• Where is the picture of the ship today? Just pictures of a guy holding a ponar pic.


  • Well, it was tech “built”, or at least the hull was.  The german Navy was planning on war for 1944, not 39.  They had plans for 100s more subs and at least a dozen more tirpitz/bismark class Battleships along with many more ships (destroyers, cruisers, etc).  The Graff Zep was going to be the first.  When war came it went on the back burner to the larger land war.  The Germans for a short time tried to complete her after France fell, but when Hitler started eyeing Russia it got mothballed again.

    Now the true WW2 geek question.  Did Germany have any planes that could have flown on it w/o large modifications?  I am not sure on the structual design of the BF 109, FW190, JU87 (did Germany have a torpedo plane?)  Or were they designing other planes specificaly to be on a carrier?

    Also, how big was this thing anyway.  I read a book about the German Navy 20 years ago so my memmory is foggy.  How to it match up to an essex class carrier?

    Fun side note as far as this whole thing goes (learned it from WW2 mag).  The japs and germs were exchanging tech secrets in 42 (from the few subs who were able to cross the globe and not get destroyed).  The Germans had the blueprints to the Akagi (and the japs got rocket and jet tech in the exchange).


  • I think the “greatest find of WW2” was when they discovered that the ship Hydro was shipping heavy water (material used for a-bombs) to Berlin. One mystery of WW2 was: Did Hitler make atomic weapons?? Now can anyone answer that

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Wouldnt have thought Germany having a carrier….as for Georhing, maybe he didn’t give fighters to the navy, maybe he stole the carrier for himself?  Ever think of that?


  • Now the true WW2 geek question.  Did Germany have any planes that could have flown on it w/o large modifications?  I am not sure on the structual design of the BF 109, FW190, JU87 (did Germany have a torpedo plane?)  Or were they designing other planes specificaly to be on a carrier?

    Also, how big was this thing anyway.  I read a book about the German Navy 20 years ago so my memmory is foggy.  How to it match up to an essex class carrier?

    I read that JU87 was to be used for the torpedo planes. The carrier was nothing like the essex behemoth. Graf Zepp was like 850 feet, essex was like 1,000. Graf had like cap. for 45 planes , while essex had 100 planes. The Essex is like 27,000 tonnes, while the graf was also heavy because it was built with better armor plating. so figure about 20,000

  • 2007 AAR League

    this article has a photo gallery w/14 pics.

    http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,428857,00.html


  • @Jennifer:

    Wouldnt have thought Germany having a carrier….as for Georhing, maybe he didn’t give fighters to the navy, maybe he stole the carrier for himself?  Ever think of that?

    I though aircraft can be Army, Navy or Air Force, but ships can only be Navy


  • No the US navy has its own air arm… not to mention the Marines are the land arm of the Navy… that last fact is changing however.


  • In the US, all 3 main branches, and the Naval sub-branch (the Marines) have their own aircraft.  The main reason for this are the differing rolls that each force uses their aircraft for.

    There has been an effort to create a Joint Strike Fighter in the US, one that will meet the needs of several branches in a single aircraft (ostensibly to reduce costs), but work on it has repeatedly run into stumbling blocks.

    If memory serves, there are plans to have Naval and Air Force versionsof the F-22 Raptor, but it is far from what was originally envisions as teh JSF in the 1980’s


  • Germany should of had “battle of Jutland 2” but this time having the entire German airforce cover the small German Navy.  I think they would have massacred them.  And if England did not take the bait of sending out their fleet to stop em…  BOOM BOOM BOOM on those radar installations and other key objectives(ports, air bases, whatever, but specificaly the radar stations.  May be hard for a plane to hit, but would be easy as hell for naval guns to go after).  If they did confront the germans, they would have been wiped out IMO.


  • Under the Bismarck sortie the BC Prince of Whales should have been finished off and the 2 ships together made way for Brest. Then waited for Tirpitz to come out along with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (spelling). Those 4 BB would have been something to behold. The admiralty would have been in stiches. Most of her capital ships were on convoy escort in many locations and the Germans had the advantage of deciding to focus on a single point of there choosing.

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