i think what he means is that the battlecruiser construction, compared to that of a modern BB, does not have the same protection and is somewhat at a disadvantage in terms of the ability to take hits from the large caliber shells.
BC construction suffered from that problem from its inception in 1906, they were vulnerable to contemporary BBs. It's the nature of the beast. It was a design that wasn't thought through, a common theme in many of Fisher's "brilliant" ideas.
BC, and some of his other ideas, the Baltic scheme, leave me wondering if he had ADD.
What is even more strange than the original BC concept, is that at the start of WW2, 3 countries had revived this folly. Japan, Germany and the USA all had designs for Invincible style BC (BB guns-cruiser armor). Germany and Japan cancelled theirs, but the USA went ahead and built 2 of them.
The issue with South Dakota was she lost power not due to enemy action, but crew error. She took damage from that action, but was able to steam away on her own power without too many issues.
The power loss was a critical design or training fail, but that wasn't what I was really stressing. The Japanese shellfire massacred her communications, radar and gun direction and left the ship almost helpless. That was done by Japanese 8", 6" and 5" shellfire (with the exception of 1x14"). The ship was thought to be safe against such attack, but proved to be extremely vulnerable. While that kind of damage is not capable of sinking her, it did leave her in a position where she could barely see (crew not well trained for night ops with no radar) and with her weaponry effectiveness reduced to pre-WW1 ability. As I wrote earlier, USS South Dakota would have probably been sunk if the USS Washington had not been there to take the heat off her at that very critical time.
The article is eye opening to me in that it spells out what the ship designers hope to accomplish with how they designed the Kongo class and while it may have worked in a earlier time (like WW1), shell construction had come so far that it totally rendered the protection scheme obsolete and mute, despite the ships being reconstructed several times.
Hiei took severe damage from 8" cruiser and 5" destroyer gunfire in a night battle. The 8" gunfire knocked out the steering and then the steering compartments flooded. With speed reduced to 5 knots, she was left to the mercy of the US air power the following day. I didn't see where she was struck by any torpedo during the night action. Protection so weak that it was possible to be put out of action by 8" and 5" gunfire?
Yes, like the USS South Dakota was knocked out by 8", 6" and 5" shellfire. The IJN Hiei vulnerability was pretty bad, but I don't know if the steering gear weakness was due to weak protection, or something else. The Kongo design was never a good one, despite claims one sees in Janes. The ship was sunk by air attack, not the gunfire. These WW1 designs were at a much greater disadvantage in both air attack and torpedo. The potential of these attacks was not realized at the time. You also need to look at the criteria of the Kongo class modernization. They didn't increase the vertical protection, only the horizontal. This was because of the various naval treaties in force that forbade improvement of protection in these older ships except against air and torpedo attack. So that means decks and other horizontal armor can be increased, and underwater anti-torpedo enhancements could be added.
What should be realized is the American Alaska BC class were roughly equally vulnerable to this kind of attack as the modernized Kongos. They had slightly better protection, but weaker armament, and were faster. Faced with similar circumstances, these BCs ran equivalent risks from surface engagements with other cruisers and destroyers. At close ranges, like the ones experienced at Guadalcanal, all of the WW2 heavies were vulnerable to light and medium shell fire. It was a British 8" shell that wreaked the KM Scharnhorst's main FC radar position early on, rendering that ship much less able to reply to HMS Duke of York (she never even hit DoY).
Most of the actions I had read about Kongo report she was struck by a single torpedo and sunk. At some point, the reports changed and it appears she was hit by two torpedos and sunk. This after being rebuilt twice and with torpedo bulges. The only other battleships sunk by subs during WW2 were old British battleships in European theater.
Not only submarines carry torpedoes, you know.
Quite a few BB and BC were sunk by torpedoes. 2 German, at least 4 British, at least 2 Italian, at least 4 Japanese (inc. IJN Yamoto and IJN Musashi) and at least 3 American. Most of these were by air torpedo and 1 British, the Italian, and the American ships were sunk in harbor. In 1940, 20 antiquated Swordfish biplanes bottomed 3 Italian battleships in Taranto harbor, at night. That gave the Japanese the idea of the Pearl Harbor attack. In that attack, 7 active American battleships were taken out. At least 3 of them sinking to the bottom due to torpedoes. These modernized WW1 American battleships were very vulnerable to both air and torpedo attack (and would have been equally vulnerable to concentrated medium and light gunfire of the kind experienced in the battles during 1942-43). A good example is the USS Nevada. She took a couple of bomb hits and 1 torpedo and beached in sinking condition. The Nevada class is roughly equivalent to the Japanese Fuso and Ise classes. Just so you know, the torpedo that struck Nevada, and the ones that sank the other BB at Pearl Harbor, used a warhead of only 1/2-2/3 the size of the USN torpedoes that sank IJN Kongo.
I'm pointing these things out because through late 1943, the Japanese were giving as hard as they got, despite the theoretically large superiority of American equipment and sometimes numbers. The most spectacular perhaps being Tassafaronga, where 8 Japanese destroyers opposed 5 cruisers and 4 destroyers and decisively won the battle. Ships often fell victim to weapons they were thought to be well enough protected against. Also, critical damage did not have to defeat the heavily protected parts of ships to cause crippling damage. You could put some incidents down to bad luck, but a lot of this vulnerability was because many systems modern ships relied upon, to make them the modern "super ships" of popular imagination, were very vulnerable to damage. These often were destroyed early on, rendering the ship much less effective than those it opposed, even though theoretically, it should be able to wipe the floor with them.
My entire point is don't be surprised when you see the stats for many of the Japanese battleships and especially the Kongo class.
I'm more interested in how you guys represent real world aspects in the Civ3 games system. The kind of clever manipulations of the program so RW things can be included in the game better than the stock version does. And also in the reasoning placed behind those modding decisions. I don't really care much about specific unit figures beyond that. Everybody has their own subjective ideas on what those should be, so everybody's ideas of what seems right will be different.