Originally posted by Bodhi
I do agree however that they did need every aircraft avaialble. That is why the T never saw production as it would have taken away from existing production and the actuality of a German Carrier surviving any length of time in the Atlantic was very unlikely.
"When the war in Europe began, the Graf Zeppelin was about 85 percent complete, and most of her machinery had been installed. However, work on the Graf Zeppelin was suspended in October 1939 due to a change in German naval thinking. It was deemed that the operation of a single aircraft carrier within range of enemy land bases was impractical, and all work on the Graf Zeppelin was halted in May of 1940. Assembly of the 60 Bf 109T-1 fighters was also halted at the same time.
However, the successes of British carrier-based aircraft against the Italian Navy late in 1940 rekindled German interest in ships of this type, and the Fieseler Werke was instructed to complete the 60 Bf 109T-1s then under construction but to remove the naval equipment and deliver them as land-based fighter bombers suitable for operation from short strips.
Stripped of naval equipment and fitted with a rack for a 66 Imp gal drop tank, 4 110-lb bombs, or a single 551-lb bomb, the planes were redesignated Bf 109T-2. It was concluded that the Bf 109T-2 would be ideal for operation from small, exposed airstrips such as those from which the Jagdflieger were forced to operate in Norway. Several units operated with the Bf 109T-2 in Norway. However, it never operated in its intended shipboard role. The short-field performance of the Bf 109T lead to surviving Norwegian-based Bf 109T-2s to be based on the tiny fortified island of Heligoland in 1943. The last of the Bf 109T-2s disappeared from the inventory at the end of 1944."
