The German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin was the lead ship in a class of two carriers of the same name ordered by the Kriegsmarine of Nazi Germany. She was the only aircraft carrier launched by Germany and represented part of the Kriegsmarine's attempt to create a well-balanced oceangoing fleet, capable of projecting German naval power far beyond the narrow confines of the Baltic and North Seas. The carrier would have had a complement of 42 fighters and dive bombers.
The Florida-class battleships of the United States Navy comprised two ships: Florida and Utah. Launched in 1910 and 1909 respectively and commissioned in 1911, they were slightly larger than the preceding Delaware class design but were otherwise very similar. This was the first US battleship class in which all ships received steam turbine engines. In the previous Delaware-class, North Dakota received steam turbine propulsion as an experiment while Delaware retained triple-expansion engines.
The Iron Duke class was a group of four dreadnought battleships built for the British Royal Navy before the First World War. The class comprised four ships: Iron Duke, Marlborough, Benbow, and Emperor of India. Launched from October 1912 to November 1913, this was the third class of Royal Navy super-dreadnoughts. The ships were essentially repeats of the King George V-class battleships; they retained the same ten 13.5 inch (34.3 cm) guns in five twin gun turrets on the centreline. However, the Iron Dukes had improved armour and a more powerful secondary armament of 6-inch weapons instead of the 4-inch mounted on the earlier ships.
The Yamato-class battleships were two battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Yamato and Musashi, laid down leading up to World War II and completed as designed. A third hull, laid down in 1940, was converted to an aircraft carrier, Shinano, during construction.
The Scharnhorst class was a class of German battleships built immediately prior to World War II. The first capital ships of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine, it comprised two vessels: Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Scharnhorst was launched first, and is considered to be the lead ship by some sources; they are also referred to as the Gneisenau class in some other sources, as Gneisenau was the first to be laid down and commissioned. They marked the beginning of German naval rearmament after the Treaty of Versailles. The ships were armed with nine 28 cm (11 in) SK C/34 guns in three triple turrets; plans to replace these with six 38 cm (15 in) SK C/34 guns in twin turrets were never realized.
Seydlitz was a heavy cruiser of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine, fourth in the Admiral Hipper class, but was never completed. The ship was laid down in December 1936 and launched in January 1939, but the outbreak of World War II slowed her construction and fitting-out work was finally stopped in the summer of 1940 when she was approximately 95 percent complete. The unfinished ship remained pier-side in the shipyard until March 1942, when the Kriegsmarine decided to pursue aircraft carriers over surface combatants. Seydlitz was among the vessels chosen for conversion into auxiliary aircraft carriers.
The O class was a planned class of three battlecruisers for the Kriegsmarine before World War II. Prompted by a perceived lack in ship numbers when compared with the British Royal Navy, the O class' design was born with the suggestion of modifying the P-class cruiser design with 380 mm (15 in) guns instead of 283 mm (11.1 in).
The P class was a planned group of twelve heavy cruisers of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine; they were the successor to the Deutschland-class cruisers. Design work began in 1937 and continued until 1939; at least twenty designs were submitted with nine of them being considered. There were three designs that were selected as the final contenders. One design was armed with six 283mm main guns in one triple turret forward and one more turret aft. It had two 150mm double secondary gun turrets as secondary armament with one being positioned above and just fore of the aft of the main 283mm main turret, and the other being in front and lower of the front main gun turret. This design had more beam than the other 2 designs. It also mounted 2 seaplanes on its fantail instead of the mid ship area. The final design was armed with six 28 cm (11 in) quick-firing guns in two triple turrets, as in the preceding Deutschland class. The ships were designated as Panzerschiff, and given the preliminary names P1–P12. They were an improved design over the preceding planned D-class cruisers, which had been canceled in 1934. Although the ships were already assigned to shipyards, construction never began on the P-class ships after the O-class battlecruiser design superseded them.
The M-class cruisers were a class of light cruisers planned, but never built, by Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine before World War II. The ships were designed for commerce raiding in the Atlantic Ocean. The design for the first four ships suffered from a number of problems, and so the fifth and sixth ships were substantially redesigned.
The Graf Zeppelin-class aircraft carriers were four German Kriegsmarine aircraft carriers planned in the mid-1930s by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder as part of the Plan Z rearmament program after Germany and Great Britain signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. They were planned after a thorough study of Japanese carrier designs. German naval architects ran into difficulties due to lack of experience in building such vessels, the realities of carrier operations in the North Sea and the lack of overall clarity in the ships' mission objectives.
Design 1047, also known as Project 1047, was a series of plans for a class of Dutch battlecruisers prior to the Second World War. These large capital ships were intended to counter the threat posed by Japanese aggression towards the Dutch colonies in the East Indies.
The D-class cruisers were a pair of German heavy cruisers, classified as panzerschiffe by the Reichsmarine. The ships were improved versions of the preceding Deutschland-class cruisers, authorized by Adolf Hitler in 1933. They were intended to counter a new French naval construction program. Displacement increased to 20,000 long tons (20,000 t), but Hitler allowed only increases to armor, prohibiting additions to the ships' main battery armament. Both ships were laid down in February 1934, but not much work done before work was cancelled pending a significant revision of the design. It was determined that the ships should be enlarged to counter the new French Dunkerque-class battleship. The construction contracts for both ships were superseded by the Scharnhorst-class battleships.
The K1 class was a type of gunboat designed by the German Kriegsmarine before World War II. The class was to have comprised four ships, which had been ordered under the provisional names K1, K2, K3, and K4. The four ships were ordered in November 1938, and were scheduled to have been completed by early 1942. However, the contracts for the four ships were canceled on 19 September 1939, two weeks after the start of World War II.
The 3.7 cm SK C/30 was the German Kriegsmarine's primary 3.7 cm (1.5 in) anti-aircraft gun during the Second World War. It was superseded by the fully automatic 3.7 cm FlaK 43 late in the war.
The 15 cm SK C/28 was a German medium-caliber naval gun used during the Second World War. It served as the secondary armament for the Bismarck class and Scharnhorst-class battleships, Deutschland-class cruisers and the Graf Zeppelin-class aircraft carriers. A number of surplus weapons were used as coast-defense guns and eight were adapted to use Army carriages and used as heavy field guns as the 15 cm Schiffskanone C/28 in Mörserlafette
The German Type IXA submarine was a sub-class of the German Type IX submarine built for Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine between 1937 and 1938. These U-boats were designed between 1935 and 1936 and were intended to be fairly large ocean-going submarines. The inspiration for the Type IXA submarine came from the German Type IA submarine, which had a similar diving depth and identical submerged horsepower.
The Bismarck-class was a pair of fast battleships built for Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine shortly before the outbreak of World War II. The ships were the largest and most powerful warships built for the Kriegsmarine; displacing more than 41,000 metric tons normally, they were armed with a battery of eight 38 cm (15 in) guns and were capable of a top speed of 30 knots. Bismarck was laid-down in July 1936 and completed in September 1940, while the keel of her sister ship, Tirpitz, was laid in October 1936 and work finished in February 1941. The ships were ordered in-response to the French Richelieu-class battleships, themselves laid-down in-response to the Italian Littorio-class battleships. The Bismarck-class was designed with the traditional role of engaging enemy battleships in home waters in mind, though the Oberkommando der Marine envisioned employing the ships as long-range commerce raiders against British shipping in the Atlantic Ocean. As such, their design represented the strategic confusion that dominated German naval construction in the 1930s.
The Jade class comprised a pair of passenger ships intended to be converted into auxiliary aircraft carriers by Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II. The two ships were launched as Gneisenau and Potsdam in 1935 and operated in peacetime by Norddeutscher Lloyd. After the outbreak of war, the ships were requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine as transports, and in May 1942, plans were drawn up to convert them into aircraft carriers. The ships were not identical, but were similar enough in size to allow identical outfitting.
The aircraft carrier II was a proposed conversion project for the incomplete French cruiser De Grasse. The ship was laid down in November 1938 and lay incomplete in the Arsenal de Lorient shipyard when Germany invaded France in May 1940. In 1942, Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine decided to convert the cruiser into an auxiliary aircraft carrier with a capacity for twenty-three fighters and dive bombers. Work ceased in February 1943, however, due to concerns with the ship's design, a severe shortage of material and labor, and the threat of Allied bombing raids. The ship was eventually completed as an anti-aircraft cruiser in 1956 by the French Navy.
