This should be in the force pool

[well-dressed gentleman]

The Graf Zepplin. Launched in 1938.

[Blashy]

It was never completed, never commissioned and thus never saw action.

It was 85% complete around May 1941 and would require somewhere around 2 years before it was ready for action.

[Rolend]

Besides this is a corps/army level game and one single unit, aircraft, tank, or ship could not be represented.

EDIT ADDED: Although I am sure you would get Rambos support for adding Rambo to the game

[Blashy]

BBs, CAs and CVs are at the unit level. Everything else is not.

[Rolend]

Blashy I was under the impression that even surface fleets were an abstract. Yes they have names like Bismark, but they represent support vessels as well. Please don't tell me that Germany only had 3 subs at the start of the war or that England only had a few DD's.

[Lars]

Er, it is in the force pool. You just have to pay for it.

I take a great peverse pleasure in turning out German aircraft carriers when the game is well in hand.

[Blashy]

Originally posted by Rolend:

Blashy I was under the impression that even surface fleets were an abstract. Yes they have names like Bismark, but they represent support vessels as well. Please don't tell me that Germany only had 3 subs at the start of the war or that England only had a few DD's.

Re read my post.

[JerseyJohn]

We had a couple of very interesting discussion on the Graf Zeppelin and her sister ship, The Peter Strasser , at the old SC-1 Forum over the years.

As Blashy said, neither ship was ever completed or commissioned. One was scuttled and the other, captured by the Soviets, was packed with items looted from Germany to be sailed back to the USSR. I believe it went down in rough seas.

Neither ship was very large and they were intended as training vessels.

Goering used his influence to see to it that the German Navy never had it's own air arm. Even the spotter planes on German cruisers and battleships were flown by Luftwaffe pilots.

-- I've always thought it would have been interesting if one or both of those small carriers had actually been finished and aviators trained to man them. And, if they'd accompanied the Bismarck, possibly joined by Tirpitz, on an Atlantic run to the French coast. With air cover the British swordfish would never have been able to attack and the British cruisers could never have shadowed the German warships.

I think they each had the capacity to carry 42 aircraft with non-folding wings.

The Graf Zeppelin launched in 1938, and docked in 1940.

[well-dressed gentleman]

WOW! It's beautiful! Sorry I missed that discussion. But if the Graf was 85% complete, then why not make it available at one sixth of the price? As an interesting nudge to get Germany into the aircraft carrier business?

And if Goering is going to screw up my naval aviator corps then I think he should be represented in the game, along with Karl Donitz and Erich Raeder. The luftwaffe are gloryhounds - it's about time the German admiralty got the respect it deserves.

[Blashy]

Also, in the game after researching OOB for BBs, CAs and CVs, it comes pretty close to displaying half of total BBs, CAs and CVs for both sides..

Alhtough some where missing and so they've added accordingly.

I have not added the GRaf Zeppelin, I have considered adding it to the starting lineup (since it had been launched) at a very low str of 1.

[JerseyJohn]

Well Dressed,

Agreed, it was a fine looking vessel. Most of the German warships were -- I think the Pocketbattleships (aka Armored Cruisers) were downright beautiful!

Blashy, and all others interested in this,

The General Forum thread on this subject, Nazi aircraft carrier found! has some very good information and some excellent points were made by Michael Emrys regarding the inadequacy of these two ships for North Atlantic action. You might want to pop in there and read some of those posts.

My favorite WWII era warship design:

< Deutschland Class Armored Cruiser Layout >

[John C]

Interesting timing...

Graf Zeppelin Found

[Blashy]

Originally posted by JerseyJohn:

Blashy, and all others interested in this,

The General Forum thread on this subject, Nazi aircraft carrier found! has some very good information and some excellent points were made by Michael Emrys regarding the inadequacy of these two ships for North Atlantic action. You might want to pop in there and read some of those posts.

This thread is enough to show WHY the CV should not be IN the production queue, not even at STR 1.

You want it, you pay the FULL price and wait for it in the queue.

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=020077;p=2

[Kuniworth]

Originally posted by John C:

Interesting timing...

Graf Zeppelin Found

speak of the devil. Interesting stuff.

[JerseyJohn]

True, Kuni. I never expected to see it happen.

Agreed, JohnC, at first I thought the two were tied in with each other, but they don't appear to be.

Blashy, Emrys made some of his most convincing points on the 2nd page of that thread, but the page you've linked to (3) is also good. Glad you've done so and I agree with you completely. The Graf Zeppelin and Peter Strasser, for game purposes, should be viewed as training vessels -- assuming that Germany had chosen to finish them somewhere along the line and also that the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe got the pilot-aviator situation straightened out.

From there they'd be seen as building full size aircraft carriers. Excpet, of course, it's hard to see how they could have bridged the 20 year gap between themselves and other nations in terms of operating experience.

Also of interest, xwormwood has since added a great slide show of photos at the General Forum Thread.

[SeaMonkey]

Well JJ don't forget the Germans had a valuable ally with plenty of experience in naval-air operations.

I'm sure there could have been some interesting exchanges with the Japanese about how to operate these carriers. Maybe even a deployment to the Japanese islands for a training session.

Knowing the adaptive qualities of the Germans, I'll bet they could have pulled off an effective use of these two carriers, even in the open ocean.

Perhaps at least air cover for their surface raiders. I wonder if the Bismark would have been caught by those Swordfish in that event.

[JerseyJohn]

SeaMonkey,

I think that would have been a definite possibility if the war hadn't started in 1939. Along the lines of what you've said, it wouldn't have taken the Germans long to learn the techniques if the Japanese freely made it available to them. I'd imagine that in exchange Germany would have let the Japanese in on radar and also their excellent gunnery radar. Both sides would have gained immensely by such a trade.

Along the same lines, in 1939 Italy had better long range aircraft designs than Germany, and, like the Japanese, no radar at all. A similar exchange would have saved the Italians from the Taronto catastrophe and also helped level the odds in surface engagements -- the Royal Navy invariably hitting them at night, when it was gunnery radar vs squinting. The Germans, of course, soon found that long range aircraft would come in very useful; they'd have gained very much as well.

Regarding those swordfish attacks on the Bismarck. I'm sure that, even if BF109's couldn't have flown off those carriers and they needed something smaller, it would still have been more than enough to shoot down those slow biplanes.

[Retributar]

Hello JerseyJohn !,...

I just purchased the old movie...'Sink the Bismark' and yes, i can't believe how archaic those British torpedo attack planes were!!!. A BF-109/'s would have had an opportunity for some very-easy kill's!.

[SeaMonkey]

So JJ, it seems we have some premise for a rebirth of your Z-Plan mod?

Now don't forget about the Brest-Litovsk scenario also.

We're patient, I know you have much to do, but in a year or two when things settle down with the SC2 engine I hope those creative juices flow that way.

[JerseyJohn]

Retributar -- Greetings!!

I read somewhere that the Bismarck's AA guns were fitted with a tracking guage that couldn't be overidden by the gunner. It was designed to help keep the gun aimed at fast moving aircraft. The swordfish were below the minimum speed and the damn guage made it twice as hard for the sailors to hit them. :eek:

That's a terrific old movie. I remember seeing it around 1961 the first day it was released at my local theater. Later that night, by sheer coincidence, I saw the episode on Bismarck in a British documentary on WWII, The Galliant Years with Richard Burton imitating Winston Churchill in reading the narration. Next day a friend of mine (we were 11 or 12) complained that, "If I'd known they were gonna have the same thing on tv last night I wouldn't have gone and seen the movie."

But I really loved the picture and still like it a lot. Especially poor old Admiral Gunther Lutjens saying, "That is good, that is very good" right up, almost to the end.

Truth is he actually fooled the Royal Navy into believing he was heading back to Norway, till, convinced that all was lost, he made that long, morononic open radio transmission to Berlin. All the Brits needed to do was triangulate on the signal. Insane, without that message the Bismarck would have made it to Brest -- same as the Prinz Eugen, which wasn't blessed with a talkative admiral sending out messages.

A lot of things came to light after that movie, some of it took thirty years, like the U. S. Coast Guard cutter supposedly out monitoring weather patterns that sighted Bismarck and immediately sent word to the Royal Navy. Then there was that American flying boat manned by a U. S. Navy crew on loan to Britain, that also sighted Bismarck and immediately sent word to the Royal Navy. -- We Americans were some weird kind of neutrals before Pearl Harbor.

Sea Monkey,

Appreciated. Yes, I've been thinking about SC-2 adaptations and improvements of both those scenarios. And the schedule you give is pretty much exactly what I've got in mind.

Meanwhile I'm studying advanced SC-2 Scenario Design with Kuniworth, who's done some fantastic things in his Russo-German War Campaign. I've already learned a lot from him.

I'll probably adapt Hubert's basic 1939 Fall Weiss in both scenarios, as I did with the SC originals. Possibly I'll expand the map a little, but I'm not certain about that yet.

The unit scale will remain as Hubert has it, and the editor's ability to create minor countries will be invaluable in Brest-Litovsk, setting up a real Ukrania.

Thanks for the good wishes regarding the writing. Having tremendous success at it and will soon be sending a link your way, a site that will have all my published work and a password area with novels in progress, including The Judas Goat, of course, which I've been doing a lot of research on.

I think doing it this way will be much better than sending out emails with large text file attachments.