Why didn’t the Germans use any aircraft carriers in WWII? I know they built a few, but either they were never completed or they were never used.
Who would they use one against? The Russians? The British? They were perfectly capable of launching aircraft against them without carriers. The Americans? There was no way the Germans could have built a fleet big and powerful enough to bring continental U.S. into range, and even if they could, would would they have done with it - invade?
Aircraft carriers can’t exist in a vacuum, they need additional fleet ships to act as pickets and provide high caliber artillery. The German navy, when all its ships are counted together, could have met the Royal Navy in a pitched battle…the problem is that those ships were never sailing at the same time, but were completed piecemeal and then chewed up.
Additionally, the navy was run by Dönitz, a submariner, who was convinced that the u-boats could on their own subvert allied commerce and transport, so he made sure that the u-boat fleet got priority.
Short answer: The war started to early.
Longer answer: The German Navy had a plan for rearmament during the 30s called plan Z. This called for several battleships as well as two carriers. One carrier, the Graf Zeppelin, was launched in 1938, but never completed. The other, simply called Carrier B, was halted in 1939 and eventually scrapped.
The reasons for never completing either were several, but all related to the, by then, ongoing war. A lack of steel and welders for one, as the Germans had to prioritize between surface ships and uboats, and since they had a bigger immediate need for uboats when the war started in '39, surface ships were prioritized down.
Secondly, the air craft needed to man the carriers were taken away from the Navy. THe Kriegsmarine did have a naval air arm, but this was put under Luftwaffe control by Göring in the late 30s, and when the Luftwaffe suddenly found themselves in charge of defending Denmark/Norway, as well as preparing for the Sea Lion offensive against the UK, the planes needed to equip the now near-ready Graf Zeppelin, weren’t made available.
Thirdly, her guns, especially the AA guns, were needed elsewhere for land defence.
By the time the production capabilities of the third Reich increased to such a level that they could very well make enough aircraft to go around, the Bismarck had been sunk, the Hipper had been sunk, the German surface fleet had suffered near crippling losses to their destroyer fleet during the Norway campaign, and the uboats had achieved such stunning successes that Hitler had lost faith in his surface vessels.
However, they did in fact attempt to get her combat ready in 1942, to provide much needed air cover for the rest of the surface fleet. Especially as by this time, with the British attacks on Tarantio, and with the sinking of Prince of Wales by Japanese aircraft, the dominance of the aircraft carrier had been established. She was attacked by the Allies in port and this, plus other delays, meant that the completion date kept slipping until Hitler ordered all surface vessels scrapped in 1943. (They didn’t scrap the exisiting ships, in the end, but all projects in progress were halted)
I don’t think that the ME-109 fighter could be adapted-it had a very fragile undercarriage.
The RAF tried to adapt the Spitfire (naval version “Seafire”)-it was not a big success-cariier landings were too rough for the undercarriage.
Frankly, Hitler had no chance with a surface navy-the Baltic Sea was easily closed, and Germany did not have the industrial capacity to build a large fleet.
Although, the few german warships build were technically good-better gunsights and fire control than comparable British warships.
One possible reason is because any German vessels pretty much had to go around the UK to get to the Atlantic, and that might have been a dicey proposition for a carrier in those days.
Speaking hypotheticals, the Axis might have had a chance had they captured the French fleet before the British sunk it, and made use of the Italian fleet. That would have given the Axis dominance over the Med, and would have made the destruction of the British colonies a cake walk.
I’m not really sure how that would in any way have made a difference to the Red Army, but it would have been a different war at least.
It was, the Bf109T (For “Träger” or carrier). Wider wings, sturdier undercarriage and other modifications of which 70 or so were made. Most of them were used in Norway, however, as their sturdy undercarriage and short take-off and landing characteristics were a plus operating from small airfields, and the Graf Zeppelin were delayed time and again.
They also had a carrier version of the Ju-87 Stuka dive bomber, and a bi-plane torpedo aircraft.
He didn’t run the navy until learly 1943 however, Raeder ran the show until Hitler decided all surface ships should be scrapped, or at the very least only used as a fleet-in-being. It is true, though, that the second carrier was delayed and cancelled due to an emphasis on uboats.
That was the plan, and one of the modifications planned for the plane to make it a naval plane was to strengthen the undercarriage. Messerschmidt was also developing another naval plane, the ME-155, and Junkers had plans to modify the 87.
In his terrific alternative-history book Fatherland, Robert Harris mentions in passing that the German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin was still in service long after the German victory in WWII.
IRL, I see her wreck was discovered just five years ago: German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin - Wikipedia
The short answer is: Germany didn’t need them.
Germany built it’s military for a European war. Land based aircraft dominate the waters in and around Europe. (It’s tough to sink France.) If you don’t need to project air power far out over the ocean, you don’t need carriers. The Germans built long range recce aircraft to hunt convoys for the uboats, and they were cheaper to build and crew than trying to build carriers for this duty.
The Royal Navy struggled with their carrier designs, knowing that land based air would dominate in the Med and close in to Europe. Their armored flight deck designs resisted most bomb hits, but made the hangars cramped, and slowed flight ops (due to small/slow elevators, IIRC). Repairs to the ship were also complicated by the armored deck. Flight deck - Wikipedia Armoured flight deck - Wikipedia
The Germans also would have had to develope aircraft carrier doctrine (not just tactics and strategy, but day to day shipboard aircraft handling, as well). Not impossible, but it takes time. (Years) They would also need to develope and build an underway replenishment force, too. (Similar to the milch-cow concept, but scaled up dramatically.) Otherwise the carriers can’t control an area for more than a few days.
These are similar reasons why China hasn’t built a carrier fleet, either. They don’t have the need to project their power far away. Yet. 
bump nailed it: too hard to get them into the Atlantic. British carriers could dock and sail from Scapa Bay (or from somewhere like Bristol, if necessary). German carriers would have to navigate the English Channel, where they’d have been sitting ducks for British land-based aircraft, or gone the long way around Scotland, with the attendant risk of running into the bulk of the Royal Navy.
Why would you need an aircraft carrier for a land war? Seriously, of what use is it? The longest stretch of water was the Mediterranean. Heck, they started the war without any real tanks and built them as they went along.
Operation Rheinübung, which resulted in the sinking of the Bismarck, was carried out mainly as a last ditch effort by Admiral Raeder (Hitler didn’t know about it until the ships had already left port) to prove that the surface fleet was useful to the war effort. Since they didn’t have the ships to slug it out with the Royal Navy, they attempted to establish their warships along the North Atlantic convoy routes. Bismarck and Prinz Eugen originally set out from the Baltic, and if they could have made it to France, they could have linked up with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (which were being repaired at Brest), which would have given them a potent raiding force in the Atlantic.
Once Rheinübung failed, the Germans basically gave up on their surface fleets in favor of the U-Boats.
They had 2 more Bismark class ships in production. As was pointed out earlier, they went to war before all their assets were in place. 3 groups of Bismark class warships would have made a bigger dent in the front half of the war and would have certainly have drawn it out longer.
They completed both the Bismarck and the Tirpitz (German battleship Tirpitz - Wikipedia). Neither played a major role in the struggle for control of the North Atlantic, but the Nazis were planning even larger battleships (H-class battleship proposals - Wikipedia).
I know they are planning on some now.
But that doesn’t change my point: China has had Atomic bombs for a while now, but no carriers. Why? Because they didn’t think they needed them, right? That’s just as true for the OP. China has had the nautical engineering ability and shipyards for constructing carriers for a long time now.
Also, China is going to have to develope a naval air tradition, just like the US and Japan did. Trial and error (hopefully few), hard work. I don’t expect China to be doing “East-PAC” cruises any time soon.
I doubt that a later start to the war would have been as advantageous for the Nazs.
The British were already under way with rearming, they had 4 battleships on the build, Lion, Temeraire, Conquerer, Thunderer and the construction was stopped since it was thought these could not be completed in time, however, a delay would likely to have led to them being finished, these were a ready match for anything that was afloat, they had much better AA protection and better armour all round. Had they been complete than its unlikely that the Ais would have taken the RN on in a major massed surface engagement, the odds would have been even more against them.Add to that that they would have had the benefit of better radar too and the German fleet has serious problems - not that the Axis were really aware of the threat of radar controlled gunnery until the loss of the Scharnhorst.
At the same time, it had already been realised that the need for escort vessels was probably more important and production had been significantly increased.
As for carriers, well it was not truly until Midway that it was absolutely plain that these were the rulers of the sea, even after Pearl and other airborne attacks it was not clear.
A delay to the start of WW2 would have suited the Germans worse, the Russians were also in the process of military build up, so were the French. Although German tactics did counter the greater numbers that they initially faced, I can’t help but think a better preparedFrance would have made a much more significant difference, as it was, was a more closely run thing in France than most folk tend to realise - at teh very least, this would have soaked up more resources from Germans, made any possible invasion attempt at Britain even less likely and may well have delayed Barbarossa until the following year - this action itself was pretty near to the limit weather wise.
German carriers did not really have much of a role in terms of their deployment, no convoys to protect, and a fleet not strong enough to enforce its will on the sea, there was no chance of oceanic operations, which left them lmited to much more localised work, which could just as readily be done by land based aircraft.
Germany didn’t build aircraft carriers because aircraft carriers weren’t thought of as offensive weapons. The weapon of choice was the battleship, and that’s what both Britain and Germany concentrated on. The various navy treaties between WWI and WWII regulated battleships, but not aircraft carriers. Aircraft carriers were mere supporting vessels. Capable of bringing air cover when invading a coastline, but certainly couldn’t match the power of a dreadnaught!
Even the Japanese didn’t understand this. Despite the Japanese’s success at Peal Harbor with an aircraft carrier mounted attack, the Japanese went on to build the biggest battleship ever, the Yamato.
It wasn’t until the Battle of Coral Sea and Midway when it was realized that the aircraft carrier had replaced the battleship as the main offensive weapon at sea. By the time the power of the aircraft carrier was recognized, Germany was’t in position to build them.
The Yamato, the largest and best armed battleship ever built spent most of WWII in port, and when it finally left port at the end of WWII, it was quickly sunk by American planes.
I would say that the Japanese had a pretty firm understanding of the concept in 1941.
Carriers didn’t initially trump the use of battleships, and being able to bring large guns to bear has its uses. Each ship type can trump the other when in its natural element, a carrier would be torn to shreds when in range of a battleship’s guns. When the Yamato was being built, Japan still had a large carrier fleet with trained and competent pilots which could provide air cover for the heavy hitters.
Think about it, which would you prefer: a mixed fleet with carriers providing air cover and reco, with artillery doing the drudge work, or a pure carrier fleet having to use some of its pilots to perform offensive operations?
Had the Yamato had air cover, sinking her would not have been a trivial task.