Battlecruiser General

>>30674812
The advantages are
>you can run away from the enemy, and several knots faster then they can
>you deliver the same payload with the same power as the enemy's, but the delivery system (the battlecruiser) is of course cheaper
>having less armor on a ship can be an advantage. There's a slight chance, depending on angle of impact, that a heavy armor piercing shell will pass through you. Like what happened to the American Destroyers and Destroyer Escorts at Samar

>>30674812
The issue was Admirals failed to use them in the matter they were supposed to. The concept was sound but reality was far different.

>>30674812
Sunk my battleship

>>30674812
You outgun heavy cruisers and outrun battleships, also at the time there were treaties limiting tonnage and caliber and what not

>>30674812
>Why would you build a ship almost as big as a battleship, arm it with battleship level guns, and then give it flimsy armor?
Because
#1 steel costs a lot
#2 shipyards can only make ships up to X displacement so you have your limits if you want to build them at the time.
#3 extra displacement "saved" on armour can be used for heavier and bigger machinery

The idea stems from British naval thought. British historically favoured fast ships over heavy ships due to various geographical reasons. British Empire was enormous and to defend it, they needed strong fleet. In this situation having bunch of sub-optimal battleships that may be wrecked by "proper" battleship of similar displacement BUT they move few knots faster has its advantages.

Imagine suddenly some naval threat arises on Pacific, like Japan attacked or something, while the majority of British BB's are stationed in Scapa Flow or wherever on the Home Isles. Having battlecruisers that had 3-4 knots speed advantage over typical battleships allowed to react much, much faster, we're talking about having your fleet in the theatre few days faster. At the same time they still outgunned cruisers of all types and could run away from battleships proper which made them perfect raiders and raider-hunters.

Just a quick comparison - Bellerophon class BB's were being built since 1906 just like Invincible class BC's. Invincible entered service in 1908 while Bellerophon did so in 1909.

At its best Bellerophon class reached 21,55 knots - which is about 40 km/h, Invincible reached 25 knots which is about 46 km/h. This difference may seem fairly small but consider the fact that from Scapa Flow to Signapore there's 14000 km in straight line so about 25000km(?) through Gibraltar and Suez Canal. This is hell of a distance, isn't it?

>>30676799

Now Bellerophon would reach Singapore(assuming it wouldn't stop at any coaling station which is untrue for both ships) in about 26 days. So practically it would be a month or so. Invincible could do the same in 22 days. Both of course assume that we're running at maximum speed whole the time which normally wouldn't happen but you can see that using BC's gave British the advantage of having Battleship-like warship on the other side of empire 4 days earlier.

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>>30674812
didn't the germans build them to bypass the BB ship restriction after WWI.
is a battlecruiser not kind of a pocket battleship?

>>30676827
No it is not. They existed before the restrictions and naval treaties were a thing.

>>30676799
>>30676819
It's also important to add that in further classess the speed divide between BC's and BB's rose.

Neptune and Colossus were still at 21 knots max speed while Lion class BC's could do 28.

So for the few years preceding WW1 it seemed logical that BC's ARE something special.

Is the modern Kirov considered a battlecruiser or just a "large cruiser" like the alaskas? That really were battlecruisers, but were called just cruiser for more political reasons

>>30674812
for spec role, ie. the German Bismark and sisters were battle cruisers designed to attack the allied supply convoys crossing the Atlantic. basically, able to spend extended period at see, capable of defeating any cruisers and destroyers that may chase them, capable of evading and battle fleets that may range and engage them.

>>30674812
not all battlecruisers were garbage, only the english ones.

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>>30674812

Alaska's were beast

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>>30678048

So you're telling me that the Bismark wasn't actually a battleship?

That feeling when America could have had battle-cruisers but no, Washington treaty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexington-class_battlecruiser

Too expensive for killing cruisers, too weak for the battle line.

>>30677716
Modern surface ships are just carriers and varying sizes of non-carriers.

>>30674812
RN BCs were a meme. germans oddly enough worked but dissapeared after ww1 for obvious reasons.

>>30677716

>Is the modern Kirov considered a battlecruiser or just a "large cruiser" like the alaskas?

Every navy has their own system, so it is pointless to get autistic about the naming conventions. However, Russia has them designated as battlecruisers.

>>30678426

The Germans had a different philosophy.

A battlecruiser in the Royal Navy meant a ship with battleship-level armament but crusier-level armor.

A battlecruiser in the kriegsmarine meant a ship with cruiser-level armament but battleship-level armor.

>>30678445
but thats not true. the fact that germans had smaller guns was due to their ships overall having smaller guns. but they were never nominally smaller than their battleship guns

>>30678445
meme post

>>30678475
not that anon, but they had fewer guns of them.
for example battleships with 28cm caliber had 12, the battlecruisers 8-10.
battleships with 30,5cm caliber had 10, the battlecruisers 8 guns.

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>>30678048
>Bismarck Class
>Battlecruiser
one of these things is not like the other

>>30674812
what i find very interesting is the massive damage the german battlecruisers took.
there are pics online of them with truck sized holes.
yet they were fixed up in just a few weeks in the dock and ready to be used again.

>>30674812
I dunno..

Why does a contestant on Jeopardy, with less than half the amount of money than the leader, land on a daily double and only bets a trifle amount of cash that will neither get him a chance to win, but guarantee he wont 'lost it all'..

Pfft, everyone knows the Baltimore Class was all you ever would need. Battlecruisers are too large with serious manpower requirements and use a ton of steel.

>Half the steel
>Half the crew
>Same amount of 5" guns, 48 vs 56 Bofors, 24 vs 34 Oerlikons

Shame none were ever preserved.

>>30675248
In actuality, a battlecruiser tended to cost as much as a battleship. That being said, they were faster than battleships and did very well against cruisers.

Really, the problem was that SOMEONE decided to send them up against Battleships and of course they died like dogs.

>>30678084
They were really interesting designs, would probably interest countries like Norway or Sweden if it wasn't for change of priorities in naval warfare.

>>30678900
>ignoring Des Monies.

>>30678933
I'm a Marylander, it's a state pride thing.

>tfw none of the USS Baltimores have ever been preserved

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>>30674812
>Battlecruiser General
>No 1144

>>30679022
>slav(e)s
>relevant
pick one

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>>30679062
Out of nowhere, broken amerishit.

Does anyone know if there were ever any "self propelled gun"/artillery type ships?

E.g. you'd have a single fucking massive gun running the length of the ship, with variable elevation but requiring the ship to be turned to face the target.

Would such a thing have been viable in the days before carrier supremacy?

>>30679940
british erebus and terror come to my mind as well as 18th century bombard sloops

>>30679940
soo, now i want to mount an 800 mm railway gun on a cruiser

>>30679940

The problem with that idea is that the gun would be so big there would be no place to actually store ammunition in sufficient quantities.

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>>30679940
Monitors? Just slap some large guns on a smaller ship and call it a day.

>>30675248
In WW1, battleships were actually cheaper than battlecruisers

>>30676799
The speed difference mainly only comes up in battle and in short chases. Full speed burns fuel too rapidly so you can't keep it up for long.

>>30678048
Bismark was a battleship (technically a fast battleship like the Queen Elizabeth), not a battlecruiser.

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>>30680200
not quite what I had in mind. Interesting to read about though.

>>30680235
this guy gets me

>>30680595
see pic attached?

>>30680784
All the monitors I've seen (which admittedly isn't that many) had either a turret configuration, or just used mortar-type launchers

>>30681022
i love you

now we just need someone to do a shoop of this

>>30678445
actually one of the main differences in british and german battleship and battlecruiser design stemed simply from mission.

british ships were less massively subdivided to improve habitability as they were designed for global reach, german BBs and BCs had heavier internal subdivision because they were only intended for short deployments in the north sea or baltic and the crew were expected to live in barracks ashore much of the time, this meant that german ships of the same thickness of armor and size would be slightly more damage resistant than a equivalent british vessel, albeit not great for deploying further than the bay of biscay.

as for german battlecruisers versus the british, both sides emphasised speed, but the germans once speed was good prefered armor, the british had less armor trusting speed to get the ships out of trouble.

it worked when they were used in the designed role (battle of the falklands) but less well when engaging other battlecruisers or battleships

>>30679940

There was a British ship, or two, in WWI that had one massive gun that fired shells. I'm thinking it was an 18" gun.. After searching the web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BL_18_inch_Mk_I_naval_gun

Then there was also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Vesuvius_(1888)

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>>30680784

>>30682351
That's some topheavy shit. The Japanese weren't even that bad.

>>30674812
>I understand the idea was to create a cheaper, faster alternative to the standard battleship
No, the idea was for scouting squadrons, exactly as they were used at Jutland.

>>30678445
>A battlecruiser in the kriegsmarine meant a ship with cruiser-level armament but battleship-level armor.
Please show me a cruiser with 11 or 12" guns.

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>>30678620
>yet they were fixed up in just a few weeks in the dock and ready to be used again.
Not really no, the high seas fleet sortied six weeks after Jutland with only three battlecruisers because all the others had been sunk or were still under repair.

>>30682818
Alaska

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>>30682837

That was a beastly ship.

>>30682861

But the Alaska didn't have battleship armor anon...

>>30674812

New question: is it better to have many guns in a smaller caliber or fewer guns in a larger caliber?

>>30683261
and that makes it a cruiser, right?

>>30683377

No a battle cruiser.

Although the US classified them as a Heavy Cruiser if I'm correct.

>>30683724
i think the official term was "large cruiser"

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>>30682638
It's just a joke.

>>30684054
戦艦!

>>30686078
なのです!

>>30683724

The U.S never classified anything as a battlecruiser, but the alaska's were most definitely battle cruisers, they were almost as big as the Iowa class, 12" guns.

>>30686827
>implying the Iowa's weren't Battlecruisers themselves

>>30686842

The Iowa's had 12 full inches of belt armor. 11 inches on the bulkheads and barbettes. 20 inches of armor on the turrets.

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>>30678084
>Alaska's were beast

Absolutely criminal that the best battle cruisers ever made, were scrapped only three years after they were built, particularly when they would have been perfect for a post-WWII navy.

>>30686842
>implying Fast Battleships weren't the final capital gun ship form

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>>30679940
>"self propelled gun"/artillery type ships?

>>30686904
Ugh the turrets were 17" with the main citadel being 17.3". Those were the thickest locations on an Iowa.

>>30687541
>Ugh the turrets were 17" with the main citadel being 17.3". Those were the thickest locations on an Iowa.
The turret face was 19.7" and the conning tower was 17.5". If you're going to be a pedantic shit, at least be a correct pedantic shit.

Battlecruisers are meme ships.

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i am MONITORing this thread

>>30690473
Dat lack of freeboard

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...and I would have got away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling Battlecruisers.