Graf Zeppelin (ship, 1938)
 The Graf Zeppelin after being launched
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The Graf Zeppelin was an aircraft carrier built for the German Navy , which remained unfinished and was never put into service. It was named after the airship pioneer Ferdinand von Zeppelin . As a type ship of the Graf Zeppelin class planned with two units , it is the only German fleet aircraft carrier to date . The construction dragged on with interruptions from December 1936 to February 1943, when it was finally stopped - although it was already well advanced. At the end of the war, the ship, which has now been partially cannibalized, was sunk by itself . It was lifted by the Soviet Union after the war and finally sunk in 1947 when it was attempted to explode.
history
After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, it began to appear that the armaments restrictions imposed in the Versailles Peace Treaty would no longer be observed by the German Reich. In addition to the construction of battleships and submarines , the construction of aircraft carriers was also within reach. The naval management therefore commissioned the construction department of the navy to prepare an official draft. The military requirements were given as follows:
- Operational area: North Sea and Atlantic
- Displacement: 15,000 tons
- Speed: 33 knots
- Armament: 9 × 15 cm guns or 6 × 20.3 cm guns and anti-aircraft guns
- Operational range: 12,000 nautical miles
- Armor protection like light cruisers.
- 60 on-board aircraft (with foldable wings only required for a third of the aircraft)
- Two catapults
- Minimum flight deck length: 180 meters
In charge of the project was the graduate engineer Wilhelm Hadeler , who was privately interested in the ship type "aircraft carrier" and therefore was one of the few within the German military who had a certain idea of the requirements for the ship type. The aircraft carrier was designed out of nowhere, as there was no experience on which to build the design. The documents of the Ausonia project from the First World War could not be used because they could not be found.
In order to get basic knowledge for the design, the publicly available information on foreign aircraft carriers was consulted. The model for the first draft was the British Courageous- class aircraft carrier . In order to answer the fundamental question of whether the design was appropriate, an employee of the design office visited the aircraft carrier Furious as part of a public demonstration, but this brought hardly any useful information. At the same time it became possible to visit the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi in autumn 1935 . The Japanese were generous in terms of handing over construction documents, as the Akagi's construction was out of date and its total renovation was imminent.
First construction phase
After Adolf Hitler had canceled the Treaty of Versailles on March 16, 1935, the way to build an aircraft carrier was clear. In order to maintain a minimum level of control during armaments, the German preferred alliance partner, Great Britain, agreed a fleet agreement that would give Germany a total of 47,000 tn.l. Aircraft carrier tonnage allowed. As a result, on November 16, 1935, the construction contract for the aircraft carrier A, later the Graf Zeppelin , was awarded to the Deutsche Werke shipyard in Kiel . Since the planned slipway was still occupied by the battleship Gneisenau at the time , the keel laying was delayed until December 28, 1936. The construction contract for the sister ship , aircraft carrier B , was also awarded to Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft AG, also based in Kiel . It was customary that the building contract for ships did not contain their future names. The reason wasn't secrecy; rather, the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy wanted to reserve the right to assign names. The name was usually determined before the launch .
The launch took place on December 8, 1938. The ship was christened by Hella von Brandenstein-Zeppelin, the daughter of Count Zeppelin. Hermann Göring gave the baptismal address .
At the beginning of the war the ship was about 90% complete. The further expansion of the ship was initially slowed down in favor of submarine construction from September 1939 and finally stopped in June 1940. The reason for the abandonment was that, even after completion, the aircraft carrier would not have been operational for months. The ship was carefully preserved so that construction could be resumed later without any problems. The development and construction of the carrier aircraft intended for the aircraft carrier, the Messerschmitt Bf 109 T as a fighter , Junkers Ju 87 C as a dive bomber and Fieseler Fi 167 as a torpedo bomber and reconnaissance aircraft , were also halted when the ship was discontinued.
On July 6, 1940 - four days after the first air raid on Kiel - an order was given to relocate the Graf Zeppelin to the east because of the danger of air raids. On July 12, the aircraft carrier, escorted by the Nautilus , was towed via Saßnitz to Gotenhafen . He lay there for almost a whole year; It was only with the imminent attack on the Soviet Union that the order was given to move the aircraft carrier back to the west in order to bring it to safety from Soviet air raids. He was then dragged to Stettin . It did not return to Gotenhafen until November 17, 1941 and was used as a precious wood store for the Navy.
Second construction phase
After the British attack on Taranto , the sinking of the Bismarck and, last but not least, the attack on Pearl Harbor had shown what a powerful weapon an aircraft carrier was, the naval war command urged in 1942 that the aircraft carrier should be completed. To do this, the carrier was towed back to Kiel in November 1942, where Deutsche Werke began work. The technical development resulted in some changes to the overall design, which mainly affected the island structures. In order to absorb the resulting additional weight and counteract a list, the hull was given differently sized torpedo bulges on the outside in the waterline , which were provided with additional fuel bunkers and thus increased the range in addition to the improved protective effect. The ship's turbine system was prepared for commissioning. The conversion phase should only take 61 days. With Hitler's order of January 26, 1943 to put all large warships out of service, construction was finally stopped on February 2, 1943.
The development of the Junkers Ju 87 E carrier aircraft as a Stuka, torpedo bomber and reconnaissance aircraft and Messerschmitt Me 155 A as a fighter aircraft, which began in 1942, was also abandoned with the final construction stop on the two aircraft carriers under construction.
Whereabouts
On April 21, 1943, the aircraft carrier, which was over 90% complete, was towed to Stettin and moored in a branch of the Oder . At its new berth, the Graf Zeppelin served as a spare parts supplier for other ships in the Navy. On April 25, 1945, a demolition squad set the ship aground and destroyed its propulsion system in order to render the carrier unusable as prey for the advancing Soviet troops.
In March 1947, the ship was lifted by the Red Army and served as a residential ship for a special department that was entrusted with the evaluation of the construction documents of the Graf Zeppelin and other loot ships . She tested bomber planes and explosive charges on the aircraft carrier to find out how they could be most effectively combated.
On June 18, 1947, during the ordnance tests on the Graf Zeppelin, shortly before a storm, the mooring was loosened to prevent the lines from tearing and the ship being stranded. The ship was then sunk with two torpedoes 30 nautical miles north of Großendorf in front of the Danzig Bay , where it is still located today.
The north port was built in Bremerhaven as a berth for the two aircraft carriers. The planes were to be serviced on the other side of the Weser. The buildings disguised as farmhouses are still standing today.
discovery
For a long time it was unclear exactly where the aircraft carrier ended. The fate itself was known, so the author Siegfried Breyer correctly stated the sinking location of the ship in 1994, but the fate could not be determined with certainty due to an unclear source. There were reports that the ship had been towed to Leningrad and broken up there. Other sources reported a sinking in the Gulf of Finland , some citing a mine hit during the transfer trip as the reason, while others reported Soviet weapons tests. The discovery of the wreck on July 12, 2006 by the Polish oil company Petrobaltic confirmed the position in front of the Gdańsk Bay, about 55 kilometers from the Polish Baltic port of Großendorf (Władysławowo). The wreck is located near the B3 oil platform at a depth of 80 meters. The government of the Russian Federation, the legal successor to the Soviet Union, is responsible for the wreck . The coordinates of the location are: 55 ° 16 '59.8 " N , 18 ° 25' 33.1" E
British attack plans
Although the Graf Zeppelin never entered service, its existence was a headache for the British Admiralty . A hypothetical naval formation consisting of Graf Zeppelin and a ship of the Bismarck or Scharnhorst class was seen as a major threat to British merchant ships. The realistic assessment of the situation was made even more difficult by the inadequate clarification. In the spring of 1940, the Royal Navy assumed that the Graf Zeppelin had already completed its test drive and that it was about to be commissioned.
The ship
The Graf Zeppelin was a remarkable construction and broke several records. At the time of her launch she was the longest warship in Europe. The side height of the girder was 22.5 meters. This value was previously unattainable in German shipbuilding. The hangar was structurally part of the hull and, in contrast to foreign constructions, in which hangars were treated as normal superstructures, contributed to the rigidity of the ship. Due to the height, the girder had an immense side surface, which increased the risk of being pushed against the bank by the wind when passing the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal , for example , which is why the Graf Zeppelin received two Voith Schneider propellers in the bow. To compensate for the weight of the island on the starboard side, the hangar decks were shifted 0.5 meters to port, which meant that the side wall on the port side overhanged one meter more than on the starboard side.
The drive system developed up to 200,000 hp. This was the most powerful drive that had been installed on a European ship up to that point. It was needed to accelerate the ship to the required speed of 33 knots.
Of all the aircraft carriers laid down in keel after the end of the Washington fleet agreement around 1936, the Graf Zeppelin was the heaviest with a maximum displacement of 33,000 tons. The tanks for aviation fuel were better protected on the Graf Zeppelin than on the Essex class .
Aviation facilities
The upper hangar of the ship was 185 m long and 16 m wide, the height was 5.8 m. The lower hangar was 172 m long, 16 m wide and 5.25 m high. Together they had a storage area of 5623 m² of which approximately 4670 m² could effectively be used. The hangar of the Graf Zeppelin was almost the same size as the hangar of the Ark Royal , which had an area of 5665 m² and was considerably larger than the hangars of comparable American aircraft carriers such as the Yorktown and Lexington class , which had an area of 4200 m² and 2900 respectively had m². The relatively lower number of aircraft, with between 43 and 48 Me 109T and Ju 87 C aircraft, especially compared to American aircraft carriers, resulted from the fact that the aircraft had to be stored in closed hangar hangars due to the weather conditions in the North Sea and the North Atlantic no aircraft could be parked permanently on the flight deck. In addition, the Me 109T did not have any folding wings . With foreign storage conditions, the number of Graf Zeppelin aircraft could have been increased to up to 80.
The flight deck was 240 m long and a maximum of 30 m wide. A total of three armored elevators with a payload of up to 6500 kg, which made it possible to relocate the aircraft, and two smaller elevators for the aircraft take-off vehicles. Although a normal taxi start was quite possible, the idea was to use the two catapults at the bow of the ship to take off on the Graf Zeppelin. In this way the rear part of the flight deck would have been free for landing operations taking place in parallel. Foreign aircraft carriers were theoretically also suitable for parallel take-offs and landings, but this was generally not practiced for safety reasons. The US Navy later developed the angled deck for parallel operation .
For flight operations, it was planned that the aircraft in the upper hangar would be placed on a launch vehicle with the landing gear retracted. The Junkers Ju 87 (Stuka) could take off from the catapults with their rigid landing gear. The cars were to be brought to the catapults using a rail system. Switches were integrated into the rail system for mutual operation, and the wagons were returned via a device on the front of the flight deck. With the launch vehicle system, the aim was to achieve one launch per minute and catapult. The take-off takes place with compressed air, and the supply is sufficient for a total of nine aircraft per catapult. Refilling took 50 minutes, which would have allowed the carrier to get a maximum of 18 aircraft into the air in ten minutes. The catapult system was relatively complicated, which would have been shown in practical use. British and American aircraft carriers also had catapults, but they were removed in the course of World War II because they did not meet expectations. The majority of all launches on fleet carriers took place in taxi. There were four brake cables for landing and a safety fence to catch aircraft in the event that the brake cables were missed.
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photos
- construction
Construction stage on September 21, 1938, Deutsche Werke Kiel
The Graf Zeppelin in June 1939
Bead attached to the aircraft carrier
- Equipment phase
Bow, port side
Bow, port side
Stern with flight deck, port side
Starboard side
Port side
- Model photos
Model: View from aft
Model: View from the port side
Model: front view
See also
literature
- Ulrich H.-J. Israel: only German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 2002, ISBN 3-7822-0786-6 .
- Stephen Burke, Adam Olejnik: Freedom of the Seas. The Story of Hitler's Aircraft Carrier - Graf Zeppelin. Self-published, 2012, ISBN 978-0-9564790-0-6 .
- Stephen Burke: Without Wings, the story of Hitler's aircraft carrier. Trafford Publishing; 3rd Revised edition 2007, ISBN 978-1425122164 .
- Wilhelm Hadeler: The aircraft carrier. Lehmann Verlag, Munich 1968.
- Frank Omeda: The German aircraft carriers. From the beginning to 1945. Kindle Edition, 2018 e-book and book.
- Richard Wagner, Manfred Wilske: aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. Neckar-Verlag, Villingen-Schwenningen 2007, ISBN 978-3-7883-1127-8 .
Web links
- Picture gallery and inventory of the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin . In: Federal Archives .
- Roman Heflik: The end of the Graf Zeppelin. In: Spiegel Online . July 27, 2006, accessed September 4, 2019 .
- Günter Stiller: Polish oil prospectors find Hitler's aircraft carrier. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. July 29, 2006, accessed September 24, 2016 .
- Peter Maxwill: Hitler's pointless super ship. In: Spiegel online. December 6, 2013, accessed September 24, 2016 .
Footnotes
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Siegfried Breyer: Marinearsenal special volume 1
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Manfred Wilske: The German aircraft carrier project Graf Zeppelin is born.
- ^ Richard Wagner / Manfred Wilske: aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. Neckar-Verlag, Villingen-Schwenningen 2007, ISBN 978-3-7883-1127-8 , pages 99-110.
- ^ Richard Wagner / Manfred Wilske: aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. Neckar-Verlag, Villingen-Schwenningen 2007, ISBN 978-3-7883-1127-8 , pages 112-114.
- ^ Mike J. Whiteley: German capital ships. Pp. 87/88.