Graf Zeppelin vs HMS Ark Royal and Victorious

Historical what if discussions, hypothetical operations, battleship vs. battleship engagements, design your own warship, etc.
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miro777
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Post by miro777 »

hey...
i must say that all the disadvantages point to the German side...

but yet..i recently heard that Raeder planned that the war started in 1946 not 1943?
anyhow, thos would leave 6, 7, 8 years to successfully use ACs...

with some assistance by the Japanese, i think it would be possibly at least to launch one AC...

yet lets say, the Germans wouldn't have had such troubles...
lets assume they had enough training, etc.

then it surely would have been a victory for GZ against the Ark Royal
wouldn't it?

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miro
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Post by Tiornu »

"then it surely would have been a victory for GZ against the Ark Royal
wouldn't it?"
Why? If one ship has 15in guns and another has 11in guns, we consider the 15in ship superior unless there is some obvious advantage for the 11in ship. What big advantage would GZ, the ship with much less firepower, have over Ark Royal? She has more speed, in theory, but that's hardly compensation for the smaller air group.
The Japanese tried to make a deal with the Germans which involved providing details on aircraft carriers. The Germans turned them down. No joke.
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Post by Captain Morgan »

miro777 wrote:hey...

ok to go to back to the initial question...

lets get specific...
Graf Zeppelin with 20 Ju-87 and 20 Bf109

vs.

HMS Ark Royal with 40 Swordfishes and 20 Fulmars

lets say that the Graf Zepplin gets the well trained pilots, which have practised landing and starting from an carrier for quite some time...
(lets say this is all happening after 1943, as initially planned by Raeder)

so then who would win.

I honestly think those 20 more swordfishes could not overcome the superiority of a Bf 109...and at that time (the start of the war) the fear caused by the diving Junkers...

adios
miro
Well if it were 1943 the Ark royal would be flying Seafires and Tarpons (Avengers) or Barracudas, not the byplanes you are trying to give her.

Those aircraft far outclass anything the GZ had.
There are 2 types of vessels out there. One type is called a target. If it isn't capable of silently doing 30+ knots at 2000 ft depth its always considered a target. The vessel that can silently go fast and deep is the one the targets are afraid of.
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miro777
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Post by miro777 »

hey...
somehow this forum does not like the GZ....

to captain morgan
first we are not in 1943...so why make that assumption??
it was never mentioned...
i put out clearly the conditions of this battle, and thats how it would happen...
not otherwise...
when u want to go into 1943, then of course the Luftwaffe would have also developed better carrier planes...

and to tiornu
we are speaking of an Midway style battle...no carrier sights the other one...so the armament of the carrier does NOT matter...
so then u think that 40 swordfish and 20 fulmars would beat 20 Bf109 and 20 Ju87???

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miro
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Post by Tiornu »

"first we are not in 1943...so why make that assumption?? it was never mentioned..."
Actually, it was you who mentioned 1943: "lets say this is all happening after 1943, as initially planned by Raeder." This is not an unreasonable date, as GZ could not have been ready for action before 1942 anyway.

"when u want to go into 1943, then of course the Luftwaffe would have also developed better carrier planes..."
Yes, we went over that. The Germans would have the Me 155, a derivative of the 109G. The attack squadron would still be Ju 87's of some sort.

"we are speaking of an Midway style battle...no carrier sights the other one...so the armament of the carrier does NOT matter..."
Of course the armament matters. The carrier with 50% more planes has a huge advantage.

"so then u think that 40 swordfish and 20 fulmars would beat 20 Bf109 and 20 Ju87?"
As already mentioned, the Swordfish and Fulmars would be replaced by this time. The British don't need to defeat 40 planes; they need to defeat groups of 18 planes, the maximum package GZ can launch at any one time.
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miro777
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Post by miro777 »

okay forget it...

Britain always wins anyways
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Post by Tiornu »

Only after 1588.
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RF
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Post by RF »

Tiornu wrote:Only after 1588.
And before it as well.... Cadiz?
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miro777
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Post by miro777 »

hey...
in actual fact....
the British won a sea battle before that....
in the start of the 100years war...
i can't remember the name though...
but they did win with a fleet of merchant ships against a well armed French fleet...


and btw...Hood did NOT win over BS....
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RF
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Re: Graf Zeppelin vs HMS Ark Royal and Victorious

Post by RF »

As this is now something of an old thread I did have the thought, with Vic Dale in mind, of having Graf Zeppelin engaging Ark Royal, Victorious and of course Glorious in company with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau......

Any thought anybody?
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Re: Graf Zeppelin vs HMS Ark Royal and Victorious

Post by David89 »

I presume we are still talking about a battle taking place in 1943, so all three British carriers would be equiped with Seafires and Avengers, though a mixture of Seafires, Corsairs and Hellcats might make up the fighter wings. Ark Royal would have 20 fighters and 40 Avengers, Victorious would have the same number and I guess that Glorious would have a complement of around 40 aircraft split evenly between fighters and torpedo bombers.

Against this Graf Zepplin has 20 ME 155s, these being roughly matched in performance to the BF109G from which they are derived but with a heavier armament, and 20 Ju 87Es. The two German battlecruisers are not particularly well endowed with AA, and with some of the sixty British fighters to take care of the German CAP, a hundred Avengers would be able to tear them and Graf Zepplin apart.

What the Germans need is bad weather to mask their approach, because if they can get close then the firepower of the two battlecruisers might be enough to swing the balance of the battle, but even this is not a given. It is unlikely that the three British carriers are completely devoid of an escort, and if the escort could delay the two German ships for even a short period of time then the overwhelming aerial superiority of the British fleet would be enough to drive off and then sink the German fleet.

It may sound like I'm completely dismissing the Ju 87s, but because of their limited numbers, the number of British fighters and the armoured decks of Ark Royal and Victorious I doubt they would play any significant role in the battle.
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Re: Graf Zeppelin vs HMS Ark Royal and Victorious

Post by David89 »

There are a couple of points I wanted to add to my previous post but unfortunately the timer on the edit function had expired by the time I got round to it.

By 1943 search radar had advanced to the point where it is almost impossible that the German group would get down to gun range undetected, they should be picked up at around 50,000m at the outside, so their only hope is weather so bad that the launch of aircraft is impossible, and this is very unlikely to happen, even in the artic.
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Re: Graf Zeppelin vs HMS Ark Royal and Victorious

Post by lwd »

As previously discussed (perhaps in other threads) GZ would probably not even be able to launch her complete complement of aircraft as a single raid. The Pacific showed that large strikes were a lot more efficient than smaller ones. Even if the RN can't launch a complete strike having 3 flight decks they can launch a pretty impressive one and still have a decent CAP aloft. I'd give one of the RN CVs and edge over GZ for this reason alone.
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Re: Graf Zeppelin vs HMS Ark Royal and Victorious

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

The Pacific theatre operations demonstrate that it was the combination of the air groups of several carriers what accomplishes the strike superiority needed. A single carrier engaged with several enemy ones is as good as having none.
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Re: Graf Zeppelin vs HMS Ark Royal and Victorious

Post by Bgile »

Karl Heidenreich wrote:The Pacific theatre operations demonstrate that it was the combination of the air groups of several carriers what accomplishes the strike superiority needed. A single carrier engaged with several enemy ones is as good as having none.
Well, Hiryu managed to destroy Yorktown at Midway.
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