Nazi WWII Aircraft Carrier located?

[MasterAndCommander]

Text

Nazi aircraft carrier' located

The Polish navy says it is almost certain that it has located the wreck of Nazi Germany's only aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin.

A Polish firm searching for oil first detected the wreck in the Baltic Sea, 55km (34 miles) offshore.

The ship's whereabouts had been a mystery since the end of World War II.

The navy investigated and said it was 99% certain that the wreck was the Graf Zeppelin. The ship, built in 1938, never saw action in the war.

The navy said it was unlikely that the 250-metre (820-foot) wreck would be recovered from the seabed, as it was at a depth of more than 80 metres (264 feet).

"Technically it's impossible to pull it out of the water," a spokesman for the Polish navy, Lieutenant Commander Bartosz Zajda told the Associated Press news agency.

After the oil company Petrobaltic discovered the wreck, the Polish navy mounted a two-day expedition to the site north of the Polish port of Wladyslawowo.

The location where the shipwreck was found
Experts used remote-controlled underwater robots and sonar photographic and video equipment to gather digital images.

The navy spokesman said there were a number of characteristics matching those of the German warship.

However, the experts were still waiting to find the name on one side of the shipwreck before declaring with absolute certainty that it was that of Graf Zeppelin.

The 33,000-ton ship, able to reach a speed of 33 knots, fitted Hitler's grandiose ambitions, but the German U-boats took priority in the battle at sea.

There are conflicting theories about how it was sunk.

Some experts believe the Germans scuttled it in Szczecin (Stettin) in April 1945, just before the Soviet Army captured the city.

Others say the Soviet navy used the ship for target practice and sank it as part of a training exercise in 1947.

 

[Ika]

Shouldn't the Germans have used this against the British? I find that strange.

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: Aflac
Shouldn't the Germans have used this against the British? I find that strange.

A single carrier isn't much use against a nation with several and long range air cover. It most likely would have been used in commerce raiding like the other German battships and cruisers that made it to open ocean.

The British would have stopped at nothing to blow it out of the water knowing the danger it posed to shipping just like the Bismark.

 

[Stumps]

It was never finished.....Gemany gave up and concentrated on it's U-boat campaign and the Atlantic wall instead.

modified BF-109 fighters(T prefix I believe) and JU-87 Stuka's were meant for it

 

[lozina]

The Germans at one point had plans to build up to 4 carriers by 1945, but their priorities shifted more and more towards U-boats and other tactics, since carriers arte so damn expensive and Germany couldn't hope to confront Britain's much much more developed navy in traditional battles

The graf Zeppelin was launched but it never was actually commissione dinto the navy so it never saw service

 

[So]

I actually read the wikipedia article on it yesterday, and I noticed all the updates, including one that very day and I was like "what the..."

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: lozina
The Germans at one point had plans to build up to 4 carriers by 1945, but their priorities shifted more and more towards U-boats and other tactics, since carriers arte so damn expensive and Germany couldn't hope to confront Britain's much much more developed navy in traditional battles

The graf Zeppelin was launched but it never was actually commissione dinto the navy so it never saw service

I don't think the Germans ever really recovered psychologically from Jutland, even though it was a basically a draw. They never seriously considered challenging England straight up on the surface again.

 

[Mursilis]

Originally posted by: Aflac
Shouldn't the Germans have used this against the British? I find that strange.

Why would the Germans need carrier-based aircraft to strike Britian when they already had plenty of land-based aircraft just across the Channel in France? It's just easier to launch more and larger aircraft from land than sea.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: Mursilis

Originally posted by: Aflac
Shouldn't the Germans have used this against the British? I find that strange.

Why would the Germans need carrier-based aircraft to strike Britian when they already had plenty of land-based aircraft just across the Channel in France? It's just easier to launch more and larger aircraft from land than sea.

QFT. An aircraft carrier was a key part of a long term strategy to become a dominant sea power after the war, not to change the course of the battle of the Atlantic. Especially not in the late war when they potentially had Iowa class battleships and Essex class carriers to contend with as well.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Carriers do well in long range battles. WW2 Europe was close up. In the pacific on the otherhand, it was a completely different picture.

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: Mursilis

Originally posted by: Aflac
Shouldn't the Germans have used this against the British? I find that strange.

Why would the Germans need carrier-based aircraft to strike Britian when they already had plenty of land-based aircraft just across the Channel in France? It's just easier to launch more and larger aircraft from land than sea.

It was a Hitler pet project.

He should have thrown everything into U-boats and advancing their development.
They had a several year window where they could have choked GB to death but were spending resources in too many other areas

 

[Gibsons]

Originally posted by: Mursilis

Originally posted by: Aflac
Shouldn't the Germans have used this against the British? I find that strange.

Why would the Germans need carrier-based aircraft to strike Britian when they already had plenty of land-based aircraft just across the Channel in France? It's just easier to launch more and larger aircraft from land than sea.

The aircraft carrier wasn't meant to strike Britain, but rather Britain's shipping. Control of the shipping lanes was an important aspect of the war, to say the least.

 

[Taggart]

Originally posted by: lozina
Ze Germans

fixed:laugh:

 

[K1052]

n/m

 

[shortylickens]

Germany had all kinds of neat little experiments.
They were working on rockets and rocket planes before anybody else.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
Germany had all kinds of neat little experiments.
They were working on rockets and rocket planes before anybody else.

Yes, the trouble is they should have picked a handful of projects that showed the most promise and focused entirely on those. They spread their man power to thin when they needed quick progress.

It would have turned real ugly, real fast if they'd managed to construct a working ICBM and a nuclear war head for it though.

I kind of agree that an air craft carrier really wouldn't have been a beneficial project for Germany considering what kind of war she was fighting. The U-Boats made the most sense...the US and britian had very developed navies that would have been pretty difficult to suppress. The U-boats allowed them to partially circumvent those navies and focus directly on harassing merchant shipping. And they were very successful doing that for a long time.

 

[Feldenak]

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: Mursilis

Originally posted by: Aflac
Shouldn't the Germans have used this against the British? I find that strange.

Why would the Germans need carrier-based aircraft to strike Britian when they already had plenty of land-based aircraft just across the Channel in France? It's just easier to launch more and larger aircraft from land than sea.

It was a Hitler pet project.

He should have thrown everything into U-boats and advancing their development.
They had a several year window where they could have choked GB to death but were spending resources in too many other areas

Hitler had terrific charisma and speaking ability...it's a good thing those gifts didn't carry over to military planning and operations.

 

[LegendKiller]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: shortylickens
Germany had all kinds of neat little experiments.
They were working on rockets and rocket planes before anybody else.

Yes, the trouble is they should have picked a handful of projects that showed the most promise and focused entirely on those. They spread their man power to thin when they needed quick progress.

It would have turned real ugly, real fast if they'd managed to construct a working ICBM and a nuclear war head for it though.

I kind of agree that an air craft carrier really wouldn't have been a beneficial project for Germany considering what kind of war she was fighting. The U-Boats made the most sense...the US and britian had very developed navies that would have been pretty difficult to suppress. The U-boats allowed them to partially circumvent those navies and focus directly on harassing merchant shipping. And they were very successful doing that for a long time.

Had Hitler been smart utilizing his resources he could have advanced u-boats and sailed two large fleets with full aircraft cover and surface ships like the Bismark and Tirpitz with escorts like the Prince Eugen and Graf Spee. Two large fleets operating in the north atlantic with 2-3 large and fast carriers along with wolf-pack support would have decimated shipping.

Had he coalesced all of the forces into a combined-arms navy they would have been unstoppable. However, Hitler was never a bright person militarily speaking. He let his good resources die piecemeal, forever wasting what good technology and tactical advantages he could have made into large strategic ones.

 

[Mursilis]

Originally posted by: Feldenak

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: Mursilis

Originally posted by: Aflac
Shouldn't the Germans have used this against the British? I find that strange.

Why would the Germans need carrier-based aircraft to strike Britian when they already had plenty of land-based aircraft just across the Channel in France? It's just easier to launch more and larger aircraft from land than sea.

It was a Hitler pet project.

He should have thrown everything into U-boats and advancing their development.
They had a several year window where they could have choked GB to death but were spending resources in too many other areas

Hitler had terrific charisma and speaking ability...it's a good thing those gifts didn't carry over to military planning and operations.

Well, we're all thankful for that. If Hitler hadn't stupidly decided to open another major front in the war by attacking Russia, the outcome likely would've been much different! Germany might still be controlling much of that continent.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Mursilis

Originally posted by: Feldenak

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: Mursilis

Originally posted by: Aflac
Shouldn't the Germans have used this against the British? I find that strange.

Why would the Germans need carrier-based aircraft to strike Britian when they already had plenty of land-based aircraft just across the Channel in France? It's just easier to launch more and larger aircraft from land than sea.

It was a Hitler pet project.

He should have thrown everything into U-boats and advancing their development.
They had a several year window where they could have choked GB to death but were spending resources in too many other areas

Hitler had terrific charisma and speaking ability...it's a good thing those gifts didn't carry over to military planning and operations.

Well, we're all thankful for that. If Hitler hadn't stupidly decided to open another major front in the war by attacking Russia, the outcome likely would've been much different! Germany might still be controlling much of that continent.

Agreed. Germany was heavily weakened and already being beaten back by the time the western front was opened...it would have been a very different landscape had he not foolishly attacked the soviet union. Would the United States have dropped atomic bombs on Germany? Would the extra resources freed up from fighting in the eastern front been better used elsewhere? At the very least they would have held off the allies for a considerable longer period of time, and maybe some of Hilter's superweapons projects would have come to fruitation in that time.

Its kind of scary to think about. Had hitler been a more sound military man, or at least had the wisdom to assign those decisions to some one that was the war would have turned about very differently.