Thiaria: Other People's ships

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17. Products of Collaboration - Part 2: Geleitboot 1941
By late 1940, Germany controlled the continental European coast all the way from Biarritz to Narvik. Between dozens of ports and hundreds of garrisons, all kinds of local, intermediate and long range naval traffic was necessary to maintain Germany's presence in strength. Hundreds of merchant ships were captured, in addition to Germany's own merchant fleet. To protect this vital traffic against the whole might of the Royal Navy, the Kriegsmarine fielded exactly ten seagoing escort vessels named F1 through F10 - which incidentally were stricken with probably the worst propulsion plants on the planet and nearly continually under repair. The capture of three dozen French avisos, corvettes and aviation tenders in various stages of completion was only a small remedy; only fourteen of these ships were actually commissioned as German escorts. Early in 1942, an emergency escort design was prepared for series production on Dutch, Belgian, Danish and French yards. At 1.370 ts standard and with diesel engines for 21 knots, these vessels resembled British frigates, but without their most prominent feature: ease of construction. Mostly because of their elaborate hull design and their armament of 4 - 105mm DP guns with a fully DP capable fire control system and a full ASW suite, they were described as being almost as complicated as a fleet torpedo boat, which made the design unsuitable for the planned mass production programme calling for an initial batch of 80 within 18 months. Armament was revised to only two 105mm guns, augmented by a powerful battery of 8 automatic 37mm cannon and 8 20mm machineguns. Four DC projectors, two 380mm ASW rocket launchers and fittings either for laying eighty mines or deploying minesweeping gear were provided. The engine was swapped to a triple expansion steam plant and the hull shape was simplified too, cutting speed to 19 knots and range by 35 percent. By late 1941, the design had been sufficiently simplified to order at least the first 24: Four at Stülcken's in Hamburg, where mass production methods were trialled, and another four each at Bolnes, Gusto and Smit in the Netherlands, AC d'Atlantique in France, and Burmeister&Wain in Denmark. Stülcken quickly delivered their four boats, numbered G1 through G4, in mid- to late 1943, averaging building times of 15 months, and the Kriegsmarine enthusiastically ordered another 48 units at the same yards. Unfortunately, the other contractors were not quite as enthusiastic. One Dutch-built ship (G9) was delivered in 1943 and six more (G5, 6, 7, 10, 13 and 14) in 1944; the others were either bombed on stocks ore broken up after mid-1944. None of the French built ships proceeded anywhere near launch readiness due to intentional stalling and sabotage. Burmeister&Wain made better progress: once the torpedo boats they were building had been cancelled, the completed the whole order (G20 through 24) between February and July 1944. Of the second batch, Stülcken completed two more (G26 and G27) in late 1944 before the yard was bombed into the ground; none of the foreign-built ones were completed. In service, these boats typically looked like this:

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Counted against the Kriegsmarine's immense requirement for escorts, the 17 completed ships were little more than a placebo. Half of them (G1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 13, 20 and 27) survived for less than a year; four of them perished while escorting ore convoys from Narvik to Germany. G1 was torpedoed by HM submarine Spiteful, the next four and G20 were sunk by aircraft and G13 by the destroyers HMS Relentless and Rotherham. The others retreated into the Baltic early in 1945, where they were a welcome sight for refugee transports. Three more were lost, one (G21) to a Soviet MTB and one each to British (G10) and Soviet (G24) airplanes. G2 and G23 were sunk by British strategic bombing in port. The five survivors (G7, 9, 14, 22 and 26) were confiscated by the Allies upon Germany's surrender and scrapped; poor production quality and (in part intentionally) shabby finish made their continued employment unattractive.

Greetings
GD

Great work as usual.

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

Another very nice looking design.
I'm curious as to why a triple shaft layout is used, surely for 19kts and TE engines two shafts would suffice?

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

We start to lack a proper words in dictionary to praise your work!

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

@Rhade: absolutely right

Amazing work GD

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best regards
Martin

~~Normerr~~FD stuff~~

Hello again!

@ Hood: The engine arrangement is the same as on the original Geleitboot 41 project. They were designed for VTE machinery from the start. I have no idea why it had to be three screws; I figured it would be one and a half times a standard minesweeper plant, but the hp don't add up. Probably they just did not know what they were doing. Which sums up much of what went on in Germany at that time.

Now for the next one:

18. Too large by half: Zerstörer 1941
The Deschimag and Krupp Germania yards had processed the orders for all 1936A through 1936C destroyers by 1942; the last units were laid down in July 1940 and launched early in 1942, leaving the slipways available for a follow-on destroyer. The decision to dedicate the entire diesel engine production to submarines resulted in the cancellation of several destroyer types with diesel or mixed propulsion, as well as the Spähkreuzers; in order to retain the momentum in destroyer production, an enlarged development of the Type 1936 was chosen for future production and designated Zerstörer Type 1941. 16 units were ordered in August 1941, eight (Z41 through Z48) from Deschimag, the other eight (Z49 through Z56) from Krupp Germania. The first five were laid down in late 1941, the rest in 1942. Standard displacement was increased to 2.900 tons and LOA approached 130 meters; armament was to increase to eight 128mm guns, initially in LA mounts, which were changed to DP in 1943. Light flak consisted of eight new model fully automatic 37mm guns and a large number of 20mm autocannon; ASW equipment was rather neglected. Their powerplant was uprated to 80.000hp for a design speed of 36 knots. All in all, they were magnificently powerful ships - and they were calculated to be built in 30 months under optimum conditions. Actual conditions were however far from optimum. Construction had no high priority from the start, and allied bombing created further delays. Although eight additional vessels (Z57 through Z64) were ordered in 1942, none of these was ever laid down, and the Germania-built ships were cancelled in January 1943 to allow this yard to build exclusively submarines. Only the first eight were proceeded with. Bremen, where the Deschimag yard was located, was however repeatedly heavily bombed; two hulls (Z45 and Z46) were completely destroyed on the slipways in 1943, and one (Z41) was sunk while fitting out. The two least advanced ships were scrapped early in 1944 after bomb damage. Only Z42 through Z44 were actually completed; only Z42 (complete in June 1944) was on schedule (building time 31 months). She went to Norway in August 1944, did not take part in any significant sorties and was unceremoniously sunk by British airplanes on the return run to Germany in December 1944. Z44 was the second unit of the class to complete and the first to be lost; she was sunk by the free Polish submarine Sokol during her first trial run out of Bremerhaven in November 1944. Z43 commissioned in January 1945 and made it to the Baltic in February. She operated together with Gneisenau and Seydlitz during the battle of Dagö and was one of two destroyers delivering the coup de grace against the Soviet battlecruser Tretij Internatsional with torpedoes. She surrendered to the Allies in Copenhagen in October 1945 and was assigned to Great Britain. She was used for trials and scrapped in 1950. When the war ended, she looked like this:

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All things considered, these large ships were costly failures; the resources would have been better spent building more 1940 or 1942 type torpedo boats, which could be made available quicker and in larger numbers. As material quality became poorer over the duration of the war and production standards became shabbier, the three completed ships had a poor finish and were every bit as unreliable as the Types 1934 and 1936, despite the fact that her propulsion technology was much more mature.

Greetings
GD

Great drawings GD, you are on a roll! (you said so a few post ago so it's no suprise, still it's so nice to see so much drawings)

These ships could be costly failures in their timeline, but the drawing is great.

Shipbucket

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