Most of Germany's naval troubles in World War II, IMHO, boil down to two main endemic factors. First, the constant meddling in military and political affairs by Hitler (who admittedly knew nothing of naval matters), though it gave the Kreigsmarine a level of autonomy unthinkable by other branches of service, it inevitably doomed any efforts by the Germans to seriously threaten the Allies from the ocean's surface. This was manifest in constant shifts in allocation of resources as has been said, lack of an overall strategic vision, and even protectiveness by the Fuhrer (especially after the Norway campaign).
Second, and far more damning, the Germans just didn't have an ingrained naval tradition like Britain, America, or even Japan. It could be (rightfully) argued that this was what made their naval defeats in the First World War all but an inevitability, and showed up in a number of ways, perhaps the most important was the hoarding of what surface assets were available. As an example: Operation Cerberus shouldn't have been an effort to bring key German warships back into home waters, it should've been an effort to skirt them past Gibraltar where they could have, with the right management and tactics, helped the Italians to effectively smash the British fleet and seal off the Mediterranean as an Axis pond.
To be quite honest, even if the war had been delayed until 1945 to allow what was thought to have been the necessary buildup to take place, and even assuming that Japan's own ambitions didn't interfere (e.g., by drawing the U.S. into war and opening the floodgates of wartime innovation that they would've happily shared with the Brits when war would finally come), these faults would have proved to be the undoing of any potential Third Reich that sought to subjugate the West as well as the East. Even if Germany only went to war with Russia, letting the West have their peace first, it would've been a stretch for them to win, and only by conquering Russia would they have been able to adequately co-ordinate with Japan to build a proper Axis navy.
In short, if the Axis powers had acted more like Allies, then the Royal Navy may well have been in serious jeopardy, with or without the H-class.
At least, this would have been the case with regards to German and Japanese surface units. Both navies' inability to significantly modernize and adapt to new tactics and doctrines would still have been a major hindrance, and while the H-class would certainly have chewed up a lot more aircraft than any Japanese surface warship ever dreamed of, such carrierborne strikes would have been the only real safe way of taking them down. Example 1: Japanese initial successes against Western naval forces were taken for granted and assumed to be correct and unchangeable because they had worked at first. Example 2: Japanese AA weapons were never really adequate to the task of taking on modern strike aircraft, and most German surface ships didn't have the right kind of AA; they basically used land-based weapons in this capacity rather than developing true naval variants as well as adequate seaborne AA fire control.
However, despite all of this rambling nonsense, I would love to see (or possibly have a go at making) a 1/700 H39, H43 or H45.
_________________ Sean Nash, ACG (aircraft camo gestapo)
On the ways: 1/200 Trumpeter HMS Nelson 1/700 Tamiya USS Yorktown CV-5
In the stash: 1/35 Italiari PT-109 1/35 Tamiya "Pibber" Patrol Boat 1/350 Trumpeter USS Yorktown CV-10
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