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Originally Posted by mmarsh What role would it have been used for Naval Reconnaissance? |
To be honest what started me thinking of the Storch aircraft was the more general question facing German naval industry in the 1930s. Against a numerically superior Royal Navy (RN) what would be the best use of their limited resources?
Perhaps with hindsight the best strategy was to build a combination of U-boats and aircraft carriers rather than battleships. However, some of the disguised merchant raiders also created problems for the RN, particularly in WW1. So I asked the question, would the equivalent resources placed into building dozens of smaller merchant raiders be more effective than using a few large gunned ships?
I think the answer depends partly on reconnaissance, since once the enemy was spotted, a small warship would be able to close quickly to destroy merchantmen with a light gun, or evade the larger enemy warships. So the question then arises what is the best aircraft for reconnaissance on a single gun ship considering that some deck space could be given to a small landing platform? After examining that the stall speed of the Storch was slightly less than the fastest ships I concluded (perhaps wrongly) that this aircraft could land vertically on a moving ship and would be suitable.
I also wondered why the larger merchant raiders were not more successful with their seaplanes. After viewing this
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d91_1201684471 I speculated that the Arado 196 might not be operational for much of the time due to its inability to land on uneven seas. If fishing Arado’s out of the sea is a better option then landing Storch’s on a small deck, I suppose a small merchant raider ship could launch them using a ramp at the front whilst mounting the main armament at the rear. This effectively becomes a hybrid carrier/destroyer.