Building H-class Battleships

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mescal
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Re: Building H-class Battleships

#61

Post by mescal » 28 Apr 2011, 15:10

Only just a comparison & getting some ideas between the H-Class battleships & the US battleships as to appearance & historical background etc. etc.
Well, writing a nice post dealing with a comparison betwween KM & USN battleships may be a good idea - though IMHO there are few pairs of navies that are less comparable.
However, to be meaningful, it requires far more than posting one picture.

You first want to compare the most evident features like sizes, gun numbers & calibers, speed... Then you may have a look at more complex but still basic features, like armor (complex because layout is as important as thickness), endurance, firecontrol, cost.
Then you may enter global synthetic features, like survivability - which requires assumption regarding the kind of damage and hence involve a study of the doctrine of the navy considered to understand what kind of enemy and under which circumstances the ship is supposed to fight.
There are many other features, bu in the end you'll have a list of features with values (or assessement) to compare. (Note that some features may be blank for one ship and not for the other.)
Hence you'll be able to make assessment
"Battleship A is better than battleship B regarding feature X" - but even a simple sentence like that is already the conclusion of a study as soon as the "feature" is more complex than size or # of guns.

But then, even if you're able to have a comaprison for each feature, you're still a long way from a global comparison.
You then have to check how these features are inter-related - having bigger guns and heavier armor is not sufficient to be the best, balance of the design has virues of its own.
And then you have to go back to the doctrine of each Navy, to understand the role of the ship under investigation - a 'medium' ship which fits perfectly the doctrinal needs of its Navy may well be in the end better than a 'super-ship' unrelated to any doctrine (and here H-class is a nice illustration)

So, yes, comparisons are interesting but such a complex work cannot be summarized in one picture.


I wonder what potential names for the H-class ships would've been?
KMS Aufwändig
KMS Überflüssig
KMS Unwirksam
KMS Aufenthalt-im-Hafen
KMS Unklug
KMS Stahlhaufen


(sorry, couldn't resist ...)
Olivier

nebelwerferXXX
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3 incomplete ships

#62

Post by nebelwerferXXX » 31 Aug 2013, 07:04

Takao wrote:Z-Plan...As has been said before; Battleship H had 5,800 tons of material delivered, Battleship J had 3,531 tons of material delivered, and Battleship K had 2,980 tons delivered. Giving you 12,311 tons of material delivered for the H-Class battleships.
How much money were spend on these 3 incomplete ships ? Since each one should be 56,000 tons per ship.


nebelwerferXXX
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Re: Building H-class Battleships

#63

Post by nebelwerferXXX » 31 Aug 2013, 09:12

To put some context on the costing for April, 1939, German Naval Expenditure by year:
1929 - 201-million RM
?
1930 - 198-million RM
?
1931 - 192-million RM
?
1932 - 187-million RM
?
1933 - 312-million RM
Hitler became Reich Chancellor in January 1933.
The 1933 Program: Scharnhorst and 8 U-boats.
1934 - 497-million RM
The 1934 Program: Gneisenau and 28 U-boats.
1935 - 695-million RM
March 1935: Germany's road to rearmament.
also came the Anglo-German Naval Treaty.
Donitz: head of the U-boat arm.
1936 - 1,161,000,000 RM
January 1936: 12 U-boats were in commission.
2 battleships (41,700-ton Bismarck and 42,900-ton Tirpitz)
2 light cruisers (Leipzig and Nurnberg)
1937 - 1,479,000,000 RM
light cruiser Konigsberg and 2 heavy cruisers (Adm Hipper and Blucher).
Anglo-German Naval Agreement: that battleship limit is 35,000 tons.
Hitler summoned his military leaders and abruptly informed them that armed force would be needed to solve the Reich's problems' in Europe: Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland.
1938 - 1,756,000,000 RM
September 1938: Anschluss and the planning for a naval war against Britain.
1939 - 2,390,000,000 RM
January 1939: emerged the famous naval 'Z-Plan'. The Z-Plan was basically a six-year programme.

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Terry Duncan
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Re: Building H-class Battleships

#64

Post by Terry Duncan » 01 Sep 2013, 16:07

There is not only the financial problem and the mineral resource problem for the strange Z Plan fleet, there is the problem of workforce and competing demands. Speer said that if all the competing plans and designs demanded by all the armed forces were to be possible, Germany needed an 840% increase in the available manpower and iirc a 300%+ increase in other resources (iirc based on pre-war or maybe pre-anschluss) levels). Basically if the navy had its ships the army lost its new tank programs or the airforce lost its new planes. Based on what Germany needed, a large top heavy navy was not it, Germany is a land power and would mostly live or die depending on how the army (and by WWII times its airforce protecting the infrastructure) fared.

As to naval effectiveness 56,000 tons of submarines will be far more effective, and far more difficult to destroy or disable than the same tonnage of battleship - unless gigantism takes over and a 56,000 ton submarine is attempted!

Nautilus
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Re: Building H-class Battleships

#65

Post by Nautilus » 01 May 2019, 14:37

nebelwerferXXX wrote:
03 Dec 2010, 09:36
Its only an idea, if the Two H-Class battleships were converted into this and that. Anyway, since the H-Class was a useless idea, the purpose of my calculations and conversions was to give how the German war effort was wasted into fantasy and impractical projects. Since Hitler was a 'land-minded' leader, I am only making a comparison from the existing KM warships and the whole German 'Z-plan' if converted into land-based weapons, and ready for used as a standing reserves for the gigantic Operation Barbarossa up to Operation Citadel. By reviewing the number of weapons, you'll come to know how gigantic was the build-up for the OKW strategic reserves of the German Army and SS units if Hitler have done this instead.
1. Conversion made sense only if talking in terms of raw material (iron ore, coal, copper, tungsten and so on). Craftsmen and industrial machinery which make tank parts or rifle barrels can't make naval ship parts. Not to mention, said factories were usually inland, not on the coasts.

2. Operation Citadel could not have been envisioned in 1940, as no plan for the invasion of the USSR had bern drawn yet.

Hitler's personal problem with gambling on strategic options usually bumped into more issues after each gain, since any buildup takes time. Unlike a RTS video game, it still takes 3 years to build a ship, as the good ole British proverb said.

Z-Plan got ditched just after 1940, since it's very purpose vanished into thin air: it aimed to force the British into an unwilling neutrality by threating to remove their power from the oceans. The failure of the Blitz proved the Brits were going to fight to the end. Which was the next major power on the oceans? Competing with USA was an even more stupid fantasy.

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