Most powerful ship (1 Viewer)

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HK, I have an original 1942 Janes(which is getting fragile so I am almost afraid to open it) and the armor they show for Kongo after reconstruction almost exactly agrees with your numbers. Bottom line: Kongo would be faster, Texas would be better protected and have heavier weight of broadside. Apparently the major weakness of the Britsh designed BCs was their resistance to plunging fire. Another note is that Hiei, in the first night at Guadalcanal was heavily damaged by 5 inch and 8 inch fire.
 
The British BCs lost at Jutland were immolated by a combination of poor armour protection and dangerous ammunition handling procedures designed to increase rate of fire. Hood, on the other hand, was lost primarily because her armour did not offer adequate protection from plunging fire - a fault she shared with many WWI era ships still in service during WWII.
 
The British BCs lost at Jutland were immolated by a combination of poor armour protection and dangerous ammunition handling procedures designed to increase rate of fire. Hood, on the other hand, was lost primarily because her armour did not offer adequate protection from plunging fire - a fault she shared with many WWI era ships still in service during WWII.

Or you could say that the main reason the BC's were lost in WWI is that they were never designed to fight alongside Battleships. The hit on the Hood was also unlucky, as was the later rudder hit on the Bismarck
 
Point is, the German BCs used the same guns as the German BBs, so it really is just sheer luck that no British BCs blew up at Dogger Bank as they did at Jutland - and we could also say that British BCs should never have engaged other BCs, never mind BBs. Although, coincidentally, the Germans thought they had put Lion out of action at Dogger Bank, due to the scale of the fires aboard her...
 
Point is, the German BCs used the same guns as the German BBs, so it really is just sheer luck that no British BCs blew up at Dogger Bank as they did at Jutland - and we could also say that British BCs should never have engaged other BCs, never mind BBs.

Largely correct, the BC's should have been used for what they were most suited for - as Cruiser-killers hunting down surface raiders.

The British had a big worry in both wars, with raiders that could out-run anything big enough to hurt them.

Ultimately though, it was seen that the BC's were not as viable as originally planned, and the "Hood" was in the process of conversion to a fast battleship, by increasing the deck armour substantially, among other things. Sadly events economics interrupted the upgrades

The trend was going in that way from the mid 30's, with the new design BB's capable of 28 - 30 knots, thus eliminating the need for 30 knot BC's with weak armour
 
Yes, one could almost say that the Iowas were a sort of hybrid BC-BB with big guns, high speed and slightly diminished protection. One thing for sure, it is hard to imagine what the armor on a BB looks like without actually seeing it. I visited Alabama and looked at the hatch to the CT. Imagine a door that is 14 inches of steel thick. Aside from the procedure with the flash proof doors between the magazines and handling rooms, the factor that hurt the Beatty BCs was that they had a range advantage over Hipper with their bigger guns but at long range there was more plunging fire which exploited the weaker horizontal armor of the British. I think that I read that the Admiral commanding Hood recognised this vulnerability and was trying to close the range so as to have more direct fire but while closing only the forward turrets could bear so he was between the Devil and the deep blue sea.
 
Its fair to say that the Warspite by WW1 standards, was designed along similar lines to the Iowa in that her speed matched that of the first british BC's but she had the armour and weapons of a BB. The problem was of course cost. The Royal Soveriegn class which had a slower max speed were built after the Warspite but were meant to stay in the line of battle. As a result they did not have such a long life. Ideally they woulld have been a copy of the Warspite.
 
The QE class were almost certainly the first class of 'fast battleships'. It is interesting to note that despite the pounding the 5th Battle Squadron took (especially Warspite) took, all of the vessels survived the engagement. Had more energy and money been expended in that direction rather tan on Fisher's pet project, the RN might have been a much deadlier force from the outset of the Great War...
 
. Had more energy and money been expended in that direction rather tan on Fisher's pet project, the RN might have been a much deadlier force from the outset of the Great War...

I believe that Churchill should get a lot of the credit for the QEs by holding out for 15 inch guns and oil fired boilers.

Actually Fisher came out of retirement to help build the QE's, and did a damn fine job on them.

Wiki said:
Warspite, and the rest of the class, was the brainchild of two men. One was Admiral Sir John 'Jackie' Fisher, who was First Sea Lord when the first all big-gun battleship, HMS Dreadnought, came into existence. The other was Winston S. Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, who was paramount in getting the Queen Elizabeths off the drawing board and into the water; but he was also influenced in a number of decisions about the Queen Elizabeths by Lord Fisher, who had been persuaded to come out of retirement by Churchill.
 
Freebird, no doubt that Fisher was instrumental in building the QEs, I was merely making the point that had fast battleships been built instead of the battlecruisers (which were very much Fisher's toys), the loss of 3000 men and three major surface units at Jutland might have been avoided. Even while the QEs were building, Fisher was continuing to plot the construction of more BCs, and succeeded with the 'large light cruisers' Furious, Courageous and Glorious - better known to the fleet as Spurious, Outrageous and Uproarious due to thier catastrophic combination of 15-inch guns with light cruiser armour. Fortunately, none of them saw action as BCs, and they were eventually converted into carriers, in which role Courageous and Glorious were lost in WWII...
 
Another great role for the Battle Cruisers is convoy raiding. Their speed also allows them to keep out of reach of enemy fleets.
 
It would have been interesting to see how that panned out - AFAIK, no BC was ever actually used as a commerce raider. It's true that high speed would allow BCs to stay out of reach of the enemy, but they would require significant amounts of fuel to keep running for very long, so bases and/or supply ships would have been essentail. Cut those off and your raider is essentially useless.

Escorted convoys could be a problem for BCs as well, don't forget the guns of an AC or OB could easily penetrate a BCs armour, and it will have to close with the escort in order to get at the convoy. Under those circumstances, you run the risk of a Jutland-style conflagration.
 
BT, Invincible was hit a number of times at Falklands by the 8 inch guns of the German Armored Cruisers. Her armor kept most( or maybe all) of the projectiles out. It would depend on where the hits occurred. The AC was the type of ship that I always had doubts about. All of those I have seen photos of were ugly and seemed kind of useless to me as far as where they fit in. I have a book,(somewhere) that is all about cruisers. When I find it, I will reread to find out the rationale for that type.
 
Check signals. I just went back to Massie and both BCs at Falklands had their armor, especially deck armor, penetrated by shell fire. I know that Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were used as commerce raiders in WW1 but light cruisers could be more cost effective. Where I don't see ACs being a fit in WW1 is that they were too slow to catch modern light cruisers and too lightly armed and armored to fight warships they could catch. Those handicaps signaled the end of that class. I am prejudiced against them, I guess, because, IMO, they were ugly and because they seemed a waste of money. In many cases they were as large as pre dreadnoughts, so must have cost as much and they could not survive in the battle line.
 
The original impetus for the AC design came from France, which wanted to build a ship faster and more lightly armed than a battle ship but more powerful than a light cruiser. These would be unleashed on British commercial shipping and would outrun what they couldn't outfight - much like the BCs in fact. The British built bigger ACs to counter them, then BCs to finish them off altogether. The AC was a very short lived design - it was inly built for about 20 years before the dreadnought BCs rendered them useless. As originall designed, they were not intended to serve in the line of battle - much like the BC again.
 

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