German Navy was concentrated in Med at start of the war

They certainly did need it. The Tirpitz's guns would have been more useful bombarding Leningrad than in the Norwegian fjords hiding from the RAF…

And Army Group 'North' was able to survive and not being annihilated because of the Kriegsmarine in 1944.

 

So you dont need it to fight, just to run away from the Soviets. Tirpitz would have been of no use to bomb Leningrad. Why wouldnt the Red Air force have sunk it???

 

That is part of my point the Tripitz and Bismark only spent 6 hours operating together, 6 hours, the two of them out in the open seas could have caused tremendous damage, I don't think Churchill would have been able to give the order 'Sink the Triptiz and Bismark!' The support of their guns in the Baltic or the Med would have been a tremendous asset, more so than sinking merhant ships, the U-boats were winning the war on that front at this point.

 

Hi General der Infanterie Friedrich H,

Thanks for the details fills in all the gaps in my query, I honestly did'nt realise the RN had 17 Aircraft Carriers! Looks like Adolf kicked off WW11 too early for the Kreigmarine. It seems that Between Gobbells and the Royal Navy propganda they had these ships built up as super ships!

Thanks for the info.

 

Actually there were 17 battleships and 23 aircraft carriers…

Because in 1941 and 1942, when the possibilities of putting enough men and matériel gave the Germans good posibilities of taking over the city, the Red Air Force had been wiped out from the area. And even occassional bombing against the German ships may not have been very succesful. Soviet air attacks against the Kriegsmarine cruisers in 1944 and 1945 had no effect at all.

Putting the German Navy's guns into the Leningrad Battle could have given the Germans far greater artillery power than they had at Sevastopol. Specially if they would have done it in 1941 immediately after the city was surrounded and before it was fortified by Zhúkov, then the chances to reduce it would have been big.

Maverick, I don't think this is true. The Tirpitz had not yet been comissioned when her sister was sunk…

Perhaps, until they had faced 6 British battleships and 15 cruisers, 3 aircraft carriers and two dozen destroyers…

In the Baltic, yes. But in the Mediterranean? Do you use four Zeppelins to lift the battleships up and bring them over Central Europe all the way down to Venice or Toulon?

Merchant ships were the life-arteries of Great Britain, if you sink them, you smother Great Britain. That was the absolute only way to defeat the British. And the U-boats were still too few in 1941 to achieve this.

Maybe your what-if could be "what-if instead of building big warships, the Germans had built more U-boats?" The answer is that with 150 U-baots in 1939, Great Britain would have surrendered by autumn 1940…

 

Sorry.

Cant believe that the Tirpitz turning up would cause Leningrad to fall!

And the crews from all those Naval units served in the Naval infantry!

 

Freidrich H

'By the spring of 1941, further successful raids by the" Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" , convinced Raeder to employ the newly completed 15" 35,000-ton battleships "Bismarck" and Tirpitz" as part of a major operation designed to strike a mortal blow at the British convoy system in the North Atlantic. The original intention was to employ both the new ships in conjunction with "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau"',


Bismark:On Friday 16 May 1941, Admiral Lütjens advised the German Naval High Command that his task force was ready for operational deployment, and he was given the "green light" to proceed.

Tirpitz: Early March 1941 the Tirpitz left Wilhelmshaven and went to Kiel via the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal to prepare trials in the Baltic Sea.

The Tirpitz was not declared operational unitl Jan 42 but it could have been!

 

I never said that. To make Leningrad fall you still need 500 planes, thousands of field guns and 30 Finnish and German divisions attacking in four flanks. This, and some naval guns would have made a very nice combination.

Oh, well. The Tirpitz had already been comissioned, but its crew had no experience at all and its engines and guns had not been trialed. That's the same as a useless ship.

 

Now you are talking Freddy!!!

Damn good point...

 

Look, the WW II German navy was a poor compromise between two non-complementary strategies that harmed both:
First, the Guerre de Course of submarine warfare was applied as a strategy. As in WW I this had a fairly good effect for its cost making it a good strategy for what was essentially a land power.
Second, was the concept of a "fleet in being." This is where ships like the Tirpitz and Bismarck came from. These large capital units were intended to pin like units from the British navy et al., and be a economic drain on Germany's enemies while increasing prestige at home. This bought Germany virtually nothing.
Germany needed to either ignore sea power except as a Guerre de Course (the normal strategy of a land power faced with fighting a sea power) or, build a real fleet in the Roman model and become a true sea power. The compromise solution of inferior sea power with a guerre de course is just a dilution of strength that causes both to fail.

 

Let's face it, Germany's naval strategy was always disfunctional, being based on challenging the Royal Navy. Tactically, the U-boat war was far more successful the surface fleet approach, but fundamentally Germany alienated Britain rather than winning it over either as an ally or neutralising the country. The U-boat strategy also had a major impact in deciding which side the US would join and in ensuring it would not be neutral - perhaps the most fundamental political/miitary error. I doubt the US would have ever permitted Britain to starve, a more successful u-boat campaign may simply have accelerated the entry of the US into the war earlier - its late 30s/early 40s naval build up suggests this was already on the cards.