This is the question/idea:

The German navy realizes that it will be highly improbable to defeat the RN before war commences. Plan 'Z' will simply take to long to implement with the rising tensions. We will say that the German Navy High Command realizes this in early 1938. They opt instead to come up with a Naval Air Arm that although it doesnt use aircraft carriers to operate from it will none the less be under the direct control of the navy.(And note Hermann Goring will not have a say in this for this What if!)

What planes should the German Navy build? The FW200 had serious structural issues. The Ju87D, while an accomplished ship killer(It sunk the most ships of any plane during WWII) didnt have the range or an sort of defense's adequate to take care of itself.

Also, this would likely mean that Germany would have to develop a long range fighter for escorting said naval bomers/torpedo bombers?

What impact could this of had on the war? Could Great Britain have been subdued? This with the U-Boat might have strangled Great Britain?


All thoughts and comments are invited!

Yours,

Bill

little correction to your what-if Bill but it should read Ju 87B series not the D.

the D was a day/night bomber

have fun

Sounds like just another duplication of efforts and more strain on the limited resources. And even when designing aircraft for the Graf Zepplin the best the designers could come up with were navalized versions of the ME-109 and JU-87. Then there was the ME-155 fighter which was basically a navalized version of the ME-109G but with a different wing and the Fieseler Fi 167 carrier-based Torpedo bomber. The Germans just did not have that much experience in the design of naval aircraft either land or ship based.They had to make due with the FW-200,JU-87 and JU-88 for example. Also where would the pilots and aircrew come from? Just adding some more bombers would not effect the overall outcome. Britain would still survive

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

Without carriers more land based aircraft specifically designated for maritime missions would have been largely worthless. Germany lacks the basing locations to cover much of the Atlantic and even some of the Med. A handful of bombers flying alone against Allied shipping would be of marginal value at best.
One escort carrier would pretty much finish any attack. Shipboard air defenses would be able to score more than a few kills in any case. When you throw in the virtual lack of cooperation between the Luftwaffe and KM, it makes this idea even more preposterous.

Good points Mr. Falkenberg, I'll add a couple of things:

I'd like to take this along the lines of Mr. von Rundstedt, Germany cancels plan 'Z', thus naval personal are available to 'crew' the bombers. Pilots would be a problem, but this is 1938(As stated in the what-if) so the German navy would have time to train pilots. As for duplication of efforts, we have a air arm associated soley with the navy and soley with the air force. So i'd imagine it would be something along those lines.

Yours,

Bill

T.A.,

A side question, in your opinion if Germany had canceled plan 'Z' could she have built a couple of aircraft carriers and would this effect the outcome of the war in the Atlantic in the least?(This is a little off topic, so please beg my Pardon!)

Yours,

Bill

I'd recomend studying the German & Itlaian attacks on:

The Pedistal convoy to Malta & the other convoy that I cant recall the name.

The PQ convoys to Mumansk. Particularly PQ17, tho the sucess and failure vs PQ14 through PQ 18 would be relevant.

And study both the US and Japanses air attacks vs the others cargo convoys and warship squadrons in the Solomons & New Guenia campaigns in 1942.

In some of these cases the ships were massacred, in others the aircraft losses were heavy, and in some neither side lost much. Understanding the why in each circumstance should provide a few clues as to how the proposed long range bombers would fare in the Battle of the Atlantic.

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Any decent books for this?


Yours,

Bill

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Starting with carriers:

The Germans had alot of work and learning to do to get useful carriers in service. The Graf Zeppelin would have required a major refit after entering service to fix the completely F#$#@%^% systems being used for launch and recovery.
The launching system required use of the catapults and a series of trollies mounting the aircraft. There was no option for rolling deck take offs like other nations often used. The trollies would have proven a complete failure in service.
This would require that the forward half of the flight deck be totally rebuilt along with much of the hanger bay. The arresting system was also marginal.

The Germans simply lacked experiance and went with what they knew: Catapult launching of aircraft from battleships and cruisers. The arrester system was a best guess on how it could be done.

Next, carriers cannot operate without escorts. These would have to be built too. It would be years before the Germans had a workable carrier fleet and by then so to would the British and US have responded to this threat in kind and in larger numbers.

There are exceptions to the effectiveness of land based bombers versus ships. Where the ships lacked air cover and did not have effective AA fire power on their own they were very vulnerable to bomber attack.
Prince of Wales and Repulse show this as do the early Murmansk convoys before they got carriers assigned. As an example of an effective AA group, the battle of Empress Augusta bay in early 1944 is illustrative. Four US cruisers and four destroyers held off almost 100 Japanese bombers shooting down about 15 and damaging many more. The Japanese scored one bomb hit killing four men in return.

Sorry, its not been a focus area for me, so I've not kept a biblography. Plus I;ve drawn a lot from magazine articals overr the years and those are tought to track down. Searching for: Murmansk Convoys, PQ17, Pedestal Convoys, Malta, ect... should lead to some titles on ebay.

This site has a chronology of the Mediterainian naval war & should help with identifying the events to look for. It reminded me that both the Itlaians & British used long and medium range bombers to interdict cargo ships similar to how proposed in this thread. I noticed that Axis bombers managed to torpedo a US cargo ship as far away as the Gulf of Suez.

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9226/ww2.html

This next site has stats on US cargo ship losses and cause. No idea how accurate it might be but it mentions a few sources.

http://www.usmm.org/casualty.html

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In this case the Allied ships had the proximity fuze, with the radar gizmo. Plus four or five years experince at anti aircraft techniques. The book 'Ship of Ghosts' describing the US crusier Houston & the battles around Indonesia provides several descriptions on the realative effectiveness of naval antiaircraft fires in 1942.

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On what evidence do you claim that the Ju 87 sank more ships than any other aircraft in WW2 ?????

Do you have a figure for either the total number of ships or the total tonnage sunk by this aircraft ?

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This 'fact' comes out of my 'Encyclopedia of World War 2 Aircraft'. I will have to dig it out of a box in the garage so I can get you the ISBN #. As for it being ships or tonnage, I can not recall until I dig said book out!

Yours,

Bill

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There are a couple of sites that state the same thing. Unfortunately there are no listings or information as to how many, ect. BTW I also forgot to mention there was a long range version of the the JU-87 for Anti-shipping the JU-87R.

"Anti-shipping version of the Stuka aimed at operate from land bases. With a lighter bombload, it could attack enemy ships further in the sea thanks to additional fuel tanks underwings (a system developped for the Ju 87C). It proved valuable during the campaign in Norway and in Crete. It was produced in the same time span as the Ju 87B, to which it bore much ressemblance and served in roughly the same Geschwader. If the additional fuel load was dispensed of, it could fullfill the same missions as its companion.
The "R" stood for "Reichweite" ("Range" in German). It was sometimes pronounced as "Richard".
Identification: This version can be recognized thanks to the additional fuel tanks near the tip of the wings (but they had them only in longer range missions). For the rest, they are very similar to the Ju-87 B.
LemaireSoft's Ju 87R 'Stuka': global



The Junkers Ju87 Stuka

WW2 Warbirds: the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka - Frans Bonné

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

Thanks, but I am fairly familiar with the Ju 87 in the anti shipping role, that's why I'm doubtful it was the most successful anti-ship bomber of WW2. I just don't see a large enough number of sinking's for it to qualify for that claim.
Because while the Ju 87 did play an important part in the campaigns around the Med, Norway, and against Soviet naval forces, and scored a number of famous victories over Allied warships, it never fought an extended campaign against Allied merchant shipping... so where do the numbers come from ?????

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Its on page # 270. In the paragraph heading. And like the sites I posted does not give the total amount,types,dates or any other real information. Only on page # 274 does it mention an attack on a convoy during the BoB.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

Nor was I implying that you weren't aware. That information was in regards to my first post made to IntIron.

why not just bring the whole japanese navy over?

I'm indebted to Mr. Falkenberg! I'll endeavor to find you some hard numbers Mr. Redcoat!

Yours,

Bill

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I was fully aware of that. I was attempting to point out that AA fire could be effective when the ships are well armed and operated in a tactically sound manner. There are plenty of earlier examples throughout the war as well.