Iowa vs Yamato comparison

Maybe it's the mission and not the ship.

Invincible and Inflexible took on Scharnhorst and Gneisanau and stuffed them. Old school.

Derfflinger was a different matter.

Bit like boxing. Stick to your weight category and you be right.

The Basket said:

Invincible and Inflexible took on Scharnhorst and Gneisanau and stuffed them. Old school.

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Umm, you mean during WWI at the Falklands, with the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau being obsolescent armored cruisers?

Regarding Battlecruisers having battleship guns, AFAIK, this was true for British battlecruisers but not the German ones of WWI.
Moltke and Seydlitz with 28 cm vs Kaiser and Koenig with 30.5, Derfflinger got 30.5, though then Bayern got 38. Conversely, these battlecruisers had belt armor of around 300 mm, more comparable to battleships than British battlecruisers, no?

The German Battlecruisers had the same guns as the equivalent battleship.

So 11 inch guns on Von Der Tann and 11 inch on Nassau.

12 inch on Derfflinger and 12 inch on Konig.

The Bayern did have bigger guns but no equivalent Battlecruiser was built so all German capital ships at Jutland, battleship or Battlecruiser had either 11 or 12 inch guns.

The German Battlecruisers had a minimum threat of 12 inch gun so needed battleship grade armour.

The Invincible had a minimum threat of a cruiser gun so had armour sufficient to meet that threat.

The later Lion and Tiger had more armour as the minimum threat was now Von Der Tann and 11 and 12 inch guns. So the German Battlecruisers and the last generation British Battlecruisers were roughly equal in armour and firepower.

Tiger had 13.5 inch guns and 9 inch belt. Hindenburg had 12 inch guns and about 12 inches of armour. The reason for the extra armour was due to Rule Britannia, there was a good chance a German Battlecruiser would run into a British Battleship or due to short numbers, the German Battlecruiser was supposed to fill out the Battle line.

I will look now at Alaska and Scharnhorst.

Remember Scharnhorst was designed to have 15 inch guns not 11.

11 was a stop gap and 15 was the goal. One must also look at goals. As a merchant raider then Scharnhorst is way over the top. Her armour is massive to sink a tanker.

A battle ship come from line of battle ship. So you line up and knock seven bells out of each other. It's just a phrase.

Alaska is a mixed bag of monkeys as it's short career shows. It's not this and not that so what is it?

Were they designed to go up against Kongos or Deutschland or even Scharnhorst? Odd that in earlier engagement around Guadalcanal then Alaska could have been splendid. It maybe do well.

1944 not so much. Also no torpedo protection is not a good idea. Type
93 torpedo would render an Alaska in twain.

Alaska was not activated for the Korean War. So that is a bad sign.

Alaska seems to be one of those ships that was a solution to a problem but the problem wasn't defined all that well ?

The Alaska class was to be a "bridge" between a Battleship class and a Cruiser class.

It was the only cruiser series in the USN that was assigned it's own unique designation: CB (Large Cruiser)

The Alaska was part of answer a military intelligence problem.

I have for before me a 1942 "Jane's fighting ships."

The Yamato is nowhere to be found but can be found is an entry for five 40,000 battleships with 9 16in guns. With names, builders and months/years of landing down. (page 287)
However there is a note of caution about a smaller class of smaller armored ships they might be confused with.
This is on page 291 and there 4 ships, the Takamatu, the Titibu, the Niitaka and on other building. these are reported to be ships from 12,000-15,000 tons, 30 knots speed and armed with 6 12in 50 cal guns and 12 5in AA guns. Supposedly they had two triple turrets.
There are careful wordings about the details not being guaranteed.

The Alaska's may have been a response to these fictitious Japanese ships.
Nobody knew how successful carriers were going to be be.

Thanks for that post Sr6. I never knew that. I had read something anecdotal decades ago that the Alaskas were built because FDR wanted battlecruisers. It didn't sound credible.

An issue with the Alaskas is the guns were unique to the class of which only 2 were fully operational.

So making unique guns using unique ammunition. That's some logistics burden.

An American Invincible? Convergent evolution? It's odd how somehow America made a Lion class Battlecruiser with a smaller gun.

Hopefully the flash protection wasn't removed.

Propaganda can be a powerful thing as it can validate heresay.

Propaganda is also an interesting word as it can make you look like one.

To my rather limited mind, they look like an American Panzerschiff.

To counter them in one v one combat. What would be required to take on Graf Spee and Alaska would be close to that mark.

So yes you have re-invented the Battlecruiser with the same mission only instead of armoured cruisers, it's Deutschlands as the threat.

As I see it, the Alaska CB class would be effective cruiser killers and perhaps a contender against battle-cruisers, but against a full-fledged battleship, nope.

The war the Alaskas were designed for was never going to happen by the time they went into service in 1945. They were not going to chase down surface raiders. They were not going to meet cruisers in battle. They had some good potential as anti-aircraft escorts, but they were expensive for that role. For shore bombardment, the DesMoines class cruisers (that came hot on their heals) would be far superior. All that being said, the Alaska's were beautiful ships. I wouldn't bet against an Alaska with a fully-working radar fire control system against any warship that was firing by sight alone.

That depends. The Japanese were Type 93 crazy and fired them things off as if they were candy.

A ship with no torpedo defence is not going to fare well.

Especially a high value target. So in a 1v1 duel against Mogani....yeah why not.

1v1 duel against Kongo? Maybe less so. Of course usual night fog smoke sun in your eyes all feature.

The Basket said:

The German Battlecruisers had the same guns as the equivalent battleship.

So 11 inch guns on Von Der Tann and 11 inch on Nassau.

12 inch on Derfflinger and 12 inch on Konig.

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Right on von-der-Tann and Derfflinger, though I believe I still may stand with Moltke and Seydlitz.

The Basket said:

The Bayern did have bigger guns but no equivalent Battlecruiser was built so all German capital ships at Jutland, battleship or Battlecruiser had either 11 or 12 inch guns.

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True, though the next planned battlecruisers, the Mackensen-class, ordered in 1914, had 35cm guns, vs the Bayern's 38 cm. The next planned "Erstaz Yorck" class battlecruisers would have had 38 cm guns, though the next planned battleship class, "L 20e α"-class was to have 42 cm guns. So, all in all, it seems to me that German battlecruisers of WWI tended to have slightly smaller guns then their contemporary battleship-counterparts? Just to be clear, these would be the guns battleships a class ago used, so still quite formidable I would assume.

The Basket said:

The German Battlecruisers had a minimum threat of 12 inch gun so needed battleship grade armour.

The Invincible had a minimum threat of a cruiser gun so had armour sufficient to meet that threat.

The later Lion and Tiger had more armour as the minimum threat was now Von Der Tann and 11 and 12 inch guns. So the German Battlecruisers and the last generation British Battlecruisers were roughly equal in armour and firepower.

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von-der-Tann being of course the first German battlecruiser, built 1907-1910. The Lion class was built 1909-1912? I guess the Moltke class would be equivalent, the Lion had 230 mm of belt armor, while the Moltke's had up to 280 mm. Tiger's belt also went to 230 mm, while the Derrflinger's was upped to 300 mm. So it seems to me, that German battlecruisers tended to be better armored than their British counterparts.

The Basket said:

Tiger had 13.5 inch guns and 9 inch belt. Hindenburg had 12 inch guns and about 12 inches of armour. The reason for the extra armour was due to Rule Britannia, there was a good chance a German Battlecruiser would run into a British Battleship or due to short numbers, the German Battlecruiser was supposed to fill out the Battle line.

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That fits what Drachinifel claimed, that the British BCs were developed to hunt down armoured cruisers doing some commerce raiding and later, after clearing the seas of them, found themselves in the battle-line, while the German BCs were designed for a role in the line from the get-go.

The Basket said:

Remember Scharnhorst was designed to have 15 inch guns not 11.

11 was a stop gap and 15 was the goal. One must also look at goals.

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You mean classification based on intended role? This is of course a good and reasonable standard of classification. Personally, I have two problems with it:
1: if the navy changes its mind and thus changes the role of the ship, wouldn't that change the class, without a single screw turned on the ship in question?
2: different navies intending different roles for the ships, wouldn't that, too, mean that ships that are virtually identical in their physical characteristics be assigned different classes because their navies had them intended for different roles?

Personally, I would therefor argue to assign classes based on their physical characteristics, especially of course armor, guns and speed.

You have to be careful with dates.

The British and German ship building programmes were not the same. So you are comparing apples to oranges.

Moltke and Seydlitz had 11 inch because that was chosen. Not because the 12 inch was not available. It was the wrong decision.

I am not familiar enough on the Mackensens to be able to comment.

USS Alaska is a clear example of wrong ship wrong time.

It had no cruisers or merchant raiders to kill so it became a gloryfied flak ship. So it wasn't exactly best use. Maybe in 1940 it would have been a winner. But by 1945 it was a ship without a role.

The Basket said:

You have to be careful with dates.

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I must admit, I just took the years from wikipedia, I hope these are reasonably enough accurate? I would assume one should compare the dates the ships were laid down (instead of launched or commissioned) as I assume by this date, the design was usually mostly finished?

The Basket said:

The British and German ship building programmes were not the same. So you are comparing apples to oranges.

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Ummm, well, I was comparing British and German battlecruisers, the question being in how far the British tended to rather sacrifice armor and the Germans firepower.

Perhaps we need a History in the Battlecruiser because it seemed to have bounced around quite a bit.

In part because of Fisher with some truly absurd ships.

The navies of the world actually didn't build very many Battlecruisers.

The British and Germans were by far the majority.

The American contribution was the Large Cruisers already mentioned and the Lexington at the end of WWI never completed.
The Japanese had the 4 Kongos and 4 somewhat mixed up ships from before the Kongos.
The French had nothing except paper until the 1930s and then you have to decide if the Dunkerque class were small battleships or battlecruisers.
The Italians no battlecruisers as such. They tended to build ships a little faster other ships in WW I but only by about 2kts and did have a bit lighter armor.
The Russians had some battleships much like on the Italian model. Not fast enough to be battlecruisers.
And that is pretty much it as far as actual ships go

Let's take the Derfflinger class.

Derfflinger was operational 3 years before Hindenburg. So Hindenburg is 3 years better? Or just constantly delayed?

Queen Elizabeth and Kronprinz were both commissioned roughly same time end of 1914. QE is a goddam starfighter compared to Kronprinz.

When it comes to history and dates one must remember one thing...

William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066.

He didn't invade England because it was 1066.

Acheron said:

I must admit, I just took the years from wikipedia, I hope these are reasonably enough accurate? I would assume one should compare the dates the ships were laid down (instead of launched or commissioned) as I assume by this date, the design was usually mostly finished?

Ummm, well, I was comparing British and German battlecruisers, the question being in how far the British tended to rather sacrifice armor and the Germans firepower.

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unfortunately both navies had budget problems and infrastructure problems which tended to limit the ship size as compared to actual military requirements/desires.

And Fisher kept bobbing his head up and down and mucking things up.

The start of things was the Dreadnought battleship with turbine machinery. This advanced the "battle fleet" from about 18-19kts to 21 Kts on theory. It actual practice the Battle fleet was closer to 14-16 kts because the reciprocating engines tended to break down at high speeds.
Most large fleets had one or more large armored cruiser formations to act as a high speed wing to the battleship squadrons. The large armored cruisers were actually in size than the pre Dreadnought battleships, mainly because they had to find space for the boilers.

The armored cruisers were often credited with speed of 20-23kts and in formation they could move around 4kts faster than the battle fleet (the old ships with two twin guns per ship).

Fisher knocked the world on it's head and built 3 "Battlecruiser" and his 'fast' ships where good for about 25kts. They were were fine for using as an anti raiding ship force but not so good as for using the "fast" wing of a battle fleet. Everybody (or just about everybody) was using armored cruisers of between 8.2in and 10 in guns while they might be able to turn the opposing fleet they weren't when the battleships were firing with their 12 in guns on the armored cruisers (unless when they were chasing cripples.

The next than Fisher screwed up was that Fisher wanted the largest guns he could get into the ship and then the smallest guns he could squeeze into any space that could fit 12pder or 4in guns.

While the Invincible's where good against the German ACs they were suspect against the old Bucher and the hole design should have been put in the rubbish bin when measured against the Von Der Tann.


about 1/2 of her 4in guns were mounted on top of her main guns so they can't be sued when the gun mounts are being fired. None of the 4in guns had any protection
There is a very, very angle when the offside was useable.


The Von Der Tann had 5.9 in guns (too low in a sea way) but her smaller guns can at least without with many of her gun crew being knocked out by her own guns.
Please note that the offside guns had at lease a somewhat useable ability to fire 8 guns to one side of the ship.

And as I keep harping on, the British insisted in using the large tube boilers sucked up not only machinery space under the deck, it sucked up a 3rd funnel, it sucked up more space for armor with the larger boiler space and took up hundreds if not over 1000 tons of machinery space that the Von Der Tann could use for the extra armor.