Considering that in my case during events Roma ends up doing several times more work compared to most of the other girls here, I'd say it's a well-deserved break.
Considering that in my case during events Roma ends up doing several times more work compared to most of the other girls here, I'd say it's a well-deserved break.
They saw a LOT during my failed LDs in E6H. 42 sortie and 19 saw the boss. So yeah.
I sometimes wonder why battleships came into existence at all. During WW1, every flaw big ships had was made immediately clear. There was early fighting aircraft that completely changed the rules of the war, the rise of submarines with their torpedoes, and ambushes from smaller, faster vessels which already existed and were growing more advanced.
It was obvious that big ships had many enemies and could get destroyed very fast if they were used aggressively, and those were the early dreadnought type ships which still had the tactical benefit of being medium-sized by our modern warship standards, and they were still only used situationally. Then WW2 comes and they make ships even bigger harder to use. Why would they do that?
I sometimes wonder why battleships came into existence at all. During WW1, every flaw big ships had was made immediately clear. There was early fighting aircraft that completely changed the rules of the war, the rise of submarines with their torpedoes, and ambushes from smaller, faster vessels which already existed and were growing more advanced.
It was obvious that big ships had many enemies and could get destroyed very fast if they were used aggressively, and those were the early dreadnought type ships which still had the tactical benefit of being medium-sized by our modern warship standards, and they were still only used situationally. Then WW2 comes and they make ships even bigger harder to use. Why would they do that?
It's almost like nothing was learned from WW1.
i think its conservative voices that refuse to admit their big bad boats can be sunk with flying pieces of wood and canvas
and maybe a fair bit of optimism where if they build bigger, better ships with more AA and escorts the air threat would be countered.
and maybe a bit of "ok we'll have carriers but thats for support and the true tip of the spear would the battleships!"
I sometimes wonder why battleships came into existence at all.
Because they worked. People hem and haw about WWI, but there were a number of engagements in the later part of the 19th century and early 20th with Battle of Tsushima being most famous where the steel battleship of the period ably showed it's importance in sea control. WWI did nothing to say otherwise.
During WW1, every flaw big ships had was made immediately clear.
In what way? Britain's fleet assured complete dominance of the sea and an economic blockade more effective then U-boats ever were. Yes, day to day it was destroyers and cruisers that patrolled and enforced it, but without the threat of battleships to back it up it would be toothless. There was no other method to gain sea control at the time, aircraft of the period were laughably inadequate to be a major threat and submarines were and remain nuisance weapons unable to exert actual sea control.
This had not materially changed in the 20s or early to mid 30s, aircraft of that period had limited payloads, very limited range, and the communications and control systems that would be critical for organizing the raids of later years didn't yet exist. There was also the obvious problem of them being completely worthless at night. Beyond that to be brutally honest aircraft carriers often couldn't really actually stop surface fleets even during WWII, if the attacker was determined barring exceptional cases of gross over-match between defender and attacker.
Before about 1938-9 if the other guy showed up with battleships and you didn't have them you were just crap out of luck outside of very unusual circumstances. This had been the same since the ships of the line of centuries prior. If you didn't have a battle fleet you lost sea control and endured a blockade and possible landings.
There was early fighting aircraft that completely changed the rules of the war,
They did nothing of the sort, aircraft up to the mid 30s were not effective ship killers. They weren't even great ship killers during WWII actually, surface actions were much more decisive and could destroy larger numbers of enemy vessels much more quickly and with finality. The plane's main advantage was that even though it was actually much less lethal you could make repeated attacks while risking only more easily replaceable aircraft vs ships. It was less effective, but lower risk, and hence it came to be preferred.
The reality is that during WWII the balance had started to favor aircraft, but only marginally. The bombs carried by most tactical aircraft were not actually very effective against armored ships, very marginal against cruisers, almost useless against battleships. Torpedoes were more effective, but it was quickly shown that an air torpedo attack against a good defense would almost invariably take horrendous losses due to how it had to be made (low altitude, a basically direct approach to the target on a closing bearing which made fire control solutions much simpler, and a need to approach through and over any ships arranged around the actual target for defense). Japan began using Kamikaze because normal air attack had proved to already be both basically suicidal anyway and completely ineffective after all.
This is also talking about very large fleets and formations, people tend to look at the behemoth of the USN Task Forces of 1944 and go "well of course battleships are useless, what where they thinking?", but TF38 was not the norm and was beyond basically anyone's wildest dreams when the last generation of battleships was designed. When Littrio, Bismarck, North Carolina and South Dakota, and KGV were being conceived in the mid 30s four great power navies (Germany, Italy, and France, Russia) had basically no carrier forces to speak off. Britain, the US, and Japan only had a handful each and these were still mostly flying biplaines of rather limited capability.
Aircraft had at this time also never actually demonstrated any real ablity to incapacitate mobile defended targets at sea. It was realized that they were improving and would represent a greater threat in the future, but no one really grasped the rapidity of the advances or the drastic increases in scale of the attacking forces that would be seen only a few years on. Really to do so would have bordered on precognition, and even then as someone associated with the British battleship program of the period noted something to the effect of "if we build them and don't need them we'll have wasted resources, if we don't build them and do need them we might doom the nation."
The airplane was not ready for primetime as an anti-ship weapon before the very late 30s, the confluence of technologies needed to bring it dominance was not in place. Even during the war it was only really effective against badly defended targets unless deployed in huge numbers and even in very large numbers it could not overmatch a stout defense of the later war period (100+ plane raids being repeatedly smashed aside by the USN with no material losses).
They also remained largely ineffective in even fairly mild inclement weather or at night.
It was obvious that big ships had many enemies and could get destroyed very fast if they were used aggressively,
Tanks also had many enemies and could be destroyed quickly, are tanks useless? This also ignores that most of the enemies in question were vulnerable to being destroyed in turn by the big ship itself, much more so in most cases. As with anything it was a balancing act of risk vs reward, but for the larger navies these ships were not so valuable as to be beyond risking in action.
Also the scarcity that drove conservation in use isn't really a factor of the class of ships, but politics. The arms limitation treaties of the 20s and 30s had artificially limited the number of battleships and bloated out the fleet with smaller compromise vessels. Without the arms treaties heavy cruisers would not exist like they did and true capital ships would have made up for many of their numbers. With more of them on hand they'd have been used more aggersively, they were used more aggersively by those powers that did have larger fleets.
As it was because of those treaties many of the roles a battleship would have done were shunted onto the more numerous cruisers, but as a concept there was little real difference between a battleship and a heavy cruiser, one was just smaller and usually slightly faster. In fact the WWII heavy cruisers would have mostly easily crushed late 19th and early 20th century "battleships" in any kind of surface action, the larger ones might well have been able to fight it out with the first generations of dreadnaughts. If you declare battleships are useless as a concept by WWII then cruisers are useless too since they are basically just "battleships, but shittier".
and those were the early dreadnought type ships which still had the tactical benefit of being medium-sized by our modern warship standards, and they were still only used situationally.
If by situational you mean "Britian spent the entire war feverishly attempting to engineer a situation in which it could fight a full scale fleet action to a decisive finish and was crushed by it's inability to do so" then sure, only situational. No Britain didn't have dreadnoughts randomly patrolling the North Sea, or making useless busy work, but it also didn't have Ships of the Line randomly patrolling a century earlier, but at the end of they day that battle fleet was why Britain was in charge of the ocean.
To say otherwise is absurd.
It's almost like nothing was learned from WW1.
No they learned exactly what WWI showed. That the size of your battle fleet determines sea control, Britain had a bigger fleet, so the German Navy spent the entire war hiding and blockaded unable to contest sea control in any meaningful way.
Dogwalker said:
Were we talking of "fault"? I really can't see faults in a piece of metal.
9. sorting to intercept a British convoy to Malta, her mere presence at sea was enough to force the convoy back to Alexandria.
So she did nothing then, how is this a counterpoint?
And that pretty much means that she saw much more action than Richelieu and the entire Iowa Class put togheter, as stated before, and she hit more enemy ships too.
Iowa and New Jersey sank enemy surface ships, so sorry try again.
No battleship I know of justified her price in WWII. But why you suddenly seem so butthurt?
I really don't understand why you are telling that to me. It's pretty much accepted that every WWII power could have better spent the resources they employed in building battleships.
Maybe, maybe not. Surface action remained viable and often more decisive then air attack, furthermore at that time aircraft had not attained a level of power where they could seriously attrition a well defended fleet, they also remained ineffective at night or in even fairly mild inclement weather. The sheer massive overmatch of the US later in the war and the fact that the Paific as a whole is an extremely permissive environment with regards to air operations (with regards to sea states and weather) somewhat clouds the issue. In terms of a peer confrontation between more evenly matched powers in a less optimal area like the North Sea there was allot more room for large surface forces to make an impact, and battleships were the largest of those.
The thing is because battleships WERE present it becomes hard to think gauge how things would have worked if they weren't. It's also worth pointing out that carriers didn't engage their opposite numbers in pitched battle with any regularity either. For instance how many carrier battles did Britain fight in WWII? ZERO. How many carrier battles did the US and Japan fight? Five. How many times did US battleships fire at Japanese battleships? Two (it should have been three but for the blunder by Halsey).
This is not a yawning disparity and in the case of Britain it also shows that by and large the surface forces had as much of an impact as carriers did, rather more so in the Mediterranean in fact. The Axis battleships were "useless" because Britain had more battleships of it's own that contained them, and the British ships were "useless" because knowing this the Axis weren't willing to risk their smaller fleet in a pitched battle, but you see the catch 22 here. If those British battleships didn't exist and the Axis one's did there suddenly anything BUT useless.
If they could be deployed freely against cruisers and destroyers supported only by the meager power of a fleet air arm heavily constrained by the influence of land based aviation Britain could quite possibly have say entirely lost control of the Med in 1940.
Thus we see the problem, battleships are useless because enemy battleships exist and it takes fairly dire circumstances to be willing to risk them in direct battle, but if one side doesn't have battleships then suddenly you can deploy them much more freely and their weight provides you with a massive advantage in a battle. It really is much like carriers in this regard, when both sides have carriers their power is highly mitigated, but if only one side has carriers they suddenly become drastically more powerful because they can be used so much more freely.
The effectiveness of air attack was also still often being overblown even in WWII. Recall that even in the end the full might of the US fast carriers at their peek could not stop a large enemy fleet devoid of meaningful fighter cover quickly enough to prevent them reaching something that needed to be defended. Battleships did it in the south. If Kurtia had pressed on, they would have done it at the north as well.
But, once they had been built, it seems difficult to make submarines out of them. I don't know anyone that managed to do that. Had Tirpitz been turned into submarines?
There are two major problems with this.
One is the common, but fairly silly assumption that not building one thing magically means you can produce it's weight in something else. That's not how it works of course.
Just going 'they're both steel' means nothing. The lets just say 20,000 tons of construction steel used in the battleship would be worthless for making say tanks isntead, because you need armor grade metal with entirely different properties for that. The same is true for a U-boat which uses special high strength steels to resist pressure and thus allow greater diving depths. There are other bottlenecks as well like the large and for the time quite high tech and complex batteries and the diesel engines entirely unrelated to the steam systems used on warships.
It's also like looking at Japan and going "they should just not build Yamato and build three Shoukaku's isntead!". Sure, because three ships definitely won't use vastly more workers, require three times the construction slips and associated support systems, need three times as many sets of intricately machined turbines and boilers all of which Japan has shortages off. Nope, warships are like fucking dirt man! All you gotta do is just take a shovel and scope one big pile into a bunch of little ones!
The second issue is the worthless of submarines vs a real fleet. Submarines are not a replacement for real warships. They don't exert any form of sea control and they're much worse at actually blockading anything. They're mostly a nuisance weapon. The reality is that 75% of the U-Boat crewman died for nothing, they were never even close to seriously damaging Britain. If you want to actually win sea control you need a fleet and you need to beat the other guys fleet, and at that time period a very real case could be made that the best fleet to do that with would include some battleships.
Recall that ideally Germany didn't want to fight Britain until later in the 40s maybe even at all if they could get the continent without having to do so. The time table for their naval expansion was as ludicrously nonsensical as any of the Japanese ones don't get me wrong, but even so by the mid to late 40s if they had been allowed to keep building they'd have had a much bigger fleet that would have likely reduced the disparity between them and Britain vs the original timeline.
So the big justification of Iowa's price tag were four enemy aircrafts claimed?
She helped sink a destroyer and a training cruiser as well. Though really this same argument could be made about many of the carriers too, or what about the scores of escorts that never even attacked a submarine, or all the destroyers and cruisers that never performed any other duty beside sitting next to carriers? Maybe we should get rid of all of them too? Just have a bunch of carriers and merchant with no escorts at all.
Same deal today, all those billion dollar Aegis ships doing nothing but maybe firing a tomahawk at a mud hut every few years and spending all there time sitting next to carriers. Fucking useless, we should get rid of them too!
Sorry, I wasn't really thinking of that. WOOHOO! Massive battleship price tag justified then. Maybe five or six AA cruisers would have been a better idea tough.
Sure they'd be a good idea, until Kondō is coming down the slot or Kurtia is coming through San Bernardino strait at midnight and you try to put them in front of Kirashima or Yamato.
This thing began with questioning how the Italian ships are depicted as lazing around, which led to NWSiaCB responding with
NWSiaCB said:
It's a Hetalia reference in particular, but in general, the Italian battleships basically didn't see combat and stuck to their port most of the war.
At which point Dogwalker responded.
Dogwalker said:
Roma was simply completed when there was no more fuel to move her, but Littorio saw much more combat than Richelieu and the entire Iowa class put togheter.
Suddenly the whole world seems to crumble. The mere suggestion that Italian ships did anything? Unacceptable! Not claiming that what Dogwalker said is necessarily entirely true, however I think its pretty telling that the statement about Italian battleships not seeing combat doesn't get any response and instead you get e.g. this about Iowa
Tk3997 said:
She helped sink a destroyer and a training cruiser as well.
Besmirching the WW2 combat record of an Iowa class battleship? Why the nerve, I'll tell you right now that they in fact fired at some island at one or point or another and also were at least present when Maikaze was sunk and did in fact shoot at Katori! Now let me tell you about how worthless those Italian battleships were instead. I do believe they may never actually have left port at all! Those times that they in fact did leave port clearly do not count. After all, when they allegedly left port were they ever around when a training cruiser was sunk? Think not! Not like the ever glorious Iowas who sailed the seven seas and chewed bubblegum and kicked ass...
Okay, sorry, I might have overdone that rant a bit. It gets tiresome seeing how often anything Italian in WW2 get dismissed out of hand regardless of merits though. You see it on pretty much any forum that even only occasionally get on the subject of WW2. I'm not even Italian, can't imagine how it annoying it'd be if I actually were. Anyway to prevent this comment from being all negative I'll say that the reasoning as to why battleships were still around by WW2 is pretty much summed up by Tk3997.
Okay, sorry, I might have overdone that rant a bit. It gets tiresome seeing how often anything Italian in WW2 get dismissed out of hand regardless of merits though. You see it on pretty much any forum that even only occasionally get on the subject of WW2. I'm not even Italian, can't imagine how it annoying it'd be if I actually were. Anyway to prevent this comment from being all negative I'll say that the reasoning as to why battleships were still around by WW2 is pretty much summed up by Tk3997.
It's not our fault the Italian leadership in WW2 were so inept.
Between all the ridiculous ranting I get that there is more than one way to see the importance of these ships, but I still maintain that I think a lot of things were overlooked when battleships were built during the first part of WW2 that would have been apparent at the time, not just in hindsight, which made them less effective then they should have been.
Okay, sorry, I might have overdone that rant a bit. It gets tiresome seeing how often anything Italian in WW2 get dismissed out of hand regardless of merits though. You see it on pretty much any forum that even only occasionally get on the subject of WW2. I'm not even Italian, can't imagine how it annoying it'd be if I actually were. Anyway to prevent this comment from being all negative I'll say that the reasoning as to why battleships were still around by WW2 is pretty much summed up by Tk3997.
It's similar to the joke about France being useless and being unable to do anything but surrender, regardless of the power they possessed previously or how hard they fought against the Axis. It's just stereotype jokes born from WW2 sadly.
So... basically the summary is: -aircraft and aircraft carrier's impact isn't as much as people say it is -battleships still have their role
Did I get that right?
In my view kind of. It's a bit like when people say that overnight all the pre-dreads were obsolete with the launch of Dreadnought. It's true in a sense, but the guns on the old pre-dreads hadn't suddenly lost their potency, though the interaction between battleships and carriers is a bit more complex. Don't fall into the trap of underestimating the power of a carrier with its aircraft either though. Aircraft were improving at a rapid pace while the defence against them had not seen many big leaps before the war. Dive bombers started being capable of carrying heavier loads that would make it impractical to ensure immunity to them while torpedoes have always been dangerous. Speeds were also increasing making the fire control and tracking more difficult.
Blindga said:
Between all the ridiculous ranting I get that there is more than one way to see the importance of these ships, but I still maintain that I think a lot of things were overlooked when battleships were built during the first part of WW2 that would have been apparent at the time, not just in hindsight, which made them less effective then they should have been.
There were only a few battleships finished in 1942 or later. Without checking exactly it's something along the lines of Musashi, Roma and Vanguard along with a bunch of US battleships (Richelieu and Jean Bart being a bit iffy) that were finished at such a late date. Most battleships built were in fact laid down before WW2 even started. At that point judging their value would require hindsight. Also keep in mind that there's more than pure military efficiency that goes into these things as well. Politics, both internal to the armed forces and within the government and the nation. Prestige, institutional inertia, sunk costs, hedging your bets etc.
Ashenhawk said:
It's similar to the joke about France being useless and being unable to do anything but surrender, regardless of the power they possessed previously or how hard they fought against the Axis. It's just stereotype jokes born from WW2 sadly.
There were only a few battleships finished in 1942 or later. Without checking exactly it's something along the lines of Musashi, Roma and Vanguard along with a bunch of US battleships (Richelieu and Jean Bart being a bit iffy) that were finished at such a late date. Most battleships built were in fact laid down before WW2 even started. At that point judging their value would require hindsight. Also keep in mind that there's more than pure military efficiency that goes into these things as well. Politics, both internal to the armed forces and within the government and the nation. Prestige, institutional inertia, sunk costs, hedging your bets etc.
I guess that wasn't exactly what I meant, but that is true too. I suppose I'm not considering all the factors that can influence the evolution of technology, so you got me there. One can always be optimistic though.
HumbugUserHello said: The mere suggestion that Italian ships did anything? Unacceptable!
So much that it magically disappeared already. It doesn't count if there are or not reasons to say that. Those words are like Lord Voldemort's name. They can not be spoken. ;)
Suddenly the whole world seems to crumble. The mere suggestion that Italian ships did anything? Unacceptable! Not claiming that what Dogwalker said is necessarily entirely true, however I think its pretty telling that the statement about Italian battleships not seeing combat doesn't get any response and instead you get e.g. this about Iowa
Well, considering this suggestion that Italian ships did anything was framed as "did more than France and America combined", then yes, it does directly ask for a comparison of how much those three nation's battleships actually did. I'm not sure why responding to "this nation is better than that one" with "well actually..." is somehow STARTING the jingoist pissing contest, but whatever...
And beyond that, if we want to get into full-on discussions of the value of battleships as a whole or the notion of pure jingoist "our battleships are bigger than yours", then the Iowas were just one class of battleships that arrived pretty late to the party. The older battleships were more likely to actually see action and not get reserved since, after all, they weren't quite as precious being used as a threat.
And yeah, I'm really being serious when I say that they are more valuable as a threat than as a real weapon of war, for the reasons Tk outlined. I remember when I was young, playing with Nerf guns or playing dodgeball in teams, I learned that you never fire your last arrow or throw your team's last ball. Even if they KNOW you don't fire your last shot, the mere fact that you still have it is all it takes to prevent them from losing all fear of you and swarming.
Tk3997 said:
There was no other method to gain sea control at the time, aircraft of the period were laughably inadequate to be a major threat and submarines were and remain nuisance weapons unable to exert actual sea control.
[...]
The second issue is the worthless of submarines vs a real fleet. Submarines are not a replacement for real warships. They don't exert any form of sea control and they're much worse at actually blockading anything. They're mostly a nuisance weapon. The reality is that 75% of the U-Boat crewman died for nothing, they were never even close to seriously damaging Britain. If you want to actually win sea control you need a fleet and you need to beat the other guys fleet, and at that time period a very real case could be made that the best fleet to do that with would include some battleships.
While submarines didn't actually exert sea control, it's disingenuous to say that submarines were merely "nuisance weapons".
I mean, sinking nearly a third of the Japanese fleet sure made the USN's Silent Service a REALLY BIG "nuisance", now didn't it? The US submarine warfare campaign against Japan was the most successful submarine warfare campaign in history and absolutely more than pulled its weight, playing a major part in starving out the Japanese garrisons so that the Marines could take them out and push the Japanese back. Dollar for dollar, submarines were some of the best money the USN was spending, even WITH their awful torpedoes.
Likewise, in terms of raw attrition, the U-boats justified themselves. They may have had absolutely horrendous casualty rates, but even the limited number of successes they had were justified by the fact that the freighters and troop transports they were sinking represented vastly greater concentrations of wealth and manpower than the submarines, themselves. Even with a majority of submarines sinking before they could get a kill, the vastly disproportionate value of a relatively cheap submarine and the incredibly valuable convoys they were hunting meant that they could afford to take massive casualties and still justify themselves if they sank even a few convoys. (In the same way that launching battalions of T-34s at the handful of Tiger IIs Germany could muster meant that "Quantity had a quality all its own.") That was WITH Enigma being broken, and the U-boats only having a chance to attack because the Allies let them just to keep from tipping their hand. Had they used a code that wasn't broken, they would have sunk vastly more men and material and had a less staggering casualty rate.
Germany stopped making surface ships and spent all its resources on submarines for good reason: They had no way of building a large enough surface fleet to do anything other than choose between dying for no reason or hiding in port being the target of increasingly frustrated British bombing raids for the whole war. Being a "nuisance" that could sink troop transports that killed the enemy long before they got to your shores was the best choice given the circumstances.
The same, in fact, can be said for aircraft. Yes, there were few times they could defeat full battle fleets, but the whole navy isn't sailing as a single giant battlefleet all the time, and picking off stragglers and convoys really adds up. More of the Japanese destroyer and freighter forces were sunk to airpower than submarines, and submarines sank more of those than surface ships.
Aircraft, likewise, definitely denied areas of ocean. There's a reason Japan started relying upon night battles and retreating during the day to avoid air patrols. Especially in the early war, this was more due to land-based aircraft, but that doesn't mean you can just say that only surface ships can deny the ocean to the enemy.
Tk3997 said:
Japan began using Kamikaze because normal air attack had proved to already be both basically suicidal anyway and completely ineffective after all.
That had a lot more to do with the losses to combat air patrol than strictly AA, although American AA was vastly more effective than other nations' to start with. America was losing vastly fewer of their planes to surface ship AA than to CAP, as well.
Also, Japan's fuel shortage in the late war (when they started actually manufacturing purpose-made kamikaze aircraft) had a lot to do with the creation of kamikaze aircraft; in their desperation for fuel, they tried making fuel from coal or charcoal from burning trees, which made for a vastly inferior petroleum that would damage engines severely. Because they were basically making engines whose gas would destroy the engines after just a couple flights, anyway, they decided they may as well make a plane that was purpose-built not to need to make that return trip.
laisy said:
So... basically the summary is: -aircraft and aircraft carrier's impact isn't as much as people say it is -battleships still have their role
Did I get that right?
Not exactly, carriers definitely had an impact, but it depends on what someone's saying as to whether they lived up to it.
Carriers absolutely had an outsized impact considering their numbers, but that's not to say that carriers can just operate willy-nilly without support ships. That threat of a battleship is definitely real, and that's exactly why they parked those Iowas right next to their big carriers as a final line of defense, and put up the cruisers and destroyers as the first line.
Likewise, it's more a matter of when you were looking at things, and where things were going. Battleships definitely had their role in the decades before the war, and it definitely wasn't crazy to make ships like the North Carolinas or South Dakotas, but it was a matter of the judgement of the person as to when, exactly air power and carriers would start to rival the battleship for the core of fleets. However, considering how long these ships take to construct, that's making judgement of how much technology will advance in the next 5-10 years, which is bordering on requiring precognition to get right. Considering as these ships would continue to serve for another likely 20-40 years, however (keep in mind, "Granny Kongou" was still a front-line ship in 1942 when she was built in 1917), that means they should be thinking about events even further ahead into the uncertainty of a rapidly advancing technology.
The problem is more when people decided to spend on surface ships at all. As previously mentioned, Germany basically realized it was hopeless to try to compete with England given when Hitler was pushing up the war, so they gave up on surface ships entirely, and went for submarines because they could still operate even when the enemy could vastly outnumber any surface force you could sally. The faster a nation realized this, the better they could have done, and Italy could have kept North Africa in play longer if they'd had more capacity to be a "nuisance" to British convoys. That can work even with you keeping your big ships in port to keep their use as a threat, since how much more threat is 4 battleships compared to 3?
Likewise, you can build more submarines vastly more quickly than you can build a carrier or battleship. Nobody actually took steel off of a battleship then made a submarine with it, but they did stop construction of Graf Zeppelin to spend their resources on more submarines, instead, since it became blatantly obvious they would never be able to project their naval power any further than where land-based aircraft would be able to go, anyway.
NWSiaCB said: Well, considering this suggestion that Italian ships did anything was framed as "did more than France and America combined",
By who? The statement is that Littorio (a ship present in the picture above) saw more action than Richelieu (a ship present in the picture above) and the entire Iowa class (Iowa, tough not the entire Iowa class, is in the picture above) put togheter. And that's entirely true. If you read it as a comparison between Italy and "France and America combined" is not my nor anyone's fault.
Tk3997 said: So she did nothing then, how is this a counterpoint?
The counterpoint is in the entire, tough biased, list. Other than long range shelling, stopping or dealying enemy convoys, protecting convoys, being bombed, torpedoed, firing her AA or claiming some enemy aircraft, Littorio participated to at least one actual surface battle. Not a live fire exercise vs. an already struck and isolated enemy ship, but a battle vs. 24 enemy ships capable to fight back, and that did so by firing 2807 shells and 36 torpedoes (surely mostly to the biggest target around). In those conditions Littorio disabled two enemy ships (that had to dock to Malta, and sunk few days later. Kingston, bombed in port, Havock left it while still damaged to avoid the same fate, run ashore in Tunisia and was finished by an Italian sub), and damaged several others. So it's confirmed, Littorio saw much more action than Richelieu and the entire Iowa Class put togheter, as stated before, and she hit more enemy ships too. So sorry, try again.
Tk3997 said: There are two major problems with this.
No, there is only one major problem with this. That NWSiaCB's statement: "they could have probably done more to actually impede the enemy using the money they spent on Roma on more submarines the way that Germany wound up doing" is major bullshit. Germans wasted their resources making battleships as well, and completed one so late in the war that she didn't see action until she was sunk by an aerial bombing as well.
However, in the case of the Italian ships, we have the great equalizer of the construction charateristics, quality of steel, batteries, engines, ecc... Prices.
Littorio: hull/engine 502.767.116 weaponry 280.000.000 total 782.767.116 Zara: hull/engine 106.440.000 weaponry 89.000.000 total 195.440.000 Duca degli Abruzzi: 93.989.000 weaponry 68.000.000 total 161.989.000 Camicia Nera: hull/engine 20.250.185 weaponry 22.500.000 total 42.750.185 Calvi submarine: hull/engine 24.909.000 weaponry 16.000.000 total 40.909.000 Marconi submarine: hull/engine 23.100.000 weaponry 8.500.000 total 31.600.000 Beilul submarine: hull/engine 14.200.000 weaponry 7.500.000 total 21.700.000
Tk3997 said: She helped sink a destroyer and a training cruiser as well.
Is like sayig that Littorio helped annihilate MW10 convoy. The balance is still in her favor.
Tk3997 said: Sure they'd be a good idea, until Kondō is coming down the slot or Kurtia is coming through San Bernardino strait at midnight and you try to put them in front of Kirashima or Yamato.
And when exactly Iowa opened fire on Kondō, Kirashima or Yamato?
By who? The statement is that Littorio (a ship present in the picture above) saw more action than Richelieu (a ship present in the picture above) and the entire Iowa class (Iowa, tough not the entire Iowa class, is in the picture above) put togheter. And that's entirely true. If you read it as a comparison between Italy and "France and America combined" is not my nor anyone's fault.
By you.
Saying that Littorio getting into one engagement means it got into more combat than the whole Iowa class is nonsense. I mean, dismiss it all you like, but that part about Iowa shelling Katori in port alone puts Iowa equal to Littorio, and then there's all the engagements with aircraft which absolutely does count as combat, sorry (although if you want to count getting torpedoed at dock in Littorio's favor in the "fighting aircraft" department, it's not really saying much in Littorio's favor when she wasn't really shooting back). And once agian, you're not including bombardments of land targets or the entire career after World War 2. The Iowa class was definitely rolled out late enough that it didn't get into much direct surface-to-surface combat, but Iowa alone got into more combat than Littorio.
If words have a meaning, sorry, no. The statement is that Littorio (a ship present in the picture above) saw more action than Richelieu (a ship present in the picture above) and the entire Iowa class (Iowa, tough not the entire Iowa class, is in the picture above) put togheter. And that's entirely true. If you read it as a comparison between Italy and "France and America combined" is not my nor anyone's fault.
NWSiaCB said: Saying that Littorio getting into one engagement means it got into more combat than the whole Iowa class is nonsense.
It's the plain truth. Other than being bombed in port like Richelieu, firing long range shells like Iowa, escorting convoys like Iowa, firing its AA guns like Iowa, stopping or dealying enemy convoys (and I'don't know if Iowa ever did that), Littorio actually participated to an actual surface battle, with actual enemy ships actually capable to fight back and that, having the battle been fought at torpedoing distance, had enough firepower to sink Littorio herself. And that's something that nor Richelieu, nor the entire Iowa class, ever did. All they did with their main guns is damaging herself (Richelieu) or fire exercises vs. targets uncapable to respond (Iowa). Comparing this to an actual surface battle is like comparing the beating of some children (Iowa vs Katori, or land masses) to having fought at Fallujah (Littorio). So Littorio saw more action than Richelieu and the entire Iowa class put together. Sorry
NWSiaCB said: The Iowa class was definitely rolled out late enough that it didn't get into much direct surface-to-surface combat,
To get into direct surface to surface combat at all, and that's not exactly my fault, it is?
NWSiaCB said: but Iowa alone got into more combat than Littorio.
I sometimes wonder why battleships came into existence at all. During WW1, every flaw big ships had was made immediately clear. There was early fighting aircraft that completely changed the rules of the war, the rise of submarines with their torpedoes, and ambushes from smaller, faster vessels which already existed and were growing more advanced.
It was obvious that big ships had many enemies and could get destroyed very fast if they were used aggressively, and those were the early dreadnought type ships which still had the tactical benefit of being medium-sized by our modern warship standards, and they were still only used situationally. Then WW2 comes and they make ships even bigger harder to use. Why would they do that?
It's almost like nothing was learned from WW1.
Because even in WWII, Big Ships Dominate. Smaller ships would highly prefer not to engage larger ones due to the firepower difference, and the worse ability of smaller class ships to withstand punishment.
In the book "Japanese Destroyer Captain," the author, Capt Hara Tameichi, repeatedly spoke about the difference in firepower from a Destroyer to even a Light Cruiser. A CL was worth a handful of Destroyers in firepower alone. A Heavy Cruiser / CA was much worse.
Then you get into the firepower of a Battleship. You see, lots of people only talk about the big guns of the Battleship. But we seem to forget that they are also loaded with secondary armament expressly made to deal with smaller threats. A number of Battleships have the firepower of a Cruiser strapped to their sides, on top of the gigantic main battery.
The only time you really hear of Destroyers straight up rushing a Battleship is of pure desperation and last result (the USN DDs defending their Carriers in Leyte Gulf), or when they have outright superior forces (the overwhelming Allied might against the Japanese for Surigao Strait).
"Troubridge′s squadron consisted of the armoured cruisers HMS Defence, Black Prince, Warrior, Duke of Edinburgh and eight destroyers armed with torpedoes. The cruisers had 9.2 in (230 mm) guns versus the 11 in (280 mm) guns of Goeben and had armour a maximum of 6 in (15 cm) thick compared to the battlecruiser′s 11 in (28 cm) armour belt. This meant that Troubridge′s squadron was not only outranged and vulnerable to Goeben′s powerful guns, but it was unlikely that his cruiser′s guns could seriously damage the German ship at all, even at short range."
The British had to try something else, but it was all for naught.
Gunpower, armor matter. And that was only a Battlecruiser that had less armor than what a Battleship would be packing.
Keep in mind that it was often the case that a Battleship would not be alone. It would be the centerpiece of a force of ships, or even grouped up with other Battleships as well as a corresponding escort. Navies spent a lot to construct a Battleship, as well as the costs of staffing them with crew and their training. So they'll protect it accordingly. When they don't, you get the idiocy of Bismarck's sortie into the Atlantic.
It was only the repeated examples of Carriers showcasing their strike power that rendered Battleships obsolete. For the high costs associated with both a BB and CV, a Carrier could throw it's power across far greater distances than what a Battleship could. And that is the only reason why the BB was obsolete.
Jesus Christ guys, Spoiler tags exist for Walls of text like this USE THEM
SHUT YOUR DAMN MOUTHS!!At that time, the Italian ships...IT'S TIME TO SHOW THEM THE POWER OF THE WESTERN COALITION! Il Principe
MachiavelliIt's because you British are like this that you're so quick to pick a fight!COMMENCE FIRE SUPPORT !!That's because you Americans are always being such control freaks, isn't it!I think it's a little better than England running the show though....had snuck off and were having a siesta.You follow the instructions of the flagship, all right?
All I brought with me were Swordfish, though. Will it be okay?