WesWorld

I'm curious to get people's thoughts on a few aspects of battlecruiser design, as I find these rather bothersome to sim...

1. Main Battery - do you prefer battleship-caliber guns, 13.8" to 15"? Or a greater number of lesser guns in the 11" to 12" range?

2. Protection - Protect everything against cruiser fire only? Provide turret and deck armor that can tolerate long range capital ship fire (that is, while you're running away)?

2a. Torpedo bulkheads - Mandatory? Or justifiably omitted when powerplant and armament take up a lot of space?

3. Speed - 30 kts? 31? 32? More?

4. Of these, which would you consider the best design, and why: Kongo (as modernized), Alaska, Scharnhorst, Renown (as modernized), Dunkerque. Which would you consider the worst?

If you look at the main requirement of a BB vs BC you should find some of your answers.

BB emphesize on:
Armament
Armor
torpedo defence
speed

BC emphesize on:
speed
armament
Armor
torpedo defence

In a true battlecruiser role I would prefer the U.S. Alaska, but in a WW2 senario there isn't any real need for a "true" battlecruiser so in that sence i would go with the Scharnhorst as she is the best protected save her boiler hump and argueably flawed turret design. Alaska lacks any serious torpedo defence, Dunkerque is the slowest of the bunch, Kongo and Renown are not bad but suffer from being old and having limited posibilitys for improvement.
Speed is the prime charactoristic of a battlecruiser but other stuff has to be sacrificed for that speed so you'll always find yourself wanting. In our sim 40,000 tons will give you alot of room to work with for a battlecruiser. Bare minimum you should have a high speed with the armor to take on anything lesser and have little to fear while having the adequate armament to do the required job.
My tendancy would be to go for a large caliber gun between the range of 12" and 14" so as to give a significant advantage if facing off with cruisers. Speed would be as high as you can get it without making the ship a tin can armor wise. When it comes to armor it gets dicey, you can either armor the hull to protect the machinery and live to fight another day or armor the guns and fight to the death if nessasary but again i would try to get the best of both worlds.
If you armor the guns and deck to take some punishment from enemy BB's there is no point in turning away, speed is for running and armor is for gunning and your balance between the two will reflect your actions.

Thanks for that. I'd agree that 40,000 t will get you a lot of goods, but I'm more interested in a smaller hull. Hence the omission of Hood from that list.

I think my question is further complicated by the timeframe. What is the role of a battlecruiser, if any, in the mid-20s and early thirties? Airpower is generally unproven, British battlecruisers have been blown up all over the North Sea, and I (at least) don't have a battleline in need of screening.

British design or German design? World of difference right there.

S&G IMHO were light battleships, nothing to do with that british design failure and misconceived idea called the BC. vdT and followers were IMHO the beginnings of the fast BB. Alaska was a mistake. could she have survied an encounter with Scharnhorst? I doubt it. (let's ignore RADAR fire control, shall we?)

I think you need cruiser killers and should look at the dutch "BCs" or cruiser killer designs like my EL Cid.

cheers

Bernhard

Hood tends to be classed as a fast BB as well as a BC, and had she recieved her additional armor aft as wll as modifications to her deck armor she would have been a fast BB. Scharnhorst could also be considered unique, as she reversed the armor and gun priorities that BC's normally use. Instead of large guns with light armor she received light guns and more armor. Unfortunately with a Scharnhorst Vs. Alaska duel I can't help but not egnore the radar/fire control issue as thease two togeather can change the whole face of a battle, and i can't help but reflect on the sinking of the scharnhorst at the hands of the DOY whos radar worked exceptionally well. Without radar and FC on paper the Scharnhorst should win unless she gets a critical hit in the boiler hump area early on.

IMHO all German BCs had that reversal of armour over gunnery, which is why they survived Jutland. This is not new to S&G.

Bernhard

Well...what's a light battleship versus a battlecruiser? Either one will take a pounding if it goes up against a real battleship.

I have a cruiser killer design in progress; India plans to lay down the Shivagi in 1923. I'm just fiddling with her dimensions, which swings her displacement by 2,000 tons depending on what version I go with.

That would leave me with 62,000 to 60,000 tons to play with, and as the last couple of threads would imply, I'm still puzzling out how to use them.

Wes: I'm not familiar enough with S&G: what is this boiler hump you refer to?

J

A battlecruiser is less heavily armed and armoured than a battleship. Iron Duke has 10 13.5" guns and Tiger has only 8 main guns.
I believe that Battlecruisers should have a large armament so that they could sink Battleships if need be. Cruiser killers are fairly useless against BBs because of the smaller weapons.
E.g. the Admiral class cruisers of WWII were to have 9-12 9.2 " guns, speed of 33knts and be armoured against cruiser gunfire. This necesstated a ship of c. 25,000t displacement and was not built for a couple of reasons; 1. It had no contemporaries to fight 2. It could not fight larger ships, 3. You could build an Extra Vanguard for the price of 2 of these cruisers.

Of the ships you mentioned i would have Renown as the best BC. She has the biggest guns. Kongo is all right, Dunkerque really is a BB, Scharnhorst is very poor not being able to inflict much damage on anything(compare her to Nelson, which is actually smaller). Alaska was a complete waste of money but OK as an AA ship.

The boiler hump was a gap in the armour of Scharnhorst.

NB. The BC is not a misconcieved idea if used the right way; You don't use a BB as a submarine so don't use a BC as a BB.

I have yet to see a picture of scharnhorsts armor schem but from what I understand the Scharnhorsts machinery plant was taller than her deck armor and as such the armor was raised in that area. This leaves (don't quote me on this) 8" of vertical armor protection around her machinery where a diving shell can drop right in.

well, what is the correct use of a BC? fight it out with BBs'? - Suicide.

fight other BCs? use BBs for the purpose.

S&G' 28 cm guns may not have been capable of sinking a BB, but could soft kill one, especially plunging fire at long range. And it can choose when to engage N&R because of a 9.5 kn speed difference. After the refit she could prolly have taken them on quite handily.

Do you have any data on the admiral class? Or even better a webpage?

Renown is dead meat against S&G, D&S, might kill Alaska, will prolly kill Kongo.

S&G will kill D&S, given radar fire control or Alaska with purely optical will kill Alaska, will definitely kill Kongo and will also kill Renown IMHO.

and please take a look at the armour of let's say von der Tann against Invincible which it was designed to counter and against her contemporary Tiger:

Belt:
vdT: 250 mm
Invincible: 152 mm
Tiger: 228 mm

Turrets:
vdT:228 mm
Invinvible: 178 mm
Tiger: 228 mm

I maintain that Germany basically built very early fast battleships whereas the UK built a misbegotten cretin that cost more than 4000 sailors their lives in the Battle of Jutland

This becomes even clearer when we compare Tiger to Seydlitz and Derfflinger:

S:
Belt: 300 mm
Turrets: 228 mm

D:
Belt: 300 mm
Turrets: 270 mm

The design philosophy for BCs between Germany and the UK was majorly different and Jacky Fisher's "Speed is the best Protection" cost many sailors unnecessarily their lives. The only ships Germany ever built that were overarmed and underarmoured were the 3 Deutschland class Panzerschiffe.

cheers

Bernhard

BTW: I count S&G and S&D as light battleships, not Battlecruisers.

I agree on the Scharnhorst's being light or fast battleships allthough I'm not so sure she would resoundingly defeat the Renowns or the Kongos. These two BC's are heavy hitters and will surely ruin S&G's day with a few large caliber hits.
As to the jutland era ships I think the British BC's (and BB's for that matter) had very volitile cordite and it seems it didn't take much to set it off. Seydlitz came extremely close to sinking herself after the battle and only just barely made it home. The german ships did tend to take more of a punishment and still survive.

Scharnhorst sink Renown? Balderdash. Renown beat both Shcarnhorst and Gneisenau off Norway.
Plunging fire at long range is very poor with the 28cm guns. They are 54.5cal giving very flat trajectories.

The Gun size makes a lot of difference, e.g. 11" 780lb shells. 15" 1938lb shells. that is nearly 3 times as heavy. All BCs are eggshells with hammers, renown's hammer is a lot larger so she can do more smashing.

I think the german navy rules of engagement beat S&G rather than the Renown. She would have had it tough if the twins decided to fight, but for sure one twin would be hurt bad if not sunk in the engagement reguardless of wether or not they sink Renown.

pont taken about the plinging fire. OTOH S&G are _much_ better armoured, not qualifying as eggshells at all. That's why IMHO the are not BCs.#

Bernhard