Bismarck is kinda overrated IMHO. I like Scharnhorst and Gneisenau much better.
What's your favorite Kriegsmarine (or Reichsmarine) warship?

>>63907906 (OP)
>enemy has 10x as many ships as you and has aircraft carriers
>hurr durr lets make overweight heavy cruisers that are supposed to go solo

horrible game plan

It's a pity that they had to flee after being bombed by the Royal Air Force despite having managed to gain a base on the west coast of France.
Things would have been different if Germany had been able to secure Dakar or Casablanca in ceasefire negotiations.

For me it's
ADMIRAL GRAF SPEE
DEUTSCHLANDS STOLZ, GIGANT ZUR SEE

>>63907913
"overweight heavy cruiser" is a compliment frankly. The sharnhorst were nearly as heavy as treaty battleships, despite having sub 12 inch guns...

It wasn't scuttled.

>>63907906 (OP)
>What's your favorite Kriegsmarine (or Reichsmarine) warship?
U-96

>>63907906 (OP)
I think the pocket battleships are cute

>>63908137
There was a plan to refit them.

admiral-hipper-class
a decent workhorse heavy cruiser that served well

>>63907913
Blame Hitler falling for the British carrot.

>>63907906 (OP)
One of Gneisenau's turrets is still functional. It was installed as a coastal defense gun by the Germans in Norway.

>>63907913
yeah, but we'd all be speaking english or something if he built another 100 subs or so instead.

>>63908945
what's it defending against?

>>63909203
Enemy ships. It was installed during WW2, when the Germans occupied Norway, and was used by the Norwegians in the decades following WW2, until it became obsolete. It's no longer in use and the whole area is basically an open military museum/park. It's still maintained and still works though, but I don't think it's been fired in decades.

Scharnhorst is so underrated only German capital ship to do down fighting.

>>63907906 (OP)
Pic related is the most impressive Nazi naval weapon and I'm tired of pretending it's not.

>>63909289
It is pretty fucking cool. It also looks surprisingly modern.

>>63908743
A plan-plan, or a "please god someone do this cocaine and think of something we can do to prevent us going to the eastern front"-plan?

>>63909351
They were intended from the start to be capable of upgrading to 15 in guns.

>>63907906 (OP)
>two of the most beautiful ships ever designed
>nicknamed 'The Ugly Sisters'
What did they mean by this?

>>63907906 (OP)
Scharnhorst is mai waifu

I almost want to take a trip around Norway and document all the remnants from Germany's autistic trip up here back in the early 40s. We've got the Gneisenau cannon posted above, the Adolf cannons intended for the H-class battleships that were meant to succeed the Bismarck-class, and several of the U-boat bunkers the Germans built which are still in use (and I know two people who worked on the U-boat bunker in my town).
We also have a ton of forts, airfields, cannon emplacements and 88s. I think almost every Norwegian kid grew up playing in old German forts and flak batteries.
A few years ago, you could even dive near the mostly intact wreck of Georg Thiele, but I think it's been reduced to almost nothing by now.

>>63907906 (OP)
I think Nurnberg was actually quite a good design
Most Kriegsmarine major vessels were somewhat overweight

>>63907906 (OP)
What if instead you had a ship that travelled with all the heavy hitters in the Kriegsmarine, then got nuked twice?

>>63907906 (OP)
It is kind of amazing that the Kreigsmarine made the mistake of letting an important surface vessel get forced into a last stand with a superior British force on three separate occasions (Graf Spee, Bismarck, Scharnhorst)

>>63907906 (OP)
I like the aesthetics of most Axis ships. As for Kriegsmarine the Admiral Hipper class is underappreciated

>>63910653
you can add Kormoran and Atlantis to the list
this was unironically according to keikaku however. individual surface raiders was their gameplan all along. the catch is that they were expecting to operate several at once and thus overstretch the RN in various directions, but their coordination was shit and they ended up throwing their ships away piecemeal and defeated in detail

imagine if they'd managed to get Bismarck, Tirpitz, maybe four or five Deutschlands and Hippers, and a couple of auxiliary cruisers deployed all at once. it would have been quite chaotic and they probably might have managed to sink many more RN cruisers

>>63911376
Imagine if at the start of WW1 the entire Ostasiangeschwader had dispersed and raided like the Emden instead of leading a futile assault on the Falklands.

>>63909203
ur mum

>>63911552
Doesn't work as well with ww1 because of lack of fuel, which is part of the reason Falklands turned out so badly for the squadron anyway
In ww2 the Kriegsmarine had disguised auxiliary tankers and longer-ranged ships as they were more prepared

>>63909351
They had built the 15-inch guns and had gotten as far as removing the Gneisenau's 11-inch turrets when Hitler had its repair/refit work cancelled. The 15-inch guns were used in coastal fortifications instead.

>>63907906 (OP)
I like their "I can't believe it's not a destroyer" torpedo boats.

>>63911807
And the anti-aircraft submarines they made to escort returning U-boats through the Bay of Biscay.

>>63911826

>>639118031
Oh, and S-Boats. They're like a more respectable looking PT boat.

>>63907913
that fact that and Scharnhorst and Gneisenau even existed made forced Britain to keep a large fleet ready in the north Atlantic to intercept them. 15 capital ships and up to 40 destroyers kept busy by 2 ships. probably a better use of German resources then another 50 uboat.

>>63912889
>15 capital ships
nah
1 squadron each of ~4-5 capital ships were deployed in the Mediterranean, Far East and Arctic, and attrition took its toll, so Home Fleet ultimately took up only 1/4th the main battle strength
>up to 40 destroyers
inshore anti-Uboat and anti-Eboat work ate up a lot of escorts

>>63909383
>>63909351

>They were intended from the start to be capable of upgrading to 15 in guns.
Yes and no. Like yes, they had this possibility in mind from the beginning, but it's not like it would have been a plug and play kind of thing. For once, conversion would have required leghtening the bow to deal with the heavier turrets. in fact i believe conversion work was extimated to last something around two years, which is why it was never attempted. At some points they even considered selling the 380 turrets (which WERE built) to the soviets, who had an even more half baked idea of useing then for their kronstadt class battlecruisers.

>>63908841
>>63910625
>>63911340

Meh, the hippers had their own problems. Overall they too were very overweight and oversized compared to their firepower. Armor wasn't great either, and their engines were maintenance heavy and often unreliable. I don't blame them tho, the Versailles treaty had set back German shipbuilding by a lot.

>>63911853
German S boats were good enough that the Italians decided to copy them and build their own. two of them were responsible for sinking the HMS Manchester, the biggest warship to be sunk by motor torpedo boats in ww2

speaking of Italians, meet one of the most ridiculous offences against the naval treaties, the WW2 Spica class
classed as "torpedo boats" but really coastal destroyers, they packed a punch similar to a WW1 destroyer

>>63913122
I mean it doesn't really matter what they were called: what mattered was their displacement of about 600 tons, which meant that their total number was unrestricted by the treaty. For once ther was no foul play involved there. In fact other navies built similar ships for the same reason: Ppic related for example is a La Melpomène class torpedo boat (torpilleur d'escadre) of the French Navy. the japanese had their Chidori class Torpedo boats, and Ecen the bongs had their own Kingfisher-class sloop

>>63913212
A rather famous bag of wank.

>>63913212
>ther was no foul play involved
they ended up going up to 1,000 tons, because no, you can't squeeze three 100mm guns, four torpedoes and a bunch of mines into 600 tons. arguably they were the heaviest armed for their size. The Chidoris packed similar armament into 800 tons but they had a lot fewer AA guns.