Best Battleship?

[hojutsuka]

Have I mentioned recently my pet theory that the old British battlecruisers might have been a better long-term investment than the old battleships? WWII was much more about mobility than battle-line bare-knuckles.

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I agree that in WWII speed and range were more important than absolute firepower and armor. Four modernized Kongos would IMHO have been much more useful to the RN than four Royal Sovereigns.

 

However, let me play Devil's advocate and consider the points in history where we could have changed which ships to keep.

 

First, Washington Treaty, 1922. At this point, RN has all of the ships that survived WWI. Of the battlecruisers, the 12" gunned Inflexibles and New Zealands are clearly not worth keeping. Hood, Renown, Repulse, and Tiger were kept, so the only change we can expect to make is keeping Lion and Princess Royal, probably scrapping two King George V's instead. The Lions had an inferior arrangement of main armament, with the 'Q' turret inserted between boiler rooms. Not only did this prevent 'Q' turret from firing on the after arcs, but it would have presented an interesting challenge when modernizing the machinery! So it wouldn't be an easy decision to make even if you are convinced of the importance of speed, but let us suppose the Lions are kept.

 

RN gets to build Nelson and Rodney, but on their completion, must scrap three captal ships and the cadet training ship Thunderer. Since we are keeping the Lions, we have to scrap two Iron Dukes, the last King George V, and the Thunderer.

 

London Treaty, 1930. This is where it becomes very hard to justify keeping the three older battlecruisers. By terms of the treaty, the RN must take five capital ships out of service. Historically, the RN scrapped the Tiger and three Iron Dukes and converted Iron Duke herself to a gunnery training ship. This left a battlefleet consisting entirely of 15" gunned capital ships, all oil-burning, clearly a desirable degree of uniformity. To keep Tiger and the Lions, we have to scrap the last two Iron Dukes and two Royal Sovereigns, and demilitarize a Royal Sovereign. This leaves three ships with a different armament (13.5") from the rest of the fleet, and even worse, with coal-burning machinery. So these ships must be completely reconstructed with oil-burning machinery (and other improvements, of course).

 

But the London Treaty extended the battleship holiday for 5 years, so that in 1936 it becomes possible to start replacing ships that are 20 or more years old. For the RN, every ship built in WWI is eligible for replacement in 1936 except Ramillies, which can be replaced in 1937, so the pace of modernization is a matter of finance and shipyard capacity, which is needed by both full reconstruction of existing ships and new construction. Since new ships will be better than even fully reconstructed ships and older ships would have to be taken out of service as the new ships arrive, it makes no sense to keep doing full reconstructions at the expense of new construction once new construction ships start arriving, say around 1939. Historically, the RN fully reconstructed (fully replaced machinery of) only four ships between 1930 and 1941, Renown, Warspite, Queen Elizabeth, and Valiant. Since there were other ships that clearly would have benefitted from a full reconstruction (Hood, Repulse, Barham, Malaya), this is likely to have been the limit.

 

So if we are keeping Tiger and the Lions, we must reconstruct them, probably at the expense of reconstructing Warspite, Queen Elizabeth, and Valiant. Now consider what this means from the point of view of the British Admiralty in 1930.

 

The big question for the Admiralty is: when will there be a war?

 

If war comes in the early or mid '30s, Tiger and the Lions will either be undergoing reconstruction or not reconstructed, so our hypothetical situation will be no better and possibly worse than the historical situation. If war comes between 1938 and 1940, say, the Tiger and the Lions will be reconstructed in time for it, so the RN will be in better shape than historically. But if there is no war by 1940, the first class of modern capital ships will be ready in time, so there will be 4 or 5 fast modern battleships plus Hood, Renown, and Repulse, i.e. half the battlefleet will be fast ships even without Tiger and the Lions. And in another 3 or 4 years, the Admiralty can reasonably expect 4 more fast battleships to replace more old ships, i.e. the Lions will probably be taken out of service.

 

To summarize, given the treaty limits on capital ships, the older ships lose much of their value when new construction begins to come on line, say 1940. Tiger and the Lions are not of real value until completely reconstructed, but given the length of time required for reconstruction and the limited number of such extensive reconstructions possible, reconstructing Tiger and the Lions would only pay off if war were to come in a very limited period, say 1938-1940. Of course, WWII did start in 1939, but the Admiralty of 1930 could hardly predict that. So I think that even if Tiger and the Lions were still around in 1930, the rational thing for the Admiralty to do would have been to scrap them, ending up with the battlefleet as it was historically.

 

So even if the Admiralty had been prescient enough to realize that in the future speed and range would be more important than absolute firepower and armor, I don't think they could have done much differently, except perhaps to reconstruct Repulse and Hood in place of two of the Queen Elizabeths.

 

Hojutsuka

 

Spelling edit.

Edited January 13, 2005 by hojutsuka

[Icicle]

I tend to agree with hojutsuka.

The only place they could really change the fleet was with the design of the new KGV's.

The treaty restrictions seemed to have imposed more restrictions on Britian. Not just the scrapping of a great deal of ships. I suppose it was because of the fleet design at thier signing.

[Mobius]

I tend to agree with hojutsuka.

The only place they could really change the fleet was with the design of the new KGV's.

133681[/snapback]

Talk about your petite battleships.

[Tony Williams]

Good analysis, hojutsuka.

 

IMO the problems with the RN's capital ships at the start of WW2 were:

 

1. The potentially very useful Repulse and Hood unmodernised.

 

2. The slow R-class battleships of very limited use - and soaking up large crews as well as utilising valuable 15 inch gun turrets.

 

3. The new KGVs not available yet (and with some significant teething problems when they arrived).

 

My own 'ideal RN battleship plan' would need a point of departure around 1935 when the shape of the new generation was fixed by international agreement. The key difference would have been that instead of agreeing to go for 14 inch ships (with 16 inch as a get-out clause), to have 15 inch ships accepted (as the Germans, French and Italians built anyway). The reason for that is that the design, manufacture, testing and debugging of the main armament was the major factor affecting the cost and delivery times of new battleships, so that calibre change would allow the re-use of existing 15 inch turrets with huge savings in cost and time.

 

You will no doubt guess what's coming next: those spare 15 inch turrets from Courageous and Glorious (historically used in the Vanguard) will arm the first of a new class of KGVs, essentially 'reduced Vanguards' with the same main armament . The weight would be saved in some reduction of length and main belt armour, and in the use of the (superior) 4.5 inch secondaries. The R-class would then be decommissioned in rotation and their armament stripped to instal in the new ships. By doing this I think it probable that the RN could have had six new 15 inch ships with great cost and time savings compared with the five 14" ships they actually got. Additional savings would have come from carrying out no further modifications to the QEs (except adding more AA guns). Those savings would of course have been used to modernise the Hood and Repulse, as well as build more carriers more quickly.

 

What I don't know is how that would have worked out in terms of dockyard capacity, specifically the number of capital ships which could be worked on at once. However, I thought it was an attractive enough idea to include within 'The Foresight War'

 

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion

forum

[larrikin]

Good analysis, hojutsuka.

 

IMO the problems with the RN's capital ships at the start of WW2 were:

 

1. The potentially very useful Repulse and Hood unmodernised.

 

2. The slow R-class battleships of very limited use - and soaking up large crews as well as utilising valuable 15 inch gun turrets.

 

3. The new KGVs not available yet (and with some significant teething problems when they arrived).

 

My own 'ideal RN battleship plan' would need a point of departure around 1935 when the shape of the new generation was fixed by international agreement. The key difference would have been that instead of agreeing to go for 14 inch ships (with 16 inch as a get-out clause), to have 15 inch ships accepted (as the Germans, French and Italians built anyway). The reason for that is that the design, manufacture, testing and debugging of the main armament was the major factor affecting the cost and delivery times of new battleships, so that calibre change would allow the re-use of existing 15 inch turrets with huge savings in cost and time.

 

You will no doubt guess what's coming next: those spare 15 inch turrets from Courageous and Glorious (historically used in the Vanguard) will arm the first of a new class of KGVs, essentially 'reduced Vanguards' with the same main armament . The weight would be saved in some reduction of length and main belt armour, and in the use of the (superior) 4.5 inch secondaries. The R-class would then be decommissioned in rotation and their armament stripped to instal in the new ships. By doing this I think it probable that the RN could have had six new 15 inch ships with great cost and time savings compared with the five 14" ships they actually got. Additional savings would have come from carrying out no further modifications to the QEs (except adding more AA guns). Those savings would of course have been used to modernise the Hood and Repulse, as well as build more carriers more  quickly.

 

What I don't know is how that would have worked out in terms of dockyard capacity, specifically the number of capital ships which could be worked on at once. However, I thought it was an attractive enough idea to include within 'The Foresight War' 

 

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion

forum

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Tony, we hashed this out on the Battlecruisers and pre-Dreads board and ISTR that the yard capacity was there, the gun production wasn't, and it was tossed up that the 24 15" turrets available (C & G, all 5 Rs) may have been even better served by building 8 6 x 15" 30+kters with massive AA. Laying down 2 in each from '35 to '38 would have seen all 8 done by '40. At 35k tons they would have been very well protected and given the RN 11 fast 15" ships, and the NelRods and QEs as a slow (but still faster than the old USN & IJN BBs) battle line, to be replaced by the 16" Lions, the first 2 of which could have been laid down in '39.

[Tony Williams]

Tony, we hashed this out on the Battlecruisers and pre-Dreads board and ISTR that the yard capacity was there, the gun production wasn't, and it was tossed up that the 24 15" turrets available (C & G, all 5 Rs) may have been even better served by building 8 6 x 15" 30+kters with massive AA. 

 

I think that you may be right in terms of practical effectiveness, but I strongly doubt that the RN, politicians and public of the time would have accepted a battleship design so undergunned by comparison with the opposition (or existing RN ships).

 

TW

[Durandal]

This is more a joke but long time ago i remember playing an Atari ST computer wargames about battleships. i did a competition 1 vs 1 both played by the computer and with all the main 16 BB.

At the begining of the final duel the Richelieu won with a lucky hit in one of the Yamato's ammuniation magazine.

The good thing it was possible to customize all ships and so to give them their original values.

[Scott Cunningham]

I did a scenario once in "Fighting Steel" that pitted the USS Tennesee agaist the Tirpitz on a night action in the N Atlantic.

 

I managed to sink the Tirpitz by staying at long range, and using my radar directed gunnery. Instead of using AP I started with HE, blasting her fire control apart (no way to tell, I just hoped for hits). Then I switched to AP when she was defenseless, closed the range a bit to increase my hit %, then sent some destroyers in to sink her with torpedoes. I only suffered two hits in the engagement.

 

Granted, it was a simulation, but I was actually suprised by the lopsidedness of the results.

 

One thing FS demonstrated was that battleships were OK for knocking out other ships with gunfire (mission kills) but to sink a ship, torpedoes were the key.

 

Getting back to the initial post, I think it is 95% safe to say the Iowas were easily the best battleships ever built. This would probably be a better discussion if it were titled "The Second Best Battleships Ever Built"

[Guest aevans]

I think that you may be right in terms of practical effectiveness, but I strongly doubt that the RN, politicians and public of the time would have accepted a battleship design so undergunned by comparison with the opposition (or existing RN ships).

 

TW

133834[/snapback]

 

Renown and Repulse were six gun ships.

[hojutsuka]

Renown and Repulse were six gun ships.

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They were built during World War I by Admiral Fisher, so politicians and public had no say in them! For that matter, even those in the RN who didn't agree with Fisher got very short shrift from him...

 

Hojutsuka