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Post by aeson on May 30, 2019 9:57:33 GMT -6
The Dunkerque class wasn't provided for by a special exemption in the Washington Naval Treaty; France (and Italy) were permitted to lay down 35,000 tons of capital ships in 1927 and another 35,000 tons of capital ships in 1929 because that's roughly when the French Courbet-class battleships, the Italian battleship Dante Alighieri, and the Italian Conte di Cavour battleships would be old enough that their replacements could begin to be laid down under the terms of the treaty. They were in some sense provided for by a special exemption in the 1930 London Naval Treaty, which extended the battleship holiday to the end of 1936 while specifically permitting France and Italy to lay down those ships that they had been permitted by the Washington Naval Treaty for 1927 and 1929 but had never laid down, but this was not a special exemption in the same sense as with the Nelson class, which had been more of a "well, the US and Japan have shiny new big ships with 16-inch guns, so we should be permitted to have some, too" kind of thing. Because the original post said:
Implying that in captainwrungel's view the Alaska class should not be represented as a battlecruiser within the game.
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Post by ramjb on May 30, 2019 10:45:10 GMT -6
Well the "replacement" rule was actually included because of the specific petition of the italians and french, because while Japan, UK and US would be left with quite modern ships after the ones picked for scrap were scrapped, the italians and french would've been left with some pretty much useless relicques. Italy never used that allowance instead turning the Cavours and Dorias into almost completely different ships, but France did with the Dunkerkes. I mentioned it as an "exception", when it was more like a good will gesture towards Italy and France tailored to accomodate for their situation, so all in all you're right in your correction .
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Post by christian on May 30, 2019 10:48:08 GMT -6
a 14 inch gun will perform much better than a 12 inch gun if both are using superheavy shells and both have the same muzzle velocity
Undebatable. Then again a 14'' gun with superheavy shells and high muzzle velocity is absurdly overkill to destroy targets wich strongest armor is 5.5 over small sections of their belt. It also would be a lot heavier. Those ships didn't need a modern 14'' gun to do the job - their modern 12'' and 12.2'' guns were more than enough for doing what they were supposed to do: kill cruisers and run away from battleships (again - the role of a battecruiser). Adding extra tonnage to only be MORE overkill was meaningless.
its also interesting to note that almost no battlecruisers were made after 1930 and i cannot think of a single one at this momentThere's nothing magical about it, the 1923 weapons disarmement treaty in Washington forbade the biggest navies from building capital ships for the following 15 years, with notable case by case exceptions made to accomodate to individual signataries justified particular needs (UK with the Nelsons, France with the Dunkerkes). So obviously when the naval building restriction was lifted everyone threw their resources in getting new battleships they couldn't build for the prior 15 years. Japan threw itself into building four yamatos (an inordinately challenging task). The US went head first into the North Carolina and South Dakota class. Only after those projects were well underway and enough resources could be spared for them, plans began to emerge about other far more specialized capital ships, such as battlecruisers. it is to be noted that all battlecruisers had commonality in their guns with their contemporary battleships for example the fusos had 14 inch guns they were battleships and the kongos had the same 14 inch guns (these ships were ordered shortly after eachother) in addition to this the british hood had 15 inch guns same guns as on their battleships of the time (revenge and so on) this has been the case all the way back to when battlecruisers first came in
these new ships b65 alaska and so on DO NOT have gun commonality with battleships of their time and comparing the alaskas guns to any gun in 1940 which was reasonably modern except the kgvs guns we quickly find the alaskas guns to be SIGNIFICANTLY worse performing
This has been adressed and explained and mentioned several times in previous posts, some of them adressed at you. It'd help if after reading something you didn't proceed to ignore it. Kongo was built pre-1914 as a half sister to HMS Lion. In 1912 the battlecruiser's prey (Cruisers of any kind) had armor thicknesses that commonly reached or even surpassed 6'' in the vital areas you'd like to hit hard during a battle - yet shell technology and AP projectile performance was limited. In order to reliably penetrate plates of that thickness or more you wanted the biggest gun possible at the time. Then there's the matter of prestige in the arms race. Kongo's main battery was a matter of high debate in the Japanese high command up to the day her design was frozen and building began. Initially the order was for ships with 12'' guns, as that was the standard for the battecruisers at the time she was ordered. Soon thereafter the ordering news reached japan of the new british battlecruisers carrying 13.5'' guns; the japanese didn't want to be left behind (because guns=prestige) and one-upped them, ordering the Kongos with 14''. Which were the largest guns of any ship of the time of her ordering, until shorty thereafter news about the american Nevadas came around (which prompted the Japanese to one up their 10x14'' main battery in turn, ordering the Fusos with 12x14'' guns). By the time the Alaska and B-65s time to be built came (even if one of those wasn't even laid down), the battlecruiser's prey (Cruisers of any kind) had armor thicknesses that ranged from tinclad armor to 5.5'' over magazines only. The new 12'' guns were as powerful as the old 14'' guns, and they were more than enough to completely massacre cruisers. They didn't need any bigger guns, for they'd only make them even more overkill against their prey, yet be dead weight against the rest of ships that justified guns that big: battleships (which neither the battlecruisers, nor Alaska nor B-65 being instances of them, were intended to fight at all to begin with). And in wartime nobody cared about "prestige" anymore - what was needed were ships as efficient as possible while as economical as possible. Meanwhile, battleship size was growing in scale and main battery steadily, because their main objective (fighting and winning against enemy battleships) demanded them to be bigger and ever-more-heavily armored as time went by. Battleships needed every bit of firepower they could muster; for battlecruisers like Alaska or B-65 anything more than what was already enough to reduce a cruiser to a heap of scrap metal was overkill and wasted displacement. Hence battleships moved up to 16'' guns while Alaskas and B-65s downscaled to 12'' and 12.2'' and used the saved displacement to be even faster. Perfectly reasonable. for germany in order to have a battlecruiser they would need to have rearmed the gneisenhau and scharnhorst with 15 inch guns once this was completed they would become battlecruisers because they now had gun commonality with their battleshipsSchranrhost and Gneisenau were battleships when they had 280mm guns. Had they swapped for 380mm guns they'd still been battlecruisers. The Kriegsmarine did have a battlecruiser design they intended to build, the "O-projekt" SchlatchKreuzer: 35000 ton warships (size of battleship) with 38cm (completely overkill for their projected role as cruiser killer and commerce raiders), and protection levels startingly similar to those of Alaska's. The ships were woefully unbalanced, the target of jokes even when on paper, the three ships to be built to the design initially ordered as "O" ,"P" and "Q", officers of the Kriegsmarine referred to them as "Ohne Panzer Quatsch" Had their main battery been downscaled to a much more reasonable battery of 11.1'' guns the displacement needs would've been drastically reduced and the ship would've been startingly similar to the Alaskas and B-65s. Unsurprising - with 38cm they were woefully unbalanced battlecruisers that wasted displacement in guns too big for the job. for the british for example the planned g3 battlecruisers were to be a battlecruiser version of the nelson class and these 2 ship classes both had the exact same guns although the g3 was never completed due to the treatyFirst, you're getting it completely upside down: the G3s were not a "Battlecruiser version of the nelson class". The Nelson was an offshoot of the G3 class with drastically cut down machinery and a re-designed armor layout and main battery placement in order to bring the design down to 35.000 tons at the cost of speed and protection. That set aside the G3 project, as planned, were fast battleships through and through, even more so than the Admiral or Amagi classes (both fast battleships on their own). The british post-jutland battlecruiser was, quite literally: "A battleship that can hit 30 knots". The UK had a problem with the original battlecruiser role: They considered that ships that expensive should be available for fleet actions. What happened to the battlecruiser in a fleet action was out there for everyone to see at Jutland, so they proceeded to uparmor their fast capital ships to battleship levels. The result was no longer a battlecruiser, not in shape (Hood had battleship protection, something battlecruisers weren't supposed to have), nor in role (Hood was fully intended to engage enemy capital ships, something no battlecruiser was supposed to do). The concept of "Fast battleship" still didn't exist (was coined by american Admiral Sims the second he saw HMS Hood), so the british called them "battlecruisers" because they just went with bureocratic inertia. But Hood was no battlecruiser. G3's design was completed with similar ideas and expectations as Hood. If Hood was no battlecruiser (and she wasn't in anything but name), G3 was even less. In a similar vein, Japan, as part of the post-WWI 8-8 program, demanded their "battecruisers" to be fully capable to work alongside the battleline in fleet battles (an offshoot of how they used their armored cruisers on Tsushima). As a result the "battlecruiser" half of the 8-8 program was a 30 knot capital ship with 16'' guns, protection that completely outclassed that of Japan's previous battleships (Ises and Nagatos), and that was fully intended to be thrown in battlefleet actions (Again, something no battlecruiser was ever supposed to do). They weren't battlecruisers - they were full fledged fast battleships. Both Hood, G3, and Amagi had armor layouts that left many a contemporary battleship at shame, expended more than 30% of their displacement in armor (when battecruisers pre-jutland rarely exceeded 25%, most times being under that, Invincibles having 18% only). All those were very "non-battlecruiser-like" traits, and responded to the intention of the navies that designed them to purposefully use them in battlefleet actions (something battlecruisers were not intended to do at all). Neither of those three classes were battecruisers in anything but name (the same the Alaskas weren't "large cruisers" in anything but name). technically speaking the furious large cruiser with 18 inch guns is not a battlecruiser but out of the fact it had 18 inch guns on a light cruiser i would be compelled to call it soFurious was completed with a 18'' gun aft and a flight-deck forwards. The 18'' gun didn't last long in place. She was a carrier the second level heads took command of the Admiralty replacing Fisher's last term. Courageous and Glorious (not to mention Furious had she even been completed as designed) were unclassifiable because they simply had no role. They had been built just for one reason: Lord Fisher wanted big guns on very fast ships, and after WW1 had started the Royal Navy had been restricted to begin new construction of light cruisers and destroyers, both of which the Navy was desperately in need off instead of more capital ships. So he ordered three light cruiser hulls with 15'' guns and 18'' guns. The Royal Navy simply didn't know what to do with them because they had no role in which they didn't suck. So they called them "Large Light Cruiser" as an expediency measure (now that was an oxymoron if there ever was one), were very careful not to use them in anything that resembled a fleet action, and finally converted them to carriers, which other than downright scrapping them was the only sensible thing to do. But no, those weren't battlecruisers at all - battecruisers were supposed to at least have enough armor to fend off gunfire from their cruiser prey, something those monstrosities didn't have. the south dakota battleship and lexington battlecruiser class were both laid down at around the same time The Lexington class is widely aknowledged as probably the worst US naval design that ever reached the point of actually being laid down, and even the own US Navy was relieved the second they were cancelled, for those ships shared too many traits with the aforementioned british nonsense ships for confort. Armed with absolutely overkill weapons, safe from 6'' gunfire only, they just had no viable role to fullfit, for not even the battlecruiser role fit them well (BCs were supposed to have armor able to hold off enemy cruiser fire. It's true that by 1920 there weren't many armored cruisers around but by that time the first generation of what latter was called "heavy cruisers" designs was being completed. Japanese Furutaka, British Hawkins, american Pensacola. Had any of the Lexingtons been completed as designed and laid down the US Navy would've found itself in a very similar position as the british did with Corageous or Glorious: "What the hell do we do with this nonsense of a monster". And then probably they'd been converted to carriers anyway. A 44000 ton cruiser killer that's vulnerable to 8'' gunfire is not a battlecruiser: it's nonsense. we are not actually rating ships here now are we? sure the lexingtons were **** but everything you said under the response to that had NOTHING to do with what we were talking about i used said point to back up that alaska and similair ships are large cruisers not battlecruisers when fighting heavy cruisers 12 inchers are completely overkill there is no reason to use such big guns for ships which at most had 150mm belt armor 10 inchers are completely sufficient (at 30km distance the 12 inchers penned 180mm armor) in addition to this litteraly no ships except the batlimore had 152mm belts and even these belts were tapered so they were 127mm on the bottom if you argument is performance 10 inchers fire faster and have adequate penetration and also weight less rule was no ships bigger than 35000 tons and limited to guns no larger than 16 inch under article V and VI of the naval treaty dunkerque was laid down in 1932 and her sister in 1934 FAR after the treaty was signed and had not yet ended these ships fall well within the treaties limits having 22000 ton displacement and 13 inch guns i have no idea how you got the idea these were even being considered in 1922 the kongos were 4 battlecruiser designs designed in 1909 in and the first being completed in 1912 in britain in 1911 the japanese came up with 2 battleships based on the kongos hull these ships being the fusos which were laid down in 1912 and 1913 in fact the last kongo was laid down 5 days after the first fuso was laid down (fun to think about) this meant the kongos had gun commonality with a battleship which during the construction of the kongo a fuso was also being constructed i have no idea why you wanted to go into details on their guns the fact the guns were the same is all that matters in fact both kongo and fuso had designs for 12 inch guns and both were changed to 14 inch guns TOGETHER the fuso had a 6x3 design laying around at vickers at one point although that design was abandoned early on the gun caliber of these 2 ships followed eachother the alaska was not made for cruiser hunting because its too slow simple as every single japanese cruiser could punch out 34+ knots except the furutakas but the furutakas were dead to any normal heavy cruiser because they had less guns less armor and lower tonnage than contemporary heavy cruisers (edit somehow the furutakas also managed 34+ knot speed (somehow) the b65 makes more sense as a cruiser hunter because it can actually do that job without being outran yet on the other hand 12 inch guns are WAYYYY overkill against american cruisers at which point no american cruiser had more than 5 inches of belt armor and only in 1944 was a ship introduced with more than 5 inches of belt armor the b65 would be far far better off with 10 inch guns as they weighted less and allowed the ship to be smaller in general scharnhorst and gneisenhau are battleships armor is just too dummy thicc 35000 tons was not especially large in the 40s sure it wasent small but compared to other ships its still 5000-10000 tons lighter the reason it was 35000 tons was because of the treaty sure nelson was a variant of the g3 but point still remains used the exact same guns aka gun commonality although one was scrapped hood was by 1920 very much a battlecruiser in 1940 she was just a shitty battleship which was all around bad her belt was 305mm thick which by 1920s standards certainly is thick but she went 30 knots which in 1920 was faily good and was not achieved by battleships thus she was a battlecruiser and even then ships laid down in 1912 such as fuso had 305 mm belts so yeah in general the 18 inch armed light cruisers were pure memes the 18 inch guns were by all means garbage with a 3 minute reload
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Post by kongoudess on May 30, 2019 11:05:54 GMT -6
for the british for example the planned g3 battlecruisers were to be a battlecruiser version of the nelson class and these 2 ship classes both had the exact same guns although the g3 was never completed due to the treaty False: the G3 class was planned to be counterparts to the N3 battleship, with 16 inch guns on the G3 and 18 inch guns on the N3. From this, we see that your requisite that battlecruisers must have the same gun as their battleship counterparts to be false. As Ramjb says, don't try to prove your opinion with things that contradict it.
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Post by ramjb on May 30, 2019 11:14:08 GMT -6
we are not actually rating ships here now are we? In fact...is exactly what we're doing . This whole massive debate began with a petition regarding about some ships' representation in-game. In game ships classification doesn't follow neither "historical" convention nor "what the navies of the time called their own ships" convention. In game classification is tied to the role: the game has a set of parameters for different configurations that were more or less common for ships with a given role in real life. So, if we're discussing what a ship should be classed as in-game, we're actually rating ships here . but everything you said under the response to that had NOTHING to do with what we were talking aboutOn the opposite, it has a lot to do with it. First, you have to understand that historical ship classification was all about technological advances, historical context and what was going on at the time those ships were designed and (those which were), built. Otherwise it makes no sense that a 14000 ton warship was a battleship in 1900, yet a 14000 ton ship was a heavy cruiser in 1942. Does it?. Classes changed shape, size, weapons, etc as time went by. The only thing that did not change were roles. Every navy had roles for ships to fight in the battleline (battleships), ships for scouting, commerce raider, trade protection (Cruisers). Ships for torpedo attack and protection against enemy torpedo attack platforms (destroyers). And then there was a particular role, which was created with the introduction of HMS Invincible: that of the "Cruiser hunter" warship. The battlecruiser role. Battleships characteristics changed A LOT as years went by. So did cruiser characteristics, so did destroyer characteristics. What didn't change was their role. In a similar vein, Battlecruiser characteristics changed A LOT as years went by. What didn't change was their role: that of cruiser killer. That there were notable differences between a 1944 battlecruiser and a 1914 one seems to be the essential point of your whole argument about why Alaska wasn't one. Then again, how's that surprising?. 30 years had passed by, technology had advanced at an incredible pace, and even the prey had changed shape (From the heavily armed and protected armored cruiser to the faster, lighter armed, much lighter protected Heavy Cruiser). As a result the requirements of the role changed and produced ships with some differences - but their role (the qualifying thing for a class) was the same: to hunt cruisers, and overpower them in battle. Also, while technology advanced another thing happened: new smaller machineries allowed more power for less displacement cost; the result were warships which had battleship roles and were expected to fight in battlefleet actions, yet had battlecruiser speeds. That was a quantum leap in design, what now we know as the "fast battleship". That denomination wasn't even created at the time the first of those warships was built (HMS Hood), so they still were called "battlecruisers" at the time based exclusively in their much faster speeds than usual battleships of the time, even while, in fact, they were not. Ships as Hood herself, G3 or the Amagi class all belonged to this new "evolved battleship" form and with time and once the time when building new battleships wasn't allowed because of the naval treaties went by, every new battleship built was a "fast battleship" because all of them shared the same traits of the G3 or Amagi - much faster than "vintage" battleships, while heavily armed and armored to fullfit their expected role of fighting other battleships. Hence any try to compare an Alaska with an Amagi, Hood, or G3 to argue that Alaska was no battlecruiser isn't viable, because, within the correct context, is not a proper comparison. You're comparing a battlecruiser with battleships and stating that as the battlecruiser doesn't have those battleship's traits ... is not a battlecruiser. It just makes no sense, does it? . Again, the huge lapse of time that passed between the moment the Washington Treaty limited the construction of new battleships, until they could be built again, changed many things. Technology evolved a lot. No battlecruiser was launched in the interim because battlecruiser construction was also banned, alongside that of anything displacing more than 10000 tons with guns larger than 8'', so we don't get to see the step by step evolutionary process of how the battlecruiser tasked with the role of hunting cruisers happened, and how the changes were introduced overtime. We have a starting point (WW1 vintage battlecruisers) and a finishing point (WW2 battlecruisers, so-called "large cruisers"). Nothing in between. But again, all classes had changed with technology. Destroyers had evolved and were different, submarines had evolved and were different, cruisers had evolved and were different, Battleships had evolved and were different. Their roles were still the same though. So it's hardly surprised that battlecruisers evolved too. Their role being the same (cruiser hunting), their characteristics were different too. From the preWW1 Kongos or Lions or Motlkes to the WW2 dated B-65 or Alaska designs many details had changed - but the role kept on being the same. And those ships, being tasked with the same role as their predecessors, thus, were also battlecruisers.
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Post by tordenskjold on Jun 8, 2019 9:32:26 GMT -6
Funny thing: It's actually possible to rebuild the 3 x 11" turrets of your Panzerschiffe into 2 x 15" ones and still have the result rated as a CA (although this requires you to strip a lot of other things from the design as well). Now that's a pocket battleship, isn't it?
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Post by aeson on Jun 8, 2019 10:42:37 GMT -6
Funny thing: It's actually possible to rebuild the 3 x 11" turrets of your Panzerschiffe into 2 x 15" ones and still have the result rated as a CA (although this requires you to strip a lot of other things from the design as well). Now that's a pocket battleship, isn't it? As long as you keep the main battery in two turrets and the design displacement at or below 10,000 tons, there is no limit on either the number or caliber of the guns you can put on a CA, so if you want, you could build something like this:
Not saying it's worth doing, but you can do it.
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Post by polyarmus on Jun 8, 2019 15:15:43 GMT -6
The main issue is, that the AI likes so much to build 40k+ tons, 30 knots 3*3*16" monstrosities which it calls battle cruisers and which are fast battleships in all but name.
These "battle-cruiser-killers" are then placed into cruiser battles facing CAs. Even Alaska-like "proper-cruiser-killers" are quite useless in such situations.
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imryn
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Post by imryn on Sept 27, 2019 5:06:33 GMT -6
I don't think it is possible to definitively classify ships in real life as BC's or BB's. The BC, as a concept, was different for each navy and changed over time, so a ship that was classed as a BC at one time by one navy might be classified as a BB by another navy. The original concept for BC's in the RN was for ships that could "Outrun any ship with similar armament, and chase down any ship with lesser armament" - that had obviously been superseded by Jutland.
The original concept was fundamentally flawed because it failed to take the human element into account. A Captain of a BC who ran from another BC could expect to be cashiered in shame because the public would never understand why a big powerful ship could not fight another big powerful ship.
This misapplication of the BC concept is faithfully replicated in RTW and RTW2 where we regularly see BC on BC action. The game AI also faithfully replicates the historical deficiencies in protection making them easy meat for player designed BC's
In my current game I am playing as GB and am having trouble meeting the FS requirements. I am up to about 1940 and up till now I have been meeting the FS requirement using about 18x6000 ton CL's and 70 or so KE's. This worked fine, but now I am starting to build up my battle fleet of BB's and CV's and the 20% of tonnage rule is causing me problems - I meet all the individual station requirements but not the overall tonnage requirement. I don't want to have to keep building relatively useless CL's in ever increasing numbers, and I want to have some ships that will be effective as raiders. My tactic up to now has been to put all my FS CL's and KE's onto TP role when at war, but that feels wasteful considering the huge number of CL's I would have to build now.
I have decided to build a class of "proper BC's" instead of a slew of 6000 ton CL's. I am thinking of something with high speed (33 kts), medium range reliable engines, 2x3x11" or 12" main guns in all forward layout, armoured against 10" shells, an aircraft and a good AA suite. I will keep them in AF and station them around the world to meet FS requirements in peace time and switch them to R in war time. As raiders they shouldn't meet anything bigger than a CA, and with 33 kts they should be able to run down most CL's and CA's, and run away from a BC if they meet one. I haven't tried designing one yet, but I imagine they will be pretty big so should meet that 20% requirement quite handily. If I can make a decent design I will post it here.
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Post by dorn on Sept 27, 2019 5:31:29 GMT -6
imrynI usually have some capital ships in the Mediterranean as RN in real history had. These ships are still easily recalled to home area in any war especially as RN is usually with USN the largest which allow them to send some ships around the globe for different missions.
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imryn
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Post by imryn on Sept 27, 2019 6:12:03 GMT -6
imryn I usually have some capital ships in the Mediterranean as RN in real history had. These ships are still easily recalled to home area in any war especially as RN is usually with USN the largest which allow them to send some ships around the globe for different missions. I only have 2 modern BB's and 2 modern BC's at the moment. I also have 5 old BB's that are in MB and only get trundled out in wartime to provide an invasion force. If I take any of my modern BB's or BC's out of home waters the politicians squeal, and my CV's are too fragile to put in the Med unsupported - they could be hammered in the opening turn of a war with France or Italy quite easily. I am at that awkward point where I have cleared out a bunch of trash to free up funds to build new ships, but haven't yet built them. I am hoping that my raider BC's will provide a long term solution to the problem - hopefully until the end of the game. Alternatively, as I build up my modern battle fleet I might station one or two in the Med and retire the raider BC's, but tbh my modern ships are too expensive to keep very many in AF during peacetime and especially overseas in peacetime.
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Post by director on Sept 27, 2019 19:28:50 GMT -6
Any time you start trying to classify ships, you run into a few problems.
'Classic' ship types (as encoded in US Navy 2-letter descriptors) can be assigned basically to the end of WW1. After that, and particularly after the naval treaties and building holidays, you can sort-of fit most ships into a classification, if you squint a little and shove really hard. Some, however, are in ship-type-limbo, neither quite one thing nor yet entirely another. The fault in this is not in the ship but rather in the classification system - rather as if we were debating whether the elephant of the parable was a snake, a fan or a pillar. Some ships just don't fit the US Navy's type-system, particularly so after 1918.
1) Many of the post-war ships weren't built to be a 'type' they were built (or rebuilt) to fill a need. German designers were not told 'get me a heavy cruiser' but rather 'what interesting things can we do to get a useful ship out of the treaty restrictions?' Italian battleships were not rebuilt to redefine the term battlecruiser, they were rebuilt in an effort to get a bit more usable life from otherwise obsolete ships. And so forth and so on. Some ships just don't fit neatly into a type, period.
2) There is no universal, accepted definition of a battlecruiser, in the sense that there are definitions of battleships, cruisers and destroyers (some encoded in law, others traditional). There is, to my knowledge, no working definition of battlecruiser that can solve the classification issues of Hood, Lexington, Alaska, Scharnhorst, Conte di Cavour, Dunkerque, Bismarck, Littorio, Iowa and so on and so forth. Can't be done: stop trying.
My working definition has been: a ship of capital size and armament, possessing better speed than contemporary battleships through the sacrifice of gun size or number, or by larger size, during the period of 1906-1918. If you start trying to classify ships solely by what they were used (or intended) for, the debate will never end... and given the changes in guns, speed, size and protection from 1906 to 1945, definitions based purely on physical qualifications aren't really useful either. I have opinions on different ships, but they are opinions and I neither expect others to agree nor much care. Interested in hearing your reasoning and explaining mine? Sure. Interested in winning an argument? Can't be bothered.
3) Better to say that a ship falls more into one category than another rather than try to cram it in based on some abstract theory.
*Scharnhorst is somewhat like a battleship - based on armor. More like a fast battleship, based on speed. Most like a battlecruiser given the Imperial German Navy's tendency to get faster speed from capital units by sacrificing gun power. She has some battlecruiser qualities (I think) and is a fast battleship in the terms of the day. But really she is a flawed design shaped by political and economic factors - not shaped to fit a ship-type. *Alaska is somewhat like a battlecruiser - based on gun size, although it is not a caliber used by any capital ship in WW2. Most like a heavy cruiser based on armor, speed and intended use - and in what her owners called her. *Hood is like a battlecruiser in armor thickness and scheme, but most like a fast battleship in size, gun battery and speed. *Dunkerque is a fast battleship, of small size due to treaty limitations and because she was shaped by the political calculation of matching Scharnhorst, not because France wanted a battlecruiser. *The pocket battleships weren't BCs or CAs or CLs or CVs or any other type because they were not designed to fit into the system but rather to be useful. Other nations didn't have the same needs and restrictions - so other nations didn't build any.
So...
Some ships fit neatly into classification boxes and some don't. It's not the fault of the ships - it's the attempt to classify that is imperfect.
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imryn
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Post by imryn on Sept 28, 2019 1:55:34 GMT -6
Any time you start trying to classify ships, you run into a few problems. 'Classic' ship types (as encoded in US Navy 2-letter descriptors) can be assigned basically to the end of WW1. After that, and particularly after the naval treaties and building holidays, you can sort-of fit most ships into a classification, if you squint a little and shove really hard. Some, however, are in ship-type-limbo, neither quite one thing nor yet entirely another. The fault in this is not in the ship but rather in the classification system - rather as if we were debating whether the elephant of the parable was a snake, a fan or a pillar. Some ships just don't fit the US Navy's type-system, particularly so after 1918. 1) Many of the post-war ships weren't built to be a 'type' they were built (or rebuilt) to fill a need. German designers were not told 'get me a heavy cruiser' but rather 'what interesting things can we do to get a useful ship out of the treaty restrictions?' Italian battleships were not rebuilt to redefine the term battlecruiser, they were rebuilt in an effort to get a bit more usable life from otherwise obsolete ships. And so forth and so on. Some ships just don't fit neatly into a type, period. 2) There is no universal, accepted definition of a battlecruiser, in the sense that there are definitions of battleships, cruisers and destroyers (some encoded in law, others traditional). There is, to my knowledge, no working definition of battlecruiser that can solve the classification issues of Hood, Lexington, Alaska, Scharnhorst, Conte di Cavour, Dunkerque, Bismarck, Littorio, Iowa and so on and so forth. Can't be done: stop trying. My working definition has been: a ship of capital size and armament, possessing better speed than contemporary battleships through the sacrifice of gun size or number, or by larger size, during the period of 1906-1918. If you start trying to classify ships solely by what they were used (or intended) for, the debate will never end... and given the changes in guns, speed, size and protection from 1906 to 1945, definitions based purely on physical qualifications aren't really useful either. I have opinions on different ships, but they are opinions and I neither expect others to agree nor much care. Interested in hearing your reasoning and explaining mine? Sure. Interested in winning an argument? Can't be bothered. 3) Better to say that a ship falls more into one category than another rather than try to cram it in based on some abstract theory. *Scharnhorst is somewhat like a battleship - based on armor. More like a fast battleship, based on speed. Most like a battlecruiser given the Imperial German Navy's tendency to get faster speed from capital units by sacrificing gun power. She has some battlecruiser qualities (I think) and is a fast battleship in the terms of the day. But really she is a flawed design shaped by political and economic factors - not shaped to fit a ship-type. *Alaska is somewhat like a battlecruiser - based on gun size, although it is not a caliber used by any capital ship in WW2. Most like a heavy cruiser based on armor, speed and intended use - and in what her owners called her. *Hood is like a battlecruiser in armor thickness and scheme, but most like a fast battleship in size, gun battery and speed. *Dunkerque is a fast battleship, of small size due to treaty limitations and because she was shaped by the political calculation of matching Scharnhorst, not because France wanted a battlecruiser. *The pocket battleships weren't BCs or CAs or CLs or CVs or any other type because they were not designed to fit into the system but rather to be useful. Other nations didn't have the same needs and restrictions - so other nations didn't build any. So... Some ships fit neatly into classification boxes and some don't. It's not the fault of the ships - it's the attempt to classify that is imperfect. Battlecruisers were the brain child of Jackie Fisher and nobody else really got what he wanted them for. He wanted ships that could "Outrun any ship with similar armament, and chase down any ship with lesser armament", and he was in a position to get them built, but once they entered service the RN never once used them in the way he intended. It is understandable - here is a ship that's as big as (or bigger than) a battleship with the same guns as a battleship, so of course it can fight a battleship. Intellectually they knew that it had weaker armour, but you can't see that, so they ended up being used as fast battleships and not "battlecruisers" in the way that Fisher envisioned them. At that time the RN was the premier navy and once the RN started building these weird ships every other navy felt they had to build them as well, whether they had a use for them or not. The politicians said "The RN has battlecruisers so we have to have them as well!" and the admirals were left scratching their heads over what to do with them. This resulted in each navy coming up with their own role for them, and their own definition of what they were. And that role and definition changed over time. They were a ship type with no clear role or definition, and the only thing we can say with certainty is that they were never used the way the originator imagined they would be.
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Post by director on Sept 28, 2019 3:42:19 GMT -6
imryn - Yes, but - Fisher didn't intend to create a battle-cruiser. He intended to beat the Americans and Japanese to the punch, and throttle German battleship construction, by creating a new super-battleship after the formula of Cuniberti: superior speed and a single-caliber broadside of at least 8 heavy guns. He did intend his new ships to be able to fight from long range, using a single-caliber battery to land hits and their speed to hold the range open. He did not think the ships needed armor if they could hold the range open since they could not be often hit by pre-dreadnought batteries. And it is commonly pointed out now that this would be true - as long as no-one else built any. Of course, every major and minor naval power went dreadnought crazy. It was pressure and resistance from the Royal Navy establishment that got 'Dreadnought' armored and the lightly-armored 'Invincible' built later. By the time the war broke out it was recognized that you couldn't fight enemy dreadnoughts with 'Invincible'-types. Battlecruisers wound up being built and used, mostly because 'they have some and we want more' (as you say). In operational terms the BCs were intended to open the way for friendly scouting forces and prevent enemy scouts from closing on the friendly battle-line, replacing armored cruisers in that role. So 'Invincible' would have been a revolutionary ship, had she been built first. But cooler heads forced a heavier-armored, slower ship to be built first and 'Dreadnought' left 'Invincible' as a solution without a problem. High speed made them useful for things like ambushing von Spee's cruisers and then moved to a scouting role - but battlecruisers were never allowed to be a replacement for all capital ships as Fisher intended. At least, that's my opinion.
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Post by dorn on Sept 28, 2019 3:53:53 GMT -6
I do not think that Fisher want battlecruiser (WW1 type of battelcruisers) at start. If I remember well the first designs was ships with firepower of dreadnought, armour of dreadnought and speed of cruisers (25 knots). However such ship would be much larger at that time about 25000 tons which was something even Fisher was unable to push ahead. So he needed to work with smaller displacement and this meen to split role of such ship to 2 smaller ships - dreadnought and battlecruiser. This original idea percieved in Royal Navy during construction of Queen Elisabeths and later Admiral class battlecruisers. Because of her sloping belt HMS Hood has best protection from any European capital ships at that time with best firepower of any European capital ships and fastest worldwide except HMS Renown, HMS Repulse and white elephants. Only after limitation by treaties Royal Navy starts sacrifices speed and focuse much more on armour. It could be seen on HMS Rodney and HMS Nelson and mainly KGV class which has the thickest armour of any treaty battleship and you can see that design choice between firepower/armour/speed was clearly in favour of armour.
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