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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 28, 2019 9:09:46 GMT -6
Fischer's original idea for the armored cruisers of the Invincible class was a ship fast enough to hunt down any armed merchant vessel afloat and fight any cruiser afloat. Fischer's definition of fight was "crush". He did not want a ship of equal strength or speed. He wanted a ship superior in numbers, guns, hitting power, speed and personnel.
Roberts, John. British Battlecruisers: 1905 - 1920 . Pen and Sword. Kindle Edition.
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Post by director on Sept 28, 2019 14:15:34 GMT -6
dorn - I don't remember my source on that (Massie's 'Dreadnought' perhaps) so it is certainly possible that I have wrongly conflated Fisher's early (and lifelong) obsession with speed into thinking that 'Invincible' was his first choice of the two designs. I am however firmly of the opinion that his early preferred designs (HMS Untakeable or Unapproachable) have more in common with 'Invincible' than 'Dreadnought'. In a world of 16-knot battleships, 21 knots is a wide superiority; in a world of 19-knot battleships it is not, but 24 or 25 knots is. Accounts of what really went on at the design board's meetings show some deep divisions over the design of HMS Dreadnought including an extended fight over triple, superimposed turrets... Fisher may have realized that he had to get a battleship built and proved before he could bring out other designs. In any case, it was essential to him that 'Dreadnought' get in the water before already-building American and Japanese ships and that she be seen to be a superior ship. Cuniberti formalized naval design thinking into a (pre-Tsushima!) design which was both striking and an unbuildable collection of wants). His essay is preserved in Jane's of 1903 (and widely reprinted later). His design has a lot of big guns and a clear superiority of speed - 24 knots - and is well-armored. Too well for the supposed displacement, speed and armament. Fisher, and the Royal Navy in general, also believed in superior speed: British battleship designs pre-Fisher favored thinning down the armor a bit in order to get an extra knot of speed. And it is an essential quality - so long as you have enough speed to hold the range open, enough accuracy to hit a moving target at very long range and enough ammo for 2-3% hit rate to be decisive. ("Sea fighting is pure common sense. The first of all its necessities is SPEED, so as to be able to fight--When you like, Where you like, and How you like.") www.tapatalk.com/groups/alltheworldsbattlecruisers/fisher-s-untakeable-concept-battleships-t8655.htmlThe above is a very interesting look at some of Fisher's early design sketches as well as 'Dreadnought's design process. His insistence on superior speed is evident from the first. I take your point and do not disagree with anything you said - I will say that, in my opinion, "ships with firepower of dreadnought, armour of dreadnought and speed of cruisers (25 knots)" are battlecruisers or fast battleships, sacrificing smaller size and cost to achieve higher speed. It has been said that all fiction is a subset of speculative fiction; it has been shown that at least one species of dinosaur still lives among us in the form of birds. Perhaps we can also say that the battlecruiser did not die out but simply and finally replaced the battleship. After the 'building holiday' expired, all new capital ships had battlecruiser speed... and what else is a 'fast battleship' but a battlecruiser perfected?
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 28, 2019 17:45:13 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.
After Fisher became the First Sea Lord in October 1904, a committee recommended the reduction of the Lord Nelson's to one, which was the HMS Dreadnought. Fisher then asked that a fast battleship with uniform armament be designed. The Lord Nelson's were an alternative but another would be eight 12 inch guns in pairs. It is a complex story, but by this time it was accepted that both the battleship and armored cruiser designs were becoming very close in capability. Fisher wrote that was impossible to prevent the merger of the two designs. This comment he made was in 1906 after the Invincible class were designed and building. Fisher had a concept in 1904 of a small force of extremely fast, powerful armored cruisers. In 1905 Fisher asked the same committee to design ships with 12 in. guns, armor of the Minotaur class and capable of 25 knots. This was conceptual design of the Invincible. War_ships.pdf (633.16 KB)
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 28, 2019 20:35:41 GMT -6
I've gone back and did some random reading on my monographs, books from the early part of the century and the latest on the British Fleet and its development of all big gun ships. Now, this was not limited to just the British. The French, Germans and the US were beginning to investigate this issue. The impetus for this development was the torpedo. It isn't really true that at this early stage, the torpedo was that dangerous, but most navies considered that it was. So, with this new weapon, close range fights between fleets were thought to be too dangerous. Long range guns, with wire-wound barrels and new metals were already in development and possible along with newer powders; it was thought that with improved fire control development, a fleet action would be safer at long ranges. Now, this would require firing in salvoes and then corrections for range and azimuth to finally get the shots on target. This is a difficult task with different gun calibers on board, each with their own characteristics. It was then decided that if the ships had one main armament, the fire control procedures would be far easier to use and be effective. This is essentially the story behind the HMS Dreadnought and other ships with the same main armament.
There were other developments that made all this possible. Improved metals for ship hull construction, better hull compartmentation. Better testing of designs and new engineering investigations into ship design. The development of the turbine which was more powerful and used less space and of course, oil and its extraction and cracking into a useful fuel for the turbines. All these new developments provided the necessary factors to radically improve the design and building of warships. With the new warships, there was a requirement for improved fleet tactics. Trafalgar was over, it was time to move on. This is what Lord Fisher provided to the Royal Navy.
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Post by sayang on Sept 29, 2019 0:18:01 GMT -6
Battle of the Falklands was the only one I can think of where BC were used as ‘intended’ - a one sided murdering of armoured cruisers.
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imryn
Full Member
Posts: 156
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Post by imryn on Sept 29, 2019 6:21:43 GMT -6
... 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. I was able to build a tiddly BC on 20,000 tons that did what I want. Unfortunately I can't use them the way I wanted because when I set them to Raider the tonnage is no longer counted against my 20% in foreign stations. This might be a bug (the ships are outside home waters after all) or it may be working as intended, but either way the best I can do is set some to R and the rest to FS. The problem there is that the ones on FS wander around and they can be dragged into battles with "real" ships.
Back to the drawing board.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 29, 2019 8:53:17 GMT -6
Battle of the Falklands was the only one I can think of where BC were used as ‘intended’ - a one sided murdering of armoured cruisers. You are correct, this was the only time the BC's actually performed the mission that they were designed for. Hood sank Bretagne, a battleship, the only time a battle cruiser sank a battleship and Bismarck sank Hood, vice versa. One for one, all is even.
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Post by ulzgoroth on Sept 29, 2019 9:44:11 GMT -6
... 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. I was able to build a tiddly BC on 20,000 tons that did what I want. Unfortunately I can't use them the way I wanted because when I set them to Raider the tonnage is no longer counted against my 20% in foreign stations. This might be a bug (the ships are outside home waters after all) or it may be working as intended, but either way the best I can do is set some to R and the rest to FS. The problem there is that the ones on FS wander around and they can be dragged into battles with "real" ships.
Back to the drawing board.
In wartime you need as much if not more garrison forces, so ships that pull garrison duty in peacetime and do something else in war don't work so well.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 29, 2019 10:54:06 GMT -6
I've been playing with my design of the HMS Dreadnought in Springsharp 3.0. The only way to get more speed out of this ship is to increase engine power. She and Invincible both used direct drive but the Invincible had 41,000 SHP compared to HMS Dreadnoughts 23,000 SHP. This made the difference. I am trying to discover why the Battlecruisers could have much more power. I am not certain armor weight and length played a part. More later.
Update: I had to increase engine power to over 45,000 SHP to get close to the Invincible speed of 25.7 knots. I also changed the armor thickness, range and decreased the beam. None of these really affected the ship except to reduce the tonnage which does allow for more speed. However, the key would be to completely redesign the ship with a higher length to beam, somewhere around 7.75 to 1, decrease the armor and number of guns. Two different missions required two different designs, normal for building ships.
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Post by director on Sept 29, 2019 10:55:18 GMT -6
Um... no. Not wanting to get into an argument over an opinion, but... Both Dogger Bank and Jutland show battlecruisers used to spearhead scouting forces, which was one of their intended uses. Arguably using the 'Kongo' class as carrier escorts in WW2 was one of their 'intended' uses (the ships didn't 'accidentally' wind up in those task forces after all) but they were technically battleships after their rebuild. And 'Washington' sank 'Kirishima' - although, again, the latter had been reclassified after refit, so it's a moot point. imryn - I like to use my BCs as raiders also, but I often do that in home waters. If the enemy starts sending his BCs to hunt down my AMCs and cruisers then the appearance of my BCs can give him a nasty surprise.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 29, 2019 11:08:56 GMT -6
Um... no. Not wanting to get into an argument over an opinion, but... Both Dogger Bank and Jutland show battlecruisers used to spearhead scouting forces, which was one of their intended uses. Arguably using the 'Kongo' class as carrier escorts in WW2 was one of their 'intended' uses (the ships didn't 'accidentally' wind up in those task forces after all) but they were technically battleships after their rebuild. And 'Washington' sank 'Kirishima' - although, again, the latter had been reclassified after refit, so it's a moot point. imryn - I like to use my BCs as raiders also, but I often do that in home waters. If the enemy starts sending his BCs to hunt down my AMCs and cruisers then the appearance of my BCs can give him a nasty surprise. The Battle-cruisers mission was to A. Scout for the fleet which as you say, they did. B. Hunt down and destroy other cruisers including armored cruisers, and at the Battle of the Falklands, the battle-cruisers did perform that mission. So, two of missions assigned to the design, were, in fact, completed.
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