WW1 German carrier: now in dutch hands.

[Spey_Phantom]

after buying a minikit fokker DR1 today, i was looking at it and at the hull i had leftover from a scrapped 1/350 bismark. so i did the math and came up with this idea, a 1/144 ww1 carrier 

Back History:

in 1915, German spies infiltrated the british war office and managed to gain acces to plans for the Royal Navy's new battleship program, with recent experiments currently being conducted with launching aircraft from battleships, the RN and the US Navy were developing a new kind of ship, the aircraft carrier. the spy managed to take pictures and took them back to Germany.

the kriegsmarine officials reviewed the information there spy retrieved from great britain and found that this new ship could be a huge threat to its fleet as planes could bomb and destroy even the toughest vessels. with this in mind, the Kriegsmarine asked the Keiser if it would be appropriate to copy the design, but it would take years to build such a vessel, but the admirality suggested, as a test, that 1 of theyre new battleships currently under construction. so be it, and in march 1917 the cruiser SMS Bavaria was the first to recieve a flat top. Fokker, managed to modify its DR1 design for carrier operations. the DR1's recieved a arrestor hook, the steel tubings in the fuselage were strenthened and the landing gear was reinforced. the carrier was declared operational in may 1918, but it was to late to be used effective in the war, dispite that it has claimed some vallue in battle. the war was coming to a close and the carrier ended up in dry dock after the war. after the armistise was signed, the carrier was discovered in the harbour in Kiel.

the carrier was towed to France where allied technicians examined the vessel, but discovered that it was inferiour to the british and american designs. the ship was eventually towed and handed over to russia, where the ship was repaired and operated by the Soviet Navy.

The Model:

im ready to start construction, but the island superstructure is gonna be another story, i dont know much of how structures on 1914/18 battlehips were build.
so im ready to start building my 3rd aircraft carrier, maybe one day, when room is no longer an issue, i might even concider building a 1/144 Kuznetsov type carrier.

[BlackOps]

Nils, sounds like a cool project   You've done more carriers than anyone I know!

Don't forget to make sure you have a docking tower for dirigibles to tie up to also.

[jcf]

Hi Nils,
for your superstructure how about something Seydlitz like?



One thing that'll add to that WWI look would be to eliminate the 'clipper bow' and replace it with a vertical stem or even
a forward curved ram bow.

BTW there was an SMS Bayern(Bavaria), the class ship of the 1914 program dreadnought battleships.
Two ships were launched in 1915, Bayern and Baden.

p.s. 103.3 meters (what the hull represents in 1/144) is a little longer than the circa 1900 light cruisers (@ 99 m) and slightly shorter than the Arkona of 1902 (104.3 m).

Jon

[dy031101]

I hate to pour water on your backstory...... but the Entente Powers were not exactly on friendly terms with the Soviet- they even invaded North Russia in the final months of the WWI partly to resurrect the Eastern Front by defeating the Soviets (who signed a peace treaty with Germany), so it's unlikely that any war prize would have been given to the Soviets.

If anything, the carrier is likely to have been interned at Scapa Flow like the majority of the rest of the Hochseeflotte (not the Kriegsmarine, which is the WWII German Navy) after the end of WWI and then scuttled.

But the concept of an Imperial German carrier is absolutely interesting. 

[GTX]

they even invaded North Russia in the final months of the WWI partly to resurrect the Eastern Front by defeating the Soviets (who signed a peace treaty with Germany), so it's unlikely that any war prize would have been given to the Soviets.

And believe it or not, but Australians won 2 VCs in Russia in 1919:

Sgt. Samuel George Pearse,
29 Aug 1919    45th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, Sadlier-Jackson's Brigade; and

Cpl. Arthur Percy Sullivan,
10 Aug 1919    45th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, Sadlier-Jackson Brigade.

Anyway, back to the model idea - I like it.  I've long thought of doing something similar and somehow having the ship confront the RN HMS Furious in 1917/18 as a second Battle of Jutland.

Regards,

Greg

[Hotte]

after buying a minikit fokker DR1 today, i was looking at it and at the hull i had leftover from a scrapped 1/350 bismark. so i did the math and came up with this idea, a 1/144 ww1 carrier 

Back History:

in 1915, German spies infiltrated the british war office and managed to gain acces to plans for the Royal Navy's new battleship program, with recent experiments currently being conducted with launching aircraft from battleships, the RN and the US Navy were developing a new kind of ship, the aircraft carrier. the spy managed to take pictures and took them back to Germany.

the kriegsmarine officials reviewed the information there spy retrieved from great britain and found that this new ship could be a huge threat to its fleet as planes could bomb and destroy even the toughest vessels. with this in mind, the Kriegsmarine asked the Keiser if it would be appropriate to copy the design, but it would take years to build such a vessel, but the admirality suggested, as a test, that 1 of theyre new battleships currently under construction. so be it, and in march 1917 the cruiser SMS Bavaria was the first to recieve a flat top. Fokker, managed to modify its DR1 design for carrier operations. the DR1's recieved a arrestor hook, the steel tubings in the fuselage were strenthened and the landing gear was reinforced. the carrier was declared operational in may 1918, but it was to late to be used effective in the war, dispite that it has claimed some vallue in battle. the war was coming to a close and the carrier ended up in dry dock after the war. after the armistise was signed, the carrier was discovered in the harbour in Kiel.

the carrier was towed to France where allied technicians examined the vessel, but discovered that it was inferiour to the british and american designs. the ship was eventually towed and handed over to russia, where the ship was repaired and operated by the Soviet Navy.

The Model:

im ready to start construction, but the island superstructure is gonna be another story, i dont know much of how structures on 1914/18 battlehips were build.
so im ready to start building my 3rd aircraft carrier, maybe one day, when room is no longer an issue, i might even concider building a 1/144 Kuznetsov type carrier.

Germany planned an aircraft carrier in the First World War!
By Blohm & Voss was for Italy the passenger liner "Ausonia" in builds.
13 000 to, 158 m long.

Hotte

[Weaver]

Well you could actually make life very much easier for yourself if you wished: early carriers often had tiny or non-existent superstructures, mainly because of turbulence, which affected the very light aircraft of the day (with their very lightly loaded wings) severely.

Funnels were either minimal, retactable (easily made with DIY plumbing bits) or horizontal, exhausting at the stern.

Bridges were sometimes under the edge of the flight deck (open hangar front) and wheelhouses were minimal or even retractable into the forward part of the deck!

Hangars often had open front ends, sometimes with flying-off decks ahead of them for multiple launches, and flight decks sometimes curved down at the stern (to reduce turbulence) and/or up at the front to help arrest landing aircraft/ski-jump free-launching ones.

Lifts were sometimes cross-shaped, and some early arrestor systems featured lengthways wires which either converged to trap the aircraft's (fixed) wheels, or supported cross-wires with bags of sand on them! 

Lots of potential for wierdness - have fun!

[Spey_Phantom]

thanks for the reference guys, but i do want to as a small superstructure because otherwise, she would look more like a blank hull with a plank on it 

anyway, i changed the name of the topic as the carrier will remain unnamed.
i might even concider doing it in captured dutch navy markings. towing it and handing it over to the soviet union might not have been the smartest move.

maybe something like this:

Back History:


from the back history from the german carrier that was orriginally planned.

in 1915, German spies infiltrated the british war office and managed to gain acces to plans for the Royal Navy's new battleship program, with recent experiments currently being conducted with launching aircraft from battleships, the RN and the US Navy were developing a new kind of ship, the aircraft carrier. the spy managed to take pictures and took them back to Germany.

the kriegsmarine officials reviewed the information there spy retrieved from great britain and found that this new ship could be a huge threat to its fleet as planes could bomb and destroy even the toughest vessels. with this in mind, the Kriegsmarine asked the Keiser if it would be appropriate to copy the design, but it would take years to build such a vessel, but the admirality suggested, as a test, that 1 of theyre new battleships currently under construction. so be it, and in march 1917 the cruiser SMS Bavaria was the first to recieve a flat top. Fokker, managed to modify its DR1 design for carrier operations. the DR1's recieved a arrestor hook, the steel tubings in the fuselage were strenthened and the landing gear was reinforced. the carrier was declared operational in may 1918, but it was to late to be used effective in the war, dispite that it has claimed some vallue in battle. the war was coming to a close and the carrier ended up in dry dock after the war.

and now for the new part of the story:

with the allies now going into germany, the Keiser ordered that the carrier should leave the port of Kiel and head north towards neutral Denmark, but the allies by then controled most of the waters and the ship eventually ended up in the Netherlands after denmark erfused to let the ship into its harbours.

after the armistice was signed, the ship ended up in the harbour of Rotterdam, as the dutch had a pact with germany and were prepared to let the ship into its waters before the wars end. the ship remained in dry dock until may 1919 when the dutch were looking towards strenthening its post-war naval forces. after Anthony Fokker returned to the Netherlands, he managed to smuggle, just like most of his aircraft, atleast 16 navalised DR1's across the border, right under the noses of the allies. the aircraft were then put together in the new fokker factory and were then flown by the Marineluchtvaartdienst (Dutch naval aviation service, MLD).

the ship was completly repaired, finished and entered service with the dutch navy in december 1919 and was renamed "HrMS Hollandia". in 1920 fokker also managed to build the DVII for the dutch navy with the same modifications as was placed on the DR1. the ship was also used on operational deplayments in the dutch east-Indies colonies. in the early 30's the ships airwing was re-equiped with british fighter aircraft, like the Hawker Nimrod, the nimrod replaced the already overaged fokker DVII. Fokker also build navalised versions of the fokker C-X, in 1936, when fokker was building the DXXI for the dutch armed forces, he also wanted to build 15 naval versions, but the aircraft seemed to big for the very small carrier. the ship managed to serve the navy up until may 1940, when she was sunk by german stuka's while she was lying in port in Rotterdam on may 10 1940, when the nazi's started theyre conquest of europe.


in other words, she might be a post-war dutch carrer with repainted DR1 minikits in dutch markings 

[Spey_Phantom]

almost forgot, here are pictures for comparison, ive now given the hull a flat top 
i put on a minikit (witch is about 1/144) Fokker DR1 just to show a view of things to come.

i plan to put 3 of them on the deck