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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; nevertheless, German naval architects ran into difficulties due to lack of experience in building such vessels, the situational realities of carrier operations in the North Sea and the lack of overall clarity in the ships' mission objectives. This lack of clarity led to features either eliminated from or not included in American and Japanese carrier designs. These included a complement of cruiser-type guns for commerce raiding and defense against British cruisers. American and Japanese carriers, designed along the lines of task-force defense, used supporting cruisers for surface firepower, which allowed flight operations to continue without disruption and kept carriers out of undue risk of damage or sinking from surface action. A combination of political infighting between the ''Kriegsmarine'' and the ''Luftwaffe'', disputes within the ranks of the ''Kriegsmarine'' itself and Adolf Hitler's waning interest all conspired against the carriers. A shortage of workers and materials slowed construction still further and, in 1939, Raeder reduced the number of ships from four to two. Even so, the ''Luftwaffe'' trained its first unit of pilots for carrier service and readied it for flight operations. With the advent of World War II, priorities shifted to U-boat construction; one carrier, ''Flugzeugträger B'', was broken up on the slipway while work on the other, ''Flugzeugträger A'' (christened ''Graf Zeppelin'') was continued tentatively but suspended in 1940. The air unit scheduled for her was disbanded at that time. The role of aircraft in the Battle of Taranto, the pursuit of the German battleship , the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway demonstrated conclusively the usefulness of aircraft carriers in modern naval warfare. With Hitler's authorization, work resumed on the remaining carrier. Progress was again delayed, this time by the demand for newer planes specifically designed for carrier use and the need for modernizing the ship in light of wartime developments. Hitler's disenchantment with the performance of the Kriegsmarine's surface units led to a final stoppage of work. The ship was captured by the Soviet Union at the end of the war and sunk as a target ship in 1947. ==Design and construction== After 1933, the Kriegsmarine began to examine the possibility of building an aircraft carrier.〔Gardiner & Chesneau, p. 226〕 Wilhelm Hadeler had been Assistant to the Professor of Naval Construction at the Technical University of Berlin for nine years when he was appointed to draft preliminary designs for an aircraft carrier in April 1934.〔Reynolds, p. 42〕 Hadeler's first design was a ship that could carry 50 aircraft and steam at .〔 The Anglo-German Naval Agreement, signed on 18 June 1935, allowed Germany to construct aircraft carriers with total displacement up to 38,500 tons,〔Reynolds, p. 43〕 though Germany was limited to 35% of total British tonnage in any category of warship. The Kriegsmarine then decided to scale back Hadeler's design to , which would permit the construction of two ships within the 35% limit.〔 The design staff decided that the new carrier would need to be able to defend itself against surface combatants, which necessitated armor protection to the standard of a heavy cruiser. A battery of sixteen guns were deemed sufficient to defend the ship from destroyers.〔Gardiner & Chesneau, pp. 226–227〕 In 1935, Adolf Hitler announced that Germany would construct aircraft carriers to strengthen the Kriegsmarine. A Luftwaffe officer, a naval officer, and a constructor visited Japan in the autumn of 1935 to obtain flight deck equipment blueprints and inspect the Japanese aircraft carrier .〔Reynolds, p. 44〕 The Germans also unsuccessfully attempted to examine the British carrier .〔Gardiner & Chesneau, p. 227〕 The keel of ''Graf Zeppelin'' was laid down on 28 December 1936,〔 on the slipway that had recently held the battleship .〔 The ship was built by the Deutsche Werke shipyard in Kiel.〔Gröner, p. 71〕 Two years later, ''Großadmiral'' (Grand Admiral) Erich Raeder presented an ambitious shipbuilding program called Plan Z which would build up the ''Kriegsmarine'' to a point where it could challenge the British Royal Navy in the North Sea. Under Plan Z, by 1945 as part of the balanced force the navy would have four carriers; the pair of ''Graf Zeppelin''-class ships were the first two in the plan. Hitler approved the construction program on 1 March 1939.〔Gardiner & Chesneau, p. 220〕 In 1938, a second carrier, ordered under the provisional name "B", was laid down at the Germaniawerft dockyard in Kiel.〔Gröner, pp. 71–72〕 ''Graf Zeppelin'' was launched on 8 December 1938.〔Gröner, p. 72〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Graf Zeppelin-class aircraft carrier」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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