Balance: offensive vs. defensive?

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Karl Heidenreich
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Balance: offensive vs. defensive?

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

All the BBs were a balance from offensive capabilies (armament) and defensive measures (armour, bulkheads, etc.) Which, by the way, was the weak point of the battlecruisers (at least the british battlecruisers).
In order to have a more "agressive" ship the designer would have to sacrificy some defensive elements and vice versa.
So, what´s better? What are you most keen to sacrifice: armament or armour?
As I said before, I´m keen to offensive doctrine so I rather had bigger guns and accurate fire direction than to have heavy armour.
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Terje Langoy
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Post by Terje Langoy »

I'd have the 1943-design of the Gneisenau. Good speed, proper armour, great guns and above all a mighty spectacle. And then I'd request for a commander that would keep her paint fresh at all times so that even the enemy could admire her. And while at this, why don't put the Scharnhorst in for a refit as well, as I'd hate to treat one of the sisters otherwise. :D

No, to be serious, I would like to see the twins with 15-inches. They would form a formidable homogenous pair and for the KM type of warfare in the Atlantic war theatre, they would be nothing but superb. That means, Karl, that it's always better to deal damage than to receive. But it also means that you ocassionally ought to know when to be somewhere else too.

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Re: Balance: offensive vs. defensive?

Post by Tiornu »

Before you can pick something to sacrifice, you must first establish a benchmark for design balance. I think that means you'd first have to ask which ship has the purest balance of firepower, protection, and mobility--not to mention investment.
The problem is clear. Pure balance, and therefore sacrifice, will very according to the setting, the navy, the mission, even the date.
As an extreme example, we can look at the Twins as Terje mentioned. One could argue that the best balance in their case would be treaty cruiser, which could have accomplished everything the Twins did historically but with a much reduced investment.
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RF
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Post by RF »

Another aspect to this subject is that in the early 20 century the British went for battlecruisers because ''speed is armour.'' Presumably this mean't that the battlecruiser could pick and choose which enemy ships to engage and avoid those that posed a danger by virtue of superior speed.

A degree of flexibility is important and I see the suggestion of Scharnhorst/Gneisenau again with the twin 15 inch turrets.

I had suggested in another thread the possibility of enlarging the Scharnhorst classe to take 15 inch gun triple turrets and I suggested that as my ideal battleship.

As an acid test, if we had for Operation Berlin the twins armed with the 15 inch calibre instead of 11 inch, and if we further assume that Admiral Marschall was in command instead of Lutjens, would a decision to attack the convoy escorted by Malaya have resulted in a substantial German victory, namely with Malaya and the bulk of the convoy sunk?
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
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ontheslipway
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Post by ontheslipway »

I'd agree. The twins never engaged a warship a normal cruiser would avoid or would have to avoid. All larger ships wete too risky to take on. You can have 5 cruisers (tonnage wise) for the Twins. Being 5 is even more easy to be somewhere else. You can even risk putting a few torpedo launchers on deck to aid the dispatch of freighters, or the odd chance you run into something dangerous at close range.

Anyway, we know what happened to Hipper as a raider. Couldn't stop a destroyer in time.
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RF
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Re: Balance: offensive vs. defensive?

Post by RF »

Karl Heidenreich wrote:All the BBs were a balance from offensive capabilies (armament) and defensive measures (armour, bulkheads, etc.) Which, by the way, was the weak point of the battlecruisers (at least the british battlecruisers).
In order to have a more "agressive" ship the designer would have to sacrificy some defensive elements and vice versa.
So, what´s better? What are you most keen to sacrifice: armament or armour?
As I said before, I´m keen to offensive doctrine so I rather had bigger guns and accurate fire direction than to have heavy armour.
There is an entirely different approach or thinking to achieving a balance but based on extreme aggression. That is avoidance of the obvious.
A battleship is obvious, it is there for all to see, it is expensive, takes time to design, construct and work in, by which time your enemy has probably done something to their battleships to trump it.
Treaty cruisers are more economic, do have balance, but not much use in dealing with Yamato, H-Classe or if you are on the other side Rodney or Iowa.

I would be tempted to try something which nobody has done before. I am thinking of a very old tactic, but applied to the modern age, and which also has the advantage of secrecy and total surprise. Indeed this could be the weapon that officially doesn't exist, nobody sees, its effect apparent when enemy forces simply vanish without trace or explanation.

Today it would be classified as a stealth weapon. As such it would combine the tactics of German hilfskreuzer and Romulan ''cloaked'' battlecruiser. Yes its a disguised merchant ship concealing battleship sized guns, a sort of ''super Q-Ship''. The differance here is that the target isn't subs or solitary merchantmen, but enemy major fleet units, lured in to point blank range and blown out of the water.

What surprises me is that no navy has ever thought of doing something like this.....
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
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ontheslipway
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Post by ontheslipway »

What surprises me is that no navy has ever thought of doing something like this.....
Of course they have. But why on earth would you ever want to mount a big gun? Can't we just all stop making up fantasies about large guns? Not going to happen for the same reason we stopped used the catapult or the ballista. It's out-dated (you may correct me on the proper use of the hyphen), heavy, expensive, etcetera.
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Post by RF »

foeth wrote:
What surprises me is that no navy has ever thought of doing something like this.....
Of course they have. But why on earth would you ever want to mount a big gun? Can't we just all stop making up fantasies about large guns? Not going to happen for the same reason we stopped used the catapult or the ballista. It's out-dated (you may correct me on the proper use of the hyphen), heavy, expensive, etcetera.
A Q-ship packed with missiles and ICBM's - first strike weapon, win WW3.
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
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ontheslipway
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Post by ontheslipway »

We already have that, it's called submarine.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Post by Karl Heidenreich »

foeth:
We already have that, it's called submarine.
:clap:

I been thinking about this and it´s true. Nowadays the ideal battleship is a nuclear submarine.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
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Terje Langoy
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Post by Terje Langoy »

But you'll have to access the question in the time when the BB's sailed the oceans!! :negative: No ships carries big guns nowadays. And in the days they were the masters of the sea, big guns and armour did matter. You can't access the question by an "old versus new" kind of approach...

As for your suggestion, RF... What about a disguised torpedo battery Q-ship instead? Could that be a hilfkreuzer design worth talking about?
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Karl Heidenreich
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Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Ok, Terje, you´re right about that. No subs. But I believe this idea of the hilfkrezer as non practical. Once discovered it won´t be usefull.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
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Post by Bgile »

I really think the Montana class were wonderfully well balanced ships, and their design corrected many of the deficiencies of previous classes. But of course they would have been obsolete by the time the first one was completed. :(
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Post by ontheslipway »

Àll battleships were obsolete in WII, unfortunately nobody knew for sure at the time. But when the "latest and greatest" were either sunk by aircraft or guarding aircraft carriers, it was obvious. Oh, wonderful hindsight!
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Karl Heidenreich
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Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Gentlemen:

we are doing this from the presumption that the BBs are the kings of the seas. And, at the begining of WWII, they still had their chance. Many battles were fought by surface units, including Rheinubung. It was the end, all right, but full of action. A lot more than in WWI anyway, which was, in theory, the war of the dreadnoughts.

I like my design with 12 x 16". Much like a Montana but more powerfull.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Sir Winston Churchill
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