New German Destroyer...price gouging?

WallyM3

I love seeing long-lost archival footage....

By the way, I love the Tirpitz...

BTW, I meant to ask earlier.

Do you have a German ship build recommendation, Manny?

Yes, the Tirpitz...

You've lost some weight, I see.

Very good likeness of Doentiz really - especially after he finished his tour at Spandau. And I guess if you want a styrene model of an object whose sole purpose was to serve as an expensive target for expensive British bombers than Tirpitz has no real competition.

Raeder must have spent the war on meth. Bismarck, Tirpitz, Gneisenau, Scharnhorst and all of heavy cruisers and "Panzerschiffe" would have made for a really scary "fleet in being" if stationed in Norway. Would have driven the RN (not to mention the RAF) absolutely crazy. It was almost like he wanted to prove his point that the German Navy wasn't ready for war to squander or risk those ships piecemeal.

Eric

the german navy was not supposed to be ready til about 1944-45. hitler messed that up by going to war early.

I've read that he was a pretty tough boss.

But it seems to me he had to. He died in 1945.

ddp59

the german navy was not supposed to be ready til about 1944-45. hitler messed that up by going to war early.

I seem to recall something about him ordering his capital ships to stay near home and that might have been because of the loss of Bismark? He often made decisions that handcuffed his top officers strategy wise. I could be totally wrong about the details but I have seen something to that effect on historical documentaries.

Hitler once made the admission (I wish that I could find it for citation right now) that he had great courage on land (tactically and strategically), but was a complete coward at sea. (I am paraphrasing, but my recollection is that it captures the nuance.)

That would explain much.

Little historical trivia to end my part in this thread. The use of German surface ships reflected the odd command relationship between the German armed services (Wehrmacht is technically correct for the lot) created by Hitler in 1938. The Army was the hundred pound guerilla; Luftwaffe was Goering's sandbox before the war and the Navy was odd man out. The revolution in November 1918 that ended any attempt to continue WWI had started in the German Navy and the fleet never lived it down. Consequently, its officers were loyal to the regime to a fault. The more powerful Hitler became, the more Nazi became the service. (Doenitz as Fuhrer in 1945 was not so strange really.) Hitler liked that, but never really knew what to do with the fleet which, ironically, he had encouraged after 1936. It's true that Raeder felt betrayed by war in 1939 because "Plan Z" was just beginning. (Hitler, in my view, was absolutely right to start war in 1939 - by then all potential enemies were beginning rearmament that would have left Germany broke and on a limb in 1945. A lot of historians gloss over it, but it was very obvious to heads of the German Army's economic section - Thomas and others - as well as the financial whiz kids trying to pay for the Nazi's "guns and butter" economic policies that the German economy was a chaotic mess. Hitler was telling them, and not so indirectly, not to worry because Germany wouldn't be paying anyone for any debts. Hitler also had a shark's instinct for blood. His opponents were weak in 1939: if there was ever a time to rewrite history that was it.) When war did come the U-boat arm had been neglected because the Kreigsmarine, like most navies, greatly overestimated the effectiveness of ASDIC. And Hitler was assuring everyone there was going to be a short war. The fun was on.

The German war effort was run by OKW (Armed forces command), the Luftwaffe (in practice independent until the failure over Britain) and OKH (Army command). Hitler commanded the lot. What was missing was a German equivalent of General Marshall or Alanbrooke or even STAVKA. Hitler played that role. Until 1942 he didn't run the war day by day but was always there to intervene when generals got into a quarrel. (His role in the Sedan offensive was typical. Very important to remember that every single strategic decision ratified by Hitler had both opponents and supporters. During the Stalingrad campaign this began to change and Hitler started to run things at a micro-level, often with catastrophic results.) Because Plan Z wasn't there, and because the U-boats didn't start to show their teeth until 1940, the Navy's and OKW's role (except for the brilliant operation in Norway) was pretty limited. Raeder of course should have recalled all German warships home in August 1939 but it seemed that some commerce raiding was the only role possible - it was unthinkable for the German surface fleet to do nothing even if badly outnumbered. Then comes victory in France and Hitler's assurances of a short war sound good. OKW took this moment to make a play for a major role in the war. OKW chief General Jodl with Rader's support (Goering would have gone along too - he alone was afraid of a war in Russia) urged that Germany proceed against England by taking Gibralter and taking the Mediterranean basin along with the Mideastern oil fields. HItler wanted to conquer Russia - after that was done, the Med was easy meat. OKH favored Hitler. So OKW says "Jawohl", supports Barbarossa and dedicates efforts to the U-boat war and helping Rommel. In this atmosphere the German BBs just coming on line, Bismarck and Tirpitz, were weapons without a defined mission. And, if the war was short, there was no real role to play. So Raeder cooked up these idiot raids into the Atlantic (Scharnhorst and Gneisenau caused some serious trouble in one) until the Bismarck debacle. If the German fleet would have gathered and sat in anchor - exactly what it should have done - it would have looked as though the Navy was afraid: unthinkable with memories of 1918 very fresh. See, nobody could really say "well, let's get ready for the long haul." Because, to admit that the war was long was to admit that Hitler had made a monumental blunder and that Germany was facing doom. Mentally tough and physically very dangerous - made you sound defeatist. (No wonder OKW was filled with plotters against Hitler like Canaris, as was OKH - these people knew how bad the pickle was after the defeat at Moscow.)  The upshot was that Hitler made Doenitz his darling and forgot about rest of the Navy outside of its active role in the Baltic. (As it was, serving in the German surface fleet was very dangerous duty: take a look of a list of German warships sunk in the war sometime. And those ships were sinking in cold water.) Not a way to run a railroad. Couldn't haven't to a nicer bunch of guys. But Tirpitz was there building its record as ace bomb dodger.

Eric

Perhaps this is a wasted stern shot, but I'd like to pose the question: could Germany's Naval (economic, ship, personnel) been better have devoted to a greater preponderance of light Cruisers (and no larger) and lighter surface vessels?

(This implies, to my thinking, a diversion to production of U-Boats, etc.)

I don't mean to exclude the contribution of something along the line of Capital ships, but, quite frankly, what good did they do the US even in the Pacific?

I think the quote was "hero on land, coward at sea", though it was really "gambler on land; too much of a control-freak to let his admirals control the sea"

Eric, wasn't Hitler micro-managing well before Stalingrad? I thought it was his 'don't take risks' orders that prevented Bismarck and Eugen from persuing Prince of Wales.

My memory and my understanding of German idiom are quite faulty.

If the notion of the thought is not reasonably communicated, I withdraw.

The gist of it was well communicated. The gambler/control-freak is only my opinion

Trivia lovers. Good to see.

It's self-evident that the Germans should have built a fleet based on smaller vessels and enough of them to dominate the Baltic. And built more U-boats. (More trivia: once France fell and the US began rearmament, the Battle of the Atlantic was effectively over. All Doenitz's spreadsheets that showed a German victory presupposed a level of ship building about the same as in 1940. By 1943 US Liberty ships were coming out so fast, that the U-boats were a pin-***. They were never a war winner - unless they caused the collapse of Churchill's government and that wasn't going to happen after Pearl Harbor. Clay Blair's exhaustive history of the U-boat war makes this point with powerful clarity.) But history is very rarely tidy. We know what Hitler wanted to do - rewrite world history in one lifetime - but that doesn't mean he had a precise blueprint. Germany was building up its Navy furiously after Munich (despite a treaty Hitler signed with the UK in 1935). Why? Ships fit into "guns and butter" model nicely. Also very clear that Hitler really wanted to scare the UK into neutrality. It's very clear he hopes of exactly this through the Danzig crisis. After the fall of France, Hitler seemed to have assumed the Brits would "see reason." (We know now they very nearly did. Churchill prevented a separate peace - barely.) Always a great question about Sea Lion. Was Hitler really serious about shipping his army across the Channel in river barges? We'll never know thanks to Fighter Command.  But if Hitler hadn't poured some big marks into the Navy during rearmament there would have been no invasion of Norway and no talk at all about Sea Lion.

Hitler once said he was a "coward at sea." Hitler did a lot of talking like that. The Norwegian operation was not the mark of a naval coward.  Operation Rhine is well documented. (Don't know what it is about battleships but two of the great memoirs of WWII concern them: "Battleship Bismarck" by Burkard Baron Von Mullenheim-Rechberg and Mitsuru Yoshida's remarkable "Requiem for Battleship Yamato". Both books were authored by surviving junior officers.) Raeder was desperate to do anything to help the cause and sent Bismarck and Prinz Eugen for a raid: Prinz Eugen was actually supposed to do the raiding. Then everyone would join Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in Brest. Lutjens wanted to delay things until Tirpitz was ready, but the Wehrmacht was about ready to clobber Crete and it wasn't exactly a secret that things were brewing on the Russian border. So Raeder ordered an immediate sortie. Hitler allowed it, but agreed with Raeder than contact with British warships should be avoided if at all possible. Once the ships left port, micro-managing from Berlin or France wasn't possible even if they'd wanted to. Naval battles are like that: the enemy has a lot to say about the narrative.  In the Denmark Straight Bismarck was very seriously damaged. When Prince of Wales retreated behind smoke, they had two cruisers with them and heaven knows what over the horizon. Lutjens from that moment was desperate to get to France - as he should have been. Had he done so it would have been medals and girls galore for everyone on the Bismarck, especially Lutjens. In the end, the German Navy handed Churchill exactly what he needed - a spectacular public relations coup. Better than the Graf Spee. Rader was an idiot. Of course he had hung around with Scheer and Scheer had hung around with the real Adm Tiripitz and Tirpitz was a four-square loonie. And Doenitz was sitting there with a smirk - he knew where the resources were going to go after the Bismarck debacle. 

In theory Hitler could have prevented the operation. He did express doubts. But one thing Hitler did like was aggressive spirit. He was also very good at underestimating the opposition. One thing Raeder didn't count on was the fact that the RN would strip every convoy in two oceans and send the entire British Navy after Bismarck. So Hitler bit his lip. The German surface fleet was neutered after Operation Rhine because Hitler didn't want to risk the public relations bath of losing his whole Navy in a week. Ironically, the same thing happened to German paratroopers after Crete. Frankly, at this period, nobody in power in Berlin was thinking about anything other than Russia.

Hitler could be very aggressive. He could also play it "by the book." The best example of this was during Barbarossa. We can see now that ordering AG Center's panzers to Kiev was a huge blunder and that Guderian and Bock were right to plead for a move on Moscow. But at the time, the "book" said destroy the Russian field army. Hitler and many others who supported his decision hoped that after a Russian defeat at Kiev, the Red Army would break. Too bad for the little corporal, but there were more men gathering during the squandered month than were lost at Kiev. The real gutsy move would have been an immediate drive on Moscow: AG Center would have had two flanks in the air for over 200 miles. Some generals thought Guderian in particular was cracked. And it would have been a gamble. But that was the point. When the USSR didn't crack early, Hitler did have to gamble. It's ironic that Germany lost WWII because Hitler played it close to the vest. The 1942 offensive was also strangely conservative - although this time around Hitler had few supporters. His generals wanted to have a big, ugly slugging match at Moscow: a gigantic Borodino. They were right: if the German qualitative superiority was still there, the Red Army could have possibly cracked. (It had done so in 1917.)  Hitler decided to "hit em where they aint" and strike the weakest point of the Russian line. The German victory at Kharkov in May only egged him on. But Case Blue only made sense if the Russians were stupid and fought as close to the front as possible. They didn't - instead they traded space for time, and effectively. (The 1941 campaign was nothing like this. Stalin didn't trade space for time, he lost space because the Red Army nearly was annihilated.)  But Hitler claimed his generals didn't understand economics. Ok. How was he going to get the oil from the Black Sea to Germany, especially if the Russians demolished the fields? Did he really think a fall/winter offensive would work in the mountains around Baku? And above all, who was going guard that enormous northern flank. It's clear to historians today what was clear to Manstein in late 1942: the Stalingrad offensive had not only been a bad play, the Wehrmacht had come within whisker of losing the entire southern army. After that period, Hitler did indeed start moving squads around. Stalin thought of trying to assassinate Hitler in 1943 but decided he was the best weapon held by the Red Army.

Eric

WallyM3

I don't mean to exclude the contribution of something along the line of Capital ships, but, quite frankly, what good did they do the US even in the Pacific?

They made lovely Anti-aircraft platforms and were decent at shore bombardment. Oh, and flagships.....

The Trump destroyer is pretty nice---even has little mines on rollers that you attach to deck track...also seems to have mine-sweeping equipment on board as well...looks like the Germans tried to maximize the utility of these craft...

PS: I love the Tirpitz

Manstein's revenge

The Trump destroyer is pretty nice---even has little mines on rollers that you attach to deck track...also seems to have mine-sweeping equipment on board as well...looks like the Germans tried to maximize the utility of these craft...

They tried to make them a jacks of all trades.    Trouble is that then you are a master of none.

The German order of battle consisted of about 3 dozen destroyers build before and during the war.   Most were lost. 

Conversely,  the USN had more than 40 destroyers of the'Goldplater' classes (pre-war roughly equivalent to the German destroyers in capabilities) and ultimately close to 400 post-1930 destroyers in commission by 1945.   The USN could afford to have specialized mine laying destroyers,  mine sweeping destroyers,  and destroyers optimized for anti-air defence  while the German Navy could barely cobble together enough to successfully sortie out of the harbor.  

EBergerud

Had he done so it would have been medals and girls galore for everyone on the Bismarck, especially Lutjens.

Nice post, and I like your colourful narratives!

Tracy White

WallyM3:

I don't mean to exclude the contribution of something along the line of Capital ships, but, quite frankly, what good did they do the US even in the Pacific?

They made lovely Anti-aircraft platforms and were decent at shore bombardment. Oh, and flagships.....

Everybody seems to forget about late 1942 in the Pacific. Both sides aircraft carriers were essentially out of action by November due to damage and attrition, and the matter of control was settled at night by surface actions. In October, Japanese surface bombardment nearly wiped out US airpower at Henderson Field. A repeat was attempted in November, the first being repulsed by USN cruisers and destroyers, and the second by US Battleships. Had that battle gone the other way and Japan been victorious, then gone on to silence Henderson field, allowing the successful landing of powerful Japanese reinforcements, potentially changing the outcome of the Guadalcanal campaign. They also helped to fight ashore the US Forces in North Africa during Operation torch at the same time period, against the French Navy. Arguably the biggest defensive nut needing to be cracked on that landing. Then of course two years later there is Leyte Gulf with the shining surface action of the old battleships at Surigao Straight and the missed opportunity of San Bernardino Straight. Night aircraft actions off of US carriers was still in development then and could not have inflicted the damage that capital ships could have.

Very good points.

If you take them out of the equation, you come up with different probable outcomes. And in some significant ways, as you point out.

The Naval Battles of Guadalcanal are probably the most dramatic and closest to being a decisive surface Capital Ship action. At least in the Pacific Theater. A US loss there would certainly have extended the war in the Pacific by delaying US offensive capabilities. At Leyte Gulf, not so much. The Marianas already being in US hands as a base for the upcoming atomic bomb attacks does not change that timeline.

stikpusher

Tracy White:

WallyM3:

I don't mean to exclude the contribution of something along the line of Capital ships, but, quite frankly, what good did they do the US even in the Pacific?

They made lovely Anti-aircraft platforms and were decent at shore bombardment. Oh, and flagships.....

 

Everybody seems to forget about late 1942 in the Pacific. Both sides aircraft carriers were essentially out of action by November due to damage and attrition, and the matter of control was settled at night by surface actions. In October, Japanese surface bombardment nearly wiped out US airpower at Henderson Field. A repeat was attempted in November, the first being repulsed by USN cruisers and destroyers, and the second by US Battleships. Had that battle gone the other way and Japan been victorious, then gone on to silence Henderson field, allowing the successful landing of powerful Japanese reinforcements, potentially changing the outcome of the Guadalcanal campaign. They also helped to fight ashore the US Forces in North Africa during Operation torch at the same time period, against the French Navy. Arguably the biggest defensive nut needing to be cracked on that landing. Then of course two years later there is Leyte Gulf with the shining surface action of the old battleships at Surigao Straight and the missed opportunity of San Bernardino Straight. Night aircraft actions off of US carriers was still in development then and could not have inflicted the damage that capital ships could have.

No, the two events I refer to were conducted with battleships. The October bombardment of Henderson conducted by Kongo and Haruna destroyed over half the aircraft there and nearly all the aviation fuel. Only the discovery of a forgotten aviation fuel dump allowed air ops the next day to save the island at that time. Other bombardments conducted by cruisers had not had such a devastating effect. The attempts to repeat in November had the potential to change the course of the battle. The November battles first was US cruisers against two Japanese battleships, Hiei and Kirishima, which was successful for the USN in turning back the IJN force. Two nights later the attempt by the surviving Kirishima was intercepted by South Dakota and Washington fatally damaged in the fray.

 You are very correct in saying that the Japanese committed their battleships piecemeal. Had they committed theirs at Guadalcanal in November of 1942 with the same mindset as they did at Leyte Gulf, that campaign could have ended very differently.

But I would venture it was probably the Royal Navy who ventured their battleships out the most to engage in line actions. Especially in the Mediterranean Sea.

The decline of the "big gun" was more messy history. There were only three major post WWI navies: RN, USN and IJN. Each were really fascinated by the aircraft carrier. (Loonies like Billy Mitchell did their best to obscure the obvious here.) The big question mark was aircraft capability which was increasing at a break neck rate, while the developments in naval architecture were slowing down. (This does not count communications, radar and sonar.) Ships and planes went through remarkable development curves. In 1870 a "state of the art" warship was HMS Warrior. Fifty years later you had things like Texas or Bayern. Ships were obsolete the moment they were launched for a generation. Then you got what seems to be an inevitable phase reflecting the law of "diminishing returns." WWI dreadnaughts were not only good, they were good enough for WWII. As Churchill put it, WWII was fought with the ships of WWI. When you count beans, the number of modern "fast battleships" in all the world's navies was very small by 1944, especially if compared with the pre-WWI naval race.

Aircraft were taking off just as ships were slowing down. A young aviator could have received his wings flying a Pea Shooter and retired looking at a new F-16. So postwar admirals all knew airplanes were sweet, they just didn't know how sweet. And they didn't know because it was not possible to see what an airplane would look like five years down the road. Carriers were recognized almost from the start as "big ticket" items that were meant to last for a generation just at at time when aviation was moving from a Spad to a ME-262 in 25 years. So when war clouds started gathering, admirals started arguing about priorities. That the CV was going to be king was obvious. The question was when the coronation would take place. The other question was how would they actually be used. None of this was clear. So when governments started to write big checks, the reflex was to build BBs along with more CVs. The 1940-41 Navy bills passed by Congress called for the construction of, I think, a dozen new BBs. They ended up with the four Iowas. The other four fast BBs had been authorized along with the Yorktown, Enterprise, Hornet and Wasp. In the long run the USN couldn't build the number of carriers approved on paper after Pearl Harbor either. (In fairness to Congress, many were thinking of "fortress America" and were not contemplating a massive army and air force competing for resources. People laughed when FDR called for 50,000 airplanes in 1940: we built 400,000.) Anyway, by December 1941 the carrier had already shown itself as the heart of the fleet - Pearl Harbor only drove home the point. So, aside from the four Iowas already begun, BBs were canceled by the USN. Japan and the UK had already made that decision. 

But what about the ships already there? Nobody was thinking of sinking Texas, much less Washington. The Brits were building DDs by the billion but weren't about to scuttle KGV. A lot of Japanese admirals had already seen that the Yamato gamble had been a mistake, but you weren't going to plant flowers on the deck and make it a theme park. The major role adopted initially by the BB was the protection of troop movements. (Every naval battle in the Pacific war was triggered by the movement of troops.) Shore bombardment was, surprisingly, controversial because it endangered the battleships. One reason the IJN didn't annihilate Henderson was that their BBs didn't have sufficient supplies of the new dedicated HE shells - it was simply assumed that a BB would fire armor piercing rounds. That sure changed. And along with it became obvious that you could put a lot of flak on a BB so in the USN, fast BBs became the centers of the carrier task forces. It wasn't a cost efficient way to do things, but it was a way to do things. And in everyone's mind was the possibility of a carrier stumbling into the range of a BB. Brits lost Glorious. The Med was never considered good "carrier country." Hornet was sunk by Japanese destroyers. (Ours couldn't do the job thanks to their miserable torpedoes.) It was because of this role that BBs intervened in the incredible shoot-out of November 15 on Guadalcanal. South Dakota and Washington were deployed when Halsey decided to temporarily land base the Enterprise air groups on Guadalcanal and get the carrier itself out of Dodge City. Good move. Enterprise aircraft helped demolish Japanese shipping, including BB Hiei: Washington demolished Kirishima the next night.

So even though it was cheaper to build ten Fletchers than one Iowa (about the same number of crewmen) and the DDs could carry over twice the number of 5'38s (and fight subs too), they couldn't be asked to stare down a chance encounter with an enemy BB - or so people assumed until Leyte. And DDs sunk. BBs didn't. It was beastly hard to sink a BB. A Kamikaze pilot who hit a BB really did waste his life. So BBs played a surprisingly important role in WWII because of capabilities in hand and as an answer to potential dangers. It's no surprise that the world said good bye to BBs in 1945. It's also no great surprise that the USN put Iowas back into the water periodically for the next fifty years. They could chuck a shell the size of a Volkswagen nearly 20 miles, and something like an Exocet would barely scratch the paint. History is messy.

Over and out on this thread. Think I'm going to build a biplane.

Eric

Messy history but great reading. Once again you have provided excellent analysis in a short spaceof a complex subject.

Back on topic - although I admit that I have enjoyed reading someone's summarised version of the WW2 navel war!

RE:Trumpeter 1/350 KM Zerstorer -

"In a recent review on a certain website,  it said that mines are included in the kit.

I can`t find any trace of them,in my kit...."

Can anyone assist further?

There is indeed mines on thier roller carts included, I think 8 of em to be exact. There are also 4 torpedos included which would be cool to use in a waterline dio.

RE: WW2 naval history - An important point to take into account was the inter-service rivalry which pervaded the respective empire builders of the time.

Churchill was 1st Sea Lord of the Admiralty twice during his political career - this coloured his views somewhat.

The rivalry  between the then pre-WW 2 RFC - then to become the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm Auxiliary hampered much of the way vital resources were allocated at the height of the U Boat war in the Atlantic.

In the UK,  this in-service bickering  nearly starved us into submission, until after much in-fighting,  the 'Atlantic Gap' between Halifax N.S, Greenland/Iceland was bridged by air support, and this  must not be forgotten.

By this time, the threat from DKM Capital ships had diminished to the point of insignificance.

However; the 'Fleet In Being' threat as  posed by the Tirpitz in Norway was very effective in terms of tying up vital RN resources needed elsewhere at the time, and she didn't even have to fire a shot.

 But - despite the historian's luxurious view of hindsight,  we must not forget what the perception was and subsequent emphasis of the threat meant at that time  to the Admiralty..

Well it sounds like a good kit to pick up and a LHS just got them in and is selling them for just under $40.