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PostPosted: Fri Dec 13, 2013 11:40 am 
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I realise we have a thread here:
viewtopic.php?f=67&t=54168
........that "slightly" discusses them along with other never were designs, but I wanted to have a thread specifically just for H-class discussion only. ;)

So, what are everybody's thoughts? Could any of these behemoths actually have been made? Would they have had any impact on the war? Discuss anything from guns to propulsion and everything in between.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-class_ba ... _proposals


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PostPosted: Fri Dec 13, 2013 11:55 am 
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Location: alton hampshire uk
hi
good topic
yes they could have been built and would have been built, and they would have been very difficult to sink. look what the RN had to deploy for the Bismarck and look what it took or perhaps that should read look how many goes they had for the Tirpitz to get it but it all boils down to the fact that the deck armour was in the wrong place.
that's my thoughts
cheers
gary r

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PostPosted: Wed Dec 18, 2013 6:15 pm 
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H39 would have been viable and very comparable to the Iowa class. I don't think any H class beyond that could have worked because Germany simply didn't have the ports and facilities to handle anything bigger.

Beyond that, considering that even the Bismarck/Tirpitz were a tactical waste for Germany, even 1 completed H-class would have been a serious misallocation of resources, to say nothing of a 140,000 ton monster sporting 20" guns.

I'm kinda glad the Nazis were more worried about showing off than doing what was sensible though. If they had used the materials/costs invoved in building the Bismarck class and unfinished H-39 to build a few dozen U-boats instead, the course of the war may have gone very differently.

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PostPosted: Sun Dec 22, 2013 2:09 am 
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Admiral Reader wasn't anticipating until 1942 at the earliest and 1945 at the latest. Had he known in 1938 he would be going to war in September 1939 Bismarck and Tirpitz would have been canceled too, and a shift of the resources to u-boats. The 15" guns for Bismarck and Tirpitz would have gone to Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.

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PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2014 10:33 pm 
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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.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 03, 2015 2:18 pm 
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I have several 2400 scale "H-Class" minis, I traded from someone. Thing is, one of them has 4 triple turrets. Can't find any reference to a H-Class with triple main turrets. Any Idea on what these may be? (triple 28cm seam too small, maybe 30.5-38cm?) anyone know a reference to this configuration?


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PostPosted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 3:19 pm 
The KM was working on a triple 38cm turret. The rate of fire for the 38ths was much higher then that of the 40cm, so with triple turret the rate of fire is even higher. HP has a 1/700 H Class-N with triple 38's.


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 06, 2016 11:09 am 
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Does anybody have plans for the H39? Or maybe know the source of them? I need detailed and accurate ones for my future project in 1/350.
Actually I found this one on a quick google search. Looks like a very good one, but don't know why it is so pixelated...
http://www.modellschlachtschiffe.de/img ... h-plan.jpg

Helps will be appreciated!
:thumbs_up_1:
Aop

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 12, 2020 9:15 am 
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Why is the """H-40"" with 4 turret often draw with a different stern than the H-39? Also planning to use the veryfire one for the mixed propulsion with 4 turret design (waterline and it will got some of tirpitz modification to make it look different than the Schlachtschiff L I'm planning to build by using the sam model)
Image
http://www.shipbucket.com/drawings/6732
Also source on the project made after H-39 seem to be somewhat conflictual too


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PostPosted: Tue Jun 16, 2020 12:24 pm 
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"Could any of these behemoths actually have been made? Would they have had any impact on the war?"
Bismarck was 40 000+ tons of steel. Instead of Bismarck the 3rd Reich could - theoretically - have built 40 Type IX submarines, or almost 2 000 Panzer IV; double that number if you throw in Tirpitz.
What would have happened if Germany had had 2 000 additional tanks for the attack on the Soviet union? How would the battle of the Atlantic have run had Germany been able to deploy 80 additional type IX submarines in the summer of 1941?
I am shuddering at the idea, and am grateful for the German admirals' ability to convince Hitler to pour scarce resources into battleships - and thus down the drain.
Richard


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PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2020 10:07 am 
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Have we heard anything recently about VeryFire upscaling their 1/700 kit to 1/350? There were some initial rumors but nothing since.


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 27, 2024 5:56 pm 
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Has anyone else built the trumpet or DKMH class battleship?
https://reviews.ipmsusa.org/review/dkm-h-class-battleship

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