Is the Kiel canal in HOI4 ?

[Secret Master]

Bah, I want Plan Z and the U-boat program. And I want to lose Barbarossa.

 

[Chromos]

IIRC they had to remove alot of excess weight, including the shells, to prevent it hitting the bottom. Must have been a risky operation to do it during war time.

The canal itself was 11 meters deep. (The locks reached 14 meters deep.)
Bismarck draft was 9,3 to 9,9 meter..

So no problem for Bismarck size ships.
Max length would have been around 330 meters, max width ~45 meters.

Compare the above pictures with this:

USS Missouri would have fit through Kiel Canal, even as their max(!) draft was 11 meters and ist was a ~30 meter longer ship.
But Bismrack would not have fit through Panama Canal as it had a 3 meter bigger beam as Missouri.. And max width for PC was ~34 meter.

So canals are not fully historically in HoI4, but maybe that will be added later on. So that Yamato class siize superhvy designs would not fit through such canals at all. That would be -maybe- just a little added rule to the canals as we have already now for diplomatic reasons.

Yeah, pre-Barbarossa they still had plenty of defensive air cover available, and the RAF had still not perfected precision bombing. Took them a few goes at Tirpitz before they got it right.

In the game, of course you teleport from the Baltic to the North Sea. You can't be attacked while in transit through a canal.

The Canal was all over the war well prepared with AA and ships used it throughout the war until the end. Due to the hvy AA cover, traveling ships were no "sitting ducks".
And afaik there is no teleport in HoI3, so I doubt that will change in HoI4.

sorry but will there bee the z plan ships in game?

Some ship classes from Z-Plan are in the tech tree like you can imagine from the German one here.

The naming doesn't fit that well overall, but for most people it might be enough game play wise.
Historically there is no ship class for Scharnhorst Class BB in the tree, and there is no class like Deutschland Class or later Planned P-class too. Historical Scharnhorst is an undergunned BB, while O-class is a P-class with 6x38cm design idea instead of P-class 6x11cm guns.
These Panzerschiffe(Deutschland/P-class) might be seen as "normal CA", but they traded the usual 8" for 11" guns wich put them between French Dunkerque, German Scharnhorst, Jap design B-65 cruiser or US Alaska Class and usual CA. The new "large/super Cruisers" like Alaska/B-65 wich were mostly a new type of Cruiser-Killer wich had also only 11"-13" main art, wich made them in my view to some "WW2 Battlecruisers".
WW1 BC had BB sized main art and higher speed, but traded much armor for it. While Germany used smaller main art calibre for more speed, but stayed with BB armour. O-class had little similar armour as Alaska, but bigger main art..
Ship design was never easy done right in a sandboxed historical game..

So imo for "better Z-Plan" we would "need"/like to have additionally:
Deutschland Class type: Raider, biger main art, otherwise similar to CA. Call it superhvy CA: "CB" It is "just" a "different" CA with focus on being a Raider.

"WW2 Battlecruiser":
Type 1: Undergunned BB, like French Dunkerque or German Scharnhorst class. Armor+, speed-(compared to Type 2 below)
Type 2: Cruiser killer like Jap design B-65 cruiser or US Alaska Class. Speed+, Armor-
Type 3: Raider like planned O-Class. Less hvy art but bigger size for longer reach, old Pocket BB idea, just in bigger size.

For having it the easy way, just one type of CA/WW2 BC would fit. And we could give it the subclass research option like we have for the tank or planes.


(For the difference in ship design around the similar French Dunkerque, German Scharnhorst, Jap design B-65 cruiser or US Alaska Class look at the ships size/stats and remember the design date. The US and JAP designs are longer and have less beam wich gives them better speed qualities. Dunkerque and Scharnhorst are the opposite and have the focus on more protection. Less cruiser, more BB..)