The colossus Graf Zeppelin was a German
aircraft carrier armed with over 60 guns and room for over 1,700 people and
60 aircraft. It was widely regarded as the definitive German vehicle that
could have turned the tide of the war. Impressively enough, most world
superpowers had plenty of aircraft carriers participating in the war, but the
technologically-advanced Germany didn’t. Hitler and his Admirals eventually envisioned
four aircraft carriers that were going to be built and finished by 1947 as part of
the naval expansion of the Kriegsmarine. However, the early breakout of the war forced
the Wehrmacht to focus on more pressing matters, leaving the project to the side. Graf Zeppelin, the incomplete 33,000-ton
lead ship in a class of two carriers, would remain stationed in
Poland for almost two years. It wouldn’t be until the war raged on and aircraft
carriers from other nations played a pivotal role in winning crucial battles that Hitler ordered
the Kriegsmarine to carry on with the project. It was now a race against time... A Defenseless Nation The Treaty of Versailles signed in
June of 1919 humiliated all of Germany, especially its military. The country was now
forbidden from developing military technology, and the war industry quickly vanished. Worst of all, the German armed forces were
reduced to a mere 100,000 men, resembling more of a police force than a proper army.
The country was pretty much left defenseless against other foreign powers, and coupled with
the economic downfall, social unrest followed. The naval branch of the German armed forces, or
Kriegsmarine, suffered the most, as they were forbidden to develop warships or dreadnoughts
like the ones the British and French had. The Kriegsmarine was only allowed to
upgrade pre-dreadnought battleships with a maximum tonnage of 10,000 tons. Like
their ground counterpart, the German Navy was defenseless against any other European power.
However, German engineers managed to work around the restrictions imposed by the Kriegsmarine
and came up with the idea of pocket battleships. Although the German re-armament
was already underway before 1933, Adolf Hitler was committed to fully supporting the
military, including the creation of a worthy navy. He wanted all branches of the military
to return to their former glory. The Navy Reemerges Born again as the Kriegsmarine, the first
objective was to produce a small but capable force to challenge the British and French
naval powers. At first it seemed unlikely, but the German industry kept working
under the patronage of the Third Reich. Although all the global powers from the First
World War had signed the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty to limit an arms race of naval
nature, only a few actually obliged. The treaty established a tonnage limit to
naval vessels, but it was repeatedly altered to fit the interests of the allied victors.
This led the Third Reich to negotiate the Anglo-German Naval Agreement to grant permission
to construct heavier vessels for the Kriegsmarine. On April 1, 1939, Hitler presented Admiral
Erich Raeder as the Kriegsmarine's chief to the military staff during a gala
ceremony aboard Scharnhorst, a new battlecruiser anchored at Jade Bay Wilhelmshaven.
During the ceremony, Hitler brought up Plan Z, a strategy to expand the Navy and be able to
finally challenge the British and French navies. Both Hitler and Raeder dreamt of building a naval
force with10 battleships, 4 aircraft carriers, 15 pocket battleships, 250 U-boats, and
more than 100 destroyers and cruisers. The plan was achievable, but only in the long run,
as the fleet could not be completed until 1948. Still, the Führer was delighted.
However, Britain and France declared war against Germany after the
annexation of Poland in September of 1939, and at this time, the Kriegsmarine was
not even at its minimal combat readiness. There was no way Germany could beat the combined
fleets of France and Britain with what they had, so the top brass was forced to
come up with unconventional ideas. Admiral Raeder only had the Bismarck and
Tirpitz 15-inch gun battleships at his disposal, three 11-inch gun pocket battleships, two
8-inch gun heavy cruisers, two 11-inch gun battle cruisers, 34 destroyers, over 60
U-boats, and not a single aircraft carrier. The clock was ticking, and the
Kriegsmarine had to hurry to finish the only aircraft carrier it had
begun building in 1935: the Graf Zeppelin. A Heavy Aircraft Carrier
While most world navies began converting ships into aircraft carriers
before the end of World War 1, Germany would join them too late in the game because of
the restrictions imposed on its armed forces. Still, after negotiating with its adversaries
the disclosure of the naval agreement, Hitler approved the construction of the Navy's
first aircraft carrier on November 16, 1935. The ship was awarded to the Deutsche Werke
shipyard in Kiel as Aircraft Carrier A and laid down in December of 1936 after work
on the Gneisenau battleship was finished. The carrier was named after
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who had risen to fame for creating the colossal
dirigibles made famous during World War 1. Graf Zeppelin would not be launched until
December 8, 1938, during the anniversary of the Battle of the Falkland Islands. She was
christened by Von Zeppelin’s daughter, Helen. The aircraft carrier was 262 meters long and had
a beam of 36 meters, with a maximum draft of 8.5 meters. Fully loaded, Graf Zeppelin displaced
33,550 long tons, and was intended to be manned by a crew of 1,760 sailors plus flight crews.
Her propulsion consisted of four Brown, Boveri & Cie geared turbines with 16 LaMont
boilers. The ship’s power plant generated over 200,000 shaft power, which translated to
a top speed of almost 62 kilometers per hour. Still, by traveling at about
30 kilometers per hour, Graf Zeppelin's range could render
almost 15,000 kilometers of range. When it came to armor, the carrier's flight
deck was protected by 45 millimeters of Wotan Weich steel armor, the main deck by 60, and the
waterline armor belt was 100 millimeters thick. Graf Zeppelin would carry substantial armament for
its time, including eight or sixteen 15-centimeter SK C/28 guns for defense against surface warships. This unique combination was meant to use Graf
Zeppelin in a more offensive role to attack cruisers, destroyers, and merchant vessels and
support the aircraft that she would be carrying. Additionally, Graf Zeppelin's anti-aircraft
defenses comprised 12 10.5-centimeter SK C/33 guns, 22 3.7-centimeter
SK C/30 guns, and 28 Flak guns. By mid-1939, the aircraft carrier was almost
80 percent complete. Expectations were high, and it was estimated that she would
be finished by the end of 1940. Pilot training and development of specific
aircraft adapted to the carrier began in 1938. The responsibility of these two tasks fell
to the head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goring. However, Goring was not too keen on cooperating, as he wished to keep control of every single
project in which aircraft were involved. Ultimately, the intention was to house 20 Fi
167 biplane torpedo bombers, 10 BF109 fighters, and 13 Stukas aboard Graf Zeppelin, or else create
an exclusive aircraft for carrier operations. Unfortunately for the Kriegsmarine, once
the war broke out in September of 1939, the Wehrmacht resources began to
run, the project quickly stalled. A Carrier is Doomed During the initial stages of the conquest of
Norway in April of 1940, Admiral Raeder proposed Hitler to halt the construction of Graf Zeppelin.
The reason was simple: although the carrier was almost complete, it would take another
10 months to install all of her guns. By then, the Kriegsmarine was in urgent
need of coastal batteries and anti-aircraft guns to protect the Norwegian coastline,
which comprised several port facilities, including the future U-boat pens.
The Führer agreed and allowed Raeder to remove the few guns that had already been
installed on Graf Zeppelin. Months later, in July of 1940, the carrier was towed to Gdynia
and used as a storage depot for timber until 1942. During this period, the usefulness of aircraft
carriers was repeatedly proven at the seas. In November of 1940, the British decimated the
Italian base at Taranto with a task force of Swordfish aircraft that took off from Royal Navy
carriers. Then, in May of 1941, Bismarck and Tirpitz were heavily damaged by fire from British
aircraft that did the same. More importantly, Japanese carriers were essential in the surprise
attack against the United States in Pearl Harbor. In May of 1942, Hitler ordered Raeder to
resume work on Graf Zeppelin, but several branch problems prevented this from happening.
To start off, Raeder wanted new and specially designed aircraft for carrier use, but Goring
argued that it was impossible to do so because the aircraft industry was already overwhelmed with
aircraft production to help on various fronts. Instead, Goring suggested converting existing
BF109s and Ju87s, and this led to more changes to the existing structure of Graf Zeppelin.
The modifications began immediately, and it appeared that the carrier
might be finished after all. However, Hitler suddenly replaced Admiral
Raeder with submarine expert Karl Dönitz as the head of the Kriegsmarine. With the war
slowly turning in favor of the Allied forces, and Germany losing the supremacy of the seas,
Donitz convinced Hitler to stop working on any type of surface ship and focus those
valuable resources on producing U-boats. Work on Graf Zeppelin was suspended
once again in January of 1943, and the carrier was transferred
to Stettin in Poland. The mighty carrier languished for
two years until, in April of 1945, its crew decided to flood it to prevent it
from falling into the hands of the Soviets. An Unexpected Discovery The Germans believed that Graf Zeppelin would
never float again, but the Soviets had other plans and refloated it for inspection.
After taking away every valuable item and used to simulate an air attack on an American
aircraft carrier, Graf was sunk in July of 1947. For decades, historians speculated about
where the only aircraft carrier produced by the Third Reich was sunk, but
nobody knew, even the Soviets. It was not until 2006 that a Polish vessel from an
oil company found the wreckage of a 265-meter-long ship 55 kilometers north of Władysławowo.
The Polish Navy quickly sent a team of divers to verify the ship's identity
and were amazed at the discovery. It was the long-forgotten Graf Zeppelin,
Hitler's first and last aircraft carrier. Thank you for watching our video! Please like
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us know in the comments below what you think of Graf Zeppelin. Could it have changed the tide
of the war in the Atlantic and Mediterranean?
