Aircraft cruiser

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Aircraft cruisers were seaplane carriers for military aerial reconnaissance of large sea areas that could operate with the fleet or independently at sea.

history

The aircraft cruisers emerged from the experience gained with the aircraft mother ships. They were much faster than the aircraft mother ships, mostly converted from freighters , and were thus able to follow the fast ships of the fleet and provide immediate aerial reconnaissance for the fleet at sea. The first German ship was the Kleine Kreuzer Stuttgart , which was converted into an aircraft cruiser in the spring of 1918. It was also planned to convert her sister ship Stettin into an aircraft cruiser, but the capacity of only three aircraft on board, as with the Stuttgart , turned out to be too small for the needs of aerial reconnaissance. That is why they wanted to convert fast and large ships like the old cruiser Roon into aircraft cruisers that could carry around 10 to 12 aircraft.

Towards the end of the First World War , however, it was recognized that aircraft carriers with wheeled aircraft would be the solution to the problem and plans for the first German aircraft carrier, the Ausonia , should be implemented. The end of the war prevented the completion of the passenger ship, whose hull and machinery were completed when it was stopped soon after the start of the war, into an aircraft carrier and the planned conversion of further passenger ships into carriers.

The Swedish Gotland 1936

With the advent of aircraft carriers, the construction of aircraft cruisers became obsolete. Only Sweden finally built another at the beginning of the 1930s, the Gotland , which served this purpose well into World War II and was converted into an anti-aircraft cruiser in 1944 .

literature

  • Siegfried Breyer: Aircraft cruiser aircraft mother ships aircraft tenders until 1945 , Podzun-Pallas, Wölfersheim-Berstadt 1994, ISBN 3-7909-0509-7
  • Dieter Jung, Berndt Wenzel, Arno Abendroth: Ships and boats of the German sea pilots 1912-1976 , 1st edition, Motorbuch, Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-87943-469-7