Graf Zeppelin class
 The Graf Zeppelin after her launch
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The Graf Zeppelin class is an aircraft carrier class that was designed by the German Navy in the 1930s and of which two units were planned. Of these, the type ship Graf Zeppelin was not completed due to the war, while the unfinished hull of the second ship ( aircraft carrier B ) was broken off again on the slipway .
history
On November 15, 1932 by the Papen Reich government in the construction program for the Navy also provided an aircraft carrier. By 1934, the Navy wanted three aircraft carriers in its fleet. In the 1920s and 1930s France was seen as the main adversary at sea and aircraft carriers were supposed to support German warships in the Atlantic in a trade war against France. With the German-British naval agreement of 1935, Germany was no longer bound by the Versailles Peace Treaty in the area of warships , and the way was clear for the construction of aircraft carriers. In this treaty, England allowed Germany to build 35% of each warship category in the British fleet. This made two aircraft carriers the size of the Graf Zeppelin class possible.
When the Z-Plan came into force in 1939, there were no other large Graf Zeppelin class carriers with a standard displacement of 23,000 tonnes beyond the two under construction, and only a smaller type of 12,000 tonnes was wanted. This was based on the consideration that the loss of one of the few large carriers is much more serious than the loss of one of several small carriers.
draft
Since the Versailles Treaty had made it impossible for Germany to build aircraft carriers, there was also no experience in carrier construction when a working group headed by the graduate engineer Wilhelm Hadeler began the design work in April 1934 . The design was initially based on the model of the British Courageous class carriers . In addition, an exchange of experience with Japan was sought. To this end, a German study commission headed by Ernst-August Roth traveled to Japan in 1935 . Finally, a carrier design was created that was largely independent of foreign influences.
A special feature of the Graf Zeppelin class were the powerful aircraft catapults . Other carrier powers either had no catapults on their carriers ( Japan ) or only those with low power ( Great Britain , United States ). The take-off from the flight deck took place there mainly without additional support. The German Navy wanted to launch its carrier aircraft mainly via catapults.
The Graf Zeppelin was the last aircraft carrier that was designed with an extensive ship artillery . The space required for guns, ammunition, ammunition lifts, artillery control stations and operating crews was largely at the expense of the space for the aircraft. In the course of the Second World War, other navies switched to protecting their weakly armed aircraft carriers with a large number of escort ships. This strategy could not be implemented on the German side because there was a lack of suitable oceanic escort vehicles. Nevertheless, when the carrier was further built in 1942, the artillery for the Graf Zeppelin was no longer provided. It had already been dismantled from the ship in 1940, but not because the heavy artillery armament for the aircraft carriers would have been dispensed with at the time, but because the artillery was needed for other purposes.
drive
The drive should be made up of four BBC -Hochdruck hot vapor transmission turbines exist for which the steam should be produced in 16 boilers. With an output of 200,000 hp, the drive system was designed to be very powerful in order to achieve maximum speed and continuous speed. The high-pressure superheated steam propulsion systems that were common on German capital ships at the time and also manufactured for the Graf Zeppelin class had a higher fuel requirement than expected, which is why the bunker capacity at the Graf Zeppelin was increased in 1942/43 .
A turbine that was intended for aircraft carrier B can be seen today as a cutaway model in the machine hall of the Kiel University of Applied Sciences , which is located on the site of the carrier's shipyard, the former Germania shipyard .
Armament
artillery
The Graf Zeppelin class ships were the last aircraft carriers in the world for which sea target artillery was intended. The 16 15 cm guns that each ship was supposed to carry were intended to defend against enemy cruisers and destroyers . The other naval powers had adopted the tactic of keeping aircraft carriers out of the range of enemy artillery and deploying their own escort ships such as destroyers and cruisers to protect the carriers - which in turn did not exist in the German Reich with the required specifications (high speed range and high permanent speed) .
The anti-aircraft armament with its 10.5-, 3.7- and 2-cm guns was quite generous according to international standards in the mid-1930s, but was reinforced as early as the late 1930s. At Graf Zeppelin , the number of light anti-aircraft guns planned was increased again in 1942, but even then it was still too low - based on experience with aircraft carriers in combat in both the Mediterranean and the Pacific.
Planes
The aircraft equipment corresponded with three types - torpedo bombers / reconnaissance bombers , dive bombers and fighters - the then recognized scheme. The number of hunters on board was far too few. In order to accommodate more bombers on the aircraft carriers, a sufficient number of fighters were dispensed with.
The following were planned for aircraft:
- 1939:
- 20 Fieseler Fi 167 as a torpedo bomber and reconnaissance aircraft
- 13 Junkers Ju 87 C as a dive bomber
- 10 Messerschmitt Bf 109 T as fighter aircraft
- 1942:
- 28 Junkers Ju 87 E as Stuka, torpedo bomber and reconnaissance aircraft
- 15 Messerschmitt Me 155 A as fighter aircraft
The number of aircraft on board the Graf Zeppelin class was comparatively small. Comparable American and Japanese carriers such as the Japanese Zuikaku and the American Enterprise carried twice as many machines. The main reason for this can be seen in the fact that the planes intended for the Graf Zeppelin did not have folding wings. In addition, due to the planned area of operation in the North Sea and the North Atlantic, because of the often stormy weather conditions, it was imperative to store the aircraft in hangar hangars. The hangar area of the Graf Zeppelin was with 5623 m² significantly larger than the hangar of the Yorktown class with 4200 m². The HMS Ark Royal (91) , a British aircraft carrier that had been designed for a similar area of operation, had a capacity of about 60 aircraft with an almost identical hangar area.
Follow-up projects
Despite the lack of completion of an aircraft carrier, the Kriegsmarine pursued concepts for further planning well into the war. Initially, this comprised aircraft carriers C and D, which, according to the 1938 financial plan, were to be laid down in 1941 and, with slight improvements, were to follow the Graf Zeppelin's design. Later, sketches for completely new aircraft carrier classes were made, such as B. a small aircraft carrier of only about 18,000 tons specially designed for the trade war. However, these were far from a thorough construction, let alone a keel laying.
literature
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . tape 1 : Armored ships, ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, gunboats . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 , p. 98-101 .
- Wilhelm Hadeler: The aircraft carrier. Lehmann Verlag, Munich 1968.
- Ullrich H.-J. Israel: only German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 2002, ISBN 3-7822-0786-6 .
- Frank Omeda: The German aircraft carriers. From the beginning until 1945. Kindle Edition E-Book / Book 2017.
- Richard Wagner, Manfred Wilske: aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. Neckar-Verlag, Villingen-Schwenningen 2007, ISBN 978-3-7883-1127-8 .