List of aircraft carriers of Germany
[2] These ships did not meet the needs of the High Seas Fleet, however, and so a more ambitious plan to convert the unfinished passenger liner SS Ausonia into an aircraft carrier was proposed in early 1918.
Starting in the mid-1930s, the Reichsmarine began design studies for a new type of aircraft carrier to meet the requirements of the revitalized German fleet; by 1936, these concepts had developed into the Graf Zeppelin class, the first member of which was laid down for the renamed Kriegsmarine in December of that year.
Despite this, neither of the Graf Zeppelin-class ships would be completed due to the outbreak of World War II in September 1939; work was halted on both in early 1940, and Flugzeugträger B was scrapped shortly thereafter.
During this second period of construction, the Kriegsmarine proposed to convert several passenger ships and two unfinished cruisers into auxiliary aircraft carriers, though none of these were completed either, and by 1945 all had either been sunk or seized as war prizes by the Allied powers.
The first planned aircraft carrier came about in 1918, late in World War I; the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) had previously experimented with seaplanes operated from ships such as the armored cruiser Friedrich Carl.
[7] The Anglo-German Naval Agreement, signed that year, allowed Germany to build up to 35 percent of the strength of the Royal Navy; this equated to 38,500 long tons (39,100 t) worth of aircraft carriers.
By the time the keel for the first vessel, provisionally named Flugzeugträger A (Aircraft carrier A), had been laid down in December 1936, standard displacement had risen to 26,931 long tons (27,363 t).
The navy decided that it would take too long to complete either ship, and since Graf Zeppelin's anti-aircraft guns could be used to strengthen the defenses of recently conquered Norway, the naval command convinced Hitler to halt construction on both vessels in early 1940, and Flugzeugträger B was broken up shortly thereafter.
The Navy therefore selected several vessels to be converted into auxiliary aircraft carriers in May 1942, including the passenger ship SS Europa, operated by Norddeutscher Lloyd.
Like Europa, both ships would have been highly unstable with the installation of a flight deck, but this problem was circumvented by the adoption of heavy ballast in the case of Potsdam—renamed Jade—and the addition of a second, outer hull for Gneisenau—renamed Elbe.
