The German battlecruisers saved the HSF just a reminder and made it home. Speed and armor can be a greater advantage than firepower
The German battleships were better armored and more durable than the battlecruisers, sending four of them on the death ride would have produced similar results though likely with a smaller chance of sinking due to being better protected. By the time of the death ride the German battlecruisers were not significantly faster than the Grand Fleet either due to previous damage, they escaped due to the simultaneous mass torpedo attack, poor visibility, the onset of night, and the intervention of the German pre-dreadnoughts. German dreadnoughts would not have performed worse because taking and giving punishment is literally what they were designed for.
The battlecruisers also had fought and destroyed several British battlecruisers beforehand
That was the screen torpedo run, onset of night and poor scouting to Jellicoes rear during the night.
That was not a design flaw of the British battlecruisers as much as it was Beatty being an idiot and ordering unsafe steps to be taken with the ammunition handling systems in order to slightly increase rate of fire. If the British battlecruisers had been following standard procedure, one or both of Queen Mary and Indefatigable likely lives to fight another day, or go down slowly after taking a beating. Lion and Tiger managed to not explode despite taking heavy damage, this serves as a good example.
Edit: not to mention that if their guns stay in the fight longer, the odds of another German battlecruiser going down increase as well.
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They faced their counterpart with the scales going German during the BC fight due to complete incompetance on Beattys part and Evan Thomas having to follow behind and make out what the hell he was trying to do. Does not make the argument for battlecruisers any stronger.
Doesn’t make it much weaker either. An asset being mishandled does not make that asset useless. Jellicoe requested more Battlecruisers in preference to battleships and post war, Battlecruiser designs were given equal priority to battleships in the anticipated post war building program. Hardly seems to be a discredited ship type.
Yes, because the March of propulsion technology allowed it without prohibitive size increases.
Eh, carriers became #1 after pretty much every fast battleship was designed. The Americans were the only ones to design their battleships to keep up with aircraft carriers.
Torpedoes were already seen as a viable 'threat' this would just reinforce the point I think and since "Torpedo Boat Destroyers" are already coming into being specifically to counter the Torpedo Boat threat this would highlight that threat.
On the converse side this does zip to help justify keeping the wooden fleet or sails I'd think
Randy
You misread my point, his suggestion was the German battlecruisers succeeded in destroying british battlecruisers. My point is that it doesn't say much about german battlecruisers (and their overall) effectiveness but rather british incompetence and mishandling. The Germans neutralised some of their opposite number, it had little effect on the overall battle, the HSF ended up in Jellicoe's jaws despite Hipper mauling Beatty and was saved not by battlecruisers death ride but destroyers charging, dropping torps, forcing Jellicoe away along with making smoke to delay Jellicoes realising the HSF was hightailing it out of there, followed by further scouting incompetence in the British rear as Scheer crossed during the night.
I dont think BCs are totally useless, but a very inefficient use of resources for what you end up with.
The German battlecruisers had as much armour as many of the British battleships. Arguably they were the first fast battleships... The British instead decided to go cheap in the 1907 program instead of building the X4 "fusion" design combining battleship armour and 25 knots speed in 22,500t displacement.
I have always thought that on the same tonnage at least in the 1910s slower but more powerful units make sense. As a major power, the best use of battlecruisers is probably to counter enemy battlecruisers, otherwise you can just counter raiding cruisers with your own cruisers and do scouting with your own cruisers. As a minor power, you are either fighting a major power in which case you can't defeat them in open battle and can only hope to defend your coastline from invasion/bombardment and/or be as big of a nuisance as possible so either raiding or tying up enemy units to stretch them thin and maybe convince a friendly power to use the opportunity and join you. Or, you are fighting another minor in which case you can either choose a battleship/battleships or a battlecruiser/battlecruisers.
If you are fighting the major, your battleship will still tie down lots of resources to blockade it in port, plus it won't get hunted down that way. It is also individually more powerful than a battlecruiser so if you do need to try and do a deathride to cripple a landing the BB probably does more damage. One could argue that a BC could run in, shoot stuff up, and flee, but realistically your enemy will always have a capital ship or two covering a landing which forces the BC to engage them when a BB is better suited for that and more durable. A BC can raid, but a BB is just as big of a threat if it just sits in port (see Tirpitz) and forces the enemy to devote significant resources to keep it there and it really isn't that big of a difference. Plus, you aren't risking the BB, if your BC gets caught and sunk while raiding that is much more crippling to you as a small power than the same thing happening to one of your cruisers. If you're fighting another minor and you go the BC route and they have a BB of similar size and age, your BC isn't beating that BB so they have the initiative. They can send the BB wherever they want within reason, and nothing you have can stop it. The BC can be a huge nuisance, but once the BB appears it has to either flee or fight, which it will lose.
In short, a force of BBs will defeat similar sized/aged BCs (obviously a Lion would beat an Espana and probably a Bellerophon but not an Iron Duke/Orion is my point) so if you want control of the sea BBs are generally the way to go. As a major navy BCs are a nice luxury to kill cruisers/counter enemy BCs but a core force of BBs to establish control of an area makes more sense. As a minor, having a BB instead of a BC means at worst you should have parity with any peers, and a BB in port requires a blockade force just like a BC in port.
That is my thinking on battleships vs battlecruisers in the WWI era anyways.
They consistently had fewer guns and less armour than their german BB contempory (+ the speed factor I would generally register that as a battlecruiser), but they were designed to counter the british battlecruisers rather than be cruiser killers. But in terms of the endgame just being fast battleships? Correct, but you've also split your battleline between two speeds.
And the British admiralty didn't do a Lascaris, no
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This is exactly what I'm getting at. Why build something more expensive than a battleship that can't stand against a battleship, either directly or indirectly, that doesn't offer you something a battleship does for a similar price. And then if you build cruisers instead you have more of them in one place than any single battlecruiser. I just dont get it.
It makes sense when you start to hit proper fast battleship territory because it can go and fight a contempory 'slow' BB and win, and becomes even more useful when carriers come around (which do an infinitely better job as scouts than BCs ever did). I just dont get the obsession with them. Firstly, in a war situation merchants should be in convoys, if you're worried about enemy cruisers plonk your own as escorts, if you're worried about big armoured cruisers or something, a pre dreadnought or in ww2 an old dreadnought) should do the trick, basically all you need to do is be enough of a threat to mission kill the thing and you've removed it as a threat to your commerce. Spee took on three regular cruisers and was mission killed, you can concentrate your forces with a convoy and the enemy has to come into range of you to sink the convoy, so speed isn't that relevant. See Hipper v Berwick. Despite doing a rubbish job at actually hitting Hipper she was driven off, and if she had forced the engagement would've certainly been mission killed or even sunk.
Agreed
Battlecruisers seem to serve a primary function of wasting eachothers resources. Battleships and cruisers look to be the better investment. Cruisers initially for scouting and trade protection, carriers and escort carriers increasingly taking over/sharing this role as things go on, with submarines as the commerce raider. A 'luxury' asset shouldn't ever really exist in a fleet IMO. Icecream and rum being the exceptions for morale of the men.
Establish convoys, escort them and dare the raiders to come and fight. Ramillies ran off S&G, Berwick ran off Hipper. Not luxury but 'good enough'. Battlecruisers a nice 'luxury' as you say, perhaps detach off a convoy in a kind of hunter killer role and try running the raider down, but ultimately unnecessary and poor use of a capital ship if you've already denied them the ability to interdict your SLOCs successfully. And for the price of a battleship? Money better spent on a battleship.
The thing to remember is that battlecruisers were initially an outgrowth of the armored cruiser in the British thought process. Being built to counter enemy cruisers, which they could handily manage as any contemporary cruiser would be easily defeated by them, serve as a rapid reaction force to threats in distant areas, and maybe act as a fast wing in fleet actions hitting weakened enemies, blocking escape, and mopping up afterwards.
In this context they make sense as they were intended, not to replace or work as a part of the battleline. But rather as a supplementary force which would allow the battlefleet to concentrate. Why deploy battleships all over the world when your battlecruisers can be anywhere they need to be quickly and respond to threats as needed? If the threat is big enough that you need battleships then your battlecruisers can buy time for the slower units to arrive. They can mop up enemy merchant shipping (so the thinking went) search for surface raiders, and generally serve as a utilitarian asset increasing the overall capability of the fleet as a whole while not taking to much from overall budgets for other units as if you are a major navy then building a few here and there wont effect your other projects that much.
If your a minor power than yeah battleships likely make more sense, unless you are expecting to fight back via commerce warfare like the French were planning with their armored cruisers. But the idea that if you can only afford a few big ships then making them faster than your enemies battleships and thus able to run away does have some attraction.
The problem was that the Germans saw the new British Invincibles and, in typical Wilhelm style, decided that they needed ships which were better than the British ships. Resulting in heavier armored, slower overall, ships. Resulting in an arms race as the British responded to the German ships with each new class, while the Germans did the same. Eventually resulting in both navies stumbling upon the fast battleship more or less.
Battlecruisers really only make sense (discounting their use in a June ecole strategy which really doesnt work in practice) if your in the very top rank of naval power and can afford to build some ships for such a niche role without it effecting the rest of your building program. The British are really the only ones in the 1906-1920 period who have a navy which makes sense for battlecruisers. Germany didnt really need them, though I think they built better ones on a ship-for-ship basis, France didnt really need them, American didnt really need them, Japan didnt really need them.
And I think this is born out by the fact that only Britain and Germany had a well developed battlecruiser force, the German fleet being built largely as one-upmanship as part of the Anglo-German arms race with justification tacked on later. Japan did build the Kongo's, but these are really a modified Tiger (or the other way around depending on your source) and likely built because Japan was still using the RN as a basis for their fleet, though they made some sense for Japan I suppose) America toyed with battlecruisers, but every time abandoned the idea, France was never very serious about the concept, Russia was more serious, Italy, and the other powers were somewhere in between.
The battlecruiser became in vogue only later in the 1910s as everyone's first or second wave of dreadnoughts were entering service and the nations considering them had enough battleships in service that they could think about building a few such ships, though none of these got very far. Post war as the United States sought to become the dominant naval power they would begin to plan some proper (though not very good) battlecruisers. Japan would invest heavily in the concept, and begin building ships to be used as part of their own unique doctrine.
In this context they make sense as they were intended, not to replace or work as a part of the battleline. But rather as a supplementary force which would allow the battlefleet to concentrate. Why deploy battleships all over the world when your battlecruisers can be anywhere they need to be quickly and respond to threats as needed? If the threat is big enough that you need battleships then your battlecruisers can buy time for the slower units to arrive. They can mop up enemy merchant shipping (so the thinking went) search for surface raiders, and generally serve as a utilitarian asset increasing the overall capability of the fleet as a whole while not taking to much from overall budgets for other units as if you are a major navy then building a few here and there wont effect your other projects that much.
If your a minor power than yeah battleships likely make more sense, unless you are expecting to fight back via commerce warfare like the French were planning with their armored cruisers. But the idea that if you can only afford a few big ships then making them faster than your enemies battleships and thus able to run away does have some attraction.
The problem was that the Germans saw the new British Invincibles and, in typical Wilhelm style, decided that they needed ships which were better than the British ships. Resulting in heavier armored, slower overall, ships. Resulting in an arms race as the British responded to the German ships with each new class, while the Germans did the same. Eventually resulting in both navies stumbling upon the fast battleship more or less.
Battlecruisers really only make sense (discounting their use in a June ecole strategy which really doesnt work in practice) if your in the very top rank of naval power and can afford to build some ships for such a niche role without it effecting the rest of your building program. The British are really the only ones in the 1906-1920 period who have a navy which makes sense for battlecruisers. Germany didnt really need them, though I think they built better ones on a ship-for-ship basis, France didnt really need them, American didnt really need them, Japan didnt really need them.
And I think this is born out by the fact that only Britain and Germany had a well developed battlecruiser force, the German fleet being built largely as one-upmanship as part of the Anglo-German arms race with justification tacked on later. Japan did build the Kongo's, but these are really a modified Tiger (or the other way around depending on your source) and likely built because Japan was still using the RN as a basis for their fleet, though they made some sense for Japan I suppose) America toyed with battlecruisers, but every time abandoned the idea, France was never very serious about the concept, Russia was more serious, Italy, and the other powers were somewhere in between.
The battlecruiser became in vogue only later in the 1910s as everyone's first or second wave of dreadnoughts were entering service and the nations considering them had enough battleships in service that they could think about building a few such ships, though none of these got very far. Post war as the United States sought to become the dominant naval power they would begin to plan some proper (though not very good) battlecruisers. Japan would invest heavily in the concept, and begin building ships to be used as part of their own unique doctrine.
Really also I suppose there is the simple fact that there is no one single battlecruiser. Everyones fast, heavily armed but lightly armored units tended to get the name regardless of the fact that each sought to use them very differently. So any discussion on if they make sense or not tends to be a bit muddied by everyone using a different role for the ships.
German battlecruisers were better designed than their British counterparts. However, those British BCs were lost because of poor safety procedures, not necessarily because they had weak armor protection.