The Germans sought to develop aircraft carriers to support their convoy raiders, particularly their battlecruisers and battleships. Their bombers and fighters would be the eyes of a raiding squadron, and they would also enable it to defeat battleship-escorted convoys, and fend off British carriers or long-range reconnaissance aircraft. The program was part of the Z-Plan, which by 1943, would have given the German Navy an immensely powerful force of several Bismarck-class battlewagons, and up-gunned Scharnhorst and Gneisenau with 15-inch guns. The war started too early for Raeder's tastes.
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"My intensity is intense." -- Roger Clemens
"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." -- Winston Churchill.
"I am not a hero. The heroes are all dead. I am a survivor." -- Sgt. William Guarnere, Easy Company, 506th Parachute Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.
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