Another Naval Question

I came across this quotation by a German Naval Official some time ago & a variation of it more recently in another book, but neither of them name the person saying it.
The two quotes are as follows:

'We Germans know how to build fair weather ships, beautiful to look at but useless in the Atlantic.'
Cajus Bekker The German Navy 1939-1945

'We Germans knew how to build outstanding freshwater ships.'
Gerhard Koop & Klaus Peter Schmolke German Destroyers of World War II

Does anybody know the name of the naval official who said them? (I think he might have been a naval architect).

After all i´ve read about the German WWII navy, i can´t say i´ve ever ran into a quote like that.

And i have to say, neither have i ran into a good reason for saying it either.

Yes, their destroyers were far from perfect.
What a surprise considering that Germany essentially created their designs and started building their destroyers from scratch with the Z1934 class.

The Z1934 certainly had problems, but it was nothing to do with ability to build non-"fair weather ships" and everything to do with the ability to build highspeed capable ships of destroyer size with zero experience in how to do so.
Not really surprising.


Their oversized torpedoboats MIGHT just be a cause for a comment like that, but it´s just stupid and dishonest, because while they were big enough to be called destroyers(and ergo bluewater ships), they were never designed as such.

The "Flottentorpedoboot 1944" WERE designed for bluewater navy work, but they were never built so who knows how they would have fared.


And if you look at their bigger ships, then it´s simply not true. The German navy felt the larger ships were mostly acceptable or better.

Only thing i can recall is that the Leipzig class to sidedrift with the wind, and to selfsteer into the wind in heavy weather, but that is more annoying than "bad", it is certainly far more desirable than a lot of other potential problems, as in severe weather it is actually helpful.
Oh, and of course the Scharnhorst class infamous waterslide, bow-heavy and VERY wet(not just nose, even the bridge). Much improved by the modified bow in 1939, so the issue was much reduced before the war even started. IIRC it was also sluggish in steering.

Bismarck class, imperfect but stable and allround good.
Deutschland class pre-dreadnoughts, slightly heavy steering, but decent enough sea boats.
Deutschland class cruisers, good sea boats, though wetnosed until bow modification 1940.
Hipper class, good sea boats, but troublesome at low speed.
Königsberg class, decent sea boats, oversensitive to proper ballast and loading and a tendency to turn away from the wind, but unless someone did something stupid, not affecting their ability.
Emden, very good sea boat with unusually soft rolling.

So, 2 ships out of 19 had issues that could align with the quote, 3 ships had some issues that can, with some creative interpretation, fall within the quote...
That´s definitely not a bad track record when you consider how few ships Germany was allowed to build between the wars, and how it had to pretty much create the knowledgebase mostly from scratch.
Even UK, despite it´s large fleet and naval tradition managed to produce occasional failures like all issues from the German ships during the same time.


And the quote on "freshwater ship"? That´s just outright stupid.
Freshwater means rivers and lakes, Germany did not build naval ships for use specifically on such, did not normally use ships for such duty.

If whoever claims it to be real meant the Baltic, well 1. the Baltic isn´t freshwater, and more importantly 2. due to the overall more shallow water, waves in the Baltic are often steeper than in the Atlantic or Pacific, excepting the far north or south Atlantic, you actually need BETTER seakeeping in the Baltic sea.


So, i pretty much thinks those "quotes" are VERY questionable. Even if they´re real, they are not truthfully descriptive of reality.
Heck, if we dumped on every navy that built some bad ships in between the world wars?
UK, France, USA, Japan, Russia, pretty much ALL nations that built naval ships managed to screw up more than once in that time.

Tenshinai wrote:After all i´ve read about the German WWII navy, i can´t say i´ve ever ran into a quote like that.

And i have to say, neither have i ran into a good reason for saying it either.

Yes, their destroyers were far from perfect.
What a surprise considering that Germany essentially created their designs and started building their destroyers from scratch with the Z1934 class.

The Z1934 certainly had problems, but it was nothing to do with ability to build non-"fair weather ships" and everything to do with the ability to build highspeed capable ships of destroyer size with zero experience in how to do so.
Not really surprising.


Their oversized torpedoboats MIGHT just be a cause for a comment like that, but it´s just stupid and dishonest, because while they were big enough to be called destroyers(and ergo bluewater ships), they were never designed as such.

The "Flottentorpedoboot 1944" WERE designed for bluewater navy work, but they were never built so who knows how they would have fared.


And if you look at their bigger ships, then it´s simply not true. The German navy felt the larger ships were mostly acceptable or better.

Only thing i can recall is that the Leipzig class to sidedrift with the wind, and to selfsteer into the wind in heavy weather, but that is more annoying than "bad", it is certainly far more desirable than a lot of other potential problems, as in severe weather it is actually helpful.
Oh, and of course the Scharnhorst class infamous waterslide, bow-heavy and VERY wet(not just nose, even the bridge). Much improved by the modified bow in 1939, so the issue was much reduced before the war even started. IIRC it was also sluggish in steering.

Bismarck class, imperfect but stable and allround good.
Deutschland class pre-dreadnoughts, slightly heavy steering, but decent enough sea boats.
Deutschland class cruisers, good sea boats, though wetnosed until bow modification 1940.
Hipper class, good sea boats, but troublesome at low speed.
Königsberg class, decent sea boats, oversensitive to proper ballast and loading and a tendency to turn away from the wind, but unless someone did something stupid, not affecting their ability.
Emden, very good sea boat with unusually soft rolling.

So, 2 ships out of 19 had issues that could align with the quote, 3 ships had some issues that can, with some creative interpretation, fall within the quote...
That´s definitely not a bad track record when you consider how few ships Germany was allowed to build between the wars, and how it had to pretty much create the knowledgebase mostly from scratch.
Even UK, despite it´s large fleet and naval tradition managed to produce occasional failures like all issues from the German ships during the same time.


And the quote on "freshwater ship"? That´s just outright stupid.
Freshwater means rivers and lakes, Germany did not build naval ships for use specifically on such, did not normally use ships for such duty.

If whoever claims it to be real meant the Baltic, well 1. the Baltic isn´t freshwater, and more importantly 2. due to the overall more shallow water, waves in the Baltic are often steeper than in the Atlantic or Pacific, excepting the far north or south Atlantic, you actually need BETTER seakeeping in the Baltic sea.


So, i pretty much thinks those "quotes" are VERY questionable. Even if they´re real, they are not truthfully descriptive of reality.
Heck, if we dumped on every navy that built some bad ships in between the world wars?
UK, France, USA, Japan, Russia, pretty much ALL nations that built naval ships managed to screw up more than once in that time.

In which case I suggest you read the books I mentioned, in particular the books by Gerhard Koop & Klaus Peter Schmolke. Although covering the ship histories of those particular classes each one of them covers a different aspect of the German Navy's rearmament in the interwar period.

The books are as follows:

Battleships of the Bismarck Class,
Battleships of the Scharnhorst Class,
Pocket Battleships of the Deutschland Class,
Heavy Cruisers of the Admiral Hipper Class,
German Light Cruisers of World War II,
German Destroyers of World War II.

These books have recently been reprinted in softback format so I know they are available. Moreover they are written by German authors so any charges of bias in favour of another navy's ships; (D. K. Brown springs to mind), can be dismissed. Furthermore that quote I asked about is mild in comparison to some of the other quotations & statements made in them. Reading those books is a damming inditement about the German Navy's preparedness leading up to WWII. And if you can get hold of them, in particular read the second one in the list. In it there are several photographs of the Gneiesenau whilst undergoing trials. I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.

Finally, whilst we are on the subject I would like to share another quotation. It is about the German Navy in WWI but I think it is equally appropriate.

'In my country they have a soap advertisement which claims for its product '99.4 per cent pure'. Personally, I am fed up with this ivory soap purity of everything pertaining to war material that bears the label 'Made in Germany'. We Anglo-Saxons are too prone to think the other fellows good are superior to our own.'
Commander E. S. Land USN, Transaction of the Institute of Naval Architects 1921 as quoted in British Battleships of World War One by R. A. Burt, revised edition pub 2014.

And if you can get hold of them, in particular read the second one in the list. In it there are several photographs of the Gneiesenau whilst undergoing trials. I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.

Like i said, the Scharnhorst class is the one that WAS infamous for having problems.

Reading those books is a damming inditement about the German Navy's preparedness leading up to WWII.

Well sure, that´s no surprise. First of all, the nazi system of effectively throwing out contracts left and right and then cancelling them hurt the German navy more than any other service.

As part of that, well the German leadership was seriously schizophrenic about the navy, there was Plan Z put in motion, yet it didn´t get more than a tiny fraction of the resources allocated that was required to actually finish it.

And like i noted above, the German naval industry was pretty much crushed after WWI, and wasn´t really allowed to even try to recover until under the nazi regime(and that´s definitely not a beneficial way to start out).

And so on...


However, something you REALLY need to realise to contrast and compare with that, is exactly how pathetically bad the preparedness of most OTHER major navies also were at the time.
The German navy does not really stand out that much if compared to others at the same time. It´s only if you look at it through microscopic detail without comparing with the others that it looks exceptionally bad.

A simple and basic example could be the USN destroyers that were transferred to the UK...
Looks like a grand gift doesn´t it, 50 DDs...
Well not really, because the vast majority of those DDs had to be put in the yard for 6-18 months before they could even be considered halfway operational, and even then, they were mostly used as replacements for SMALLER and older British ships, because they were so old, decrepit and poor, that they were just one step from useless.

Sure, all navies had at least some part that was in good shape in 1939, but far too much of them were in BAD shape.
The IJN was most "ready for war" and the British was probably the navy with the best chance of being overall effective, but both still had massive flaws inherent in their systems.
Outside of its few good sides, the USN was mostly a joke.
The French and Italian navies were in reasonably good shape in many ways, but both had severe secondary/indirect deficiencies, like the Italian lack of fuel making certain they would probably be ineffective.
While many smaller navies, like my own, relied on WWI ships that would only be effective if used very well tactically and operationally.

In short, overall the level of preparedness for war in the navies were generally quite embarassing. And noone managed to get everything(or even most things) right.

Excellent post Tenshinal and thank you.. Let all of us be very thankful that the German Navy prior to and during WW2 did NOT concentrate on submarine development at the probable cost of other wartime naval production priorities. Or ALL other WW2 priorities. We might all be speaking German today. Wow!.

HB of CJ wrote:Excellent post Tenshinal and thank you.. Let all of us be very thankful that the German Navy prior to and during WW2 did NOT concentrate on submarine development at the probable cost of other wartime naval production priorities. Or ALL other WW2 priorities. We might all be speaking German today. Wow!.

I wouldn't be so sure of that. Even if the german navy had gone all-in on submarines from the beginning, the main factors that led to the Reich's demise would have been unchanged (as most of them had to do with the Reich being unstable by design, Germany's lack of easily accessible natural resources and a comprehensive failure to understand logistics on the part of german military leadership); while the U-boat fleet was the most successful arm of the german navy, the allied air superiority over the Atlantic (which was achieved by 1943) combined with Admiral Horton's tactical changes effectively nullified it. To avoid this, german submarines would have to have several massively game-changing advances that were still in their infancy in the 1940s (such as air-independent propulsion mechanisms, improved sonar, guided torpedoes).
And even if that had been achieved somehow, it would have only spurred on the development of cargo airplanes. Something like the Spruce Goose would have appeared much sooner than it did in our reality.

The E wrote:I wouldn't be so sure of that. Even if the german navy had gone all-in on submarines from the beginning, the main factors that led to the Reich's demise would have been unchanged (as most of them had to do with the Reich being unstable by design, Germany's lack of easily accessible natural resources and a comprehensive failure to understand logistics on the part of german military leadership); while the U-boat fleet was the most successful arm of the german navy, the allied air superiority over the Atlantic (which was achieved by 1943) combined with Admiral Horton's tactical changes effectively nullified it. To avoid this, german submarines would have to have several massively game-changing advances that were still in their infancy in the 1940s (such as air-independent propulsion mechanisms, improved sonar, guided torpedoes).

When the war broke out, Germany had 27 bluewater submarines ready for operations, mostly the Type VII(and a few more being refitted to not be at WWI standards).
And a similar number of less capable coastal submarines(Type II), with a pathetic total warload of 5 torpedoes and 3 tubes.
The Type VII then remained the big workhorse for the WHOLE war, without getting any major refits or improvements.

Now, lets say the Germans simply do not build the Bismarck(or start on the Tirpitz). That would have allowed close to doubling the number of bluewater subs at/around the start of the war.
And that´s just by not building the white elephant bragging rights ship class.

What if they had actually FOCUSED on subs early instead?

Let´s say they go the same route as the IJN did with their No.71 in 1938. A sub that was pretty much prototype testing sub for advanced hydrodynamics and other fun stuff.
A sub that pulled almost 22 knots submerged in 1938. 5 years before the German Type XXI came around with its 18 knots submerged that (rightly) scared the hell out of the allies.

Germany could if they really wanted have managed that by 1937, and then by 1939 have a Type XXI "light" in production.

While dropping the original VII in favour of something improved at LEAST by 1938.

And then not build any warships larger than cruisers.

So, by war´s start, instead of less than 30 mostly quite dated submarines, Germany could have around 25 dated ones, 50+ roughly equal to mid war Type IXs, and 5-15 advanced subs.

Does this change the outcome of the war? Most probably not. But the risk is HIGH that UK would be forced to surrender in the first 2 years due to being cut off from its seatrade.

UK was probably the best with ASW in 1939, yet it was not even capable of handling what the Germans did come with historically, add another several dozen considerably better subs to the Germans and the British are going to lose the convoy war.

The E wrote:And even if that had been achieved somehow, it would have only spurred on the development of cargo airplanes. Something like the Spruce Goose would have appeared much sooner than it did in our reality.

Eh, sorry for laughing at you, but that would be completely irrelevant. Cargo airplanes even today can still only carry a tiny fraction of what ships can manage.

You simply cannot replace cargo ships with aircraft, end of story.
Even a tiny merchant ship carries hundreds of tons of cargo, while the more common cargo planes at the time carried <3 and around 7 tons of cargo. And that´s before even starting to look at space and loading restrictions that adds up on aircraft.

And the "Spruce Goose" was a pisspoor idea from start to the end. Even unloaded with a fraction of its max fuelload and aided by ground effect, it was not easily taking off.

And there´s good reason NOONE builds flying boats as cargo haulers, they add far too much surface area to the plane, which means it has FAR more drag than a plane of equal cargo and abilities that flies to and from land runways.

It was supposed to carry ~75t. That´s 100% wishful thinking.

And even if you managed to get a cargohauler that was capable of 10t across the Atlantic?
Each trip would cost several times more than even a single merchant ship doing the same trip, and the ship carries maybe 100, maybe 300 times more cargo. Maybe 600 times more, AND it does so while capable of loading things that an aircraft simply cannot load.

Are you seeing the problem? Why NOONE uses aircraft for heavy mass cargohauling? Because it´s bloody damned expensive!

Even if UK and USA both used ALL heavy bombers they had in Europe during WWII, for nothing but carrying cargo across the Atlantic, that literally be just a drop in the ocean compared to how much ships carried.

The E wrote:the allied air superiority over the Atlantic (which was achieved by 1943)

3-4 YEARS after the war started yes. That doesn´t matter much if Germany STARTS the war with triple the number of higher quality subs.

And depending on who you ask, the estimate on how many submarines Germany COULD have had in late 1939, IF they had focused on subs instead of wasted so much on bad surface ship ideas, IIRC the higher estimates goes beyond 300. TEN TIMES the historical number.

Personally i think that disregards how much manufacturing effort is involved, so a more realistic is 100-150, that´s still more than enough to wreak unholy havoc on British sealanes.

The E wrote:To avoid this, german submarines would have to have several massively game-changing advances that were still in their infancy in the 1940s (such as air-independent propulsion mechanisms, improved sonar, guided torpedoes).

Focusing on subs WOULD mean to also focus on their development early. The Type II wasn´t really a good vessel for WWII, and Type VII, while far more practically evolved, it was still nowhere near "cutting edge" in any way, even when it first launched.

Germany could probably have gone straight for the Type IX with some effort, and like i said above, they could started advanced research 3-6 years earlier than they did and have something fairly close to the historical XXI by 1939. Most of the design challenges was essentially pure engineering and testing, very little was truly radical or brand new inventions.

All true, and I thank you for your critique of my points

The point is, given what we know about the situation in Germany and the world back then, scenarios in which the Nazis win require many, many points of departure from our reality. There's no single aspect of the war that can be changed to drastically affect its outcome (There are scenarios to prolong or shorten the war, but in the end, Germany ends up losing), and by the time you change the situation such that Germany does end up winning, it's not going to be Nazi Germany anymore.

The E wrote:All true, and I thank you for your critique of my points

The point is, given what we know about the situation in Germany and the world back then, scenarios in which the Nazis win require many, many points of departure from our reality. There's no single aspect of the war that can be changed to drastically affect its outcome (There are scenarios to prolong or shorten the war, but in the end, Germany ends up losing), and by the time you change the situation such that Germany does end up winning, it's not going to be Nazi Germany anymore.

Pretty much yeah.