Graf Zeppelin

The launching of Graf Zeppelin, 8 December 1938.

Design History

Flugzeugträger A — later christened Graf Zeppelin — was the culmination of the efforts mustered by the German Armed Forces to produce a native aircraft carrier to field in their reborn navy. The endeavor started in 1933, when the Kriegsmarine first seriously considered building a carrier; due to the circumstances Germany found herself in following World War I, there was a notable gap between her naval aviation capabilities and those of other navies. The project was further made difficult as aircraft technologies were rapidly shifting during the 1930s, and because — more inherently — the Kriegsmarine did not have any carrier doctrine to speak of. The Luftwaffe — a contributor to this joint venture — was also unenthusiastic, as they did not have any planes to spare for the Navy, nor did they have experienced pilots in naval aviation. Regardless, by 1934 the Kreigsmarine drafted the first designs and handed them over to Deutsche-Werke AG to finalize plans and begin construction.

The proposal by the Kriegsmarine called for a ship of 22,000 tons that could make 35 knots speed and carry 50 planes. In accordance with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, two ships of such size would keep them below 50 percent of British carrier tonnage.

Since many resources were being invested in project, the Kriegsmarine was keen to ensure the survivability of the vessels. Uncharacteristic of typical German ships of this size, she was divided into multiple narrow compartments to mitigate loss to flooding. Also uncharacteristic of most carriers, she had armor installed, roughly equal to that of a cruiser. Additionally, Graf Zeppelin had a very novel system installed for fire-suppression: all the fuel systems were buffered with pressurized gasses. The non-liquid systems were filled with dry gas, and pipes carrying petroleum were jacketed with tubing filled with inert gas. Graf Zeppelin also had torpedo bulges installed for better protection and weight balance late in the design phase.

To reach the top speed wanted in the design sketches, engineers concluded that it would require an engine output of over 200,000 shaft horsepower; no ship in built by the navies Europe had that much power at the time. To accomplish such a feat, engineers estimated that it would take no less than four turbines to do so, with each turbine being fed by four boilers. Each group of boilers would be placed in their own fire-room for better management. In addition, a novel feature implemented into Graf Zeppelin was the Voith-Schneider cyclorotors. Designers understood that a vessel of such size would not be able to maneuver on rudder alone in ports and canals. Accordingly, they installed two cyclorotors under the forward keel of the ship; they could be extended in order to aid in low-speed maneuverability, and then retracted back into the hull when not in use. (In modern vessels, bow thrusters fill a similar role.) Similarly, in 1939, her straight bow was replaced by a “clipper” bow to increase seaworthiness.

Just like the navies of America and the Japan, the German Kriegsmarine fell into the belief that aircraft carriers should be able to protect themselves in surface combat. As such — in conjunction with her aforementioned armor package — Graf Zeppelin mounted sixteen 150mm guns in eight twin-armored casemates all along her bow. Since these guns could only service low-angles, she had another twelve 105mm guns installed in six twin-turrets fore-and-aft of the island superstructure. In addition, she had a complement of 20mm and 37mm anti-aircraft guns.

Unlike aircraft carriers of other nations, planes could not take off from the flight deck unassisted; they had to be launched off two prominent steam pressure catapults built into the forward end of the flight deck. As the catapults used large launching sleds to hurl the aircraft off deck, there was a complex retrieval system built right underneath the flight deck to re-position the sleds back at the start for reuse. In theory, this allowed the aircraft carrier to launch eight planes in under four minutes. The catapults would be fed via three elevators that worked between two hangars. As German aviation programs could not diversify for both Air force and Navy needs, the mainstay of the aviation complement onboard Graf Zeppelin would be naval versions of the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter and the Junkers Ju 87 dive-bomber.

Service History

Despite all the efforts put into her design and construction, Graf Zeppelin would never come into being as the first completed aircraft carrier of the Axis powers of Europe. Finally laid down in 1937 — following the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935 where Germany successfully negotiated for the right to build aircraft carriers — the fate of Graf Zeppelin and her unnamed sister ship would be argued over by three men: Grand Admiral of the Kriegsmarine Erich Raeder, head of the Luftwaffe Hermann Göring, and Admiral Karl Dönitz. Raeder was the driving force behind the addition of aircraft carriers to the Kriegsmarine, following visitations to see Japan’s powerful carrier force earlier in the 1930’s. An aircraft carrier would require aircraft, however, and this would require an establishment of a Fleet Air Arm, leading to the short-lived Trägergruppe (or "Carrier Group"). This, however, would be under the split jurisdiction of the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe, and Göring jealously fought off any attempts that would undermine his complete control of every military aircraft in Germany's inventory. Dönitz, an influential admiral himself, knew that the greatest successes enjoyed by the Kaiserliche Marine was at the hands of their U-boats, and believed that Germany could never muster a naval force to contest the Royal Navy on the surface; he pushed to have resources that would be expended on any aircraft carriers shifted elsewhere.

Given all of the various factors involved, Raeder’s ambitions of adding a total of four aircraft carriers to the Kriegsmarine would ultimately prove impossible. Nevertheless, construction of Graf Zeppelin and her sister Flugzeugträger B proceeded uninterrupted until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, halting construction as wartime resources were spent elsewhere (and Raeder still battled Göring politically). In late February 1940, the frustrated Raeder ordered Flugzeugträger B to be broken up and scrapped, although Graf Zeppelin was spared this fate, rusting in a drydock at Kiel. Her sixteen 150mm secondaries were transferred to coastal installations in recently conquered Norway in April 1940 with Hitler’s approval. She first went to sea in July 1940 to be transferred to Gotenhafen, Germany (now Gdynia, Poland) where she continued to languish in port without any progress. She moved again to Stettin in November 1941 to stay out of Russian air strike range, where she was used as a floating warehouse by the Kriegsmarine. Following the successful Japanese carrier strike on Pearl Harbor, Raeder had the ammunition to finally gain approval from Hitler to continue construction on Graf Zeppelin on 13 May 1942. Construction continued slowly from then on, moving back to a floating drydock in Kiel come December 1942. In late January 1943, however, Hitler had become disenchanted with the Kriegsmarine and ordered all large surface ships to be scrapped. In the political chaos that followed, Raeder was relieved as the head of the Kriegsmarine by Dönitz. Dönitz managed to convince Hitler to withdraw his order to scrap most surface ships, but agreed to halt the construction of all large capital ships. Thus, in February 1943 Graf Zeppelin’s construction was halted for the last time. In April, she was towed to a wharf near Stettin, where she sat for two years with a 40-man skeleton crew.

In April 1945, as Soviet forces drew near, her crew flooded and detonated the ship in port, bringing an end to Germany’s only purpose-built aircraft carrier to ever near completion. Her life was not yet over, however. In March 1946, in violation of agreements with the Allied powers, the Soviets re-floated Graf Zeppelin. She was towed out of Stettin in the summer of 1947 — believed to be headed for the Soviet Union — with her flight deck loaded with containers. What happened after this point is not fully known. Western historians state that she struck a mine off the Gulf of Finland, and was scrapped after her damaged wreck was dragged to Leningrad. Soviet records indicate that she briefly made port in Swinemünde, then was towed out of harbor on 16 August 1947 and used as a target hulk for bombs, shells, and torpedoes. In 2006, her wreckage was discovered in 80 meters of water north of Władysławowo, Poland, confirming the final resting place of the Kriegsmarine's lone aircraft carrier.

Historical Inaccuracies

• Graf Zeppelin’s stat card depicts the ship had it been completed in 1945; the Bf 109T was in service until the summer of 1944. The aircraft was also outdated by 1942 and newer planes were sought when work on the aircraft carrier resumed that same year.
• The 37 mm Flak LM/42 anti-aircraft gun entered service in autumn 1943; construction on Graf Zeppelin ceased in early 1943. The 37 mm Flakzwilling 30 was originally intended for the ship.
• Actual planned aircraft capacity was 42; twelve Bf 109Ts & thirty Ju 87Cs. This was later revised to thirty Bf 109Ts and twelve Ju 87 D-4s.
• The Ju 87C was also a torpedo bomber.

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  The wappen (coat of arms) of Graf Zeppelin.

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  The keel for Graf Zeppelin in December 1936.

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  Graf Zeppelin after her launching on 8 December 1938.

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  Graf Zeppelin moored at Stettin in mid-1941.

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  Another view of Graf Zeppelin in 1941.

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  Projected recognition drawing of Graf Zeppelin had she been completed in September 1942.

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  Graf Zeppelin in drydock in March 1943.

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  Graf Zeppelin in 1947 at Swinemünde, prior to her sinking as a target ship.

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  Bow view of a model of Graf Zeppelin, at the Aeronauticum in Nordholz, Germany.

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  Sidescan sonar survey of the wreck of Graf Zeppelin.