Battleships and Battlecruisers

[Skygunner]

Foreward : I swear this was going to just be a simple paragraph explaing my opinions on a Battleship and a Battlecruiser, but it just sorta exploded into what you see below.  Have fun!

 

As I'm sure this will eventually come up, I'd like to address this notion right off the bat.   The whole argument about what makes a battleship a battleship, and a battlecruiser a battlecruiser.   The easy way to say it is,  when.

 

The definition of the two has changed depnding on the year or the nation that built the ship.   However I'll try to explain it as best.   First we need to define what a battleship is, to do this we need to talk about the British.   We will be using them for the base of our definitions because when it comes to seafaring for a large portion of all naval history England is one of the playing powers, if not the greatest power.  They have their ups and downs but for Battleships and Battlecruisers England is an up.  

 

When we think old timey battleships we think of something like this. HMS Victory, Lord Nelsons flagship at the Battle of Trafalger.

 

Though the Battleships of their day the term doesn't apply, these wooden walls are Ships of the line (not Frigates.  A frigate can be a ship of the line, but being a ship of the line doesn't make it a Frigate), their replacement is the armoured warship, or Ironclads.  Again, an ambigious term that covers a lot of differnt kinds of ships, including merchant and warships so not helpful. For ironclads we typically see a few words.

 

"Broadsides"  "central battery" and "turreted"  This is also a little wobbly so for ease of understanding, that simply refers to the layout of its armament, they all have advantages and disadvantages over the other,  all can be armoured and all have formed the most powerful ships of their time in their respected fleets,  Likewise visually we are still not at something most of us would recgonize as 100% a battleship.  See HMS Minotaur below, one of the largest and well armed broadsides ironclad.

 

 

Sticking with england, the first ship to really lay out what a "battleship" would be was HMS Devastation

 

 

Classed as a 'Mastless Turret Ship" it has a few key features that make it an example of what a Battleship would be. This is where we find our first disagreement.  Basically that ship you see up there is consdiered by some to be the worlds first "Battleship".  The problem lies in how the term is used, which as you can tell is rather complicated (which is why this topic even exists because if you can't define battleship how can you tell what a battlecruiser is...) For arguments sake, although at the time not called one,  this is a battleship.  Our working definition of battleship is.....

 

A capital ship that is heavily armed and armoured compared to other ships of the time,  has turrets, is steam driven, ocean going, and relies primairly on its guns for causing damage

 

A sloppy defintion but one for now.  For it to work you need to knwo what a capital ship is, that is simply the most important ship type to a navy at a time.  The type can change, in this day and age Aircraft carriers (or subs depending on who you ask) are the capital ships.  Before that, battleships, before that minitors, before that ironclads, before that Ships of the Line, before that Frigates. Wow, that is a familiar looking list.

 

Using that definition up there we can now look at warships and start sorting them.  We're now at the late 1800's, there are two types of heavy warship in most navies.   Cruisers and Battleships.   Battleships are what we already said they were, large, heavily armoured, etc, etc.  Cruisers are broken into 2 catagories,  Armoured and Protected.  This is an easy thing to disginguish.

 

Armoured cruisers have both belt armour, and deck armour (at least)  protected cruisers just have deck armour.  Using wikipedia for visual aids (and nothing else,  use books or some other website, grrr) I present this diagram.

 

 

A is belt armour, it sometimes makes up part of the Hull, sometimes it doesn't and is attached to the hull instead.  Armoured cruisers and battleships both have this, it can be set at an angle or be verticle.

 

B is deck armour.  Usually the main deck, or the deck the super structure rests on/top of the hull.  It is typically flat  and usually much thinner than belt armour.  More on that later.

 

C is Internal deck armour.  Usually shaped like an arch (as seen in the diagram)  it only protects things below it, usually the sides are thicker than the top, not always.

 

D is underwater protection. (in this diagram it's an internal belt) but it can take more forms than just a layer of steel.  It's purpose is to protect the lower parts of the hull.

 

Protected cruiers are typically weaker than Armoured Cruisers with few exceptions.  Armoured Cruisers are typically weaker than Battleships with few exceptions, and that's how it is untill the British started doing some silly things.

 

Much like tanks, ships are constantly being improved.  However unlike tanks, you tpyically have far more ship designs than you do tank designs.  They are big, bulky, require a lot of work, usually you only build 3 or 4 unlesss it's a smaller warship,  (small being anything under 2000 tons) I say usually, there's always exceptions.  By the time those ships are built, the technology on them is usually obsolete or there is just something better, so you build your next class of ships with that tech, etc, etc the process repeats.

 

With england, a country considered to be at the forefront (at the time) of naval technology, and with enough money to build large ships in large numbers, and keep doing that. There was a constant drive to have the best equipment.  As such their Armoured cruisers kept getting larger and larger with each sucessive class, heavier armour, heavier guns, more engines to propel the heavy ship, more displacement to accomadate it, etc.  Battleships however were much slower to develope,  new guns were considerably harder to develope, they were already top of the hill, each sucessive cllass didn't need to be reinvented, just improved.

 

Armoured cruisers were also developed so quick as they often used technologies developed already for battleships, can anyone figure out what is happening yet?

 

 

Well this was all topped off iin  something we will call the "Russo Japanese War",  because that's what most historians call it. I won't go into major details however if you want to know why this is so important, i'll let this humerous video explain it.

 

More to our point, in these battles, large caliber guns made an impact, and the realization that an armoured cruisers could fight battleships, and win. (Don't worry if this line seems wrong, we'll get to that later)  At least almost.  You see, up until now, there had been no large naval engagements of these new technologies, it was all theory.   These two battles immedieatly began to influence designs breaking them into  major ideas.  Speed, firepower or Armour.  Tpyically if you had a fast ship, it had less armour.  Speed is determined by how powerful your engines are and how much your ship weighs.  The same engine will prope a lighter ship faster than a heavier one that's basic physics.  Armour is what was usually sacraficed on cruisers to make them faster.   The Russo Japanese war showed that speed was important.  Armament was rarely sacraficed to reduce weight.

 

It's about this time people assume I will say "and then England made the dreadnought because they realized eliminating the secondary battery would help save weight allowing for a speedy, armoured, well armed design."  .......Nu.   Until now another common feature on ships was multiple batteries.  Primary guns,  secondary guns, and tertiary.  All different calibers, all with different trajectories and different FCS needs.  More than that, to distinguish a secondary 5in splash from a secondary 8in splash, from a primary 12in splash was kinda hard, especailly at 1000+ meters.  Elimination of the mixed caliber weapons was a logical step taken by 3 nations at roughly the same time.  England, Japan, and United States.  (and to a lesser extent Germany).

 

However of all those nations the first to finish, and I use the term finish loosely was England with the battleship HMS Dreadnought.

]

I will go into that whole "loosely" in another post, because that's a whole nother can of worms.  So now battleships have standardized batteries.  1 larger caliber gun, and 1 small or intermedieate caliber gun.

 

The term Battleship that we defined up there is still valid at this point, but it gets a sub catagory.   All battleships buit to a design that predated HMS Dreadnought are reffered to "Pre-Dreadnoughts",  most Battleships designed in response to the idea of 1 large battery and 1 small get the term "Dreadnought".  Both are still battleships, it's just a term used to describe what type of guns its armament consists of.  

 

So england,  after 1905, with their realativly huge armoured cruisers is now under the thumb of one Admiral Jackie Fisher.  A man whom I can say had a very clear way of doing things...his way. If that doesn't make sense, too bad, he's Admiral, listen too him.  He looked at the battles between russia and japan and went.  "Armoured cruiser can fight battleships, our giant british cruisers are useful on the front line, build them larger, keep the armour the same and give them guns like battleships!".   Lord Fischer conviently overlooked the deployment, training, and pretty much all other major factors that proved this statemen false....so we get these, the Invincible Class [/b]Battlecruiser

 

 

And here it is exploding

 

 

..............

 

Here are a few more battlecruisers

HMS Queen Mary

HMS Indefatigable

 

 

No, not all Battlecruisers exploded violently, however there should be no wonder why.  Let's define them, we have enough information to.

A capital ship that is heavily armed compared to other ships of the time,  has turrets, is steam driven, ocean going, and relies primairly on its guns for causing damage.  Typically sacrafice protection for far greater speeds.

 

 

It's unfortunate, but the early battlecruisers were doomed to fail.  After the loss of those three the concept of a battlecruiser was looked at again.  Clearly armour was required for the ships to ever stand a hope against a traditional Battleship.  Their loss was due to more than just a lack of armour, and ship concepts,  ammunition handling, and overall useage were all greatly changed after this point.   This was the final chance for Armoured cruisers as well,  they were no comparison to even battlecruisers and had gotten so large that it was just better to build a Battleship.

 

So that's it then.  A battlecruiser is just a fast battleship that sacrafices armour for speed, right?  Well....sort of.   This is where it starts getting fuzzy.  As tech advanced,  more efficent boilers and turbines were developed.  Battleships were produced that were moderatly and heavily armoured, but were also fast.  Treaties were enacted that limited tonnage and caused designs to start follwoing different regulations and actual maximum paramaters to build ships too.  KMS Scharnhorst: and the FN Dunkerque are oftend described as both Battlecruisers and Battleships. In realiaty, the term simply became obsolete. Like naval technology, a naval term obsoleted itself.   AFter WWI, few ships are built to the defintion provided above for what a Battlecruiser is.  The term "fast battleship" is even made to describe nwer faster battleships.  Old battleships are reboiled to give them fleet speeds.

 

Well,  one it was a bit of history, but two, and this is the kicker.  When researching and discussing naval history with anyone else,  be it a historian, someone on the internet, your dog, what have you, don't get caught up on classifying ships by Battlecruiser or Battleship because even though defintions above are logical,  no matter which one you use, you will always find an exception.  The purpose of a battlecruiser and a battleship are the same....they are both captial ships.  Their armaments are esentially the same, sometimes mirroring a battleship being built at the time.

 

Key point to drive home with is,  Battleships and Battlecruisers have the same end goal in mnd.  Fight opposing capital ships  The ultimate goal of both these ships is to be able to engage really, any other ship they come across and win. They may have other uses too, such as being better for scouting,  rapid response for shipping protection, etc, but in the end they are designed to fight against an oposing capital ship.  They are both capital ships, they eventually meld together. After 1920, the ideas of a battlecruiser are simply made obsolete, and we have Battleships once more.  

 

Final note,  just don't worry too much about classifying ships after 1920 as one or the other.

 

 

Reference Material

Conways, Der Geetrieg, US navy at War.

 

I'd do a full works cited but I think this is silly enough so far.

[God_Of_Death_EX]

very detailed one, takes me some time to go through

but +1 first!

[Crag_r]

Skygunner, on 20 August 2012 - 04:22 AM, said:

Forgive typos! We don't have an edit button.

Left of the Multi quote button, unless your mouse is near it, it wont show...

[Skygunner]

Crag_r, on 20 August 2012 - 04:28 AM, said:

Left of the Multi quote button, unless your mouse is near it, it wont show...

Witchcraft!

*starts to proofread again*

[God_Of_Death_EX]

Crag_r, on 20 August 2012 - 04:28 AM, said:

Left of the Multi quote button, unless your mouse is near it, it wont show...

ninja?

[PanzerjagerVPanther]

Not bad I have a few points to back up y thet should add subs but looking at forums of WoT and if somebody posted something a bit wrong they'd end up with -14s at least.

[vect]

My Edit button doesn't exist :(

[Ariecho]

Very well done, Sir! (+1)

[bakerstranded7]

I can hardly wait for the game.

[Goldeneye54]

Very good read. +1 for sure.

[Hurlbut]

The battlecruisers when they were conceived of and launched, were intended to fulfill the same roles as the armored cruiser or heavy cruiser but with more effeciency. The mission roles of the battle cruiser was to;

Destroy cruisers

Scout on enemy fleet

commerce protection (cruisers were thought as the ultimate threat to commerce)

Fast flank/wing of a battleline in which they keep away smaller ships from flanking the fleet and harrass distracted enemy battleships

Pursuit of wounded/fleeing warships.

 

In this they were intended to be used as overgunned cruisers.

 

The losses of the three british battlecruisers was due to magazine hits/ammunition hits and improper safety procedures allow for flashes leading to catastrophic explosions.

"Each was lost to a single salvo penetrating the turret and detonating in the working chamber. Beatty's flagship Lion herself was almost lost in a similar manner, save for the heroic actions of Major Harvey"

 

You have not contrasted that with the performance of the german battlecruisers in the same period though.

 

However, the Battle of Jutland showed how the battlecruisers on both sides were badly utilized as their concieved roles never called for them being a part of the battle line (in case of the germans, they were the main focus for much of the battle for british gunfire).

[flyingtaco]

Hurlbut, on 29 November 2012 - 10:41 PM, said:

However, the Battle of Jutland showed how the battlecruisers on both sides were badly utilized as their concieved roles never called for them being a part of the battle line (in case of the germans, they were the main focus for much of the battle for british gunfire).

yeah thats one of my concerns. KGB has said they will be balanced against BB's not CAs ....one wrong turn and one hit and you are in a world of hurt... particularly if you get cornered on map. think they should be balanced against CAs dodging sounds great but are they really fast enough to dodge shells? ...unless we have hangtimes of a minute or so for shells.... which I doubt.

[Super_Dreadnought]

nice read. +1