Something that has puzzled me over the years. Why would a capital ship, for example the Alaska's and the Bismark's, have a single rudder? Besides the obvious battle damage, the Alaska's had a wider turning circle.
The Hood was a battleship in everything except name, to be honest. The real battlecruisers were the Repair & Refit brothers (Renown and Repulse). The armor on those was frighteninly thing compared to the Hood at one point.
@@GeneralKenobiSIYE _Hood was a "Fast-Battleship" compared to the ships of WWI and early 20s, but by WWII she was undeniably a battlecruiser_ I disagree. Battlecruisers had *cruiser* armor. That is why the HMS Renown had a belt of 152 mm (!). HMS Hood had a 305 mm _inclined_ belt, and parts of its turrets were even more heavily protected than Bismarck's, for comparison.
Agree, I think the German battlecruisers can probably best be classified as battlecruisers, they had the typical BC characteristics; Approx same caliber main guns but fewer of them, more speed, and notably thinner armor than the contemporary German battleships. The German BC's also fulfilled the BC role as fast scouts. It is interesting to see that by end of WW1 both the German BC's and the RN BC's developed into having 4 twin turrets, of same caliber as the contemporary BB's, as mentioned in video. Thanks for presentation of this very interesting type of warships :-)
The German ships were fast battleships, they had BB guns, armor that was as thick as in most countries BBs and were fast, at least 26kts. Fast Battleships.
Excellent video As you stated, there was nothing wrong with the original concept of the BC, it only went bad when the British used them for a role they were never designed for. And the loss of the three at Jutland was more due to very poor ammunition and cordite handling than a flawed design. The same almost happened to Seydlitz at Dogger bank but thanks to the courage and skill of the crew who flooded her magazines the ship was saved and the HSF learned a valuable lesson, something the British would have to wait for Jutland to learn.
Ah! but they were used in the original role at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, but as the video said they had then swept the seas of armoured cruisers and were used in the line of battle. Of course if Beatty had possessed a flag officer who was half way competent they could have fought their counterparts and scouted for the Grand Fleet as well, but tragically he didn't and gave the Germans an opening to claim victory at Jutland. I still think the analogy of "The prisoner has assaulted his jailer, but is back in his cell" sums that up, but the assault was unnecessarily damaging.
I really love this channel. You (re-)sparked my huge interest in warships in mere minutes to the point where I'm binge watching your playlists. Thank you for your amazing content
Rest of youtube: special video vlog, special face cam/reveal, special VR video, 4k video, house tour, vacation vlog. Drachinifel: special video (human voice)
I'm 57...and I table game quite a bit. When I'm refighting the Pacific War (or even parts of the Atlantic/Mediterranean campaigns) I like to refer to certain ships on certain missions as "combat cruisers'. Especially the Alaska class. But 'hunter killers' and 'cruiser killers' are very sexy as well. Cheers!
As always an informative video, Drach. I really enjoyed learning about the origin of the concept, the explanation why the German battlecruisers were of a fundamentally different design and how their intended use changed from being a cruiser killer to a line- of-battle vessel. I would however have liked for you to have gone into a bit more detail as I think this is one of the most interesting and important topics given the spectacular loss of four British Battlecruisers. Again great work. We are the richer for you sharing your knowledge
Think a video on the first supercarrier, the USS Forrestal, would be interesting. Not only was it the first USN carrier design that incorporated an angled flight deck, but was originally supposed to have a telescoping island (based on the cancelled USS United States) that would have permitted use of heavy bombers. Because the Navy had no role in strategic nuclear bombing it was having a difficult time justifying its existence. The nuclear-capable Lockheed P-2 Neptune medium bomber was a stop gap solution, but incapable of landing on a carrier. Later a C-130 Hercules was successfully tested taking off and landing. And, of course, there was the terrible fire during the Vietnam War.
Could you make a video about the Dali-esque French pre-dreadnaughts one day? They are so spectacular... TIA. I binge watched everyone of your videos and almost caught up on the q&as. It's criminal some network isn't throwing money at you to make a series...
Thank you - most interesting. Hadn’t really appreciated that the BC concept started life as being Armoured Cruiser killers, but of course that’s just the role they played in 1914. Would have been interesting if Admiral Troubridge had tested it to the limit with his 4 Armoured Cruisers against Goeben at Otranto - how many ACs does it take to equal 1 BC? I’ve gamed it out a few times and Goeben usually wins.
And I had just finished all the Drydock episodes yesterday and was a little down I was out of "new" (I've watched everything now but the robot voiced ones) Drachinifel videos to watch. Thanks Drach!
As an ocean liner enthusiast from the 1890s to 1960s.... military ships that have funnels at different lengths away from each other if there are more than the 2 or at different proportions.... really makes me cringe.... no symmetry... but I guess that's not what they aren't meant for looks.
@@FirstDagger Funnels of aircraft carriers were always a tricky subject. Furious initially kept her Bridge and funnel... which made, obviously flying operations really shitty. Later, it had it's exhausts to stern, which brought up the issue, that you smoke up the landing path of approaching aircrafts. Not so great. :P upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/SSZ_airship_aboard_HMS_Furious_1918_IWM_Q_20640.jpg Having the funnels sideways appears odd, but not unreasonable imo. If you just blow that shit towards the ocean at the side, it doesn't disturb planes so much.
I have a Dry Dock question... What about U.S. Commandeered boats? Every year we have a wooden boat festival, and regularly there are vintage boats that were pleasure craft, but used by the US for coastal patrols, and still show some of the modifications to the boats made by the Navy. How did this system work? Did people volunteer their boats? Would they have any rights in this, like the option to run the boat for the Navy? And, where there any interesting stories concerning these seized boats?
Edit, I'm an idiot and didn't realise you were wanting specific US navy references. Sorry about that World war one and two had lots of examples of private boats being seized/bought for naval use. The most famous example was Dunkirk, while there were some civilian crewed boats many were seized by the military and crewed by reservists. Other notable examples are the HMY Iolaire (A yaught drafted for use as a troop ship and lost with great loss of life on new years day 1919) and the drafted fishing trawlers used as convoy escorts, sub hunters and various other roles through both wars
There is a rusting wreck run aground in Southern Ohio of a large three masted steel yacht that was used by Thomas Edison when it was commadeered by the Coast Guard in WW1. It was used for rod fishing between the wars and commandeered again in WW2. Finally it was used by the Circle line taking tourists around Manhattan. The USS Sachem or the Circle line V was purchased at auction and towed to its final resting place tragically to rust away...
The origin of battlecruiser was much more complex than the content you say in this video. Firstly, John Fisher's view of the navy is similar to Sir Julian Stafford Corbett's opinion. The most important objective of the navy is sea control. Fisher thought that the Royal Navy did not need any more battleships, RN only needed one type of capital ship which are all big gun super cruisers capable of doing the following tasks: Protecting British Empire's lines of communications；Destroying enemy lines of communications; participating in major fleet action in which they could sink any major warships. The super cruisers he mentioned was the HMS Dreadnought. In most of the time, these super cruisers would be placed in different places to protect or destroy lines of communications. When the situation demand, these cruisers can concentrate into a large fleet quickly using their high speed and participating in major fleet actions. In ship to ship combat, these super cruisers can outrange enemy capital ships with their vastly superior fire control system. The cruisers did not need much armour protection since the enemy cannot fight back anyway. However, most people in the navy and the government let alone the public cannot accept such a radical proposal of kicking battleships out of the navy. In the end, HMS Dreadnought was classified into a new generation of battleships instead of cruisers. The Battlecruisers we known are built to replace the old armoured cruisers. Furthermore, other navies developed equally good fire control system so the out range thing did not happen. These cruisers will need heavy armour. Then Fisher wanted capital ships with heavy armour, great firepower, and high speed like the X4 battleship. He knew such ships would very expensive however he argued the number of capital ships RN needed can be reduced greatly so as the total military expenditure. However, this idea was rejected too.
For those who whom are battleship fans.( I was always a big fan.) The Battle cruiser always seemed like an under armored, second cousin to true warships. The spectacular destruction of British battle cruisers at Jutland. Serving to underline his perception. As does the equally spectacular destruction of HMS Hood. Yet, as time goes by, the battle cruiser concept morphs into the fast battleship. As ultimately expressed in the form of the US Navy's Iowa class battleships. The key issue is mobility! Despite the short comings, it's the mobility of these ships that made them more useful, and more effective than battleships. Oh yes, in a straight up gunfight, the battleship was likely to win. Except that the battleship can't keep up! As both world wars waxed, and wained. The battleships didn't keep up. Battleships were too slow at Jutland, so the battle cruisers did most of the fighting. In WW-II it was Japan's Kongo class ships that opened my eyes. Yamato and Musashi were available. Only they were too big, too slow and used far too much fuel for the mission. One nights raid, on Henderson field destroyed most of the "Cactus airforce," on the ground. It was the loss of half of Japan's best batte cruisers, that forced Japan to abandon Guadalcanal. It was the tremendous mobility of the Iowa class. That brought them ftom the doldrums of mothballs back into active service. Heavy armor has it's value. Except that when it makes the ship too slow to accomplish the mission? Only certain parts of the ship can be armored. The displacement hull, is as vulnerable to fire and flooding as any other sea going vessel. One is inclined to wonder. What would have happened. Had HMS Dreadnought been completed with 10" guns, and a speed of 26 knots instead.
So as a separate class, considering that there were two schools of Battlecruiser thought: Namely the British (sacrifice armor for speed vs a Battleship) and German (sacrifice firepower vs a Battleship) Why are the following not considered battlecruisers: The intent was to be able to kill anything smaller than them, and outrun anything else. (While not being the battleships themselves.) Deutschland (German take on the British battlecruiser pattern. That went... about as well as the British Battlecruisers did. ) Dunkerque (French take that kinda sits between the British and German patterns.) Scharnhorst (WW2 German take on the German WW1 battlecruiser pattern.) Alaska (US take on the original mission.) All of these were by the standards of the time significantly smaller/less capable than modern battleships, but far and away more capable than 'heavy' cruisers. They'd also (rightly) run away from battleships as seen with the Scharnhorsts and an older battleship.
From my experience (and gut feeling) Dunkerque and Scharnhorst are early designs for fast battleships and Alaska and Deutschland where not called battlecruisers for political and PR reasons
Everyone developed their own "intermediate" ship designs that were in between cruisers and battleships and these designs varied wildly between nations whom all had their own tactical and strategic considerations. All of them tend get lumped together into the "battlecruiser" category, regardless of size, design, gun caliber, armor, or intended purpose primarily for the sake of convenience.
I was thinking that you could have mentioned the use of HMAS Australia in the Indian ocean was exactly what the class was designed for it kept the armoured cruisers away. I think you could have also mentioned the Kongo class as transitional to the fast battleship.
in short. the Cost of a Capital ship the Size of a Capital ship the Firepower of a Battleship the Speed of a cruiser the Armor of a Heavy Crusier designed to be a big bully really, designed to completely dominate smaller ships by outmuscling them in regards to firepower but still being fast enough so they can't run away, however the high Speed of the battlecruiser means that although it can dishout Battleship punishment it cannot take it back, and when going Toe to Toe with a real battleship it will lose badly and therefore will need to run away when it see's one.
TheGadsdenGuru The real problem with battlecruisers was that they were too expensive to ever make strategic sense. If it costs as much as a capital ship it must be able to function as such.
Ships more commonly accepted as battlehips - HMS Hood... erm what???? It's interesting listening to the begining of this and contrasting it with your USS Alaska video - the arguments are almost exactly opposed:-)!
I think that muzzle break on such guns can create side blast so strong that it could be dangerous for personell and equipment, i dont understand why would you want to reduce recoil with muzzle break anyway since mass of the ship and fixed position of gun is probably enough.
I don't quite understand the difference between a Fast Battleship that cannot engage other Battleships because of their very weak armor and Battlecruisers. Ships like the Kongos and Dunkerques seemed like the very definition of a Battlecruiser, with the former starting life as a Battlecruiser and the latter custom built to hunt German Heavy Cruisers.
As far as I'm aware protection is the main difference. For instance since Hood had comparable armour to the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge class she could be described as a fast battleships. Kongo after her refit is another decent example, her original 8-11 inch belt was respectable but after her refit doubled her deck armour thickness she had roughly comparable protection to many battleships of the time period which is why people consider her a fast battleship in her refitted form. I would dispute Dunkurque however, her belt having a maximum thickness of less than 9 inches would not be battleship levels of protection so I would say she is definitely a battlecruiser
@@themadhammer3305 The problem I'd see is that Kongos couldn't even resist heavy cruiser shells at 14km because of their thin belts. Any deep penetrating modern Battleship shell could have caused catastrophic damage, be it 12” - 18”. So why even have the title of "Battleship" when she can't engage other Battleships? The refit Kongos had armor belts of less than 9 inches, same as the Dunkerque.
@@Edax_Royeaux your right on Kongos belt thickness the article i read had it wrong. Fast battleship is an odd term I'll give you that, mostly because the criteria for it seems arbitrary and different nations each applied it differently.
I think it's more sensible to discuss whether or not they were fast battleships compared to the opposition when they were laid down originally. And old battleship doesn't stop being a battleship because it's no longer very good, and the same thing goes for an old fast battleship. So why should that not go for an old battleship rebuilt into what one would expect from a fast battleship of that hull size? The main weakness was smaller size compared to contemporaries, but that doesn't stop the 9.4 inch German pre-dreads from being battleships.
Kongos were built as battlecruisers. They got pressed into a fast battleship role. Dunquerqe I imagine is more a result of funny french odeas about what battleship combat would look like, along with some good old penny pinching.
So in your commentary on the USS Alaska, you took the opinion that they are not battle cruisers since they didn’t use contemporary battleship caliber guns. Have you changed your opinion?
@@Weesel71 Battlecruisersa re defined by their role: cruiser killer. Alaska fits that, so its a battlecruiser. For the porpouses of discission that is sufficient.
@@kurt1339 I have the Alaska and the Kronstadt in World Of Warships. No Azuma (B-64/5) because it sucks in game and no Stalingrad because it's unattainable.
Let's get something out of the way. Every time battle cruisers come up, some one will bring up Jutland and the how the three British battle cruisers blowing up proved the concept was flawed. The problem with this assertion is not one of these ships was hit in a magazine. All three blew up for as Friedman crafts it "near suicidal ammunition handling practices". Beatty was many things and aggressive and technically and administratively challenged was three of them. He was convinced that a few more hits at Dogger Bank would have slowed the German battle cruisers and brought them under his guns to be destroyed. He can't be blamed for such a faulty tactical concept, given the lack of intelligence, but closing the range would actually improve the resistance of the German battle cruisers to his guns. The deck armor of the German battle cruisers was not effectively thicker than their British counterparts at engagement ranges over 17,000 yards. But getting back on track, it became unofficial policy in the Battle Cruiser Squadron, to increase the rate of fire by putting more shells and powder in the turret, the handling rooms, within the barbettes and even outside the magazines. Powder was actually removed from their storage cans. Flash protection was by-passed or disengaged. The result was to create a train of powder right down to the magazines. The three British battle cruisers were hit in a turret or barbette. Penetration or armor scabs flashed exposed powder which travelled to the magazines where the cordite exploded. Had pre-Dogger Bank processes and procedures been in place, these battle cruisers would certainly have lost the turret in question but not blown up. After the battle, this situation was covered up and it was put out that the ships blew up because of design flaws and additional protective plating on the decks was worked in around the turrets. Beatty went on the command the Grand Fleet and this whole thing didn't began to be uncovered until the 1980s. There was also the problem with the type Cordite being used, in that after the war, a problem suspected before the war was proven by tests. WWI cordite in large amounts (tons) would explode when exposed to fire, rather than burn, which meant that the British battle cruisers were fated to explode when the flash reached their magazines. The battle cruisers were not be used in the line of battle. They were to stand off on the opposite side from the battle line or use their speed to reach the enemy's van and cap his "T", adding their firepower from ranges where their thinner armor would not be exposed. Before the advent of reliable aircraft and aircraft radios, cruisers were the only strategic and operational search capability. The battle cruiser was expected to dominate the reconnaissance phase of the fight. If the enemy had battle cruisers, then your battle cruisers had to push them aside. Consider this. The six "Lexington" class large scout cruisers (the USN NEVER called these things battle cruisers, at least officially) were intended to execute the strategic and operational scouting mission, in conjunction with the "Omaha" class and the expected follow-up 8" gun classes. Find the Japanese battle fleet by crushing his large armored cruisers and light cruisers. If the four "Kongo" class battle cruisers were present, they would use their six-seven knot advantage to engage at favorable ranges for their 16" guns, which at the time would have out-ranged the Japanese ships by ~10,000 yards. Their protection was more than sufficient to engage at the limits of visual day ranges, 20,000-26,000 yards, for spotted fire. As far as trade protection, the British battle cruisers performed that mission superbly, running down and destroying the armored cruisers of the German East Asia Squadron. By 1942, speed became more and more important, as battleships and battle cruisers evolved into surface escorts for fleet carriers. The Renown, as rebuilt, wasn't going to stand up to KMS Bismarck by itself in 1941, but it certainly was more valuable as a carrier escort in 1944 than any of the modified "Queen Elizabeths". The "Iowas" may have only bought six knots with that 10,000 tons, but it was the reason they survived on active duty far longer than the 26-27 knot "Washington" and "South Dakota II" classes. BTW, the US "fast" battleships were NOT built to escort fleet carriers. They were, instead, the beginnings of a new battle line. In 1936, the USN decrypted a message intercepted in 1922 in the earlier JN-25 code, that indicated "Mutsu" had made over 26 knots on her trials. Before this the USN had considered a 23kt battleship as "fast". They had to assume the rebuilt IJN battle line could do as well. That made every US battleship built before 1936 obsolescent. A new battle line had to be built from scratch. Also, when originally conceived as "Kongo" killers, fleet scouts for bad weather and night operations and commerce raiding, the "Iowas" were to be escorted BY the fleet carriers, not the other way around. The battleship as a carrier group surface escort evolved from the carrier battles of 1942, where the carriers, when maneuvering often left the "Washington" and "South Dakota II" class battleships up to 2 nm behind the carrier task group. This made that extra six knots even more important. As it was, back as late as 1939, the "Iowas" would have been followed by 27 knot, 12 x 16" gun, 45,000 ton versions, the funding of the new Panama Canal locks allowing the growth of this design into the "Montanas".
The USN didnt have any battlecruisers. When its prospective class was laid down, the US carrier fleet consisted of a 60 year old converted coallier. As for the japanese, the Kongos are three decades older than any carrier the IJN had, and were intended as commerce raiders and fleet screens. They ended up relegated to carrier escort, because none of the more capable japanese dreadnought were fast enough to keep up.
Soooo... some Battlecruisers are more like “light battleships,” being basically slightly less well armed or armored battleships but also not necessarily much faster?
Battle cruiser, a ship with battleship type guns, our the same guns that are used on battleships, but much faster more maneuverable and whit similar range to a cruiser,
The main thing is not the armour upgrades, but the engine overhaul and range finder upgrade. Had her engines been overhauled she could have closed the distance quicker and would be less likely to suffer the unlucky hit that sank her.
The huge error committed by the Admiralty was to call them battlecruisers. If they had been called cruiser hunters it might have kept the Admiralty's minds focused on their limitations and reduced, at least, the tendancy to expose them to battleship gunfire in fleet actions.
Please give me a list of battlecruisers lost to battleship fire that was not a result of either improper ammunition handling, or circumstances in which the ship was forced to operate alone, rather than as part of a real battle line. I dont know of any, and therefore find the assertion that battlecruisers were not fit for line engagements unfounded and sensationalist.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 poor ammunition handling aside the battlecruisers that exploded at Jutland were mostly hit by other battlecruisers and not battleships.
A good question. As I understand it, riveting was the norm until just before World War Two. Welding was a relatively new technology, whereas, riveting was well understood.
No. The alaska class were supposed to be 'large cruisers', a successor to armoured cruisers in pretty much the same role. "Battlecruisers" as such didnt exist as a class.
I often hear that german battlecruisers were slower than the british due to their heavier armor, but thats not true. SMS Von der Tann was the fastest big warship of the world when she entered service, having more than a knot on both Invincible and Indefatigable, and the following classes werent slower or slowly gained speed, too, being at a similar speed as their british counterparts. Its only the Renowns and Hood that really were a lot faster. I guess they only lost some long range speed by being coal fired, needing to clean their boilers every few hours ( which really reduced their speed at the end of the battle of Jutland)
Judging German battlecruiser speeds is tricky as the construction companies got bonuses for additional speed, as a result their trial runs were done with elite engineering crews, the best coal money could buy, in shallow water and at ultra light loading. This means that trial speeds can very very misleading compared to real-world combat performance for these ships with more generic crew, average to poor quality coal and a full crew and complement of stores. For example, if trial speeds are accurate then 1st SG at the Battle of Dogger Bank should've easily pulled away once they ditched Blucher, whereas they were actually being gradually overhauled until Beatty misdirected the BCF.
@@Drachinifel First of, thanks for the answer. As you said, the quality of the coal is important, and it seems the german coal became worse and worse over the war. So, yeah, in the war the british BCs were often (not always, look at Goeben) faster than the Germans. But that wasnt a design flaw but due to wartime fuel restrictions. I am sure with german coal the british BCs would have similarily slowed down, as the Germans would have been faster with better, imported coal. Also, I am by no means an expert, but doesnt shallow water slow a ship down? I read that the Germans estimated their ships 1-2kn faster had they been able to run trials in deep water instead of their shallow shore waters. (Thats for their ships completed during the war, like Lützow and Hindenburg)
@@535phobos with water depth it's very dependant on precise depth conditions. There are known areas where hydrodynamic effects make ships of certain drafts and displacement faster by a knot or two, min the early years of destroyer construction Thornycroft and Yarrow were notorious for testing their ships in one or two particular areas that gave them an artificial leg up. Of course those areas wouldn't help a battlecruiser, due to their different dimensions and displacement, but there were known 'sweet spot' areas where many of them were run that give an artificially high result. It's cumulative, so if you ship is designed for 25knots, better powerplant performance might give you 0.5-.75knots, an elite crew might buy 0.5knots, good coal might buy 0.5-0.75 knots over average, light loading might but around 1 knot and the right depth of water might but 0.5-1knot. Put together, and your 25knot ship is suddenly making 28.5knots. But go into wartime and the only thing you'll have from that is your good powerplant and suddenly you can maybe hit 26knots at a push. With Goeben, she was designed for 0.5knots more than her pursuers, and with a partial engine clean vs the chasing ships somewhat less clean systems her pulling ahead is fairly predictable, but the flip side is her contemporary was Lion, and Lion would've run her down. Coal quality also helped, albeit that in the first few hours good as bad coal would give maybe 1-1.5knots difference from standard, where it really hurt was the amount of smoke bad coal made and how quickly it clogged the boilers. For example at Jutland by the time the night actions began bad coal meant some German destroyers were down to pre-dreadnought speeds thanks to choked boilers and grates that needed cleaning.
If this question has already been asked, please inform me which video to watch thank you. My question is, what was the worst and best anti aircraft guns in World War 2?
Worst is probably the Japanese triple 25mm. Best could be the Bofors 40mm, the ubiquitous Oerlikon 20mm, the US 5"/38 DP in combination with radar directors, etc, depending on your definition of best.
Well my understanding is that the 5 inch usa aa gun was best. The us navy did a lot of work on the anti air problem and found that aa fire under 5inches or so was largely ineffective. This was do to effective ranges.
@@bkjeong4302 which early British one? The 40mm pom pom was worse than the Bofors, but other than that it was pretty good, compare it to the German 37. The 4.5 inch was a pretty good dual purpose weapon. The 4 inch was pretty good. The 5.25 was not great, but it's better as a whole than the mixed batteries on axis ships. The 12.7mm Vickers was a standardish heavy machine gun.
Worst was definitely the 25mm japanese hotchkiss copy. The best is a toss up between the 40 bofors and the 127mm L38 DP, depending on what you want it to do.
The whole concept of Battlecruisers never made any sense once the Queen Elizabeth class Battleship was built. A Queen Elizabeth class Battleship was just as fast as any Battlecruiser and had heavy armor as well as 15 inch guns. “Why not just spend the extra money and get what is you really want, the fastest, strongest ship?” Winston Churchill
Not quite as fast at 24.5 knots, as opposed to ~26-27 of early Battle Cruisers, or 32 of Hood, ReKnown, and Repulse which were built VERY shortly thereafter.
I have the greatest admiration for your work, but really after 4 years have past, I'd wish you'll have time to make this video again very soon. It's full of questionable statements and omissions. For instance in a video on the origins of the battlecruiser you've managed not to mention even once the promoter and inventor of the battlecruiser itself, Jackie Fisher... I guess it's because what he thought the battlecruiser was all about runs against your beautiful and tidy theory that “they were only intended to chase armour cruisers in the colonies”. Yes, with hindsight we all know that after everybody else obliged and started building dreadnought battleships too, batllecruisers with such thin armour were only good for chasing armour cruisers (and pre-dreadnoughts) and as a heavy scout for the fleet if the enemy had battlecruisers nearby too. But for a historian hindsight can be a very deceiving tool on which to build our theories about the past. Going back to the sources usually gives us a better understanding: for Jackie Fisher the battlecruiser was not a type of ship “to be built in small numbers”: they were actually meant to supersede battleships altogether! His famous “The scheme! The whole scheme! And nothing but the Scheme!” included among other things to replace the home defence battlefleet with light forces (light cruisers, destroyers, torpedo boats and subs) for close defence while keeping a battlefleet of “flying squadrons” of fast long range armour cruisers (battlecruisers) based in the UK ready to fight the enemy in open seas or to be quickly deplyed to the colonies to hunt down any marauding enemy ship there. These reforms would have made the RN more efficient and economical to operate. HMS Dreadnought was intended just as a testbed to proof new technologies in a battleship for the coming new battlecruisers. Now, things didn't work out that way. The arms race with Germany and the inherent conservatism inside the service, meant that “the Scheme” would never be implemented, building instead huge number of battleships to face Germany. But these are the ideas really behind the “origin of the battlecruiser” which is the tittle of this video. Once Germany retaliated and started building modern battleships, the concept of a lightly armour capital ship became seriously outdated. Surprised when you said that the German battlecruisers are not fast battleships because “they are faster than battleships but not for a wide margin” when they were as fast or faster than Invincible. Or that they had battleship-grade guns but “their broadside was not large”. When they had the same broadside of 8 or 10 heavy guns as the South Carolina, Dreadnought, Bellerophon, St Vincent, Neptune, Colossus... yes some of them had 11in guns instead of 12in but of a superior design and very dangerous as shown by Von der Tann, the weakest of them all using the weakest gun the 11in 45cal guns. Of course if you don't increase the displacement but still want higher speed you have to compromise on something else. Nevertheless, German battlecruisers did have battleship-grade armour and guns. Not as thick armour or not as many or as big guns as the best battleships around but battleship-grade nevertheless. Any German battlecruiser with their speed reduced to 21 knots but still unchanged armour and armament would be classified as a battleship, neither the biggest or the best but a perfectly OK design nevertheless. The same cannot be said of most British battlecruisers.
This battlecruiser idea makes the mistake of assuming one on one combat. All the older cruisers have to do is operate in pairs in order to defeat the new battle cruiser so carefully designed to "wipe the seas clean" of them. The same goes for all the problems they had pushing the treaty limits. when you make smaller ships, you can make more of them, so just design the ship with sensible proportions and it ends up in whatever weight class it ends up in. Also, the treaties were a big waste since they incentivised scrapping so many older ships in order to make room for newer ones. The treaty writers should have written the treaties around budgets or handicapped the tonnage on older ships in order to remove such wasteful incentives.
@Harry Lagom I don't think it was inevitable, and had they been used as intended, they were not a dumb idea. This is because they were basically the continuation of the armoured cruiser concept into the Dreadnought age, a vessel as large as a battleship but designed to kill cruisers. The fact that design worked for 30 years shows that the core concept was sound
@Harry Lagom You really have not explained how it was inevitable that a cruiser killer would come on to a fight against a battle fleet. It's not like armoured cruisers were used that way. It's not like destroyer escorts were used as destroyers. It's not like monitors were used as battleships. It's not like tank destroyers with the firepower of heavy tanks were used as heavy tanks. There are so many examples of weapons which have a similar punch, or at least similar calibre weapons, to the heavyweights, but sacrifice something to get there. They were not pressed into those roles. And the core concept was killing cruisers. That is it. You can say there was more to it, yes. That stuff is not part of the core concept. Therefore, even you must admit that battlecruisers were a success at killing cruisers, thus succeeded in their core concept. Also the fact that the Beatty was an idiot and decided to open up all the flash doors allowing ships to explode does not singlehandedly disprove the concept. Look how well the German battlecruisers did. And the British battlecruisers could have done a hell of a lot better if turret penetration didn't equal game over for them. And all this is despite the fact that the British ones at least were never even meant to be in that position in the first place.
@@dubsy1026 Armoured cruisers were absolutely second rate battleships, and it fit their design perfectly. Nor was battlecruisers in the line of battle an unsound concept, it was merely british incompetence that gives a warped picture of their potential.
I believe it was Jacky Fisher who coined the phrase, _"Stronger than the faster and faster than the stronger."_ Unfortunately, speed is not armor and in first world war a force of battlecruisers came off second best in a duel with standard cruisers. When the British built the Kongo for the Japanese Navy, she was a battlecruiser. The Japanese eventually made improvements to make the Kongos more of battleships. Besides, the Japanese eventually built the Takao class of heavy cruisers and they were the best in the world. Battlecruisers look good at the beginning but are always lacking.
The German BCs did it better. They traded firepower for armor. The British had a good idea, but the bad one was taking them up against ships with battleship-caliber guns. Six-inch armor won't stop an eleven-inch shell. ☹️ Also the German BCs LOOK like battleships: their British counterparts looked like armed ocean liners.
Pinned post for Q&A :)
Could you do a special for Armored Cruisers? Please?
Something that has puzzled me over the years. Why would a capital ship, for example the Alaska's and the Bismark's, have a single rudder? Besides the obvious battle damage, the Alaska's had a wider turning circle.
If you had to design the perfect fleet, using ships from 1920-1939, what ships would you put into that fleet and why
Q +A: would you consider the Soviet Kirov's as modern iterations of the battlecrusier concept? Why or why not?
Could the Royal Navy have defeated the Japanese navy in WW2 in a one on one fight?
"... Was never intended be to go against battleships."
RIP hood
NEKOmancer
Ironically that was one of the few cases where the CC could have won (an unusually heavily armoured CC vs. a glass cannon BB).
The Hood was a battleship in everything except name, to be honest. The real battlecruisers were the Repair & Refit brothers (Renown and Repulse). The armor on those was frighteninly thing compared to the Hood at one point.
@@VRichardsn No. Hood was a "Fast-Battleship" compared to the ships of WWI and early 20s, but by WWII she was undeniably a battlecruiser.
HMS "was never intended to go against battleships" Hood
@@GeneralKenobiSIYE
_Hood was a "Fast-Battleship" compared to the ships of WWI and early 20s, but by WWII she was undeniably a battlecruiser_
I disagree. Battlecruisers had *cruiser* armor. That is why the HMS Renown had a belt of 152 mm (!).
HMS Hood had a 305 mm _inclined_ belt, and parts of its turrets were even more heavily protected than Bismarck's, for comparison.
My god three videos in the span of an hour! Its a christmas miracle!
Or an Easter Miracle.
Echo Whiskey lol i did it on purpose
More like a Holy Week Miracle.
Well, technically Easter is more miraculous 😉
@@kesfitzgerald1084 Well yes but we are closer to the Easter Tritium, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil, than Easter Proper.
Yay,one of my favourite topics in naval warfare,also better with human voice tbh
Agree, I think the German battlecruisers can probably best be classified as battlecruisers, they had the typical BC characteristics; Approx same caliber main guns but fewer of them, more speed, and notably thinner armor than the contemporary German battleships. The German BC's also fulfilled the BC role as fast scouts.
It is interesting to see that by end of WW1 both the German BC's and the RN BC's developed into having 4 twin turrets, of same caliber as the contemporary BB's, as mentioned in video.
Thanks for presentation of this very interesting type of warships :-)
They just didn’t blow up, which was a plus
The German ships were fast battleships, they had BB guns, armor that was as thick as in most countries BBs and were fast, at least 26kts.
Fast Battleships.
Excellent video
As you stated, there was nothing wrong with the original concept of the BC, it only went bad when the British used them for a role they were never designed for.
And the loss of the three at Jutland was more due to very poor ammunition and cordite handling than a flawed design.
The same almost happened to Seydlitz at Dogger bank but thanks to the courage and skill of the crew who flooded her magazines the ship was saved and the HSF learned a valuable lesson, something the British would have to wait for Jutland to learn.
Ah! but they were used in the original role at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, but as the video said they had then swept the seas of armoured cruisers and were used in the line of battle. Of course if Beatty had possessed a flag officer who was half way competent they could have fought their counterparts and scouted for the Grand Fleet as well, but tragically he didn't and gave the Germans an opening to claim victory at Jutland. I still think the analogy of "The prisoner has assaulted his jailer, but is back in his cell" sums that up, but the assault was unnecessarily damaging.
I really love this channel. You (re-)sparked my huge interest in warships in mere minutes to the point where I'm binge watching your playlists. Thank you for your amazing content
Holy cow! Three in a row. What an embarrassment of riches today. Thanks, Drach.
Draf is spoiling us today
Rest of youtube: special video vlog, special face cam/reveal, special VR video, 4k video, house tour, vacation vlog.
Drachinifel: special video (human voice)
A true work of art
Short punchy video packed with information....I love it. Thank you for the videos.
Drach, your voice is a sublime British treasure, and completely outclasses that horrible robot voice. Thanks for speaking!
I'm glad your going with the human voice, this channel is great but I just can't stand text to speech
3 videos in a day. Time to binge!
"Battlecruiser" just sounds like such a cool name, too.
OPERATIONAL.
@@typehere6689 I really have to go.... Number One.
It's sexy.
I'm 57...and I table game quite a bit. When I'm refighting the Pacific War (or even parts of the Atlantic/Mediterranean campaigns) I like to refer to certain ships on certain missions as "combat cruisers'. Especially the Alaska class. But 'hunter killers' and 'cruiser killers' are very sexy as well. Cheers!
Warcruiser; it just rolls off the tongue...
Drachinifel. You are spoiling us ^^
Mr. "shoot from the lip" Jackie Fisher's idea. Great concept, so long as your enemy doesn't build them as well.
Great vid Drach, nice write-up. I like the battlecruiser concept.
Same; my favourite type of ship
Very good episode mate, thank you very much!
As always an informative video, Drach. I really enjoyed learning about the origin of the concept, the explanation why the German battlecruisers were of a fundamentally different design and how their intended use changed from being a cruiser killer to a line- of-battle vessel. I would however have liked for you to have gone into a bit more detail as I think this is one of the most interesting and important topics given the spectacular loss of four British Battlecruisers. Again great work. We are the richer for you sharing your knowledge
I love these videos ... thx!
Wow three videos today, you have been a busy little beaver. Interesting and Informative as always, thank you sir.
Think a video on the first supercarrier, the USS Forrestal, would be interesting. Not only was it the first USN carrier design that incorporated an angled flight deck, but was originally supposed to have a telescoping island (based on the cancelled USS United States) that would have permitted use of heavy bombers. Because the Navy had no role in strategic nuclear bombing it was having a difficult time justifying its existence. The nuclear-capable Lockheed P-2 Neptune medium bomber was a stop gap solution, but incapable of landing on a carrier. Later a C-130 Hercules was successfully tested taking off and landing. And, of course, there was the terrible fire during the Vietnam War.
Great video. Would have been nice to hear how various nations approached the battlecruiser issue, but very informative and interesting.
Agreed.
Could you make a video about the Dali-esque French pre-dreadnaughts one day? They are so spectacular... TIA.
I binge watched everyone of your videos and almost caught up on the q&as. It's criminal some network isn't throwing money at you to make a series...
Your horrific wish was granted. There exists a French Pre-dreadnaught video and good God WTF France?
@@theatagamer90 hon hon un peu de vin plus un hôtel est un vaisseau de guerre
'Floating hotels'
Thank you - most interesting. Hadn’t really appreciated that the BC concept started life as being Armoured Cruiser killers, but of course that’s just the role they played in 1914. Would have been interesting if Admiral Troubridge had tested it to the limit with his 4 Armoured Cruisers against Goeben at Otranto - how many ACs does it take to equal 1 BC? I’ve gamed it out a few times and Goeben usually wins.
And I had just finished all the Drydock episodes yesterday and was a little down I was out of "new" (I've watched everything now but the robot voiced ones) Drachinifel videos to watch. Thanks Drach!
As an ocean liner enthusiast from the 1890s to 1960s.... military ships that have funnels at different lengths away from each other if there are more than the 2 or at different proportions.... really makes me cringe.... no symmetry... but I guess that's not what they aren't meant for looks.
If takes makes you cringe then you must be literally be screaming at the funnels of Akagi and Kaga.
@@FirstDagger the aircraft carriers? I just looked it up and all I see are the aircraft carriers. Since it's just the one it's fine to me.
@@FirstDagger Funnels of aircraft carriers were always a tricky subject. Furious initially kept her Bridge and funnel... which made, obviously flying operations really shitty. Later, it had it's exhausts to stern, which brought up the issue, that you smoke up the landing path of approaching aircrafts. Not so great. :P
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/SSZ_airship_aboard_HMS_Furious_1918_IWM_Q_20640.jpg
Having the funnels sideways appears odd, but not unreasonable imo. If you just blow that shit towards the ocean at the side, it doesn't disturb planes so much.
@cullen_Moseley Funnels can be for looks. The Titanic's 4th funnel was fake.
@@Edax_Royeaux I know that. Many passenger ships had dummy funnels. Normandie, Gegorgic, Translvannia, etc
Nicely done.
I have a Dry Dock question... What about U.S. Commandeered boats? Every year we have a wooden boat festival, and regularly there are vintage boats that were pleasure craft, but used by the US for coastal patrols, and still show some of the modifications to the boats made by the Navy. How did this system work? Did people volunteer their boats? Would they have any rights in this, like the option to run the boat for the Navy? And, where there any interesting stories concerning these seized boats?
Edit, I'm an idiot and didn't realise you were wanting specific US navy references. Sorry about that
World war one and two had lots of examples of private boats being seized/bought for naval use. The most famous example was Dunkirk, while there were some civilian crewed boats many were seized by the military and crewed by reservists.
Other notable examples are the HMY Iolaire (A yaught drafted for use as a troop ship and lost with great loss of life on new years day 1919) and the drafted fishing trawlers used as convoy escorts, sub hunters and various other roles through both wars
There is a rusting wreck run aground in Southern Ohio of a large three masted steel yacht that was used by Thomas Edison when it was commadeered by the Coast Guard in WW1. It was used for rod fishing between the wars and commandeered again in WW2. Finally it was used by the Circle line taking tourists around Manhattan. The USS Sachem or the Circle line V was purchased at auction and towed to its final resting place tragically to rust away...
The origin of battlecruiser was much more complex than the content you say in this video.
Firstly, John Fisher's view of the navy is similar to Sir Julian Stafford Corbett's opinion. The most important objective of the navy is sea control.
Fisher thought that the Royal Navy did not need any more battleships, RN only needed one type of capital ship which are all big gun super cruisers capable of doing the following tasks: Protecting British Empire's lines of communications；Destroying enemy lines of communications; participating in major fleet action in which they could sink any major warships. The super cruisers he mentioned was the HMS Dreadnought.
In most of the time, these super cruisers would be placed in different places to protect or destroy lines of communications. When the situation demand, these cruisers can concentrate into a large fleet quickly using their high speed and participating in major fleet actions. In ship to ship combat, these super cruisers can outrange enemy capital ships with their vastly superior fire control system. The cruisers did not need much armour protection since the enemy cannot fight back anyway.
However, most people in the navy and the government let alone the public cannot accept such a radical proposal of kicking battleships out of the navy. In the end, HMS Dreadnought was classified into a new generation of battleships instead of cruisers. The Battlecruisers we known are built to replace the old armoured cruisers. Furthermore, other navies developed equally good fire control system so the out range thing did not happen. These cruisers will need heavy armour.
Then Fisher wanted capital ships with heavy armour, great firepower, and high speed like the X4 battleship. He knew such ships would very expensive however he argued the number of capital ships RN needed can be reduced greatly so as the total military expenditure. However, this idea was rejected too.
Shockingly, you can only for a very brief overview into 5 minutes. :D
For those who whom are battleship fans.( I was always a big fan.) The Battle cruiser always seemed like an under armored, second cousin to true warships.
The spectacular destruction of British battle cruisers at Jutland. Serving to underline his perception. As does the equally spectacular destruction of HMS Hood. Yet, as time goes by, the battle cruiser concept morphs into the fast battleship. As ultimately expressed in the form of the US Navy's Iowa class battleships.
The key issue is mobility! Despite the short comings, it's the mobility of these ships that made them more useful, and more effective than battleships. Oh yes, in a straight up gunfight, the battleship was likely to win. Except that the battleship can't keep up! As both world wars waxed, and wained. The battleships didn't keep up. Battleships were too slow at Jutland, so the battle cruisers did most of the fighting.
In WW-II it was Japan's Kongo class ships that opened my eyes. Yamato and Musashi were available. Only they were too big, too slow and used far too much fuel for the mission. One nights raid, on Henderson field destroyed most of the "Cactus airforce," on the ground. It was the loss of half of Japan's best batte cruisers, that forced Japan to abandon Guadalcanal.
It was the tremendous mobility of the Iowa class. That brought them ftom the doldrums of mothballs back into active service. Heavy armor has it's value. Except that when it makes the ship too slow to accomplish the mission? Only certain parts of the ship can be armored. The displacement hull, is as vulnerable to fire and flooding as any other sea going vessel.
One is inclined to wonder. What would have happened. Had HMS Dreadnought been completed with 10" guns, and a speed of 26 knots instead.
Can you do a video on the HMS Vanguard
I read once that the original battlecruiser concept was to outgun anything that could outrun it and outrun anything that could outgun it.
So as a separate class, considering that there were two schools of Battlecruiser thought: Namely the British (sacrifice armor for speed vs a Battleship) and German (sacrifice firepower vs a Battleship) Why are the following not considered battlecruisers:
The intent was to be able to kill anything smaller than them, and outrun anything else. (While not being the battleships themselves.)
Deutschland (German take on the British battlecruiser pattern. That went... about as well as the British Battlecruisers did. )
Dunkerque (French take that kinda sits between the British and German patterns.)
Scharnhorst (WW2 German take on the German WW1 battlecruiser pattern.)
Alaska (US take on the original mission.)
All of these were by the standards of the time significantly smaller/less capable than modern battleships, but far and away more capable than 'heavy' cruisers. They'd also (rightly) run away from battleships as seen with the Scharnhorsts and an older battleship.
From my experience (and gut feeling) Dunkerque and Scharnhorst are early designs for fast battleships and Alaska and Deutschland where not called battlecruisers for political and PR reasons
Everyone developed their own "intermediate" ship designs that were in between cruisers and battleships and these designs varied wildly between nations whom all had their own tactical and strategic considerations. All of them tend get lumped together into the "battlecruiser" category, regardless of size, design, gun caliber, armor, or intended purpose primarily for the sake of convenience.
I was thinking that you could have mentioned the use of HMAS Australia in the Indian ocean was exactly what the class was designed for it kept the armoured cruisers away. I think you could have also mentioned the Kongo class as transitional to the fast battleship.
Those roles are better told in the ships own videos. :)
I thought HMAS Australia was a county class heavy cruiser?
@@peacockluke The Second HMAS Australia was.
in short.
the Cost of a Capital ship
the Size of a Capital ship
the Firepower of a Battleship
the Speed of a cruiser
the Armor of a Heavy Crusier
designed to be a big bully really, designed to completely dominate smaller ships by outmuscling them in regards to firepower but still being fast enough so they can't run away,
however the high Speed of the battlecruiser means that although it can dishout Battleship punishment it cannot take it back, and when going Toe to Toe with a real battleship it will lose badly and therefore will need to run away when it see's one.
TheGadsdenGuru
The real problem with battlecruisers was that they were too expensive to ever make strategic sense. If it costs as much as a capital ship it must be able to function as such.
yay
Ships more commonly accepted as battlehips - HMS Hood... erm what???? It's interesting listening to the begining of this and contrasting it with your USS Alaska video - the arguments are almost exactly opposed:-)!
Hood? A Battleship? You said it, not me! Shame on you Drach!
Great work on this channel! I have question, Why did gun barrels not have muzzle brakes or similar design for recoil from gas pressures on the ship?
I think that muzzle break on such guns can create side blast so strong that it could be dangerous for personell and equipment, i dont understand why would you want to reduce recoil with muzzle break anyway since mass of the ship and fixed position of gun is probably enough.
I don't quite understand the difference between a Fast Battleship that cannot engage other Battleships because of their very weak armor and Battlecruisers. Ships like the Kongos and Dunkerques seemed like the very definition of a Battlecruiser, with the former starting life as a Battlecruiser and the latter custom built to hunt German Heavy Cruisers.
As far as I'm aware protection is the main difference. For instance since Hood had comparable armour to the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge class she could be described as a fast battleships. Kongo after her refit is another decent example, her original 8-11 inch belt was respectable but after her refit doubled her deck armour thickness she had roughly comparable protection to many battleships of the time period which is why people consider her a fast battleship in her refitted form.
I would dispute Dunkurque however, her belt having a maximum thickness of less than 9 inches would not be battleship levels of protection so I would say she is definitely a battlecruiser
@@themadhammer3305 The problem I'd see is that Kongos couldn't even resist heavy cruiser shells at 14km because of their thin belts. Any deep penetrating modern Battleship shell could have caused catastrophic damage, be it 12” - 18”. So why even have the title of "Battleship" when she can't engage other Battleships? The refit Kongos had armor belts of less than 9 inches, same as the Dunkerque.
@@Edax_Royeaux your right on Kongos belt thickness the article i read had it wrong. Fast battleship is an odd term I'll give you that, mostly because the criteria for it seems arbitrary and different nations each applied it differently.
I think it's more sensible to discuss whether or not they were fast battleships compared to the opposition when they were laid down originally.
And old battleship doesn't stop being a battleship because it's no longer very good, and the same thing goes for an old fast battleship. So why should that not go for an old battleship rebuilt into what one would expect from a fast battleship of that hull size? The main weakness was smaller size compared to contemporaries, but that doesn't stop the 9.4 inch German pre-dreads from being battleships.
Kongos were built as battlecruisers. They got pressed into a fast battleship role. Dunquerqe I imagine is more a result of funny french odeas about what battleship combat would look like, along with some good old penny pinching.
In before the pinned post!
So in your commentary on the USS Alaska, you took the opinion that they are not battle cruisers since they didn’t use contemporary battleship caliber guns. Have you changed your opinion?
Youch! This again! :) The USN called them Large Cruisers. IMO best to leave it at that: they are "other".
@@Weesel71 Battlecruisersa re defined by their role: cruiser killer.
Alaska fits that, so its a battlecruiser. For the porpouses of discission that is sufficient.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 I happen to agree, but Drachinifel did not in his USS Alaska video.
Try them at world of warships
@@kurt1339 I have the Alaska and the Kronstadt in World Of Warships. No Azuma (B-64/5) because it sucks in game and no Stalingrad because it's unattainable.
Let's get something out of the way. Every time battle cruisers come up, some one will bring up Jutland and the how the three British battle cruisers blowing up proved the concept was flawed. The problem with this assertion is not one of these ships was hit in a magazine. All three blew up for as Friedman crafts it "near suicidal ammunition handling practices". Beatty was many things and aggressive and technically and administratively challenged was three of them. He was convinced that a few more hits at Dogger Bank would have slowed the German battle cruisers and brought them under his guns to be destroyed. He can't be blamed for such a faulty tactical concept, given the lack of intelligence, but closing the range would actually improve the resistance of the German battle cruisers to his guns. The deck armor of the German battle cruisers was not effectively thicker than their British counterparts at engagement ranges over 17,000 yards.
But getting back on track, it became unofficial policy in the Battle Cruiser Squadron, to increase the rate of fire by putting more shells and powder in the turret, the handling rooms, within the barbettes and even outside the magazines. Powder was actually removed from their storage cans. Flash protection was by-passed or disengaged. The result was to create a train of powder right down to the magazines. The three British battle cruisers were hit in a turret or barbette. Penetration or armor scabs flashed exposed powder which travelled to the magazines where the cordite exploded. Had pre-Dogger Bank processes and procedures been in place, these battle cruisers would certainly have lost the turret in question but not blown up. After the battle, this situation was covered up and it was put out that the ships blew up because of design flaws and additional protective plating on the decks was worked in around the turrets. Beatty went on the command the Grand Fleet and this whole thing didn't began to be uncovered until the 1980s.
There was also the problem with the type Cordite being used, in that after the war, a problem suspected before the war was proven by tests. WWI cordite in large amounts (tons) would explode when exposed to fire, rather than burn, which meant that the British battle cruisers were fated to explode when the flash reached their magazines.
The battle cruisers were not be used in the line of battle. They were to stand off on the opposite side from the battle line or use their speed to reach the enemy's van and cap his "T", adding their firepower from ranges where their thinner armor would not be exposed.
Before the advent of reliable aircraft and aircraft radios, cruisers were the only strategic and operational search capability. The battle cruiser was expected to dominate the reconnaissance phase of the fight. If the enemy had battle cruisers, then your battle cruisers had to push them aside. Consider this. The six "Lexington" class large scout cruisers (the USN NEVER called these things battle cruisers, at least officially) were intended to execute the strategic and operational scouting mission, in conjunction with the "Omaha" class and the expected follow-up 8" gun classes. Find the Japanese battle fleet by crushing his large armored cruisers and light cruisers. If the four "Kongo" class battle cruisers were present, they would use their six-seven knot advantage to engage at favorable ranges for their 16" guns, which at the time would have out-ranged the Japanese ships by ~10,000 yards. Their protection was more than sufficient to engage at the limits of visual day ranges, 20,000-26,000 yards, for spotted fire.
As far as trade protection, the British battle cruisers performed that mission superbly, running down and destroying the armored cruisers of the German East Asia Squadron. By 1942, speed became more and more important, as battleships and battle cruisers evolved into surface escorts for fleet carriers. The Renown, as rebuilt, wasn't going to stand up to KMS Bismarck by itself in 1941, but it certainly was more valuable as a carrier escort in 1944 than any of the modified "Queen Elizabeths". The "Iowas" may have only bought six knots with that 10,000 tons, but it was the reason they survived on active duty far longer than the 26-27 knot "Washington" and "South Dakota II" classes.
BTW, the US "fast" battleships were NOT built to escort fleet carriers. They were, instead, the beginnings of a new battle line. In 1936, the USN decrypted a message intercepted in 1922 in the earlier JN-25 code, that indicated "Mutsu" had made over 26 knots on her trials. Before this the USN had considered a 23kt battleship as "fast". They had to assume the rebuilt IJN battle line could do as well. That made every US battleship built before 1936 obsolescent. A new battle line had to be built from scratch. Also, when originally conceived as "Kongo" killers, fleet scouts for bad weather and night operations and commerce raiding, the "Iowas" were to be escorted BY the fleet carriers, not the other way around. The battleship as a carrier group surface escort evolved from the carrier battles of 1942, where the carriers, when maneuvering often left the "Washington" and "South Dakota II" class battleships up to 2 nm behind the carrier task group. This made that extra six knots even more important. As it was, back as late as 1939, the "Iowas" would have been followed by 27 knot, 12 x 16" gun, 45,000 ton versions, the funding of the new Panama Canal locks allowing the growth of this design into the "Montanas".
Loverly, thank you! Comment: USN 'Standards' could well have been rebuilt to a sane speed ability.
Never meant to fight against battleship caliber guns:
Indefatigable, Queen Mary, Invincible and Hood-now they tell us
Say, is there any recent news on the USS Texas? The poor buggers not doing great I bet.
For IJN and US navy, it's main purpose was to keep up with the carrier groups. Battleships were too slow for that and they were always left behind.
The USN didnt have any battlecruisers. When its prospective class was laid down, the US carrier fleet consisted of a 60 year old converted coallier.
As for the japanese, the Kongos are three decades older than any carrier the IJN had, and were intended as commerce raiders and fleet screens. They ended up relegated to carrier escort, because none of the more capable japanese dreadnought were fast enough to keep up.
Soooo... some Battlecruisers are more like “light battleships,” being basically slightly less well armed or armored battleships but also not necessarily much faster?
Battle cruiser, a ship with battleship type guns, our the same guns that are used on battleships, but much faster more maneuverable and whit similar range to a cruiser,
With a century's worth of hindsight, it seems the way to get the most out of a battle cruiser was to turn it into an aircraft carrier...
Concept went from a cruiser with battleship guns to a battleship with cruiser speed.
What if hood got the QE II type upgrade, will she win ? At less not loss in 3 minutes
The main thing is not the armour upgrades, but the engine overhaul and range finder upgrade. Had her engines been overhauled she could have closed the distance quicker and would be less likely to suffer the unlucky hit that sank her.
Bismarck got very, very, very lucky to sink Hood like that. Hood's armor was only marginally thinner than Bismarck's.
The Alaska class were a work of art. Too bad they didn't arrive in 1942.
The huge error committed by the Admiralty was to call them battlecruisers. If they had been called cruiser hunters it might have kept the Admiralty's minds focused on their limitations and reduced, at least, the tendancy to expose them to battleship gunfire in fleet actions.
Please give me a list of battlecruisers lost to battleship fire that was not a result of either improper ammunition handling, or circumstances in which the ship was forced to operate alone, rather than as part of a real battle line.
I dont know of any, and therefore find the assertion that battlecruisers were not fit for line engagements unfounded and sensationalist.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 poor ammunition handling aside the battlecruisers that exploded at Jutland were mostly hit by other battlecruisers and not battleships.
can you make a video about one specific ship, USS WIlliam Porter
edit: nvm what about a less popular ship named KRI Irian
He has, search it
oh really ??
*WHEN SOMEONE POSTS 3 VIDEOS IN LESS THAN 3 HOURS*
Could you do a video on the Cailio Dullio ironclad
5:04 I see this photo a lot. are these of welded or riveted construction in regards to the internal structures?
A good question. As I understand it, riveting was the norm until just before World War Two. Welding was a relatively new technology, whereas, riveting was well understood.
Did the US have a battle-cruiser, because I remember that the USS Alaska was a battlecruiser.
No. The alaska class were supposed to be 'large cruisers', a successor to armoured cruisers in pretty much the same role.
"Battlecruisers" as such didnt exist as a class.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 Thank you.
Lexingtons were originally going to be battlecruisers.
@@gokbay3057 I, didn't know that, thank you.
Von der tann please
how does the crew deploy and stow the anti torpedo net?
I often hear that german battlecruisers were slower than the british due to their heavier armor, but thats not true. SMS Von der Tann was the fastest big warship of the world when she entered service, having more than a knot on both Invincible and Indefatigable, and the following classes werent slower or slowly gained speed, too, being at a similar speed as their british counterparts. Its only the Renowns and Hood that really were a lot faster.
I guess they only lost some long range speed by being coal fired, needing to clean their boilers every few hours ( which really reduced their speed at the end of the battle of Jutland)
Judging German battlecruiser speeds is tricky as the construction companies got bonuses for additional speed, as a result their trial runs were done with elite engineering crews, the best coal money could buy, in shallow water and at ultra light loading.
This means that trial speeds can very very misleading compared to real-world combat performance for these ships with more generic crew, average to poor quality coal and a full crew and complement of stores.
For example, if trial speeds are accurate then 1st SG at the Battle of Dogger Bank should've easily pulled away once they ditched Blucher, whereas they were actually being gradually overhauled until Beatty misdirected the BCF.
@@Drachinifel First of, thanks for the answer.
As you said, the quality of the coal is important, and it seems the german coal became worse and worse over the war. So, yeah, in the war the british BCs were often (not always, look at Goeben) faster than the Germans. But that wasnt a design flaw but due to wartime fuel restrictions. I am sure with german coal the british BCs would have similarily slowed down, as the Germans would have been faster with better, imported coal.
Also, I am by no means an expert, but doesnt shallow water slow a ship down? I read that the Germans estimated their ships 1-2kn faster had they been able to run trials in deep water instead of their shallow shore waters. (Thats for their ships completed during the war, like Lützow and Hindenburg)
@@535phobos with water depth it's very dependant on precise depth conditions. There are known areas where hydrodynamic effects make ships of certain drafts and displacement faster by a knot or two, min the early years of destroyer construction Thornycroft and Yarrow were notorious for testing their ships in one or two particular areas that gave them an artificial leg up. Of course those areas wouldn't help a battlecruiser, due to their different dimensions and displacement, but there were known 'sweet spot' areas where many of them were run that give an artificially high result.
It's cumulative, so if you ship is designed for 25knots, better powerplant performance might give you 0.5-.75knots, an elite crew might buy 0.5knots, good coal might buy 0.5-0.75 knots over average, light loading might but around 1 knot and the right depth of water might but 0.5-1knot.
Put together, and your 25knot ship is suddenly making 28.5knots.
But go into wartime and the only thing you'll have from that is your good powerplant and suddenly you can maybe hit 26knots at a push.
With Goeben, she was designed for 0.5knots more than her pursuers, and with a partial engine clean vs the chasing ships somewhat less clean systems her pulling ahead is fairly predictable, but the flip side is her contemporary was Lion, and Lion would've run her down.
Coal quality also helped, albeit that in the first few hours good as bad coal would give maybe 1-1.5knots difference from standard, where it really hurt was the amount of smoke bad coal made and how quickly it clogged the boilers. For example at Jutland by the time the night actions began bad coal meant some German destroyers were down to pre-dreadnought speeds thanks to choked boilers and grates that needed cleaning.
Battlecruiser operational
Sooo....as the Italians in HOI4 I should build Fast Battleships instead of my beloved BC's?
Thanks.
@@mikhailiagacesa3406 So not superheavy but modern BB with all attachments . and grouped withwith modern light carriers and destoyers
If this question has already been asked, please inform me which video to watch thank you. My question is, what was the worst and best anti aircraft guns in World War 2?
Worst is probably the Japanese triple 25mm. Best could be the Bofors 40mm, the ubiquitous Oerlikon 20mm, the US 5"/38 DP in combination with radar directors, etc, depending on your definition of best.
Worst is probably the Japanese 25mm or one of the early-war British ones.
Well my understanding is that the 5 inch usa aa gun was best. The us navy did a lot of work on the anti air problem and found that aa fire under 5inches or so was largely ineffective. This was do to effective ranges.
@@bkjeong4302 which early British one? The 40mm pom pom was worse than the Bofors, but other than that it was pretty good, compare it to the German 37. The 4.5 inch was a pretty good dual purpose weapon. The 4 inch was pretty good. The 5.25 was not great, but it's better as a whole than the mixed batteries on axis ships. The 12.7mm Vickers was a standardish heavy machine gun.
Worst was definitely the 25mm japanese hotchkiss copy. The best is a toss up between the 40 bofors and the 127mm L38 DP, depending on what you want it to do.
Three videos? Someone's had their weetabix
What is the reason for the robot voices anyway?
Garry Wells seems to have a trend in military channels, I can't stand them
Early days of the channel
So sad when the daughters of invincible had a family in fighting and that her 2 german daughters sank their own mother
The whole concept of Battlecruisers never made any sense once the Queen Elizabeth class Battleship was built. A Queen Elizabeth class Battleship was just as fast as any Battlecruiser and had heavy armor as well as 15 inch guns. “Why not just spend the extra money and get what is you really want, the fastest, strongest ship?” Winston Churchill
Because its a balancing act.
Not quite as fast at 24.5 knots, as opposed to ~26-27 of early Battle Cruisers, or 32 of Hood, ReKnown, and Repulse which were built VERY shortly thereafter.
I have the greatest admiration for your work, but really after 4 years have past, I'd wish you'll have time to make this video again very soon. It's full of questionable statements and omissions. For instance in a video on the origins of the battlecruiser you've managed not to mention even once the promoter and inventor of the battlecruiser itself, Jackie Fisher... I guess it's because what he thought the battlecruiser was all about runs against your beautiful and tidy theory that “they were only intended to chase armour cruisers in the colonies”. Yes, with hindsight we all know that after everybody else obliged and started building dreadnought battleships too, batllecruisers with such thin armour were only good for chasing armour cruisers (and pre-dreadnoughts) and as a heavy scout for the fleet if the enemy had battlecruisers nearby too. But for a historian hindsight can be a very deceiving tool on which to build our theories about the past. Going back to the sources usually gives us a better understanding: for Jackie Fisher the battlecruiser was not a type of ship “to be built in small numbers”: they were actually meant to supersede battleships altogether! His famous “The scheme! The whole scheme! And nothing but the Scheme!” included among other things to replace the home defence battlefleet with light forces (light cruisers, destroyers, torpedo boats and subs) for close defence while keeping a battlefleet of “flying squadrons” of fast long range armour cruisers (battlecruisers) based in the UK ready to fight the enemy in open seas or to be quickly deplyed to the colonies to hunt down any marauding enemy ship there. These reforms would have made the RN more efficient and economical to operate. HMS Dreadnought was intended just as a testbed to proof new technologies in a battleship for the coming new battlecruisers. Now, things didn't work out that way. The arms race with Germany and the inherent conservatism inside the service, meant that “the Scheme” would never be implemented, building instead huge number of battleships to face Germany. But these are the ideas really behind the “origin of the battlecruiser” which is the tittle of this video. Once Germany retaliated and started building modern battleships, the concept of a lightly armour capital ship became seriously outdated.
Surprised when you said that the German battlecruisers are not fast battleships because “they are faster than battleships but not for a wide margin” when they were as fast or faster than Invincible. Or that they had battleship-grade guns but “their broadside was not large”. When they had the same broadside of 8 or 10 heavy guns as the South Carolina, Dreadnought, Bellerophon, St Vincent, Neptune, Colossus... yes some of them had 11in guns instead of 12in but of a superior design and very dangerous as shown by Von der Tann, the weakest of them all using the weakest gun the 11in 45cal guns. Of course if you don't increase the displacement but still want higher speed you have to compromise on something else. Nevertheless, German battlecruisers did have battleship-grade armour and guns. Not as thick armour or not as many or as big guns as the best battleships around but battleship-grade nevertheless. Any German battlecruiser with their speed reduced to 21 knots but still unchanged armour and armament would be classified as a battleship, neither the biggest or the best but a perfectly OK design nevertheless. The same cannot be said of most British battlecruisers.
hiei and kirishima.
Wich class is above dreadnoughts?
Dreadnought battleships were designed as the biggest and strongest warship of any nation. There is nothing stronger (up until the aircraft carrier).
Superdreadnaught
None outside of science fiction. Nowadays, everyone tends to build the smallest practical things possible for any given role.
@Frederik Nielsen pretty much everything built after HMS Orion was referred to as a super Dreadnought
Juggernaut
This battlecruiser idea makes the mistake of assuming one on one combat. All the older cruisers have to do is operate in pairs in order to defeat the new battle cruiser so carefully designed to "wipe the seas clean" of them. The same goes for all the problems they had pushing the treaty limits. when you make smaller ships, you can make more of them, so just design the ship with sensible proportions and it ends up in whatever weight class it ends up in.
Also, the treaties were a big waste since they incentivised scrapping so many older ships in order to make room for newer ones. The treaty writers should have written the treaties around budgets or handicapped the tonnage on older ships in order to remove such wasteful incentives.
A 1910 era battlecruiser is equivalent in battle to 4 to 6 contemporary heavy cruisers. At that point it is cheaper.
Please do the Nevada (bb36)
Battlecruisers should have never been expected to be part of the main line of battle.
@Harry Lagom I don't think it was inevitable, and had they been used as intended, they were not a dumb idea. This is because they were basically the continuation of the armoured cruiser concept into the Dreadnought age, a vessel as large as a battleship but designed to kill cruisers. The fact that design worked for 30 years shows that the core concept was sound
@Harry Lagom You really have not explained how it was inevitable that a cruiser killer would come on to a fight against a battle fleet. It's not like armoured cruisers were used that way. It's not like destroyer escorts were used as destroyers. It's not like monitors were used as battleships. It's not like tank destroyers with the firepower of heavy tanks were used as heavy tanks. There are so many examples of weapons which have a similar punch, or at least similar calibre weapons, to the heavyweights, but sacrifice something to get there. They were not pressed into those roles.
And the core concept was killing cruisers. That is it. You can say there was more to it, yes. That stuff is not part of the core concept. Therefore, even you must admit that battlecruisers were a success at killing cruisers, thus succeeded in their core concept.
Also the fact that the Beatty was an idiot and decided to open up all the flash doors allowing ships to explode does not singlehandedly disprove the concept. Look how well the German battlecruisers did. And the British battlecruisers could have done a hell of a lot better if turret penetration didn't equal game over for them. And all this is despite the fact that the British ones at least were never even meant to be in that position in the first place.
@@dubsy1026 Armoured cruisers were absolutely second rate battleships, and it fit their design perfectly. Nor was battlecruisers in the line of battle an unsound concept, it was merely british incompetence that gives a warped picture of their potential.
WHAT IS HAPPENING. Another video??
But wait doesn’t Russia operate a couple of battlecruisers
I didn't understand anything. But okay.
I believe it was Jacky Fisher who coined the phrase, _"Stronger than the faster and faster than the stronger."_ Unfortunately, speed is not armor and in first world war a force of battlecruisers came off second best in a duel with standard cruisers. When the British built the Kongo for the Japanese Navy, she was a battlecruiser. The Japanese eventually made improvements to make the Kongos more of battleships. Besides, the Japanese eventually built the Takao class of heavy cruisers and they were the best in the world. Battlecruisers look good at the beginning but are always lacking.
Kongo class belt and turret armour was, of course, not increased. Calling them battleships was PR, still Battle Cruisers.
The German BCs did it better. They traded firepower for armor. The British had a good idea, but the bad one was taking them up against ships with battleship-caliber guns. Six-inch armor won't stop an eleven-inch shell. ☹️
Also the German BCs LOOK like battleships: their British counterparts looked like armed ocean liners.
You called HMS Hood a Battleship? WHAT?
Matjov
To be fair, her armour is similar to the QEs.
@@bkjeong4302 true. I forgive him 😉
.6" less belt armour than Bismarck, .8" more on turret faces. Basically same armament, probably a knot or so slower when they met. Battleship.
robot lives matter!
Maybe they should have actually bothered to have designed them.
3 (videos) in a couple of hours? It’s obvious, good sir, that you must be a young man... 🤣
I prefer to call them cattlebruisers. Day9 anyone?
Your intro is too long, and the gun sounds are absolutely terrible. That is my only complaint about your amazing videos.
Wait! Someone complaining about gun sounds on a BATTLESHIP channel??
Should do a five minute guide to best SOUNDING Naval rifles!