"Paper Ships: Cruiser Hindenburg" Topic

"The Hindenburg cruiser project have their origin in the 1940's, from a period in which Germany was planning to challenge Britain at sea.

Berlin was determined to be free of the restrictions of treaties and external limitations on ship design. In order to modernize the navy, a generalized Plan Z was developed and approved in 1939. It presupposed that war with Great Britain would begin not earlier than 1948, and the Kriegsmarine was planned to have 684 ships of various types by that time. However, several alternative variants of this plan were considered and rejected, including some less ambitious and costly, but with more realistic and promising results in a shorter term. The cruiser component of Plan Z consisted of 5 Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruisers and 12 Project P ironclads. The latter were the development of Deutschland-class "pocket battleships," with a displacement of 25,500 tons, six 280-mm guns, and diesel power plants. It's probable that this plan could have allowed for the evolution of the fascinating German cruisers of the 1930s, which had been designed under the restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty.

German engineers had two possible paths ahead of them. The first was to further modernize the "pocket battleships," which would later result in Projects D and E, and in turn led to the creation of P-class. The second was to develop a series of sophisticated heavy cruisers starting with the head ship Admiral Hipper and ending with its upgraded variant—Prinz Eugen…"

Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

Oh, that kind of paper ship.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

So they basically blew up a Graf Spee and created a Scharnhorst?

Germany couldn't have done it even with a 1948 timeline.