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steelehc
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Alaska
Dec 2001
time: 20:18
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I know we've had a plethora of "dominating" threads, but the've only covered the land and the air. Nothing has covered the Queens of the Sea, so here we are. Please don't get mad.
PS: Answer based on WW2 statistics, as only the Iowas have been updated and refitted to more modern standards.
Steele
Last edited by steelehc on 30-03-2002 at 09:49
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Dr Strangelove
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Of the entire group only (select members of) the Iowa class, have been upgraded to incorporate post WW2 technology, so obviously they would have an advantage. Their missles alone would give them a commanding range advantage over any other battlewagon.
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Chris 62
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But I'm feeling MUCH better now
Jan 2001
time: 00:18
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Based on effectivness, the South dakota class combined the best Firepower, speed, armor, and unit cost.
FG, Repluse was a Battlecruiser, smaller then Hood, and not as effective.
The Yamato class were expensive white elephants that accomplished little, and the Iowas are somewhat over-rated, their armor and speed has been over stated for years.
The British KGV class were undergunned, and the Bismarks were also bad buys for the money spent.
The best battle record belongs to HMS Warspite, a WWI era vessal that collected 11 battlestars in WWII.
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Simon Darkshade
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Evil HQ, Adelaide, South Australia
May 2001
time: 14:18
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The Hood was a very good early 1920s battlecruiser, and was badly in need of an upgrade. However, in its time, it made a much larger contribution than the brief foray of the Bismarck, which in the end did not achieve its primary mission.
Warspite and the other WWI veteran battleships that were upgraded made a good contribution. The Queen Elizabeth class was an overall good ship.
The KGVs were good fighting ships, whose bulky appearence belied their ability and qualities. They were basically treaty battleships, and their gun combination of 10 X 14 inch in a 2 x 4 1 x 2 turret pattern did not make for an optimum broadside.
The Iowas had the best guns in the 16"/50 cal (Mk 7), and were overall a very good package. In terms of performance in WW2, the South Dakota's were quite comparable, though. The Iowas have proved long lived and valuable years beyond any competitors, being still quite useful for many tasks.
In the overall, they are the best battleship.
The 120 000 tone H Project battleships planned by Germany with 30 inch guns were quite amusing, even though they were only an academic exercise.
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Lazarus and the Gimp
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Whale-raping abomination
Aug 2000
time: 05:18
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The Hood tends to get ridiculed these days because of the way it was sunk by the Bismark. That doesn't really do it justice, however.
First off, the captain of the Hood knew the decks were insufficiently armoured. However, that's only a concern at extremely long ranges when shells are descending near vertically off their parabolic flights. In other words, only a concern for a very short time in the early stages of any encounter. In the early stages, the chances of getting hit, whilst the enemy gunners are still trying the guage the range on a moving target (at extreme long range and on a swelling sea) are very remote.
Once the ranges are closed, the weak decks weren't any concern at all. Shells can't turn corners in flight, and the Hood was massively armoured around the belt. It was a real brawler of a ship. I watched a TV interview with one of the Hood survivors and his account demonstrated that the Hood's captain hadn't put a foot wrong. As soon as the Bismark was sighted, he charged it at full speed to close the ranges. The fatal shell that hit the Hood was only the 5th salvo fired by the Bismark- to find the range that quickly was a complete fluke. At that point, the Hood had already begun the turn to bring it alongside the Bismark to launch a broadside- it was a real last-gasp lucky shot shell that blew it up.
Had that not happened, it would been an incredibly brutal slugging match between two immensely powerful ships. In a 1-on-1 encounter I'd still back the Bismark to win, but it would have suffered tremendous damage in the process and would probably have been crippled. The Hood was also backed up by the Prince of Wales, which wasn't as powerful but in theory should have helped send the Bismark to the bottom.
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Chris 62
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But I'm feeling MUCH better now
Jan 2001
time: 00:18
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Laz, have to disagree about the Graf Spee.
The Germans called it a Panzer schilff, or armored ship, later rated a heavy cruiser, and the design was flawed.
The main armament was 6x11inch guns, not very much, with the added mistake that they were of slow firing and slow turret traverse.
They also were not fast.
The French Strasbourg class was built as a counter to them, carried 8x13 inch weapons, had a better turn of speed, and equal armor protection.
Graff Spee was defeated by a small heavy cruiser (6x8in guns) and two light cruisers, so it couldn't defeat even smaller ships.
Her career was decent, but her sisters Admiral Scheer and Lutzow were uneventful failures.
As for the Hood, she was designed before Jutland, where the flaws of british battlecruisers were revealed.
They were all vulnerable to plunging shot.
The real culprit in Hood's demise was the admirility, they had schedualed a major rebuilding of Hood to commense in 1938, but from the Munich crisis foward, they found a reason to keep her active.
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Dr Strangelove
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quote:
Originally posted by KrazyHorse
The Bismarck had some of the most accurate fire control of any surface vessel in WWII. If the British hadn't had all the ships in the world she would have been able to wreck some serious ass. |
By the end of the war the range finding and fire control equipment on American ships was the best in the world.
It wasn't all the ships in the world that doomed the Bismark, it was a single obsolete carrier equipped with obsolete biplanes. An Iowa class battleship, bristling with 10 five inch dual purpose AA turrets, 20 quad-forty mm emplacements and up to 100 twenty mm guns, and the first two types guided and / or aimed by radar would have laughed off the pathetic British air attack.
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Khan Singh
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By means of the Internet, I am all places at once
Mar 2000
time: 00:18
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In terms of overall usefulness, the Iowas were supreme. But that wouldn't have mattered in a gun battle. There, Yamato would take out Iowa in five minutes. And Iowa could take out anything else in five minutes.
Okay, to be fair Bismark would still be afloat after five, as would Richelieu. But both would be out of action and incapable of escape. So they die, Captain, and we all move up in rank.
The other contenders don't really figure. Vittorio Veneto had an impressive gun battery, but insufficient armor and poor general protection. King George V had decent armor and good practicality, but her battery was simply inadequate.
It would be fairer, though not especially helpful, to ask what ship generated the best performance per ton of displacement. I think Richelieu did, with overall power probably very comparable to the Iowas on 10,000 tons less displacement. And Iowa wasn't exactly wasting a lot of displacement herself.
Of course, ultimately "deserves got nothing to do with it." Iowa would have faced Yamato and lost and the fact that she had 15,000 tons less displacement wouldn't have counted for anything. In a battleship action, if the enemy has guns able to penetrate your armor, you're dead. That is pretty much how the equation finally works out. All the ships here could hit the enemy at 18,000 yards, and all their shells exploded reliably enough to allow them to blow up inside an armored citadel. Radar and good fuses are nice, but the simple fact of the matter is that Iowa's armor was just sufficiently thick to ensure that Yamato's 18.1" shells would detonate after they penetrated Iowa's belt. All of Iowa's advantages come to naught on that simple fact.
In overall historical terms, the most dominating battleship was probably Dreadnaught whose battery easily outclassed that of any opponent. Likewise, the Queen Elizabeths were far superior in gun power to any contemporaneous battleship. British fuses reduced their effectiveness, but nonetheless they remained highly effective battleships 30 years after construction
Last edited by Khan Singh on 30-03-2002 at 22:31
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Simon Darkshade
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Evil HQ, Adelaide, South Australia
May 2001
time: 14:18
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IIRC, Ark Royal was not "obsolete" at the time of the Bismarck sinking, but was rather one of the Royal Navy's most modern fleet carriers.
Compared to some in service in the US and Japanese navies, it was certainly much less powerful, but was good in its service in the Atlantic, Home Fleet and and the Med.
The Swordfish was an old biplane, but was still quite useful, and ended up having a good strike rate with some significant kills and assists.
As said, the circumstances of the destruction of the Hood were extremely similar to the destruction of British battlecruisers at Jutland.
Also to be considered is the way in which the Hood was regarded as the "pride of the Royal Navy", which did obscure her true capabilities and role to some extent. The concentrated and accurate fire of Bismarck and Prinz Eugen was not what she was designed and armoured for, and her assumption of the dominant role in the engagement instead of the better armoured Prince of Wales can be seen as an extention of this... delusion on behalf of the Admiralty that Chris alluded to.
The Yamato and Musashi were well armoured and armed, but they were not decisive weapons, and cash cows that did not see extensive use save for their final, futile missions.
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Khan Singh
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By means of the Internet, I am all places at once
Mar 2000
time: 00:18
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Well, of course all battleships were expensive white elephants that accomplished little. That's why we don't build them any more. The Yamatos were probably less useless than other battleships, for the simple reason that they could have actually destroyed any other battleship,while the other battleships would only have been destroyed by them. Naturally carriers, or even land based air, would have been a better use of resources. But there is no particular reason to think that Yamato was more of a waste than Iowa. Neither of them did anything to justify their costs, which were enormous.
The 16"/50s were superior guns, and Iowa's battery were probably slightly superior to Yamato's in total usefulness, given her better shells and fire control. But firepower is only half the equation. Iowa was simply not designed with immunity to her own gun power at decisive combat ranges. Yamato, on the other hand, was. And, since their gunpower was basically comparable, Yamato's shells would penetrate Iowa's citadel, while Iowa's shells would not. Since the raison d'etre of battleships is combat in the battleline, that means that Yamatos were superior, albeit on much higher displacement.
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Khan Singh
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By means of the Internet, I am all places at once
Mar 2000
time: 00:18
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The USN put out a lot of arguments about the tremendous power of 16"/50 caliber guns, partly out of pride and partly to justify recommissioning the Iowa class. But, in truth, I just don't see much reason to think that the guns themselves were actually better than Yamato's.
The 16"/50 caliber gun was good, but, good as it was, it is important to remember that the Yamato's guns were still 18.1". They may not have been especially powerful guns for their size. But they none the less fired a 20% heavier shell at a slightly higher muzzle velocity than the "tremendously powerful" guns of Iowa. Terminal velocity was also slightly higher and the long delay fuze of Japanese "diving" shells would help to defeat the resistive properties of the Iowa's armor scheme, as well as resulting in more hits due to diving through water. Firing cycle was probably only slightly longer than Iowa's, contrary to the numerous claims made over the years that Yamato fired slowly.
If the Iowa's battery did had an advantage over Yamato's, then it came from radar, superior fire control and from better shells. These are important advantages and, as I said, I think it makes Iowa's battery slightly superior overall.
But again, this does not mean an Iowa could defeat a Yamato. Iowa may have had better fire control than Yamato, but this does not mean Yamato couldn't hit targets. On the contrary, by all accounts, including those of Americans off Leyte, she fired tight salvos accurately ---night or day. The Iowa's might have hit Yamato first, but the Yamatos were built to take that kind of punishment. The Iowas were not. Almost any hit by Yamato on Iowa had a high chance of penetrating her armor and exploding in her vitals.
Last edited by Khan Singh on 31-03-2002 at 03:24
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30-03-2002 09:22
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