FFG-7 wrote:
I think they would have still ordered the Iowas as the Lexington class as designed & started to be built were battlecruisers. battlecruisers were to take on other cruisers but not same as was found out at the Battle of Jutland & the British found out when she was firing at what she thought was Prinz Eugen was actually the Bismarck & paid for it. the same as when the Japanese battlecruiser(fast battleship?) Kirishima fought against the battleship Washington & lost.
That battle cruisers were designed to hunt other cruisers and only transitioned to the fleet scout role is true, but the thing about Jutland and Bismarck are popular myths that really need to be stopped repeating.
After Dogger Bank in 1914 it was stressed that to remedy the poor gunnery of the Battle Cruiser Fleet rate of fire needed to be increased. Therefore at Jutland they stacked propellant bags everywhere, in the gun turrets, the turntables, some ships going as far as removing their anti flash doors. Does that sound stupid and unsafe? Yes it is. Thanks Beatty.
Does that mean their protection was insufficient? No. HMS Tiger suffered 21 hits in the battle, some of which close or against main armament protection, and survived in fighting shape.
Outliers are present, of course. The first gen (Invincibles & Indefatigables) battle cruisers were really poorly protected (6'' main belt), but that's just six ships spread across the battle cruiser fleet and the battle fleet itself.
Hood was lost because of a particular quirk of hers when running at speed: the trough of the wave in her wake was located roughly abreast of her aft magazines, and when she just started to turn to engage Bismarck closer, she lifted that section slightly out of the water and the shell that detonated her bypassed all protection except a small amount of transverse bulkheads by just going below the main belt. It is a one in a million shot, but there are naval historians about to publish a new article on the topic because all other explanations presented from 1941 so far had had some fault of some kind (mostly, regarding the fact a 38 cm shell, no matter how good Bismarck's guns were, could not have possibly penetrated directly into the magazines by going through either her main belt - which was still 12'' thick -, the upper strake or the armoured deck without being diverted from its original path or begun to be broken up).
Kirishima being lost against Washington is probably the only good example that we can point to of why a battle cruiser (or fast battleship, still she had just an 8'' belt) should not engage a proper battleship, although to be fair to Kirishima they didn't know Washington was there until they bumped into it, otherwise they would have sent something like Nagato.
Even though finalized in 1919, the Lexingtons have the armament and speed of a modern (for the time) vessel, but still the protection of a first generation battle cruiser (7'' of belt against 6'' of HMS Invincible). Even if they would have been uparmoured like Renown and Repulse (9''), that still would have been insufficient for them to sit in the battle line for any length of time. That is why I agree to the fact that the Iowas (maybe just two) still get ordered, because as good as a fast battleship in the sense of the Kongo is (I think both classes are pretty comparable, both started as battle cruisers and both would end up needing uparmouring due to insufficient protection), it still is not good enough to stand up to proper battleship guns (unless they're facing the Scharnhorsts).
Sorry for the long rant, the British battle cruisers are a cherished (and a bit touchy) subject to me, so I just wanted to address the point.
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