The Ship Model Forum

A satirical history of the battleship!

http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/01/battleship-history/

Very nice - it would be interesting if someone could come up with 15 events proving the usefulness of battleships (especially also in regard, if really a battleships was necessary to do that). I guess that would be more difficult than to make that satirical history...

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I found the piece to be rather funny, satirical, a bit snarky (after all, we're talking Army-Navy here), and a little thought provoking. Fifteen events proving the usefulness of the battleship can no doubt be listed by someone far more familiar with naval history than I, going back to the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC, to Nelson's victory at Trafalgar, to the standoff between Monitor and Merrimack in the Civil War, with lots to be added between those centuries. What was the title of Alfred Thayer Mahan's book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783?

I think it bears noting that the satire used as a reference the period of 1880-1941, when battleships were the most powerful vessels afloat. Quite true. But the strategic influence of the battleship may have peaked between the American Civil War and the Spanish-American War ("You may fire when ready, Gridley!"). Shortly after that, although much "conventional wisdom" still rested with the power of the battleship, WWI changed that (although the reality wasn't recognized until Pearl Harbor). Despite the frenetic naval arms buildup that contributed to WWI, oddly enough both the Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy were more than reluctant to risk loss of their new, expensive, prestigious battleships. Indeed, there were only two major fleet actions during the war, Dogger Bank and Jutland, neither of which proved decisive.

A brash and provocative statement could be made that the battleship was essentially useless during WWII as well. The shellings of Henderson Field by the IJN could be taken as an exception to that, as well as some other slugfests during the Guadalcanal campaign, and then the lost opportunity of the IJN to wreck the landings in the Philippines, but other than that battleships didn't do much, except perhaps to provide antiaircraft fire around USN carriers, which assumed primacy after Pearl Harbor. The sinking of Bismarck might also be considered an example of where RN battleships proved their worth, but even here Bismarck was intended to be a commerce raider, which seems a terribly inefficient way to go after merchantmen, and Bismarck's sister Tirpitz spent the war in Norwegian fjords. In another role, the effectiveness of battleships in "softening up" the beaches of Normandy and the Pacific Islands, well that might best be described as minimal, the big guns moved around a lot of sand, but really didn't do much to make things easier for the guys hitting the beaches.

So yes, I think fifteen examples proving the usefulness of battleships can be found, but I think the list basically ends in 1898 with Dewey and Gridley in Manila Bay.

You could be correct that it would be much easier to find examples in earlier times - but not in the American Civil war, because there both sides had NO battleships. The ironclads fighting in that war were monitors and other type of coast defence ships.

In the Spanish-American War some battleships were deployed (but not in Manila, there only cruisers and gunboats were used) and they certainly helped the USA to win the war.

In the Second World War battleships were mostly useless or used for purposes, for which they were the most expensive of all possible solutions (e.g. AA platforms, bombardment of land targets, commerce raider and convoy escorts).

And I am also not sure, if Mahan was right at all. E.g. the Napoleonic Wars were not decided at Trafalgar in 1805, but ten years later after Napoleon's defeat in Russia in the battles of Leipzig (by continental powers only!) and Waterloo.

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Trafalgar insured that Napoleon remained on the Continent.

Foreign trade was greatly hampered. The Continental System never fully made up for the lost.

From the British perspective, Napoleon was no longer a direct threat to Britain after Trafalgar.

Amused as I am by the satirical comedy of the original piece, I can't resist the derailing to a more serious discussion that it has started.

I think the assessment that battleships were useless in WWII is a bit unfair. Most of the examples of battleships performing poorly involve either obsolete ships, numerical or tactical inferiority or some other combination of factors that are not the fault of the individual ship.

Yes, they might not have been optimal for all the jobs they performed but the fact is that each navy had quite a few battleships, so why not use them? It's very easy to point out ways that battleships can be sunk but it's easy to forget that actually sinking one is not that easy and requires a significant commitment of specialised resources. Basically, obsolete or not, it's still a very real threat and can't be ignored. Even if it doesn't directly take part in a battle, if it's presence forces the enemy to adjust his force distribution and spend resources to deal with the mere possibility that the battleship will turn up, then it has affected the battle (or possibly even another battle somewhere else) in a positive way.

Aircraft carriers are of course excellent and flexible assets but they do have weakness and can be sunk in the same ways a battleships can, if not easier. Parking artillery off someone's coast is very effective and provides round the clock fire support. And I disagree with the idea that the same job could be done cheaper by another ship, because when the enemy starts firing back you don't want to be aboard a heavy cruiser. You can make the same argument the other way around, that a full size fleet carrier would have been a very expensive and inefficient way of protecting a convoy from surface attack.

Same story with AA escorts. Sure on the surface you're using a very expensive unit for a task a cruiser could do, but you're also getting something that's much harder to sink. The Pacific war is pretty useless at providing examples for or against this point because the US would have won almost no matter what they did. In a more balanced fight, forcing your enemy to spend disproportionate effort sinking your AA battery might be considered a worthy investment.

I think that we shouldn't judge the battleship's effectiveness in WWII by the simple fact that you can't point a finger at a date in history and say "battleships made a decisive difference that day". Glamorous battles and victories are only part of the story. For better or worse they existed, and therefore they made up part of the force balance of the major navies and played their roles accordingly.

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Vlad

It never ceases to amaze me that people misunderstand the most basic fundamentals about surface ships in general and specifically battleships. Battleships are the ultimate form of a surface combatant: heavily armed, fast, can deliver an unparalleled amount of ordnance, and are massively survivable. They are unequalled at showing the flag, and they are massively intimidating. One final point in the brief case is that they come in at less 1/5 the annual cost of a CVN and, short of aviation, still perform nearly all of the same peace-time and war-time functions of a CVN (presence and ordnance delivery).

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Gents- Some very quick replies, may get to say more later...

I'm being (perhaps overly) judicious in what I include as "battleships," so I'm taking some poetic license, along the lines of powerfully armed vessel (whether battering ram as in ancient times, to the more modern era cannon/gun armed ships) capable of sinking the enemy's ships. For what that definition's worth...

I appreciate your contribution, I like a good discussion on ideas and viewpoints, even should our positions differ, a good discussion always leads to learning something.

Don't forget about the Peninsular War another major burden on the French . Kevin

@ MareNostrum:
I would have counted a ship of the line as battleship, but not the monitors or other ironclads of the American Civil War. Compared to contemporary battleships (e.g. Gloire, Warrior) these were coast defence ships.

@ navydavesof:
The Second World War has proven that a battleship is easy to sink, e.g. proven by U 331 (sinking of Barham), Japanese land based bombers (Prince of Wales), Japanese carrier based bombers (the USN battleship row in Pearl Harbor), USN destroyers (Fuso) or USN carrier based bombers (Yamato). Someone impressed or even intimidated today by the fighting power of battleship is easy to impress There are reasons why non were built in the last 70 years

@ DougC:
for Britain the victory at Trafalgar was for sure important. These battleships secured Britain's maritime superiority for decades.

But Napoleon was defeated ten years later by continental powers, which were all also hit by the British embargo - remember that many of these countries were actually already defeated by Napoleon, but changed the site after the French defeat in Russia. Also in the Second World War the war in Europe was decided on the eastern front. Naval power contributed to the German defeat, for sure, e.g. be securing convoys to Russia (Murmansk), and by the "island" hopping campaign at the western front (the amphibious landing in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, and Provence).

But battleships were mostly useless in Second World War or very expensive solutions, e.g. there were cheaper ways to built anti-aircaft ships to protect carriers (e.g. Oakland class or even big destroyers like the Akizuki class), to attack convoys (cruisers) or bombard positions on land (e.g. monitors).

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It pretty much goes down to the point of "if the other guys has one we need to have one also (preferably more powerful)" doctrine. It's a naval race afterall. Battleships were vulnerable to cheaper weapons before WWII. A cheap 50 man submarine could sink an expensive 1000 man battleship for instance and that happened quite a few times. That however did not take out the battleship out of the scene for a while like it should have. Would it make sense for the RN to take out most of their battleship fleet after the Royal Oak sinking knowing that Germany was building Bismark and Tirpitz? Would the USN launch all 4 Iowas if Japan was not building the 4 Yamatos?

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"Build few and build fast,
Each one better than the last"
John Fisher

There were also losses of battleships in First World War to submarines and mines, but still another battleship was the main option to sink them. In the Second World War most navies had no battlefleets made of battleships anymore - mostly because of the massive reduction of their numbers caused by treaties. For sure it was not understood at that time that the battleship was outdated and therefore still battleships were built. All the major navies built, as you have written, battleships because the others were also building them.

An interesting example is the Anglo-German Naval Agreement - probably seen by many as part of appeasements politics. But it actually caused that the German navy built several very expensive battleships, which were mostly completely useless in Second World War. Therefore massive resources were luckily wasted. These battleships were built instead of cruisers (e.g. "panzerschiffe" of the Deutschland class) specialised for trade warfare. In Second World War German battleships were mostly used to attack Allied trade...

Tirpitz is often mentioned as fleet in being, but actually there were always also other German ships in Norway, , e.g. Lützow or Admiral Scheer, which forced the Royal Navy to deploy heavy surface escorts for the Murmansk convoys. More cruisers would have been a bigger thread, because their quantity and probably also they would have been used much more often than Tirpitz.

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Both Bismark and Tirpitz were a mere waste of resources caused by an outdated thought that the Kriegsmarine could still compete with the Royal Navy in terms of battleships like they did in WWI. The silly man of the square moustache was not very knowledgeable in naval warfare (well, not knowledgeable in anything for what matters) and given that most the admirals bowed before all sort of ideas coming out of him they had to content themselves in building what he wanted and dreaming that one day Plan Z would actually come to place. Like you said, to make trade warfare you don't need a battleship. Panzerschiffs and heavy cruisers in my opinion were already a bit too much but ok given that they could run into heavy escorts like most of them did at some point. Auxiliary cruisers did achieved quite a lot also and their costs both of building, maintenance and operations were considerably less. A bigger investment in submarine numbers could have made a lot of difference specially in first couples of years of the war.

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"Build few and build fast,
Each one better than the last"
John Fisher

As far as I remember the admiralty of the Kriegsmarine still believed in the battlefleet concept and therefore submarines were not considered to be a priority - but the H class battleships of the Z-plan. But at the time this plan should have been completed, the armament industries of the Allied states would long have overtaken their German counterpart. There was a small time period, in which the German industry had a quantitative advantage in building planes and tanks - and the gamblers in the German leadership decided to use that and started the war. That left the German navy unprepared with still a doctrin based on Mahan's thinking, which was not compatible with the available ships (2 battleships are not sufficient for a battlefleet...).

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I can agree with the argument that spending resources on new battleships in the 1940s may not have been wise, but most navies made good use of their existing ships. So a "cheap" submarine can sink a battleship, so what? Many aircraft carriers were sunk by submarines and nobody uses that as an argument to claim carriers aren't worth having.

Carriers can defeat battleships in a fleet engagement, I agree. But your argument from this is that a fleet should only have carriers and the next biggest ship should be cruisers. The thing is, carriers benefit from concentration and an organised carrier task force can only be in one place at a time, usually to deliver maximum firepower to a key objective. What about secondary objectives? Yes it's cheaper to send some cruisers here than to send a battleship or two but the cost of this is not wasted. Think of it as insurance. If an objective is not important enough for either side to commit their carrier fleet (or that fleet is tired out and indisposed) then the enemy cruisers are not going to have a very good time if they find a battleship in their way. If you send an equal cruiser force you could lose the fight. War is about creating asymmetric situations and denying opportunities. Your battleships might be vulnerable to the enemy carriers, but they can be a thorn in the side of his cruiser squadrons etc.

This is exactly what happened at Guadalcanal, where battleships on both sides were given an opportunity to make an important mark in the absence of their respective sides carriers, despite the fact the latter had already proven themselves decisive.

Also, the idea that carrier air power can be everywhere around the clock is an aberration, a concept based purely on the huge US fleets of 1944/45. This didn't even feature in the wildest dreams of fleet planners of 1939/1940. Even if they accepted that the carrier was more important than the battleship, that platform still had limitations that justified maintaining a balanced fleet of both types of ship.

However, a lot of talk on this subject is anecdotal and we are actually missing a key set of figures for our discussion. What was the actual cost to build and operate different ships types? This is something I would love to see, if someone is able to provide a meaningful comparison table.

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Vlad

You are right that there were not enough carriers available. The US Navy and Japanese navy lost most of their carriers in the battles of 1942 (sunk or damaged) and therefore had to make for most of 1943 without any significant contribution of carriers.

That could have been the big time of battleship, if you are right - and there were many battleships available, especially Japanese. But how often were battleships actually used, where they were actually needed and could not have been defeated by other means?

The Japanese battleships were used several times to bombard Henderson field on Guadalcanal - for sure that could have been done by smaller ships also (and was done by smaller ships also!). They were stopped once by a mixed force of cruisers and destroyers with same help of aircraft to finish of the crippled Hiei. The next time they were stopped by a mixed force of battleships and destroyers - in a battle, which also could have easily resulted in the loss of at least one of the USN battleships.

Any other examples in the Pacific War? Kuritas fleet? Hmm, not really successful.

In the European theatre the aircraft carrier was anyway much less needed, because land-based aircraft were heavily used in most battles. Here there was no clear superiority of the carrier over the battleship.

Are there examples of successful use of battleships?

Warspite in Narvik? For sure successful, but very risky and any other ship stronger than a destroyer would have done as good (and would have been sunk, if German submarine torpedoes would have been working).

Rodney and King George V finishing off Bismarck? That could be such an example, if Bismarck would not have been already heavily damaged (including some damage caused by the battleship Prince of Wales, but the serious one was the torpedo hit by a Swordfish from Ark Royal).

The British battleships at Battle of Cape Matapan: a crushing British victory, but would have some heavy or even light cruiser caused the same, if they would have surprised the Italian cruisers the same way and had the same advantage in radar technology?

There should be more examples, if you were right, because there were battleships available - for some time even more battleships than carriers.


Some numbers for prices (Wikipedia):

Essex class 68-78 million $
Iowa class 100 million $ (not surprising that a battleship was more expensive than a carrier!)
Baltimore class 40 million $

Hopefully someone else finds more about that question. But should be obvious that in the interest of numbers for secondary objectives to build more cruisers and destroyers would have been more useful - and easier to afford.

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So I'll take these two examples for instance... Bismarck and Type VIIC
Sources used: http://www.kbismarck.com; Dietric Eichholz, The History of the German U-boat Building; Uboat net

Bismarck:
Cost in Reichmarks - 196.8 million
Tonnage (Standard) - 43.978 tons
Crew - 2.200

Type VIIC:
Cost in Reichmarks - 2 million
Tonnage (Surfaced) - 769 tons
Crew - 52

So consider, in theory, these numbers:
- The cost of 1 Bismarck could give you in round numbers 98 U-boats.
- The tonnage displaced by 1 Bismarck is equivalent to 57 U-boats.
- The crew of 1 Bismarck could man 42 U-boats.

Lets consider the lowest figures of U-boats and round them down to 40 U-Boats. 1 Bismarck is worth 40 Type VIIC in terms of resources and numbers...in theory.
Bismarck and Prinz Eugen (I am not including the extra numbers resulting of the inclusion of Prinz Eugen on this case) sorty out in their unique venture in May 1941. Bismarck succeeds in sinking Hood and damaging Prince of Wales but in the process gets sunk. This is a loss of 44.000 tons from Hood against other 44.000 tons of Bismarck...casualties were very high for both cases.
In the same month 40 U-boats, if they were available in numbers for deployment, would sort out all in one major operation against convoys. Let's divide them in groups of 5 and you have 8 wolfpacks. Lets put say 2 wolfpacks (10 boats) near Scapa and another major RN naval base. With luck and skill they might bag a few warships for perhaps half of them being lost in a worst case scenario...they might even be able to sink a battleship and some more ships. So using some cases of ships that were actually sunk by submarines let's say that these 10 submarines manage to sink the Royal Oak and the Courageous and a couple of destroyers in the process...(this is a total of 50.000 tons...plus casualties). U-boats loose 5 units in the process (total of 3.845 tons and considerably less casualties). This is the classical "against fleet operations" of U-boats. They can cause considerable amount of damage to a fleet and have very reduced losses both in numbers, tonnage and crews.
You still have 6 wolfpacks (30 boats) on the loose in the Atlantic. Each one of them will be used to attack a convoy so 6 convoys are going to be attacked by 5 U-boats. These are high numbers for attackers against a convoy...this would actually call for mayhem but let's be moderate. 5 U-boats attack each convoy and they loose 2 U-boats in each attack (total of losses of U-boats is 12 boats - 9.228 tons - 12 crews written off). Each convoy looses 5 ships (1 ships per submarine...this is a very low figure of success). Each of these ships is worth some 5.000 tons so multiplied by 5 it's 25.000 tons of ship tonnage lost per convoy and multiplied by the 6 convoys this is 150.000 tons worth of shipping, plus crews, plus cargo.
Finally for the convoy figures - 30 cargo ships (150.000 tons) are lost for the loss 12 U-boats (9.200 tons).

Conclusion
1 Bismarck sinks 1 battlecruiser (44.000 tons) and is lost.
40 U-boats sink 1 battleship, 1 aircraft carrier, 2 destroyers and 30 cargo ships (200.000 tons) for the loss of 17 U-boats (13.073 tons). 23 U-boats return home to fight another day.

This is a lot of theory to take in so early in the morning but please do step in for the analysis. Need another coffee...

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"Build few and build fast,
Each one better than the last"
John Fisher

Can't do math in my head anymore (was never very good at it anyway), but you're providing a sensible analysis and methodology in my view at least. I think Doenitz wanted 300 operational U-boats available all at one time; the most he got was a fraction of that. To say nothing of the advanced technology ones that came about late in the war, possibly earlier had the U-boat arm received the attention and resources he wanted. The naval war in the Atlantic would undoubtedly have been different, and thus the European war.

The analysis does look sound but it is also in the narrow context of the KM. They could not really hope to challenge the RN at sea, so it was not worth their time trying in the first place. Their goal was essentially a blockade campaign in support of a mainly land based war. Submarines are great for this sort of sea denial, but denial is not the same as control and subs have no real ability for power projection.

I also offer the following "mitigating" circumstances:

-no RN capital ship was lost to submarine attack after 1941, so their initial success is as much the fault of RN mistakes and lack of experience/equipment as anything else. If extra subs are available in mid 1941 (instead of Bis) they might not be able to emulate the success (luck) of earlier exploits e.g. Glorious, Royal Oak etc.

-estimates of numbers built are likely optimistic since u-boot construction would have hit different industrial bottle necks e.g. diesel engines and pressure hulls that are not directly freed up by cancelling a battleship.

-cheap weapons have cheap counters. If we give Donitz his 300 u-boots can we counter-factually assume the RN build 150 new escorts instead of e.g. Duke of York?

So I can agree with the argument that building Bismarck was wasted resources better spent elsewhere, but building u-boots instead would not have been some miracle war winning solution. And the narrow tactical and strategic needs of the KM mean there is no valid extrapolation from "Bismarck was not worth building" to "all battleships are useless".

But I can also offer the counter argument that the resources for Bismarck were not wasted in construction but in how she was used. Consider the resources spent by the RN to actually sink Bismarck. Not ships sunk, but ships committed, including taking crucial ships out of the Med. A single ship can draw the attention of nearly half the RN, already overstretched, nearly succeeded anyway, and nobody is there to take advantage of the situation!! Think of the mess the Italians could have made in the Med if they could plan an operation knowing Ark Royal and Renown are in the Atlantic, or what S&G and Tirpitz (if she was ready) could do with such a strategic opportunity. Bismarck was misused in a huge strategic inability by the KM and their allies to use the assets available to them. To say she could have been used better is in my opinion very different to saying she shouldn't have been built.

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Vlad

The ships deployed against Bismarck were deployed once, but were available for other tasks before and afterwards (except of Hood) - whereas Bismarck was lost. It was a very short term-effect.

What kind of action the Italians could have done, which would have justify the sacrifice of a battleship? There is hardly something imaginable, which would have changed anything. Anyway the Italian navy already had closed the Mediterranean for Allied trade - the British had severe problems to supply even Malta and could not transport anything trough the Mediterranean.

I agree that additional submarines would not have caused Germany to win the war, but would probably have been the bigger threat - at least in 1941.

But the Kriegsmarine is probably anyway not the best example, because it was a very weak navy.

I had asked for examples of successful use battleships in Second World Two - but apparently there are non. Even in those periods, in which a limited number of carriers were available, mostly cruisers and destroyers were used by the bigger navies. I thin that justifies the statement that they were useless or the most expensive of all possible solutions to a problem.

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