The H-45 Battleship Concept
By: Andrei Tapalaga
Tags: WIB History, Hitler, War, History, Naval History

The H-45 Battleship Concept

Another behemoth designed by Hitler

Pixel art of the H-45 Battleship concept

After the loss of the Bismarck German battleship which was the pride o the German army, Hitler became very furious and wanted to start the design of Fuhrer class battleships that would make the Yamato Japanese battleship a joke. Sadly the picture you see above is the only thing I could find to show what the H-45 could have looked like (sorry for the small resolution).

An interpretation of the H-45 Concept

Hitler was in love with huge weapons that are just ridiculous and ineffective because of the number of resources it takes to actually use them. A good example would be the Maus tank which had the thickest armor at the time, however, because it was so big and heavy the engine would use as much fuel as 10 king tigers to actually move 1km in distance.

Not only that but because of the heavyweight, it could only do a top speed of 15kmh so it would be better off as a turret in battle. The tank was built but never used because even the Germans realized (after production) it’s ineffectiveness in combat.

Copy of the original blueprints of the H-45 Battleship

The blueprint that you have above is to show the comparison of what is considered a large battleship (the Bismarck) versus the H-45 or Fuhrer class battleship. We are talking about a battleship that is 3 times larger by far and just gunned to the teeth.

The armament that was presented to be on the H-45 is just scary for someone that does understand the power of naval armament. The main guns of the battleships are 8 x 800mm Gustav siege guns! The largest that has ever been implemented on a battleship in the second world war was of 460mm on the Yamato and that was a devastating ship that has survived a fight against 5 destroyers at the same time.

The secondary armament of the H-45 would have been as follows:

12 x 9.45/73 (240mm) long-range anti-aircraft guns

24 x 5.04/60 (128mm) anti-aircraft guns

light armament 55mm Gerat 58 and 30mm anti-aircraft guns (number not specified)

Bismarck 1940

The Bismarck was a middle-rank battleship that had the armor of 320mm and the main guns of 380mm which for 1940 was something you would want to stay away from. This is so that you get a better understanding of the Fuhrer class battleship.

The H-45 was planned to be 606 meters long, beam 91 meters wide and the draft 16.75 meters wide. The Bismarck was only 241 meters long. The armor that was planned to be on the H-45 was all-around 410mm thick steel which with all the armament would bring the ship at a staggering 700,000 tones!

The weight distribution would have been as follows:

Armament: 16,425 tons = 2.9%

Armor: 158,660 tons = 28.3%

Machinery: 11,931 tons = 2.1%

Hull, fittings & equipment: 274,955 tons = 49.1%

Fuel, ammunition & stores: 97,307 tons = 17.4%

Representation of other naval crafts and an aircraft to the H-45 concept

Now I know that you will aks what kind of monster eating diesel would be required to push such a weight? What was planned was a 480,000 shp (shaft horsepower) powered by 8 shafts producing 372,000 kW. The maximum speed was approximated to 28 knots.

It is imperative to remember that this is a stupid concept that was made up by Hitler which had no naval engineering skills. Just as all of his monstrosities it probably would have been able to build it, however, not only the number of resources required to build it would have made it inefficient but also the fuel consumptions and the number of men required to run the battleship.