Germany's reduced naval infrastructure left few slipways suitable for capital ships in the 1930s. Construction of Bismarck and Graf Zeppelin had to fit around the berths released by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Hurrying ships off those slipways could create additional technical problems without providing more building capacity. Cancelling Graf Zeppelin and carrier B is proposed as one way to release space for another battleship. Those spaces would become available sequentially, so abandoning the carriers would still leave a constrained construction schedule.
Notable Point · 1:50:13-1:51:29
German slipways forced a carrier-versus-battleship tradeoff
Germany could not answer a renewed capital-ship race quickly without giving another major program access to its few large building berths.