Battleship Top Ten

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

Tiornu wrote:
Or, courtesy of Hitler and Reader, simply not allowed to do the job they were built for
Strictly speaking, we can't say precisely what job they were built for, but as they were battleships, we can infer their mission as the traditional one of battleships--fighting other battleships. This indeed reflects a bungle by Hitler and his crew, since there were never any prospects of deploying these ships for that role in a war against Britain.
I'll note that the Twins did not flee from Renown due simply to doctrine; they fled because their guns weren't working, and they thought a Nelson-class battleship was lurking nearby, not to mention torpedo-toting destroyers.
I had understood the role of the twins as being that of the pocket battleships - as commerce raiders, able to attack cruiser escorted shipping and being able to outgun anything faster than themselves and outrun anything more heavily armed (there were of cause exceptions to this as Captain Dove pointed out to Langsdorf of the Graf Spee).

In that role they were moderately successful, particulary taking into account their effects in disrupting shipping movements rather than simply looking at it purely in terms of what is actually sunk.

In this case the small battleship or pocket battleship has a wider role than simply fighting other battleships - to fight directly is not necessarily the sole criteria for any warship.
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Causality Failure

Post by wadinga »

Tiornu,

Surely their guns weren't working because they were running away so fast (instead of acting as Covering Force for the Narvik invasion) they drove their bows under water? Another design fault along with their unreliable engine rooms.

All:
BTW I may have said Ciliax earlier when I meant Bey, but then Cerberus was a strategic retreat and Gneisenau was effectively a constructive total loss after that mission.

I would put micromanagement and bungling as endearing features of the Nazi regime, as faults they would be near the bottom of a very long list.

The only way for a numerically inferior navy to win against numbers is to fight and win when the odds are in your favour and wear away the advantage. Two Scharnhorsts retreating from Ramillies is like two knife wielding street yobs running away from a pensioner with a Zimmer frame.

Atlantis and the other Hilfkreuzer were far more effective commerce raiders as surface ships. Tiornu is right, battleships that don't go out to fight aren't earning their pay. The High Seas Fleet was a massive pointless drain on resources after Jutland when they lost the will to try again.

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Terje Langoy
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Post by Terje Langoy »

Admiral Marschall was, to my knowledge, not there to sink aircraft carriers and surely not battleships. While he were hammering HMS Glorious, the troop transports could evacuate their soldiers without the twins giving them a hard time. As the Scharnhorst also managed to get herself torpedoed in the same run, she could not pursue any transports at all. It all appears as quite a violation of the operational orders and if the Naval command can't trust the Fleet commander to do what he's told to do, then what good is he..?

(I'm not saying that I dislike Marschall. He simply fought in the wrong navy, as Wadinga so elegantly put it)

Wadinga, I have the impression that Scharnhorst was the one who was constantly haunted by machinery failure, not the Gneisenau. During the encounter with HMS Renown, Gneisenau did respond and scored two hits, although with minimal effect. She had the optics in the left turret ear of Anton smashed as well as the foretop rangefinder disabled along with the fire director for her secondary guns. Whitley also states that smoke from the Scharnhorst obscured the Gneisenau, impairing her rangefinders, and that this is why HMS Renown swithced fire towards the Scharnhorst. I'm inclined to say that the Gneisenau withdrew after very precise shooting from HMS Renown (all honour to the old lady) as she could no longer find the range to her target, nor could she respond with more than Caesar-turret only. The withdrawal seems a wise decision and to my understanding hardly due to a design-fault but battle damage. (Although I don't know if the sea-spray would eventually impair her forward turrets regardless of the damage)

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Re: Causality Failure

Post by RF »

wadinga wrote:
I would put micromanagement and bungling as endearing features of the Nazi regime, as faults they would be near the bottom of a very long list.

wadinga
That is why the Germans lost the war - and is top of my list. The same can be said for the Japanese.
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Re: Causality Failure

Post by RF »

wadinga wrote:

Tiornu is right, battleships that don't go out to fight aren't earning their pay. The High Seas Fleet was a massive pointless drain on resources after Jutland when they lost the will to try again.

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It was a pointless drain from 1890 onwards!

It could only really be a weapon aimed at Britain yet the Kaiser and the Naval Staff never planned for a war against Britain, so did not realise the High Seas Fleet could be so easily bottled up. For the same reason the Germans put little real effort into defending their colonies, leaving only small token forces that were easily defeated at the start of WW1.

The Germans would have done better to have placed the bulk of their fleet in their colonial empire, with substantial land forces to defend the colonies. But even that would only be a short term strategy.
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The horse had bolted

Post by wadinga »

Terje, (I hesitate to tell you about your country's history-but :wink: )
While he were hammering HMS Glorious, the troop transports could evacuate their soldiers without the twins giving them a hard time.
IIRC Marschall had discovered by air recon that the mission he had been sent on was obsolete. The Allies had already evacuated Harstad, the last toehold, and the troopship he did sink, Orama, was empty because there were no more troops to go home. (BTW that unfortunate ship sinks again in 99.875% of WWII documentaries).

When he encountered Glorious etc he did what a naval officer should do- "Engage The Enemy More Closely" and inflicted a tragic defeat on democracy. His decision was correct because smothering Glorious with fire stopped her launching the airstrike which could have crippled his vessels if he had turned away because some jackboot-licking halfwit in Berlin wanted him to sink particular types of ships, other than the ones he met. After suffering torpedo damage to Scharnhorst, he took what I hope was a difficult decision for him and left hundreds of British sailors to die in the sea. (Less often mentioned around here than Bismarck's casualties- similar situation). He had picked up hundreds of survivors from Orama, Oil Pioneer and Juniper.

Scharnhorst's engineering plant was worse than G's but the Hippers too had lots of major problems.

In the fight of Stroemvaer (?) The twins had six turret mounted rangefinders and four fire control units with R/F and three times as many heavy weapons. They ran because an aggressive attack by Renown convinced them there must be more than one capital ship. In the wild conditions a successful destroyer attack was likely impossible. They kept running until they reached Iceland, and left Bonte's destroyers that they were supposed to be protecting to be slaughtered. They didn't even make a feint to distract the British. This is lack of spirit. Material is multiplied by Morale.

For RF: I thoughts we were talking about faults with the Nazi Regime. I can think of at least Six Million evil, wrong things they did which come above micromanagement. They lost because they inflicted a terrible war on humankind.

Ramillies, Renown and Malaya were all individually more powerful than S & G together.

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Post by Terje Langoy »

Do not hesitate at all, Wadinga :wink:

A detail confuses me after reading your post. If Marschall found his objective to have come and gone by the time he encountered HMS Glorious, why did he take the Gneisenau, Hipper and a destroyer escort to sea again during 10 June? (according to Whitley) What could have been the objective if not to make a final run on the troop transports?

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Post by Tiornu »

I had understood the role of the twins as being that of the pocket battleships
The Twins evolved from a pocket battleship design after it became apparent that they might also have to fight enemy battleships. Unlike the Deutschlands, the Twins had turbine machinery which left them fundamentally less capable of performing the pocket battleship mission of high-seas raiding. In 1938, the head of the Fleet Dept issued a memo stating he was unable to find any expressed mission intended for the Twins.
Surely their guns weren't working because they were running away so fast (instead of acting as Covering Force for the Narvik invasion) they drove their bows under water?
No. That would mean they had to run away because they were running away. They weren't running away until they realized they were unlikely to get the better of the encounter. If you can get a hold of the Koop/Schmolke book on the Scharnhorst class history, the reasons for withdrawal is spelled out.
Another design fault along with their unreliable engine rooms.
Oh, there were many, many faults to their design. In my opinion, they were the most completely flawed battleships of their generation. It was the boilers that caused most of their propulsion problems.
Atlantis and the other Hilfkreuzer were far more effective commerce raiders as surface ships.
And cheaper!
They ran because an aggressive attack by Renown convinced them there must be more than one capital ship.
They actually sighted another battleship...or so they thought. Again, see the K/S book.
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Re: Causality Failure

Post by RF »

wadinga wrote:
Atlantis and the other Hilfkreuzer were far more effective commerce raiders as surface ships.
And as Tiornu says, cheaper (in fact less than one per cent of the cost of Bismarck!).

However one thing the hilfskreuzer couldn't do was attack convoys - the big ships still had a legitimate commerce raiding role. Look at the impact of Scheer's foray into the Indian Ocean, compared with the attention Atlantis, Pinguin and later Kormoran caused.....
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Post by Terje Langoy »

Tiornu wrote:
I had understood the role of the twins as being that of the pocket battleships
The Twins evolved from a pocket battleship design after it became apparent that they might also have to fight enemy battleships. Unlike the Deutschlands, the Twins had turbine machinery which left them fundamentally less capable of performing the pocket battleship mission of high-seas raiding. In 1938, the head of the Fleet Dept issued a memo stating he was unable to find any expressed mission intended for the Twins.
Your post seems to ring a familiar bell, Tiornu. I’ve definitely had a similar discussion earlier so let me blow the whistle and see what comes out of it this time. At the time being, I make a daring statement that the Scharnhorst-class was a temporary agreement made of political and practical reasons and does not necessarily have to be intended as a permanent design. The cue that initiated the discussions might have been the Dunkerque, but any counter of the French design was a strictly naval affair and does not cover the complete background of the Scharnhorst-design. With the tense situation between Adolf Hitler and President Hindenburg, these political times were crucial for the path of which Germany was to take into the future.

The political turmoil of the time, with Hitler seizing power in Germany, may be the key factor for the Scharnhorst-class becoming just what they became. This occurred in the same period as the discussions upon Panzer Schiff D took place. While Hindenburg had sought to respect the confinement of the treaty, (the Deutschland-class was a product of that policy) Hitler had campaigned against the treaty for a long time. As Hitler seized power and Hindenburg passed away, the treaty seemingly was of lesser concern but even Hitler had a notion of respect to the old document to begin with. The navy still found their desire for larger guns unaccepted as Hitler didn’t want to provoke the major powers. This political caution resulted in the Scharnhorst-class becoming an unfortunate compromise as Hitler attempted to ease the navy without causing international fuzz.

Besides politics, the need for continuity in the fleet plans could also have been a factor. During a naval conference in November 1932, Admiral Räeder and Defence Minister, General Groener, had agreed on the size of the future fleet and set a time-frame for this to be accomplished. But about a year later, these plans were already hampered by the postponement of the current design. The first design may have been accepted simply due to this desire for continuity. The design appears more or less an unsuccessful attempt to correspond with the treaty while also responding to the Dunkerque and Admiral Räeder continued to be bothered by the fact that all improvements on the design had been of a defensive nature. The naval construction in Germany was apparently heading in the wrong direction. He did of course desire improvements to the fighting capacity of the ship and these concerns resulted in several designs with various armament and arrangement to be drawn up before he made a final appeal to Hitler in July 1934. The reluctant Hitler accepted another turret of the current calibre to be added. Even just a minor improvement was enough for Räeder to order the design to be revised. This does however not mean that he was content with the design. It means that this was the best he could gain at that time. I seriously doubt that Räeder was satisfied and am compelled to believe that an upgrade may have been intended but abandoned due to the outbreak of war.

As for an area of deployment where the Twins would fit, they were just as fit for Kriegsmarine operations as any of the capital ships. And they were just as successful (or unsuccessful) as any of the other. They did not respond to the contemporary navies but the French one, Germany’s anticipated adversary. However, they would be used as raiders, something none of them could have been built for. Mainly, they were just completed pieces of a fleet that never came to be. Btw, I must apologize for a long history lesson. It was my intention to draw a parallel between the political situation and the process of the design, nothing more. All inputs are very welcome, as this is still a fascinating subject.
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Post by Tiornu »

At the time, Hitler was trying to work a deal with Britain which ceded to Britain supremacy at sea in exchange from Germany's domination of the Continent. Why Hitler thought it might work, I cannot guess.
The best design history that I've seen is the one in Whitley. He goes through the whole process and the question of which guns to mount--28cm, 30.5cm, 33cm, 35cm, or 38cm.
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Post by Terje Langoy »

It seems a common perception that the twins, as in the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, both suffered from the very same defaults. However, I disagree with that perception. The impression I get from Whitley’s account of the encounter with HMS Renown, hereunder the efforts made by the Gneisenau, seems to contradict this. I’ll sum up the statistics of the battle, as in the quantity of ammunition expended by the units involved, just to make a case for my stand.

- The Scharnhorst fired 195 rounds of 283-mm, whereas most of these were AP-shells from her aft magazines. The total amount represents the same as almost 22 broadside salvos whereas none found the target.

- The Gneisenau fired 54 rounds of 283-mm, whereas most of these were nose-fused HE-shells. The total amount represents 6 broadside salvos whereas two of them straddled the target. The hits were however of no great significance.

- HMS Renown fired 230 rounds of 380-mm representing almost 39 broadside salvos. Three of them straddled the target with significant effect.

In either case, the twins lost and in the end, that is what matters. I am well aware of that. However, the statistic above seems to contradict the statement that the twins suffered from defaults. Apparently, only one of them did as the Gneisenau did the job she was supposed to do. She engaged the enemy, scored hits and received hits, like they used to do in any classic sea battle. In the end, she was more or less defeated by the accurate gunnery of HMS Renown and had suffered casualties, amongst them her senior gunnery officer, F. Kpt. Buchka, as the foretop range-finder had been disabled. Seemingly, the Scharnhorst had chosen a rapid and continuous fire while the Gneisenau opted for a slower but more precise rate of fire. Although it didn’t pay off, it does nonetheless serve her a better mention than a mere default. Even as they withdrew from the scene, the propulsion plant of the Gneisenau performed exactly as it should. It was the Scharnhorst that developed defects in her machinery and this actually resulted in the Gneisenau having to fall back so that the Scharnhorst could keep up with her. Again, this serves her a better mention than a default. As I interpret Whitley’s account, she appears just as reliable as any during the encounter.

The Gneisenau had her flaws, the wet forward turrets in particular, but during the major encounters in her operational career, she did nonetheless deliver. Just look at the figures from the encounter. HMS Renown made three hits with an expenditure of 230 rounds, Gneisenau made two with 54 rounds. There is indeed a difference to be noticed here. And I’ve yet to read an account where her propulsion plant caused her trouble, and by that I’m referring to her sorties, not the overall performance. Same can be said for her gunnery, which seemed a notch better than that of her sister. Fire directors performed outstanding and achieved good results at a low expenditure. I guess the conclusion of mine is that the Gneisenau should be recognized for her individual performance, not the overall performance of the class. Failure aboard the Scharnhorst isn’t necessarily synonymous with failure aboard the Gneisenau as well.
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Lutjen's Post-Match Excuses.

Post by wadinga »

Tiornu,
They weren't running away until they realized they were unlikely to get the better of the encounter. If you can get a hold of the Koop/Schmolke book on the Scharnhorst class history, the reasons for withdrawal is spelled out.
Having pulled K & S from the shelf it's revealing extracts from Lutjen's War Diary confirms that from very first sighting S & G ran away on course 030. Lutjen's excuses include fantasy sightings of possibly second and third enemy capital ships reinforcing his decision to leg it at top speed. By 05:25 G has been hit on the foretop, but by 05:28 there are comments about enemy (singular) two forward turrets. S & G keep on running, and by 06:53 Lutjens can list A turret in both ships out of action, S's engine room in trouble, G's foretop out etc etc. Plenty of good reasons to keep on running. :wink:

Further comms keep on suggesting there was more than one enemy (trying to justify running) although Renown's three gun salvos landing should have made it obvious they were running away at top speed from a single ship and doing it so quickly they flooded both their forward turrets. Lutjen's decision to run away at full speed disabled his armament more effectively than Renown did.

The clincher is Lutjen's comment " The objective of the operation and the great distance from home bases precluded me from continuing (:lol: ) to offer battle to the enemy against whose main armament our armour is not resistant. In order to reduce the effectiveness of his batteries, I decided to steer NE bearing in mind that I could now only bring my after turrets to bear.

The reference to "objective of the operation" is a bit vague. Dietl's troops were ashore so you could say that part had been achieved, but surely S & G were supposed to hang around and give Bonte's destroyers a chance to leave unmolested, as well as frustrate/ATTACK any British forces. As for his armour not being up to scratch, that's an accountant's excuse. If you attack hard enough you don't get hit. Gloworm, Acasta and Ardent all attacked, and they didn't have any armour at all! They had guts, Lutjens didn't.

For Terje: I guess Marschall didn't have the benefit of fearless seekers of truth from the BBC World Service or CNN giving him up to the minute reports on the Allied withdrawal. He went out again (after escorting S to comparative safety) because he thought the enemy might be at sea. His Army specified original mission had been fixated with sailing right into Harstad fjord, in very dangerous constricted waters, to attack the Allied supply base, and save Dietl's troops. He thought it was a bad idea to take capital ships in there and when it became obvious the plan was obsolete he dropped it. Offshore he had searoom and the freedom to attack targets of opportunity.

Marschall went back into harbour on the 11th, after his second sortie and was turfed out of command shortly afterwards. Good news for the Allied Cause. Lucky Lutjens (He Alvays Obeyed Precisely Ze Orders!) took G out on the 20th June heading home and managed to get his Flagship torpedoed by HMS Clyde the very same day!

Gneisenau's apparent but minor success in scoring a higher hit rate than Renown is just a matter of luck, with similar equipment Scharnhorst apparently scored none. Also you should realize the Germans were shooting aft ie away from the the spray and snow whilst Renown was sighting and shooting into the worst of it.


It seems even Lutjens didn't believe two Scharnhorsts were worth one Renown.

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Post by Tiornu »

The total amount represents the same as almost 22 broadside salvos whereas none found the target....
The total amount represents 6 broadside salvos whereas two of them straddled the target.
Did they fire any broadsides? Even if they made the attempt, their gun problems would have reduced the shots per salvo.
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Re: Lutjen's Post-Match Excuses.

Post by Terje Langoy »

wadinga wrote: For Terje: I guess Marschall didn't have the benefit of fearless seekers of truth from the BBC World Service or CNN giving him up to the minute reports on the Allied withdrawal. He went out again (after escorting S to comparative safety) because he thought the enemy might be at sea. His Army specified original mission had been fixated with sailing right into Harstad fjord, in very dangerous constricted waters, to attack the Allied supply base, and save Dietl's troops. He thought it was a bad idea to take capital ships in there and when it became obvious the plan was obsolete he dropped it. Offshore he had searoom and the freedom to attack targets of opportunity.
Neither do I suspect he had such sources to provide him with an update but I have decided to put my faith in the possibility that Whitley might have carried out the efforts of acquiring a reasonable motive behind Marschall's actions at the time being. They were stated as following:

"By the following day, (that would be 10 June) it had become clear to Marschall that the Allies were in fact evacuating Norway and with no time to lose, he ordered a strike against enemy shipping..."

It doesn't appear to me that the Admiral knew that the British already had evacuated the area. And I do acknowledge the plausible motive that he wanted to prevent an airstrike from being launched as he moved in against HMS Glorious but by doing this, he did in fact also increase the chances of an airstrike actually being launched since he had no way of knowing the readiness of the Glorious or whether his own ships had been detected during the first sighting. Further postings, like RF's notice: We shall attack all the same, (even if the contact was a battleship) also seems to appear not as an order to prevent an airstrike but more or less an offensive against a unidentified heavy enemy unit, and so forth a violation of his operational orders.
wadinga wrote: Marschall went back into harbour on the 11th, after his second sortie and was turfed out of command shortly afterwards. Good news for the Allied Cause. Lucky Lutjens (He Alvays Obeyed Precisely Ze Orders!) took G out on the 20th June heading home and managed to get his Flagship torpedoed by HMS Clyde the very same day!
Whitley states that the Gneisenau actually headed north to create a diversion for the Scharnhorst heading south. A very unfortunate clash of coincidences it seems as HMS Clyde had her bows out for the light cruiser Nürnberg, returning to Trondheim after operation Dora. Instead she spotted the Gneisenau in the midst of her diversion and of course dispatched her torpedoes. Lütjens management has little to do with it.
wadinga wrote: Gneisenau's apparent but minor success in scoring a higher hit rate than Renown is just a matter of luck, with similar equipment Scharnhorst apparently scored none. Also you should realize the Germans were shooting aft ie away from the the spray and snow whilst Renown was sighting and shooting into the worst of it.
I would hardly call it a matter of luck to strike the target two times. And equipment alone means nothing without a crew to handle it. Gneisenau was simply better than the Scharnhorst at that part. It was not my intention to compare the Gneisenau and HMS Renown and make a case that Gneisenau had better gunnery but rather draw attention to the differences in performance between the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau.
wadinga wrote: If you attack hard enough you don't get hit. Gloworm, Acasta and Ardent all attacked, and they didn't have any armour at all! They had guts, Lutjens didn't.
Glowworm, Acasta and Ardent had torpedoes and that was a powerful weapon against the twins and Hipper. Guts does indeed have very much something to do with this, (all honour to the daring destroyers) but without torpedoes, no daring attack would probably have taken place either. There's no need to highlight the threat of a destroyer to a battleship. The Royal Navy could risk the destroyers, the Kriegsmarine could not risk the battleships.

Tiornu, these broadside figures were meant to illustrate the expenditure of shells, and so forth the differences in their performance. Both ships fired most of their rounds with their Caesar-turrets, due to the course of the action.
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