Was Blucher (WW1 ship) the best Armored Cruiser ever built?

[chuck]

Where to find coal? I'd bet there would be plentiful coal supplies inside some of those merchant ships Blucher would be knocking off.

It would be a neat trick to shift a large amount of coal from one ship to another in open sea in anything but flat calm.

[Dave Wooley]

Commerce raiders sink merchant ships. How many German commerce raiders were sunk by British Battle Cruisers? The merchant cruisers that Germany put to sea, including an old sailing ship did just fine on the sea lanes. You gotta find 'em to sink them. How long is the RN going to keep BCs at sea chasing around after a big German commerce raider. One needs to read the history of German World War I commerce raiding to judge the Blucher. If she goes down to 22 knots, who cares? Nobody. You don't need 22 knots to catch merchant ships. When and if a British Battle Cruiser finds you, you are sunk, whether raiding in the North Atlantic or chasing the tail of your own BC on the Dogger Bank.
I'de assume Blucher at sea would sink 40 merchant ships before anyone laid a glove on her. In fact, the more British BCs that sail around in circles searching for a needle in a haystack, the better. Gives the German High Seas Fleet BC force a clearer shot at bombarding the UK coast and drawing an inferior RN BC force to certain distruction. The war at sea had to be fought in many places at once. RN BCs out in the Atlantic for months on end? That would make the High Seas Fleet all the happier. Mission accomplished Blucher. Use your ships where they can pay off, Blucher in the North Sea was a zero, a waste of men and guns. I doubt any merchant ship she found in the Atlantic would feel she was a zero.


Bob B.

That's assuming that two of the RNs fast and modern light cruisers haven't tracked such a ship down and sent it to the bottom or at least inflicted so much damage that such a warship { Blucher] would have been so much scrap metal.
Dave Wooley

[bengtsson]

So then Emden and Karlsruhe were failed raiders then? I think they had fairly successful raiding careers. No reason to expect Blucher to do any less well, especially if she is modified for the role as a raider. I wouldn't send her out as built. Sitting by a dockside for months on end added little to the German war effort, and going out and slowing down the German BCs at a critical battle would hardly qualify as aiding the war effort. If you won't use her, then scrap her and use the men and steel in a more useful manner.
Given the unconvoyed merchant shipping filling the Atlantic, Germany's raiding efforts were very timid. They knew better by WWII and had a range of raiders and plans and organization up and running. Germany knew they missed a good chance in WWI by not running a large raiding program.

Bob B.

[Dave Wooley]

So then Emden and Karlsruhe were failed raiders then? I think they had fairly successful raiding careers. No reason to expect Blucher to do any less well, especially if she is modified for the role as a raider. I wouldn't send her out as built. Sitting by a dockside for months on end added little to the German war effort, and going out and slowing down the German BCs at a critical battle would hardly qualify as aiding the war effort. If you won't use her, then scrap her and use the men and steel in a more useful manner.
Given the unconvoyed merchant shipping filling the Atlantic, Germany's raiding efforts were very timid. They knew better by WWII and had a range of raiders and plans and organization up and running. Germany knew they missed a good chance in WWI by not running a large raiding program.

Bob B.

Basically the German surface raiders were good press in Germany for their daring exploits But the truth is their impact on British trade was very little {For Karlsruhe an internal explosion was the result of her demise} Germany missed the chance of inflicting real strategic damage on British merchant marine by allowing the US to force Germany to enforce the �Prize Law� ruling on all German U-boat activities following the 1915 U-boat offensive. This rule came into force on the 25th of April 1916 .
The German high command was fully aware of the critical situation that the British blockade was having on Germany .To quote Scheer's own words " before the U-boat campaign overseas traffic to and from England has hardly been seriously reduced. Although the cruiser campaign carried on by the Emden and Karlsruhe and the Kronprinz Friedrich Wilhelm and the Princz Eitel- Friedrich had had a disturbing effect yet no decisive results could be achieved owing to lack overseas bases. {This is the interesting statement] The rise in freights was still moderate and on the whole the Englishman hardly suffered at all�. It was calculated that German U-boats in 1915 alone sunk 480000tons of shipping around the UK. Add to that the 300000tons sunk in the Mediterranean. If the same level of unrestricted sinking had been maintained throughout 1916 then the Strategic position of the UK may well have been very different.
Dave Wooley

[Captain Morgan]

As a commerce raider the Blucher would be checkmated by British battlecruisers just like S/G pair. Powered as she was by reciprocating engines, she could not possibly maintain peak performance for long without overhaul. Soon her maximum speed would drop to 24, then 23, then 22. Similar speed reduction will not afflict turbine powered Invincibles sent out to hunt her. The reciprocating engines may be slightly more economic on coal than early turbines, but the British have coaling bases almost whereever they might need them, the Germans very few and each of them watched over like hawks by either the British or her allies.

The Germans thought the battlecruisers were to be an evolutionary improvement over existing armored cruisers, so they built an evolutionary improvement over existing armored cruiser to counter it. But they were wrong, and Blucher was hardly worth her steel form day one.

Actually speed starts dropping in month out of DRYDOCK. Hull fouling effects speed more than anything else. Especially in warmer water.