Germany became convinced that the only way to protect her capital ships against carriers was with carriers of her own.
Germany saw how instrumental carrier aircraft were in the destruction of the Bismarck, they also saw that Tirpitz was nearly torpedoed at sea by carrier aircraft while out searching for a convoy. When construction on GZ was resumed in 1942 her role as an aircraft carrier changed. Now, GZ's aircraft loadout changed several times over her building career.įirst, it was to consist of twenty Fi167 Torpedo bombers, ten Bf109T fighters, and thirteen Ju87C dive/torpedo bombers. Because of this rule, GZ's otherwise massive hangar space was severely handicapped, on top of having 3 aircraft elevators already taking up space.Ĥ: Her primary competition, British carriers, also had relatively small aircraft loadouts. This rule also applied to the forward and rear hangar walls as well, of course.
Both of GZ's hangars were 15.8m wide, this meant that only 10.8m of space was usable to the ship's aircraft. For this role, massive amounts of carrier aircraft were not required.Ģ: The rocky political relationship between the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe made deciding on a concrete number of aircraft to be built difficult, to say the least.ģ: Initially, the Navy required that 2.5m of space exist between GZ's aircraft and hangar walls. There are several reasons for this small aircraft compliment.ġ: Graf Zeppelin was originally intended to be a commerce raider, using her aircraft primarily for scouting and defense purposes and using her impressive array of primary and secondary guns to do most of the dirty work. It is well known that Graf Zeppelin's original aircraft compliment was originally going to consist of just over 40 aircraft, a small amount considering the massive amounts of space GZ had in her hangars (more space than Enterprise and even the massive Lexington). The subject of Graf Zeppelin's aircraft compliment has been under hot debate for these last few weeks.
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