Germany goes with hybrid carries after the Panzerschiffe
- Thread starter tomo pauk
- Start date
They are alt-timeline updates to or successors to the He51. Probably the He52 would be up-engined and up-armed and the He53 a monoplane version. But since they'll mostly end up at the bottom of the sea (when their hybrid carriers are sunk), it's probably not critical to know details.
I think that they already are.
It's the resurfacing that needs a bit of work.
The problem with this suggestion (and I am not 100% sure you are not trying to be funny?) is that when does that become a reason to build aircraft carriers?
Malta did not become a royal pain the arse until 1941 and was not that far away from Sicily which is about 120 miles - not sure what advantage they would bring to such a fight?
The RN wasnt very good at finding and tracking KM raiders, even subs, until 1942.
Well to be fair there was not very many KM raiders at all in WW2 and not many subs until late 1941/1942 onwards!
Well, they did sink the Graf Spee in 1939, and the Bismarck in 1941. Also the auxiliary cruisers Pinguin, Atlantis, and Kormoran in 1941 as well.
Hybrid carriers have very limited applications, none of which I think Germany would have use for. The thing is, you'll never see a hybrid be both things at once, i.e. Shooting it's guns and launching planes at the same time. So you'll either have an undergunned battleship with a big weak spot, or a carrier with pitiful deck capacity
Graf Spee detected and actually attacked the RN units, not the other way around, she could have avoided battle.
Bismarck broke contact, only gross German mistakes and luck allowed the RN to eventually catch up to her.
Before then, the KM surface units raided pretty much undetected.
Oh, and those AMCs were able to raid for between one and two years before being caught...
But, people often like to pretend KM ships should have scuttled in port since any sortie implied immediate and unfailing RN tracking...
Which is hilarious to anyone with a passing knowledge of WW2 naval warfare.
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Oh what a lovely target for either a carrier or a battleship. Even for a raider it's a flawed design. Those guns are wasted weight, you don't need capital ship guns to sink merchantmen, 6 0r 8 inch guns are more than enough.A hybrid is both a bad warship and the best commerce raider.
But they do look good, very steampunky:
If for some reason you were going to build a hybrid carrier for raiding a heavy cruiser turret fore and aft with the flight deck between in a better design. You'd probably never use them anyway and soon remove them to extend the flight deck and hanger.
True, a couple 15cm turrets would be more than enough.
That would cause turbulence issues and shorten the flight deck significantly.
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And the Atlantis was intercepted because the OKM ordered it to rendezvous with a U boat. The British intercepted the message and decyphered it so was able to send a cruiser to the area
On the other hand if you are intercepted by a cruiser you will be outgunned.
So we now have three missions:
1) Attack targets with aircraft
2) Intercept merchants and sink them
3) Fight off any cruisers that intercept you.
Incidentally, I love cortzez#9's third picture. Looks very dieselpunkiish.
I would keep the twins, make another pair even, and the 4xGZ for a buddy system.
Turn the Hippers into hybrids with 2x3x15cm, the USN designed a 10.000t one with 24 aircraft, good enough for me. They can scout for and search shipping until the free for all is declared.
If one gets sunk, it is not much of a loss.
I would suggest always asking the British about naval matters... the actual British officers of the time, not the forum kind.
"...the Director of Naval Construction's department apparently did prepare a sketch design for a cruiser-carrier in 1933, although no details of it have survived. It was
rejected by the board, at least in part because of the fear that other nations would follow suit. The hybrid would not only make an effective trade protection vessel, but, as Chatfield had mentioned, a good commerce raider as well, and the Admiralty did not want to give anyone ideas along that line."
A hybrid is both a bad warship and the best commerce raider.
But they do look good, very steampunky:
May I ask where that quote is from?
Sure:
THE HYBRID WARSHIP
The Amalgamation of Big Guns and Aircraft
R D Layman and Stephen McLaughlin
NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS
Aka, the big fat book of hybrids.
I thought so. It also says that Chatfield only gave a "mildy favourable" recommendation to the production of designs - not ships - and later wrote "hybrids are always failures". Rather than considering them a major threat, the RN felt that the hybrids were "markedly inferior to conventional types" So, as you say, a bad warship - but arguably given the realities of the high operational losses of small aircraft carriers and the limited effectiveness of small strikes, probably not a good commerce raider for the money either IMHO.
Even in peacetime, when aircraft were expected to last for five years, such a ship with 15 a/c will cost over 50% more than a heavy cruiser to buy and run, ignoring the extra costs involved in developing a new type and the costs of the very expensive elevators, cats and arrester gear. Given that even in peacetime the aircraft cost more to run and replace than a small carrier, it is arguably a very false economy to create a hybrid rather than a carrier and a cruiser. Rather than having a ship that is "not much of a loss" you end up with an expensive ship that IS a loss.
A hybrid 10,000 tonner with 24 a/c would apparently cost only 15% less than a proper light carrier AND a light cruiser, extrapolating from RN figures of the time - and that's only counting the simple cost of the 10k cruiser and 24 aircraft, so ignoring the expensive hangar equipment, catapult, elevator, arrester wires etc. I can't where it is but at one stage when the Brits were vaguely considering a hybrid battleship they did the sums and it was apparent that spending the same amount of money on two separate types - gunships and carriers - was far more efficient.
On top of that, of course, you end up with a ship that in action has a bunch of very inflammable aircraft aboard and which must compromise manoeuvring to use its guns against manoeuvring to use its aircraft, rather than two ships that can optimise each.
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I recently did the figures in another thread. In Norway, being outgunned doesn't really matter because of the simple geometry of the situation and the slower speed of the British ships available. The main German fleet could get past the Scapa Flow-Stavanger line before the British could get there, even if the Brits somehow saw the Germans leave the Jade and reported and acted on it immediately.
It appears that the German move was far less of a desperate gamble than some say, and far more of a professionally astute calculation.