Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2013 5:32 am
No, no, gentlemen. You have it entirely wrong. The battlecruiser was not only a fine idea but a potentially war-winning weapon... within a narrow range of a decade or so after it was first proposed, if it was used in its intended roles and if only one fleet had them.
A battlecruiser is here defined as an all-big-gun ship with cruiser speed, whether this is achieved by sacrificing armor thickness (British model) or number and size of guns (German model). These 'cruiser-killers' should be used to blow a hole through the light ships guarding an enemy fleet and enable the collection of good intelligence on the location and disposition of the enemy; equally, they could form a 'fast division' to reach across the enemy's bow and cross his 'T' or force him to turn away. And if your enemy has a fast division then the value of one for your own fleet is enhanced...
So... in theory, great. Of course the problem is that theory and practice are the same - in theory - but different - in practice.
Where battlecruisers were used AS INTENDED they performed very well. Even the thin-skinned British models would have been fine if ammunition had been properly handled, instead of the flash-doors being propped open and shells and propellant heaped in piles in the turrets. This foolish British insistence on a high rate of fire with no regard for safety should the enemy ACTUALLY FIRE BACK doomed thousands of men to death and wreaked havoc on the British battlecruisers. It is extremely fortunate that the German High Seas battleships never 'got to grips' with their British counterparts. If they had, the same disregard of basic safety in the handling of explosives might have cost Jellicoe more battleships than Beatty lost battlecruisers. So let's take that part of Jutland out of the equation... battlecruisers did not explode because they were fragile, they exploded because safety precautions were ignored. It was the battlecruisers that exploded at Jutland because they did most of the shooting and being shot at - the battleships scarcely cleared their main batteries and few British battleships were hit.
Explosions aside, British and German battlecruisers alike showed they could suffer enormous damage and still be repaired and fight again. Other than British BCs lost by careless and foolish handling of explosives, one battlecruiser was sunk - SMS Lutzow - after taking at least 24 heavy-caliber hits. None were lost at Dogger Bank, Coronels or in the various actions of the Goeben under German and Turkish colors. That's a pretty good record for any capital ship...
HMS Hood was lost, as best I can determine, because her designers did not anticipate she would be fired on thirty years later by weapons of vastly higher muzzle velocity from an angle that exposed her weak ends and from a range that exposed her weak deck. A failure of armor? Yes... in the same way a tank designed in 1918 would see its armor fail when hit in the rear by an 88mm anti-aircraft gun. A thorough refit (similar to that of other British ships before WWII) might not have saved Hood but would have greatly improved her odds.
So the battlecruiser was a THEORETICAL triumph - a ship able to close the range rapidly and land heavy blows before its opponent could effectively reply. Unfortunately the battlecruiser 1) did not in fact have a monopoly on long range fire, 2) could not put more than 3% of its shells on target anyway and 3) was not in practice enough faster than a conventional dreadnought to make speed a decisive factor. Against the old, slow piston-engined battleships or against an out-gunned, out-ranged cruiser a battlecruiser would have been grim death; against a dreadnought battleship not so much. But still... in practice the ships were not a failure (IMHO).
Loki, I'm still not exactly sure what you did to balance your economy but I'm glad it worked. Now about those Prussians... is this the war you were planning to script or one that is coming on its own? Whichever is true it simply means that your shift from Nasty to Nice has confused the Prussians. And you know what Prussians do when they get uneasy...
A battlecruiser is here defined as an all-big-gun ship with cruiser speed, whether this is achieved by sacrificing armor thickness (British model) or number and size of guns (German model). These 'cruiser-killers' should be used to blow a hole through the light ships guarding an enemy fleet and enable the collection of good intelligence on the location and disposition of the enemy; equally, they could form a 'fast division' to reach across the enemy's bow and cross his 'T' or force him to turn away. And if your enemy has a fast division then the value of one for your own fleet is enhanced...
So... in theory, great. Of course the problem is that theory and practice are the same - in theory - but different - in practice.
Where battlecruisers were used AS INTENDED they performed very well. Even the thin-skinned British models would have been fine if ammunition had been properly handled, instead of the flash-doors being propped open and shells and propellant heaped in piles in the turrets. This foolish British insistence on a high rate of fire with no regard for safety should the enemy ACTUALLY FIRE BACK doomed thousands of men to death and wreaked havoc on the British battlecruisers. It is extremely fortunate that the German High Seas battleships never 'got to grips' with their British counterparts. If they had, the same disregard of basic safety in the handling of explosives might have cost Jellicoe more battleships than Beatty lost battlecruisers. So let's take that part of Jutland out of the equation... battlecruisers did not explode because they were fragile, they exploded because safety precautions were ignored. It was the battlecruisers that exploded at Jutland because they did most of the shooting and being shot at - the battleships scarcely cleared their main batteries and few British battleships were hit.
Explosions aside, British and German battlecruisers alike showed they could suffer enormous damage and still be repaired and fight again. Other than British BCs lost by careless and foolish handling of explosives, one battlecruiser was sunk - SMS Lutzow - after taking at least 24 heavy-caliber hits. None were lost at Dogger Bank, Coronels or in the various actions of the Goeben under German and Turkish colors. That's a pretty good record for any capital ship...
HMS Hood was lost, as best I can determine, because her designers did not anticipate she would be fired on thirty years later by weapons of vastly higher muzzle velocity from an angle that exposed her weak ends and from a range that exposed her weak deck. A failure of armor? Yes... in the same way a tank designed in 1918 would see its armor fail when hit in the rear by an 88mm anti-aircraft gun. A thorough refit (similar to that of other British ships before WWII) might not have saved Hood but would have greatly improved her odds.
So the battlecruiser was a THEORETICAL triumph - a ship able to close the range rapidly and land heavy blows before its opponent could effectively reply. Unfortunately the battlecruiser 1) did not in fact have a monopoly on long range fire, 2) could not put more than 3% of its shells on target anyway and 3) was not in practice enough faster than a conventional dreadnought to make speed a decisive factor. Against the old, slow piston-engined battleships or against an out-gunned, out-ranged cruiser a battlecruiser would have been grim death; against a dreadnought battleship not so much. But still... in practice the ships were not a failure (IMHO).
Loki, I'm still not exactly sure what you did to balance your economy but I'm glad it worked. Now about those Prussians... is this the war you were planning to script or one that is coming on its own? Whichever is true it simply means that your shift from Nasty to Nice has confused the Prussians. And you know what Prussians do when they get uneasy...