Why The Nazis Never Built An Aircraft Carrier?

this video is sponsored by squarespace stukas were taking off from the deck one by one somewhere in the atlantic their goal was simple obliterate the us fleet and open the door for the invasion of new york of course this never happened but have you ever asked yourself at some point where were the german aircraft carriers in world war ii did hitler even have any well they did sort of nazi germany built an aircraft carrier in world war ii and had three more planned to be the cutting edge weapon of its atlantic fleet it was one of the largest ships built during the war but it was never deployed this is the krieg's marina's lost dream and the story behind the graf zeppelin aircraft carrier [Music] [Music] now you've all heard the word zeppelin and the first thing that pops into your mind are large airships most notably the famous hindenburg but this zeppelin was a bit different named after count or in german graf ferdinand von zeppelin the inventor of the airships bears the name in his honor the first german aircraft carrier of world war ii hitler hoped that it would be one of the critical factors in beating the royal navy and dominating the seas you see the german navy was never as strong as the british one and it was clear to hitler in 1934 that if he wished to compete with the british in a potential conflict in the future then the kriegs marina should be strengthened and new types of ships would need to be developed plan zed was the name of the german plan to strengthen the krieg's marina's presence in the atlantic ocean and even the odds against the royal navy among other things it listed aircraft carriers as one of the priorities and four graf zeppelin carriers were planned to be built in total and having the new german air force limited by land air bases wouldn't do it all hence an aircraft carrier would be the perfect cornerstone of the new german navy and its air force but rather than following the design of classic aircraft carriers the idea was to incorporate heavy guns into the design so the ship could defend itself against potential enemies the main weaponry of the ship apart from the aircraft obviously would have been sixteen hundred and fifty millimeter guns the same ones used as secondary ornaments on the bismarck and scharnhorst battleships a further 12 heavy anti-air 105 millimeter guns would accomplish a number of smaller 37 and 20 millimeter a guns this was much heavier firepower compared to some of the comparable aircraft carriers of world war ii for example the sx class or the japanese akagi even compared to the uss lexington which were one of the largest ships of the war and now that we mentioned dakargi it's interesting to note that the germans actually obtained drawings and technical data from it and used it in the development of their own carrier and this carrier was to be truly massive at 262 meters in length its beam would be 31.5 meters and if you're wondering what that is well basically it's the fancy naval name for the widest point on the ship and its draft was 7.6 meters where draft is the distance from the water line to the bottom of the keel or in simple english the hull of the ship displacement of the ship was 33.5 000 tons and it had a maximum speed of projected 35 knots ironically this huge aircraft carrier to take on the british could only exist because of the british in an attempt to a please and improve relations between germany and britain they had agreed to increase the displacement limit up to 38.5 000 tons for aircraft carriers greater than the limit of the treaty of versailles this massive ship would also require a crew of 2000 with 300 of them being aircrew and the rest sailors and officers in terms of aircraft on board we'll get to that in a minute so just hang on with the green light confirmed the keel was laid in 1936 and we moved forward three years towards the start of the war in 1939 you have to wonder why germany didn't match the power of say their british american or japanese fleets why the navy in germany lost out to the air force and the army perhaps the powers that could be may have been swayed by the dream of a super carrier if the navy had used a squarespace website that's right if you're launching a new brand building a business empire or just raising funds for your own super carrier then squarespace is the obvious choice they have an ability to run powerful email campaigns they're optimized for mobile phones and they have a fantastic e-commerce platform ready to go just add ships plus with all the seo tools you need to appear on the front page of google there's no need to sail the high seas when you can meet the world from your living room so to support the channel and get 10 off your first sighted domain go to www.squarespace.com found your clicks right now will mean more videos tomorrow i'm excited what we'll cover next back to the show the first ship in the series would bear the exact same name as its class and would be launched in 1938 with the second aircraft carrier undergoing construction simply called carrier b as the war started the zeppelin ship was moved from kiel germany to gottenhafen now godinya in poland but with the invasion of norway in 1940 nazi germany suddenly found itself with a ton of new beachside real estate to defend namely all those beautiful norwegian fjords all the work on the carrier a and b were stopped and its 15 centimeter guns were taken away to be mounted as coastal defense in norway and its 10.5 centimeter flat cannons were also removed it was then decided that the b carrier should be scrapped and focus would then move to the construction of more u-boats as those had been a very effective during the war so far and the current zeppelin hull well that ended up becoming a store for timber but this isn't the end of the story we move forward two more years to 1942 just after a little-known attack called pearl harbor success of the aircraft carrier in combat was widely proven by this point in time and german admiral eric rader proposed to hitler that the work should continue on the ship which the evil mustache guy no not that one had already approved in the original plans graf zeppelin was to carry bf-109ts and u-87c aircraft along with the fiesla 5167 torpedo bomber so that's up to a total of 42 aircraft on board however in 1942 raider wanted new aircraft specifically designed to be launched from an aircraft carrier just like the many that the japanese and americans had deployed in the pacific namely the messerschmitt 155 or the naval version of the bf-109 this project would be later developed by and let me absolutely butcher this name bloom und voss into a high altitude interceptor made to fight against the us bombers like the b-29 future video on that anyone let me know down in the comments back to the story his idea was rejected because by 1942 the germans were knees deep into soviet mud literally and the luffwaffle couldn't take on new projects so it was decided to go back to the first proposed idea the idea was to have the ship ready to enter the fight by 1943 with the air crew already under going through special training but again hitler being hitler you can guess what happened next because of the loss of both the bismarck and the schonhorst the overall poor performance of surface ships compared to the u-boat the fewer ordered all work to be stopped on any new designs he then removed radar from command in ordered to focus only on u-boat development the ship was moved near staten and left there to rot for another two years before it met it's sad end the red army was advancing fast and in 1945 germans aware that the war was lost and wanting to deprive the enemy of their beloved ship which was pretty sad by this point in time placed explosives and sunk the ship down into the depths unfortunately the depths weren't very deep and in the shallow waters off the coast it ended up just being half sunk the soviets couldn't actually use the carrier for themselves again but they weren't done with it it was re-floated in 1946 towed somewhere deep into the baltic sea and sunk in a training exercise in 1947 a truly sad ending to a ship just like this but in 2006 a polish research vessel found the remains of the graf zeppelin aircraft carrier some 80 meters below the surface around 35 kilometers from the coast it was examined and with fair certainty concluded that this really was the last zeppelin lying in its grave so your question is had this aircraft actually been built and deployed it's hard to say whether or not it would have actually turned the tide of war rather it's likely that this ship would have been a big target and hunted down much like the bismarck nazi germany ended up lacking the resources to really take the fight to the us mainland and a pearl harbor new york style attack didn't seem to be on the cards although had the horton brothers also finished their america bomber perhaps this aircraft carrier could have fixed the floor with launching it to the us mainland let me know down in the comments what you think would have been the outcome had this aircraft carrier actually been built and used by the german forces i would love to know some alternative history and thanks again so much for watching and if you don't want to miss the opportunity to see new videos please hit that like and subscribe button and check out the patreon if you want to support the channel and see behind the scenes i'll see you in the next video on found and explained

Channel: Found And Explained

Views: 1,667,877

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Id: Opqi--cyVJY

Length: 12min 26sec (746 seconds)

Published: Fri May 13 2022