Graf Zeppelin and the risk of too much new technology

What is your most controversial opinion about German military equipment?

Graf Zeppelin contained good ideas but was an impractical first carrier because too many untested technologies had to work together at once.

Graf Zeppelin combined too many unfamiliar systems on Germany's first aircraft carrier. The objection is that useful individual ideas would take too long to integrate into a workable ship. On that assessment, an operational carrier would not emerge until the 1950s. The Ford class provides a comparison with the difficulties of making a large technological jump in one generation. A proposed alternative introduces improvements through successive Nimitz and Ford batches so faults remain easier to isolate. Royal Navy battleship development supplies another example of limiting the number of simultaneous changes.