Submarine vs Battleship

[ComradeMaverick]

Peoples repubblic of Jhelomians
One great socialist empire against five civilizzations ruled by fundamentalism.

Lords of Khaos fleet invaded the Jhelomian's territory. A huge battleship entered in the Jhelom sea. There were no ship, only one submarine, an old submarine could destroy it. So it went near the battleship and after a terrible fight the submarine wins!!!!!!!!

 

[Nylan]

???
Please explain

 

[Prof. Garfield]

He was ether lucky, or his sub was vet and the batleship wasn't...

 

[Nylan]

Oh...okay. The civ names confused me. This is kinda like the pikeman-beats-tank situation.

 

[ComradeMaverick]

One time it happens to me that a phalanxs damages about 5 life points to a stealth bomber! It seems that old weapons are the best ones!

 

[Nylan]

Lucky!

 

[blackthorn]

Yeah that happens occasionally.


Just try and use that sub on me.....

 

[NP300]

This is kinda like the pikeman-beats-tank situation.

Why? In real life submarines have sunk many battleships.

 

[Ace]

Battleships being Dreadnought types built from 1906 on, not Pre-dreadnoughts. No Battleship was sunk by a sub prior to World War II and in that war, only 3 battleships were sunk by subs: The Royal Oak, the Japanese Kongo, and the Barham. On the flip side, in World War I, the Dreadnought, herself, rammed and sank a German U-Boat.

 

[Stegyre]

So "many" is an overstatement, I think the basic point is that, unlike "pikeman beats tank," subs really can (if rarely) beat BBs. Subs have a reasonably good attack factor. Good enough that they can, from time to time, defeat a BB, as long as the sub is the attacker. I seem to recall a more experienced civ-er (either here or at 'poly) doing a post/paper on the subject, advocating maintaining a sub in port to attack any BBs that approach.

 

[NP300]

Battleships being Dreadnought types built from 1906 on, not Pre-dreadnoughts. No Battleship was sunk by a sub prior to World War II and in that war, only 3 battleships were sunk by subs: The Royal Oak, the Japanese Kongo, and the Barham. On the flip side, in World War I, the Dreadnought, herself, rammed and sank a German U-Boat.

I knew they were at least 3 in WWII. I'm pretty sure some were sunk during WWI.

If it's 3 I think the reason is largely because there weren't that many battleships during WWII in the European theater. The main problem with a battleship is the thick armor, which can sometimes survive torpedo hits. Thus, it's only a matter of getting better torpedoes. And if the enemy fleet consisted mainly of battleships you can be sure such would be employed.

And a modern submarine could easily kill a battlehip, I think, with submarine launched cruise missiles and the like.

I just don't see why it's so unlikely that a sub would sink a battleship. Remember, a battleship's big advantage are the thick armor and the big guns. A submarine effectively negates the big-gun advantage of the battleship because it is under-water, leaving only the armor advantage.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Submarine launched cruise missiles are already simulated by the game. It doesn't realy matter though, because batleships are not used very much any more. Lets just keep talk about the game.

 

[Ace]

I knew they were at least 3 in WWII. I'm pretty sure some were sunk during WWI.

If it's 3 I think the reason is largely because there weren't that many battleships during WWII in the European theater. The main problem with a battleship is the thick armor, which can sometimes survive torpedo hits. Thus, it's only a matter of getting better torpedoes. And if the enemy fleet consisted mainly of battleships you can be sure such would be employed.

And a modern submarine could easily kill a battlehip, I think, with submarine launched cruise missiles and the like.

I just don't see why it's so unlikely that a sub would sink a battleship. Remember, a battleship's big advantage are the thick armor and the big guns. A submarine effectively negates the big-gun advantage of the battleship because it is under-water, leaving only the armor advantage.

No Battleship was sunk by sub in WWI. Several Pre-dreadnought battleships were sunk, but that is a different type. One of the major differences is that the Dreadnought battleship had major internal subdivision into watertight compartments. These ships were designed to survive serious damage, above and below the waterline, and keep going. Serveral world war II BBs suffered torpedo hits and survived.

You seem to forget that Battleships don't move without destroyer support. A sub getting in a torpedo attack on a battleship would be easy if the battleship was alone. To put it in perspective, in the game, a BB would have a destroyer in the hex ahead of it and one on each hex alongside it.

Cruise missles are good weapons, but assuming that they will "sink" a ship that was designed to withstand 16" armour piercing shells is missing the whole point of weapons vs. armour protection.

There are better torpedoes...they are nuke-tipped and will sink anything.