Rheinubung was originally conceived as a two pincer operation of Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau which would also be a greater sum than its parts.Karl Heidenreich wrote:
The idea of ships operating in groups is nice, but the assumption here is the ship design. As a matter of fact I have defended the idea that the Bismarck + Tirpitz at Rheinubung would have been bigger than the sum of the parts, but some nicer 16" German-made guns would have been more than ideal.
Best regards.
Unfortunately for the Germans such a force under an aggressive, enterprising commander never operated in the Atlantic; it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if a large convoy escorted by Malaya or Warspite had been put under determined attack by that squadron.
My concept in battleship design, as I have said, is to concentrate on firepower first. That is why I favour triple turrets (I would also be interested in the quad turrets the French used for their ships, although I note they weren't much of a success with the KGV class) and 15 or 16 inch guns. I don't want a ship too big, and I would envisage having my battleships operating in pairs. That in fact is one reason I felt that an enlarged Scharnhorst classe with triple 15 or 16 inch gun turrets would be best. I would also use triple turrets for the secondary battery as well, say two each to port and starboard, and a fifth triple turret just forward of C turret, in superfiring position to it.
Such a ship, as Karl will quickly point out, won't have the gunpower to take on Yamato. This is of course correct.
If we are on the road to the biggest ever battleship with the biggest ever guns then I would have to settle with an outrageous 300,000 ton monster sporting an updated version of the German Army's WW1 ''Big Bertha'' guns or even a naval equivalent of the WW2 Thor mortar used by the Heer to batter Sebastopol. These naval equivalents would presumably have a shell range of 100 miles or more and probably need a space satellite to do the shell spotting. Even Hitler didn't get as far as suggesting something like that.
No, I will settle for an enlarged Scharnhorst classe and against the likes of Yamato I would use a combination of forces, aircraft etc.
The international treaties of the 1920's limiting warship size were a good idea. For the purpose of this thread it might be an idea to impose a weight limit on the size of battleship, say 45,000 tons. This would of course eliminate Yamato, but would focus the discussion on the best combination of firepower, speed and armoured protection.