The Battleships that should have never been, 1930-1945!

Inspired by this thread, make your changes to OTL by replacing useless battleships with other naval/merchant ship construction, from 1930-1945. Whatever ships you remove, tell us why they deserved to be removed, and what you would have them replaced by.

For me, I got to thinking about my upcoming "Invasion Hawaii" thread, and was looking at the (to me) newly discovered facts of Japans Oil import situation, and could only shake my head. Then I started thinking about the uselessness of building huge 'gas hogs' of monster Super Battleships of the Yamato class, and then had me a light bulb moment, and thought: "What if, instead of the Yamato class battleships, the Japanese had instead been building the worlds biggest (and first) Super-Tankers?

In other words, the Japanese don't build ships that worsen their Oil importing situation by using up precious fuel, but rather ships that help their importation of Oil? The first two Yamato's were laid down in late 1937/early 1938, and were launched in mid to late 1940. How much less time would be needed to build ships of this size as simple tankers with huge open spaces inside rather than all the watertight compartments and armoured ammunition magazines and such? How much Oil could a tanker of this size carry?

Any thought on these ships replacements?

How about other 'useless battleships' replacements?
 
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Whats wrong with battleships? Ton for ton they are the most cost effective warships. In 1930 a slow 35,000 ton BB will have a total life-cycle cost of £25,898,900. A 35,000 ton BC £28,316,900 and a 23,000 ton CV £34,102,500. This puts a large 35,000 ton CV at double the cost of a BB. In terms of life-cycle costs the ratios are about:
BB 1.0 (26 years life)
BC 1.09 (26 years life)
CV 1.32 (20 years life)
CVL 0.68 (20 years life)
CA 0.34 (20 years life)
CL 0.22 (20 years life)
DD Flotilla 0.52 (16 years life)
SS 0.05 (13 years life)

From the ratios, a BB is equivalent to 10 submarines as each submarine has to be replaced in the 26 year life of the battleship.
 
snip

For me, I got to thinking about my upcoming "Invasion Hawaii" thread...,

Sorry to OT, the old thread is locked - you asked about "Hawaii under the Rising Sun" and it is well worth reading (and $75) in reference to Hawaii invasion AH. It goes into a lot of the Japanese planning, resources, management etc. They did address the issue of supply, I get the impression that a Japanese Hawaii would be used as a block to the US projecting into the Western Pacific rather than the Japanese projecting into the Eastern Pacific. As such the need to supply it to the extent that the US supplied Hawaii would be greatly diminished.
 
Replace Bismarck and Tirpitz with more Pocket Battleships plus cruisers and destroyers. And landing craft if Sealion is a serious option...
 
Dorknaught said:

That analysis ignores function. By the 1940s battleships had become specialist combatants, relegated to niche roles such as fighting at night, and in adverse weather conditions, and providing heavy naval gunfire support.

The true mainline naval combatant, and measure of a fleets fighting strength was the strike capable fleet carrier. You battleship fleet can't be cost effective if it has been sunk by massed air attack from enemy carriers even if you do have two battleship to every carrier the enemy has.

If naval combat worked like an rts video game were each unit just has a health pool and a damage output, that cost analysis might work. But it doesn't, and they don't.
In the 30s the fast battleships would have been the kings of the sea, but a decade later aircraft performance had improved to the point that they carried weapons dangerous enough to dethrone them.
 
South Dakota class and North Carolina class

I would replace them with......the South Dakota class and North Carolina class (stay with me)

I would not trigger the escelator clause but instead 'spam them out ASAP' with the original 14" gun armamanet they were originally intended to have

Going to 16" I feel compromised an otherwise good design treaty limited design - and there was no Battleship vs Battleship clash that I know of where having 14" over 16" would have had any difference - it was purely political and arguably delayed the construction of those 6 vessels.

Leave the 16" to the Iowas in the same way that the British left it to the Lions (okay they eventually decided not to build them and they were not needed - but then arguably neither were the Iowas) and get the 6 Modern fast Battleships in service earlier.
 
The idea is to have a balanced fleet and the RN used total costs to assess ship type/numbers/construction etc. This would include both carriers and BB but it's a big ask to see 25 years into the future and guarantee that there is a major war in there. As you point out, the BB is an all weather 24hr a day weapon system and the symbol of naval power in the ppublics eye. The 'unproven' carrier is not (the OP says 1930). The USN used the airgroups from 10 carriers to put down Yamato. 10 South Dakotas could have done the same job.
 
Some contemporary costs: Soryu is about ¥42m in 1934, Tone, ¥31m, Fleet Oiler ¥18m, Commercial 10k ton tanker ¥2.6m.

1937 costs were ¥98m for Yamato and ¥80m for Shokaku (not including airgroup). By 1939 this was around ¥130m for a Yamato and ¥101m for Taiho
 
The majority of the battleships laid down in the prewar era were, IMHO, good decisions at the time they were ordered. The ascendancy of the carrier was not proven yet, and the idea was to build a balanced fleet. (Taranto and Pearl Harbor proved that battleships were sitting ducks in harbor--blindingly obvious.)
Lacking all weather capability, battleships are needed at night and in other non-flying weather.

The later ones built might have been worth cancelling, but when to pull the plug is the key question. Bismarck and Tirpitz probably shouldn't have been built, though. Same with Graf Zeppelin
 
South Dakota class ....
Leave the 16" to the Iowas .... and get the 6 Modern fast Battleships in service earlier.

I would go even further and kill off the entire SD class, why could the USN not laid down 6 14" NCs in 1937, they would all be ready by 1941 and worth far more than any ship on a slip, then they would go with 6 Iowas (with maybe the SD /45 gun) laid down in 1939 for service in 1942......
 
Whats wrong with battleships? Ton for ton they are the most cost effective warships. In 1930 a slow 35,000 ton BB will have a total life-cycle cost of £25,898,900. A 35,000 ton BC £28,316,900 and a 23,000 ton CV £34,102,500. This puts a large 35,000 ton CV at double the cost of a BB. In terms of life-cycle costs the ratios are about:
BB 1.0 (26 years life)
BC 1.09 (26 years life)
CV 1.32 (20 years life)
CVL 0.68 (20 years life)
CA 0.34 (20 years life)
CL 0.22 (20 years life)
DD Flotilla 0.52 (16 years life)
SS 0.05 (13 years life)

From the ratios, a BB is equivalent to 10 submarines as each submarine has to be replaced in the 26 year life of the battleship.
real life doesn't work with this kind of game statistics
considering there have been loads of ships that exceed those stats by a wide margin
 

SsgtC

Banned
South Dakota class and North Carolina class

I would replace them with......the South Dakota class and North Carolina class (stay with me)

I would not trigger the escelator clause but instead 'spam them out ASAP' with the original 14" gun armamanet they were originally intended to have

Going to 16" I feel compromised an otherwise good design treaty limited design - and there was no Battleship vs Battleship clash that I know of where having 14" over 16" would have had any difference - it was purely political and arguably delayed the construction of those 6 vessels.

Leave the 16" to the Iowas in the same way that the British left it to the Lions (okay they eventually decided not to build them and they were not needed - but then arguably neither were the Iowas) and get the 6 Modern fast Battleships in service earlier.
Except the SoDaks were always intended to be armed with the 16" gun. The reason with the year's delay in building them was because the Navy wasn't happy with the North Carolinas and ordered a new design drawn up instead of ordering two repeat North Carolinas
 

SsgtC

Banned
I would go even further and kill off the entire SD class, why could the USN not laid down 6 14" NCs in 1937, they would all be ready by 1941 and worth far more than any ship on a slip, then they would go with 6 Iowas (with maybe the SD /45 gun) laid down in 1939 for service in 1942......
See my reply above. The Navy wasn't happy with the class as a whole. In particular they felt they were under armored and lacked the flag facilities to serve as a fleet flagship
 
Except the SoDaks were always intended to be armed with the 16" gun. The reason with the year's delay in building them was because the Navy wasn't happy with the North Carolinas and ordered a new design drawn up instead of ordering two repeat North Carolinas...In particular they felt they were under armored and lacked the flag facilities to serve as a fleet flagship
Yes, BUT I simply think that with hindsight that's its a very bad idea to delay then for almost any reason as the utility of new battleships starts to fall of a cliff very rapidly post 42/43 as both air power takes over and the sea war is won by the allies. I think that with hindsight or even a realistic appreciation of how of the wall the Japanese government was rapidly going then pushing the first design you had into large numbers early would be far better.

I think if they did build 6 early NC they would potentially lose at least one of them in early battles but that's kind of what warships are for and it would probably save far more US lives in total if they blunt the Japanese expansion early on?
 
The Sovietsky Soyuz ships were, IMVHO, not the best designs for a nation that hadn't built a battleship since the Great War, but a new generation of Soviet battleships was a practical necessity at the time. It was bad in detail; build a pair, learn, then build more would be a better plan. Once the USSR was at war, they were suspended reasonably quickly; though scrapping them might have been a better idea.
Being able to contest the Baltic could have had a lot of value--if there was a pair of ships that could oppose a German fleet.
 

SsgtC

Banned
with hindsight
That's the key phrase. The people making those decisions don't have hindsight. Put yourself in their shoes. You can either order four more of a class that you're REALLY not happy with, or you can wait six months to a year for a new class that is almost literally twice as good. And remember, the US is not an active Combatant at this point, so there isn't the urgency to spam out "good enough" hulls when you can get far better by waiting a few months
 
That's the key phrase. The people making those decisions don't have hindsight. Put yourself in their shoes. You can either order four more of a class that you're REALLY not happy with, or you can wait six months to a year for a new class that is almost literally twice as good. And remember, the US is not an active Combatant at this point, so there isn't the urgency to spam out "good enough" hulls when you can get far better by waiting a few months
I think its entirely reasonable for the US to realise that the treaties have basically failed even if the US isn't yet and may not get involved, Asia and Europe are starting to rearm fast if not openly falling apart by 1937 and that therefore the entire US battle line will need to be replaced with the next decade simply to maintain deterrent value.

Worse case they end up with 4 more weaker ships that can still match anything pre WNT (especially as the old US line was simply to slow for WWII CV actions) so we are talking about the US needing to build another 9 ships minimum before it becomes a problem that you built the extra NCs, for a 15 ship strong force of LNT or more than 9 ships if international numbers grow as is likely with effective treaties.

I think the idea that its reasonable to wait until war is actually declared to replace the older totally obviously obsolete pre standards in the US battleship line is simply very much an issue of inertia from the treaties and lack of critical judgement. The US had full knowledge about how its WWI program ran and the timetable it would take to replace battleships in time for a war I think not responding in a timely fashion to others leaving the treaties and starting ships is very much an avoidable fault.

PS- The easiest POD might be simply that the USN insists that it should match the 5 KVGs with 5 14" NCs to maintain its ratios?
 

Driftless

Donor
The Sovietsky Soyuz ships were, IMVHO, not the best designs for a nation that hadn't built a battleship since the Great War, but a new generation of Soviet battleships was a practical necessity at the time. It was bad in detail; build a pair, learn, then build more would be a better plan. Once the USSR was at war, they were suspended reasonably quickly; though scrapping them might have been a better idea.
Being able to contest the Baltic could have had a lot of value--if there was a pair of ships that could oppose a German fleet.

I partly agree with the idea they Soviets needed a more robust naval force, but their requirements and limitations were different than any other navy. The Baltic and Black Seas are very confined and not mutually supportable and in the Pacific they faced potential adversaries with world class navies of great size and skilled sailors(Japan, US, UK, even without counting France). The Soviets would have been better off starting smaller - both in scope and quantity. As you note, learn as you go and adjust. Trying to create world beaters completely from scratch probably wasn't a great idea, plus the execution was poorly done-the quality control of armor and construction was pretty bad.
 
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