Re: [GZG] Battlecruisers

[Ryan Gill <rmgill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:31 AM -0500 12/24/06, Jerry Han wrote:
> The thing is though, those were different eras.  In World War I, German
> commerce raiders were, for the most part, converted merchant cruisers.
> Thus, usually, any decent crewed light cruiser could handle them.

I'm thinking of the WWII era where the Germans 
DID have just the pocket battleship like the Adm 
Graff Spee. What's tricky is that Ajax, Achillies 
and Exteter should have lost against the Graff 
Spee, but He was under orders to eschew a fight 
with British forces. Had the PE turned on them 
and stayed on them, he likely could have driven 
them off or destroyed them. He'd driven off 
Exeter already.

I suspect a few more fast BCs could have been 
useful in the Northern Transit to the USSR on the 
convoys north. Certainly to ward off the 
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.

> The German Pocket Battleships were, in a sense, 'light' battlecruisers,
> as they carried 11" guns on essentially a heavy cruiser hull.  BCs would
> have been useful in hunting down the pocket battleships, but, by World
> War 2, there were many other countermeasures, all of which were much more
> flexible than battlecruisers.  (Air power, submarines, fast battleships,
> heavy 8" cruisers, destroyers with reliable torpedoes, etc.)

I think an upgraded BC with BB armament (the G3s) 
of the time (14"-16" guns) would have easily 
controlled the range with the Adm Graf Spee or 
the Gneisenau and probably have been a boon. Of 
course, it takes the same or nearly the same 
resources to build a BC and they only make sense 
if you have sufficient BB's to make up your needs 
and slips waiting on something else. Else, you'll 
find them being used in the wrong role and they 
suffer when pressed into the battle line.


> But that's the point -- if you needed bigger ships with more punch, it was
> always more cost effective to send a battleship than a battlecruiser, or
> send a division of heavy cruisers.  The classic battlecruiser was neither
> fish nor fowl, overkill against heavy cruisers, hopelessly outclassed against
> any battleship, especially when battleships were capable of matching
> battlecruiser speeds.

When FAST battleships were able to match the BC 
speeds. The Montana's were going to be good old 
fashioned slow battleships with even more armor 
(gobs more) and armament (4 triple 16"/50s and 
the 10 double 5"/54s) than the Iowas. Still a 
multi-layer approach just like CLs, CAs and CH's.

Though, looking at hazegray.org, it seems that 
the Alaska's were almost older style Battleships 
in that they were protected against their own 
armament (12" guns). Almost a throw back to 
size/gun size/armor but with a modern layout and 
machinery/armament.

> It's an appealing concept, as demonstrated by the number of game systems
> and novels trying to implement a version of the battlecruiser that
> makes sense, but, it takes a certain mix of technology to make it
> really useful I believe, and that mix wasn't present in World War I / II era.
> The problem is that the phrase "able to catch what you can destroy, able
> to run away from what you can't" isn't just a definition of a ship class,
> it's one of the defining rules of the tactical matrix of combat, naval or
> otherwise.  There are certain sweet spots for 
> size and capability defined by the era, and the 
> battlecruiser never quite fit into any of those 
> sweet
> spots in naval history.

I think mostly because it's role was too 
particular and it was often just stuck into the 
battle-line where it suffered horribly.
--
--
Ryan Gill              rmgill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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