Battleship "Leapfrog" in Europe before WWII

[dseehafer]

Greetings all,

 

  as the title suggests we'll be taking a brief look at the many times the European navies one-upped each other's battleships in the years leading up to the Second World War. Note that I have not included Nelson as the ships that were built as a result of her construction were not meant to directly counter Nelson, rather, it was just everybody taking advantage of the current naval treaty and its limitations. Again, for this list, we are only looking at ships built specifically, or primarily, to counter the previous ship. Further, in this iteration, we will be looking specifically at battleships (yes, Deutschland was a Heavy Cruiser, but she still sparked the European battleship Leapfrog that would follow). We'll be looking at cruisers and destroyers in other threads to follow.

 

 

- Germany's Deutschland is launched. A new breed of warship altogether, she and her 4 planned sisters present a unique threat, one that is, in most cases, more powerful than anything faster and faster than anything more powerful while also boasting impressive sailing range.

 

 - France, realizing that they have nothing in their navy that is capable of both catching and outgunning the Deutschlands, gather funds to build the Dunkerque, the world's first purpose-built Fast Battleship. Armed with eight 13" rifles her guns are powerful enough to penetrate Deutschland's armor while her own armor is, in theory, impervious to the 11" guns of the Deutschland. At the same time, she has the speed necessary to catch a Deutschland and force combat. (Note that the earliest plans for what would eventually become the Dunkerque can be traced back to being a response to Italy's Trento class Heavy Cruisers, however, it was the emergence of the Deutschland class that convinced the French to finish the design and actually bring paper to metal.)

 

- In response to France's Dunkerque Germany cancels the final two Deutschlands and goes back to the drawing boards. The initial new design called for a Deutschland with a third turret, though, the only way to counter a battleship is with another battleship. The new Scharnhorst class battleships featured improved 11" guns, were heavily armored and, at the time of their completion, were the fastest battleships in the world.

 

- France, (incorrectly) believing the new Scharnhorst class battleships were armed with the same 11" rifles of the Deutschland class, did not directly respond. Again, Dunkerque was supposed to be armored against the 11" guns of the Deutschlands, as far as France was concerned, Dunkerque was armored against the Scharnhorst's guns as well.

 

- Italy announces that it will exercise its treaty right to build battleships and that two 35,000t battleships will be laid down. These would be the first of the Littorio class battleships.

 

- France, assuming the new Italian battleships will boast a gun caliber larger than 11", gather funds for an up-armored Dunkerque. The resulting ship, Strasbourg, featured thicker belt, turret, and barbette armor over Dunkerque. Her machinery is also slightly more powerful, allowing Strasbourg to keep the 29.5kn top speed despite the additional weight in armor.

 

- France, upon realizing that the Strasbourg is not adequately protected against the 15" rifles of the Littorios, announces the laying down of two 15" armed battleships of her own. These would become Richelieu and Jean Bart.

 

- Germany, which had been planning a pair of 35,000t battleships armed with 13" guns, increases the size of the battleships to 45,000t and armed with 15" guns in response to the news of France's new 15" battleships going under construction. The resulting battleships, Bismarck and Tirpitz, would be the largest European battleships ever built and only Yamato and Musashi could boast more tonnage in armor. The ships were well armed, well armored, and perhaps most importantly, extremely fast as well.

 

- Great Britain, knowing full well that her most modern 14" armed King George V battleships are not up to par with Bismarck in terms of speed and armament, begin construction on the HMS Vanguard. Like Bismarck, she would boast eight 15" guns, good armor protection and a top speed of 30 knots. Construction progressed slowly and Vanguard would be completed shortly after hostilities ceased, making her the last battleship ever built.

 

 

Please feel free to add anything I missed or correct anything I goofed on. :)

[mr3awsome]

8 hours ago, dseehafer said:

- Great Britain, knowing full well that her most modern 14" armed King George V battleships are not up to par with Bismarck in terms of speed and armament, begin construction on the HMS Vanguard. Like Bismarck, she would boast eight 15" guns, good armor protection and a top speed of 30 knots. Construction progressed slowly and Vanguard would be completed shortly after hostilities ceased, making her the last battleship ever built.

Given that KGV's design speed was 29.25 knots, the speed thing wasn't really viewed as being a huge issue. 

As for the armament, they were also not unduly concerned, as had Bismarck been 35,000t like she was supposed to, she would have had a ~9" belt and about as half as much deck armour as she actually had.  Thanks to a damage control book recovered from Bismarck when she was sunk, and the information the Russians had received , they were able to back design Bismarck to a relatively complete degree (41,150t vs 41,700t).

Even so this didn't have much of an influence on Vanguard's design, as the design was formalised in March 1941, and the only real influence in the 1942 changes is the increased sheer forward.   

[dseehafer]

35 minutes ago, mr3awsome said:

Given that KGV's design speed was 29.25 knots, the speed thing wasn't really viewed as being a huge issue. 

As for the armament, they were also not unduly concerned, as had Bismarck been 35,000t like she was supposed to, she would have had a ~9" belt and about as half as much deck armour as she actually had.  Thanks to a damage control book recovered from Bismarck when she was sunk, and the information the Russians had received , they were able to back design Bismarck to a relatively complete degree (41,150t vs 41,700t).

Even so this didn't have much of an influence on Vanguard's design, as the design was formalised in March 1941, and the only real influence in the 1942 changes is the increased sheer forward.   

 

Interesting. Wikipedia makes it sound like the only real reason Vanguard was built was to compete with the battleships currently under development in Germany and Japan saying... "By early 1939 it was clear that the first two Lion-class battleships could not be delivered before 1943 at the earliest and that further battleship construction would be necessary to match the German and Japanese battleships already under construction." Now, Wikipedia is not always the best source on Warships, so I won't hold that quote up as being "gold solid" but that is what founded my claim. I did not "pull it out of my hind end", so to speak. Judging by the quote, Vanguard may not have been built specifically to counter the Bismarck class, but it was because Germany (and arguably to a lesser extent, Japan) was building new battleships (the Bismarcks) that Great Britain saw it fit to keep up with the competition. Or, at least, that's what I'm taking away from it. So while Vanguard was not a direct counter to the Bismarcks as Dunkerque was to Deutschland, it could be argued that if the Bismarcks were not built at all, then Vanguard would not have been built either. No? 

[mr3awsome]

1 hour ago, dseehafer said:

 So while Vanguard was not a direct counter to the Bismarcks as Dunkerque was to Deutschland, it could be argued that if the Bismarcks were not built at all, then Vanguard would not have been built either. No? 

Even in that scenario its unlikely that she wouldn't have been built. The driver was the fact that at the end of the battleship building holiday, there were 10 British battleships overage, with another two approaching the limit. As nice as a rebuilt Queen Elizabeth is, its much more useful to have a modern battleship. Given the backlog that the nine prior ships would have on the very limited gun pit pool, the reasoning for Vanguard remains. 

 

2 hours ago, dseehafer said:

Interesting. Wikipedia makes it sound like the only real reason Vanguard was built was to compete with the battleships currently under development in Germany and Japan saying... "By early 1939 it was clear that the first two Lion-class battleships could not be delivered before 1943 at the earliest and that further battleship construction would be necessary to match the German and Japanese battleships already under construction." Now, Wikipedia is not always the best source on Warships, so I won't hold that quote up as being "gold solid" but that is what founded my claim. I did not "pull it out of my hind end", so to speak. Judging by the quote, Vanguard may not have been built specifically to counter the Bismarck class, but it was because Germany (and arguably to a lesser extent, Japan) was building new battleships (the Bismarcks) that Great Britain saw it fit to keep up with the competition. Or, at least, that's what I'm taking away from it. 

It is certainly a factor, but I think the limited pool of rebuild ships compared to Japan, plus the need to keep ships at home and in the Med makes it highly likely that it would have happened with or without Bismarck.