Battlecruisers

[Tiornu]

If I stand alone in the forest and shout that battlecruisers were, from the get-go, intended to fight against battleships, would anyone hear me and have me committed/burned as a heretic/darted and tagged for further research/etc?

[larrikin]

Almost certainly! In fact Monty & Bob would hunt you down and strap you to Tiger's funnel.

[Tony Williams]

I've always understood that battlecruisres were intended to take their place in the line of battle when required, even though their speed allowed greater flexibility of deployment. The problem with this was, of course, summed up by whoever coined the erroneous phrase 'speed is armour'!

 

If the battlecruisers were only intended to deal with lesser types, then a battery of 9.2 inch guns would have been more sensible.

 

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion

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[Corinthian]

I couldn't really understand the reasons behind the battlecruiser concept. If it was meant to take on smaller ships and run away from BBs, then how come it seems that the difference in the speed of BBs then with battlecruisers was almost negligible (say, 5 knots). I seem to recall such speed differences. Is 5 knots "negligible" as I said, or is it really a big difference (like an earthquake at Richter 5.5 is significantly stronger than one at Richter 5 only)?

[larrikin]

Originally posted by TomasCTT:

I couldn't really understand the reasons behind the battlecruiser concept. If it was meant to take on smaller ships and run away from BBs, then how come it seems that the difference in the speed of BBs  then with battlecruisers was almost negligible (say, 5 knots).  I seem to recall such speed differences.  Is 5 knots "negligible" as I said, or is it really a big difference (like an earthquake at Richter 5.5 is significantly stronger than one at Richter 5 only)?

 

It depends on the speed of the battleline. Generally BCs were about 25-30% faster than their contemporary battleships. For example, the last 13.5" RN dreadnoughts (Orions & Iron Dukes) did ~21kts, while 'the Magnificent Cats' did 26-28ts. The QEs, the first fast battleships, did 25kts, and the Admiral class BCs, their design contemporaries (near enough) were intended to do 32-33kts.

[DougRichards]

Wasn't the one and only successful use of Battlecruisers in their intended role the Battle of the Falklands in 1915:

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Quoting from: http://www.gwpda.org/naval/j0700000.htm

 

A German Squadron under Vice-Admiral Graf von Spee was visiting the Far East, and following some initial operations in the Pacific, decided to return to Germany via Cape Horn. Aware of his presence off the coast of South America, a small British force sailed into Chilean waters under Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock: it consisted of three old cruisers, (HMS Good Hope, Glasgow, Monmouth) and an armed merchant cruiser, Otranto. An old, slow battleship (HMS Canopus) followed. Having left the latter some 300 miles behind, Cradock met von Spee's ships off Coronel, Chile. At the Battle of Coronel, 1 November 1914, the British were outgunned, and Cradock opted to try and inflict damage on a German squadron a long way from home. He was killed when Good Hope blew up, and Monmouth was sunk. He had ordered Otranto to escape, and Glasgow, though damaged, did too.

 

The response of the British Admiralty was to detach 2 battlecruisers (HMS Invincible and Inflexible) from British waters, to deal with von Spee. They sailed to the South Atlantic under Vice-Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee. They met other British cruisers off Brazil and sailed to the Falklands. The day after arriving, von Spee also arrived from the south with 5 cruisers (SMS Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Leipzig, Nurnburg and Dresden) and some supply ships. He intended to shell the wireless station. At Port Stanley were the two battlecruisers, and 3 cruisers, HMS Kent, Glasgow, Cornwall. Several other units, including HMS Canopus, were not ready to sail.. Von Spee turned away, and was chased by the British ships. The Battle of the Falklands (8 December 1914) was a series of duels, in which Invincible and Inflexible sank Scharnhorst & Gneisenau; Glasgow and Cornwall sank Leipzig; Kent sank Nurnburg. SMS Dresden escaped, but was caught off the coast of Chile in March 1915 and sunk.

 

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The original role of the battlecruiser was to chase and destroy cruisers, whilst having a heavy enough armament so that the only ships then capable of having a go at them would be battleships, which would be unable to catch them anyway.

 

The fallacy here is of course as soon as both sides have battlecruisers then their role against cruisers becomes obsolete and they have to fight against their own kind.

[DougRichards]

Originally posted by TomasCTT:

I couldn't really understand the reasons behind the battlecruiser concept. If it was meant to take on smaller ships and run away from BBs, then how come it seems that the difference in the speed of BBs  then with battlecruisers was almost negligible (say, 5 knots).  I seem to recall such speed differences.  Is 5 knots "negligible" as I said, or is it really a big difference (like an earthquake at Richter 5.5 is significantly stronger than one at Richter 5 only)?

 

If a ship is running away from another ship 5 knots can be a tremendous difference, over 12 hours, obviously, this means 60 nautical miles difference, it also means a much larger search area (does 10,000 square nautical miles sound about right?) In an era without radar, even 40 nautical miles is a large distance.

[Guest Sargent]

Originally posted by Tiornu:

If I stand alone in the forest and shout that battlecruisers were, from the get-go, intended to fight against battleships, would anyone hear me and have me committed/burned as a heretic/darted and tagged for further research/etc?

 

 

Flogged with scorpions and pepper rubbed into the wounds.

 

The design committee considered them cruisers, the Invincibles were scaled up from 9.2" designs. Even the term "Battlecruiser" didn't become official until 19112, IIRC.

 

Fisher didn't want them to fight BBs, he wanted them to replace BBs, but that was too radical.

[RETAC21]

It's my understanding that they were designed to kill armoured cruisers, a role in which they excelled (see the Falklands) but even when no confrontation ensued, they assured that the armoured cruiser became obsolete. But I have also read that they were intended as a fast wing for the Battle fleet and thus became obsolete with the advent of the fast battleship.

[Guest Murph]

Yes. Shall I get the firewood? P.S. The Alaska class were not battlecruisers.

 

Originally posted by Tiornu:

If I stand alone in the forest and shout that battlecruisers were, from the get-go, intended to fight against battleships, would anyone hear me and have me committed/burned as a heretic/darted and tagged for further research/etc?

[ABNredleg]

Admiral Sir R H Bacon, Lord Fisher's biographer, wrote that Fisher felt that the battlecruisers were to have the additional role "of forming a fast light squadron to supplement the battleships in action, and to worry the ships in the van or rear of the enemy's line. They were never intended to engage battleships single handed; but they were designed to assist in a general action by engaging some of the enemy's ships that were already fighting our battleships." This was similar to the role Japanese armored cruisers played in 1905 when the Japanese lost a third of their battleships to Russian mines.

 

The main role, however, was that of fighting enemy cruisers - they were called armored cruisers until November 1911.

[Corinthian]

Doug, Larrikin: Thanks for clearing that up. I now have a better perception on the battlecruiser.

 

IIRC, the Alaska was considered a battlecruiser. Well, at least that's what Jane's mini-book on WW2 ships say.

[ABNredleg]

The American Navy considered the Alaska class to be heavy cruisers since they were built to cruiser, rather than battleship, standards.

[TheSilentType]

From what I understand, Battlecruisers were meant to do to Armored Cruisers what HMS Dreadnought did to all previous battleships. As for the 5 knot difference, just look how tough a time Beatty had catching up with the Germans at the Dogger Bank. If the Germans were 5 knots faster Beatty wouldn't have had a chance of catching them.

[Tony Williams]

Originally posted by ABNredleg:

The American Navy considered the Alaska class to be heavy cruisers since they were built to cruiser, rather than battleship, standards. 

 

That doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't battlecruisers by everyone else's criteria.

 

After all, if the British had decided to call all of their post-1907 battleships 'dreadnoughts' and didn't use the term 'battleship', they would still have been battleships in terms of their specification and performance.

 

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion

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[Scott Cunningham]

In WWI they were employed with the main battle line, but as a fast wing. They could maneuver quicker and gave the admiral more options than the slower, far more ponderous battle line.

 

It is of note that in Jutland both sides BC's were heavily engaged, while the main battle lines just bumped a bit. Most losses were to BC's as well (Invincible, Indefatigable, Derflingger, Seydlitz (OK, she didn't sink until in harbor), etc.... I'm not sure if the Queen Mary was a BC.

[Ol Paint]

Originally posted by Tony Williams:

That doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't battlecruisers by everyone else's criteria.

 

After all, if the British had decided to call all of their post-1907 battleships 'dreadnoughts' and didn't use the term 'battleship', they would still have been battleships in terms of their specification and performance.

 

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion

forum

 

Not quite. The battlecruisers were supposed to carry BB caliber armament at speeds faster than the contemporary BBs could attain, for one thing. By the time the Alaskas were designed, no one else was using a 12" in a BB, with the possible exceptions of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and these ships were really designed for 15" guns and laid down before the US was even considering the CBs. The Alaskas also don't meet the speed test required to be properly classed as battlecruisers.

 

Tiornu,

 

I don't think you are a heretic--my unresearched position is that it depends on the circumstances. Battlecruisers were intended to smash through the screening force and to fight for their information, which would mean engaging the enemy's battleships to determine the location and composition of the main battle line. Now, if you were to shout that battlecruisers were supposed to take a place in the traditional battleline, you might be open to tarring and feathering...

 

Douglas

[Guest Sargent]

Originally posted by ABNredleg:

Admiral Sir R H Bacon, Lord Fisher's biographer, wrote that Fisher felt that the battlecruisers were to have the additional role "of forming a fast light squadron to supplement the battleships in action, and to worry the ships in the van or rear of the enemy's line. 

 

Armored cruisers already had this role, in more navies than the Japanese. The USN, for one.

[Yama]

Originally posted by Scott Cunningham:

It is of note that in Jutland both sides BC's were heavily engaged, while the main battle lines just bumped a bit. Most losses were to BC's as well (Invincible, Indefatigable, Derflingger, Seydlitz (OK, she didn't sink until in harbor), etc....    I'm not sure if the Queen Mary was a BC.

 

QM was a BC. All capital ship losses at Jutland were battlecruisers, except for Pommern which was a pre-dreadnought.

 

What really killed off battlecruiser concept were 1) treaty limitations - no point wasting too much limited tonnage to battlecruisers which were generally less important than battleships 2) aviation - scouting was increasingly done by air, and one important role of battlecruisers (killing enemy's scout cruisers and acting as heavy scout itself) largely went away.

 

'Large cruisers' like Alaska were sort of 'battlecruiser lite' concept where the ships inherited most of BC roles, but designs were not as powerful as contemporary battleships but powerful enough to dismiss all cruisers and commerce raiders (cruiser designs being limited by treaties). Increasing capabilities of naval aviation made these ships kinda pointless too, and most of such designs were never built.

[TheSilentType]

If you go by mission, then the Alaskas would've certainly fit the original battlecruiser definition, since they were meant primarily to chase down enemy commerce raiders.

[Tiornu]

"Even the term 'Battlecruiser' didn't become official until 19112, IIRC."

The all-big-gun cruiser officially became a "battle cruiser" on 24 November 1911 with Admiralty Weekly Order No 351. I don't know if "battlecruiser" (one word) ever became official. Of course, this applies only to the RN. The Germans didn't adopt it until the late 1930's. The Japanese followed the British change almost immediately. The Americans had no need for the term for some time, then adopted it for the CC ships. The Russians adopted the term in 1915.

 

"What really killed off battlecruiser concept were...."

Personally, I don't believe the battlecruiser concept was ever killed off. All the fast battleships are BB-BC hybrids. I believe that if you look through Admiralty documents, you'll see KGV, Lion, and Vanguard all referred to as battlecruisers.

 

"The problem with this was, of course, summed up by whoever coined the erroneous phrase 'speed is armour'!"

I'm not sure if that is a problem because I'm not sure what it was supposed to mean. If it refers to the use of superior mobility to assume positions of tactical superiority that compensate for the lesser firepower and protection of a BC, then it could be seen as a correct statement.

 

"Wasn't the one and only successful use of Battlecruisers in their intended role the Battle of the Falklands in 1915"

Any reference to the intended "role" is likely to fail for being singular. These were multi-role ships from the start. The genesis appears to have been in the perceived need for an overseas ship capable of overtaking raiding cruisers AND duking it out with station ironclads. Eventually, we see them used for scouting, commerce protection/raiding, and battle-line fast wings.

 

"Armored cruisers already had this role, in more navies than the Japanese."

People often say that battlecruisers were never meant to be used against battleships, and admirals were seduced into fatal errors by the large caliber of the guns. If more of these people remembered the Russo-Japanese War, then we wouldn't be hearing such misinformation. The 8in armored cruisers were meant to fight battleships (in many cases), so why would the 12in armored cruisers not be meant for it?

 

"The fallacy here is of course as soon as both sides have battlecruisers then their role against cruisers becomes obsolete and they have to fight against their own kind."

Yes, Fisher seems to have assumed Britain would always be building the biggest and fastest.

 

"P.S. The Alaska class were not battlecruisers."

That's right. They were battleships.

[ABNredleg]

According to Friedman, the primary purpose of the Alaska class was to kill Japanese heavy cruisers, which were considered at the time to be the main threat to US carriers. War plans in the 1930's assumed that the carriers would be making independent raids against the Japanese, escorted by heavy cruisers since they were the only ships capable of keeping up with 30 knot carriers. Japanese heavy cruisers were considered to be the primary surface threat to the carriers so the US Navy became interested in cruiser-killers as carrier escorts. Admiral King was commander of Aircraft, Battle Force at the time and became a champion of the concept, which he pushed as a member of the General Board and as CNO.

 

The concept met a lot of resistance in the Navy, with many feeling that enemy nations could negate the value of the cruiser-killer by building a similar ship. There was also a feeling that building such a ship would diminish the value of existing US heavy cruisers, which the Navy felt were individually superior to their Japanese counterparts.

 

The consensus of the Navy was that the Alaska class was a waste of resources - I have to admit, however, that I think they are some of the best looking ships the Navy ever built.

 

edited for spelling

 

 

[Edited by ABNredleg (15 Nov 2004).]

[nemo]

Don't knock the battlecruisers.

 

Although it is ideal to chase down commerce raiders or conduct raids, it's not the primary function of the battlecruisers.

 

In the days before radar and aircraft, battle cruiser serves vital function as heavy scout and scout destroyer. It's heavy enough to force through the screen of cruiser and destroyers or destroy scouting cruisers and destroyers.

 

Just think about what Jutland would be if one side did not have battlecruiser. If British did not have battle cruiser, High Sea Fleet could escape unharmed and the battle would never take place. If German did not have battlecruisers, High Sea Fleet could be trapped and destroyed because Grand Fleet is faster and twice as powerful.

 

Battlecruisers are much more expensive than battleships -- that

extra 5 knots takes about twice as much horsepower. I submit that people won't spend that kind of money on something which is useless.

[lastdingo]

The success of the battlecruisers is not to be found in battle fame, but (in peacetime) rather in their success to force the cruisers to become very fast and therefore poorly armoured and expensive.

In wartime, they succeeded to prevent lots of cruiser actions, but this role was later taken over by carriers.

 

BTW, the Kirov class with its high cruise speed, negligible armour and long-range wepaonry can easily be considered as battlecruiser - and as such had again a great impact on the sleep of USN admirals.

[Yama]

Originally posted by Tiornu:

The all-big-gun cruiser officially became a "battle cruiser" on 24 November 1911 with Admiralty Weekly Order No 351. I don't know if "battlecruiser" (one word) ever became official. Of course, this applies only to the RN. The Germans didn't adopt it until the late 1930's. The Japanese followed the British change almost immediately. The Americans had no need for the term for some time, then adopted it for the CC ships. The Russians adopted the term in 1915.

 

Hmm. Germans didn't call their WW1 battlecruisers as battlecruisers? Were they called armored cruisers? Germans of course never actually had any battlecruisers after WW1, except on paper. Russians never finished any battlecruisers either, although they had several paper ones.

 

Personally, I don't believe the battlecruiser concept was ever killed off. All the fast battleships are BB-BC hybrids. I believe that if you look through Admiralty documents, you'll see KGV, Lion, and Vanguard all referred to as battlecruisers.

 

I think that without development at naval aviation, we would have seen 35knot and faster battlecruisers at some point. It's just that it became kinda pointless - it doesn't matter whether you do 30 or 35 knots, you can't outrun 200knot aircraft.

 

"Armored cruisers already had this role, in more navies than the Japanese."

People often say that battlecruisers were never meant to be used against battleships, and admirals were seduced into fatal errors by the large caliber of the guns. If more of these people remembered the Russo-Japanese War, then we wouldn't be hearing such misinformation. The 8in armored cruisers were meant to fight battleships (in many cases), so why would the 12in armored cruisers not be meant for it?

 

Armored cruisers didn't have exactly stellar record against battleships and battlecruisers in WW1, did they? ISTR they were mostly slaughtered at leisure.

 

"P.S. The Alaska class were not battlecruisers."

That's right. They were battleships.

 

Ooh, here we go

 

Originally posted by lastdingo:

BTW, the Kirov class with its high cruise speed, negligible armour  and long-range wepaonry can easily be considered as battlecruiser - and as such had again a great impact on the sleep of USN admirals.

 

Kirovs are not battlecruisers in traditional sense. They are more akin to large cruisers or even missile battleships. Lack of armour doesn't really mean anything as armour plate is largely useless in modern naval warfare. Of course it can be argued whether 'traditional' classification means anything anymore. I mean, we call certain types of ships 'frigates' even if they don't have sails and one main gun deck...