AHC/WI: Alternate Dreadnought Cruiser Development

Battlecruisers were designed with an emphasis on speed and firepower, with minimal protection. In the original role as scouts and cruiser killers, this wasn't an issue, because they could outgun any ship they could catch (pre-dreadnoughts, armored cruisers, etc.) and outrun any ship that outgunned them (dreadnoughts, other battlecruisers). However, in practice battlecruisers tended to be used in roles more befitting dreadnoughts, which proved devastating due to their lack of strong protection. Since a battlecruiser cost as much as a dreadnought, this was also a major waste of resources, especially since they couldn't even use their primary advantage - speed - in a battle line style engagement.

What if instead of pursuing large battlecruiser programs, the naval powers had also continued to develop and procure armored cruisers for hunting light cruisers? This would allow the cruisers to use infrastructure and shell stockpiles already in existence for smaller caliber guns that would otherwise be shut down and go to waste, such as those for the 9.2", 9.4", 10", 11", and 12" guns, which would all be sufficient for defeating light cruisers. It could potentially allow the smaller number of battlecruisers to be larger and more expensive per unit, improving protection levels to be comparable to those of battleships. That way, battlecruisers would be more suitable for the conditions of the line of battle, and would even have an advantage over battleships, being able to fight any battle on their terms.

Delta Force said:

Battlecruisers were designed with an emphasis on speed and firepower, with minimal protection. In the original role as scouts and cruiser killers, this wasn't an issue, because they could outgun any ship they could catch (pre-dreadnoughts, armored cruisers, etc.) and outrun any ship that outgunned them (dreadnoughts, other battlecruisers). However, in practice battlecruisers tended to be used in roles more befitting dreadnoughts, which proved devastating due to their lack of strong protection. Since a battlecruiser cost as much as a dreadnought, this was also a major waste of resources, especially since they couldn't even use their primary advantage - speed - in a battle line style engagement.

What if instead of pursuing large battlecruiser programs, the naval powers had also continued to develop and procure armored cruisers for hunting light cruisers? This would allow the cruisers to use infrastructure and shell stockpiles already in existence for smaller caliber guns that would otherwise be shut down and go to waste, such as those for the 9.2", 9.4", 10", 11", and 12" guns, which would all be sufficient for defeating light cruisers. It could potentially allow the smaller number of battlecruisers to be larger and more expensive per unit, improving protection levels to be comparable to those of battleships. That way, battlecruisers would be more suitable for the conditions of the line of battle, and would even have an advantage over battleships, being able to fight any battle on their terms.

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Perhaps if the Bellerophon class had been built as the X4s (a combination Improved Dreadnought / Invincible design - basically a pre - Queen Elizabeth fast Battleship) we might have seen no further development of the Battle Cruiser and armoured Cruiser and instead a shift to fast uniformly heavily armed but relatively lighter armoured Cruisers (such as the Hawkins class) and none of Fishers follies and certainly no exploding Battle cruisers!

So a steady development from X4 Bellorphon to Queen Elizabeth with no Battlecrusiers after Invincible and QE becomes effectively a class of 12 Ships (No revenge BBs or Renowns/Repulse BCs) rather than 5.

A larger Town class Light Cruisers from 1910 (up to Hawkins size) again with a uniform armament up to 7.5" and torpedoes fills the Cruiser Niche.

Continuing to build armored cruisers is the wrong way to go to get fewer but more heavily protected battlecruisers, the battlecruiser was intended to destroy armored cruisers with its heavy armament and high speed. Having a lot of armored cruisers that need hunting only makes Fisher's follies seem like a better idea, if they spend more time hunting those they'll spend less time in places likely to highlight their flaws

No if you want fewer but more heavily armored Battlecruisers you need the armored cruisers they would be expected to face to be armed with Battleship scale guns, so that they need to be armored to stand up to them. Say an earlier version of the Tsukuba and Ibuki class, either from Japan, or the US who was considering such a design as well. If there was an earlier shift to 12 inch gunned armored cruisers any Armored Cruiser killer would have to expect to face them and be armored to match, and coincidentally face a battleship as well

Armoured cruisers (AC) of the time were too slow compared to battleships to safely outrun them and of course were no match for them in a straight up fight.
To increase speed you had to increase size. (Note: If you look at the SMS Blücher, which was the biggest AC to my knowledge, one can see the same increase in speed as with the first battlecruisers(BC)).
Now if you already are building a bigger ship you can add bigger guns (starting with 12''). What follows is that you have a faster and stronger cruiser than before that can easily kill any AC's your opponent might have (battle of the falkland islands).
Also the costs weren't that much higher (Last british AC cost ~1,4mio£ first british BC 1,7mio£). [no guarantee on those numbers].

By 1914/15 both british and germans (the two most important navies of that time period) were in a sense already on their way out of the BC phase and well into the fast battleship phase.
The british had built the QE class and the german BC's had mostly been much more heavily amoured than their british counterparts(with bigger guns to follow in the subsequent classes).

Navalwarfare and building programs are a bit like rock-paper-scissors (weak analogy i know).
In the beginning you needed BC's because your opponent had AC's. BC's made AC's obsolete (and were themselves made obsolete by fast battleships.)
Now everyone had BC's or equivalent (20-30k t) with a huge gap to Light Cruisers (5000t). Which makes it impossible to have enough BC's to cover your opponents Light Cruisers. Subsequently you need something to hunt LC's ...

I am by no means an expert on these topics but my best guess is that without the Washington Naval Treaty we would have seen heavy cruisers emerge (as they did OTL) with more armour (no tonnage limit) thus once again resembling the AC's just faster. (The same technological advances that allowed battleships to be become faster would do the same to cruisers.)
And now I think that was what you were looking for? I hope I could show you above why something along this lines was not practical in 1910ish without a pre 1900 pod (Or close to ASB have the Japanese AC's be destroyed in 1905s battle of Tsushima)

In the end all that doesn't matter when the carrier comes along

fishingfred said:

Armoured cruisers (AC) of the time were too slow compared to battleships to safely outrun them and of course were no match for them in a straight up fight.
To increase speed you had to increase size. (Note: If you look at the SMS Blücher, which was the biggest AC to my knowledge, one can see the same increase in speed as with the first battlecruisers(BC)).

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Actually they need to be fitted with turbines. Not one single AC used them, all used VTE's. Using turbines (and later oil-firing) you can easily get speeds up another 3-4 knots.

And AC's were useful on foreign stations to hunt down raiders and escort convoys, so I can see them being built especially if made faster.

AC's of the time especially the most modern ones had a 3 - 4 knot advantage over a BB. Most Pre-dreads could do 18 knots, there was a very limited number of classes that were faster and if you forced the engines you could probably crank 19 - 20 knots out of them.

So for the time a 23k AC was perfectly fine, it spots the battleship, turns, cranks on the coal and pulls out of range. Also with the gunnery methods of the time a AC was probably a threat that a BB could not ignore. Especially once they started going into larger mixed batteries. Of course with Dreadnoughts the pre-dread was obsolete and so too was the vast majority of the ACs but the RN made a big decision to arm the BCs as they did with the intent that they should run down and kill what they can but not engage a well armed opponent..but...

"Guys we've got 12 inch guns on these things right?"
"Yep.."
"So why don't we use them to engage Dreadnoughts?"
"Because their guns can rip through our armour with ease?"
"Ahh yes..but what if we engaged them..whilst they was fighting OUR Dreadnoughts?"
"You know..thats a jolly good idea.."

That became the thinking, instead of being scouts and scout killers, BC's became a fast wing of the fleet.

I'd say that the RN's BC's should have been armed with 9.2's like the Blucher was designed to face, that way you've got a fast AC killer and scout that is NOT too well armed to go tangling with DN's.

sharlin said:

I'd say that the RN's BC's should have been armed with 9.2's like the Blucher was designed to face, that way you've got a fast AC killer and scout that is NOT too well armed to go tangling with DN's.

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Fisher went through a number of these designs. In 1902, he planned a ship with 4 9.2in, 12 7.5in and a 6in belt. By 1904, he planned an all-big-gun armoured cruiser with 16 9.2in and a 6in belt. However, the arguments for the use of the 12in gun in the Dreadnought- a uniform all-big-gun salvo of eight or more guns is needed to allow salvo ranging, and the heaviest gun gives the greatest impact and is most accurate at long range- also apply to battlecruisers.

eltf177 said:

Actually they need to be fitted with turbines. Not one single AC used them, all used VTE's. Using turbines (and later oil-firing) you can easily get speeds up another 3-4 knots.

And AC's were useful on foreign stations to hunt down raiders and escort convoys, so I can see them being built especially if made faster.

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You are right they could have made AC's faster but BC's where faster and outgunned them significantly. And when it came down to refit all your old cruisers or built newer bigger ones, well it was called naval arms race.
(The right logic is: Something that can kill AC's and be quicker needs to be as big as a battleship with less armour. Not:"To increase speed you had to increase size.")

sharlin said:

I'd say that the RN's BC's should have been armed with 9.2's like the Blucher was designed to face, that way you've got a fast AC killer and scout that is NOT too well armed to go tangling with DN's.

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And then someone must have thought: "But why not use 12'' guns and kill the blücher too?".

The problem was that Fisher was obsessed with Speed and gun power, so he pushed for the biggest guns of the time, the 12 inch to be mounted on the Invincibles.

What would be needed would be someone who could A. Stand up to the force of nautical nature that is Fisher and help him to design something a bit more rational. In one AH I did someone did a design for me of a 'Colonial Armoured Cruiser' later re-named Heavy Cruiser and it was a 1906 take on a County Class. Four 9.2 inch dual turrets, two forwards, two aft, 25 knots and a battery of 4 inch guns with shields on the flanks. That would be more rational than the overgunned monsters that were designed.

sharlin said:

AC's of the time especially the most modern ones had a 3 - 4 knot advantage over a BB. Most Pre-dreads could do 18 knots, there was a very limited number of classes that were faster and if you forced the engines you could probably crank 19 - 20 knots out of them.

So for the time a 23k AC was perfectly fine, it spots the battleship, turns, cranks on the coal and pulls out of range. Also with the gunnery methods of the time a AC was probably a threat that a BB could not ignore. Especially once they started going into larger mixed batteries. Of course with Dreadnoughts the pre-dread was obsolete and so too was the vast majority of the ACs but the RN made a big decision to arm the BCs as they did with the intent that they should run down and kill what they can but not engage a well armed opponent..but...

"Guys we've got 12 inch guns on these things right?"
"Yep.."
"So why don't we use them to engage Dreadnoughts?"
"Because their guns can rip through our armour with ease?"
"Ahh yes..but what if we engaged them..whilst they was fighting OUR Dreadnoughts?"
"You know..thats a jolly good idea.."

That became the thinking, instead of being scouts and scout killers, BC's became a fast wing of the fleet.

I'd say that the RN's BC's should have been armed with 9.2's like the Blucher was designed to face, that way you've got a fast AC killer and scout that is NOT too well armed to go tangling with DN's.

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Indeed - that's why I like the idea of the pre war Bellerophens / St Vincients / Neptunes / Colossus / King George V / Iron Duke class + becoming fast Battleships with no more BCs after Invincible class (or maybe not even these)

These ships and their equivalent BCs cost roughly the same - so I would assume a modest increase in cost.

The trick would be to hide the ships true top speeds - something the 'silent service' was good at.

Could you really hide the speed (at least after they are finished building) as Britain was selling lots of ships so you should be able to get a good idea of what you can get for a certain size/cost (and you know the armament and cost, I guess you might think they had very strong belts ?).

JSB

It was always a temptation to use the next class down in the battleline. The Japanese did this with armoured cruisers against Russian battleships.

Cat!

catalfalque said:

It was always a temptation to use the next class down in the battleline. The Japanese did this with armoured cruisers against Russian battleships.

Cat!

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True but this is pre-dread times when a AC was a threat against a BB and the IJN's AC's were world class and very modern, much better than anything in the Russian fleet at Tishuma save the Borodino's.

jsb said:

Could you really hide the speed (at least after they are finished building) as Britain was selling lots of ships so you should be able to get a good idea of what you can get for a certain size/cost (and you know the armament and cost, I guess you might think they had very strong belts ?).

JSB

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Historically they did manage to hide some of the advantages and foreign built ships could be built to what ever standard.

Just don't build them quite as well as the front line British ships

And then you have things like the two Brazilian DN's that many thought were being built for the UK 'in secret' as they were quite a bit more powerful than anything we had in the fleet at the time (but less well armoured).

Very Anglo Centric

The German BC were designated as Large Cruisers and the Russian as Cruisers of the line.

On the original Fisheresque concept it can be argued that they were reasonably successful. There are only four actions (and a passive action).

Heligoland Bight, Dogger Bank, Falklands and Jutland. The first three are clear victories for the fast BC concept and the last is a swan song, but in terms of comparable losses british fuze failures may be as much to blame as thin armour. The passive one is Australia escorting troopships and keeping the German raiders away.

The Russian concept was to act as a fast wing, overtake and cross the T of the enemy battle line and win the battle of Tsushima.

So the fast BC concept is really a British solution to the need to hunt down colonial Armoured Cruisers while keeping the Battleship strength intact. Once done they are a very effective scouting wing against anything short of themselves and as said by 16 being overtaken in the role by the fast BB.

And the spurious etc are designated large light cruisers.

The battlecruiser is a fascinating warship and one of my favourite topics. It is also completely maligned for no other reason than that British gunners were careless with their cordite charges in the attempt to increase their own rate of fire.

As pointed out, the battlecruiser is simply the further development of the armoured cruiser. The term battlecruiser was first used in regards to HMS Powerful and HMS Terrible in the 1890s. Fisher's concept of the armoured cruiser nee battlecruiser was central to his 'flotilla scheme' which he thought up as a method to allow the Royal Navy to reign in its expenses worldwide. HMS Dreadnought was a 'bone' thrown to the battleship-centric Royal Navy so that the new battlecruisers could be built.

Gannt the chartist said:

The German BC were designated as Large Cruisers and the Russian as Cruisers of the line.

On the original Fisheresque concept it can be argued that they were reasonably successful. There are only four actions (and a passive action).

Heligoland Bight, Dogger Bank, Falklands and Jutland. The first three are clear victories for the fast BC concept and the last is a swan song, but in terms of comparable losses british fuze failures may be as much to blame as thin armour. The passive one is Australia escorting troopships and keeping the German raiders away.

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Perhaps, as Massie suggests, it was a problem of nomenclature, at least for the British. Once battle became part of their name, it became difficult to resist putting them in the line of battle. It didn't help that they looked like battleships (and cost as much!). Perhaps if they had been called heavy cruisers...

But used to hunt down and mop up smaller raider forces, as at the Falklands, they succeeded more or less as Fisher envisioned.

For all that, however, they were an expensive solution to a secondary problem, and it is telling that they disappear for all intents and purposes by the 1920's. Submarines turned out to be the real threat to commerce, and that required ASW units, not gigantic cruiser killers. To the extent that they pointed to a Fisheresque solution, they gave way to fast battleships, which through superior propulsion technology (and yes, greater tonnage) finally achieved his desired speed, speed, speed without sacrificing armor. Just in time, of course, to be superseded by naval aviation...

Ofc the Panzerschiffe comes back, and the treaty cruiser and when it does the Dunquerque's, Dutch colonial cruisers and Alaska's and Kronshstadt's also make an appearance. Same problem same solution.

Athelstane said:

it is telling that they disappear for all intents and purposes by the 1920's.

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But isn't that due to the WNT stopping all production of big ships ?

Do you think they would have stopped building them without it ? Lexington's etc?

JSB