Favorite battlecruiser

[USS Drum]

Well I decided to start a thread about our favorite battlecruiser so her is mine, the Lexington Class:

[CCIP]

Kinda hard to judge a ship that never existed...

But if we go with those, I'm pretty sure the G3 battlecruiser wins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G3_battlecruiser

Otherwise, the history of battlecruisers is not a happy one, both in WWI and (what was left of them) in WWII. They were, in all truth, a misconceived and dangerous ship concept that was essentially obsolete before WWI even started, but was defended relentlessly (at least until its real weaknesses became apparent at Jutland).

They were still beautiful ships of course. I've always loved the Cats (Lion class) and the German battlecruisers of WWI - both had their flaws; the latter in the end were simply better suited to the situations they fought in. Their "Death Ride" at Jutland was an brave action however you slice it. The Seydlitz probably rightly deserves the title of the most accomplished battlecruiser in history, having participated in all of the major battles in the North Sea and survived incredible amounts of damage repeatedly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Seydlitz


Kinda wondering why this is in the SH4 forum. Not a lot of battlecruiser action going on there

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by CCIP

They were, in all truth, a misconceived and dangerous ship concept that was essentially obsolete before WWI even started, but was defended relentlessly (at least until its real weaknesses became apparent at Jutland).

I will disagree on one point, and start by saying I don't believe they were misconceived at all, just misapplied. When first designed they were meant to be a companion to Dreadnought, and were called "First-Class Armoured Cruisers". They were supposed to be the bane of other armored cruisers, and to run away from battleships. In the great renaming of 1912 they were redesignated 'Battlecruisers', and since they had 12" guns the mistake was made of assigning them to battleship divisions. The original idea was a good one; it was misused during the war. At the Falklands they did exactly what they were designed for, and did it perfectly.

[CCIP]

Yeah, I think you're right that the 'Battle-' part was their biggest failing and made them misapplied. But the application for them was still extremely limited, especially considering their vast expense. They were pushed into battle line combat in lieu of battleships, which could've been built instead of them. And then true fast battleships, the first of which were launched on the eve of WWI, also more or less guaranteed that that the battlecruisers' days were numbered.

[Sailor Steve]

You're absolutely right there. I think they were built because the contemporary German armored cruisers were so dangerous as surface raiders.

Conway's says that the Invincibles were first concieved to carry sixteen 9.2" guns rather than the eight 12" guns they ended up with.

[USS Drum]

Originally Posted by CCIP

Kinda wondering why this is in the SH4 forum. Not a lot of battlecruiser action going on there

Karle94 is working on a Lexington.

[CCIP]

Yeah, though one shouldn't underestimate Jacky Fisher's role in the concept of the battlecruiser either. He had a big bright idea and he wasn't gonna let it go - it was the ship he really wanted to build (Dreadnought was his compromise that, ironically, proved to be the right idea in the end - but not what he really wanted to built). The battlecruiser was his ship and he was gonna see it through, and his increasingly outrageous designs in later WWI only show that.

Not that cruiser killers didn't have their niche, of course. The idea kind of survived into WWII, but never saw much use in reality.

Then you could also argue that battleships as such were, in the end, also a failure. The predictions of Mahanian doctrine that they were built around never came true - the great decisive line battle never happened, while billions and billions were sunk into building the things by many nations, when the real masters of the sea turned out to be the humble airplane and submarine.

And yet of course you can't not love the designs (assuming you like fast, powerful, intimidating, deadly-looking things)

[USS Drum]

The Lexington actually had a good purpose it wouldn't fight battleships, instead it would be a scout for the main fleet and then return and help the main fleet destroy the enemy.

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by USS Drum

The Lexington actually had a good purpose it wouldn't fight battleships, instead it would be a scout for the main fleet and then return and help the main fleet destroy the enemy.

Well that is how the battlecruisers ended up getting used. Then they would meet the other side's battlecruisers doing the same thing. Then, well, Dogger Bank and Jutland happened, and the rest is history. And that was before Lexington even left the drawing board.

As scouts go, light cruisers were cheaper and in the end more effective. And both were not even close to a match to aircraft that, again, were already beginning to fill that role before Lexington even finished being designed.

[USS Drum]

You should here what the British designed a cruiser with 2 18 inch gun but eggshell armor.

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by USS Drum

You should here what the British designed a cruiser with 2 18 inch gun but eggshell armor.

Yup, that's one of Fisher's crazy schemes, the Furious, along with her smaller-gunned half-sisters Courageous and Glorious Also known in history as the "Spurious", "Outrageous" and "Uproarious"

And, like the Lexington, successfully converted to aircraft carriers.

[USS Drum]

At least the Germans made their battlecruisers have actual "armor".

Since imaginary battlecruisers are included.

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by USS Drum

At least the Germans made their battlecruisers have actual "armor".

The German and British BCs are pretty different beasts tbh. Their grouping together as the same type is possibly another historical mis-representation.

The conventional design wisdom in the dreadnought age went "Speed, Armor, Guns: Pick Two". Battleships sacrificed speed for more armor and bigger guns. The British battlecruiser concept, intended to chase down cruisers, only needed armor to protect itself from the cruisers it was supposed to fight, and so traded protection for speed and big guns. German battlecruisers, on the other hand, traded guns (11" and 12" guns, vs. the British 12, 13.5, and 15" BCs) for armor and speed. They were a pretty different kind of ship altogether.

Otherwise as battlecruisers, the German ships were actually flawed, especially because their range was restricted and they would have trouble ever operating as 'cruiser killers'. They had a number of other issues and problems as well, but the theater they fought in these disadvantages rarely mattered because they fought close to home. But what made even more difference is the enemy they faced - the British battlecruisers, led by the aggressive Beatty who was eager to lead his under-armored ships into a fight, were already at a disadvantage in a slugging match against the Germans. But this was massively compounded by flawed British shells, dangerous propellant storage, and inferior gunnery methods and practice among Beatty's BCs.

Ironically, a lot of these lessons were never learned by either side. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were direct descendants of German BCs of World War I. They ultimately fell to airplanes and fast battleships. British BCs in WWII suffered the exact same fates (Repulse and Hood respectively - the latter also probably blowing up thanks to the same dangerous propellant used since WWI).

[FightingSteel1]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I will disagree on one point, and start by saying I don't believe they were misconceived at all, just misapplied.

In the end, Battlecruisers are just as cool as Battleships to most people. I'd have to go with the Scharnhorst/Gneisneau as my favorites, and as relatively successful vessels as well.

It seems that BCs were misused many times in my opinion. In WW1, they were thrown into giant slugfests that didn't suit their strengths. In WW2 the Hood was thrown up against probably the most advanced warship at that current time. The British were just too blinded by the Hood as a symbol and got complacent with her condition. A similar issue was sending Repulse (and POW) with no carrier companion, towards a nation that had demonstrated it's airpower capability several times by then. Just sad losses of life across the board.

As for my favorites, the Kreigsmarine seemed to misapply most of their ships in the war. Scharnhorst and her sister did have success when traveling together, and if the Germans would have grouped their vessels and used them in tandem with one another more they would have been more successful. It just was difficult though since the German ports came under air attack so much. How many times were their ships knocked out for weeks or months at a time because of damage in port?

The Kreigsmarine actually did go the opposite of WWI and avoided direct fights as much as possible. And then after having that policy all those years, they send Scharnhorst out by itself in bad weather in a terrible situation. Just inexcusable. Credit the Duke of York with a lucky shot, as the Scharnhorst almost got away despite the decision of German naval command.

I don't know about the Lexington BCs (though they made cool carriers, one of my favorites), but what about the real odd ships? The Alaska Class? They look great, and were maybe the nicest BCs of all, but strange that they were built and completed so late in the war, for almost no purpose.