Question regarding Battleships ?

As I understand it Turkey, Brazil, Argentina and Chile all bought new-build dreadnought battleships in the WW1 period, although not all were delivered as contracted. Have I missed any other purchasers?
 
As I understand it Turkey, Brazil, Argentina and Chile all bought new-build dreadnought battleships in the WW1 period, although not all were delivered as contracted. Have I missed any other purchasers?
One could argue that Spain's Espana class dreadnoughts were bought from Britain, since the guns, machinery and IIRC armour were all British sourced and then assembled in Spain.

BC, not dreadnought, but don't forget IJNS Kongo.
 
The most difficult thing to make is the money.

The ship itself is ungodly expensive (the Iowa class ran $100 million each in 1942 dollars or ~$1.7 billion in today's value) and it is just the surface cost. You need to come up with infrastructure that can create all the parts that make the whole. Many of the infrastructure pieces are not dual use and those that are can not perform their civilian tasks at full scale while producing materials for the ship.

There is also the difficulty that the BB can not operate alone. It requires a substantial support system ranging from escort vessels to supply ships.

It is vastly less expensive to buy "off the shelf" than to create the necessary structure.
Ironically, I've just read that the export Battleship building industry was highly profitable.
 

CalBear

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Ironically, I've just read that the export Battleship building industry was highly profitable.

Oh, absolutely.

Still it is rather like an automobile. The manufacturer makes a ton of money every sale, but how much would it cost for the car-buyer to make one from scratch?
 
.... You need to come up with infrastructure that can create all the parts that make the whole. Many of the infrastructure pieces are not dual use and those that are can not perform their civilian tasks at full scale while producing materials for the ship….

A example of this comes from the last operating years of the Iowa class. The diesel auxiliary power engines were wearing out & required removal for a rebuild. It was not possible to do this in place. Removing the engines through the top or side of the ship was difficult as the armor was in the way. Restoring the armor after it had been cut through required:

1. Building electrical welding machines that were camp able to the correct arc, power & heat for the steel allow. The design of the originals dated to the 1930s & the materials to build those designs no longer existed. A new one off elector welding machine for the task would have to be built & tested/adjusted.

2. Electro welding rod & alloy filler metal for the specific alloy of the armor alloy no longer existed. that would have to built, tested, and rebuilt to test results.

3. Only a handful, if any, of very elderly welders remained alive with experience in welding the armor alloy. The welders doing the task would have to experiment to refine their technique to that needed.

4. Testing protocols for quality control of the welds would have had to been adapted from the 1930s/40s era to modern equipment, with the added complication of having to relearn the behavior of the armor alloy under test conditions.

It was proposed it would be faster & cheaper to dry dock the ship & remove the engines through the bottom of the ships hull.

Source: Naval Institute Proceedings circa 2003 (?)
 
A example of this comes from the last operating years of the Iowa class. The diesel auxiliary power engines were wearing out & required removal for a rebuild. It was not possible to do this in place. Removing the engines through the top or side of the ship was difficult as the armor was in the way. Restoring the armor after it had been cut through required:

1. Building electrical welding machines that were camp able to the correct arc, power & heat for the steel allow. The design of the originals dated to the 1930s & the materials to build those designs no longer existed. A new one off elector welding machine for the task would have to be built & tested/adjusted.

2. Electro welding rod & alloy filler metal for the specific alloy of the armor alloy no longer existed. that would have to built, tested, and rebuilt to test results.

3. Only a handful, if any, of very elderly welders remained alive with experience in welding the armor alloy. The welders doing the task would have to experiment to refine their technique to that needed.

4. Testing protocols for quality control of the welds would have had to been adapted from the 1930s/40s era to modern equipment, with the added complication of having to relearn the behavior of the armor alloy under test conditions.

It was proposed it would be faster & cheaper to dry dock the ship & remove the engines through the bottom of the ships hull.

Source: Naval Institute Proceedings circa 2003 (?)

If memory serves, on a somewhat related note, I seem to recall reading that retired personnel with actual experience in operating an IOWA were so difficult to locate, that the Royal Navy was consulted to see if anybody with any dreadnought time could be recruited to lend a hand in training US personnel. Not sure how that particular initiative panned out.
 
As I understand it Turkey, Brazil, Argentina and Chile all bought new-build dreadnought battleships in the WW1 period, although not all were delivered as contracted. Have I missed any other purchasers?

Greece comes to mind .As does Spain which if memory serves had gone as far as to give the builders their specs for the ships when WWI broke out .
 
Oh, absolutely.

Still it is rather like an automobile. The manufacturer makes a ton of money every sale, but how much would it cost for the car-buyer to make one from scratch?
Since I have basically made the same comment earlier in this thread, who am I to dispute such an astute argument?:)
 
That depends on what you're defending. IIRC the Dutch had plans for battleships that were not built, they were to defend their East Indies archipelago as part of a balanced fleet. In that case you'd need fleets of short range TBs to cover such a large area, making BBs a better investment.

which coastal defense ships suites fine.

Battleships becomes more expensive the later it gets especially the US ones which cost more than 2x its contemporaries. Nor would you the Dutch need it when there is a cheaper option.

Considering that the Dutch had a bigger economy than Brazil at this time. Same Brazil who bought Dreads.
 
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Needs must

If a likely enemy has a battleship, it's almost essential that you have one. There's too much mischief a battleship can accomplish if unopposed. Vulnerable to torpedo boats--yes. Able to do great amounts of harm at times and places where torpedo boats can't get a clear run--like daylight--VERY!

Essentially, the only really reliable counter to a battleship up until the 1940's is another battleship of comparable power.
 
If a likely enemy has a battleship, it's almost essential that you have one. There's too much mischief a battleship can accomplish if unopposed. Vulnerable to torpedo boats--yes. Able to do great amounts of harm at times and places where torpedo boats can't get a clear run--like daylight--VERY!

Essentially, the only really reliable counter to a battleship up until the 1940's is another battleship of comparable power.

That's right, the Dutch had coastal defence ships but decided before both world wars that they needed BBs to counter Japan, CDS just weren't going to cut it.
 
That's right, the Dutch had coastal defence ships but decided before both world wars that they needed BBs to counter Japan, CDS just weren't going to cut it.

If a likely enemy has a battleship, it's almost essential that you have one. There's too much mischief a battleship can accomplish if unopposed. Vulnerable to torpedo boats--yes. Able to do great amounts of harm at times and places where torpedo boats can't get a clear run--like daylight--VERY!

Essentially, the only really reliable counter to a battleship up until the 1940's is another battleship of comparable power.

Beg to differ. In defense, coastal defense networks, torpedo boats, coastal defense ships should do fine. A lot of those battleships got destroyed by torpedo, mines. Even those big gun coastal artillery can be a deterrent, cheaper than buying a battleship.

The rationality of Battleships is for offense, high seas control, power projection.

There is no rationality that the Dutch cannot afford it. both the Dutch including the whole Dutch East Indies had larger economies than those South Americans who bought battleships.

If the Dutch would feel threatened it is Battleships that would threaten their homewaters. Not Japan. I don't even think Japan and Dutch are peer competitors. From a strategic standpoint in 1920s, Japan needed to pass by US and UK before getting to the Dutch East Indies.
 
The Dutch built what is more or less a coast defence ship as late as 1909 but their next plans were for a Dreadnought in 1914 and a battlecruiser in 1939 which were both stopped due the outbreak of war. The Dutch never built or planned to build another coast defence ship after 1909, all plans were conventional capital ships.

Interestingly enough the idea for the CDS lingered on in the Treaty of Versailles limit on German ships, 11" guns and 10,000 tons. However by the late 20s, and by cheating on the displacement, the Germans were able to build powerful and quite fast commerce raiding Pocket Battleships. I suspect that by WW1, except for very specific circumstances, the day of the CDS was over.
 
Beg to differ. In defense, coastal defense networks, torpedo boats, coastal defense ships should do fine. A lot of those battleships got destroyed by torpedo, mines. Even those big gun coastal artillery can be a deterrent, cheaper than buying a battleship.

I can think of only one contemporary battleship sunk by mine HMS Audacious. Torpedo boats, well one got the Szent Istvan it is true but for dreadnoughts that is about it. Otherwise most battleship losses to non-battleship methods prior-World War II tended to be older non-contemporary vessels. For example the British lost R and Queen Elizabeth Class battleships to submarine attack in World War II but no King George V or even Nelson class were lost that way.

So yes I think there is strong evidence backing those planners who assumed that only battleship could reliably nix battleship.
 
If a likely enemy has a battleship, it's almost essential that you have one. There's too much mischief a battleship can accomplish if unopposed. Vulnerable to torpedo boats--yes. Able to do great amounts of harm at times and places where torpedo boats can't get a clear run--like daylight--VERY!

Essentially, the only really reliable counter to a battleship up until the 1940's is another battleship of comparable power.

Countries will only build battleships if they think they can afford them. If not, they'll get coastal defence ships, MTBs, minelayers, etc. to make their waters a dangerous place for battleships. This would often be the course adopted by smaller coastal nations. The USSR had battleships for the Baltic in the interwar, even if old-fashioned/obsolete ones, but for economic reasons its smaller neighbours like Sweden, Finland and the Baltic states did not built battleships to counter them.

In Finland, for example, even the two circa 4000 tons coastal defence ships built in the early 1930s were considered hideously expensive (and some still see it as a mistake to build them in the first place - arguing that the money should have been used for equipping the underfunded army, especially to buy field artillery and AT guns, instead). There would have been no way Finland would have built battleships in the interwar against the Soviet threat. But then the Gulf of Finland and the Archipelago Sea were quite problematic areas for battleships anyway, as seen in both world wars.
 
Depends on geography as well

A maze of small islands and tight waters is great for torpedo boats and coast defense ships. But if your primary vulnerable points aren't so shielded, then it becomes more difficult. If the enemy has a battleship, and you don't, you've conceded control of everything beyond range of coastal guns to the enemy, any time he wants to take it. If you know when and where he's coming, you can prepare--but a torpedo boat squadron in daylight likely won't get any fish off, if the battleship is escorted.

Equally important, when it comes to diplomacy, a battleship is seen as a symbol of military power--which comes into play when you're trying to make alliances.
 
A maze of small islands and tight waters is great for torpedo boats and coast defense ships. But if your primary vulnerable points aren't so shielded, then it becomes more difficult. If the enemy has a battleship, and you don't, you've conceded control of everything beyond range of coastal guns to the enemy, any time he wants to take it. If you know when and where he's coming, you can prepare--but a torpedo boat squadron in daylight likely won't get any fish off, if the battleship is escorted.

Equally important, when it comes to diplomacy, a battleship is seen as a symbol of military power--which comes into play when you're trying to make alliances.

I agree that geography is very important, especially for the example of the northern part of the Baltic Sea. But still, for small-to-middling nations that don't have colonies, and that need to have an army of sorts as well, to defend against an enemy invasion on land, battleships can easily seem too expensive in comparison to all the smaller vessels, weapons and materiel they can buy for the same outlay of money. I think that for a small nation that is not an island, the army's needs will very often cancel the admirals' hopes for battleships. Battleships for such nations can easily be painted as a white elephant project, a very expensive weapons system that can be lost in a single battle.
 
As I understand it Turkey, Brazil, Argentina and Chile all bought new-build dreadnought battleships in the WW1 period, although not all were delivered as contracted. Have I missed any other purchasers?
Japan bought Kongo technically a battlecruiser if you want to be picky.
 
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