Re: [GZG] Battlecruisers

I'm having serious computer troubles, so this reply is rather belated
:-(

Ryan Gill replied to me:

>>Sure they did; just like the USN called their 
>>pocket battleship-equivalents "large cruisers" 
>>rather than "battlecruisers". What they were 
>>called by their builders doesn't change the fact 
>>that the WW2 Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were 
>>quite similar to the USN Alaskas in both 
>>displacement and performance, contrary to your 
>>above claim that "only the USN built ships like 
>>that".
> 
>Except they had armor protecting them to the 
>level of armament they had and the Alaskas are 
>over twice as heavy displacement wise.

Um... Ryan? You're looking at the wrong Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. There
were two different sets of them - one in WW1 (sunk at the Falklands),
and one in WW2. The stats you displayed are for the WW1 ones, but they
were never called "battlecruisers" or "pocket battleships". Above I'm
talking about the WW2 ones (it even says so explicitly in the section
you quoted).

The *WW2* Scharnhorst and Gneisenau displaced 31-38'000 tonnes (pre-war
and mid-war loads respectively), carried a main armament of 9x11" guns
and a maximum armour thickness of 320mm, and had a top speed of 31.6
knots.

That makes them slightly *larger*, *faster* and *heavier armoured* than
the Alaskas (at 34'000 tonnes, max armour 229mm and top speed 31.4
knots), though their main armament was somewhat lighter (9x11" guns vs
the Alaskas' 9x12" guns). 

Regards,

Oerjan

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