London & Washington era Heavy vs. Light Cruisers

[Yama]

4 hours ago, Markus Becker said:

That seems to have been an internal US thing done before the light/heavy entered the treaties. Looks like the French did the same with their even less armored early 8" cruisers. 

Eggshells with sledgehammers. 

That was common with interwar heavy cruisers. There might not even have been a proper belt armour, and if there was, it might have been very shallow, just 1 deck deep, and it was unlikely enemy could manage to hit it...

[BJE]

On 12/9/2023 at 7:28 PM, Markus Becker said:

That seems to have been an internal US thing done before the light/heavy entered the treaties. Looks like the French did the same with their even less armored early 8" cruisers. 

Eggshells with sledgehammers. 

Light cruiser existed as a nomenclature before the treaties, then more or less meaning "not an armoured cruiser". So when the first cruisers were built under the Washington treaty rules they fit that definition.

Edited December 14, 2023 by BJE

[Ivanhoe]

On 12/4/2023 at 7:24 PM, 17thfabn said:

How would a light cruiser fare against a heavy cruiser. The heavy has the advantage of bigger shell with better penetration. The light has the advantage of more guns and higher rate of fire. 

I would reframe the question as; At a national level, given X dollars/quids/marks/sheckels of budget, is it better to go all-big or all-numerous?

Some great points in the above discussion. In the Pacific theater of WWII, I have the impression that USN destroyers, if only by sheer numbers, were a big part of the success of the USN over the IJN. It wouldn't surprise me if a convincing argument could be made that light cruisers in numbers were more effectice than fewer, heavier cruisers.

[R011]

3 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

I would reframe the question as; At a national level, given X dollars/quids/marks/sheckels of budget, is it better to go all-big or all-numerous?

Some great points in the above discussion. In the Pacific theater of WWII, I have the impression that USN destroyers, if only by sheer numbers, were a big part of the success of the USN over the IJN. It wouldn't surprise me if a convincing argument could be made that light cruisers in numbers were more effectice than fewer, heavier cruisers.

I'd rather have a Leander or a Colony when and where its needed than a County or Town thousands of miles away. 

Mind you, the USN could build a S/L of 10K ton 6 inch cruisers (29) and a S/L of 15K ton 8 inch gun cruisers (18) at the same time plus eight 5 inch armed AA cruisers and two Large Cruisers with 12 inch guns.

[Yama]

On 12/10/2023 at 12:27 PM, BJE said:

Light cruiser as a nomenclature before the treaties, then more or less meaning "not an armoured cruiser". So when the first cruisers were built under the Washington treaty rules they fit that definition.

IIRC first light cruisers of RN were called 'light armoured cruisers' at first, as they had belt armour, unlike earlier protected cruisers.

Treaty limitations basically meant that large cruisers were no longer a thing, though many navies did keep building small cruisers, due to aforementioned reasons.

5 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

I would reframe the question as; At a national level, given X dollars/quids/marks/sheckels of budget, is it better to go all-big or all-numerous?

Some great points in the above discussion. In the Pacific theater of WWII, I have the impression that USN destroyers, if only by sheer numbers, were a big part of the success of the USN over the IJN. It wouldn't surprise me if a convincing argument could be made that light cruisers in numbers were more effectice than fewer, heavier cruisers.

Japanese used small light cruisers as destroyer leaders, but I don't think they performed too well. Destroyer battles were often chaotic night actions, where cruisers would sometimes just be easier targets for torpedoes.

Cost difference between Treaty limit (10 000 tons) "light" and "heavy" cruiser is quite minimal: of course if you drop tonnage to 8000 or less, cost starts to play part, and that also more or less rules out larger gun than 6".

Edited December 14, 2023 by Yama

[17thfabn]

7 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

I would reframe the question as; At a national level, given X dollars/quids/marks/sheckels of budget, is it better to go all-big or all-numerous?

My impression is the way the London & Washington Naval Treaties were structured it was best to build as big a cruiser as the treaties allowed ( with a little creative interpretation).

Hence your treaty heavy and light cruisers both ended up in the 10,000 ton range. With the "heavies" having eight or nine 8" guns, and the "lights" having twelve to fifteen 6" guns.

 

[R011]

2 hours ago, 17thfabn said:

My impression is the way the London & Washington Naval Treaties were structured it was best to build as big a cruiser as the treaties allowed ( with a little creative interpretation).

Hence your treaty heavy and light cruisers both ended up in the 10,000 ton range. With the "heavies" having eight or nine 8" guns, and the "lights" having twelve to fifteen 6" guns.

 

The tendency was, barring other considerations, to build to the limit.  When the limit was 10K tons and 8 inch guns, those were the cruisers they built.  The USN continued to refer to them as Light Cruisers with CL hull numbers.  As far as I can tell, the RN and IJN just called them cruisers.  The 1930 LNT put total tonnage limits and effectively a gun limit of 6 inches.  The RN mostly built smaller cruisers like the Leanders  but built a few 10K 12 gun cruisers to match the Japanese and Americans.  The 1935 LNT reduced the individual tonnage but allowed the parties to build as many cruisers as they wanted.

[futon]

Since the London Naval Treaty specified category A cruisers (8 inch) and category B cruisers (6 inch), there does exist a difference to reflect it in names. So 一等 as category A and 二等 as category B was part of the 巡洋艦 cruiser name. From there the A and B could be swapped out with "heavy" and "light" if translating.

Thus..

一等巡洋艦 = Heavy Cruiser or Cruiser A

二等巡洋艦 = Light Cruiser or Cruiser B

But operationally, they were both used in the same way. So nothing more than naming convention and thus easier or better to omit for most purposes I imagine. 

 

For ships that were purpose built as light cruisers got 軽 for light as part of the name.. so 軽巡洋艦 as light cruiser.

Edited December 14, 2023 by futon

[Yama]

On 12/9/2023 at 12:15 PM, RETAC21 said:

But this only underlines that long range fire with 8 inch guns was a myth. Hit rates were negligible and the shells weren't big enough to cause damage: "In the first hour of action up to 1720, the Japanese fired 1,271 rounds of 8” shells and scored five hits, only one of which was effective.  The Allies didn’t do so well. Any hits they might have landed were duds and not acknowledged by the Japanese. "

http://www.microworks.net/pacific/battles/java_sea.htm

Light cruisers could get in range and their weight of fire was greater in terms of effects, see River Plate, Cape Esperance, Empress Augusta, etc.

Where the big County class failed, the lighter cruisers of the Leander and Amphion classes succeded, and the RN pretty much gave up on larger caliber cruisers (even though they were projected during the war) in exchange for 6 inch cruisers.

Your examples only serve to reinforce my point: At River Plate and Java Sea, all the decisive hits were caused by 8 inch (or larger) hits. Other two of your examples were night actions fought at close range.

Lot of people have proposed that greater rate of fire of 6 inch guns compensates their lack of power and accuracy even at longer ranges, but it is simply not supported by actual real world battles. 6 inch fire was effective against cruisers only at medium ranges (12 kyds or less). That was achievable in night time, or other poor visibility conditions, but in daylight engagement, 8 incher was going to carry the day 9 times out of ten.

Now, of course a good argument can be made that this situation was rare enough so it could be ignored, and 6-inch cruisers were better overall ships, as they were better against destroyers etc.

 

[RETAC21]

1 hour ago, Yama said:

Your examples only serve to reinforce my point: At River Plate and Java Sea, all the decisive hits were caused by 8 inch (or larger) hits. Other two of your examples were night actions fought at close range.

Lot of people have proposed that greater rate of fire of 6 inch guns compensates their lack of power and accuracy even at longer ranges, but it is simply not supported by actual real world battles. 6 inch fire was effective against cruisers only at medium ranges (12 kyds or less). That was achievable in night time, or other poor visibility conditions, but in daylight engagement, 8 incher was going to carry the day 9 times out of ten.

Now, of course a good argument can be made that this situation was rare enough so it could be ignored, and 6-inch cruisers were better overall ships, as they were better against destroyers etc.

 

I wouldn't call a chance hit at Java Sea a demonstration of the effectiveness of 8 inch fire, when 1000+ rounds were fired, more so as the same result would have been achieved with a 6 inch gun. As for River Plate, see here: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2019/august/battle-badly-fought for what was in effect a botched battle, and again, dependent on a chance hit.

More representative examples are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cape_Spartivento ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cape_Matapan or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Barents_Sea

In neither long range fire from heavy cruisers hit anything or had an influence on what light cruisers did or did not, and in the Barents Sea it was 6 inch fire that ended the battle.

Now, show an example that shows that "in daylight engagement, 8 incher was going to carry the day 9 times out of ten"

[Yama]

I continue to be baffled at your examples, as first two show ineffectiveness of light cruiser fire compared to heavies (and caused Med Fleet to request heavy cruisers), and Barents Sea was another nighttime engagement fought from quite close range. As for Java Sea, sure enough, that single telling hit might be chalked up on luck. OTOH, more numerous light cruisers did not hit their counterparts at all, and even if they had, they would have been unlikely to do damage at that range.

[sunday]

There was a somewhat decisive battle at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, but it was between a couple of National cruisers and a couple of Red destroyers

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Battle_of_Cape_Spartel_(1936)

Quote

A fierce exchange of fire followed, during which the destroyer Almirante Ferrándiz was chased and eventually sunk by Canarias in the Alboran Sea after a 40-minute engagement, while Gravina was pursued and hit twice by Almirante Cervera along the Atlantic coast of Morocco. The main guns of Canarias found their mark at a range of 11 nautical miles (20 km; 13 mi) with their second salvo, while those of Almirante Cervera performed poorly.

Canarias was a Town-class heavy cruiser, license built in Spain, and had jury-rigged fire direction equipment. But her fire director officer was the fire direction chief instructor at the Spanish naval academy. So this battle is quite anecdotal.

Almirante Cervera was a 6" armed cruiser, lead ship of her class, but her main artillery was quite shot up after firing a lot in support of the rising in Asturias.

Edited December 15, 2023 by sunday

[Markus Becker]

On 12/13/2023 at 8:10 PM, Ivanhoe said:

I would reframe the question as; At a national level, given X dollars/quids/marks/sheckels of budget, is it better to go all-big or all-numerous?

Some great points in the above discussion. In the Pacific theater of WWII, I have the impression that USN destroyers, if only by sheer numbers, were a big part of the success of the USN over the IJN. It wouldn't surprise me if a convincing argument could be made that light cruisers in numbers were more effectice than fewer, heavier cruisers.

Depends what nation you are.

The US and Japan wanted them for fleet action only and went more or less straight to the 10k ton limit. The UK needed cruisers for the protection of it's global trade network and the required numbers ruled out big cruisers. Thus the smaller Leanders and Arethusas.

@Yama: The Japanese use of CL as DD leaders was an economy measure. New, small CL had such a low priority that the WW1 era ships remained in use.

[CaptLuke]

The US was driving towards 10,000 ton, 8" armed cruisers even before the treaty, driven by the combination of the UK Hawkins class (9800 tons and 7.5" guns) and the likelihood of war with Japan, where long ranged ships capable of independent action were seen as an advantage.  When the treaty kicked in, the USN was more or less forced to build 6" gun cruisers, so they built them big and heavily armed: the Brooklyn class was near 10,000 tons with 15 6" guns.  The US actually built an 8" armed variant of the Brooklyn class, the one-off Wichita.

 

The US did take note of the rate of fire advantage of 6" guns in the night actions around Guadalcanal, but went for a "have your cake and eat it too" solution of building faster firing 8" guns, though this took till the end of 1945 and the Des Moines class missed the war.  The 8" Mark 16 guns on the Des Moines fired about 2.5 times as fast as the wartime Mark 12 and Mark 15 guns.

 

 

[R011]

2 hours ago, CaptLuke said:

The US was driving towards 10,000 ton, 8" armed cruisers even before the treaty, driven by the combination of the UK Hawkins class (9800 tons and 7.5" guns) and the likelihood of war with Japan, where long ranged ships capable of independent action were seen as an advantage.  When the treaty kicked in, the USN was more or less forced to build 6" gun cruisers, so they built them big and heavily armed: the Brooklyn class was near 10,000 tons with 15 6" guns.  The US actually built an 8" armed variant of the Brooklyn class, the one-off Wichita.

 

The US did take note of the rate of fire advantage of 6" guns in the night actions around Guadalcanal, but went for a "have your cake and eat it too" solution of building faster firing 8" guns, though this took till the end of 1945 and the Des Moines class missed the war.  The 8" Mark 16 guns on the Des Moines fired about 2.5 times as fast as the wartime Mark 12 and Mark 15 guns.

 

 

You seem to be conflating the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty and the 1930 London Naval Treaty.  The WNT had a 8 inch limit on cruiser guns and the RN, USN, and IJN built a bunch of 8 inch gun armed "light" cruisers.  The 1930 LNT limited the number of 8 inch gun cruisers more or less to those already built and set a new limit of 6 inch guns.  Once they left the treaty system in the mid thirties, as they were entitled to do, the IJN rearmed some of its 10K ton six inch cruisers with 8 inch guns. 

The RN stuck with 6 inch guns and built a bunch of econo-cruisers for numbers.  The USN could afford the time and resources to go back to building 8 inch cruisers that were a bit larger and more balanced as well as  a s/t of 5 and 6 inch gun cruisers..

[rmgill]

On 12/4/2023 at 8:24 PM, 17thfabn said:

If I understand correctly most of the cruisers built during the treaty era were around 10,000 tones. Or at least had claimed tonnage of around 10,000 tones.

The typically "heavy" cruiser had eight to nine 8" guns. 

The typically "light" cruiser had twelve  6" guns. A few had fifteen "6" guns. 

I'm leaving out the odd ball small British cruisers and the U.S.N. Atlanta class with 5" main armament and the RN Dido class with 5.25" guns and similar.

I would guess that  it wouldn't happen too often that  a light and heavy cruiser would have a one on one shoot out due to most naval actions being a team sport. But there could be actions where a light and heavy cruiser traded shots during an engagement. 

How would a light cruiser fare against a heavy cruiser. The heavy has the advantage of bigger shell with better penetration. The light has the advantage of more guns and higher rate of fire. 

I seem to remember one of the notes either from Sci.Military.naval, maybe Blackbeard or perhaps Andrew Toppan's comments was that the difference in decisions was numbers needed to show the flag vs numbers needed to effect commerce raiding. A lighter faster cruiser could in effect count for more numbers AND mission kill a heavier cruiser on commerce raiding. In a standup fight sure, the heavy vs the light is better. But with more lights, you could spread the scouting around more and get better numbers. Or at least that's what I recall. 

[rmgill]

Does Drach cover this subject in this video?
 

 

[Argus]

Oh the joy... guys I hate to be a pain in the bum, however... there's a fundamental problem here; 'cruiser' meant different things to different people at different times - but we're trying to apply a common nomenclature and conceptual framework here, and there's just too many outliers for it work easily. 

Take the post Washington Counties. 10,000 tons and 8" guns came straight off the conference table sure - BUT. 

A/ The RN had just had the whole 'Battle Cruiser' concept, which was fundamental to their global strategy, taken away as an ongoing thing. The Battle Cruiser had been their answer to the 'Second Class Capital Ship' problem which had been bedeviling them in one form or another since the 74 went away. So that's an issue that had to be addressed with this class. 
B/ The 'Northern Patrol' issue, running a distant blockade had proven itself as a tactic, but the practicalities of maintaining a year round patrol line up in the GIUKN gap had been a very rude and extremely unpleasant shock to all concerned.  That was a problem that needed to be addressed by this class.
C/ Trade protection, many many many lessons learned, a good number contradictory, but all of key importance as the RN had just re-learned the centrality of trade to their role, and yep another thing the new class needed to address..  
D/ The Fleet role AND the 'Light Forces' role were also in the mix too, with a lot of very practical wartime experience needing to be fed back into the mix. The whole 'light forces' bit was in some respects another re-discovery. Having little semi-independent forces of mixed cruisers and destroyers working on what amounted to different operational layers to the main fleets had been a bigger part of WWI than had been broadly anticipated. Here was another question that had to be addressed in the process of designing the County class. 
E/ The shifting global picture that was seeing the East change from a position of security to one of weakness as the Japanese Alliance waned and no American connection emerged to replace it. 
F/ A minor block obsolescence issue with the bulk of the Battle Cruisers and Armoured Cruisers, they had all be heavily worn by hard service during the war, all were technically out moded by 1919 RN design standards, so losing most of them at Washington had been more a blessing than a curse. However there was no depth in this corner of the fleet so some ships in the water would be a very good thing. 

So if anything Washington simplified their problem in some respects, 10,000 tons and 8" guns was at least a framework no one could argue with. So got a ship out the end that was, if the RN's concepts were directly translated in the ones we're using here - a light cruiser, with 8' guns, 10,000 tons and all the rest. It's like Courageous, Glorious and Furious all being 'large Light Cruisers.' They were classifying cruisers by their protection you see, not size, armament or role, so if a cruiser had a belt on par with her main armament she was an armored cruiser, if not she was just a cruiser, and since AC's because 'heavy' the  un-AC's had to be 'light' then when they re-armored most of the counties in the 1930's and gave them an actual belt well they became 'heavy cruisers' except those they didn't who remained light. 

Speaking of 'Light' cruisers, there is a common assumption that the RN's 'economy' light cruiser classes like the Arethusa's and Leanders were the trade protection ships, yes and no but mostly no. As I suggested there were actually 3 wartime roles, Fleet, Trade and Non-Fleet (my catchall for frontline work not attached directly to a formal battle fleet), and all cruisers were expected to slot in to any of them more or less and did. But so far as there was specialization the small 6" Lights and the later 5.25" ships were really more aimed being the Fleet/non-Fleet ships, its the Counties and Towns that were the real Trade role specialists. They had the range, habitability and seakeeping to do the miles and the fire power to... lets recall the successful warship raiders of WWI were small/light cruisers, Emden etc, then next down the list were the Merchant conversions and whatever else they, might have been, AMC's and merchant raiders were never easy kills for 6" gun fire, where an 8" could stand off and later the Towns wade in and drown. 

Speaking about the Towns and later 'big' 6" cruisers, RN and USN alike, practically the range advantage of the 8" was moot, hit probabilities out at that distance were too low to covert theory into practice. By the time the 8" were in with a chance to get salvos to stick against ships maneuvering at 30 knots, the 6" were close enough that their rof gave them an equal chance of getting hits, and neither ship could shrug off 6", the odds running against whoever took the first hits. Sure the RN did a lot of missing at Matapan, the Italian cruisers were sensibly doing a very good job not letting them close the range. But 8" wouldn't have changed that picture for the better.  An 8" Mk.VIII takes 55.9 seconds to get a shell 25,000 yards down range, for a 30 knot ship that's 950 yards she's moved between bang and splash. The 6" Mk.XXII was a tad over 70 seconds, so more like 1200 yards run. But at 20,000 yards, the difference in target run over time of flight was down to a 150 yards between the two guns against the 2:1 advantage in rof (@ sustained rate) for the 6".... 

 

[Tim the Tank Nut]

your last paragraph is worth the price of admission for a month.  Very insightful, now I have something new to think about.

[Markus Becker]

Just like to drop a comment on "AMC's and merchant raiders were never easy kills for 6" gun fire".

Fire control. German AMC didn't have it. The old 15cm guns were under local control. Same on British AMC IIRC. So even an unmodernized C class cruiser would have had Atlantis for breakfast. 

If by "merchant raiders" you mean proper warships with 6" guns or more. Yes, small CL are suboptimal. 

[Argus]

On 1/13/2024 at 8:46 AM, Markus Becker said:

Just like to drop a comment on "AMC's and merchant raiders were never easy kills for 6" gun fire".

Fire control. German AMC didn't have it. The old 15cm guns were under local control. Same on British AMC IIRC. So even an unmodernized C class cruiser would have had Atlantis for breakfast. 

If by "merchant raiders" you mean proper warships with 6" guns or more. Yes, small CL are suboptimal. 

I'll stand by my comment, as I worded it quite carefully. The sort of merchant shipping converted to raiders and AMC's were not EASILY killed with 6" guns. Provided the crew could keep the fires to a tolerable level and nothing got into a magazine or torpedo warhead (so essentially the same criteria as a proper warship). A big merchie or medium sized liner could and did absorb an immense amount of punishment, they sort of made up in reserve buoyancy and volume what they lacked in armor, to soak up the hits. The ships would die, but they died hard if the crew did their bit, eg Kormoran or Kaiser W d Grosse, even going up against 11" guns, look at Jervis Bay and Rawalpindi. 

I beg to disagree on the fire control. Its a broad field to generalise across, and for the most part it was inferior to that on proper warships but some degree of fire control was almost universal on any raider/AMC that had the chance to fit out properly (unlike say Cap Trafalgar). At worst it was usually a 2-3m range finder up on the Bridge with central telephone control. Atlantis looks like she may well have had a much better FC set up than an Un-modernised C class. But I concur with your basic point, handled properly the C should kill Atlantis, but improperly handled a modified Leander couldn't cope with Kormoran and survive, and that C-class is going to feel every hit she takes in the process. Sure a mission kill and a spell in a repair yard is a fair price to pay for sinking another ship, but no one WANTS to do it. If the opportunity was there, an 8" cruiser would do the job with more surety and less risk than a comparable 6".

[Argus]

On 1/13/2024 at 4:23 AM, Tim the Tank Nut said:

your last paragraph is worth the price of admission for a month.  Very insightful, now I have something new to think about.

Oh shit man, I thank you kindly for the compliment and I'm glad it was of value to you - 07

[Argus]

Speaking of 'Light' cruisers, there is a common assumption that the RN's 'economy' light cruiser classes like the Arethusa's and Leanders were the trade protection ships, yes and no but mostly no. As I suggested there were actually 3 wartime roles, Fleet, Trade and Non-Fleet (my catchall for frontline work not attached directly to a formal battle fleet), and all cruisers were expected to slot in to any of them more or less and did. But so far as there was specialization the small 6" Lights and the later 5.25" ships were really more aimed being the Fleet/non-Fleet ships, its the Counties and Towns that were the real Trade role specialists. They had the range, habitability and seakeeping to do the miles and the fire power to... lets recall the successful warship raiders of WWI were small/light cruisers, Emden etc, then next down the list were the Merchant conversions and whatever else they might have been, AMC's and merchant raiders were never easy kills for 6" gun fire, where an 8" could stand off and later the Towns wade in and drown them in fire. 

Pardon me - I noticed I left a couple of points out that I'd meant to cover.
a/ Another plus of the bigger Country/Town's in the trade role, were that a good trade protection ship also had what it took to be a decent raider too. I believe Drach or one of the other youtube Naval guys covered the RN's anticipated strategy in the Pacific if they had to 1vs1 Japan. Shutting down Japanese trade ASAP and running a very distant blockade, essentially from the City of London with the big trade cruisers being the pointy end of cleaning up all the tonnage that control of the world's maritime insurance, shipping finance, bunker and  stevedoring couldn't just prevent from ever leaving port with Japanese cargoes with the stroke of a pen.
b/ The other element I missed, was what happened if in the next war the enemy didn't use converted merchantmen and small cruisers for raiding. What if they started using large cruisers or even very large cruisers? Well any RN cruiser, hell Destroyer, could perform the traditional role of 'Flaming Datum' in the face of a superior raider - throw yourself at the bastard regardless, kicking, clawing and screaming to let everyone know where it was and do as much damage as possible, looking for mission degradation, if not a mission kill.  Pegasus, Glowworm, even Harwood at the River Plate with a force of 3 ships was basically doing just this against the Graff Spee. But as with Harwood, a heavy cruiser was going to be in a much better position to gat a fair price for its sacrifice. This is just me, but I recon the RN were a bit conflicted over this side, logically you'd want to lose the least in such a trade, but if a ship must die and its crew with her, then... what's the old Russian saying, its better to die with music? Anyway the other advantages of a larger cruiser in the trade role more than justified it all. 

PS
c/ The third aspect to the heavy cruiser as trade specialist is how it 'lifts the bar.' The flip side to all these ideas is that if the enemy want to play the game they have to pony up to the pot too. If you want to raid against the RN's heavy cruiser base line, or hunt the RN raiding cruisers you either need to come with equal or superior force, else make the same 'flaming datum' play. There's not that many countries who have enough heavy cruisers (or larger) to play that game and those who do usually have other roles in mind for them.  So there's a strategic multiplier there from the start, backed up by a theoretical one. Now every nation sent its raiders out with orders to avoid engaging enemy warships, to run rather than fight if at all possible, its just sensible. But not many of them actually did. Sure they'd dodge and sneak around patrolling cruisers, but when confronted directly, I'm struggling to think of one example were a raider that could have run, even tried. To ask why is is a bit silly, there'd be as many answers and captains involved. However the one thing these raiders all had in common was  ... well a lack of anywhere to run too. We talked about this a lot in the Falkland's thread, its a long way home and a lot of patrol lines to cross on the way. It was doable, any number of raiders, raider support ships and blockade runners got past the RN and reached Germany. It's a very big ocean, ships are really really small, if a discovered raider could break contact there was hope, there was a chance - run east for the approaching dusk, make smoke and shoot back. Even if the enemy have a speed advantage it only rests on one shell not ended up in the wrong place, and until radar allowed blind fire though smoke chasing an enemy was no picnic. But the tendency was to turn and fight instead. 
Well the skipper of an RN raider is not facing the same issues. He would have refuge within 'realistic' reach, and be in a ship quite literally built for the purpose of running long distances at high average speeds through bad weather. If any raider skipper was in a position to run and fight another day, the guy on the bridge of a Country would have been he. Now that and $2.50 will buy a cheap cup of coffee, but it is what it is. 

Edited January 15, 2024 by Argus

[sunday]

There is the story of Canarias, a County-like heavy cruiser, that was one of the most successful commerce raiders ever, during the Spanish Civil War. High speed and great endurance made her very useful.

[Argus]

14 minutes ago, sunday said:

There is the story of Canarias, a County-like heavy cruiser, that was one of the most successful commerce raiders ever, during the Spanish Civil War. High speed and great endurance made her very useful.

Yep and thanks for reminding me about the THRID thing I forgot to mention earlier