Pocket battleships for minor navies
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David S Poepoe
Banned
Technically, the Great Powers retained their shipbuilding industrial capability, circa 1922, since capitals ships were permitted to be refitted and reconstructed to meet new threats. What really keeps domestic shipyards and armament makers going is domestic orders, which the respective governments weren't placing.
It's thought by Admirals worldover to be common enough for that speed advantage to be one of the main reasons for light cruisers existing...
BlondieBC
Banned
One PB can have a decisive advantage over 2 CA if the following conditions are met.
1) The PB larger gun can be expected to penetrate deep into the CA at all ranges and at all angles. An example from OTL can be see on the 15" gun and possibly the 13.5" (350mm) guns versus pre-dreads armor schemes. Once the 15" are common, the predreads are bascially retired even during wartime. Off the top of my head, I can't give you how a 11" 1930 gun is expected to do against a CA built about the same time, but if the 11" guns can penetrate all angles and all distance, it makes the CA a bad choice. AP shells explode about 40 feet or so into a ship, and the problem becomes if the armor can't defeat many of these hits (invulnerability zone), you end up with a situation where every hit does serious damage and has a good chance of finding the main magazine or engine spaces.
2) The PB armor should have a generous invulnerability zone against the CA 8" guns. Say at least 1/3 of the possible range of the CA 8" guns.
It also helps a lot if the PB gun has significantly more range than a CA, and the PB can carry spotting aircraft. One also has to look at the cost of a PB compared a fast BB or BC. If the cost differential is not big enough, you should go with the BB. The problem with the Alaska class is not so much its characteristics, but its cost and crewing. If the Alaska had cost about what a CA did and had about the same crew, it would be a great ship. But is was basically 3/4 of a Iowa with 50% of the capability, so it sucked. It seems like you have done a lot of work on the costs, so that is really what drives the decision.
Now based on my biased which are heavily biased by my research for my TL, I would tend to go with the CA not the PB. Going from very low to very high budgets, here is how I build a 1930 navy.
1) Defend your ports. Coastal Artillery, Mines, Marines, torpedo boats, low performance airplanes, submarines. All of these are cheap compared to BB, and if you can't defend your home ports little matters. You also get some limited force projection from the torpedo boats, submarines, and airplane.
2) Go with AMC. Stockpiling the weapons to convert them and some engineering studies are dirt cheap.
3) Build CL and longer range DD. They can both protect your merchant shipping and cause issue for your opponents. Still cheap. And with the forces in part 1, it makes it real difficult for the enemy to stay within a couple of hundred miles of your coast on a sustained basis. And we are building a balance navy from the bottom up.
4) The next issue is to be able to control the sea on the open water. I have to have equal ships to my enemy. If my enemy is a Great Power, i need BB and CV which for smaller countries is impossible. So then I get the question of superior raiders than CL. There are several solutions here such as very long range SS, CL, CA or PB. It just comes down to a cost advantage that will normally favor SS.
Now if my enemy only has CA and I can afford PB then I will go with the PB. But you are a lot better off with a full fast BB. If my enemy has fast BB, then a PB is pointless. In many ways, a PB is to naval warfare as a Zeppelin is to air warfare. A niche weapon that may make sense as a small part of a force, but never the dominant force.
Now all that being said. Too many TL focus in on the optimal solution, and lose the richness of RL where mistakes are common. I can easily see a couple of navy with PB or even Alaska class solutions for their interwar navy. And I would enjoy reading a ATL with some sub-optimal decision on ship design.
1) The PB larger gun can be expected to penetrate deep into the CA at all ranges and at all angles. An example from OTL can be see on the 15" gun and possibly the 13.5" (350mm) guns versus pre-dreads armor schemes. Once the 15" are common, the predreads are bascially retired even during wartime. Off the top of my head, I can't give you how a 11" 1930 gun is expected to do against a CA built about the same time, but if the 11" guns can penetrate all angles and all distance, it makes the CA a bad choice. AP shells explode about 40 feet or so into a ship, and the problem becomes if the armor can't defeat many of these hits (invulnerability zone), you end up with a situation where every hit does serious damage and has a good chance of finding the main magazine or engine spaces.
2) The PB armor should have a generous invulnerability zone against the CA 8" guns. Say at least 1/3 of the possible range of the CA 8" guns.
It also helps a lot if the PB gun has significantly more range than a CA, and the PB can carry spotting aircraft. One also has to look at the cost of a PB compared a fast BB or BC. If the cost differential is not big enough, you should go with the BB. The problem with the Alaska class is not so much its characteristics, but its cost and crewing. If the Alaska had cost about what a CA did and had about the same crew, it would be a great ship. But is was basically 3/4 of a Iowa with 50% of the capability, so it sucked. It seems like you have done a lot of work on the costs, so that is really what drives the decision.
Now based on my biased which are heavily biased by my research for my TL, I would tend to go with the CA not the PB. Going from very low to very high budgets, here is how I build a 1930 navy.
1) Defend your ports. Coastal Artillery, Mines, Marines, torpedo boats, low performance airplanes, submarines. All of these are cheap compared to BB, and if you can't defend your home ports little matters. You also get some limited force projection from the torpedo boats, submarines, and airplane.
2) Go with AMC. Stockpiling the weapons to convert them and some engineering studies are dirt cheap.
3) Build CL and longer range DD. They can both protect your merchant shipping and cause issue for your opponents. Still cheap. And with the forces in part 1, it makes it real difficult for the enemy to stay within a couple of hundred miles of your coast on a sustained basis. And we are building a balance navy from the bottom up.
4) The next issue is to be able to control the sea on the open water. I have to have equal ships to my enemy. If my enemy is a Great Power, i need BB and CV which for smaller countries is impossible. So then I get the question of superior raiders than CL. There are several solutions here such as very long range SS, CL, CA or PB. It just comes down to a cost advantage that will normally favor SS.
Now if my enemy only has CA and I can afford PB then I will go with the PB. But you are a lot better off with a full fast BB. If my enemy has fast BB, then a PB is pointless. In many ways, a PB is to naval warfare as a Zeppelin is to air warfare. A niche weapon that may make sense as a small part of a force, but never the dominant force.
Now all that being said. Too many TL focus in on the optimal solution, and lose the richness of RL where mistakes are common. I can easily see a couple of navy with PB or even Alaska class solutions for their interwar navy. And I would enjoy reading a ATL with some sub-optimal decision on ship design.
Cost
Hipper cost 85M RM. Deutschland 82M. So if built by the same navy, a PB and a CA cost about the same.
Schanorst cost 143, and Bismarck 197. German cruisers were expensive. I think the brasilians would get a better deal in the UK, or even Italy. But you probably could buy a US built PB for the cost of a same size US built CA.
Hipper cost 85M RM. Deutschland 82M. So if built by the same navy, a PB and a CA cost about the same.
Schanorst cost 143, and Bismarck 197. German cruisers were expensive. I think the brasilians would get a better deal in the UK, or even Italy. But you probably could buy a US built PB for the cost of a same size US built CA.
The ABC navies were unbalanced. Brasil and Chile had one BB each. Argentina had two. Argentina bought two Italian CA (CL size with 7.5'' guns) and later one British CL. The respective destroyer forces were well balanced and Chile kept some very old protected cruisers in service for dubious reasons. It would be logical for B and C to ty and counter A. The obvious way would be another BB and two CA each (buying new BBs would be complicated becauseof the treaty) That would cost a lot of money and have a mirror effect on tactics, all navies now being very similar. The two PB option would be cheaper (than a BB+two CA) and allow for assimetrical tactics, wich make far more interesting wargames, tactical studies, and AH threads
Flubber
Banned
Reading is not understanding.
You live in a barely disguised tariff zone whose fraudulent pretensions allow it's member nations to play a diplomatic shell game by claiming either EU status or national sovereignty depending on which stance provides them the most benefits at the moment.
Your "union" is an example of cynical realpolitik and nothing more.
What you're failing to understand is that a treaty slightly changed in the manner you suggest would not be signed. David has tried to explain that to you and I will again. A treaty which would allow the major ship building powers free rein to provide warships to minor powers would not be signed by other powers because, as WW1 had shown less than a decade earlier, a ship exporting power can quickly reinforce it's battle line with ships allegedly built for other powers.
This revised treaty you will not find online, because it's made up. It's the POD
It's not the POD. It's a failed attempt at a POD.
First off, welcome to the real world - cynical realpolitik is a staple of international relations whether we approve of it or not.
Second, I understand your personal opinions may not be sympathetic to the EU or it's member nations. But there's no need to be gratuitously offensive to the people who live there. I'd appreciate it if you could find a civil way to make your point, especially when you disagree with others on this board.
This - precisely this.
If the UK agrees to limit tonnage to 525,000 tons of capital ships (or whatever it precisely was), but has 100,000 tons of capital ships under construction for second rank powers, along with say 60,000 tons of permitted UK replacement construction, if a new war breaks out the UK can swiftly complete the ongoing production, and suddenly have more like 700,000 tons of capital ships, substantially more than permitted under the treaty, and severely tipping the balance of power.
Likewise the US could do the same; Japan had fewer customers, but could perhaps have built up a "Manchurian" fleet to take them from 3/5 of the US/UK size to more like 4/5. That would gut the Treaty and make it pointless.
Snide remarks are not answers, either.
I happen to live in the area of the world with higher standards of living, education, democracy and all the things that count. We didn't get there by sticking to the letter of every treaty like some countries (when it suits them) who happen to be so backward that when someone tries to allow poor sick people into hospitals gets labeled a comunist.
Back to the matter.
You are sticking to the very unlikely possibility that all the minor navies would order their ships from the same country, at the same time, and all allow that country to buy them back at a time of war.
That could in fact, if it happened, allow that country an extra 3 or 4 30000t BB. But by the same token nothing prevented the USA to buy, in December 1941, Minas Gerais, Latorre, Rivadavia and Moreno to get an extra 4 BB. They certanly had the money.
And it was allway possible to discretely back a national building effort. The Germans tested tanks and aircraft in Russia and Sweden.
The treaty was signed because nobody but the US had the money to build new ships and if a naval arms race had took place the US could have bankrupted the others. Japan would have ended just like the USSR (allegedly) did.
Nobody really wanted to have to compete with the USA. The treaty was a diplomatic excuse for an economical reality, and it allowed the Navies of Britain, France and Italy to retain an artificial rank while it gave the IJN a fighting chance.
The IJN got way more relative strengh vs the USN than Japan had relative money vs the USA.
They (along with the French), got a great deal. Would they tear up that insurance policy and spend all their money in an impossible effort to mach US building plans just to prevent Britain and the US from possibly making some money from selling somebody a repeat QE BB?
That would be very unrealistic of them.
But fell free to disagree. I dont think you have a "failed" opinion. I just dont agree with it. Hey, you don't believe Europe exists so I am probably just an imaginary person anyway
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30000t per export country, and those countries could have been listed in, and invited to sign, the treaty.
Is it just me, or was the treaty unfair to the countries that, having lost the ships they ordered before WW1 just found out they could never buy another one? If Brasil and Chile had been aware that the shipyards of the world that could build BB were going to be off limits shouldn't they be allowed the chance to revise their cancelation options?
If Japan built a "Manchurian" ship, the US could simply threaten to renounce the treaty, suspecting foul play. But if Brasil ordered a single Nagato from Japan and showed every intention of using it for purely national interests, the US could hardly object, Brasil being in fact a friendly nation...
What about building replacemt ships for the own navy and instead of scrapping the old ships selling them to minors (Kilikis BB sold by US to Greece OTL...)
A R-class BB would be a valuable asset to any minor navy - especially moernized...
small navies don't have to aquire new ships, ...
A R-class BB would be a valuable asset to any minor navy - especially moernized...
small navies don't have to aquire new ships, ...
We've discussed that briefly in a very interesting thread that dealt with navies in a post WW1 non Versailles and non WT context. (We got a lot of flak from the OTL loyalists)The possibility of a number of 13.5'' ships being sold, including the remainning BC, is a very interesting possibility.
It would of course require another thread, something along the lines of "Used Dreadnoughts market post WW1"
It opens up great possibilities for naval wargamers. I don't think the R class would be up for sale. Iron duke class BB and Tiger maybe?
David S Poepoe
Banned
Really, it is just you. For the most part Brasil ordered warships that it could not afford. Chile was compensated for both dreadnoughts seized by the British. I believe it was also offered two Invincible class battlecruisers at one point. I'm sure that the countries were refunded any money they had already paid the shipyards.
The strong do as they wish and the weak suffer as they must.
If Brasil had ordered a Nagato class battleship the Japanese would have been reminded that to accept or attempt to fulfill the contract would be a breech of the WNT. The Brasilians would have then been advised to withdraw the contract.
The WNT was drafted and signed by those that had the power to enforce it. Those that didn't sign it had no choice but to abide by it since they had no capability of circumventing it and neither the ability to keep the Great Powers from enforcing it.
The strong do as they wish and the weak suffer as they must.
Given the size of South American Economies in the 20s/30s, I'd say it was more Politics than economics.
Fair and realistic are different things. The world major navies froze their respective size ratios, and at the same time also froze the rest of the worlds access to capital ships in the near and mid term future.
Only natural to their eyes in the 20s, certanly unfair to modern eyes.
A similar provison regarding carriers would have been unacceptable in the 50s. Times change.
I would of course rather have more posts regarding wether the PB would have been a good choice than on the plausability of the minor navies being allowed to buy them or building them.
And seing how Brasil is doing now, in the long run the Weak did pretty well (some of them, at least
)David S Poepoe
Banned
I consider the Armoured Cruisers of the Deutschland class to be unique products of a specific time and series of political and military decisions/events and conditions that are hard to artificially create in order to replicate the result. That is why I doubt any treaty, especially one to curb future arms races and wars, would include loophole to start another arms race.
I consider the Armoured Cruisers to be good warships that were just hampered by German strategy and location geopolitically.
It is. I consider this aspect of the Washington treaty a 1920s version of the nuclear non proliferation treaty. The "haves" made a pact among themselves that excluded the "have nots" from access to a certain type of weapon. What we have learned from the NPT is that if a country really wants nuclear weapons it might get them. In a way, a non Treaty country getting capital ships is a bit like India, Pakistan and Israel getting Nuclear weapons.
Chile and Brasil were rich, large countries with lots of coastline, economical interest overseas and regional power aspirations if not status. If Brasil felt, in the late 20s/early 30s it needed naval firepower to face a possible Argentine challenge I don't think it was fair, or even good politics, to have all the nations with the capability to build it to form a negative alliance not to sell.
Like nukes, if Brasil really wanted two PB, it would get them. If Germany was unable to build them, and given their appetite for exporting they would find a way, they would get Dutch or Swede experts to help (they did build cruisers) and get Skoda to design and build the guns.
Would the treaty nations go out of their way to stop them? I don't think so. It wasn't a major threat, global balance was not affected, etc.
In a way ABC were the BRIC of the 20s. We find it natural that China is starting a carrier fleet and India is expanding hers. We wouldn't try and organise a world cartel to prevent them doing so.
That's what I meant by modern eyes.
How do you feel about the larger, unconstrained by Versailles, Italian concept?
Too big and expensive in the fast BB era?
It may or may not be fair, but it would most certainly be good politics by the "haves" to keep people from trying to find loopholes in the WNT, even if what naval power Brazil has isn't terribly important in and of itself to their interests.
So Brazil finding a way would not be all that easy.