Naval History Forums

I really doubt if Germany could have even finished each of these battleships to augment the existing Kriegsmarine but if they were, would they would have been the most powerful battleships ever built (with their astronomically high tonnage!).
How much effect would it have on the British merchant shipping and the Royal Navy?

Off hand, I would say that H39 was probably the last design that had any chance of every being built. The subsequent ones were mostly design studies to show to what extremes modern warfare and weapons would cause ship design to go. Most of the subsequent designs would have been impractical from the German point of view as these behemoths would not have been able to navigate most German waters.

And plus they would have had taken a TON of steel to be built.
Why did the H-44 weigh so much at like 120,000 tns while the Super Yamato was just 55,000 tons with just 2 less 20 in guns.

H-44 design study was simply an exercise to show just how impractical battleship design would become if it was to incorporate the ever increasing size of guns the political leadership seemed to desire, together with all the lessons thus far learned from battle experience. There was never an intention to build these monsters, which in any event would be a poor investment in treasure, labour, and materials; the last of the designs which might theoritically have been built had Germany won the war was perhaps H-41, but more probably H-39 or perhaps a new design with a displacement somewhere in between. Even the original H-class design, of which several were ordered and contruction had started were cancelled in 1939 with the outbreak of the war to save labour and materials which were better used for other war essential projects which would not take so long to bring to fruition. It is possible too, that new postwar battleships would not have been a part of Germany's plans at all and dropped in favor of aircraft carriers as was the case among the victorious allies.

Jason01 wrote:I really doubt if Germany could have even finished each of these battleships to augment the existing Kriegsmarine but if they were, would they would have been the most powerful battleships ever built (with their astronomically high tonnage!).
How much effect would it have on the British merchant shipping and the Royal Navy?

I don't think that the RN would have allowed themselves to be outbuilt, if the carrier had not become such a potent force I feel that the RN would have answered every one of Germany's new battleships with at least one if not two of their own.

My data differs from that you presented as to gun size. The first two had 40.6 cm guns; H-42 had 42 cm; the last two both had 50.8 cm.

After H-39, these were design studies to study what was needed to protect against modern aircraft weapons. The increased displacement of these ships wasn't driven by gun size; the armament was a surprising small fraction of the displacement. Instead, it was driven by the deck armor. H-44 had over twice the thickness of Bismarck's deck armor. That armor alone, even discounting the supporting structure, weighed close to 30,000 tons. As an aside, that 30,000 tons is equivalent to about 600 Tiger tanks.

First off the H39 class would be the only ones to build realistically. Britain would have countered these with the more heavely armoured Lion class as well as building the Vanguard. But they would have still posed a tremendous threat to the R.N regardless of it's new ships. One can only ponder at what havoc just one of these would have created.

What Germany should have built in addition to it's u-boats is aircraft carriers. Imagine 2 or 3 Graf Zepplins braking out into the Atlantic with the Tirpitz , Scharnhorst and Hipper class heavy cruisers as escort,- Yikes!

fyrbane wrote: What Germany should have built in addition to it's u-boats is aircraft carriers. Imagine 2 or 3 Graf Zepplins braking out into the Atlantic with the Tirpitz , Scharnhorst and Hipper class heavy cruisers as escort,- Yikes!

Raeder could have done a lot better than that.

Using the 1934 agreement with Britain, he could have had six panzerschiffe by not building the Hippers plus Graf Zeppelin and Peter Strasser, built the Narviks earlier along with the spahkreuzer and add in the four auxiliary aircraft carriers the Germans planned.
And all the effort expended into the Z Plan battleships should have been used on constructing a third Bismarck instead.

Most important of all - improve German shipyard efficiency and labour productivity - so these ships are commissioned a lot earlier than they were.

Another possibility, perhaps unlikely , but - why not get the Japs to build a carrier for the KM and train the crew/pilots out in the Far East?

Do carriers really help the Germans that much? Especially if they show up in 43 or later? The same with the H-class if they show up in 43 then you likely see more battleships and carriers in the Atlantic for a while but I'm not sure it makes much more of an impact.

I think the intention is that they ''show up'' by 1940 or 1941 at the latest.

It's an interesting premise on the Kriegmarine side. However I has always thought that the big "what if" is in the Royal Navy side: what if the Washington Treaty would have never been signed allowing ALL navies to get into a arms race. Certainly the RN superbattleships (& battlecruisers) eclipse anything that the USN or IJN could have launched (including Yamatos). Of course, none would have been like the behemoth late H Class of 130+K tons (that I doubt would have ever been built). But all the RN projects make the Montana Class look like a lifeboat.

Karl Heidenreich wrote: But all the RN projects make the Montana Class look like a lifeboat.

I didn't laugh so much a long time; thank you old fried :)

Hey, what's up with your vacation in Europe ? Are you still coming ?

Cheers,
Alex

Alex:

Hey, what's up with your vacation in Europe ? Are you still coming ?

Not this year: have a promise to my family and taking them to New York, New Jersey and Washigton this summer. If Europe still exists for 2013 then I will go there (have to go to the Valley of the Fallen in Spain and Poenari in Rumania).

Regards,

Europe's nice and cheap now, as the Euro has sunk against the dollar - that is if you were going to the ''euozone''

Britain I'm afraid isn't so cheap, we have money that is worth something.

RF:

Britain I'm afraid isn't so cheap, we have money that is worth something.

England's survival lays in it's independence from continental idiocy. Any person with something over his shoulders knows that you cannot unite what is separate by nature. It's obvious. Maybe Britain could be, again, the salvation for Europe when colapse cames. But before had to rid themselves from islamic influence.

What do this has to do with H Class Battleships beats me!!!