Battlecruiser definition?

From the Washington Naval Treaty to the end of the Second World War.
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marcelo_malara
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Post by marcelo_malara »

Karl:
I read again Battlecruisers by Roberts (which I recomend you to buy), and reading it again, bearing in mind this discussion, I collected a lot of usefull info:
1-Fisher was a fan of fast warships, so he personally prefered an armoured cruiser to a battleship.
2-He was convinced that the mine and the torpedo would end the reign of the battleship.
3-So when he proposed Dreadnought, he applied the same principle of uniform battery to the armoured cruisers, in the secret beliefe that when the battleship (dreadnoughts and predreadnoughts) disappeard because of 2, this would become the capital ship.
4-The rest of the admiralty was against his ideas, so they continued building battleships. The new type of ship received the official definition of dreadnought cruisers, and they had a new type of ship looking for a mission.
5-The missions asigned then included cruiser hunting, scouting (which I forgot in my previous posting, sorry for the confusion), and battlefleet support. In this they were not intended to fight one-to-one with a battleship, but to attack an enemy battleship already engaged with another battleship.
6-After building the first class (Invincible), which cost was the same as a battleship, there was serious doubts in the RN about them. But the Germans were already building their first battlecruisers, so that they continued with the following classes in a battlecruisers race.
7-In 1909 the term battlecruisers was officially adopted by the RN

Hope that this will help with the discussion.

Regards
MVictorP
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Post by MVictorP »

Karl Heidenreich wrote:The only thing I feel mising is one classification that I don´t believe is an "outlaw" or a supercruiser: the Fast Battleship.
As a matter of fact the Iowa class is often considered a Fast Battleship. In this case we can define it the following way:
Fast Battleship: a Batteship with the same characteristics of their contemporary homologues (armament and armour) but with a greater power plant so it can travel at higher speeds, adding the Battlecruiser´s advantage to hers. The Iowas (and the never built Montanas) were such vessels. So the Iowas were the only real Fast Battleships built.
If this is the case then, by definition, the Iowas are the most modern and capable of all the Battleships.
Personally, I consider the Iowas to be, simply, newer, bigger battleships. Their high speed was in line with machinery evolution. The Richelieus were already as fast (by "cheating"), and the more traditional Bismarks, Littorios and Vanguard were also in line with that tendency.

Many think that Hood was the first such "Fast Battleship". To achieve this, however, required an unusually big displacement. At 48000 std tons, the Iowas can go fast indeed.

As for the Montanas, they were relatively slow (28 knts), being more "old-fashionned", à la Yamato.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Post by Karl Heidenreich »

MVictorP wrote:
As for the Montanas, they were relatively slow (28 knts), being more "old-fashionned", à la Yamato.
Do you believe that Yamato´s was that old fashioned? It had, as in the Iowas, their main armor concentrated in the citadel, and their hulls were very similar (it was, at least, more similar than those of the German and British capital ships). The great difference was the Iowas restriction in their hulls so to travel at the Panama Canal which wasn´t a problem that the Japanese mind.
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Dave Saxton
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Post by Dave Saxton »

I have been referred to this online essay:

http://www.friesian.com/kongo.htm

It's mostly from secondary sources, but fairly well written, and interesting reading nonetheless.
MVictorP
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Post by MVictorP »

Karl Heidenreich wrote: Do you believe that Yamato´s was that old fashioned? It had, as in the Iowas, their main armor concentrated in the citadel, and their hulls were very similar (it was, at least, more similar than those of the German and British capital ships).
"Old fashionned" in the sense that speed played a distant tird fiddle after armement and protection. By all means, they were to be very modern ships too. However I would question their relevance.
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