What went wrong?

No legs.

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>nothing to shoot at
>rail gun
It's really hard to move your massive overengineered wunderwaffen when all the rail lines have been bombed to shit by the RAF/USAF

Existing in the first place when the resources needed to build it were desperately needed elsewhere.

Nothing, but in the hindsight the resources dedicated to operating these things would have been better used somewhere else.

Only if if the rest of the army was strong enough, these guns were pretty impressive addition to the long range firepower.

Part of the far too ambitious Plan Z, which was supposed to run until about 1950 and when everything was completed the Kriegsmarine was supposed to be able to go against the Royal Navy. In reality, German capital ships were more status symbols than viable weapons. Considering that all German capital ships, aside from Bismarck and Tirpitz, were built/commissioned prewar- it was partly trying to find a use for units already in service. Surface raiding was a good tactic but one that was inevitably going to go sour. It brings up the argument of the battleships are going to sink at some point, would it be better for them to have a few enemy ships go down with them due to raiding and battle, or for them to sit in the Fjords waiting to get bombed (which requires even more resources to defend)?

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that one is tiny compared to Gustav

Raeder thought he could use battleships as giant cruisers and roll up and down capturing delicious british tea shipments, using cruiser rules like it was 1914. As you said he couldn't into the concept of concealment or being easily spotted (although the Bismarck did a pretty good job of hiding up until it didn't).

holy fugg
H44 battleship
132,000 tons (almost twice the size of the Yamoto)
8x20 inch guns
german autism best autism

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How to sap your economy and resources in one project.
The German gave up on the Graf Zeppelin because they realized a carrier wouldn't help them any and the planes they were planning to use were not suitable. The H-class ships were even more pointless and would have surely been sunk on their first outings.

I wish the H-44 was completed so it could gone to sea and then got assaulted by Tallboys or even Grand Slams.

>were built/commissioned prewar
Shouldn't they have known after WW1 that challenging the Royal Navy head-on was futile?

It came down to the belief that France and Britain would not declare war and so Germany would have time to build up all its forces to the point it was dominant across the board...even though any potential adversary would be doing the same when it noticed the massive build up. No one ever accused Nazi war planners of being realistic.

It was designed to penetrate the maginot line's defenses and pop their magazine

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There was nothing that needed a gun that big to kill it, and it was so overengineered to get that size that it was equal parts too expensive to maintain and too unwieldy to actually use.

Sure worked for Dresden

Isnt this where Osama was hiding?

In all honesty, French and especially British declaration of war on Germany after Poland wasn't as "guaranteed" as they now make it out to be.

The Germans made an ambitious gamble, sure, but it was not entirely unrealistic.