Comments on post #2495582

@USS_Brony_Alicorn on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2017-01-11T02:29:34-05:00

Na-Class: (looks down on the "X") "Aww Fuck! Huh!?"(AP Shell exits out her front head)

Warspite: "This is me taking back control! Control for the Britain! Control for the oceans! Taking back control...of my life! (Looks back at Bismarck and kongou) What in bloody hell have you done lately?"

@Estavali on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-10-05T08:10:57-04:00

JsTuCkEy said:

From using Abyssals to represent Allied ships to using them to represent Axis ships, Sakazaki Freddy has come full circle.

Freddy has been drifting away from the "Allies (or essentially everyone that Japan fought) = Abyssals" stance for a while, albeit slowly. IIRC the first time he did this was in this comic about this air battle between the Chinese Nationalist Air Force and 13 Zero Fighters., where the Chinese airmen were represented by fairies like their Japanese counterparts.

Besides this, there's also Junyou's and Hiyou's recollections of the Battle of the Philippine Seas. Here the Allied aircraft and airmen are shown as shipgirl fairies and the like instead of Abyssals.

But AFAIK perhaps the only time where he depicted an unimplemented Allied ship as a shipgirl is in one of his latest books, which includes Kamikaze's encounter with USS Hawkbill (who looks a bit like a bikini-version of Dechi imho =3)

@HumbugUserHello on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-10-01T09:57:11-04:00

Response

However, I warn that at this point is seems to me as if you are just dismissing what I say offhand with what amounts to NUH UH and, quite naturally, this insults me.
Regardless, I understand that such was not your point, so I will trudge on.

Okay if you think that I can understand that you'd get annoyed. I'm just not in the habit of accepting what people say on the internet without them giving a solid reasoning behind it. Just because I'm not 100% in agreement with you doesn't mean I'm not reflecting on it - I've definitely revised some of my views due to this discussion.
Let's call it a quits here then, after all it is a bit odd to have such a long string of posts about ship designations in the comment thread of an image depicting a long range shot by Warspite.

I will just add one tiny thing, but no need to respond to it.

Not that I know of, it's not. The Alaska is not considered to have had a multi-tier Deck system, a Bomb deck would make it multi-tier.

I don't think there is any source on the internet that I could link to which would satisfy you on this, I can hardly just link to wikipedia now can I? :) The best I can offer is this preliminary design study (https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/s-file/s511-17.jpg) from https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/s-file/s511-17l.htm but that's of course not the final design.
I've read that the Alaska had somewhere around a 55-60# STS weather deck but as I mentioned earlier armor scheme errors seems to be pretty common - maybe what I've read about it has been incorrect.

@kibehisa on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-30T20:53:46-04:00

HumbugUserHello said:

-snip-

Response

I will openly admit that I made a mistake on the Revenge's launching date, that is quite embarrassing.

However, I warn that at this point is seems to me as if you are just dismissing what I say offhand with what amounts to NUH UH and, quite naturally, this insults me.
Regardless, I understand that such was not your point, so I will trudge on.

Firstly, a shell passing through belt armor undamaged is a lot harder than you seem to think it is.
To reliably pass through the North Carolina's belt undamaged, you basically have to over-penetrate by a clear 100%. That means either a 22 inch gun (unless it was American with Super Heavy shells, in which case a 20in gun could do it) or to be at the range where it simply just does not matter anymore (<10,000 yards assuming the enemy ship is also a battleship with 20 inches of armor or less, because either ship will murder the other at that range).
Otherwise, the shell may go through, but it's going through in pieces and flying everywhere.

What if it doesn't go through in pieces?
The bursting charge makes sure it explodes into pieces, they are designed to do that (understand, this is for belt hits, not deck hits, the mechanics are different because of the lower resistance of the deck armor system).
Those pieces are not as hard to stop as the actual projectile, but they can each cause a lot of damage.
The hope (of the shooter) is that one or more of those pieces cause more damage than the ship can recover from.
It has been said that Battleship shells are just very, very large grenades fired from the ends of gun barrels and that is honestly quite true in concept.
But, as I said, those pieces are not as hard to stop once they are inside the ship.

You are thinking far too much on hard killing the enemy projectile.
As I (basically) said previously, the difference between a Cruiser and a Battleship is that a Cruiser has its armor and so does a Battleship, but the Battleship says "AND WHAT IF THAT FAILS!?!" in a big booming voice, and so is designed to mitigate damage when the primary armor is defeated.
Battleships (and Battlecruisers) are designed in such a way to contain most (if not all) of the resulting damage from a penetration to one single compartment.
Cruisers (and Large Cruisers) are essentially not, relying entirely on hard-killing the shell in the first place.
Thus, even if the Alaska had the same thickness of armor plate as the North Carolina, the North Carolina's armor scheme is far superior to the Alaska's.

It follows that splinter protection is therefore also part of the main armor scheme and a very important part of that scheme, because it's all part of the 'what if that fails' defense.

Another thing is, Projectiles don't have to make it through the belt intact to cause damage, merely hitting the belt armor can cause damage.
You can theoretically actually sink a ship without ever penetrating the armor, just as you can 'kill' a tank without actually penetrating the armor.
Spalling is a thing.
It's not unheard of (although, I only think this has happened once) for the resulting spalling from a defeated projectile to penetrate into the machinery space and set off a ship's boilers, which is a guaranteed kill (normal systems damage is much more likely, however).
This is basically impossible with a good battleship-type armor scheme (damage from spalling is basically zero).
In this way, the Deutschland/Lützow-class were remarkably similar to a battleship, one of the many reasons they were called 'Pocket Battleships', but their laughably thin (for the time) 3 inch armor belt precluded them from being considered as Battlecruisers.

In addition, the TDS of a warship is the secondary defense against waterline hits around the machinery spaces, usually once the main belt has been penetrated (not always, though; the Iowa, South Dakota, and the later Italian battleships had their armor scheme inside out), and the primary defense against plunging shells (once underwater, and the TDS was liquid filled for a reason, the flexibility of the structural steel was highly beneficial).
The 'perfect shot' on a ship (against the belt armor, not the deck armor - that is a different game entirely) puts a hole in the ship just slightly above the water line, because this causes the most flooding as the ship tries to move and it's rather more complicated to counter the flooding there (because of the meta-center of gravity), and if it gets into the machinery space it is game over (for that boiler).
Thus, with the Alaska as she is, the 'perfect shot' through the belt armor (which set off the bursting charge) would end up hitting her limited TDS and going through, probably without a problem.
With the North Carolina, the 'perfect shot' through the belt armor has to tear through 4 of the North Carolina's TDS' 6 chambers. Admittedly, only one of those does it actually hit where it's liquid filled, but it's still a remarkably more difficult challenge for the fragmentation to make it to the machinery spaces.

And

But I have to ask in turn then how you can know for certain that it's superior in any meaningful way.

As I said, 1.5 inches is the minimum for that outer plate.
Landgraff implied that it was thicker, not thinner.
The difference between 1.25 in shell plate and 1.5 in shell plate + support structure (that is not on that diagram in either case, but something has to hold it up [Nathan Okun has commentated on this before]) is the difference between decapping a 16 in shell and an 18 in shell, so more is always better.
A decapped shell has between 30 and 50% more trouble penetrating armor; this implicates that the Yamato actually could not have defeated the Iowa's belt armor...

One more:

I believe weather deck is 60# STS on the Alaska-class well.

Not that I know of, it's not. The Alaska is not considered to have had a multi-tier Deck system, a Bomb deck would make it multi-tier.

@HumbugUserHello on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-30T18:26:53-04:00

Ok, got you.

Response

The same shot through the North Carolina would have to penetrate 7 or 8 layers, disregarding thickness.
That has a very large effect on projectiles, completely disregarding the thicknesses of those sheets.

Surely as few as 3 layers also holds for the North Carolina with a perfect shot?
I mean look, the only extra layers on the North Carolina-class scheme seen in the image are the ones that are part of the torpedo defense (which are both thin and not proper armor steel) and then one additional vertical layer between the weather deck and the lower splinter deck, that's it.
I'd expect that any shell that manages to get through the North Carolina-class main armor belt intact will not be affected in any significant way by the layers behind - it's splinter protection. Being thicker is of course still a benefit in that aspect but it won't defeat enemy shells. The 60# STS weather deck is perhaps the only one that is really important as part of the protection against shells. The value isn't there for some reason in the image that I linked to I believe weather deck is 60# STS on the Alaska-class well.
So as I said, thicker, not radically different.

You misunderstand.
The US classifies EVERY SHIP in the world by the USN Hull code system and always has since the hull code system came into being, purely as shorthand for recognition issues.

Ok (don't have anything to add, just noting that I read it).

See, the Queen Elizabeth-class were from the Dreadnought-era, Revenge and Hood were both designed specifically because of Jutland, making both of them from the Post-Jutland era. So, comparing Queen Elizabeth-class ships to Hood is extremely unfair, they are not only several years apart - they are from entirely different eras with what are essentially entirely different design theories!

Both Revenge and Royal Oak were present at Jutland, it isn't a post-Jutland design at all. Hood is the only post-Jutland capital ship laid down during the war by the UK. The Revenge-class is also an oddity in that it has the unusual (almost unique) trait of being slower than the battleship class that preceded it.

Technically speaking, that is a lie perpetuated by Norman Friedman at the behest of the US Government because the specs on the Iowas was still classified at that time - they were still in service!
The overall scheme is similar, but they were not identical.

I can buy that as armor scheme errors seems to be rather common. But I have to ask in turn then how you can know for certain that it's superior in any meaningful way.

It actually is clear cut.

I don't think we are going to see eye to eye on this specific point but an interesting discussion nonetheless.

Oh, well now. I hadn't realized just how much of a wall of text I wrote. If that is unreadable, I apologize.

No, no problem at all. I cut out quite a bit in my response though for brevity.

@kibehisa on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-29T18:13:38-04:00

HumbugUserHello said:

-snip-

Nah, I just am a very fiery commentator.

Response

Okay.

Alaska v. North Carolina

In your image, look at the Alaska and the North Carolina.
EVERY LINE on the North Carolina counts as part of the armor scheme.
The Alaska has basically nothing in comparison to the North Carolina over there, it's not just "a bit of a bulge and and a double bottom" - it's literally over twice as much metal in there.
Let me but this another way.
Assuming a perfect shot through the Armor belt, for a shell to get through to the Alaska's machinery space, the shell would have to penetrate as few as 3 layers of steel.
The same shot through the North Carolina would have to penetrate 7 or 8 layers, disregarding thickness.
That has a very large effect on projectiles, completely disregarding the thicknesses of those sheets.

The Cruiser scheme is basically: 'Can it get the job done? Yes? Good. Stop there.'
The Battleship scheme, on the other hand, is redundancy after redundancy after redundancy; not only do they ask 'can it get the job done', they ask 'can it still get the job done if the earlier method fails?' and make for that too... and, often, after that someone asks 'and what if that fails too?' and everybody else takes him seriously (at least among the design team).

Hull Code

You misunderstand.
The US classifies EVERY SHIP in the world by the USN Hull code system and always has since the hull code system came into being, purely as shorthand for recognition issues.
And, unlike many navies of the world, the US has been very generous as to what the various other navies thought about their own ships.
In the 1930s, Japan decided to do away with their 'Battlecruiser' rating, thus they declared to the world that the Kongou-class Battlecruisers were now Fast Battleships.
Most of the world's powers laughed at them.
The US?
Not only did the US not laugh at them, the US Office of Naval Intelligence rewrote their Identification books to label the Kongou-class as Battleships (note the 'BB' instead of 'CC' up in the corner there) exactly as Japan had declared them (and bumping all of Japan's other post-Dreadnought battleships up in number).
To this day, if a power declares a ship to be a certain type or whatnot, the US just accepts it and records it as such unless intelligence proves that the ship is designed for something else.
The Soviet Navy was the one that declared the Kirov-class to be CBGNs, the US ONI basically just accepted it.
The present Russian Navy still calls them that when relating with the USN.
'Battlecruiser' just rolls off the tongue better than 'Large Nuclear-Powered Guided Missile Cruiser' and is rather more terrifying, so people can have their 'baby killing black rifles' effect when they want to start the propaganda machine up and running.
Japan today still insists that their totally-not-aircraft-carriers are 'Helicopter Carrying Destroyers', guess what the US ONI lists them as... DDH (Destroyer, Helo).
Ironically, none of Japans DDHs actually can use fixed wing aircraft - they are not even capable of taking the Harrier, let alone the F-35B; but they really should have been called cruisers at their size...

When using the legacy USN hull codes, the ships are labeled based on their role, design, and capabilities.
Cruisers were DL ('Destroyer Leader', essentially over-sized DDs meant to serve as flagships of Destroyer Squadrons - see the Atlanta-class CLAA for the epitome example of when this goes so far that it becomes a [light] cruiser), CL (Light Cruiser, a Cruiser with 6in or less guns and thinner armor, typically around 6,000 to 8,000 tons - but the US endwar CLs displaced ~11,000 tons because the US had pushed the technology level to another era [see below]), CA (Heavy Cruisers, although the Hull Code technically means 'Armored Cruiser'; defined as a Cruiser with guns of 8 inches or larger, with thicker armor, and typically a displacement of between 8,000 and 12,000 tons - although the US and Germany ended up with 14,000 ton monsters, and the 'endwar' era CA for the US was over 17,000 tons.), and CB (Large Cruiser, defined as "simply a very large cruiser that is larger than any Cruiser has the right to be given Capital-class weapons" [said Ernest King, the primary pusher for the Alaska-class], of 25,000 tons or more), and CC (Battlecruiser, which was 'a ship that combines the speed of a cruiser with the firepower of a Battleship').

You had this kind of pecking order going on. The ships higher up on the chain would hunt down and sink ships lower on the chain and could tango with ships on the same level as themselves; but were not meant to engage ships higher up on that chain. In fact, that is what Battlecruisers were meant to do - take on anything smaller (lower on the chain) than themselves and run away from anything larger (higher on the chain).
CB was inserted between CA and CC.
The US doctrine would not allow for committing an Alaska against, say, HMS Hood or Kongou, except in moments of desperation (such as the Battle of Savo Island) because the US considered the Alaska-class to be inferior to CCs.
As a matter of fact, the US built the North Carolina-class Battleships specifically to tango with the Kongou-class ships, and to good effect (see Washington v. Kirishima).

On top of this,
I feel the need to point out that ALL current warship types (in the English language) are based upon the USN Hull Code system, which in turn is based on the British Conventional system.
This is because of two things: the Washington Naval Treaty (which was literally written by Americans) and NATO (which the US practically wrote the books for).

Queen Elizabeth-class/Revenge-class/Hood

Okay.
When talking about ships, there is a certain thing you have to consider.
Eras.
Some major innovation or event will take place and suddenly EVERYTHING changes.

Starting with the USS Monitor that started the 'Ironclad-era',
Somebody (England) put Torpedoes on small, fast boats to counter the Ironclads in 1873; this started the 'Torpedo-era' (also called 'Pre-Mahan'),
Alfred Mahan released his influential thesis, "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783", in 1890; this revolutionized Naval Warfare for some reason. You now have the 'Mahanian-era' (also called 'Pre-Dreadnought'),
Mahanian doctrine resulted in the construction of the HMS Dreadnought in 1905 and the American South Carolina-class (which gave the world super-firing turrets and the all centerline Battleship format we are all familiar with) in 1906 (wouldn't be completed until 1910 because the US was lazy at that point), thus starting the 'Dreadnought-era'.
Then WW1 struck, experience from the Battle of Jutland in 1916 once again changed everything. Now you had the 'Post-Jutland era'.
Post WW1, an arms race between England and the US raged on and war was not only likely, but considered inevitable; however, because the US was really not wanting a war, American diplomats proposed an unprecedented resolution : the major naval powers of the world would voluntarily reduce the power of their navies and limit themselves in the near term future. Remarkably, this deal was agreed to in 1922 and the 'Great Anglo-American War of 1923' was avoided, starting the 'Treaty-era'.
Then Germany, under Adolf Hitler, began to rebuild the Navy of Germany (along with the German activity on land) and Japan (legally) left the Treaty in the 1930s. This started the 'Rearmament-era'. This is the Era that the Yamato, Iowa, Bismarck, and Alaska come from (with Iowa and Alaska being only just barely in this era).
Obviously, WW2 is next, with the experiences gained driving technologies to the next level. Starting with plans drawn up in 1942, you have the 'End War-era'...
...and after that is irrelevant for this discussion.

See, the Queen Elizabeth-class were from the Dreadnought-era, Revenge and Hood were both designed specifically because of Jutland, making both of them from the Post-Jutland era. So, comparing Queen Elizabeth-class ships to Hood is extremely unfair, they are not only several years apart - they are from entirely different eras with what are essentially entirely different design theories!
Yes, the changes between HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Revenge were revolutionary.
HMS Revenge used the Solid Block Armor belt that would hold in WW2 battleships; Queen Elizabeth was using the pre-WW1 stacked armor belt.
HMS Hood has comparable armor to HMS Queen Elizabeth, yes, but not her contemporary HMS Revenge.
Both were designed for the same type of battle, and the HMS Revenge was superior at that.

Isn't the armor schemes of the South Dakota-class and the Iowa-class almost identical? It's the North Carolina-class which has a difference scheme.

Technically speaking, that is a lie perpetuated by Norman Friedman at the behest of the US Government because the specs on the Iowas was still classified at that time - they were still in service!
The overall scheme is similar, but they were not identical.
The Iowa has many facets of her armor scheme that are still to this day classified.
So far classified that Richard A.Landgraff, the man behind the 1980s Iowa-class reactivations, admits that the official US Navy Booklet of General Plans for the Iowas (which has most of the correct dimensions and thicknesses that Conways, Janes, and even Friedman all get wrong consistently) flat out lists the wrong numbers.
Among these being the Outer Shell Plate which is claimed (publicly) to be 1.5 inches thick. The South Dakota's was 1.25 in, which is a completely unclassified fact. Landgraff refused to reveal the actual thickness for the Iowa, insisting that it was still classified but dismissed the 1.5 in claim as 'hooey', so I have no idea what it is.
There is also the debatable 4 ft thick 'concrete belt' that some say the Iowas carried (but was removed post-WW2 because of the related costs and the space was filled with water starting during Korea) that would have given them an effective ~23 inches of belt armor.

...an example of how the line isn't very clear cut.

It actually is clear cut.
A Battlecruiser cannot reliably stand up to a Battleship because a Battleship is higher on the food chain.
Meanwhile, a Battleship can and will wail on a Battlecruiser that is dumb enough to directly engage it. The Battle of Jutland is a prime example of this.
Fast Battleships effectively obsoleted the Battlecruiser because they could reach the same speeds as the Battlecruisers while still retaining full functionality and protection as a Battleship.
Battlecruisers as a concept was revived later on as a system with decent enough armor/survivability (past CIWS/AA/Missile Defense systems) to slug it out in the modern battlespace and survive (forcing the enemy to use high end weapons against the ship) without going to battleship levels of trying to shrug off hits from any and everything.
Large Cruisers have actually survived as a purely offensive system with basically no armor/survivability (see, Kirov).
Again, weight classes.

Oh, well now. I hadn't realized just how much of a wall of text I wrote. If that is unreadable, I apologize.

@HumbugUserHello on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-29T12:37:29-04:00

kibehisa said:

I say now, I may seem to come across as harsh or combative, but I'm really not meaning to be.

Ah good, thought you were a bit annoyed with me :p

Response

See here.
Alaska is in the bottom center of this image flanked by her contemporary Battleships.
As you can see, a proper Battleship armor scheme is much more complex (and effective) to say the least.

Yes, I'm aware of the difference but in my eyes it's on a sliding scale and not a binary difference. It's a bit of a pain to find the schemes online, but here's a few more examples to throw into the mix.
(googled image: armor scheme for Alaska - North Carolina - South Dakota - Iowa)
http://i.imgur.com/soToadg.png
(googled image: Graf Spee scheme and Scharnhorst scheme)
http://images.yuku.com.s3.amazonaws.com/image/jpeg/10a25c596ad5b5284bd0c46312b32316e06f042.jpg
http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/ac143/Matrose71/198_Scharnhorst_armorlayout.jpg

Increase all thickness values by 50% on the Alaska scheme, add a bit of a bulge and and a double bottom and boom! You get the scheme similar to the one on North Carolina... Well not exactly but it's not miles off either. Even between cruisers the schemes runs a wide range after all, much larger than the difference between the Alaska-class and the North Carolina-class. Feel free to attempt to educate me further if you want but as an admitted amateur I just don't see it.
Actually, contradicting my earlier post, armor weight as a percentage of displacement might generally be the single largest difference. I'm not sure if any post WW1 cruiser had more than 20% of normal displacement in armor while at least battleships easily exceeded that value. But that's battleships, perhaps not as clear cut between battlecruisers and cruisers.

Okay.
The Hull Code for the Alaska-class Large/Heavy Cruiser is CB.
Almost any time you see C show up as a prefix in a USN hull code, it means 'Cruiser'.
Almost any time you see B show up as a suffix in a USN hull code, it means 'Heavy' or 'Large'
'B' (as a suffix) refers to weight class.
Thus, the difference between a CL (Cruiser, Light), a CA (Cruiser, Armored), and a CB (Cruiser, Large) is, essentially, Weight Class.
Like it is unfair to compare a Flyweight Boxer to a Super-Heavy Weight Boxer, it is unfair to compare the 17,255 l.ton Des Moines-class or the 10,600 l.ton Deutschland/Lützow-class to the monstrous 29,771 l.ton Alaska.

Now while I can accept your other arguments even if I may have objections this is one that I really dislike (the Hull Code argument). Every other countries designations are regularly ignored without any care in the world so it's only logical that what the USN designated their ships as shouldn't carry all that much weight either. But then again you acknowledge the existence of other nations designations later so... eh.

The US AND RUSSIA (as I said earlier) were the only powers that used the Large/Heavy Cruiser rating (as compared to 'Armored/Heavy Cruiser'); but that does not implicate that the US was the only one to have put forward such designs.
The US AND RUSSIA are just the only powers that have actually built and operated this type of ship.
Of all powers involved (Russia, the US, Japan, and the Dutch), only the Dutch called theirs a Battlecruiser.

You are right that you mentioned the Kirov-class. From my experience you are rather unusual in that you actually put anything but the Alaska-class in the large cruiser box. On the forums/places I've visited on the web all but the Alaska-class would be called battlecruisers so I've kind of been arguing on that premise. So sorry about that.
Anyway, I will acknowledge that you use the designation more logically, but I still think that my main point that the classification rules are vague and somewhat subjective holds.

The HMS Revenge (OLDER than Hood, by the by) and her 13 inch thick SOLID armor belt (one monolithic plate at midship, unlike the Hood's Upper/Middle/Main scheme) laughs at Hood's 12in/7in/5in belt (at midship).
Even though Revenge had slightly thinner Deck Armor, for the battles that they were designed for (Jutland), the Revenge was better off.

I was thinking of the Queen Elizabeth-class which didn't have quite the same slab of armor as the Revenge-class. But it's true that the Revenge-class was newer although there isn't really any evolutionary leap between the two, only a matter of priorities.

First off, the Iowa-class Battleships ARE BATTLESHIPS, and anyone who says otherwise punch them in the nose.

I'd definitely call them battleships myself.

Secondly, the Iowa-class ships were more advanced in every way than their predecessor South Dakota-class; Superior Firepower, Superior Armor (yes, the Iowa-class's Armor scheme was far superior to the South Dakota-class'), Superior Speed, Superior Endurance (even more efficient powerplants), Superior Handling...
Suffice to say, the Iowa made NO compromise for her speed (with the possible exception of her TDS) - 10,000 tons and 200ft were a very small price to pay that was far outweighed by the gains made.

Why is Hood different?
HMS Hood : Laid Down : 1st of September, 1916
USS Iowa : Laid Down : 27th of June, 1940

Isn't the armor schemes of the South Dakota-class and the Iowa-class almost identical? It's the North Carolina-class which has a difference scheme.

Anyway let's that a look at Hood then compared to the Queen Elizabeth-class. It added ~15000 tons and 200 ft to get superior speed, superior endurance, same firepower, no clue about handling (although it would be amazing if it could turn as easily after adding 200 ft), same firepower. Armor scheme is a more difficult to evaluate fairly but I'd put them as roughly equal but with different strengths.
Now to disclaimers - there's admittedly roughly 4 years between Queen Elizabeth being laid down and Hood while only 1 year between South Dakota and Iowa and the weight gain in percentage is much larger between QE and Hood. Still I think the comparison is apt. That said I'm not bothered about Hood being called a battlecruiser at all it's just that I wanted to use it as an example of how the line isn't very clear cut.

The age of the design of the ship means almost everything when it comes to classifying that ship!

Granted, but the post WW1 naval treaties still kind of killed displacement growth between the wars. There wasn't a lot of ships you'd call battlecruiser built after WW1 either so using the WW1 capital ships, especially battlecruisers, doesn't seem that out of place.

@kibehisa on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-29T09:10:25-04:00

HumbugUserHello said:

- snip -

I say now, I may seem to come across as harsh or combative, but I'm really not meaning to be.

Response

Re:

Why is the Alaska-class considered a Large Cruiser and not a Battlecruiser

As I said... wait...

Re:

It's not like armor schemes between cruisers and battleships are entirely different stories either...

Stop.
Stop.
Yes, yes they are.

The Alaska has CRUISER type armor in CRUISER type mountings on a CRUISER hull, this was VERY BAD in comparison to a proper Battleship scheme even if the primary plates were of the same nominal thickness.
Since explaining this to you seems to get neither of us anywhere, let me show you instead.
See here.
Alaska is in the bottom center of this image flanked by her contemporary Battleships.
As you can see, a proper Battleship armor scheme is much more complex (and effective) to say the least.
Ignoring the Iowa's special feature (that puts preventative measures OUTSIDE her armor belt), every one of the actual battleships (including the Iowa) put a heavy emphasis on mitigating the damage of a shell that manages to defeat the Armor Belt.
Alaska, on the other hand, was designed as her contemporary cruisers were - the Armor belt was essentially the first and last line of defense.
Actual BATTLECRUISERS of the WW2 Era, had any been built, would have had a similar Armor Scheme as any of the actual battleships there, but with the armor thickness that the Alaska had.
As a matter of fact...
This is the HMS Hood.
Not exactly the Alaska's

Re:

TDS

It's not unheard of for Heavy Cruisers to take on heavier TDS, but in general it's a one way street due to weight concerns.
Rules of thumb are not absolutes.

Re:

is it that strange then to call the Al[a]ska-class battlecruisers

Is it strange? No, it's a common mistake.
Is it entirely Wrong? Yes.

Re:

If it really is that strange then I'd ask why e.g. the Des Moines-class or Deutschland/Lützow are called heavy cruisers and not large cruisers...

Okay.
The Hull Code for the Alaska-class Large/Heavy Cruiser is CB.
Almost any time you see C show up as a prefix in a USN hull code, it means 'Cruiser'.
Almost any time you see B show up as a suffix in a USN hull code, it means 'Heavy' or 'Large'
'B' (as a suffix) refers to weight class.
Thus, the difference between a CL (Cruiser, Light), a CA (Cruiser, Armored), and a CB (Cruiser, Large) is, essentially, Weight Class.
Like it is unfair to compare a Flyweight Boxer to a Super-Heavy Weight Boxer, it is unfair to compare the 17,255 l.ton Des Moines-class or the 10,600 l.ton Deutschland/Lützow-class to the monstrous 29,771 l.ton Alaska.

Re:

...at what point is the threshold reached?

Largely, this is an arbitrary figure, but the distinction between a Armored Cruiser and a Large Cruiser is generally considered to be the magic 25,000 l.tons standard displacement line.
Just like with Super Battleships and their magic 50,000-55,000 l.ton standard displacement line (some argue 60k).

Kirov, a Large (Nuclear Powered Guided Missile) Cruiser, falls slightly short of this magic line at 24,300 tons (tonnes?), but her weapons payload make up for it.

Re:

I'd be more comfortable with the designation if it wasn't such an Alaska-class exclusive club.

The US AND RUSSIA (as I said earlier) were the only powers that used the Large/Heavy Cruiser rating (as compared to 'Armored/Heavy Cruiser'); but that does not implicate that the US was the only one to have put forward such designs.
The US AND RUSSIA are just the only powers that have actually built and operated this type of ship.
Of all powers involved (Russia, the US, Japan, and the Dutch), only the Dutch called theirs a Battlecruiser.

The Heavy/Large Cruiser designs that I know of:

Russian:
Kronshtadt-class Heavy Cruiser (1939, canceled)
Stalingrad-class Heavy Cruiser (1951, canceled)
Kirov-class Heavy Nuclear-Powered Guided Missile Cruiser (1974, in service)
Note, people commonly claim that all three of these are Battlecruisers - in reality, all three of them are labeled Тяжёлые крейсера (Heavy Cruiser) by the Russians as compared to Линейные крейсера (Line [of Battle] Cruiser) such as the Borodino-class battlecruiser)

American:
Alaska-class Large Cruiser (1941, retired)

Japanese:
Design B-65 cruiser (1942, canceled)

Dutch:
Design 1047 battlecruiser (drafts drawn up in 1940, not ready for construction, canceled by Nazi invasion)

It's hardly an "Alaska-class exclusive club" when the Russians were trying to build theirs first and only stopped because the Nazis sacked the shipyard.

Re:

Fast Battleship/Battle Cruiser

Part A:

As for Hood potentially being called a fast battleship, well, it had armor comparable to the latest contemporary UK battleships

The HMS Revenge (OLDER than Hood, by the by) and her 13 inch thick SOLID armor belt (one monolithic plate at midship, unlike the Hood's Upper/Middle/Main scheme) laughs at Hood's 12in/7in/5in belt (at midship).
Even though Revenge had slightly thinner Deck Armor, for the battles that they were designed for (Jutland), the Revenge was better off.

Part B:

The Iowa-class is usually said to be battleships despite having to sacrifice quite a lot of tons to get their speed so why is Hood so different?

First off, the Iowa-class Battleships ARE BATTLESHIPS, and anyone who says otherwise punch them in the nose.
Secondly, the Iowa-class ships were more advanced in every way than their predecessor South Dakota-class; Superior Firepower, Superior Armor (yes, the Iowa-class's Armor scheme was far superior to the South Dakota-class'), Superior Speed, Superior Endurance (even more efficient powerplants), Superior Handling...
Suffice to say, the Iowa made NO compromise for her speed (with the possible exception of her TDS) - 10,000 tons and 200ft were a very small price to pay that was far outweighed by the gains made.

Why is Hood different?
HMS Hood : Laid Down : 1st of September, 1916
USS Iowa : Laid Down : 27th of June, 1940

I repeat:
The age of the design of the ship means almost everything when it comes to classifying that ship!

Re:

Finally as for modern designs versus the older ones I'd say that's at least partially a matter of politics which complicates things further. I find that the evolution from the WW1 era ship classes to the WW2 era ships is much clearer than from WW2 to modern times.

Okay, that's fine. On certain levels I agree (certainly the absolute retardation of the Zumwalt-class 'Destroyer' that is in every way including gun caliber and displacement a Light Cruiser).

But still, I say again:

The requirements of various types of ships rise as the threat level rise.
What was required of one ship type in 1899 (Bainbridge-class destroyer, the US' first DDs) will NOT be the same as what is required of a new ship of the same type in 1916 (Caldwell-class Destroyer of late WW1) or God forbid in 1943 (Sumner-class Destroyer of mid WW2).
Take a WW1 Destroyer such as the American Caldwell-class and pit it up against an American Sumner-class from WW2.
The two ships are remarkably different beasts despite being of the same type!
The age of the design of the ship means almost everything when it comes to classifying that ship!

@HumbugUserHello on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-28T14:10:59-04:00

kibehisa said:

Your armor displacement values were actually hard data which is why I concentrated on that. Your original statement that battlecruiser are scaled down battleships while large cruisers are are scaled up cruisers, in my opinion, doesn't really help you make any real distinction between them. Especially as the WW1 battlecruisers were usually the size of the battleships so saying that they were scaled down seems like an odd choice of words. Things such as compartmentalization and TDS is also partly a factor of absolute size as well, rather than role. I might note here that Scharnhorst has (in my amateur eyes) a scaled up version of the TDS from Deutschland/Lützow while Algerié has a TDS scheme similar to Dunkerque. It's not like armor schemes between cruisers and battleships are entirely different stories either although as you said, the battleships usually has a much larger percentage of their weight in armor.

I hope I don't seem too confrontational because that's not my intent, but what I'm trying to get at is that there aren't 100% clear guidelines that tell you what class a ship is. The Alaska-class has similar displacement as Dunkerque with similar max armor values (although I belive Dunkerque has a higher total weight in armor). Dunkerque is usually called either a battlecruiser or a battleship, is it that strange then to call the Alska-class battlecruisers? If it really is that strange then I'd ask why e.g. the Des Moines-class or Deutschland/Lützow are called heavy cruisers and not large cruisers, at what point is the threshold reached? I'd be more comfortable with the designation if it wasn't such an Alaska-class exclusive club.

As for Hood potentially being called a fast battleship, well, it had armor comparable to the latest contemporary UK battleships although obviously Hood displaced a lot more. But then speed is never free, it's always a compromise. The Iowa-class is usually said to be battleships despite having to sacrifice quite a lot of tons to get their speed so why is Hood so different?

Finally as for modern designs versus the older ones I'd say that's at least partially a matter of politics which complicates things further. I find that the evolution from the WW1 era ship classes to the WW2 era ships is much clearer than from WW2 to modern times.

@kibehisa on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-28T02:25:25-04:00

HumbugUserHello said:

-snip-

You are misconstruing what I said.

Since you seem to not acknowledge this, I will clarify for you that the requirements of various types of ships rise as the threat level rise.
What was required of one ship type in 1906 will NOT be the same as what is required of a new ship of the same type in 1916 or God forbid in 1941.
Take a semi-modern Destroyer (DD, not DDG) such as the American Spruance-class and pit it up against an American Fletcher-class from WW2.
The two ships are remarkably different beasts despite being of the same type!
The age of the design of the ship means almost everything when it comes to classifying that ship!

That being said, overall, the armor displacement percentage is only a general guideline looking backwards (no major nation stuck to the so-called 'typical' naval designs as each independently designed and developed their ships and naval theories).

What was important is as I said:

A Battlecruiser is a scaled down Battleship.
A Large/Heavy Cruiser is a scaled up Cruiser.

You somehow ignored that fairly major point, so important that I emboldened parts of it.
The Alaska-class ships had CRUISER type Armor in CRUISER type mountings on top of CRUISER type TDS backed up by CRUISER type compartmentalization, with (admittedly very large) CRUISER type guns.
HMS Hood had thinner BATTLESHIP type Armor in BATTLESHIP type mountings on top of a BATTLESHIP type TDS (of the day) backed up by BATTLESHIP type compartmentalization (albeit a weaker form of it), with guns that were literally BATTLESHIP grade and type.

A Battlecruiser is a battleship-lite.
A Large/Heavy Cruiser is an oversized Cruiser.

As history proves, for nations that can afford a Battleship of similar speed, or even a Battlecruiser, the Large Cruiser is impractical.
(A single Alaska cost almost as much to keep in service as a single Iowa that did over twice the work)
Russia, on the other hand, can afford the Kirov but not a full BBG or CCG, so the Kirov falls right in their economic sweet spot, and missiles partially make up the effectiveness difference (magazine depth being the BBG/CCG's notable superiority over the CBG).

Also, you keep equating battlecruisers with fast battleships, this is wrong.
Please do not do this.
Fast Battleships and Battlecruisers are vastly different beasts.
Battlecruisers are Battleships 'lightened' to go faster (this means thinner armor and possibly fewer guns. They could not reliably engage enemy battleships head to head.
Fast Battleships are Battleships strengthened enough to reach at least 27 knots without compromising anything else, and is more representative of an era of battleship construction than a proper class or type. And, yes, this means that even the Giant Yamato is technically a Fast Battleship even though she is a 'Super Battleship' as well.

Hood was no Fast Battleship, even the reconstructed Kongou-class had more claim to that title than Hood did.

- - - Edit - - -

JsTuCkEy said:

Then how do you explain the guns?

Ah, sorry, missed this earlier.

Surprisingly, the 12in guns of the Alaska were basically giant Cruiser type guns, lacking most of the special protections that the larger battleship type guns had - instead focusing on increasing the fire rate rather than protection.
Incidentally, the system was not satisfactory (in fact, the Navy considered it a failure) and did not get the designed 4 shots/min fire rate, never achieving more than 3 (2.4 was more realistic).

Note, although the ship may be built around the weapons, weapons alone do not make the ship.
One could argue that the Alaska-class were large and heavily armored Pocket Battleships, but that doesn't make the Deutschland/Lützow-class heavy cruisers anything other than heavy cruisers with 11in guns.

@HumbugUserHello on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-27T18:31:18-04:00

Thanks for deciphering and translating these!

kibehisa said:

That is NOT the basic definition of battlecruisers, and never has been!

A Battlecruiser is a scaled down Battleship.
A Large/Heavy Cruiser is a scaled up Cruiser.

That is the basic definition of a Battlecruiser and a Large/Heavy Cruiser.

The Alaska-class only had 16.4% armor displacement, which is standard for Cruisers, in a Cruiser-type mounting and has a Cruiser-type TDS.
The minimum armor displacement for a Battlecruiser is 25%, HMS Hood had 30%, mounted like a Battleship and has a Battleship-type TDS.

Massive difference.

Invincible had something on the order of 19-20% of weight in armor, not that far of from the 16.4% you say the Alska-class had and below your purported minimum required for a battlecruiser. The WW2 French heavy cruiser Algerié had something like 18-19% armour weight and thus pretty similar to Invincible. The battleship Dreadnought had 27-28% or in other words lower than your value for the battlecruiser/(fast battleship) Hood. On the German side on the other hand the "battlecruiser" Von der Tann had 31-32% while the first dreadnought style battleship Nassau had 35%. Clearly what is usually called a battlecruiser doesn't fully correlate with how much of the displacement is used for armor.
(Note that I'm not 100% confident of the percentage values I've given, but hopefully they are more or less correct. Percentage is calculated according to normal displacement)

First of all I'll admit that e.g. Invincible is a pretty old example to use as a comparison, but on the other hand if you have a definition of a battlecruiser that excludes Invincible then surely something is wrong with it? Secondly how exactly you'd define a battlecruiser vs. a fast battleship vs. a (large) cruiser is definitely a bit murky and I myself don't have any exact rules - it does seem a bit odd to insist that the Alaska-class ships were so unique that they warrant a completely unique category however.
Of course if you are saying the Alska-class are large cruiser simply because the US navy gave them the CB hull code then I also hope that, as an example, you call Von der Tann, Derfflinger etc. large cruisers as well.

@JsTuCkEy on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-27T13:31:24-04:00

kibehisa said:

That is NOT the basic definition of battlecruisers, and never has been!

A Battlecruiser is a scaled down Battleship.
A Large/Heavy Cruiser is a scaled up Cruiser.

That is the basic definition of a Battlecruiser and a Large/Heavy Cruiser.

The Alaska-class only had 16.4% armor displacement, which is standard for Cruisers, in a Cruiser-type mounting and has a Cruiser-type TDS.
The minimum armor displacement for a Battlecruiser is 25%, HMS Hood had 30%, mounted like a Battleship and has a Battleship-type TDS.

Massive difference.

Then how do you explain the guns?

@NWSiaCB on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-27T13:25:36-04:00

JsTuCkEy said:

From using Abyssals to represent Allied ships to using them to represent Axis ships, Sakazaki Freddy has come full circle.

I think it's more "abyssals represent unimplemented ships", or at least enemies of the current ship.

Then again, Kongou and BISKO are on Warspite's side, here, so I guess we should just assume this isn't historical, but part of the game, so she wasn't even shooting at Giulio Cesare, but that extreme range shots are just her thing because she did it once in real life.

@kibehisa on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-26T21:52:21-04:00

JsTuCkEy said:

If we go by the basic definition of battlecruiser-battleship guns with cruiser armor-then yes the Alaska-class were battlecruisers.

That is NOT the basic definition of battlecruisers, and never has been!

A Battlecruiser is a scaled down Battleship.
A Large/Heavy Cruiser is a scaled up Cruiser.

That is the basic definition of a Battlecruiser and a Large/Heavy Cruiser.

The Alaska-class only had 16.4% armor displacement, which is standard for Cruisers, in a Cruiser-type mounting and has a Cruiser-type TDS.
The minimum armor displacement for a Battlecruiser is 25%, HMS Hood had 30%, mounted like a Battleship and has a Battleship-type TDS.

Massive difference.

@JsTuCkEy on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-26T14:36:18-04:00

evvvk said:

At least he didn't use BC as a shorthand for battlecruiser. Though him thinking that CB stands for battlecruiser is hardly surprising considering how widespread the misconception that Alaskas were battlecruisers is (personally I blame it on the fact that people keep comparing them to vintage world war 1 battlecruisers that were still around during the WWII instead of the planned more modern battlecruiser classes like G3s or Amagis that got cancelled due to WNT).

If we go by the basic definition of battlecruiser-battleship guns with cruiser armor-then yes the Alaska-class were battlecruisers.

@evvvk on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-26T14:31:13-04:00

kibehisa said:

CC, not CB.

CC stands for 'Battle Cruiser' or 'Cruiser, Command/Control'.
CB stands for, 'Cruiser, Heavy/Large'.

At least he didn't use BC as a shorthand for battlecruiser. Though him thinking that CB stands for battlecruiser is hardly surprising considering how widespread the misconception that Alaskas were battlecruisers is (personally I blame it on the fact that people keep comparing them to vintage world war 1 battlecruisers that were still around during the WWII instead of the planned more modern battlecruiser classes like G3s or Amagis that got cancelled due to WNT).

@kibehisa on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-26T01:44:46-04:00

trees said:

Renown was an unmodernized CB

CC, not CB.

CC stands for 'Battle Cruiser' or 'Cruiser, Command/Control'.
CB stands for, 'Cruiser, Heavy/Large'.

The only CB in history are the US' Alaska-class CB from WW2 and the (current) Soviet/Russian Kirov-class CBGN (that people insist on calling a Battlecruiser).

Confusing, yes, but the Hull codes are what they are.

@deathheater5 on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-26T01:16:35-04:00

trees said:

Renown was an unmodernized CB with only three double turrets and nine inches of armor on the belt and very little in the way of deck armor. She was *exactly* the kind of ship the Scharnhorst class would have been perfect for engaging.

Renown was modernized twice in the interwar period with the second one giving her a warspite like superstructure.

@trees on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-26T01:06:13-04:00

ezekill said:

Though wasn't that because of their GFCS (lolseetaktderp) going haywire in Scharnhorst that she couldn't bead Renown properly to retaliate and the standing RoE to get the hell out of dodge against capital ships? Little sister started getting zeroed and hit when the lumpy battlecruiser shifted to zero in on the big sister after she tried to straddle the enemy yet eventually ran like little children lol. From a battlecruiser which technically aint a capital ship like a battlehsip even.

The GFCS worked fine, there weren't GFCS issues until Renown shot out Gneisenau's GFCS system. Also at the time while that RoE for German capital ships did exist, no-one really followed it as at the time the Kriegsmarine was glory-hungry and wanted to sink some capital ships to impress the Furer and not have all their ships sold for scrap and be conscripted into the Army.

@trees on post #2495582 (kongou, bismarck, warspite, i-class destroyer, ru-class battleship, and 1 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy)

2016-09-26T01:04:19-04:00

panzerfan said:

It makes perfect sense for Scharnhorst to run away from Renown given what she's packing armament wise at that, for there's no guarantee that she can come out alive against such a modernized battlecruiser.
Scharnhorst died a death worthy of a battleship at that later on against the Duke of York.

Renown was an unmodernized CB with only three double turrets and nine inches of armor on the belt and very little in the way of deck armor. She was *exactly* the kind of ship the Scharnhorst class would have been perfect for engaging.