Best World war two warships?

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I did not think it ever left port, except when the Russian's tried to tow it back to Russia.

 

[renrich]

The CAs built by the Germans for WW2 were largely failures. They had major engine problems. Could not compare to the later war US CAs.

 

[parsifal]

The CAs built by the Germans for WW2 were largely failures. They had major engine problems. Could not compare to the later war US CAs.

BIG Call Richard!!! I think the Bostons were better, for the record when all of the elements are taken into account, but the Hipper/Eugen Class were very capable ships (and therefore it seems a little harsh to me to describe them as failures (perhaps they were failures, but not because of design issues, rather in their original specs as short ranged "treaty cruisers" but this was the fashion at the time of their construction...its even arguable whether they were in fact that short ranged, as Del will tell you).

One has to be very careful when talking "up" the US designs. They were very much the compromise......the 1940 expansion plans were drawn up with treaty limits stil in place, and to speed construction and output, the American simply ordered repeats of the same designs in subsequent fiscal years leading to 1944, rather than update the designs, which were urgently needed (there were a few exceptions to this. One effect of this shortcut to numbers was the increasing topweight of the American cruisers, which particulalry manifested itself in the Clevelands, but was also a much smaller problem in the Bostons. The main part of the fighting was done by the older "treaty" cruisers of the USN, except for the 1945 battles against the kamikazes....so the bostons were never really tested in a hotly contested battle. The german cruisers fought several quite hard battles and these cruisers fared up quite well


My opinion is they (the hippers) WERE a bit short ranged, but the only serious engine failure I am aware of was the Eugens last cruise as she was taken back to the US as war booty. I would think she was in a poor state by then , plus there is evidence to suggest that the inexperience of the American crews operating her on thet cuise may have been a factor

 

[renrich]

Quote from "Fighting Ships of WW2" by J N Westwood. "But in contriving ultra-sophisticated machinery, the designers neglected one or two simple matters. In 1941, for example, when the Eugen was operating in warm Atlantic waters, it was discovered that her condensers could not convert her exhaust steam fast enough into boiler feedwater." "Thus the Eugen did very little for the german war effort. Her sister ships did even less. Part of their trouble was unreliable machinery and part was their comparatively short range." I have read of these machinery problems in other references so I would argue that the german CAs would not match the American CAs or for that matter the IJN or British CAs for their contributions to the war effort.

 

[delcyros]

Renrich, do You blame machinery as the prime reason for the low war record of the three CA´s? Have you checked about Hippers atlantic cruise in 1940?
Or is it rather possible that the strategic decision after sinking of Bismarck in may 1941 may have been responsible for that no german surface ship broke out into the Atltantic in 41 and 42?

I am no great fan of the design, either but PRINZ EUGEN in 1945 state does not generally compare unfavourably with US CA´s, even in electronic equipment (a fairly large ECM suite, AR-shells), FC and basic radar technology (The only KM ship to receive FuG Berlin-0 centimetric sets). It was also subject to a series of very tough Il-2 and RAF air attacks in 1945 druing it´s part in the baltic rescue operations when operating under soviet VVS air superiority umbrella and with help of light forced performed well in this difficult tactical environment. A failure looks different to me.

 

[renrich]

No Del, I don't blame machinery totally for their war record. No major unit in the KM had much of a stellar war record. Too few and poorly used for the most part. The Hippers were over sized and over designed and over complicated IMO. If they had been forced to serve in the ways that the US, IJN or British CAs they would probably have been poorly suited. The Hippers IMO were not nearly as well designed as the much earlier designed Pensacola or Kako class. They were handsome though.

 

[syscom3]

"Boston" class?

Dont you mean the Baltimore Class cruisers (the epitomy of heavy cruiser design in WW2)?

 

[delcyros]

Agreed, Renrich. But I am not quite not agreeing with stellar records to all ships: Scheer is the cruiser, which still holds the title for sinking most enemy merchants tonnage in ww2. The two BC´s also sunk over 100.000.t. of enemy shipping including one of only two aircraft carriers lost to surface forces in ww2.
I think the KM got much in return for the money spend on the PBB´s and BC´s but much less for the ressources spent in CA´s and BB´s.

 

[parsifal]

Yes, the baltimores....I mistakenly always refer to them as Bostone fopr some reason that even escapes me. Thanks for the correction

 

[renrich]

Agree Del, in the early war when the KM was employed aggressively there were some positive results in traditional ways. Also, the "fleet in being" concept had an impact throughout the war. For those purposes it did not matter too much about engine reliability as long as the British were not aware of any problems.

 

[parsifal]

I think the biggest problem in the german navy was not their ships. In fact I would argue that their ships were first class. In my opinion it was in the nature of their employment, and this was brought about by their limited numbers, obsessive care to avoid casualties, and lastly the imbalanced nature of the fleet itself. The fleet lacked an effective carrier based air arm (I have often wondered what might have happened if the germans had embraced carrier warfare in the same way as the army embraced blitzkrieg for the ground battle. What might have happened if the Germans had the use of four carriers instead of none, with a proper support base and a doctrine on their use.

Alternatively some time many years agao, I calculated that if the Germans in 1937-38 had opted for submarines in place of the BBs and the CAs that they were building, whether this might have resulted in some greater level of success. I remeber estimating on the basis of unit costs and crew training, that instead of the Bismarck-Tirpitz, and the Heavy Cruisers Seydlitz and Lutzow (not the Pocket battleship) the Germans may have entered the war with an additional 60-80 fleet subs.....what effect might this have had on the first year of the war????

But it is unfair, and innaccurate to try and blame the KMs failures on some design failures of the ships.....i believe the ships themselves to be first rate, at least from a technical point of view

 

[renrich]

With respect, Parsifal it is rather fruitless to speculate about the size of the KM. Germany was not and is not a maritime country and expended huge sums of money and effort to build a navy before WW1 which still could not defeat the Grand Fleet. WW2 was not supposed to begin until 1945 and even then plans for the KM would not have brought it on par with the RN, much less the USN. Might as well speculate what would have happened if the population of Germany had been twice as large. Her CAs had mechanical difficulties, her true BBS have been criticised for poor arrangement of armor, Scharnhorst and her sister were undergunned for BBS, the Scheers were innovative but the answer to them was several cruisers. Again, Germany was a relatively small, continental power with not much maritime capacity, a little like the South in the War Between the States.

 

[parsifal]

Richard

You raise many good points, most of which i agree with. However, the comment that generated this sub-strand of the thread was whether the German cruisers were failures due to their design.

I dont think either myself or Del are arguing that they were not failures. The question is whether this was due to their design and specifically their engine reliability.

I dont have much information to support the reliability argument. This leads me to suspect that they were not suffereing nearly such reliability problems as you might think. If you have supporting information to suggest otherwise,, I would love to know about it.

 

[Henk]

Yes, the Germans did use their Surface Naval Vessels fot all the wrong things, but they were verry skilled in their work. The Royal Navy sailors had lots of respect for the Germans because they were very good gunners.

The German vessels were very good in their own way and used correctly they could have done a lot, but the big problem was Hitler did not care about the Navy and they lost quite a few destroyers in the Norway invasion and they never had enough naval forces to see the war through.

Hitler said himself; "on land I am a hero, but on sea I am a coward".

 

[BombTaxi]

As renrich has already mentioned, the KM was built on the basis that the war would not start until 1946. Therefore, it was nowhere near ready for hostilities in 1939. If things had kicked off in '46 the KM would theoretically have had the H class BBs and at least one carrier, and would have had some experience in using them together.

Having said that, the ships that the KM did have were not best in class by any means. Although Tirpitz kept the RN paralysed with fear for most of the war, she and Bismarck were closely based on the superdreadnoughts that would have been built had the Imperial Navy carried on building it's fleet through WW1. As such they were old technology - fortunately for the KM, many of the RNs BBs and BCs were WW1 veterans themselves, which helped to level the playing field.

The Panzerschiff, such as Graf Spee and Scheer were the development of Wolfgang Zenker's plans for 'cruiser killers' of the mid 20's, which were ultimately put on hold by the Great Depression. By the time Hitler built them, they were anachronistic. The Battle of the River Plate proved that the 8-inch gun 'Treaty Cruisers' that they were designed to destroy (i.e HMS Exeter) could give the type a hard time, and they had neither the speed or firepower to face the RN's BCs. Likewise, Scharnhorst and Gniesenau were really neither one thing or another - too small and weakly armed to fight a BB, and probably to lightly aremed to sucessfully face a BC either. So really, the KM's major fleet units were noting to write home about.

And as an aside, following renrich's comments on Germany's maritime aspirations, I would contend that the Imperial Navy's failure to defeat the Grand Fleet was more to do with leadership than technology. In fact, German ships were far tougher than their British counterparts - especially the BCs, which bore the brunt of the actual fleet combat in the North Sea. Had they have been deployed more aggressively, things may well have turned out differently. Anyone who is after a one-volume history of the Great War as fought between the RN and Imperial Navy would be well off to read Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie. Dreadnought, by the same author, covers the dreadnought arms race prior to the war, and shows that pre-1914 Germany was indeed a country with very serious naval aspirations - so serious in fact that they played a large part in the international tension that lead to the Great War.

 

[Burmese Bandit]

MHO, the germans should have taken the one thing from their 'pocket battleships' that was a world beater at the time - their diesel powerplant - and used them to build small aircraft carriers. Lighter than the Pocket battleships, minimal armour protection, and with about 24 Ju 87s and 9 carrier versions of the Arado floatplane fighters, they would have been a tremendous headache to the British in the early days of the war had they employed them in twopacks where one or the other was continuously flying a reconnaisance combat air patrol.

Such a (say) twinset of a two pack of carriers wandering around in shipping lanes would cause havoc not only for their large search and strike radii against merchant shipping, not only for their ability to see pursuers in time (due to their aircraft) and run away in a sprint which would exhaust their pursuer's fuel while conserving theirs (due to their diesel engines) but also for their ability to refuel any U-boats they rendezvoused with on the Ocean.

If I were the chief of the German Navy just before WW II I would have cancelled the Scharhorst and Gneisenau and built four of these U-tanker Carriers. With their lighter loads, I could have got at least 28 knots out of those diesel engines, and while a battleship or cruiser could theoretically chase at 30 knots, doing so would gobble up their fuel faster than water filling up the titanic.

But of course...there is one reason why the German Navy never got carriers...that reason being expressed in two words:

HERMAN GOERING.

 

[Burmese Bandit]

I thought there might be some Marine Engineering and Naval Architecture enthusiasts around here...(even on a Warbird Forum!) so I'm bumping this up in the hope that they respond!

 

[renrich]

One reason Germany has never built a dominant navy has been that Germany is not a maritime country like, for instance, Britain and the US and Japan. They have not relied on trade for their economy and they don't have the maritime tradition as Britain has had for centuries. The art and science of building and operating aircraft carriers was by no means a proven skill when Germany was building up it's navy in the 30s. The German navy like many of their counterparts in other navies was still in the battleship age. Another factor was that operating carriers in the North Sea and vicinity with the technology of those days was not easy.

 

[Burmese Bandit]

True, Renrich, Germany did not have a maritime naval tradition, but in maritime technology in the 1930s Germany was behind no one. From about 1890 onwards german maritime and naval architecture was on a level with anyone else's.

I agree however that carrier technology was a very immature one in the 1930s. But certainly not beyond the capabilities of Germany's naval architects! And in some ways, carriers are much more simple to design than battleships.

 

[parsifal]

Del is without a doubt the best expert in this general area