Thiaria: Other People's ships

Garlicdesign

Post subject: Re: Thiaria: Other People's ships

Posted: February 18th, 2016, 8:02 pm

Posts: 1071
Joined: December 26th, 2012, 9:36 am
Location: Germany

Hello again!

11. Type 1936A, B and C
The Type 1936A destroyers Z25 through Z32, laid down in 1938 and 1939, were designed for a main armament of five 150mm guns on a hull only 200 tons larger than the preceding Type 1936 class. The ships were commissioned in 1940 and 1941, but only Z25 received a (prototype) 150mm twin turret. Experience with Z25 was sobering; she was badly bow heavy, limited to 32 knots top speed and a piss-poor sea boat. A single sortie proved that she could only use the turret in a dead calm, and it was decided to arm all others with a single 150mm mount forward; typically, the units of the class looked like this upon completion:

[ img ]

The single open mount also proved unsatisfactory, as it was easily incapacitated by heavy weather. The Type 1936A destroyers served throughout the war without siginificant success; two were sunk by gunfire of British, Canadian and Free Polish destroyers using 120mm guns without being able to retaliate in kind; two more were sunk by British cruisers. So useless were the 150mm guns in practice that two units (Z29 and Z31) were even refitted with five 128mm guns after battle damage. The forward pair was mounted in an enclosed twin turret, which weighed 40 tons (compared to the over 60 tons of the 150mm twin, despite being only marginally smaller), and they were way better sea boats than Z25. After receiving additional light flak, Z29 looked like this:

[ img ]

The follow-on group of eight further vessels was modified while on stocks. They were to revert to 128mm guns, six of them in three fully enclosed LA turrets. As two turrets were arranged aft, countering the bow-heaviness of the basic design, seakeeping and fightability in heavy weather were considerably increased. Unfortunately, the turrets were not available before the second half of 1942, and the first four ships of the follow-on group - Z33 through Z36, dubbed Type 1936B - had to be completed with five single 128mm guns in open mounts. They were the best sea boats of all German destroyers built so far, although they had the same problems as their predecessors to use their weapons in heavy weather. Due to the better weight reserves compared with the Type 1936 and 1936A, they had an AA suite of four 37mm and sixteen 20mm guns when they commissioned between May and December 1942, looking like this:

[ img ]

Two were ordered from Deschimag (ex AG Weser) in Bremen, the other two from Krupp Germania in Kiel; the same procedure was used for their sisters Z37 through Z40, which became known as the Type 1936C. The latter group entered service between February and September 1943 with the new main armament; as the main guns were heavier, they had only 12 20mm guns to keep topweight down. When they entered service, they looked like this:

[ img ]

All eight were sent to Norway and got involved in some heavy fighting. Remarkably, none were lost in surface engagements, unlike four of the 1936As, which were nominally heavier armed. Z34 sunk the old British destroyers HMS Walpole and HMS Westcott during the destruction of convoy JW52, and she and Z36 both sunk two British transports. During the second battle of Bear Island, it was again Z34 that torpedoed the Canadian heavy cruiser HMS Ontario, forcing it to retreat. Z32, Z37 and Z38, together with the light cruiser Wiesbaden, repulsed a British cruiser/destroyer attack on a small German ore convoy from Narvik to Bremen west of Jutland in November 1943, sinking HMS Scourge and damaging HMS Royalist. Z37 was heavily damaged in this engagement and needed thorough repairs; she was bombed and sunk by the RAF shortly after re-commissioning on the way back to Norway in March 1944. When the Germans retreated their fleet from Norway, Z35 and Z36 were hit by heavy air strikes and sunk as well. Z33 was lost in April 1945 in a mass attack of Soviet MTBs, of which she managed to sink three before taking multiple torpedo hits. Z34 and Z38 hit back in the battle of Ösel; the former sank the destroyer Silny together with T66, the latter damaged the heavy cruiser Molotov with gunfire after missing her with all eight torpedoes. Z34, Z38, Z39 and Z40 survived the war. Z34, which was awarded to the Soviet Union and became Provorniy, looked like this in 1944:

[ img ]

Z38 became British (HMS Nonsuch), Z39 became American (DD939, unnamed) and Z40 became French (Hoche), respectively. At the time of her surrender, Z40 looked like this:

[ img ]

P.S. DISCLAIMER
Posting these AU versions does NOT mean I claim to paint the real German WWII destroyer fleet. These are very well documented, and to do them and their various individual modernization measures even the most basic justice, about 40 drawings would be necessary, for which (and the associated research) I unfortunately cannot spare the time. Sorry

Greetings
GD

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