RE: Fleet Composition - What more should I get?

At 5:34 PM -0800 1/4/04, Jared Hilal wrote:
>
>Historically, a battlecruiser (BC) was armed about the same as a
>battleship (caliber & number of guns), sacrificing armor for addional
>powerplant.

A lightly armored Battleship with speed instead of protection.

http://www.hazegray.org/navhist/battleships/us_bc.htm#lex-cl

>A Fast Battleship, like the US Iowa class, had similar armor to a
>battleship, but a reduce main battery to allow displacement for
>additional engineering.

It also, upped the ante for Battleship sizes and 
armor (57.5K tons full load w/ 3 triple 16" 
turrets @ 33 knots) in the process (ie North 
Carolinas at 44.5k tons w/ same main battery @ 33 
knots. What's missing are the comparable US 
Battleships of the Montana Class (70K tons full 
load w/ 4 triple 16" turrets @ 28 knots).

see
http://www.hazegray.org/navhist/battleships/us_wwii.htm

>A Large Cruiser (CB), like the US Alaska class, had a main battery much
>more powerful than contemporary heavy cruisers, but smaller than
>contemporary BBs, and defenses equal to CAs.

And these @ 34k tons 3 triple 12" guns and a 33 
knot speed were designed to hunt down the 8" 
gunned cruisers that were expected to be commerce 
raiding. Andrew Toppan calls them "big cruisers".

see
http://www.hazegray.org/navhist/battleships/us_bc.htm#ala-cl

>Pre-WW2 german panzerschiffen (lit. "armored ships"), dubbed "pocket
>battleships" in the British press, fall into this last category.

Which is why 2 or three cruisers could make a 
Panzerschiffen run as it wasn't an unfair fight.

Commerce raiding as the sole method of waging 
naval war clearly doesn't work(See WWII 
Atlantic). However, using it as an addition to 
your already effective battle line does work (see 
the Pacific)
-- 
--
Ryan Gill	       rmgill@SPAMmindspring.com
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'60 Daimler Ferret '42 Daimler Dingo '42 Humber MkIV (1/3)
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