Zkribbler
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IIRC, I learned this fact out of the instruction booklet in the Avalon-Hill game of Jutland.
Prinz Eugen
- Thread starter onejayhawk
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IIRC, I learned this fact out of the instruction booklet in the Avalon-Hill game of Jutland.
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
I like this Prinz Eugen more than i like that Prinz Eugen.
Berzerker
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I had Jutland, one of my favorite games without a board
Fisher tended to base his justification on Britain's world empire. He claimed that battlecruisers' long "legs" and high speed made them more suited to a global role. Battlecruisers were, of course, rarely employed outside of Europe, and it only happened once during the Great War - the Battle of the Falkland Islands, a strategic blunder that the Germans fortunately did not take advantage of. The reasoning behind the warships' design might have made sense in a committee but turned out to be nonsense in practice.
The justification you bring up doesn't really fly, either. Battlecruisers had the biggest and deadliest weapons in the world. They were comparable in displacement and armament to dreadnoughts. (It's one of the reasons why "battlecruiser" is such an annoying name - people think that they were like cruisers, when they were, to all intents and purposes, capital ships.) There was literally no vessel on Earth that they could not outshoot. The British mistake was in not fully understanding the opportunity cost of skimping on armor to improve speed and armament. In general, the German battlecruisers had smaller guns and were slower, but they could survive a prolonged firefight and the British battlecruisers could not.
If British battlecruisers were not designed to fight other capital ships, what exactly were they supposed to fight?
Zkribbler
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Cruisers, destroyers, sea commerce, shore emplacements...
PhroX
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Vaguely interesting fact: the Austrian, Italian, British, German and American navies have all had ships named after Eugene of Savoy.
And if you think battlecruisers were bad, take a look at Fisher's Follies, the "large light cruisers" designed to operate in the Baltic sea. The "light cruiser" referred to their armour and speed. The "large" referred to the fact they were as big as a battleship. Needless to say, they didn't really work as, well, anything in their original configuration (they were eventually converted into half decent aircraft carriers). Particularly the HMS Furious, who's main battery consisting of a grand total of two guns. Admittedly those guns were second only to the Yamato's in calibre and I believe actually fired a heavier shell, but the ship couldn't actually handle firing them.
And then there was the proposed HMS Incomparable, which frankly made the previous ships seems logical....
And if you think battlecruisers were bad, take a look at Fisher's Follies, the "large light cruisers" designed to operate in the Baltic sea. The "light cruiser" referred to their armour and speed. The "large" referred to the fact they were as big as a battleship. Needless to say, they didn't really work as, well, anything in their original configuration (they were eventually converted into half decent aircraft carriers). Particularly the HMS Furious, who's main battery consisting of a grand total of two guns. Admittedly those guns were second only to the Yamato's in calibre and I believe actually fired a heavier shell, but the ship couldn't actually handle firing them.
And then there was the proposed HMS Incomparable, which frankly made the previous ships seems logical....
Silurian
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Victory and SPI made some good games too
Lenghth does give substantial speed, lighter armor & less canons do give speed... intended as a hit and run sniper ??? but for what targets ?
Was there a strategic significance for the UK to have presence in the Baltic Sea ?
PhroX
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There were some plans to invade Germany by landing in the Baltic (this was mid-WW1) and Fisher felt these ships would be perfect to support this adventure. He would've wanted them anyway, they were the next stage of his belief that speed was everything in naval warfare, but it was the Baltic scheme that enabled him to get the design built.
As for what targets, who knows? At least with a conventional battlecruiser, the concept of being able to outshoot anything it can't outrun and outrun anything it can't shoot holds true (of course, they often weren't used like that, and there's a big question as to whether committing the resources to building a dreadnought that couldn't fight other dreadnoughts was worthwhile), but with the Follies, they couldn't even really do that - the small number of main battery guns (especially on HMS Furious) made rangefinding pretty difficult and their lack of armour meant even 6" guns (typical of smaller cruisers) could easily penetrate their belt, so its arguable if they could even outfight a comparable displacement of cruisers.
innonimatu
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If they were to be deployed across the BE... wouldn't say fight, but perhaps they could be used to bomb the natives (the ones without modern weapons) a little further inland? The RAF was not yet available for that job.
Kind of like modern carriers. Probably not unsinkable by now, but they seem useful against those who lack the weapons to do it.
Thorgalaeg
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They were pretty useful, any weaker ship that felt under a battlecruiser sight was practically dead since there was no way to overrun them. Corsair light cruisers or even heavy cruisers being its main preys.
Also they were very useful as recon units for the main slower battleship force. Looking for the enemy main fleet and then running away while sinking enemy recon units in the process. I would suggest Rule the Waves. Graphics whores abstain.
Also they were very useful as recon units for the main slower battleship force. Looking for the enemy main fleet and then running away while sinking enemy recon units in the process. I would suggest Rule the Waves. Graphics whores abstain.
onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
Who won the war?
Better to say rationalization. It is suspect at best. A ship cannot outrun a shell. I think it was closer to comparing urination apparatus, where the biggest caliper measurement wins.
Wooden Ships and Iron Men.
J
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
The German battlecruisers fared somewhat better at Jutland
Here's the SMS Seydlitz after the battle.
Here's the SMS Seydlitz after the battle.
Berzerker
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I'm a little surprised the Prinz Eugen survived the war, I'd think the Brits would have had a special incentive to sink it
There wasn't really much of a chance for doing that. The ship returned to Brest less than one week after the Bismark had been sunk, with the British having no idea where it was while still at sea. It was hit by a bomb while in Brest, then was part of the channel dash in February 1942, which was helped by bad weather and a bunch of british blunders. A few days later it was hit by a torpedo near Norway, was temporarily repaired in Trondheim and then returned to Germany for proper repairs. It never really operated outside the Baltic Sea again. In total, it was maybe 4-5 weeks at sea in areas the British could have theoretically attacked, with the days it was most prone being those with the Bismark.
For show-the-flag missions like that, the British had plenty of obsolete vessels. That's what they usually did with aging battleships - send them to the China Station or wherever.
Battlecruisers designed as the British designed them only made sense if the opponent they would be traveling around the world to fight had powerful warships of its own. The only time that became an eventuality was in the very beginning of the Great War, when the German Asiatic Squadron crossed the Pacific and moved into the South Atlantic. Dispatching two battlecruisers to kill the Asiatic Squadron made sense in light of the battlecruisers' prewar mission, and that's what the Admiralty did - accepting a grave risk in the process, but they lucked out.
But the British were not primarily building against an enemy with global reach and powerful warships. They were building against an enemy who would concentrate the overwhelming majority of its warships in local waters. The Royal Navy was well aware that Germany would be the primary enemy in the next war and that the North Sea would be the main theater of war. They chose not to build their warships to fight in that theater against that enemy, and instead build for a mission that was poorly considered at the time and makes even less sense now. As PhroX points out, Fisher and the Great War-era Admiralty were notorious for shepherding ill-considered ship designs into production.
Battlecruisers qua battlecruisers weren't really the issue. The concept made sense, for precisely the tactical reasons you mention. Having something with less armor than a dreadnought but equivalent firepower and greater speed was reasonably useful.
The issue was the Royal Navy's decision to deemphasize protection even further in favor of speed and firepower (a simplification, but one that broadly works) in its designs, which made British battlecruisers significantly less safe while not providing an equivalent bonus to their ability to kill enemy warships. German battlecruisers made different trade-offs, but they were markedly better at taking damage without blowing up than the British vessels were.
The British won the war in spite of their battlecruiser design, not because of it. In fact, several thousand sailors died unnecessarily at Jutland because of it.
Yeah, a warship that can take twenty-one hits and stay afloat looks pretty good compared to one that takes two hits, blows up, and leaves twenty survivors.The German battlecruisers fared somewhat better at Jutland
Here's the SMS Seydlitz after the battle.
onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
Not BC per se, but building philosophy, ie getting more hulls in the water. Of course you can ask the Repulse and Prince of Wales about other design characteristics.
Still, the shear size of a mere cruiser gets me, even if it is as heavy a design a the PE.
J
Berzerker
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still no pics of the ship in its prime?
FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
They were design to sit outside the range of crusiers and use their bigger guns to outranged return fire.
Didnt the British like the Italians use this as a cheap means of modernising there older ships ? The lack of armour was a serious shortcoming when the concept as tested during war.
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