomber with an enclosed cockpit and retractable under-carriage which could put a 500 lbs bomb on a target.

The replacements for those planes indeed were the Fulmar and Firefly, planes which served with Sea Hurricanes, Wildcats, Seafires, Hellcats and Corsairs. Why do you only the two types which were the least effective fighters?

The Albacore was hardly a big improvement over the Swordfish.

True, but in the Swordfish's case it did it's job against the Bismarck and at Taranto and in it's main role, sub-killing, I'd describe it as WW2's best ASW carrier plane.

The FAA ignored dive bombing after the Skua, in part because of the lack of size in air wings opting instead for one that had fighters and torpedo planes only. The problem there, was the choice of just torpedo bombers was horrid when it came to attacking anything with air cover, or that wasn't a ship.

The Swordfish, Albacore, Avenger, Firefly, Barracuda and Corsair all carried a very useful bombload. FAA's target didn't tend to have air cover, and when they did i.e. Taranto, the Tirpitz, the target's in Indonesia, they either provided an escort or went in at night.

In carrier design and development the RN was equally slow. Their first new carrier was the Hermes. She was laid down in mid 1917 but not completed until nearly 7 years later in 1924. At that point, the RN had three other carriers of the Courageous class there were pretty marginal carriers themselves.

This was your most insane point.

Why did Britain need aircraft carriers in 1919?

In 1924, when the rest of the world had two aircraft carriers (USS Langley and IJN Höshö) RN had four i.e. twice as many. How is that slow?

All four had air wings on the order of 30 to 40 aircraft at most.
These are pre-Nazi and would have had to be retained simply on the basis of needing numbers and cost of replacement, not to mention the slow rate of new construction in peacetime.

Next, you get Ark Royal. While this carrier had a huge hanger bay on two decks and could carry upwards of 75 aircraft theoretically, the practical flaws in the design limited her to about 50 at most.

There's a good thread here somwhere about comparisons between the size of respective navie's airwings, you should look it up. The British ones aren't very comparable. Unlike other navies, they didn't store aircraft on the flight deck and their doctrine was a carrier group would have a support carrier, to maintain strength on the strike group.

So, here the Germans lay down destroyers, 15 cm gun cruisers, maybe a few panzerschiffe for coast defense, and start building a half dozen carriers. I doubt that would have raised an eyebrow at the Admiralty.

I take back what I said about your previous statement being the most insane, this claim's certifiable.

How would the British do something different? They couldn't even fund decent rebuilds of their old battleships and cruisers in the mid 1930's. The RAF was grabbing the lion's share of funds for aircraft development and the FAA was the last thing on their agenda, if it was on it at all. Britain would have "bean counted' that they had four carriers in service against the, say, four Germany was initially building.
Even if Germany early on converted some large merchant to a trials carrier for building experience, I doubt Britain would have responded in some alarmed way over it.

This is one time where the Allies (British and French) were likely to do little to respond.

All of the arms of Britain's armed forces were under funded pre war. Of the lot, I'd argue RN prepared the best. They realised the German surface fleet wasn't a rival, so left the old battleships mothballed, while they began production of escort vessels and anti aircraft cruisers.

Given the German's history of being, well idiots, with the Nazi's the worst amongst those and the British history of being winners, with in this case RN being the best of the winning side, the whole idea that Germany suddenly acquires a massive capability for carrier operations will the British do nothing is too dumb for words.