Why did Hitler send one of his only three heavy cruisers alone

>>2424564
it was autism

>>2424564
shits and giggles

>>2424564
He wanted to conquer it

?

They had more than 3 heavy cruisers, and the Deutschlands were the more expendable of the bunch.

>>2424564
Los Malvinas son Deutsch.

>>2425135
t. SMS Scharnhorst und SMS Gneisenau

>>2424564
They were on a secret mission to find the lost city of Atlantis

>>2424564

Because cutting Britain off from the US was literally his only hope of winning the war.

>>2425255
>Because cutting Britain off from the US was literally his only hope of winning the war.

yes, the south Atlantic is a common trade route between the US and the UK...

for those goods that are sent from the only port in the US, San Fransisco, and have gone across the pacific or down south america, and then gone round the Cape Horn, or round the Cape of Good Hope, and into the south Atlantic.

If only the US had a east coast, and harbours in cities like Boston, Norfolk, or Savannah, which connected to the Atlantic, the war would've been SO much easier!

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The German navy’s surface fleet was a huge waste of resources and probably cost them the war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kriegsmarine_ships

They would never reach parity with the British and even if the Germans rolled a natural 20 and somehow achieved a stupendous victory, the Brits would _still_ have far more ships.

Germany should have only built submarines for long range interdiction of British shipping and limited the surface fleet to costal defense, putting the resources available from dropping the useless blue-water navy into other projects, especially long range heavy bombers and their long range fighter escorts.

Because the only way for the Germans to knock the Brits out of the war is thru airpower, which not coincidently, the same thing the Germans needed against the Soviets.

>>2425733
If Germany didn't built its surface fleet, Britain wouldn't have built 50 cruisers and 4 battleships to counter them, instead being able to funnel them into more aircraft and destroyer escorts.

>>2425733
the Brits had so many ships because the U.S. was giving them ships, 50 destroyers in one deal

>>2425733

The honest answer is that in order to win the war, Germany would have needed to have more ships of all types. Germany would have needed to have a much larger surface fleet AND more u-boats than they had in real life. In short, they simply couldn't have won with the resources that they had available at the time.

>>2425812
50 destroyers were all outdated junks that were more trouble than they were worth. The Destroyers for Bases deal was a political move if anything, and possibly a way to trick Germans into firing at a USN ship.

>>2425825


Even that probably wouldn't have been enough. Given that the British control pretty much all the places to base aircraft in the Atlantic, they can stick as many naval patrollers and bombers as they want, wheras the Germans can't, whatever the overall air situation.

There's a reason that most of the submarine kills of convoy ships happened in the center of the northern atlantic routes, at the furthest point from the airbases.

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>>2425750
>>2425825

Germany had a very good chance of winning an air war against the UK, they had no chance of defeating them on the high seas.

The Kriegsmarine was worse than useless, as it brought nothing to fight while consuming a huge amount of resources needed elsewhere.

>>2425984
>Germany had a very good chance of winning an air war against the UK,


That's right except for the part where it isn't and the Germans had no chance at all of winning an air war.

>>2425206
kek

>>2425984
>Germany had a very good chance of winning an air war against the UK
>can't even win the Battle of Britain

[laughing hurricane pilots]

>>2425984
>Germany had a very good chance of winning an air war against the UK,
They had no chance of winning an air war against the UK. They also had no hope of building and maintaining a meaningful strategic bombing force.

>>2425984
more

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>>2425984

>Germany had a very good chance of winning an air war against the UK

Is there any ship more aesthetic than the Deutschlands? Only the littorio class comes close

>>2425984

>The Kriegsmarine was worse than useless, as it brought nothing to fight while consuming a huge amount of resources needed elsewhere.

The war would have been over a lot quicker if the Kriegsmarine hadn't been constantly raiding Allied merchant fleets. It was all just delaying to inevitable, but to say they brought nothing to the fight is simply wrong.

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>>2425996
>>2426192
>>2426202
>>2426324

And this while pissing away untold amounts of resources on a pointless surface fleet that did fuck all throughout the war.

>>2425733

It's a false choice based on a false premise. The Germans didn't lose the war because they built the wrong stuff. They lost the war because their capacity to produce stuff was just not enough compared to their competition. In order to win the war, Germany would have needed:

1. A larger, more capable surface fleet
2. A larger, more capable u-boat force
3. A larger, more capable air force

In order to win the war Germany simply needed more.....of everything. You can certainly point to strategic mistakes here and there, but arguably the biggest mistake was starting an unwinnable war in the first place.

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>>2426332
>the Kriegsmarine hadn't been constantly raiding Allied merchant fleets

And this while pissing away untold amounts of resources on a pointless surface fleet that did fuck all throughout the war.

>>2426435
aircraft production numbers propped up by huge numbers of single-engine fighters, and by production of engine-less frames towards the end of the war.

>>2426435

I'm not sure why this is supposed to be impressive. Almost every year on that chart has Britain listed as producing more aircraft.

>>2426443

Tirpitz tied up an insane amount of British resources simply by existing. It might not have had a very impressive career, but it definitely did more than nothing.

>>2426465
Tirpitz spend more time in a dry lock being repaired than raiding convoys or sitting in norway being attacked by planes (and then being repair)

>>2426500

That....doesn't actually contradict anything that I wrote.

>>2426512
more resources were spend on that ship by Germany than they were spend by the UK to sink it.

>>2426514
Nope. The British had to keep a large force to keep the Tirpitz in port. They had to continually send bombers to attack it - bombers that would have been better put to use elsewhere.

By just having the ship in Norway, it forced the British to keep enough forces on hand at all times in case the Tirpitz tried to pull another Bismarck.

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>>2426465
>Almost every year on that chart has Britain listed as producing more aircraft.

Almost every year, the Brits were getting assloads of material and support from the U.S.

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>>2426465
>Tirpitz tied up an insane amount of British resources simply by existing.

“While stationed in Norway, Tirpitz was also intended to be used to intercept Allied convoys to the Soviet Union, and two such missions were attempted in 1942.

In September 1943, Tirpitz, along with the battleship Scharnhorst, bombarded Allied positions on Spitzbergen, the only time the ship used her main battery in an offensive role.

Shortly thereafter, the ship was damaged in an attack by British mini-submarines and subsequently subjected to a series of large-scale air raids.

On 12 November 1944, British Lancaster bombers equipped with 12,000-pound (5,400kg) "Tallboy" bombs scored two direct hits and a near miss which caused the ship to capsize rapidly.”

Wow, what a good investment that was!…

>>2426435
>shit out masses of single-engine fighters without engines half the time in 44
>can't even match 42 USA

[laughing yanks]

>>2426522
>They had to continually send bombers to attack it - bombers that would have been better put to use elsewhere.
what are force of 50-100 bombers compare to the huge numbers they got by late war?
>By just having the ship in Norway, it forced the British to keep enough forces on hand at all times in case the Tirpitz tried to pull another Bismarck.
the Tirpitz would never leave Norway, the RN had a total dominance on sea and by late war the uboots were already stop being a problem like in 1940 thanks to radar

>>2426530

There is only so much you can do when you're vastly outnumbered.

>>2426530
>Scharnhorst
best boy tho

poor fella

>>2426530
>missing the fact it forced the RN to hold several BBs in the North Atlantic for most of the war when it could be using them in the Med/Far East
What part of fleet in being do you not understand?

>>2426539
U-boat effectiveness peaked in early 43, but they were still a problem through the war because there were SO FUCKING MANY.

>>2426549

Building more U-boats instead of battleships early in the war probably would have been the right way to go. Churchill always said that throughout the whole war, the only thing that truly scared him were U-boats. The two Scharnhorst-class battleships cost close to 150 million Reichsmarks apiece, and the two Bismarck-class ships cost nearly 250 million Reichsmarks each for this amount of money, the Germans could have built more than a hundred additional Type VII U-boats. That being said, saying that the surface fleet accomplished nothing is simply wrong.

It's just a matter of having limited time and resources. The US was able to have a very powerful surface fleet and a large submarine navy at the same time. Germany was forced to make very unpleasant compromises due to not having that same production capacity. Factories were the real super-weapons of WW2.

Germany would have been better off building a time machine than wasting valuable resources building this useless fleet. Britian would surely fall if the Germans won the time war.

>>2426578
>Germans build a time machine
[DOCTOR INTERRUPT]

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>>2426549
>What part of fleet in being do you not understand?

The war with Japan was a distant 2nd fiddle and even more so, once the U.S. stepped in.

That 50,000+ tons of steel (not to mention all the man-hours, fuel, etc.) that was the Tirpitz, could have been FAR better spent on subs and tanks.

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>>2426541
>There is only so much you can do when you're vastly outnumbered.

Indeed, like not wasting resources on weapons systems that don't help you win the war...

>>2426590
Not talking about Japan, talking about the Med. With the RN free to dedicate the full surface fleet there with the US handling the Far East, they'd clobber the Regia Marina, take the Med, and ruin Rommel's day even faster.

Type XXIs were still having technical problems in 45 and only 2 of them ever got patrols. Maybe if they didn't build a shitton of U-boats that didn't work they might have done better.

>>2426598

I certainly hope you're not implying that long-range bombers would have been a better investment. At least Tirpitz was able to function as a Fleet-In-Being. Bombers would have been absolutely useless for Germany.

>>2426590
>Tirpitz, could have been FAR better spent on subs and tanks.
why triggers me more are the Dora and the other railway guns

but then the real problem are not the tanks. but the crews

>>2426598
But a fleet in being is literally a better option than shitting away your prewar production on a battle of attrition? If you're out-produced you won't be able to win the attrition, so it's better to use your limited naval production to tie up the enemy's.

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>>2426617

HITLER: “Build me ze blue-water surface fleet!”
SPEER: “But why, mein Fuhrer?”
HITLER: “Because then we’ll be… a fleet-in-being!”
SPEER: “And… then, mein Fuhrer?”
HITLER: “Well… then the overwhelmingly more powerful British navy will have to keep a couple of it’s literally hundreds of ships around to keep an eye on us!”
SPEER: “Jawohl, mein Fuhrer!”

>>2426652

And yet it still makes more sense than your bomber idea.

>>2426569
>Building more U-boats instead of battleships early in the war probably would have been the right way to go.
Battleships were started before the war. If Germany makes the decision to build Uboats in 1936, that's when the war would begin.

>>2426598
>whining about weapons that would win the war
>posting bombers

The Luftwaffe bomber fleet was effectively useless by the end of 1943 because there weren't enough fighters to protect them.

>>2426672

So you're saying that Germany can't build any U-boats until the war starts?

>>2426683

Any attempt to bomb Britain was a lost cause.

>>2426685
Not even Britain - even the Soviets had enough fighters to make it almost impossible for Luftwaffe bombers to do anything even if they were being babysitted by fighters.

If you look at close air support units that the Luftwaffe had, you'll see that by 1943 they were starting to replace all their Stukas with Fw 190s.

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>>2426683
> discussing history
> whining

Why are you even here?

But the fact remains that the Germans could not effectively strike the UK (or the U.S.S.R.) as they had no effective heavy bombers and escort fighters. Meanwhile, the Germans surface fleet that cost them fuck loads of material, man-power and money, effectively did nothing throughout the war.

"The surface forces can do no more than show that they know how to die gallantly."
— Grand Admiral Erich Raeder —

>>2424564
He might have not have been the smart, as it turns out

>>2426704

>But the fact remains that the Germans could not effectively strike the UK (or the U.S.S.R.) as they had no effective heavy bombers and escort fighters.

It wouldn't have made any difference if they had those things. Bombing was a losing game.

>>2426578
or just go back in time and off the first anglos in doggerland

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>>2426700
>almost impossible for Luftwaffe bombers to do anything
>>2426718
>Bombing was a losing game.

Except that's exactly what the UK and U.S. did to Germany.

>>2426744

>Except that's exactly what the UK and U.S. did to Germany.

And it was completely ineffective for the most part.

>>2424564
He didnt know war tactics

>>2426744

With hugely more production than the Germans were able to bring to bear, and OH YEAH, IT DIDN'T WIN THE WAR ALONE and required ground invasion to end the war.


Hell, strategic bombing didn't even absolutely reduce German production, it just kept it from increasing faster than it historically did. So yes, bombing is a losing game. You know what's a winning game? Having your tanks and artillery and boots on the ground stomping through your enemy's country.

>>2426744
The difference being the Allies had more than enough resources to throw at the bombing campaign and much less of a ground war. And even then, with the Allies regularly launching thousand-bomber raids on German cities, the impact was far less tangible than anyone had hoped. Production numbers didn't drop all that much, and the impact is better measured in the amount of resources the Luftwaffe had to devote to the West and the number of fighters downed in defense of the Reich than anything else.

The Luftwaffe, meanwhile, had always had a tactical focus with its bombing force, and German industry was struggling to just keep up with attrition of the aging machines it had, let alone build up a massive new force of an entirely new class (or more realistically, multiple classes, as they needed escorts) of aircraft.

What the Luftwaffe needed more than anything was pilots, and nothing could really fix that short of a major cultural shift that Nazi Germany wouldn't be capable of.

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>>2426757
>You know what's a winning game? Having your tanks and artillery and boots on the ground stomping through your enemy's country.

And you can't do that if you don't control the skies.

>>2426757
>>2426777

There wasn't a single instance of effective strategic bombing in WW2 that didn't involve nukes. On the balance of things, bomber campaigns were just a great way to lose lots of pilots and kill a few civilians in the process.

>>2426782

Bombers can't control the skies.

>>2426782

>And you can't do that if you don't control the skies.


You control the skies with fighters, interceptors, and to a lesser extent smaller attack craft as they put a lot more pressure on the opposing air defense assets than heavy bombers.

They can be useful once you already do control the skies, but they don't really help you win it. Not to mention that you DO have successful ground offensives in absence of air superiority. The 1942 North African offensives, or the 1943 Soviet offensives.


>>2426785

Try the Transport Plan.

>>2426785
Depends what you consider to be effective. The bombing of Germany had a lot of "soft" consequences - people fled cities, resources better used elsewhere were diverted to defend the skies over Germany, and experienced men were killed over Germany. The strategic bombing did fail at its original goal - to grind German production to a halt, or at least slow it down.

But it was devastatingly to the Luftwaffe in the long run. Countless pilots were killed in defense of the Reich, draining resources from the Eastern Front. Even the Luftwaffe's second greatest ace, Gunther Rall, was downed over Germany and put out of action for the remainder of the war less than ten sorties into his career there. And meanwhile, the Eastern Front was horrifically undermanned. The Luftwaffe threw all of its available resources into Kursk, leaving the skies open over the rest of the front, and by 1944 the Luftwaffe could only spare a single fighter gruppe and a single schlachtgeschwader gruppe to defend the Crimea against roughly 1,000 Soviet aircraft.

If it weren't for the Allied bombing drawing so many resources away from the Eastern Front, the Luftwaffe may have been able to hold onto air superiority for a bit longer.

>>2426794

>Try the Transport Plan.

I accept this refutation.

But I maintain that most bombing campaigns were a waste of resources, more inspired by a primal desire for revenge then by practical concerns. And that equally applies to campaigns by both sides.

>>2426802

Bombers didn't break the Luftwaffe. Fighters like the P-51 did. And then bombers only became viable after the majority of the Luftwaffe was already in flames.

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>>2426804

If you want something, at least on the British side, I would recommend pic related. It goes quite a lot into the interplay of personality and different interests as to why Britain ended up with the doctrine it had.

But quite a bit of it wasn't exactly a desire for revenge, but a stupid kind of terrified optimism. WW1 style trench warfare was enormously traumatic to pretty much all involved, and you see the military development of France, Germany, and the UK alike all coming up with ways to try to not have to stand in rows for four years pouring artillery on each other.

Strategic bombing was conceived of as a way of sidestepping land war entirely; if you can break their morale with some bombing raids directly on the civilians, you sidestep the need for even more enormously destructive land war. So they sunk an enormous amount of resources into Bomber Command, it was one of the few things that kept increasing budgets during the interwar period when everyone else had to tighten their proverbial belts, and once they were committed, it was really hard to get uncomitted and try something else even when it became very clear that it couldn't deliver on its promises.

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>>2426785
>There wasn't a single instance of effective strategic bombing in WW2 that didn't involve nukes.

Alright, I'm out of here.

>>2426815
What bombers did was force the Luftwaffe to pool resources there. Fighters may have downed the Luftwaffe's fighters, but the Luftwaffe's fighters wouldn't have been there if not for the bombers. And fighters weren't the only strategic pieces. Thousands of guns were stuck looking into the skies, along with millions of rounds of ammunition and the men to crew these weapons. Radar sets and operators were stuck on the Kammhuber line instead of bbeing sent east where they were needed, as were experienced pilots.

And the sheer terror caused by the bombers made the impact even greater - cities were hoarding air defense resources, regardless of their strategic value, for fears of becoming another Hamburg.

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>>2425135

>>2424564
because he was a fucking retard who couldnt command his way out of a paper bag

>>2426750
You must be joking...

>>2426802
>resources better used elsewhere were diverted to defend the skies over Germany
This. After the big bombing raids of 1943 the german air defence of the reich claimed an enormous amount of resources. More than the russian front got.

the idea was to lay low and strike unexpectedly, draw attention, leg it then strike again

disrupting shipping lines, causing materials to arrive late, sink merchants, avoid confrontation with the royal navy

in theory it works, but the graf spee was a bit too effective and so it left traces to be found by a british task force

in theory it is a brilliant plan actually
you occupy forces without being caught and sink tonnage at a moderate level without losses

however when you are greedy (stopping merchants in quick succession, board them, take the sailors as prisoners, then sink the ship) you are taking risks and the it can easily cost you your ship
as it did with the graf spee

>>2426684
If Germany builds a bunch of U-Boats, Britain will no longer be following a policy of appeasement. Do I need to connect the dots for you?

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Because he was an autistic dumbass who thought he could win wars by doing what he wanted.

>>2427877
>in theory it is a brilliant plan actually
Actually, commerce raiding is a terrible plan in theory, and was conclusively refuted by Mahan then in practice by WW1.
Tying up a disproportionate amount of enemy forces doesn't mean shit when the enemy control the seas and 90% of their shipping gets through.

>>2427910

U-boat construction was permitted under the Anglo-German Naval Agreement.

>>2425984
Hahahahahaha

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Because he had his mind on his thing ====D

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This thing ^

>>2426684
Well yeah, countries like Finland built U-boat for Germany before the war.

>>2427472

The Allies during World War II dropped in excess of 2.5 million tons of bombs on Europe without this being directly decisive for the war. These bombings accomplished very little besides wrecking a great many historic cities and killing loads of civilians. And before you start calling me a Wehraboo, I fully acknowledge that the Luftwaffe started the trend by normalizing the idea that it was okay to bomb cities indiscriminately.

Smaller, more tactical aircraft like the P-51 and P-47 had a much bigger impact in terms of actually defeating the German military. Also, note that the Soviets were also able to fight all the way to Berlin without having any large bomber aircraft at all.

>>2426435
Britain didn't just outproduced Germany in aircraft, but also in tanks.

>>2428588

Tanks were one of the few things Britain didn't outproduce Germany in, anon.

>>2426324
Germany almost did win the air war until the blitz started.

They were destroying UK airfields and planes and pilots faster than the UK could put them up and lucky for the british they started to bomb London instead of military targets.

There was a large chunk of british politicans who wanted peace.

Peace for the UK in 1940 would have been extremely generous and wouldn't have meant occupation or loss of land, probably just a return of the pre-WWI german colonies.

Considering it how bad France got beaten there was little reason to keep fighting the war.

>>2428633

So in other words, they were doing great until they bought into the strategic bombing meme.

>>2428633

.t retard

You know, if the airfield damage continued (We will, for the moment, ignore the fact that Germany could not keep up the bombing campaign indefinitely, and even if the air assets are destroyed, that doesn't mean the British will surrender, or even that a channel invasion is feasible), the British can always do something radical, like say, bring FG 10 or 12 down south, or rebase FG 11 somewhere out of Me-109 range.

>There was a large chunk of british politicans who wanted peace.

Backbenchers don't count anon. And the one time you had a testing of waters for a vote of no confidence over Churchill (way after the Blitz, by the way), it got crushed. Part of that, by the way, is because Germany's recent treaty breaking left people skeptical of German promises, and there was the fact that Germany couldn't actually do all that much to the UK.

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>>2428593
if you count purely tanks yes, STUG III are not tanks.

>>2428578
Well, its debatable who started it.

1. Lone german pilot flies several miles past his target and mistakes London for his air factory, nobody dies
2. Churchill calls bomber command and tells them to bomb berlin that night
3. Bomber command objects saying if they do that the germans will respond by actually bombing London and civilians will die
4. Churchill doesn't care they are losing the air race and it would take pressure off plane production
5. Hitler ignores attack n berlin
6. Churchill does it again every night for a week
7. Hitler gives speech in Reichstag calling for revenge thinking the public will turn on Churchill
8. Hitler pisses off British public and they go from almost wanting peace to never surrender

>>2428651
>>2428651
The blitz turned public opinion in favor of war and the year after the blitz the USSR was in the war and the situation was drastically different.

Germany wasn't asking for a surrender it was asking for a negotiated settlement and was willing to make concessions to the UK.

>>2424564
To raid british traffic, also supposedly to back a pro nazi coup in argentina

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>>2428136

Commerce raiding was the only reason that Germany was able to hold out for as long as it did. The greatest damage to the British war economy had been done through the destruction of merchant shipping by submarines and aircraft. Attacking merchant fleets was much more effective than trying to bomb the UK. The Kriegsmarine simply didn't have enough ships to make it work. In 1939, Germany had 2 fast battleships, 5 heavy cruisers, 6 light cruisers, 22 destroyers, and 20 torpedo boats. That's not nearly enough to stop shipping across the entire north Atlantic.

>>2425135
Kek

>>2428691
dude there were already pro Nazis in Argentina, the 1943 coup kick them out

>>2426602
If this is going to be about what should have been done, then they never should have made the coastal sea defense system and invested that into fast response tanks and aircraft to stop an invasion force. Not to mention japan should have simply attacked Russia from the east rather than give the US cassus belli. Cut off supply lines to the Russia, shorten the eastern campaign and divert forces in the west to the east.

>>2429770
>. Not to mention japan should have simply attacked Russia from the east rather than give the US cassus belli.


And get their asses kicked again? You do know that Soviet troop levels went UP from June to december 1941, not down, right?

>>2429777

Not him, but attacking Russia to help out Hitler would have made a fuck-load more sense than bringing the US into the war. I almost feel like "how could the Axis win WW2" should almost be a stickied thread.

>Germany builds more u-boats early in the war
>Japan doesn't bomb pearl harbor
>Germany never tried tries to bomb London
>Japan builds Yamato and Musashi as fleet carriers instead of battleships

>>2429845

>Not him, but attacking Russia to help out Hitler would have made a fuck-load more sense than bringing the US into the war.

If you start with the (idiotic) assumption that Japan is there to help Germany out, maybe, and even then probably not. If you start with the much more rational assumption that Japan is looking for an oil source, and the only realistic one within their reach is the DEI, which Roosevelt has very clearly stated that he will defend, it makes a lot more sense.

>Germany builds more u-boats early in the war

Meaningless. U-boats are the insurgency of naval war. They're useless for attacking things that actually fight back, like planes and warships. They're only really good for attacking things that don't have a lot of guns, a la cargo vessels. Once the British worked out the bugs in their convoy defense systems, more u-boats just means more u-boats get sunk.

>Japan doesn't bomb pearl harbor

Will not keep the U.S. out of the war indefinitely. Not to mention that Lend Lease had already started for the British, Soviets, and Chinese before the open war.

>Germany never tried tries to bomb London

So they sit around with their thumbs up their asses and hope that Britain will go away? They can't make a sealion work, what with no sealift worth mentioning and no amphibious experience. That leaves some sort of morale attack, and protip, you need to bomb cities to have even a prayer of that working

>Japan builds Yamato and Musashi as fleet carriers instead of battleships

So now we have 3 Shinanos instead of one. So what? It was hardly a tide-turner, hell, they wouldn't even use it as a main fleet carrier, just as a floating aircraft storage bin.

>>2428480
>U-boat construction was permitted under the Anglo-German Naval Agreement.
It was restricted.
>(f) In the matter of submarines, however, Germany, while not exceeding the ratio of 35:100 in respect of total tonnage, shall have the right to possess a submarine tonnage equal to the total submarine tonnage possessed by the Members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. The German Government, however, undertake that, except in the circumstances indicated in the immediately following sentence, Germany's submarine tonnage shall not exceed 45 percent.

>>2429874

Britain didn't really work out how to effectively counter U-boats until mid-late war. Early in the war, they really had no effective way to counter them. There is a window of opportunity there for a larger u-boat campaign to be devastating. This would involve taking all the resources used to build Bismark and Tirpitz and making u-boats instead.

The Shinano sucked because they tried to take a battleship that was already 1/2 complete and turn it into a carrier. If you designed and built the ships as fleet carriers from the start, it would have been a much better ship. And Japan definitely needed more carriers during the war.

>Will not keep the U.S. out of the war indefinitely

Isolationism in the US was strong until pearl harbor. Keeping the US out of the war another year or two would still have made a big difference.

>So they sit around with their thumbs up their asses and hope that Britain will go away?

Use u-boats to attack merchant shipping and use planes to attack harbors. Do not attack cities. The enigma codes also needs to be in there somewhere. Preventing the codes from being broken is also very important for any potential Axis victory scenario.

>>2429983
>Early in the war, they really had no effective way to counter them. There is a window of opportunity there for a larger u-boat campaign to be devastating

Not really, no, the U-boats were never crippling, and couldn't be. Read this. http://jmss.org/jmss/index.php/jmss/article/view/236/251

Not to mention that even things like ship construction to other types of ship construction aren't infinitely fungible and you can't just take "DA RESOURCES" used to finish up ships like the Tirpitz and spit out a couple of dozen more u-boats with them.

>The Shinano sucked because they tried to take a battleship that was already 1/2 complete and turn it into a carrier. If you designed and built the ships as fleet carriers from the start, it would have been a much better ship.

Yeah, unlike say, the Kaga, Akagi, any of the Pre-war American carriers, or the other ones that were actually finished battlecruisers converted to carriers and became very successful ones. No, the reason the Shinano sucked is that after you hit that maximum deck length you need for your planes to takeoff, bigger doesn't actually help you all that much more when it comes to carriers.

>And Japan definitely needed more carriers during the war.


And airplanes, and pilots, and land troops, and everything else. 2 extra Shinanos or even slightly better ones are just going to get crushed by the 20+ Essex class carriers America spat out during the war.
1/2

why can't the continentals ever manage to field proper competent navies?

that's a more interesting question

>>2429983

2/2/


>Isolationism in the US was strong until pearl harbor.

Isolationism in the U.S. was strong primarily because it was also assumed that the Allies were going to win without U.S. help. http://ibiblio.org/pha/Gallup/Gallup%201941.htm

You'll notice persistent favoring the UK over places like Italy and Germany, a notion that the U.S. should intervene to keep them from getting facerolled, but thinking that they can win it on their own.

>Use u-boats to attack merchant shipping and use planes to attack harbors

And when they ship things to harbors outside of fighter escort range? You know, like they were doing already?


> The enigma codes also needs to be in there somewhere.

Again, not really.

>Preventing the codes from being broken is also very important for any potential Axis victory scenario.

You're a fucking idiot, you know that? Fact is, and none of your dinky little changes alters this, that the Axis were enormously outbuilt by the Allies. In a total war footing, they lose, pure and simple. What they needed, more than an intelligence coup here and a tactical shift there, was an ability to capitalize their early victories and turn them into political concessions. They, however, did not have this, and the course that Germany especially took for rearming cost them that path.

File: 1486812335581.gif (2MB, 500x500px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 500x500px

>>2430038

>No, the reason the Shinano sucked is that after you hit that maximum deck length you need for your planes to takeoff, bigger doesn't actually help you all that much more when it comes to carriers.

And if you had designed the ship as a carrier from the beginning instead of converting it from a partially finished battleship, that obviously would have been taken into account. See how that works?

>2 extra Shinanos or even slightly better ones are just going to get crushed by the 20+ Essex class carriers America spat out during the war.

Those don't come into play until around 1942 and America's entry into the war will be delay by the fact that Japan isn't attacking Pearl Harbor, so it would be at an even later date.

>>2430038
>No, the reason the Shinano sucked is that after you hit that maximum deck length you need for your planes to takeoff, bigger doesn't actually help you all that much more when it comes to carriers.
The Shinano sucked because it was too slow to launch aircraft, had a puny deck, and much of its displacement was wasted for battleshipy things.

>>2425812
the british still had vastly more ships than the germans even without the destroyers for bases deal.

that deal was useful in that it gave the british more hulls for ASW convo duty, but the destroyers given were shit and reached the height of their usefulness in being used as suicide bombs

>>2426435
yeah, but they had fewer pilots and aces aside shittier pilots to boot, and no fucking fuel

>>2428633
>They were destroying UK airfields and planes and pilots faster than the UK could put them up

the managed to outpace RAF replacement rates for a whole 2 weeks, while losing planes and aircrew more rapidly than they could be replaced throughout.

>lucky for the british they started to bomb London instead of military targets.
why lucky? the RAF wasnt in danger of defeat, although the concentration on london did make shooting down the luftwaffe easier as interception gt easier

>>2426525
>You're not allowed to count for ability to get resources for uh.... reasons.

>>2429845
>Don't start idiotic wars you can't win, don't put ideology ahead of geopolitics.

>>2424564
It was just a prank gone too far, bro.