Looking at the history of German destroyers during WW2 I have noticed the length of time involved between being laid down, launching and commissioning. Often a period of more than two years was involved. Some U-Boats and major surface ships also had very long lead times, was Raeder aware of this apparent slow schedule?
The Germans were certainly aware of Henry Kaisers' shipbuilding program in the USA, was any attempt made to improve the slow pace of construction of German shipyards? I assume they fell outside the ambit of Speer when he re-organised German armament production.
Does anybody have any comments on this?
German shipyard construction efficiency
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Dave Saxton
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Germany never had the material or the human resources to do even scaled down war time ship building like the USA. There seems to have been some indecision about where to direct those limited resources as well.
The war caught the Navy by surprize. After it became clear that the war would continue for an extended period, those limited resources had to be used only on projects that could do the most good, and not wasted on projects of little short term utility. This meant U-boats for naval production. However, Operation Sea Lion caused a lot of resources to be diverted to landing craft and invasion logistical needs untill early 41. Ship building projects got endlessly delayed and resources were diverted to one crisis after another. Simply repairing the battle damage, and the continued maintance, of existing assets, consumed the great portion of Germany's shipyard capacity and resources.
Then after the invasion of the USSR, almost all of Germany's industrial capacity had to be commited to that second land front, and not to naval needs, except U-boats. The infrastructure being bombed day and night didn't help.
Germany never really got into a true full wartime emergency production mode until mid 1943, and by then most industrial capacity had to be commited to urgent AFV and aerospace weapon systems.
The Nazi leadership's obssesion with, and the wasting of resources, on what we now know as the holocuast certianly didn't help things.
The war caught the Navy by surprize. After it became clear that the war would continue for an extended period, those limited resources had to be used only on projects that could do the most good, and not wasted on projects of little short term utility. This meant U-boats for naval production. However, Operation Sea Lion caused a lot of resources to be diverted to landing craft and invasion logistical needs untill early 41. Ship building projects got endlessly delayed and resources were diverted to one crisis after another. Simply repairing the battle damage, and the continued maintance, of existing assets, consumed the great portion of Germany's shipyard capacity and resources.
Then after the invasion of the USSR, almost all of Germany's industrial capacity had to be commited to that second land front, and not to naval needs, except U-boats. The infrastructure being bombed day and night didn't help.
Germany never really got into a true full wartime emergency production mode until mid 1943, and by then most industrial capacity had to be commited to urgent AFV and aerospace weapon systems.
The Nazi leadership's obssesion with, and the wasting of resources, on what we now know as the holocuast certianly didn't help things.
The Germans could have done a lot better, after all they had the resources of the occuppied countries.
In Brenneckes' book about the Hilfskreuzer Pinguin, there is recorded the comment of Pinguins chief engineer about the fitting out of the captured Norwegian tanker Storstad as the minelayer Passat: ''we can do the job at sea in three days, doing the job in a dockyard back home would take three weeks.''
In Brenneckes' book about the Hilfskreuzer Pinguin, there is recorded the comment of Pinguins chief engineer about the fitting out of the captured Norwegian tanker Storstad as the minelayer Passat: ''we can do the job at sea in three days, doing the job in a dockyard back home would take three weeks.''