Username: MBecker01
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 793
Date of Post: (02/23/07 07:33:48)
Anybody knowing why the USN did designated the Alaskas as "large cruisers"? Did they feel the term "Battlecruiser" was no longer politically correct after HMS Hood just blew up?
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Username: JPaulMartin
Nickname: Capitalist Pig
Number of Posts: 1481
Date of Post: (02/23/07 07:39:05)
The USN considered the Alaskas to be the natural evolution of the heavy cruiser in a treaty free environment.
It had nothing to do with Hood.
Jeff
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/23/07 07:51:59)
Just so; also, these ships were designated "large cruisers" when authorized in July 1940, so the term is at least that old and probably goes back somewhat farther.
In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal; America's is. - Ronald Reagan
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Username: JBG
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 1691
Date of Post: (02/24/07 02:46:44)
When you look at their configeration they most resemble a heavy cruiser rather than a battlecruiser so I find the description apt. Friedman has something to say on the issue as well.
The USN also had a proposed CC, converted into Lex and Sara. They were not typical BCs either. Perhaps the closest that the USN ever came to a BC was the Iowa class though really it was the destiny of the fast BB to render the BC otiose.
For what it's worth ( cringes, expecting incoming white elephants!! ) I really like the look of the Alaskas but would have preferred that the catapults be landed and replaced by further 5"/38s.
Jonathan
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Username: MBecker01
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 793
Date of Post: (02/24/07 12:56:21)
When you look at their configeration they most resemble a heavy cruiser rather than a battlecruiser so I find the description apt.
Hmm .... a ship 32,000+tons big, 250 meters long, armed with 9*12inch guns and 9inches of armour resembles a CA? Maybe its design was based on one, but it sure as hell looks like a BC.
And why were the Lex-class BCs no "typical" BCs? 34 knots, 16inch guns and a *shudder* 7inch armour belt is very "Jackie Fisher" like, isnt it? Or did you want to say they would have been even worse than other BCs?
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Username: Tony Evans
Nickname: Banned User
Number of Posts: 4163
Date of Post: (02/24/07 15:46:15)
The Alaskas had cruiser hull forms and a secondary armament layout typical of US post-treaty cruisers. If you look at similar angle photos of CA and CB class vessels, it's pretty obvious they're from the same stable.
Now you put 630 sergeants together and, oh mother, you've got yourself a situation.
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Username: sunkrepeatedly
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 56
Date of Post: (02/24/07 18:16:53)
The Alaskas were cruisers more than "battlecruisers" because of their TDS.
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Username: Dave Bender
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 258
Date of Post: (02/26/07 07:26:44)
http://www.navsource.org/archives/04/134/04134.htm
The Des Moines class was the natural (and in my opinion darn near perfect) evolution of the heavy cruiser series. This ship is what heavy cruisers were meant to be.
The BC Alaska class was a throwback to pre-WWI era thinking. The design was obsolete from the moment the keel was laid. Total service life for the U.S.S. Alaska was less then 3 years (commissioned June 1944, decommissioned and never reactivated Feb 1947). A total waste of money. But the U.S. had the money to waste.
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Username: tomthehand
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 105
Date of Post: (02/26/07 08:40:42)
Also, compare them to their battleship contemporaries, the Montana class. They start to look more like the natural evolution of the cruiser when compared to Montana's natural evolution of the battleship.
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Username: Tony Evans
Nickname: Banned User
Number of Posts: 4163
Date of Post: (02/26/07 13:20:42)
Des Moines was the apotheosis of and equally dead end evolutionary path, just one that took longer to fade into oblivion. Also, the post-treaty 8" gun cruisers were notoriously inefficient of manpower.
Now you put 630 sergeants together and, oh mother, you've got yourself a situation.
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Username: Dave Bender
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 258
Date of Post: (02/26/07 19:38:44)
The CA Des Moines served 13 years, which is about 4 times as long as the BC Alaska. Her sister ship CA Newport News served a full service life of 27 years before finally being decommissioned in 1975. All ships become obsolete eventually. The Des Moines class cruisers were the right ship type at the right time.
The Alaska Class BCs were the right ship type for fighting the 1914 Battle of the Falklands or 1915 Battle of Dogger Bank. The designer must have been inspired by Jacky Fisher.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/26/07 19:59:36)
What on earth are you smoking? Des Moines was obsolete before she was even laid down; the semi-automatic 8-inch gun was intended to extend the range at which gunships could deal with rapidly maneuvering surface targets, with a secondary long-range antiaircraft role. The anti-ship role evaporated with the IJN and the antiaircraft role was always questionable.
Des Moines was built because the Navy had spent a lot of time and money developing a weapon and wanted to send it to sea (the Worcesters were built for the same reason.)
The only reason any of them saw significant postwar service was because they made good flagships and could fire the occasional shore bombardment. As Tony said, they were a dead end.
In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal; America's is. - Ronald Reagan
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Username: James1978
Nickname: Geography Teacher
Number of Posts: 1020
Date of Post: (02/26/07 20:31:01)
Hey Theodore, I don't suppose you saved that explanation/justification for the Alaskas and how they weren't a product of FDR's whim that you put on on the Battleship board some time back? All the data is scattered around in Friedman's, but you pulled it together so well.
James
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/26/07 20:32:02)
I think part of the confusion stems from differing conceptions of the functions of ships with characteristics intermediate to cruisers and battleships. The RN and KM conceived of battlecruisers as "battle scouts," overgrown armored cruisers primarily intended to fulfill battlefleet functions such as scouting and operating as the fast wing of the battlefleet. Trade protection and independent operations were secondary. When the USN contemplated ships intended for those functions, they called them battlecruisers - witness the Lexingtons and other interwar studies.
However, the Alaskas did not fulfill the same roles. They were intended primarily for carrier screening duties (in which they would augment the existing heavy cruisers in fighting off enemy heavy cruisers) and independent operations against enemy commerce raiders. They did not have a battlefleet function - they weren't scouts (by that time, USN scouting jobs had passed to aircraft and submarines), nor were they a fast wing of the battlefleet (that's what the Iowas were for.) So they weren't battlecruisers - they were large cruisers.
So even though the various intermediate ships of the 1930s and 1940s all had fairly similar characteristics, they were different things to their navies. The Alaskas were large cruisers. The Scharnhorsts were battleships (because they were the entire German battlefleet when they were built.) Ditto the Dutch 1047s. The Japanese B-64/65 was called "Super A-type" by the IJN, which sounds like large cruiser (the A-type was the heavy cruiser) but because the Japanese conceived of their A-type cruisers as integral to the battlefleet and intended to use the Super A-type in the same way, they were battlecruisers. And the Dunkerques could be either battleships or battlecruisers, depending on how the French chose to use them on any given day (and the French described them both ways, too!)
Given all these differing conceptions, it's no surprise there's so much confusion. Some people refer to all of the modern intermediate types as "light battleships," and I think that's as apt a descriptor as any if you want just one term to describe them all.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/26/07 20:46:53)
I don't think so, sorry. There's some of that sort of thing in another post farther down the thread.
The short version is that the Navy wasn't happy having its carriers defended only by heavy cruisers when there were so many Japanese heavy cruisers and maybe the odd Kongo or its replacement wandering around the ocean and wanted something better than a CA in the screen without having to resort to using full-sized fast battleships (read Iowas) for the job. They also wanted something that could whack a pocket battleship with ease, again without having to send an Iowa after her. Not that anybody objected to overkill, but Alaskas were a lot cheaper and easier to build than Iowas, so you could get more of them and not take away from the battlefleet. The project's biggest booster was Admiral King, even before he rose to COMINCH/CNO; FDR was interested, but he was interested in everything the Navy did. He was also smart enough to listen to the Navy Department professionals when they told him his latest idea was a bad one.
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Username: Dave Bender
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 258
Date of Post: (02/27/07 07:52:19)
Not too many of those running around the Pacific in 1944.
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Username: Tony Evans
Nickname: Banned User
Number of Posts: 4163
Date of Post: (02/27/07 08:36:54)
And? The CBs would have totally dominated a surface engagement between cruisers in ways that even the latest CAs could not have. Also, from the point of view of manpower/resource management and likely missions, the continuation in commission of BBs through the end of Korea makes less sense than the retirement of the CBs. A rational navy would have turned the BBs into razor blades and kept the CBs at least in storage.
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Username: Dirk Mothaar
Nickname: Adminstrator Emeritus
Number of Posts: 1039
Date of Post: (02/27/07 10:44:43)
Tony, I disagree. The Alaskas had very nearly as large a crew as the Iowas, but were sizably less capable ships. In terms of operating costs, they were at least 90% as expensive as an Iowa, which I think explains their disposal and the Iowas' retention.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/27/07 10:52:44)
There were also four Iowas and only two Alaskas.
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Username: Tony Evans
Nickname: Banned User
Number of Posts: 4163
Date of Post: (02/27/07 11:22:17)
According to navsource, Alaska had a rated complement of 1512. Iowa's rated complement was 1921. Also, due to its secondary armament layout, Alaska had an effective 5" broadside of 8 guns out of 12, while Iowa had 10 guns out of 20. One can make all sorts of arguments whether efficiency is more important than redundancy, and whether a total heavy AA battery of 20 guns was that much more useful than 12 in absolute terms, and just how much more effective 16" guns were than 12" gunsi n the bombardment role. But given the likely post war threats and operating modes, and given the fact all large gun vessels were going to be put away against need, I can see an argument for wanting to keep two or three supercruisers over 3 or 4 BBs.
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Username: Billy Boy Mark II
Nickname:
Number of Posts: 2742
Date of Post: (02/27/07 13:49:43)
Dutch 1047's? what were they?
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/27/07 13:51:45)
Scharnhorst with a Dutch accent. Light battleships intended for duty in the NEI.
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Username: MBecker01
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 793
Date of Post: (02/27/07 15:05:25)
The Dunkerques were purpose build pocket-BB killers. The pocket-BBs were supposed to be faster than more powerful warships and more powerful than faster ones. Britain had three BCs that were faster and more powerful, but France just had half a dozen or so slow WW1-BBs. Thats why they came up with the Dunkerques, who made almost 30 knots, but carried just enough armor to protect them from a 11inch shell.
Maybe they might have been effective against the modernized, but still lightly armoured italian BBs, but not against one with standard armour and armament.
And the Scharnhorsts were battleships, because they carried as much armour as BBs did(14inches/40% of the ships weight).
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Username: Billy Boy Mark II
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 2742
Date of Post: (02/27/07 16:17:19)
I had heard they thought about building BC's before WW1 and WW2... Any design specs?
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Username: MBecker01
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 793
Date of Post: (02/27/07 16:31:52)
Its not much:
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNNeth_11-545.htm
http://www.dutchfleet.net/viewtopic.php ... ad0c7e3eef
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Username: Dave Bender
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 258
Date of Post: (02/27/07 19:02:25)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_cru ... g%C3%A9rie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_bat ... _Dunkerque
I doubt it, although that may have been the official justfication. In reality the existing French Algrie class heavy cruiser was perfectly capable of handling a Deutschland class Panzerschiff. Not to mention that the German Army was vastly overmatched by the French Army at the time Dunkerque was laid down in 1932.
Defending Indo-China against Japan is a more likely reason, just as the Dutch were considering BCs to defend the East Indies. Also it gave the French navy a chance to perfect the quad turrret prior to building the Richelieu class battleships.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/27/07 20:10:04)
I don't know that I'd go so far as to describe the Dunkerques as "purpose-built pocket battleship killers." The panzerschiffe certainly had an impact on their design, but they weren't the only thing out there. The French had to balance treaty constraints and operational needs; at the time these ships were designed, the threat included foreign cruisers (besides the panzerschiffe) and the Italian battlefleet, which was then made up of unmodernized 12-inch battleships. They needed something that could be both battleship and battlecruiser. What they ended up with was a light battleship.
Saying that the Scharnhorsts were battleships because of their armor completely misses the point. A ship is defined by its function, not its characteristics. The Fletchers had about as much armor as the Tourvilles, but that doesn't make them heavy cruisers. The Scharnhorsts were battleships because they were intended to fight French battleships, not because of how much armor they had.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/27/07 20:27:09)
The Dutch contemplated a dreadnought program for NEI defense in 1912-14. They got designs from several builders but never ordered anything. The designs were typical export battleships - eight guns in the 13.5-14-inch range, 21-22 knots, 9-10-inch armor, 20-25,000 tons.
In 1938 they started thinking about another naval program designed to reinforce the NEI. They decided the Japanese probably wouldn't be able to send battleships against their possessions because they'd be tied down by British and American battleships, so from the outset they looked at ships designed to fight Japanese heavy cruisers. They got a good deal of German technical assistance and planned to buy much material (including guns and armor) from Germany, but the ships were to have beeen built in the Netherlands (to that end, the Dutch started expanding their naval facilities.) They never did settle on a design; 1047 was the last in the series before Germany invaded: nine 11-inch guns, 34 knots, 10-inch armor, 28,000 tons.
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Username: JBG
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 1691
Date of Post: (02/28/07 02:31:01)
I must admit that I like Tiornu's description elsewhere of the twins as being "second class batteleships" to be quite apt. They had the armour and speed to take on a battle line but not the caliber of armament. The French ships don't quite make it in tis grey area, being for the first two BCs and for the last two BBs.
CB for the Alaska's is proper. As they were a USN invention, the USN can, I suppose, describe them as they wish but the USN wasn't given to bizarre flights of fancy when denoting ships when they actually got around to constructing those ships.
The USN was always most interested in the homogeonous battle line. The BC, in it's RN or DKM form, was not a natural design for the USN and so the nearest they got was the CCs, the Iowas and the Alaskas.
But the late WW2 ships can also be seen as treaty free expressions of naval design and only the USN could really even attempt to fully explore the new vistas established by the abandonment of the treaties - Des Moines, Worcester, Alaska and Montana.
Truly, whilst Theodore has provided some excellent analysis, this topic has been well ventilated ( including, I must say, by Theodore ) on many occasions on, at least, the BC Board and Warshipprojects. I am not a member at Navweaps.
Jonathan
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Username: Seer Stuart
Nickname: The Prince of Darkness
Number of Posts: 7088
Date of Post: (02/28/07 06:14:03)
The Dunkerques were purpose build pocket-BB killers.
Not really (although that is a common statement). Designing a ship as "an answer to" or ""killer-of" is actually very rare. Dunkerque actually comes from a different root entirely. Back in 1922,the French dreadnought Paris went aground in Quiberon Bay and was a total loss. Under the terms of the Washington Treaty (signed later but applicable to Paris's replacement) she was eligible for replacement but as a replacement what she could be was quite severly restricted. Essentially, she could be equivalent to the latest French battleship class (25,000 tons, 13.4 inch guns, armor belt 270mm) but no more than that. Dunkerque was designed within those limits - when work on her started, the German panzerschiffe were unknwon quantities.
The French decided (quite rightly) that they couldn't build a satisfactory battleship on 25,000 tons when everybody else was building to 35,000 and that an attempt to do so would result in a ship that was obsolete before she was launched. So, they decided to use the available displacement to build a light battleship that was faster than the battle line but sacrificed gunpower (enforced anyway due to the limitation to 13.4 inch guns) and armor (also limited anyway). One of the roles seen for the new ship was as a cruiser-killer, designed to protect trade and commerce from the Washington Class 8 inch cruisers. Work on the ship proceeded very slowly but it got speeded up when news of the Panzerschiffe started to come out.
Later, the old battleship Jean Bart was scheduled to be disarmed as a training ship so a sister to Dunkerque was ordered to replace her. That later ship was signficantly improved with heavier armor et al.
So, while the Panzerschiffe were certainly part of the general threat spectrum that existed when the Dunkerques were being built, they weren't built specifically to counter those ships. It's probably truer to say the French Navy used them to prod the government into getting their light battleships built faster. A very good case can be made that in reality, the Dunkerque's were better suited to France's real requirements than the later 15 inch gun ships. For the same investment the French could have had a fleet of 10 Dunkerques for the six 15 inch ships they had planned.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others.
Nations survive by making examples of others
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Username: Dave Bender
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 258
Date of Post: (02/28/07 07:06:10)
Why go with expensive BCs if Japanese CAs are the target? A Prinz Eugen (modified Hipper) class CA is easily a match for the Japanese cruisers, and probably a lot more useful in restricted waters around all those East Indies Islands. The excellent German 20.3cm naval rifle and 12 x torpedoes will beat the Japanese cruisers at their own game. If the Dutch get the SeaKat radar that will be a nice bonus.
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Username: MBecker01
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 793
Date of Post: (02/28/07 08:07:25)
Sure about the 25,000 ton limit?
According to "Janes BBs of the 20th Century" the WNT allowed France to build two 35,000 ton BBs, an option France did not exercise until the "Deutschland" was launched. And when they did they stayed well below the 35,000 ton limit.
That indicates they did not plan to use them against other BBs. And why should they? Italys BBs were even more obsolete then the French ones.
As far as the Richelieus are concerned, they were needed to counter the threat of the heavier german and italian BBs under construction after 1935.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/28/07 09:23:11)
Stuart, I'm not sure where you found that particular treaty interpretation, but it appears to be badly in error. For openers, France was lost several months after the treaty entered into force. Nor were there any restrictions on replacements for accidental losses more severe than those on other replacement tonnage; that's spelled out explicitly in the treaty:
"In case of loss or accidental destruction of capital ships or aircraft carriers, they may immediately be replaced by new construction subject to the tonnage limits prescribed in Articles IV and VII and in conformity with the other provisions of the present Treaty, the regular replacement program being deemed to be advanced to that extent."
In other words, the French were free to build a 35,000-ton, 16-inch-gun battleship immediately as a replacement for France.
Not that the French were interested in such ships at the time. The treaty specified replacement tonnage, not replacement hulls, and set the French figure at 175,000 tons, which equates to five 35,000-tonners. As you say, the French started out looking at cruiser-killers aimed at treaty cruisers back in 1926; those were 17,500-ton ships armed with eight 12-inch guns, protected against 8-inch fire, and capable of 34-36 knots. Under the treaty, they could eventually build ten such ships. However, the German announcement of Deutschland in 1928 changed the equation: now the "croiseur de combat" had to be able to withstand 11-inch fire. So the ship had to get bigger. It also got slower, and the French also wanted something with more punch than a 12-inch gun (my guess is they were afraid they'd be stuck with their wimpy prewar 12-inch gun and wanted something modern. If that was the case, they weren't the only ones with such a fear - the USN had it too.)
Another factor in French capital ship design was the continuing British demand for further qualitative restrictions on capital ships. There was another disarmament conference at Geneva in 1927 that didn't get anywhere; the British spent the whole time pressing for a reduction to 25,000 tons and 12-inch guns. Everybody else thought this was a horrible idea and the conference fell apart.
The French tried to do it anyway. By 1930 they had a design for a 25,000-ton ship armed with 12-inch guns and protected against 11-inch fire. However, the London Treaty of 1930 did not put further qualitative restrictions on capital ships, so the French promptly went up to the 13-inch gun. That and some extra deck armor to protect against bombs pushed the displacement up to its final figure of 26,500 tons. The French could only get six such ships under their tonnage cap, but that stopped mattering in 1935 when the French gave notice of their withdrawal from the treaty system (following Japan out the door.)
The Richelieus came from an entirely different political-military situation that included the naval rearmament taking place in Italy and Japan, the prospective rearmament of Germany, and questions over Britain's commitment to containing Germany.
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Username: Seer Stuart
Nickname: The Prince of Darkness
Number of Posts: 7088
Date of Post: (02/28/07 10:08:54)
Stuart, I'm not sure where you found that particular treaty interpretation, but it appears to be badly in error. For openers, France was lost several months after the treaty entered into force. Nor were there any restrictions on replacements for accidental losses more severe than those on other replacement tonnage; that's spelled out explicitly in the treaty
Sorry, my memory at fault. That's what happens when one gets old. It was the French Government that insisted the replacement for Paris be of approximately the same size and characteristics as Paris. They have a bad habit of doing that; in the early days of the Charles de Gaulle, the French Government originally insisted that the CdG be the same "size" as the Foch. That kicked off the light battleship ideas in the early 1920s since it was pretty obvious that 35,000/16 was the coming standard and, as you say, the French weren't into that. Later, as the cruiser-killer got bigger it became virtually identical to the light battleship Paris replacement and the two merged to produce Dunkerque.
John Jordan has done a very good series of articles on French warship design (almost up to Norman Friedman standards) that show just how complex these design histories are.
Another intersting thought; I wonder if Dukerque and Strasbourg had survived WW2 whether they would have carried on the way the cruisers Colbert and de Grasse did, getting Masurca as a rebuild in the 1960s.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/28/07 11:36:47)
I'll have to get hold of the Jordan articles. I'm working mostly from Garzke & Dulin. I am given to understand that the best works on French warships are (unsurprisingly) in the French language. That's not a problem for me, but I haven't laid hands on the books yet.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/28/07 12:01:03)
Hippers preferable to Japanese cruisers? As the Senior Chief would say, pardon me while I fall down laughing. Everybody's 8-inch guns were comparable. German torpedoes were in the same class as American torpedoes (that's not a compliment.) Hipper's protection left everything to be desired - it couldn't even stand up to 6-inch fire - and Hipper's engines and boilers were a breakdown waiting to happen (actually, they were usually a breakdown waiting to be repaired. To their credit, the Dutch were skeptical about German machinery and probably wouldn't have used it in their capital ships.)
Building something comparable (and the Hippers were vastly inferior) to the threat when you can build something superior is just plain dumb. The 1047s could have handled Japanese cruisers with ease (well, right until they ran into torpedoes, anyway) and stood a pretty good chance of handling the older Japanese battleships. Hippers would have been at a disadvantage against Japanese heavy cruisers and stood no chance at all against battleships. They made no sense for the Dutch. They didn't make much sense for the Germans either, come to that.
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Username: MBecker01
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 793
Date of Post: (02/28/07 12:39:16)
Quote:German torpedoes were in the same class as American torpedoes (that's not a compliment.)
No, they were not. The mechanical fuses worked and while not 100% perfect depth control was much better, IIRC perfect when not fired from a sub.
And while the stories about Hippers engine troubles are legion, I have heard no such things about Prinz Eugen. And Dave suggested the Dutch buying Prinz Eugen-class CAs.
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Username: Lord Herrick
Nickname: The Great Navigator
Number of Posts: 2488
Date of Post: (02/28/07 13:47:18)
A machinery casualty forced Prinz Eugen to abort her commerce raiding cruise on May 29, 1941 after she parted company with Bismarck.
In 1945 or '46, Prinz Eugen's propulsion plant completely crapped out when the USN was moving her from Germany to the USA for evaluation. The plant was so troublesome that the USN (no slouches when it came to high-pressure steam) required a compliment of Kreigsmarine engineers to help handle the damned things. They were completely unable to restore power and she had to be taken in tow for the rest of the cross-Atlantic journey.
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Username: Lord Herrick
Nickname: The Great Navigator
Number of Posts: 2488
Date of Post: (02/28/07 14:03:06)
Even with radar fire control, 8" gunfire against fast-moving destroyers and cruisers was problematic at best until 1944 - as the USN found to it's great cost in the Slot. Destroyers and Tromps were much better suited to the small war in the restricted waters of Borneo - fast enough to slip in and out and do the job, small enough to be expendable.
The Dutch wanted BCs because the BCs would eat the covering force cruisers for lunch in daylight at range - just the kind of battle Doorman ended up fighting on February 27, 1942, but without the long range and heavy punch of 11" guns.
Hipper or Prinz Eugen don't do that. A 12TT salvo doesn't do a damned thing at 20,000 yards unless you have Long Lances - and the TT pose a serious hazard to the cruiser carrying them in a gunnery action. Theodore has already spelled out why the Hippers and Prinz Eugens do not give the Dutch superiority over their expected opponents, and barely give parity. Nor is something as unreliable as a WWII German warship - especially one of their heavy cruisers - at all desirable at a remote posting like the NEI where infrastructure was minimal.
You need something that can dish it out, take a walloping and keep fighting, because of the minimal ability to repair battle damage anywhere short of the Netherlands. A Prinz Eugen has got one good fight in her - she takes a torpedo or machinery damage or bomb damage and she's effectively kaput, even if she makes it back to harbor. Barring multiple torpedo hits, a Project 1047 will shrug off what the Dutch thought the Japanese could dish out.
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Username: Dave Bender
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 258
Date of Post: (02/28/07 14:35:11)
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/index_weapons.htm
German 20.3 cm/60 (8" SK C/34
Armor Penetration
24cm of armor @ 9,500 meters
Japanese 20 cm/50 (8" 3rd Year Type No. 2
Armor penetration
19cm of armor @ 10,000 meters.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/28/07 14:44:02)
Sorry, meant to say that German torpedoes were in the same range/speed class as American torpedoes. Slightly better performance, somewhat smaller warhead. Of course, the Dutch are in for a nasty surprise if they rely on the magnetic exploder. Hard to say how tropical operations might affect them, too. They're certainly not in the Japanese class.
Prinz Eugen was an Admiral Hipper class cruiser. Eugen's machinery problems aren't as legendary as Hipper's, mainly because she hardly ever went to sea. But pretty much every German steam-powered ship in the WWII era had serious machinery problems. That's no slight on the Germans; they were using steam conditions far in advance of what anybody else was doing. They were at the bleeding edge of technology and paid the price. They weren't alone in that; the USN didn't exactly enjoy its postwar experience with high pressure/temperature steam either.
If the Germans didn't plan to wander very far from home, they could have gotten away with it - those plants were finicky and needed lots of dockyard attention to stay in good condition. For overseas service, it was a problem. I don't even want to think about how miserable they would have been in the tropics - the Dutch sure weren't excited about the prospect.
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Username: MBecker01
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 793
Date of Post: (02/28/07 14:51:49)
Sorry, meant to say that German torpedoes were in the same range/speed class as American torpedoes. ... They're certainly not in the Japanese class.
How could they be? The Long Lances were a class of their own!
By the way, after all the talk about cost-efficiency and limited maintanace facilities in DIE, how many dive-bombers do you get for the price of one or two 1047-BCs?
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/28/07 14:52:45)
Very good, something other than Wikipedia. Now tell me how many heavy cruisers had even 19cm of armor over their vitals, how the penetration curves compare, what the chances of a shell penetrating an own-caliber plate are, and explain exactly how that nominal advantage in penetrating power is important.
Here's a clue: none, they converge, not great, and it isn't.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/28/07 14:57:26)
Hey, I never said I thought the Dutch building capital ships was a good idea...
I personally think it was pretty optimistic of them to think the Japanese wouldn't commit capital ships to the conquest of the NEI because they'd be tied down by American and British capital ships. If, on the other hand, you look at the 1047s as the fast wing of a joint RN-RNN battlefleet in the Far East, they don't look so bad.
I can't fault the Dutch too much for missing the coming aviation revolution; nobody got that one completely right.
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Username: James1978
Nickname: Geography Teacher
Number of Posts: 1020
Date of Post: (02/28/07 16:22:47)
Back in 1922,the French dreadnought Paris went aground in Quiberon Bay and was a total loss.
You sure? I thought that France was the ship that ran aground, not Paris.
James
Fighter pilots make movies, Bomber crews make history.
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Username: Dave Bender
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 258
Date of Post: (02/28/07 16:44:57)
Now tell me how many heavy cruisers had even 19cm of armor over their vitals, how the penetration curves compare, what the chances of a shell penetrating an own-caliber plate are, and explain exactly how that nominal advantage in penetrating power is important.
The side that ambushes the other will win. That is usually the way WWII era cruiser battles worked.
My point is that the Prinz Eugene class is every bit as good as it's Japanese counterparts. And some components, like main guns and radar, are decidedly superior. Since the Dutch were interested in German naval technology I think a modified Prinz Eugene is worth considering ILO BCs that would probably cost twice as much. You can purchase 4 CAs ILO 2 BCs.
Nothing requires the Dutch variant to use the same steam plant as its KM counterpart. The Dutch version would almost certainly use standard Dutch naval torpedoes. And the ship would come with air conditioning as this ship is for use in the tropics.
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Username: Pengolodh
Nickname: Vicious, Cold-Blooded Piece of Toast
Number of Posts: 683
Date of Post: (02/28/07 17:06:25)
You can purchase 4 CAs ILO 2 BCs.
The Dutch were planning three battlecruisers. Anyway, what about crew? AFAIK the Hipper-class required a crew of 1600. The information available to me at the moment suggests the battlecruisers were designed for a crew of 1050. So two battlecruisers would require a crew-strength of 2100, while four Hipper-type (either batch) heavy cruisers would require a total crew-strength of 6400 - more than three times as much. Now the German heavy cruisers seem to have been a bit extreme in their manpower-requirements, but typical heavy cruisers of other nations have had typical crewsizes of about 800, so four such vessels would still require about 50% more crewmen than two battlecruisers. These will need to be shipped out a long, long way from home, and some of the supplies they need will have to come from the Netherlands, not locally.
Best regards
Pengolodh
The fact that you needed to know was not known at the time that the now known need to know was known, therefore those that needed to advise and inform the Home Secretary perhaps felt the information he needed as to whether to inform the highest authority of the known information was not yet known and therefore there was no authority for the authority to be informed because the need to know was not, at that time, known or needed.
Bernard Wooley, "Yes, Minister!"
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Username: Dave Bender
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 258
Date of Post: (02/28/07 17:21:02)
http://niehorster.orbat.com/600_pto/41- ... acific.htm
A drop in the bucket compared to Dutch military forces already stationed in the East Indies. I doubt crew size would be a deciding factor in ship design selection.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/28/07 20:21:33)
Thank you for dodging the question. Points for consistency. I repeat: how does the greater penetration of the German 8-inch gun make it better when it comes to facing other heavy cruisers? Answer: it doesn't. No 8-inch-gun cruiser had adequate protection against 8-inch fire. The Japanese could penetrate the Germans, the Germans could penetrate the Japanese. And you'll note that the Japanese ships had more guns than the Germans. More powerful torpedoes. Reliable engines. (Your comment about air conditioning shows just how little you understand about ships of this era.) Superior protection. Et cetera. Prinz Eugen was not "every bit as good as it's [sic] Japanese counterparts" - it was one of the worst heavy cruisers ever built, certainly the worst of its generation. All of which combines to help explain why the Dutch planned ships protected against 8-inch fire and armed with guns capable of overwhelming any cruiser in short order and giving pause to some capital ships.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (02/28/07 20:23:34)
Oui, c'est la Paris, pas la France.
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Username: p620346
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 433
Date of Post: (02/28/07 21:21:54)
"In 1945 or '46, Prinz Eugen's propulsion plant completely crapped out when the USN was moving her from Germany to the USA for evaluation. The plant was so troublesome that the USN (no slouches when it came to high-pressure steam) required a compliment of Kreigsmarine engineers to help handle the damned things. They were completely unable to restore power and she had to be taken in tow for the rest of the cross-Atlantic journey."
Prinz Eugen made it across the Atlantic and to Panama under her own power. She had to be towed part of the way across the PACIFIC to Pearl Harbor after the USN unloaded all of the remaining German engineers.
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Username: NewGolconda
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 1343
Date of Post: (02/28/07 21:57:50)
All of which combines to help explain why the Dutch planned ships protected against 8-inch fire and armed with guns capable of overwhelming any cruiser in short order and giving pause to some capital ships
David Chessum posted some very informative figures some time back on the relative annual ownership costs of various classes of warship. Basically a 35,000 capital ship is a little more than twice as expensive to build and operate as a 10,000 ton heavy cruiser.
The large capital ship has considerably more fighting potential than two, or even perhaps three or four heavy cruisers. The only advantage possessed by two or three heavy cruisers is in the ability to be in two or three places at the same time, which can be of considerable value in a trade protection role.
In a fleet in being or sea denial role, the large capital ship has much in its favour.
There are apparently some figures for land based bombers, I dont have them to hand, but I believe it was something like 40 operational medium bombers were equivalent to an operational capital ship. With WWII experience (Force Z) in mind, the aircraft option might look quite good. Yet if you put yourself in say a 1934 time frame, an order for 200 Vickers Wildebeests (aiming for say 80 operational machines in full squadron service four years later), 120 basic and intermediate trainers, mechanics, pilots etc doesnt necessarily look to be much more useful than a pair of 28Kton BCs to defend the NEI, even with hindsight. The exchange doesnt even look that good if you replace them with proportionate numbers of B-18, Hampdens etc. Eighty operational TBDs or equivalent might be a brighter propasition, assuming that they are available.
The following figures were provided by Chatfield in 1938 in response to an enquiry from the Australian Government: (Source [AA : A1608, N51/1/6] )
ESTIMATED DIRECT COST OF PRINCIPAL CLASSES OF SHIP EXPRESSED AS A YEARLY AMOUNT
Maintenance Annual Large
Ship Costs Aircraft Replacement Repairs Total
(a) (b) (c) (d)
Capital Ship 310,000 34,500 307,500 54,800, 706,800 (NELSON Class) (100%)
Cruiser, Large 187,000 23,000 93,600 20,000, 323,600 (45.7%)
Cruiser, Small 130,000 23,000 57,500 14,900, 225,400 (31.8%)
Aircraft Carrier 255,000 414,000 202,500 22,500, 894,000 (36 A/C) (126.5%)
Aircraft Carrier 160,000 172,500 162,500 19,500, 514,500, (15 A/C) (72.7%)
Destroyer Flotilla 332,000 - 181,800 14,500, 528,300 (J. Class-8 Vessels) (75%)
Submarine (1000 tons) 39,800 - 25,700 (e) 65,500, (9.25%)
NOTES
(a) Maintenance covers the pay, victualling and miscellaneous
expenses of the personnel, naval stores, fuel and armament stores
consumed, and the cost of annual docking and repair.
(b) The figure for aircraft covers cost of replacing equipment
(assumed life-5 years) plus annual cost of maintenance of
personnel and material chargeable to Vote 4. It has been assumed
that Capital Ships would carry 3 aircraft and Cruisers 2 aircraft.
(c) This figure represents the capital cost of building the ship
divided by its 'life'. The lives assumed are:-
Capital Ships 26 years
Carriers 20 years
Cruisers 23 1/2 years
Destroyers 22 years
Submarines 14 years
(d) Large repairs take place about the ninth year of the ship's
life. In the case of a Capital Ship, a second large repair takes
place about the eighteenth year. The figure taken for this column
represents the aggregate cost of large repair(s) divided by the
vessel's life as scheduled under (c). The actual cost of large
repair is, for the most part, conjectural as little or no
experience has been gained of these vessels.
(e) Submarines are not subjected to 'Large Repairs'. The average
annual cost of all repairs and of periodic renewal of batteries is
reflected in column (a).
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Username: JBG
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 1691
Date of Post: (03/01/07 01:30:44)
Interesting, NewGolconda.
I have heard the figure of a capital ship being equal to 20 heavy bombers.
Jonathan
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Username: Lord Herrick
Nickname: The Great Navigator
Number of Posts: 2488
Date of Post: (03/01/07 08:41:04)
You're right - it was from Balboa to Pearl.
Still means her powerplant was problematic - more reliable that Hipper's, perhaps, but not much.
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Username: Seer Stuart
Nickname: The Prince of Darkness
Number of Posts: 7088
Date of Post: (03/01/07 10:11:19)
Prinz Eugen made it across the Atlantic and to Panama under her own power. She had to be towed part of the way across the PACIFIC to Pearl Harbor after the USN unloaded all of the remaining German engineers.
According to the Warships Profile on Prinz Eugen, she started off from Europe with one of her 12 boilers inoperable and arrived in the United States with one still working. An interesting thing is that both Russia and the U.S. tried to get the German-design steam plants working and both gave them up as a bad job. There was a good film about those experiences in the US Navy but I can't remember its name.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others.
Nations survive by making examples of others
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Username: Seer Stuart
Nickname: The Prince of Darkness
Number of Posts: 7088
Date of Post: (03/01/07 10:18:07)
Prinz Eugen was not "every bit as good as it's [sic] Japanese counterparts" - it was one of the worst heavy cruisers ever built, certainly the worst of its generation.
Not disagreeing with that assessment at all, if anything it's a little kind, but have you any idea where the Germans put all that extra displacement? She's BIG for what is essentially a very mediocre level of capability.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others.
Nations survive by making examples of others
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Username: Pengolodh
Nickname: Vicious, Cold-Blooded Piece of Toast
Number of Posts: 683
Date of Post: (03/01/07 10:26:13)
The Prinz Eugen like her sisters and half-sisters, had a crew of 1600, while normal heavy cruisers seem to have settled for crew-sizes of about 800 or so (what was HMS Hood's crewsize, btw?) - they all had to go somewhere, and I'd guess providing accomodation for all those men would drive up the size. I'm not sure why they had such a large crew - I don't think the capital ships or Deutschlands were extreme as far as crewing is concerned.
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Username: Pengolodh
Nickname: Vicious, Cold-Blooded Piece of Toast
Number of Posts: 683
Date of Post: (03/01/07 10:39:58)
There's one other interesting weakness to the Hipper-class (or at least to Blcher) I remember reading about some years ago. It was in a Norwegian book about Blcher, and I tried to find it at the library today, but it was stolen two years ago - I'll get it by inter-library loan, hopefully. Going by memory, the book referred to Soviet naval engineers invited to inspect the ship, and who were unimpressed by some features.
One thing the Soviets found unsatisfactory was (assuming I remember correctly) communications between the fore and aft of the ship. Apparently the voicepipes, telephone lines, etc. at least on one point were all bundled together, so that a single hit or near miss to that area would leave the ship dependent on crewmen runners for communication between the forward and aft parts of the ship.
When/if I get the book, I'll post more accurately what their complaints were, and see if I can see what sources were used.
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Username: Seer Stuart
Nickname: The Prince of Darkness
Number of Posts: 7088
Date of Post: (03/01/07 10:59:59)
The Prinz Eugen like her sisters and half-sisters, had a crew of 1600, while normal heavy cruisers seem to have settled for crew-sizes of about 800 or so (what was HMS Hood's crewsize, btw?)
From Janes Frightening Slips 1953 - 54
The Baltimores had a crew of 1,700, the Des Moines of 1,860, (all wartime) the British counties around 700, the Spanish Canarias 1,042 (peacetime).
The Portland class had a complement of 876 peace, 1,200 wartime
The Wichita had 882 (peace), 1,200 wartime.
In big light cruisers, the Roanoke was 973 peace. 1,700 wartime and the Clevelands 976 peace. 1,200 wartime
SO that looks like peacetime complement was around 66 - 75 percent that of wartime. That makes the Counties around 950 and the Canarias 1,385 wartime.
From JFS 1939,
the complement of the Japanese heavy cruisers was around 692 peacetime, say 920 wartime.
No figures on the hippers but the Panzerschiffe had crews of 926 peacetime, say 1,250 wartime.
This raises another question, Based on that, it does seem the German ships had crews that were a little oversized but that raises another question, the US cruisers I can see with their massed anti-aircraft batteries but what on earth did the Germans do with all those warm bodies?
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Username: Lord Herrick
Nickname: The Great Navigator
Number of Posts: 2488
Date of Post: (03/01/07 11:56:44)
Do you know if that refers to her reaching Philadelphia or Panama?
Also, were they able to get any of those boilers back online, or did she start across the Pacific with only one boiler operational?
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Username: Tony Evans
Nickname: Banned User
Number of Posts: 4163
Date of Post: (03/01/07 13:20:29)
I'd like to know what all of those extra bodies on the US cruisers were doing when there was no shooting going on. There are only so many bulkheads to paint, brass fittings to shine, and spuds to peel.
When I was on Long Beach we had about 1,000 men on the deployment crew, and there was all kinds of sitting around with thumbs up butts going on.
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Username: DocMartyn
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 3389
Date of Post: (03/01/07 19:10:59)
I can just have a guess here, but wouldn't they be mending stuff all the time? They had to look after the powerplant (which failed regularly), the electronics(which failed regularly), the aircraft catapult (which failed regularly) and then train the news guys to make repairs at sea.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (03/01/07 22:13:08)
what on earth did the Germans do with all those warm bodies?
They were supposed to row the ship when the machinery inevitably broke down.
I got hold of the Koop & Schmolke book on the Hippers - they say the complement varied from 42 to 51 officers and 1340 to 1548 others. Prinz Eugen carried 1400 total on Rheinbung, excluding prize crews and B-Dienst personnel not counted as ship's company. Blcher had 1380 when she went to Oslo. Hipper carried 1600 during her Atlantic operations, which may include prize crews. There isn't any explanation other than it being wartime. Simple redundancy, I guess. Or oarsmen.
have you any idea where the Germans put all that extra displacement? She's BIG for what is essentially a very mediocre level of capability.
At an institutional level, I'd guess it's because the Germans didn't have a lot of experience designing and building warships at the time. It wasn't something like the USN or RN where the war meant a dramatic increase of an existing peacetime establishment - the Germans were building everything from scratch and weren't up to par.
At another level, it's because the Hippers were a very inefficient design. Take the armor scheme, for example. It looks like a miniature Bismarck. It's a battleship-type scheme - there's an armored citadel enclosing the turrets and main machinery. She's even got a turtledeck! Coverage is good, but it's painfully thin - the main belt is just 80mm thick (~3.1 inches) and the main deck is a mere 30mm. What's usually given for deck armor is 50mm, but this refers only to the sloped portion.
The Americans (I can't speak for later British cruisers) armored their cruisers differently. They used a heavy side belt protecting the machinery spaces and separate belts (often internal) protecting the magazine spaces, which were placed below the waterline for further protection. They also carried barbette armor deep into the ship and in later vessels adopted a conical barbette structure that saved weight and created inclined armor within the ship. It was a fairly complex system, but it allowed for much greater thicknesses: Wichita, Hipper's nearest contemporary, had 6in (152mm) belt armor covering both machinery and magazines and a 2.25in (~57mm) armor deck (with, as near as I can tell, no turtledeck.) It didn't protect as much hull volume as did Hipper's scheme, but it covered all of the vitals with much greater thicknesses.
The kicker? The Hippers devoted about 2500 tons to armor, not including turrets. Wichita devoted just 1500 tons to armor (unclear whether that includes turret armor weight but I think it does.) That's at least a thousand tons right there, with all kinds of knock-on effects on ship's structure, etc.
Then there's the four-turret arrangement versus three - Hipper's four total about 977 tons with that horrible faceted design (160mm = 6.2in on the vertical face, 105mm = 4.1in on the sloped face, 70mm = 2.75in on the roof) versus Wichita's three (with one more gun) totalling 939 tons, properly designed and featuring an 8in (203mm) face and 2.75in (70mm) roof.
And machinery - let's not forget machinery. The Hipper class main plant weighed about 3250 tons - the Wichita plant just 1800 tons (note these figures include auxiliaries.) Hipper had twelve boilers and three shafts and developed 132,000 SHP for 32.5 knots. Wichita had six boilers and four shafts and developed 100,000 SHP for 33.6 knots.
I could run on down the list, but I think you get the idea. The Hippers used their excessive tonnage in a horribly inefficient way. Earlier I mentioned the German designers' relative inexperience building warships. That certainly played a part, but even so, I'm astonished at how many fundamentally bad ideas were incorporated into this ship (and I didn't realize how many or how bad until I started looking at the weight breakdowns.) The armor scheme. The faceted turrets. The three-shaft arrangement. The unreliable powerplant. What an awful ship.
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Username: Tony Evans
Nickname: Banned User
Number of Posts: 4163
Date of Post: (03/01/07 22:16:39)
There's only so much work that needs to be done, even if your equipment isn't all that reliable. They must have been double manning a lot of jobs for no good reason other than a good portion of the crew didn't have anything better to do than look busy.
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Username: Theodore
Nickname: Keeper of the Secret Handshake
Number of Posts: 4922
Date of Post: (03/01/07 22:27:44)
Not all Hippers were created equal, at least in the machinery department. Hipper's boilers had a working pressure of 85 atmospheres (1250psi) and could get up to 92 atmospheres (1350psi); Prinz Eugen's boilers had a working pressure of 70 atmospheres (1030psi) and could get up to 78.5 atmospheres (1155psi.) That alone might account for Hipper's more serious reliability problems - not that Prinz Eugen's weren't bad, just that Hipper's were worse. Temperature in both ships was 450C. No information on machinery trouble during Prinz Eugen's voyages as IX-300.
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Username: Mr Gaius Julius
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 399
Date of Post: (03/02/07 14:43:21)
I could be wrong but the various land units in Korea (and Vietnam if I remember right) might disagree with you over the idea that the Des Moines was a dead-end useless ship.
I would expect that having her sight in and land some heavy gun support would have been very very welcome.
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Username: 1Big Rich
Nickname: Old Friend
Number of Posts: 114
Date of Post: (03/03/07 18:00:14)
Deleted; said better by Stuart above...
Regards,
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Username: K Newman
Nickname: Bubblehead Cop
Number of Posts: 4972
Date of Post: (03/04/07 14:36:12)
The extra bodies were called supernumeraries. During WW2, the USN placed a lot of extra personnel on board ships. They were intended to beef up DC parties and as replacements for casualties. All the extra help during damage control came in handy, fighting casualties is a very tiring business and having fresh hands to send in made a difference.
This is a lesson that has been lost on the current Navy leadership, with their plans for minimal crewing. The Cole incident would have caused them to wise up, but no.
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Username: Seer Stuart
Nickname: The Prince of Darkness
Number of Posts: 7088
Date of Post: (03/05/07 10:46:42)
I could be wrong but the various land units in Korea (and Vietnam if I remember right) might disagree with you over the idea that the Des Moines was a dead-end useless ship. I would expect that having her sight in and land some heavy gun support would have been very very welcome.
That's not really relevent. The point is, did she do anything that a 1928-era cruiser that was half her size could not have done? In size terms, Des Moines was well on the way to being a battleship in size armed with cruiser guns (a bit of an exagerration but not much so). Had the U.S. Navy built said 1928 cruisers, they coudl probably have had two of them for the Des Moines which would have meant another bunch of guys sitting on the shore somewhere else could have had a cruiser in support of them.
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Username: Tony Evans
Nickname: Banned User
Number of Posts: 4163
Date of Post: (03/05/07 10:56:06)
I knew pretty much why they were there. My question was what did they do with most of their time. You can only do so much DC and gun drill, and even if you're striking for a rate, there's only so much time the senior ratings have to give you instruction. They muct have spent a lot of time playing spades and acey-deucy.
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Username: Tony Evans
Nickname: Banned User
Number of Posts: 4163
Date of Post: (03/05/07 11:04:29)
All that Stuart said is true, but my real point was that 8" gun cruisers were at a developmental dead end by 1945. They lingered on with some degree of usefulness, but only because their construction costs were sunk and they could be operated to meet a some of the then existing requirements. Had they not existed, they certainly wouldn't have been built.
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Username: Seer Stuart
Nickname: The Prince of Darkness
Number of Posts: 7088
Date of Post: (03/05/07 11:06:59)
The extra bodies were called supernumeraries. During WW2, the USN placed a lot of extra personnel on board ships. They were intended to beef up DC parties and as replacements for casualties. All the extra help during damage control came in handy, fighting casualties is a very tiring business and having fresh hands to send in made a difference. This is a lesson that has been lost on the current Navy leadership, with their plans for minimal crewing. The Cole incident would have caused them to wise up, but no.
The problem is that, over the lifetime of the ship, each crewmember adds around US$16 million to the final bill. So, cutting the crew from 400 to 300 saves enough money to buy an additional destroyer. Over a Navy the size of ours, that makes a massive difference.
The question is where does the balance fall between saving money by reducing crew size and limiting future provision for ship survival? There's a perception that most US warships are over-crewed but by how many?
Another thought for you by the way; given the size of present crews and the number of ships we have to operate to do what we want to do, the only way we can get enough warm bodies to fill all the slots is to put women onto ships. Now, if we cut the crew by, say, a third, it could well be argued that we would reduce the required crew pool to the point where we needn't put women on ships any more. (I know there are political considerations as well, but the shortage of warm bodies is a very real one).
So, would an Arleigh Burke with the existing crew of 350 (including 50 women) be any worse off that an Arleigh Burke deisgned to be operated by a crew of 250, all men?
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Username: Sea Skimmer
Nickname: Interstellar Warlord
Number of Posts: 1947
Date of Post: (03/05/07 12:56:38)
The problem is that, over the lifetime of the ship, each crewmember adds around US$16 million to the final bill.
I find it very hard to believe that one crewmen could cost 320,000 dollars a year, given a 50 year ship lifespan. If that was the case then a 5000 man aircraft carrier crew would cost 80 billion dollars for the same time and it would be impossible to justify building them vs. 80,000 cruise missiles.
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Username: K Newman
Nickname: Bubblehead Cop
Number of Posts: 4972
Date of Post: (03/05/07 20:01:25)
The problem is that, over the lifetime of the ship, each crewmember adds around US$16 million to the final bill. So, cutting the crew from 400 to 300 saves enough money to buy an additional destroyer. Over a Navy the size of ours, that makes a massive difference.
Problem is, Congress doesn't really care about lifetime costs. The politicians that pass the budgets are short-sighted and tend to work on a year-to-year and election-to-election basis.
This is common throughout government at all levels. A case in point is the department where I work. Getting them to replace vehicles is an ongoing battle. In the short term, it's cheaper to keep fixing a old junker than it is to buy a new vehicle. You should see some of the junkyard rejects many of our investigators drive, in excess of 150,000 miles is not uncommon. The good news is that they're so old and beat up, they make great undercover vehicles. Just unscrew the radio antenna, pull down the dash lights and swap out the yellow government tag with a private tag and they're good to go.
The question is where does the balance fall between saving money by reducing crew size and limiting future provision for ship survival? There's a perception that most US warships are over-crewed but by how many?
I don't know. One of those PhDs they keep locked up in the basement of the Pentagon needs to be tasked with finding an answer. There's plenty of data out there, dating back to World War II. Somebody just needs to piece it to together. My guess is that the wartime Navy had a formula of some sort, based on combat experience.
Another thought for you by the way; given the size of present crews and the number of ships we have to operate to do what we want to do, the only way we can get enough warm bodies to fill all the slots is to put women onto ships. Now, if we cut the crew by, say, a third, it could well be argued that we would reduce the required crew pool to the point where we needn't put women on ships any more. (I know there are political considerations as well, but the shortage of warm bodies is a very real one).
Ya know, I keep hearing this from a variety of sources. But I was around during Reagan's attempted 600 ship build-up and I don't recall the Navy having problems crewing all those new ships. Back in that day, women were only found on tenders and repair ships.
We can drop the crew size of a DDG down to four and it's guaranteed that at least one of them will be a woman. Guaranteed. Allowing women on combatant ships is more about politics than need.
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Username: K Newman
Nickname: Bubblehead Cop
Number of Posts: 4972
Date of Post: (03/05/07 20:24:24)
I have no idea. I have a whole whopping eighteen days of surface sea time. All the rest was on board submarines, which are always undermanned for the amount of work to be done. I know that when I rode that skimmer, there were a lot of people who were busting their tails while many weren't. A lot of that had to do with their rating. Then again, that ship was a submarine tender, so she was probably not representative of a surface combatant.
The thing is, if Achmed the Moroccan Boat Bomber had done a Cole on us as we passed through the Strait of Gibraltar and had hit us in the right spot, all those normally useless bodies would have been quite busy indeed, doing something to fight the casualty or defend the ship while making up for the loss of a lot of dead crewmembers.
What comes to mind is the hit that Frankin took off Japan in 1945. She suffered over a thousand casualties and yet her crew was still able to fight the casualties and bring her home. Could a ship of the same size with a minimal crew be saved today after receiving that much damage? I don't think so.
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Username: Tony Evans
Nickname: Banned User
Number of Posts: 4163
Date of Post: (03/06/07 09:03:10)
You're trying to hard, K. I wasn't arguing the utility of all of the extra bodies. I was just wondering what they did most of the time, knowing that there's only so much you can do on a ship that has anypractical value to its immediate operation and upkeep.
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Username: K Newman
Nickname: Bubblehead Cop
Number of Posts: 4972
Date of Post: (03/06/07 16:32:37)
Dunno. A lot of make-work, I guess. OSCS can answer that better than I can.
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Username: drunknsubmrnr
Nickname: Future-American
Number of Posts: 2299
Date of Post: (03/06/07 17:40:10)
*sniff*
From those who think you need TWO planesmen AND a helmsman...
Kevin
Normal human beings don't get dolphins.
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Username: K Newman
Nickname: Bubblehead Cop
Number of Posts: 4972
Date of Post: (03/09/07 03:59:59)
That just two planesmen, one of which is also the helmsman.
Get qualified, Nub.
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Username: Trynn Allen
Nickname: Official USAF Sycophant
Number of Posts: 539
Date of Post: (03/16/07 05:20:50)
The Emden was built to train the crews, what if the extra crew, wasn't needed, but desired to build up a trained core for the Z Plan.
If your cruisers are done before you capital ships, as these were, use them as training/combat ships so that you can get a larger core of trained sailors.
The idea makes sense, whether or not there is any truth to it is another question.
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime"
Mark Twain
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Username: Larry
Nickname: Official USAF Sycophant
Number of Posts: 2174
Date of Post: (03/16/07 07:29:59)
I have a hard time believing this concept that we are so desperately short of personnel. Or, more to the point, that we've simply got all the personnel that are available. Less than 20 years ago, the US was able to operate an all volunteer military that was substantially more male and 50% or more larger than today's military. The economy then was no worse than today's; there were just as many alternatives for young people then as now to serving in the military. I think this notion of a critical shortage of available personnel is massively overplayed and has become something of a received truth. So many people in the business seem to buy into it.
My opinion is that if the US were to substantially increase manning requirements across all the services, the recruiting goals would be met without a serious reduction in troop quality. It may take some time and additional effort, but I am certain that it can still be done; there is simply not such a fundamental difference between today, and, say 1989, as to preclude that from happening.
I wish I had a gun just like the A-10, I'd be happy as a baby in a playpen I'd mow 'em down like a weedeater, with that thirty millimeter! I wish I had a gun just like the A-10.