Should make it clear that I am not against speculation nor asking "What if?" However, without accounting for the contextual realities that would have driven the alternate situation as they drove the actual event speculation becomes fantasy, a kiddies wish list to Santa where all things are possible and no contention, however rediculous, need be supported by evidence. Ignoring those factors that made the real history reduce the speculative dialog to the level of Hollywood's U-571, a movie widely recognized around here as a historical travesty that some actually call entertainment.
<climbs off soap box>
I would suggest that before one can deal with Graf Zeppelin in the North Atlantic , one needs to address the problems associated with developing an effective naval air arm, the possible air/sea doctrines to be used that fitted the KM's operational philosophy and institutional requirements and the equipment available for aircraft and their offensive and defensive weapons.
Even a casual examination of these factors demonstrate that there was never any realistic prospect of Graf Zeppelin being completed during the war. The KM had no time or resources to invent everything required from scratch while the USN, RN and IJN, the principle carrier operators of the day, took decades in the inter-war period to develop and train their naval air arms and doctrines. The Nazi's didn't have decades and merely sticking arrester hooks on variants of the BF-109 and JU-87 does little to show that they knew what they were doing or even on the right track.
The BF-109T is a case in point. Adapting a land plane for carrier use has almost never been successful even though there have been a couple none jump immediately to mind. The Messerschmidt lacked virtually every attribute associated with an effective carrier plane:
- Poor forward visibility when landing even with leading edge slats to reduce the angle of attack;
- Weak, narrow chord undercarriage. The BF-109 was notorious for being difficult to land and killed many a student trying. That on a grass airfield, now move the problem to a pitching carrier deck.
- Difficult for the pilot to exit in an emegency due to the very cramped cockpit and side-opening canopy.
- Liquid cooled engine requiring longer warm up times that slow the cycling of air operations. (If you think this is not an issue, read Shattered Sword to see how similar small technical and doctrinal issues helped to doom Nagumo's carrier force at Midway.) Also the carrier would have to hold yet another flammable liquid in quantity, always a damage control nightmare and the KM was comparitively weak in damage control.
Do not forget that a reasonable solution needs to be found for the political problems that would arise from the pecularities of the Nazi regime where by law, everything that flew belonged to Goering's Luftwaffe. In Britain, the FAA only started to become effective once it was seperated from the RAF and given back to the Navy.
Even in peacetime creating a naval air arm from nothing is difficult, expensive and prone to false starts, errors and accidents, doing so in wartime and the problems become even greater. For what its worth (nothing?) I think the Germans were absolutely correct in not pumping resources into Graf Zeppelin and trying to create a carrier force.
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