In article 40b4d9c9$1@bg2.,
"Matt Wiser" writes:
Weren't the USN tests of the captured 190 in anticipation that the 190
had been sold to Japan and that Corsair and Hellcat pilots would encounter
them in the Pacific? The 190 would have been a good carrier fighter had the
Germans ever finished the Graf Zeppelin CV instead of listening to the Fat
Boy and taking naval air from the Navy to the Luftwaffe.

No, not partiularly. Remember that at teh time that teh tests took
place, we still hadn't invaded Normandy, or Southern France, and
things were still cooking along in the Med. Since one of the salient
traits of the Navy is the mobility of their airbases, it would be
foolish to ignore the possibily of meeting 190s.

As to the 190 being a good carrier fighter. No, I don't think so at
all. It's behavior in the pattern was, for a carrier fighter, dismal
at best, (High stall speed, no stall warning, and a nasty tendency to
snap inverted when stalled in anythi8ng but straight & level flight)
with no visibility of the deck from about halfway down the base leg.
(Big engine, little canopy, with the pilot seated low down in the
fuselage. While the gear was somewhat better laid out than the 109,
it most likely wasn't strong enough to stand up to real carrier
operations.
Let's not forget that the rather small size of the German single
engined fighters means that there's no volume available for fuel, so
range/radius is dismal, and there isn't enough space to hang a lot of
stuff on the outside of the airplane. This turns out to be a real
problem with a Carrier Air Group. You've only got so much space to
carry and move airplanes around on, so you need teh most flexibility
that you can get out of an airplane.
As for the Graf Zeppelin (Seagoing version) - if the Germans had
completed her, it would have had as much effect on the War as it did
as a hulk tied up to the pier. Carriers don't operate in isolation -
they need a lot of support - Escorts for the carrier itself, a big
train of Replenishment Ships, Oilers, and other such ships following
it around and requiring excort themselves, and reliable, timely
intelligence about what's going on around them. The Kreigsmarine was
never, ever able to supply this, even if they were able to get their
heads wrapped around it. (Which is rather doubtful - look at the way
they used the few ships they had, ****ing them away in ones and twos
on solo missions that, while they produced a bit of a flap as they
were hunted down & sunk, did nothing to further German War Aims.)
After the April 1940 Norway Campaign, the Germans ended up with no
useful surface Navy at all. (Norway was nasty to the German Navy.
They came out of the Norway Campaign with 3 ships that weren't in the
yards for extensive repairs that put them out of action for the rest
of the year.
They also had some very real problems with basic technology. Their
high pressure/high temperature machinery was supposed to produce a
more compact, lighter, adn more economical power plant. They never
got them to work properly, and what they achieved as a temendous
amount of skill at rigging towlines. Their Light Cruisers, which was
the basis for the Graf Zeppelin's hull, were so structurally weak that
they couldn't be allowed out of the Baltic. Graf Zeppelin herself was
the product of a flawed concept - she combined the airgroup of an
Escort Carrier (even worse than that, since the range/radius of
the airplanes was so limited) with the armament of a small light
cruiser. Just what was it supposed to do?

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster