WWII Battleships

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Regia Nave Aquila: italian Regia Marina realized that battleships were useless and started to convert a classe Littorio battleship into a carrier

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>>1887882
Aquila was converted from a passenger liner.

>>1887903
Correct, I apoligize

>>1887882
But Aircraft carriers were mostly useless for the Italian Navy. It's not that they didn't understand the use of airpower in naval conflict, it's that pretty much every point in the Mediterranean can be covered by land based aircraft.

>>1887913
This was the mussolini thought, but Regia marina suffered heavy defeats from the royal navy and than they undestand they need carriers

>>1887923
Why? The Italians couldn't even maintain air superiority or make good use of airpower directly off the coast of Italy. How would having aircraft carriers help?

>>1887928
Look at the Cape Matapan battle, british air superiority was decisive

>>1887934
But that was a perfect example: The whole thing took place in range of Italian air bases, and they even sent a (completely useless) air escort. So there was no problem with the ability to project air power there.

>>1887946
and why in your opinion Regia marina started building the Aquila? To waste some money? Anyway the point is that huge battleships were beautifull but useless!

>>1887956
>and why in your opinion Regia marina started building the Aquila? To waste some money?
Something must be done about the problem, this is something, so let's do it.

>Anyway the point is that huge battleships were beautifull but useless!
I mean, you just contradicted yourself right there.

>>1887960
>I mean, you just contradicted yourself right there
why?

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I'm just gonna ramble a bit because I find the naval battles of WW2 to be interesting.

>>1887913

How come Italian airpower deteriorated so much during the 30's? The Regio Aeronautica was one of the leading airforces in the world under the leadership of Balbo. A curious development. Although I understand why they did not build aircraft carriers since they had limited production capabilities and at the outset of WW2 not even the British knew how to properly use them (or what role they ought to fill). The HMS Courageous was the first Aircraft carrier sunk. It was torpedoed by a german u-boat while out sumbarine hunting (!).

Anyway, as regards to Battleships, they were mostly useless since decisive battles would be decided by whoever could field the most airpower. The prime target for any fleet would be to knock out the enemies airfields and aircraft carriers, after which the rest of the fleet would be compareatively easy pickings. But in the Pacific campaign Battleships were used by the US to bombard shore defences before any landing (and sometimes also acting as off shore artillery once the campaign was underway).

Japanese battleships also bombarded the airfield at Guadalcanal with incendiary bombs on two occasions in an attempt to knock it out. Although except for the moral effect, it caused little damage.

The Japanese super battleship was called Hotel Yamato by disgruntled japanese sailors, since it sat ashore almost all of the war. The fuel cost of having it sortie was prohibitive. When it finally did sortie in a last ditch attempt to save her honour in the waning days of ww2 it was not even carrying enough fuel to return to port again. It was a one way trip and everyone knew it. American planes spotted the task force, which was unprotected by aircraft, and started circling just below the cloud cover, methodically awaiting the arrival of all it's squadrons before attacking. The japanese watched from their decks.

>>1887984
If the Regia Marina wouldn't build a ship that's a waste of money, they wouldn't have built useless battleships.

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>>1888016

At the start of ww2, almost nobody thought that Battleships were a waste of money. Any naval power expected to have a few.

>>1888016
Every navy built battleships in WWII because nobody understud the waste, but someone like US navy and royal navy and lately Regia marina understud that carriers were usefull. ok?

>>1887913
>it's that pretty much every point in the Mediterranean can be covered by land based aircraft.

Which is great if you already control the entire Mediterranean...

>>1888038

Just a tip;

It's "understood"

>>1888014
Balbo was dangerous for Mussolini so he died of friendly fire...

>>1888043
tnx I must improve my english

>>1888038
The U.S., British, and Japanese Navies all understood the use of Aircraft Carriers because they all had uses for aircraft carriers. These were ocean going navies with thousands of miles of sea lanes to operate in, with no airbases nearby.

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>>1888064

Yes, but even these nations entered into the war thinking that it would be the Battleships, not the carriers, that would decide the war.

The US realized fairly early, I'd say Coral Sea and Midway.

The Japanese learned, but were to slow to adapt because of rigid military hierarchy.

The British and Italians realized after Taranto.

>>1888064
and why the royal navy used the HMS FOrmidable in the mediterranean sea?
inb4 they had bases in Malta and Egypt

>>1888073
The US realized fairly early, I'd say Coral Sea and Midway

maybe early: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor didn't find carriers in harbor...

>>1888044
Italian flak can't melt steel planes.

>>1888088
He was shooted down by the italian cruiser San Giorgio

>>1888083
Instead the American carriers were off in the middle of the Pacific alone where they could have been gangraped if the Japanese ran into them.

>>1887869
Man the littorios were beautiful

>>1888102
of course they could have been gangraped, but they were off because they know about japanese attack: the Us needed a big shock like Pearl harbor to enter the war but they don't want to lose the precious carriers!

>>1888074
>and why the royal navy used the HMS FOrmidable in the mediterranean sea?
Because the Mediterranean sea is very far away from Britain. Malta is strategically positioned, but can't cover the whole sea, and Egypt is too far from anything. It's only good for defending itself, and Crete, when that became a thing.

The British needed a way to get more airbases in an isolated region: the exact reason you have an aircraft carrier.

>>1888118
GB owned also gibraltar, you are clutching at straws. They had a carrier in the mediterranean sea to control it and they did it

>>1888144
>GB owned also gibraltar, you are clutching at straws.
Seriously? And I'm the one clutching at straws? Gibraltar is over 800 miles from the nearest Italian territory. No fighter aircraft in the world could make the trip from Gibraltar to the Mediterranean theater and actually fly a mission.

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>>1888174
Gibraltar + Malta + Crete + Egypt this is not enough to control the mediterranean sea?

>>1888181
Brah there's a lot of axis land bordering the Mediterranean and only so much air and naval power Britain could afford to use there

>>1888181
First, the British didn't control Crete. And second, no it isn't. Of these, only Malta is able to project power anywhere offensive. Egypt can only MAYBE hit Rhodes on an offensive operation. It can only deny the Italians access to the Eastern Mediterranean, but the Italians don't need access there.

>>1888207
they need suez because they colonies in somalia and ethiopia and eritrea

>>1888213
Yes, they need Suez. And that can only be taken by land. having an Aircraft carrier does not give them access to the Red Sea.

>>1888217
I disagree but I have to go, please keep this alive! And post more battleships!

>>1888117

Thats pretty conspiratiorial and not substantiated by any evidence. Also if that were the case, I doubt the US would have kept 8 battleships in port. Battleships are prohibitively expensive.

>>1887928

Because in practical usage, it turned out to be much harder than the Italians thought to coordinate their fleets and their land based air. If you have a carrier, it's traveling right with your fleet, and it's staffed with naval officers who understand at least the basics of sea combat.

Relying on land based air often got too many planes sent to the wrong location and getting there hours after the British wiped out a convoy or beat up some warships, even if they were from the unsinkable aircraft carrier of Sicily.

Airpower's more than about having more planes, it's about getting planes to where they're needed.

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bumping with battle[spoiler]cruiser[/spoiler]

>>1888287
brilliant

>>1888014
>How come Italian airpower deteriorated so much during the 30's?
No money, recessive economy, priority given to the navy for political reasons.

>>1888287
I agree that all of these were fundamental problems, but I'm skeptical an aircraft carrier would have solved them. They had everything they needed to get them where they needed, and they didn't. Organizational problems plagued the RM in every field (see for example in this thread: Shooting down and killing the head of their own air force).

>>1888584
>see for example in this thread: Shooting down and killing the head of their own air force
Yeah totally an accident, everyone knows it.

>>1888584

Well, Italian incompetence is something you're going to have to deal with no matter what you do, but I would note that things like response times and target prioritization worked way better for navies like the USN and the IJN when they were relying on CVP than when they were relying on LBA.

It probably would have helped some, albeit not solved the problem outright.

>>1888591
But would it have helped enough to justify construction of a Carrier force. Remember, Italian competence isn't just scarce, so is Italian Industry. It took them 2 years to get the Aquilla going, and it could carry all of 50 aircraft, and couldn't land them.

The core of this problem, as I see it, is that Italy was unwilling to think of themselves as a second rate power, and therefor were unwilling to prepare for war like it. An aircraft carrier is a wasteful boondoggle for the Italians, but they end up building one because the British have them.

FFS, the only reason it was remotely a Naval Conflict at all is because France dropped out so quick. Could you imagine if the bulk of the French Fleet had been available to secure the Med?

But despite all of this, the Italians planned the whole war like they were going on the offensive.

>>1888679

You could turn around and make the exact same argument about Battleships, about how it's really cruisers, u-boats, and smaller vessels that usually carry the day in a war of raid and counterraid on supply convoys, which is what the battle of the Med mostly hinged around anyway.

>The core of this problem, as I see it, is that Italy was unwilling to think of themselves as a second rate power, and therefor were unwilling to prepare for war like it. An aircraft carrier is a wasteful boondoggle for the Italians, but they end up building one because the British have them.

I would argue that the core problem is what it usually is in militaries: that you don't have a single top down policy voted on for some abstract notion of "the good of the state", but you have a number of competing bureaus, all of whom would like to win the war, to be sure, but equally if not more important is making sure that their department gets the biggest budgets and the most prestige. If/when land based planes start failing to do their job over the water, the star of the people who had been badgering for carriers rises, and they push through a carrier program.

You see the exact same thing in pretty much every military in WW2, especially where the British are concerned with bomber command; as enormous resources went towards churning out more Lancaster bombers that almost certainly could have been better used elsewhere.

>FFS, the only reason it was remotely a Naval Conflict at all is because France dropped out so quick. Could you imagine if the bulk of the French Fleet had been available to secure the Med?

I dunno. The French fleet of WW2 was pretty lame. The 1930s Dunkerque class was barely superior and in some ways inferior to the Andrea Doria class the Italians had some 20 years prior.

>>1888720
Even if the French fleet has some deficiencies the royal navy would have made up the difference. Both navies combined would nullify the regia marina almost instantly, freeing up British naval assets to aid in the Atlantic.

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>>1888073

>The US realized fairly early, I'd say Coral Sea and Midway

The Montana-class battleships were planned as the successors to the Iowa-class. They were designed to be 25% more effective than the Iowa-class in combat, with the trade-off that the Montana's would be slower than the Iowa-class and also too wide to fit through the Panama canal. After Midway, the Montana-class was cancelled, leaving the Iowa-class as the last line of battleships to be authorized by Congress.

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>>1887869

The only battleship to fight for both sides during the war.

>>1888419
but that's a Large Cruiser

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>>1889791
Of course it's just a """large cruiser""".

>>1889717

Not him, but that doesn't really disprove his point.

Yeah, the U.S. planned 5 Montanas, and they actually built 4 Iowa class BB.

Meanwhile, they pumped out 24 Essex class carriers, and were beginning the construction of the Midway class during the war.

Designing and even building new and better battleships doesn't mean that your naval strategy is primarily based around them.

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>>1889911

That's good because it wasn't intended to disprove his post. The exact opposite actually.

>>1889791
>>1889903

>Implying that "Large Cruiser" and "Battlecruiser" aren't interchangeably in terms of usage.

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I really love the pagoda towers on Japanese WW2 ships. Too bad it was useless compared to actually using radar.

>>1890094

Is that the reason for them? To compensate for lacking proper radar?

>>1890094
The fuck? That's ridiculous.

>>1890106

Basically. The problem was the US ships using the latest radar tech could shot them from beyond he horizon, so before the Japanese could even spot them.

>>1890106
Yeah because they put them on in the 30s.

>>1890166
OTH was invented after WWII dingus.

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i cry everytime

>>1888096
I thought Italo Balbo was killed in Libya by friendly AA when they mistook the plane that was carrying him as British.

>>1890207
Imagine realizing that the first big naval battle of the war happened in South America.
I suppose Hitler thought to himself "Truly, after all these years, I am become World War Two"

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>>1890221
The cruiser was in dock providing some of that AA fire.

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Reading about HMS King George V.

Apparently fitted with a rudimentary fire-control system. Huh, I learnt something today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HACS

>>1890304

I have no ideal why they didn't just go for a conventional 3 x 3 layout. Is having 1 extra gun really worth all that complication involved with making quad-turrets?

>>1890193
No it wasn't.
The Yamato had OTH capabilities, but lacking in radar it had to use scout planes to relay the position of enemy ships. It obviously didnt work very well, if at all though.

>>1890321
Short answer is no.

>>1890329
Yes it was moron.

>>1890329
Show me WWII over the horizon radar that isn't just putting radar on the tallest part of your ship, which is doing the same thing as putting rangefinders on top of a giant tower.

>>1890321
They wanted 12 guns in 3 quad turrets but they couldn't fit it into the tonnage limit.

>>1890321
>>1890354
> In service, the quad turrets proved to be less reliable than was hoped for. Wartime haste in building, insufficient clearance between the rotating and fixed structure of the turret, insufficient full calibre firing exercises and extensive arrangements to prevent flash from reaching the magazines made it mechanically complex,[83] leading to problems during prolonged actions. In order to bring ammunition into the turret at any degree of train, the design included a transfer ring between the magazine and turret; this did not have sufficient clearance to allow for the ship bending and flexing.[84] Improved clearances, improved mechanical linkages, and better training[83] led to greater reliability in the quadruple turrets but they remained controversial.

They wanted to retain the broadside power of US and Japanese ships within a tonnage limit. This >>1890399

>>1890406

It would have made more sense to go with a 3 x 2 layout with 16-in guns.

>>1890437
Yeah, I don't know why the British preferred 14" guns. The article mentions something about the US-Britain naval treaties and it being 'too late' to change anything for the George V class.

>>1888073
Taranto happened a year before Pearl Harbor.

>>1890474

Yes. I never stated anything to suggest otherwise.

>>1890485
>I never stated anything to suggest otherwise.
How about we start with
>US realized fairly early
and go from there?
I don't know if you are an actual imbecile, but your post sure does make you sound like one.

>>1888720
>You could turn around and make the exact same argument about Battleships, about how it's really cruisers, u-boats, and smaller vessels that usually carry the day in a war of raid and counterraid on supply convoys, which is what the battle of the Med mostly hinged around anyway.
Wouldn't really dispute that if you did, yeah.

>
I would argue that the core problem is what it usually is in militaries: that you don't have a single top down policy voted on for some abstract notion of "the good of the state", but you have a number of competing bureaus, all of whom would like to win the war, to be sure, but equally if not more important is making sure that their department gets the biggest budgets and the most prestige. If/when land based planes start failing to do their job over the water, the star of the people who had been badgering for carriers rises, and they push through a carrier program.
Plenty of Militaries do and did effectively and realistically plan for their role in an upcoming war, however. The soviets, when facing similar problems as the Italians DID focus on cruisers, u-boats and smaller vessels. The Japanese, despite an insitutional bias towards the Battleship, did end up building a carrier centric navy because of the vast distances of the pacific.

But all of this is shifting the grounds of the discussion: It was not that building aircraft carriers was unavoidable, just the opposite. That building carriers for the Italian Navy wasn't a good idea.

>>1889676
This. The war Italy planned for would have been even more hilariously and hopelessly one sided than the one they were given, and they were still woefully unprepared.

>>1890517
What is your major malfunction?
Is English a second language for you?

>>1890517

Ok, so let's start from there... Go on... Where did I state that Taranto took place after Midway? I'm all ears.

>>1890519
>But all of this is shifting the grounds of the discussion: It was not that building aircraft carriers was unavoidable, just the opposite. That building carriers for the Italian Navy wasn't a good idea.


I thought it was based around what justified the building of the aircraft carriers for Italy, and why they were built.

If you want to ask the different question of "whether or not they should have been built with the benefit of hindsight"? You run into a different set of problems, mostly hinging around how the Italians were so bad at pretty much everything they did that it probably wouldn't matter.

There were some pretty good coordination reasons to at least try it as an alternative to land based planes. Those reasons were probably mere pretexts though, not the actual reason the Aquila and any successors that may have followed had Italy remained in the war were laid down.


> The Japanese, despite an insitutional bias towards the Battleship, did end up building a carrier centric navy because of the vast distances of the pacific.

They also hugely ignored the importance of convoy defense, which wound up being a crippling mistake. I wouldn't argue that they were remarkably more far-sighted and free from bureaucratic infighting, hell, they probably had it even worse than the Italians.

>This. The war Italy planned for would have been even more hilariously and hopelessly one sided than the one they were given, and they were still woefully unprepared.

To be fair, the "war Italy planned for" or at least the one Mussolini planned for, was to jump in at the end of the hostilities, present a few battles that he participated in, and claim some territorial concessions on the cheap.

It was a pretty bad plan, all things considered.

>>1890555
You state that the US realized the importance of carriers fairly early, around Coral Sea. Then imply that the Japanese were the second to realize this. Then imply further that Brits and Italians realized the importance of carriers later after Taranto.
Basically you either have the chronology backwards or you are incapable of coherently expressing yourself in English.

>>1890887

I feel like everybody knew that carriers were important. It just wasn't understand how important they were immediately. It was after it became clear that battleships just weren't as survivable as they used to be that people started thinking "maybe we don't need to build anymore battleship."

>>1890887
I think he did not intend for his post to be in chronological order and you are assuming that he did

>>1890905
Ships usually served for a long time. Most ships in WW2 were built in the WW1 era and continually modernized. Carriers only started to become important after the Washington Naval Treaty which severely restricted battleships while carriers were not very restricted as their aircrafts wouldn't count for displacement had more of their displacement to spare. Second, the development of aircraft in the late 30s greatly increased aircraft payload and changed carriers from a support role into an offensive role.

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Battleships were designed for a war they never got and that greatly disapoints me
>pic not related

>>1890461
British wanted the ship ASAP, getting 16 inch guns would delay it coming into service which was a huge nono.

>>1890887
>>1891061

This.

You are incredibly autistic. I implied no chronological structure.