|
Post by aeson on Jun 23, 2020 21:44:35 GMT -6
If you have obsolete light cruisers in your fleet but are entirely unwilling to risk them in combat, why do you have them in the fleet? Plenty of navies kept around older ships for shore bombardment or escort duties that weren’t intended to face contemporary ships -See all the armored cruisers still around in WWII Intentions are lovely things; they're also irrelevant when they run into the reality that there just so happens to be a more powerful and more modern warship - or a squadron thereof - steaming into gun range, whether it's Pegasus against Konigsberg, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau against Good Hope and Monmouth, or Invincible and Inflexible against Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the First World War, or Rawalpindi or Acasta and Ardent against another Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, Jervis Bay against Admiral Scheer, Glowworm against Admiral Hipper, Kirishima against Washington and South Dakota, or Taffy 3 against Center Force in the Second.
Retaining obsolete ships in the fleet - or enrolling low-capability units into it - so that you can make use of them in relatively low-risk roles for which a more modern or more capable warship is not particularly necessary requires accepting the risk that they will at some point encounter something that they cannot fight. If you are unwilling to accept that risk, then you should not have kept the ships.
|
|
|
Post by seawolf on Jun 23, 2020 22:45:38 GMT -6
Plenty of navies kept around older ships for shore bombardment or escort duties that weren’t intended to face contemporary ships -See all the armored cruisers still around in WWII Intentions are lovely things; they're also irrelevant when they run into the reality that there just so happens to be a more powerful and more modern warship - or a squadron thereof - steaming into gun range, whether it's Pegasus against Konigsberg, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau against Good Hope and Monmouth, or Invincible and Inflexible against Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the First World War, or Rawalpindi or Acasta and Ardent against another Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, Jervis Bay against Admiral Scheer, Glowworm against Admiral Hipper, Kirishima against Washington and South Dakota, or Taffy 3 against Center Force in the Second.
Retaining obsolete ships in the fleet - or enrolling low-capability units into it - so that you can make use of them in relatively low-risk roles for which a more modern or more capable warship is not particularly necessary requires accepting the risk that they will at some point encounter something that they cannot fight. If you are unwilling to accept that risk, then you should not have kept the ships.
I don't think anyone is arguing there shouldn't be risk, I think the problem is that they take unnecessary risks. The British didn't send the old C class out to hunt for Graf Spee It wouldn't be unreasonable to be able to choose which ships are frontline units, and which are rear units. While they could still end up in convoy battles or surprise encounters, rear units wouldn't be chasing down raiders or engaging in fleet combat
|
|
|
Post by aeson on Jun 24, 2020 0:55:48 GMT -6
The British didn't send the old C class out to hunt for Graf Spee But they did involve at least three of them - Cardiff, Caledon, and Calypso - in the search for Scharnhorst and Gneisenau after the sinking of Rawalpindi, where the C-class cruisers would have been even more badly outclassed if they happened to be caught out away from heavier warships than would be the case against Graf Spee.
Also, I don't know that I'd call the Leander-class cruisers that did end up fighting Graf Spee so superior to the remaining C-class cruisers as to make it unthinkable for C-class cruisers to have been used in their place. The Leanders are obviously preferable - probably especially when compared to the C-class cruisers refitted for the anti-aircraft role - but I would say more due to their speed than anything else; individual quality doesn't matter quite as much in a squadron-versus-one scenario as in an engagement involving more equal numbers of ships on each side and neither a Leander nor a C can do much to armored parts of a Deutschland, so regardless of which ones you brought along their main purpose in being there would be to break unarmored things and perhaps draw fire away from the presumptive main threat (Exeter or Cumberland, possibly both), and insofar as resilience goes the only major advantage that the Leanders have over the Cs is their size. Setting ships to Trade Protection already significantly reduces their likelihood of showing up to any engagement that isn't a Raider Interception, and there is also the option to send ships out of the primary theater of operations - i.e. away from the front line and into rear areas - if you do not want them showing up in engagements against the likely-most-capable part of the enemy's fleet.
Also, Rawalpindi - an armed merchant cruiser, so hardly 'front line' if by that we mean one of the more capable units of the fleet - was literally chasing down raiders when it ran into Scharnhorst and Gneisenau; as part of the Northern Patrol, its regular duties involved patrolling to intercept German shipping and surface raiders, and it was looking into a possible enemy sighting when it found the two battleships. Older cruisers, including the C class in the Second World War and many predreadnought-era cruisers in the First, were often employed similarly.
|
|
|
Post by buttons on Jun 24, 2020 7:46:18 GMT -6
Raider missions are the most lethal since it tends to involve one side being wiped out unless the weaker ship is also faster and decides to run immediately. Also there is no incentive to use bigger ships on trade protection, why keep around a bunch of obsolete cruisers when I can just spam KEs?
|
|
|
Post by aeson on Jun 24, 2020 9:24:15 GMT -6
Also there is no incentive to use bigger ships on trade protection, why keep around a bunch of obsolete cruisers when I can just spam KEs? Corvettes don't counter surface raiders, and cruisers do better at it when assigned to Trade Protection than in the Active Fleet. My standard purpose-built raiding cruisers are 2,100 tons, have minimal armament and protection, have design speeds around ~19-21 knots in the predreadnought era, ~24-26 knots in the late-'10s or the '20s, and ~27-28 knots if built later, and are built by the dozen. I very rarely lose one in a Raider Interception unless I choose to fight; the computer's ships can theoretically run them down, but in practice they can often keep far enough ahead to escape under cover of darkness or foul weather.
|
|