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Post by wknehring on May 25, 2019 2:53:58 GMT -6
Guys, regarding to the Scharnhorst- she was developed as conter against the Dunkerque-Class (in fact it was an upgraded Panzerschiff D preliminary design with a 3rd turret and more much more armour at the wrong areas). She had immunity against their 13" guns and partial against 14" guns. And that at shorter ranges, because of the estimated battle area Atlantic and North Sea with rough seas and bad visibility. And remember, at the time the Scharnhorsts were developed, enemy number 1 was France and not the British! As said- only the British called them Battlecruisers, because of wrong information and estimations. Neither of the two ships was capable of 32 knots and neither of them had 26000ts. The protection was unbalanced, especially for a German design! Reducing the mainbelt to 12,5 or 13" and use that weight for a thicker upper belt, would have resulted in a much better immunity against 14" up to 15" and perhaps 16"! So the upper belt had 45mm of armour and was even to thin to decap incomming heavy shells. And in the midship section over the engines and near the funnel, the maindeck only was 20mm thick. I had some calculations with the british 14" and 15" guns based on the sources of NavWeaps and the Scharnhorsts were prone to engineroom hits at long ranges. And if the British CA would have used APC instead of SAP, even they could reach the engine room at long ranges! It is often said the ~80mm of deck armour over the magazines were bad designed- if you take the whole armour scheme, it was capable to defeat even 15" shells! But practically encounters were at much shorter distances and than the vitals were relatively save. But because of the 45mm upper belt, the superstructure was destroyed easily, even by cruiser shells. And that´s part of the reason the twins declined the encounter with HMS Warspite and later HMS Renown (or was it HMS Repulse?) in Norway. The opening range would have been a big disadvantage for the twins, although they were capable of dealing significant damage to HMS Renown in return (and at medium range to HMS Warspite too). The chance to be hit with a 15" shell inflicting significant damage to the engines (which were not that reliable as hoped/wished) with the sea full of enemy submarines, was a too high risk of losing one of the sisters in the early stages of the war. Once the sisters would have been rearmed with the 15" guns, they would have become proper battleships in backup roles for Bismarck/Tirpitz. So please, call them BBs, not Battlecruisers (this term didn´t even exist in the German navy language- they had Große Kreuzer/Large Cruisers or later Panzerschiffe/Armoured Ships).
edit:
Regarding to the German Große Kreuzer of WW1, you must have in mind, that there was another reason why they had smaller weapons than the equal aged BB-classes. The German doctrine was Große Kreuzer must have smaller weapons than battleships.
von der Tann 11" - Helgoland 12" Moltke-Class + Seydlitz longer 11" - Kaiser-Class 12" Derfflinger-Class 12" - König-Class 12" (although there were thoughts to arm them with 14" guns. That was cancelled because there were no 14" guns ready to use) Mackensen-Class 14" - Bayern-Class 15" The Ersatz-Yorck Class 15" - L20e Alpha 16,5" (development of the 16,5" was started)
After the Battle of Jutland the German Highcommand allowed Große Kreuzer to have the same guncaliber as the BB, to be more in detail, they began to develop the GK/Großkampfschiff (Capital Warship) with BB-armour and guns in addition with cruiser speed (research about the GK35.. and GK45.. preliminary designs of 1917 and 1918).
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Post by ramjb on May 25, 2019 3:11:22 GMT -6
Good descripcion there. The Scharnhorst had also another huge design flaw - the machinery required for the insane speed of the design proved too large to be confined in the volume below the main armored deck. Hence some of it had to be placed avobe, covering it with 3-3.5 inches of armor. The problem is that being avobe the main armor deck also meant it was out of the "shadow" and protection of the main armor belt, and a hit in those areas would only meet the 3.5'' of armor provided there even at short range.
It's strongly suspected that the drastic loss of speed of Scharnhorst during her fatal encounter with DoY and prevented her from disengaging was caused by just that kind of hit.
The encounter in Norway was against Renown - and in that one there was also the consideration of the standing order by Hitler of not risking surface units against enemy capital ships. Weather was horrible and the twins were having a terrible time with seas sweeping all over the bows and up to the Bruno turret, which could barely be fired. Anton remained almost silent in both ships during the encounter. Seems there was some serious problems with the FCS aswell, as gunnery became progressively worse as the encounter went on, instead of getting better, which would've been what one would expect (After returning to germany both ships had more than 20km of cabling removed in the fire control systems as part of the effort to simplify it).
All in all both ships performed very poorly and that, alongside Hitler's standing orders, also contributed to them choosing to disengage even while on paper they should've made an absolute butchery out of Renown.
The denomination SchlatchKreuzer existed in the Kriegsmarine. O and P class designs were labelled as such. But yeah, WW1 BCs were called Grosse Kreuzer indeed, and Scharnhorst was never called anything other than Schlatchschiffe.
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Post by amurtiger on May 25, 2019 13:24:36 GMT -6
This is actually kinda silly thinking if you follow it through. Take a turret off the hood and shrink the machinery down thanks to 20 years in technological development and you'll find the hood closing in on that 40% number pretty quickly.
Mental acrobatics can accomplish much but serve to no practical purpose. a) "Take a turret off Hood and shrink the machinery down" - then you end with a different ship. Not HMS Hood. Whatever that theoretical ship would've been is irrelevant in a discusion about REAL ones. b) "Thanks to 20 years in technological development" - Sorry, Hood was built in 1920. Argumental gymnastics nonetheless, that ship was designed as, and built as, and ended up being a battlecruiser (though I repeat that by accident the british stumbled with the concept of Fast Battleship, which the ship far more resembled) c) "And you'll find the hood closing in to that 40% number" - I'd love to know where you get that calculation from. Source?. Link. Because mere guesstimation doesn't cut it here. Besides, to be precise, the Scharnhorsts went to sea with a 44% of armor devoted to armor. Which, once again, is lights ayears and whole leagues ahead of what any battlecruiser ever devoted to protection. I know I mentioned 40% before but I tend not to be too anal in giving statistics (unless the circunstances require it XD). The mere fact is that the Scharnhorst class had a 350mm turret face and main belt armor (ignoring the internal inclined deck that's only weaker out of battleships of the 30s and 40s than KGV and Yamato. Including the 105mm inclined internal deck, only Yamato had stronger lateral protection). She had a weaker main deck armor for the time, but still between 2 to 3.75'' while they point at an outdated design (again, Scharnhorsts were enlarged Bayerns) can't be qualified as "un-battleship-like". When the german designers and naval architects began work on the final iteration of Scharnhorst, the starting point was Bayern. When the german designers and naval architects began work on Bismarck the starting point was Scharnhorst. She was one more of a line of battleships that was interrupted by 20 years of post-WW1, a weak one and one with many weaknesses and design shortcomings. But that she was a battleship, there's little question about it in my mind.
If you don't like the practicality of mental gynmastics as you call them then you should probably stop posting and participating in the same.
In terms of seeing how removing a turret and reducing machinery weight might shift the balance towards armour I think you can work out the logic here pretty easily with the main caveat being that if you drastically reduce the tonnage you can end up in the same place, otherwise that spare tonnage is going to go somewhere. Where it certainly didn't end up is the guns where triple 11" turrets are not comparable to an actual battleship turret of the day, looking entirely on the German side of things Bismarck's 2x15" turret weigh in at about a million KG vs 750 thousand for the triple 3x11" turret of the Scharnhorst. Saving 25% on your main gun weight is a really good way to start building a battlecruiser, especially when you do that by embracing a calibre that had little chance of competing with any of her peers. Broadside weight is even more damning when you can find that the Scharnhorst only managed 56% of the broadside weight of a Renown, even with it's rate of fire advantage it just barely ties with Renown over the course of a minute of fire ( counting the half reload Scharnhorst will be in ).
The guns are very clearly an unambiguously saying Battlecruiser.
Armour is of course another matter and the fact that German designers iterated their capital ships on the basis of their last available complete plan isn't at all surprising, as we've thoroughly demonstrated the line between Battlecruiser and Battleship isn't all that clear and the relatively green naval staff in Germany ( owing to no work since WWI ) would surely appreciate the help of a fully fleshed out design. Likewise when they went on to make the Bismarck, especially considering they'd had a few design mishaps on the Scharnhorst they'd have every reason to want to iterate on an existing design and minimize the risk of further mishaps.
So what do we call a fast ship with meager guns for her tonnage and era and armour capable of sitting in a battleline.
I call her a battlecruiser, she was not made to defeat other capital ships ( or if she was she was woefully under-armed for such a task ) she was made to survive them and get out of dodge, precisely what we'd expect from a battlecruiser. The fact that the Americans didn't like the word 'battlecruiser' owing to their poor performance at Jutland doesn't make the Alaska any less a battlecruiser and likewise German naval terms not matching up one for one with the english designations don't preclude english designations from being used.
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Post by ramjb on May 25, 2019 14:10:13 GMT -6
If you don't like the practicality of mental gynmastics as you call them then you should probably stop posting and participating in the samewe're taking about ships that were real, were built and had real characteristics, good or bad, that are demonstrable because of...well because of their existance. Yet you come here talking about an imaginary one, with made up characteristics conjured by your "imagination" and your "estimation", using it as some kind of argument to prove who-knows-what. Don't be surprised if that argument is not taken seriously. As for stop posting and participating in discussions just because someone doesn't want to go to the scifi alternate universe you're making your arguments from when we're debating real ships, I'm afraid you have no right to tell that to anyone. Saving 25% on your main gun weight is a really good way to start building a battlecruiserMaybe. If that's what you're trying. The only problem here, is that the germans weren't. They were trying to build a battleship to counter and beat the French Dunkerke. specially when you do that by embracing a calibre that had little chance of competing with any of her peers.It's not that the germans embraced the 280mm caliber. Is that they had no other turret ready to build, and their ships were already 3 years behind schedule. When Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were being built there were several triple 11.1'' mounts built and ready to be mounted in a warship. Meanwhile the 380mm dual turret that later was mounted in the Bismarck class was still in development and would take a couple years more to complete. For the germans it was a case of building a battleship with 280mm guns or not building anything at all for at least 2 more years. Political concerns regarding the possible reaction from the UK did the rest. So they built the battleship with 280mm guns. Absolutely nothing in the reasoning and decision-making process that ended up with those guns aboard that class had anything to do with building battlecruisers. So, there goes your argument. Armour is of course another matter and the fact that German designers iterated their capital ships on the basis of their last available complete plan isn't at all surprisingIsn't it?. Really?. There were complete available plans for both the Mackensen and Bayern class available to base any design on, aswell as those of the later planned enlarged mackensen with 38cm guns. If what you're building is a battlecruiser, tell me, how isn't it surprising that what the designers built on was a battleship design, and not a battlecruiser one?. Likewise when they went on to make the Bismarck, especially considering they'd had a few design mishaps on the Scharnhorst they'd have every reason to want to iterate on an existing design and minimize the risk of further mishaps."few design mishaps" is an understatement, but that's another topic. obviously, they had every reason to want to iterate on the existing design preceding Bismarck - that of a battleship. Can't be more easy to understand. What would be hard to understand is why they'd base the design of the largest battleship in the world at the time of her design on a battlecruiser. So what do we call a fast ship with meager guns for her tonnage and era and armour capable of sitting in a battleline.We call it what she was designed for, built as and ended up being. A battleship. Of very poor qualitiy and tremendous deficiencies, but that a ship was, ton for ton, a huge waste of resources and a bad design doesn't mean it was not a battleship. I call her a battlecruiser, she was not made to defeat other capital shipsYou've already been told that this is not correct. Insisting on it won't make it suddenly correct. The Scharnhorst class upscaled design was specifically tailored to defeat other capital ships. In particular to be able to hunt down, fight, and beat, the french Dunkerke class. Which, at the time of Scharnhorst's design, was the most modern capital ship in the world. You're free to call her whatever you want or like. Nobody will stop you. You can even call her a CV if you like because she carried planes (with floats, but planes, so she carried planes, hence CV). Doesn't mean she was one, and that people will tell you she wasn't one. The fact that the Americans didn't like the word 'battlecruiser' owing to their poor performance at Jutland doesn't make the Alaska any less a battlecruiserThe americans had absolutely no problem with the word "battlecruiser", and whatever performance they had at Jutland they didn't care the less when it came down to their own design processes and priorities. Otherwise the Lexington Class would've never left the drawing board, yet six of those ships, labelled as Battlecruisers, were laid down between 1920 and their cancellation because of the Washington Treaty. The whole thing going on behind the Alaska's naming is offtopic, but can be summed up only after understanding the tortuous and muddy design process behind a ship that ended up being 33% larger to what initially intended and almost twice the cost, and the political interest in keeping that ship from being classified as a capital ship (which a battlecruiser was, while a "Large Cruiser" could be argued was not), something that had not been intended to be in the whole process going on from the requirements that led to her, to her comissioning into the fleet. Now I'll restate again, and I'll leave my sarcastic remark about CVs aside for one, and try to be completely straightforward here. It's OK to come and say that the Scharnhorst was, according to your own standards, a battlecruiser. It is, really. I will disagree with your own standard of classification for I think it's not optimal, the same you'll think mine isn't. All fine and dandy, everyone friends, let's go on to the next topic. What it is not OK is to come here trying to explain your classification using "historical factors", when those historical factors were not as you are describing them. I'll sum just two of them up again: -German Battlecruisers historically didn't sacrifize just weapons for speed: they sacrifized weapons AND armor. Scharnhorst sailed with one of the heaviest sets of armor any capital ship of the era, and only had small caliber weapons for a battleship because of practical (bigger guns weren't ready) and political (not wanting to worry the UK) reasons. Not because she was built to be a battlecruiser. -Battlecruisers were never intended to fight capital ships. You've insisted Scharnhorst wasn't either, yet she was: Designed specifically and on purpose to counter and kill the French Dunkerke. there's more, but no need to re-list every point you made that is not correct from an historical standpoint. The gripe here is not that you call a ship whatever you want to call it according to your own personal set of rules (Even when they differ from standard practice, you're entitled to your own way of perceiving classifications). The gripe is that you're trying to explain and base your own personal way of classificating those ships with recurrent historical factual mistakes, which others (like me) are trying to correct. Nobody will force you at dialectical gunpoint to recognize those ships as battleships if you think they weren't. But trying to explain why you're calling them the way you want based on facts that are incorrect or don't adjust to history, is going to meet arguments. Because then someone will come and tell you that you're wrong, not in calling the ship whatever you want to call it, but in defending such classification using incorrect information. look, is as easy as saying "for me, whatever the germans called it, and whatever the reason those guns were used, those ship were battlecruisers because they had small guns for a battleship". I'll disagree, tell you that in my opinion (and that of the largest set of historical authors from Friedman to Breyers who have covered thos ships) are battleships because they were designed and built as such, their weapons being an afterthought caused by political and practical reasons at the time of their design. But nobody will challenge your right to call them whatever you want. But if you say that those ships were battlecruisers because "the germans did this" or "the turrets were that" or "the ship wasn't intended to", etc, when it's all incorrect, then people will challenge those statements. Which is what is happening here. Call those ships whatever you want - but don't use incorrect historical data to justify it . That's all .
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Post by amurtiger on May 25, 2019 18:03:15 GMT -6
we're taking about ships that were real, were built and had real characteristics, good or bad, that are demonstrable because of...well because of their existance. Yet you come here talking about an imaginary one, with made up characteristics conjured by your "imagination" and your "estimation", using it as some kind of argument to prove who-knows-what. Don't be surprised if that argument is not taken seriously. As for stop posting and participating in discussions just because someone doesn't want to go to the scifi alternate universe you're making your arguments from when we're debating real ships, I'm afraid you have no right to tell that to anyone.
Likewise you have no right to tell anyone that their estimation is useless, there's nothing sci-fi about proposing a ship with a turret less and less weight put into machinery, that's basically what the Scharns hoped to be if they got their 15" guns. If you don't like fairly reasonable propositions used to help clarify what we understand as being a 'battlecruiser' or 'battleship' then don't participate in the discussion.
I thought we were talking about real ships and not sci-fi ones there weren't built? They built an 11" gun armed battleship in the 1930s on the basis of what they actually built this comes up awfully short in comparison to any serious battleship of the time. Just because they were forced into using an 11" gun doesn't change the fact that that's inadequate for the time.
One design was the basis for a ship that actually got into the water and used, the other was under construction right to the end of the war, if you're looking not to be surprised by mistakes ( such as the machinery height issue ) in design starting with a better defined design is a pretty obvious move, if you can't acknowledge that that's your choice.
Because the only modern capital ship design they had to work with was the Scharn, starting from scratch again from the Bayern would only take more time they really didn't have to flesh the design out.
If I build a canoe but swear up and down that it's an aircraft carrier, it's a canoe. Likewise a very fast battleship that just doesn't cut it on main battery ends up as a battlecruiser.
You've 'told' plenty and proven little. While the Scharn was certainly tailored to defeat a capital ship that requires at least acknowledging that the Dunkerque was well below the standard of the time in spite of her being modern. The reason of course being that she was designed to nail down the Deutschlands which were certainly no battleship or even battlecruiser, being so lightly armoured that only matched heavy cruisers of the day. Against most other capital ships Scharns shortcomings would leave her as no capital combatant against anything that itself wasn't a battlecruiser or the Dunk which itself probably straddles the line between battleship and battlecruiser, it's saving graces being it's relatively small size and somewhat more balanced arrangement of armor and weapons.
So, lying through omission are we? Funny way of 'defending historical fact'
The Lexingtons were planned before Jutland and put on hold after the battle took place and went through a number of redesign proposals that eventually ran up on the rocks of the budget, not wanting to spend the money on such a thorough change of the ship would demand and the sentiment that the Lexingtons were already obsolete due to the poor protection contributed to the drive to convert them to carriers as they could have managed to get themselves an exception for the ships as battlecruisers since they did manage to get an exception for them as carriers which otherwise would have been over the weight limit.
What's worse is pretending that history decisively favors your perspective simply over what can at best be called nitpicks.
The 1908 German capital ships saw the battlecruisers with ~18% less thickness in belt and less then ~50% of the broadside weight of the battleships laid down that year . I'll certainly agree that protection was sacrificed for speed as well but the idea that they primarily sacrificed their weapons has plenty of evidence.
The 1909-1910 British capital ships saw a squadron of battlecruisers with ~50% less thickness in belt and ~46% of the broadside weight of compared to the battleships and another pair of battlecruiser with ~25% less thickness in belt and 20% less broadside weight. Obviously the evidence is less clear for the british as they had a calibre change right around then which split the battlecruisers into two classes. Post-Jutland ships would further complicate this as they realized that arming battlecruisers for the battle line while failing to armour them as such was not a great decision.
If you'd like to find some characteristic innate to the Scharn that clearly made them battleships by all means but thusfar I've seen a lot of talk about design history and naming conventions and little honest evaluation of the Scharnhorst's ability to fight other capital ships. Other then the lightly built Dunks the only capital ships she could confidently fight were laid down a long time ago and likely had some battlecruiser lineage. ( Kongos, Renown/Repulse )
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Post by ramjb on May 25, 2019 20:09:34 GMT -6
Likewise you have no right to tell anyone that their estimation is useless
Talking about imaginary ships in the context of a discussion about real ones *IS* useless. And anyone has the right to say as much. Especially when your estimation is based on just your imaginary beliefs, not on solid grounds: you do NOT know how a ship like the one you describe would end up being, for one.
Taking a turret off a ship and reducing the machinery will reduce the ammount of armor needed for turret protection and machinery, but will also reduce the tonnage used on weaponry and machinery, hence the displacement % invested in armor won't jump by a lot, and certainly won't magically rocket it from 30% to 44%, for other.
As a result, your "estimation" about how a ship with 30% displacement dedicated to armor would magically jump into 40%-ish territory, not only is for all that matters, wrong, is also unfounded and describing a ship that never existed - hence, is also scifi, and useless for the purposes of the discussion going here.
that's basically what the Scharns hoped to be if they got their 15" guns
I missed the part where the Scharnhorsts skimped on machinery, given that they even had to make room for it outside of the main citadel, on a ship that had 1.5 knots of speed advantage over HMS Hood in her best times. No, that's not what the Scharnhorsts hoped to be. That's also incorrect.
I thought we were talking about real ships and not sci-fi ones there weren't built? They built an 11" gun armed battleship in the 1930s on the basis of what they actually built this comes up awfully short in comparison to any serious battleship of the time. Just because they were forced into using an 11" gun doesn't change the fact that that's inadequate for the time.
We are talking about real ships, and I've done it all the time. Where haven't I?.
Germans built 11.'' guns because that was within the limits of what the Versailles treaty allowed them to build. Then Hitler came, Versailles was rejected - but 38cm turrets don't grow on thin air. When the Scharnhorst design, after being repeatedly delayed for years, had to be finalized, all the germans had to build their battleship was 11.1'' guns. So, they built their battleship with 11.1'' guns. That the resulting ship fell short of what a 32000 ship should've been in terms of firepower was the consecuence of many things - her design being one of a battlecruiser not being one.
I fail to see where resides your logic here. YEs, the weapons were inadequate. No, the germans didn't have anything else at that time. Yes, they were built with those guns. No, that the resulting ship ended up being underarmed doesn't mean it was anything other than a battleship. No ship with the level of protection of Scharnhorst could be a Battlecruiser, to begin with.
One design was the basis for a ship that actually got into the water and used, the other was under construction right to the end of the war, if you're looking not to be surprised by mistakes ( such as the machinery height issue ) in design starting with a better defined design is a pretty obvious move, if you can't acknowledge that that's your choice.
You fail to understand the whole process. The Mackenses were scrapped on the yard before finished, but their design plans were finalized and complete, and as valid as the ones from, say, Derrflinger or Bayern. For all intents and purpose it was as efficient basing a design on them as it would've been basing them on Derrflinger, Bayern, or whatever other ship completed by the Kaiser's fleet.
Yet the design process began on Bayern.
The Scharnhorst problem with the machinery could've not been avoided had she been based on Mackensen had she been completed, the same it couldn't be avoided being as she was, based on Bayern.
The problem stemmed from the high pressure machinery (which was brand new technology at the time) used on the Scharnhorsts being less efficient than expected and producing less power per volume of unit than initially planned. By the time this was discovered the ships were already partially built and past the point of modification, there was no turning back to make more room for the machinery under the armored deck by changing the hull dimensions.
The ships at that point could either accept a cut in speed, or go "creative" to get the design power putting a larger powerplant and letting part of it unprotected by the main armored deck and the belt armor- the high brass decided the latter, the rest is history.
Nothing would've changed that, no matter the design starting point, because as you might understand, the designers did scale the Bayern design up enough to accomodate the machinery plant they were told the ship needed, not more. Had they been working with Mackensen plans, they'd have scaled them up enough to accomodate the machinery plant they were told the ship needed, and not more.
That then the needed machinery to attain the design speeds turned out to take more space that what they were told, they couldn't know - and they've met the same problem using any plans as basis - Mackensen's, or Bayern's.
Because the only modern capital ship design they had to work with was the Scharn, starting from scratch again from the Bayern would only take more time they really didn't have to flesh the design out.
Source of that, please?.
I mean, that's pure speculation of your part, unless you can back it up.
You've 'told' plenty and proven little.
Have I?. PLease point at any incorrections in my posts, and how they are incorrect, listing sources that back it up.
Because thus far the only one who has been listing incorrect facts in this discussion I'm afraid hasn't been me.
While the Scharn was certainly tailored to defeat a capital ship....
Stop right there. If Scharnhorst was tailored to defeat a capital ship, that is what you should do. Just stop there and not go any further listing excuses, or going again into a bout of argumentative pirouettes.
Scharnhorst was designed to defeat a capital ship. Something NO battlecruiser was ever designed to do, for their role actually involved the opposite: running away from them.
So by your own (implicit) admission you're admitting Scharnhorst was a battleship wether you like it or not.
that requires at least acknowledging that the Dunkerque was well below the standard of the time in spite of her being modern. The reason of course being that she was designed to nail down the Deutschlands which were certainly no battleship or even battlecruiser, being so lightly armoured that only matched heavy cruisers of the day.
Noone debates Dunkerke was a ship with limits. So was Strassbourg.
Both were capital ships though. Scharnhorst was designed to hunt and kill them. Read avobe for the obvious consequences in what regards to the topic of this discussion.
Against most other capital ships Scharns shortcomings would leave her as no capital combatant against anything that itself wasn't a battlecruiser or the Dunk
The Scharnhorsts class (on paper at least) was more than powerful enough to engage 1 on 1 with any of the Revenges or Queen Elizabeths. Those 11.1'' guns were small but punched far avobe their weight (literally) in what regards to vertical penetration and the old line of british battleships were vulnerable to them up to a pretty sizeable range. And the Scharnhorsts themselves were not only far faster, but also far better protected, the closer the range, the better... and they had the speed to force whatever range they wanted (or to flee, as they had to do because of Hitler's orders when they found one escorting a convoy in the North Atlantic in 1940)
The Scharnhorst class (on paper at least) could deal with the japanese Fuso/Ise half siblings aswell as with the Kongos. So could against the italian Dorias and Cavours, so could with the french Courbets and Bretagnes. All those ships were in service as they were being built, as they were completed, and as the war started.
For a class not being able to deal with other capital ships, that's a pretty long list of capital ships she could deal with. Granted - they were all old. But they were battleships nonetheless. All of them (with the more than arguable exception of the Kongos).
So, lying through omission are we?
Where did I?.
The Lexingtons were planned before Jutland and put on hold after the battle took place and went through a number of redesign proposals that eventually ran up on the rocks of the budget, not wanting to spend the money on such a thorough change of the ship would demand and the sentiment that the Lexingtons were already obsolete due to the poor protection contributed to the drive to convert them to carriers as they could have managed to get themselves an exception for the ships as battlecruisers since they did manage to get an exception for them as carriers which otherwise would have been over the weight limit.
Very nice exposition.
Now please explain to me how going full ahead with the plan of building no less than six 44.000 ton battlecruisers, designed and named as such, with woeful protection as such, matches your words:
"The fact that the Americans didn't like the word 'battlecruiser' owing to their poor performance at Jutland".
If they didn't want to spend the money on a thorough change of the ship (at the design stage, let's not forget, which is not what one would call "costly"...costly is building the ship to whatever design is decided, changing some drawings years before the ships were even laid down, is not), yet they hated the word and performance of those ships so much, why didn't they just not bother with them at all, and go with more Colorados instead?.
Because building 6 of the largest warships ever built to JUST a battlecruiser configuration, and classing them openly as such, doesn't seem to point towards an overall dislike of the US Navy for the word "Battlecruiser", nor their performance.
The Lexington design changed drastically indeed since they were initially aproved in 1916 until they were actually laid down in 1920/21. Initially they were supposed to be armed with 10x14'' guns. After Jutland, the changes that happened shifted their design into one that didn't increase protection at all, but was armed with 8x16'' guns. If the problem was cost they could've kept the cheaper 14'' battery and increase the protection. Or downscale the speed by a knot or two and benefit from the much smaller needed machinery protection to thicken the armors of the smaller machinery areas. Or something that at least did ANYTHING to increase those ship's protection...
Yet they upgunned it, didn't even look at the armor, and called it a day. They must've disliked battlecruisers a lot, but for sure they did make sure theirs was the worst protected one even after Jutland. And then they ordered six of them. It's a stroke of luck they disliked battlecruisers, had they liked them maybe they'd ordered 18...
The British still liked the word, that's for sure, but at least the Admiral class was properly protected. The americans didn't do that at all, and they had not begun their Lexingtons by the time Jutland had happened (Hood actually had been laid down the day before).
One wonders why a navy would spend such a fortune in six ships they hated so much.
What's worse is pretending that history decisively favors your perspective simply over what can at best be called nitpicks.
I haven't used any arguments that you haven't brought here too. I just have corrected you listing them incorrectly.
And they are not nitpicks. But whatever floats your boat.
The 1908 German capital ships saw the battlecruisers with ~18% less thickness in belt and less then ~50% of the broadside weight of the battleships laid down that year . I'll certainly agree that protection was sacrificed for speed as well but the idea that they primarily sacrificed their weapons has plenty of evidence.
Of course it does. Who has denied that?. But the fact remains that the sacrifizes came from both armor AND weapons - and in this same thread someone (might have been you, not sure) used the argument about "saving in weapons to get speed means battlecruiser".
Which is incorrect.
Battlecruiser meant saving in weapons AND armor to get speed. On them both, not on one OR the another. It's not a nitpick, people get the mistaken impression of how those ships were designed and what it took to build them, so clearing the point can only help.
If you'd like to find some characteristic innate to the Scharn that clearly made them battleships by all means but thusfar I've seen a lot of talk about design history and naming conventions and little honest evaluation of the Scharnhorst's ability to fight other capital ships. Other then the lightly built Dunks the only capital ships she could confidently fight were laid down a long time ago and likely had some battlecruiser lineage. ( Kongos, Renown/Repulse )
As I mentioned avobe, Scharnhorst was on paper perfectly capable of dealing with old WW-1 like battlewagons (with the more than notable exception of the US ones which were tough as nails).
as for "some characteristic innate to the Scharnhorst that clearly made them battleships..."
This has already been said, but let's try it again.
How about a vertical side protection of 350mm belt backed up by 105mm inclined armor plus 45mm of inclined internal bulkheads?. How about 360mm of turret faces and 200mm on sides?. How about 350mm on the CT?.
How about 44% of the total displacement invested in armor?
That's not battecruiser protection. Not even the best armored battlecruiser ever built had anything close to that level of protection, much less the usual ones.
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Post by Tabac Iberez on May 25, 2019 20:45:21 GMT -6
Regarding the Alaska class, it's worth noting that while they were absolutely titantic, they were in most ways a cruiser design: one rudder, the same underwater protection as the Baltimore, the same arrangment and direction of secondary and anti-air fire as a cruiser, an amidships aircraft catapult, and berthing facilities and messing based off of the Baltimore it was descended from. Most damning would be their armor protection against only an eight-inch gun, and ridiculous manuvering characterists: in no way, shape, or form could these ships be expected to engage with a battle-line.
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Post by ramjb on May 25, 2019 20:53:13 GMT -6
"in no way, shape, or form could these ships be expected to engage with a battle-line." By doctrine, and specially after Jutland, no battlecruiser was expected to do so either .
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Post by Antediluvian Monster on May 26, 2019 1:39:22 GMT -6
AFAIK, the only time during WW1 that battlecruisers really engaged a battle line was the death ride of the German ones at Jutland. The British ones were blown up by their opposite numbers, something ships like Queen Mary were intended to cope with.
There are actually few examples from WW2 too, Kirishima, Renown (arguably) and Hood (though arguably a fast battleship).
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Post by plattfuss on May 26, 2019 4:50:06 GMT -6
As far as I know it was planned to give the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau the same guns as the Bismarck would get some years later (SK 38 cm C 34a) - this was not realized as that guns were still in development at the time the Scharnhorst was launched. Hence they got the guns of the Deutschland class (SK 28 cm SKC) but it was planned to replace them with the SK 38 as soon as they became available - which never got to happen as the war already had begun.
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Post by director on May 26, 2019 5:24:25 GMT -6
Just my opinion here. Battlecruisers are more extreme versions of capital ships, possessing superior speed by sacrificing other qualities. They may be created in three ways:
1) Sacrifice armor while retaining superior speed and capital-ship gun caliber (classic British) 2) Sacrifice capital-ship gun caliber or number while retaining superior speed and capital-ship armoring (classic German) 3) Increased displacement permitting superior speed and capital-ship gun caliber and capital-ship armoring.
My thinking has evolved on this, and I now regard the battle-cruiser as a class peculiar to WW1. There were no battlecruisers built after HMS Renown and Repulse; everything else was an armored cruiser (Deutschland), large cruiser (Alaska), or fast battleship (Hood and others). All ships must be judged by their time and circumstances; the built-in ability to upgrade the Scharnhorst-class to 6x15" guns makes them fast battleships. The Dunkerque-class were intended to counter the Scharnhorst design as well as the rebuilt Italian WW1 battleships; they were restricted in tonnage but clearly, given their armor and gun caliber, intended to be fast battleships.
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Post by ramjb on May 26, 2019 5:34:50 GMT -6
As far as I know it was planned to give the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau the same guns as the Bismarck would get some years later (SK 38 cm C 34a) - this was not realized as that guns were still in development at the time the Scharnhorst was launched. Hence they got the guns of the Deutschland class (SK 28 cm SKC) but it was planned to replace them with the SK 38 as soon as they became available - which never got to happen as the war already had begun. Some pointers here: -The Scharnhorsts didn't mount the same guns as the Deutchland did, but the more modern, harder hitting, version that was designed for Panzerschiffe "D" (The original upscaled Deutchland). The triple mounts were also of a more modern design. So no, they didn't get the Deutschland guns . -The idea to arm those ships with 38cm guns was around while their final design was being worked on, but it wasn't a concrete "plan" as, pre 1935, Germany still was bound to the Treaty of Versailles that limited German naval guns to 305mm. The design work on the new gun and associated turret had started but was on very initial stages and couldn't be complete for the time the design was to be built. This is where Hitler became actively involved with this topic, as he stepped in to reinforce the idea that those ships should not be perceived as a threat by the UK and that as such he was banning the use 38cm guns. The turrets for the D class were still around and could be finished in time, so the design incorporated it and was finished, and built, with them. The proposed upgrade to 38cm guns came later. On one side as the design work on the 38cm turret advanced it was noted that the new turret barbette was of dimensions close to those of the triple 28cm turret. Not identical, and they weighed more, so the turret wells in the Scharnhorsts would require a relatively extensive re-build to take them (and as later was discovered, extensive re-work of the bows, but that wasn't known at the time), but it was both within the realms of the possible and the economically viable. By that time the anglo-german naval treaty of 1935 had been signed and after 1936 it meant that Germany (after the 2nd London Treaty and the escalator clause for main battleship guns was in force because of the refusal of Japan and Italy to sign it) could build ships with guns up to 40.6cm. At that time it was considered to re-arm the then building Scharnhorsts with the 38cm twins. But by that time the Bismarck class had already been approved with those guns and mounts and the priority was to build the turrets and mounts for Bismarck and Tirpitz; had the Scharnhorsts been chosen for upgrade to those guns at that stage they would've needed to be stopped and by the beginning of WW2 they'd probably have been incomplete and waiting for their main battery to arrive, or still in the middle of the needed turret well rebuild to take it. This was judged as unaceptable once more by the germans, and instead it was settled that "at some point in the future" those ships would be rearmed. There was no official order, nor official say, nor set time, nor given expectation on what would happen, it was a diffuse idea at best: "well, when we have time we'll swap the guns on those ships", so it can hardly be said that "it was planned to rearm those ships". The idea was there, yes, but there was no real planification about when, or how, that changeover would take place. In the end when Gneisenau's Anton turret's magazine was blown up during a british raid, it was calculated that the ship would need at least 2 years of repairs before becoming operational again. It was decided to rearm her with 38cm guns at that time, as 2 years was judged enough time to build the new turrets and the ship could be rebuilt to take the turrets as she was repaired. It was also judged that a completely redesigned bow would be needed; given the Schanrhorst class' already chronic nose-heavy problems even after being fit with the Atlantic Bow, to take the two heavier 38cm twin mounts the bows needed to be enlarged in order to provide more buoyancy. Work was started for the rebuild in mid-42; In 1943, however, all work on her stopped and she was never to be rebuilt that way. Scharnhorst was sent to Norway with her 28cm guns. A rebuild was never scheduled to her, not to the day she was sunk in the North Cape.
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Post by tordenskjold on May 26, 2019 6:49:23 GMT -6
Really interesting discussion here - but coming back to RTW2 I would like to remind you that, as aeson showed in the second post already, it's actually possible to model Deutschland-like ships ingame. I did the same recently, and interestingly it appears that these ships really seem promising in their intended role, at least in the late game. Here we have the outcome of an encounter with a similarly large "ordinary" CA:
The battle log (omitting entries related to irrelevant air operations): So, it's quite obvious that the main reason for success was Helena's superior gun caliber, allowing to open the engagement at a much larger distance. Takachiho was only able to return fire nearly 30 minutes after Helena did so, and by then she had already taken nine hits. Regarding Takachiho, the ship log read:
So, the 11 inch guns from Helena did not also hit, but every hit already penetrated the rather thin (yet typical) armour of the Japanese cruiser, causing flooding early on and disabling turrets. Oh, and the stern turrets of Takachiho were then destroyed by Helena's secondary battery - it may have been sheer luck that these had not been hit earlier by the main guns.
Yes, it might be arguable what would have happened against a number of enemy ships in a situation similar to River Plate. Let's see, maybe I have one such engagement next time.
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Post by iridium on May 26, 2019 7:32:52 GMT -6
It appears to me that we are attempting to classify ships based on characteristics rather than intended mission. This is incorrect as ships are designed with a set of missions in mind (that the ship can perform them effectively), and then characteristics required are developed from that desired list. Ships are classified for their intended role, not some arbitrary characteristics that vary greatly depending on the building nation's unique set of needs, and limitations. As director is alluding to, defining ship type is a bit more involved than using a measuring tape on all of its hardware. Alaska was intended as commerce protection / screening support, rather than working with the battle line as a scout itself. Similarly to how the Kongo's would be utilized in the Japanese 'Grand Battle' plan. We could have a conversation as to whether the Kongo class ever deserved to be re-rated as battleships, I'd probably still consider them BCs despite the additional armor added etc.
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Post by ramjb on May 26, 2019 8:29:55 GMT -6
It appears to me that we are attempting to classify ships based on characteristics rather than intended mission. This is incorrect as... Nominally is not incorrect. Different fleets during different times have used quite distinct standards of classification, something that has always made this a quite hot topic, and something that was one of the central and most important points during the Naval Treaty discussions both at Washington, Geneva and London. In order to put a set of legal limits on ship classes that could be enforced, the treaties had to define which those classes were. As every nation had their own interpretation of classifications, that led to lengthy, arduous and complex negotiations so everyone would accept a common system of classification, which later on could be used to enforce construction limits. (On a side note the system that was agreed upon wasn't exactly flawless and left some very grey areas, one of which has been more than recently covered in another topic about CLs in the game in this forum). We do see the same during the Cold War, with some nations (like the russians or british) given classification based on primary role, something that ended in some cruisers being smaller than some destroyers, the former being dedicated anti-surface ships, the latter being antisubmarine ones, in the russian case, or frigates being bigger than destroyers in the british case. Meanwhile other nations used completely different classification standards, as the US Navy, which only added confusion, something that was very noticeable during the period of the "Cruiser scare" when american media and even part of the US Navy lost their mind because the Soviet Navy had a lot more cruisers than the US Navy, without even stopping to notice most of those "Cruisers" were far smaller and less capable than many of the american "Destroyers". All in all the whole classification topic it's rarely anything but a mess, and this is not the first time discussions about what certain ships were, and certainly won't be the last. What most people who like the topic of naval warfare history have been doing for the last maybe 40 years is to try to rationalize ship classifications by role, as you describe, as the most sensible one to use at the time of differentiating what different ships of the early XX century really were. In general terms is the most widely accepted standard and one that most historical authors about the topic have accepted too. Yet that doesn't mean is the "right" way to class it, it's just the most widely accepted one and the one that for many people makes most sense. But there is still a notable ammount of people who qualify ships by what their respective navies called them (regardless of how much practical sense it made), and there also is quite a good number of people who qualify ships by their final characteristics, not by the role they were intended to cover, and not by the classification given to them by their own navies. In the end as I mentioned in a post avobe, is down to each one to define his own set of rules to class historical ships according to his own personal standards; as long as those standards make sense, it won't be "Wrong" per se. Just based on different rules than what others do. The problem of course comes when someone with that way of classificating ships tries to overstep it and goes on to try to explain or justificate them usingmostly incorrect or taken out of context historical facts. Because then we end up in very lenghty debates which circle about those historical facts more than about the classification itself. The sad part of it is that there's no historical "explanation" or "justification" needed to validate a personal set of standards that lead you to class a ship in a different way to others. This debate could be a lot shorter if Amurtiger would've stated "for me ships with weapons as weak as the Scharnhorst can't be classed as battleships", and left it at that. That is perfectly fine, and in fact is as correct as me stating "for me ships should be classified for the role they were designed to fullfit". He doesn't need to justify it any further, he doesn't need to explain it anymore. It's his own perception of things, it's something that has a valid rational to it, and is as correct as anyone else's. That other positions are more widespread and have more acceptance between naval history aficionados and experts alike doesn't mean they are more or less correct. They are different ways of qualifying ships, and that's perfectly OK. The problem is when someone goes on and tries to state, on top of his own personal perception of things, that historically things were how they were not, and use that incorrect information to further justify their opinion. That is the only thing that's not correct, and that is what can lead to quite heated up and lengthy discussions. Because while classing ships by personal perception is OK, classing them based on confused, incorrect, or just wrong historical "Facts" is not.
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