Confusion on battles

saber964 wrote:Remember the Dreadnaught Bellerophon versus RADM Pierre BatCruDiv? 1 v 4 and the 4 got splattered.

Well the 4 would probably lose anyway, that's 3.4 mtons of BC attacking 6.9 mtons of DN[1]. But it was especially bad because they happened to drop out of hyper deep inside Bellerophon's weapon's envelope.
They exited hyper just 574,000 km away and the ships were on converging vectors. So they appeared almost inside energy range! (And in the seconds it took Bellerophon to bring up sidewalls and turn to clear her starboard broadside they clearly crossed that approximately 500,000 km magic line and were vaporized)


So a suicidally close range, all clumped together, which seems about the worst possible way for 4 BCs to tackle a DN.


[1] Huh, my copy of SVW describes Bellerophon as a "six-and-a-half-megaton leviathan"; but HoS lists the Bellerophon-class as "6,985,250 tons". (Though it isn't 100% clear if that description is from the omniscient narrator or from the internal thoughts of the CL Captain, Commander Gregory. If the later he might simply have been off in his mental musing...)

Jonathan_S wrote:


[1] Huh, my copy of SVW describes Bellerophon as a "six-and-a-half-megaton leviathan"; but HoS lists the Bellerophon-class as "6,985,250 tons". (Though it isn't 100% clear if that description is from the omniscient narrator or from the internal thoughts of the CL Captain, Commander Gregory. If the later he might simply have been off in his mental musing...)

Long tons, short tons, metric tons, or ton Longweight? (lol)

(Obviously metric as it's the only one which measures mass, the others will only work in a 1G gravity field)

Touring Gettysburg as an 8th Grader, my friend and I got into an argument with a tour guide who insisted on calling the displayed 12 pounder which was stamped with a 500 lbs weight stamp "a 1/2 ton cannon". She finally ended the argument with "Fine, the cannon is half a Short Ton then", as my other friend kicked me before I could reply that a short tons was 2000 lbs... and on that carriage it technically was a smoothbore howitzer, not a cannon...

It's a little much of a change, but early Bellerophons might have massed slightly less than the final, upgraded version; HoS #s reflected the latest post-refit stats for weaps and masses - and construction updates might have changed the design between 1896 and 1906. The SDs were pretty much one continual build between the Victories and Sphinx and Gryphon classes, with the design constantly being tweaked and the "classes" being the major design steps (earlier ships were later backfitted to the latest class standard.) I can't see the DNs (being built simultaneously with the same components) being constructed a different way. However, the Majestics seem to be a very different ship (with some major flaws), so the DN classes were probably not direct lineage like the SD classes.

The Gryphons even had 2 flights, indicating a mild, though significant design change. The Medusas were laid down as "Gryphon flight 3", leading us to discuss previously whether their cover story (and original plan) was a design change to follow the "Bengamin the Greats"

Daryl wrote:In OTL an immediate comparison is The Battle of The River Plate where three cruisers took on a pocket battleship.
The end result was that the battleship (Graf Spee) scuttled itself. However many naval people believe it may have won if the battle continued, but the captain wanted to preserve the lives of his crew.
Mind you as RFC pointed out it is all to easy for armchair warriors to talk about a swarm of smaller ships eventually defeating a big opponent, but not so easy to be one of the crews in the vulnerable small ships that will be destroyed.

The Deutschlands were more heavy cruisers than "battleships". Even the Alaska class ships, with bigger guns, were categorized as "Very Heavy Cruisers", type symbol "CB".

Fox2! wrote:

Daryl wrote:In OTL an immediate comparison is The Battle of The River Plate where three cruisers took on a pocket battleship.
The end result was that the battleship (Graf Spee) scuttled itself. However many naval people believe it may have won if the battle continued, but the captain wanted to preserve the lives of his crew.
Mind you as RFC pointed out it is all to easy for armchair warriors to talk about a swarm of smaller ships eventually defeating a big opponent, but not so easy to be one of the crews in the vulnerable small ships that will be destroyed.

The Deutschlands were more heavy cruisers than "battleships". Even the Alaska class ships, with bigger guns, were categorized as "Very Heavy Cruisers", type symbol "CB".

The title of "Pocket Battleship" was British propaganda. The Germans called them Panzerschiff or Armored Ship. The ships were basically over gunned heavy cruisers. They are also often listed as large cruisers like Alaska in various reference books like Conways All the Worlds Fighting Ships.

Fox2! wrote:The Deutschlands were more heavy cruisers than "battleships". Even the Alaska class ships, with bigger guns, were categorized as "Very Heavy Cruisers", type symbol "CB".

saber964 wrote:The title of "Pocket Battleship" was British propaganda. The Germans called them Panzerschiff or Armored Ship. The ships were basically over gunned heavy cruisers. They are also often listed as large cruisers like Alaska in various reference books like Conways All the Worlds Fighting Ships.

"Propaganda" or just a British description? "Pocket" battleship does not make them sound any less fearsome. Could they have been called battlecruisers? Is battlecruiser what "CB" is trying to suggest?

Frankly "Armored Ship" is not very descriptive, because every military ship from a destroyer escort upwards has some armor.

tlb wrote:

Fox2! wrote:The Deutschlands were more heavy cruisers than "battleships". Even the Alaska class ships, with bigger guns, were categorized as "Very Heavy Cruisers", type symbol "CB".

saber964 wrote:The title of "Pocket Battleship" was British propaganda. The Germans called them Panzerschiff or Armored Ship. The ships were basically over gunned heavy cruisers. They are also often listed as large cruisers like Alaska in various reference books like Conways All the Worlds Fighting Ships.

"Propaganda" or just a British description? "Pocket" battleship does not make them sound any less fearsome. Could they have been called battlecruisers? Is battlecruiser what "CB" is trying to suggest?

Frankly "Armored Ship" is not very descriptive, because every military ship from a destroyer escort upwards has some armor.

One of the reasons the Alaska was designed and built was specifically to counter the Deutschlands and rumors that the Japanese had similiar "Super Cruisers" under construction (which they didn't). the foreign ships were intended to be used as super raiders, capable of running through any normal convoy protection (including CAs), and deserved a similiarly scaled up counter.

The Lexington and the Constellation were originally CCs, the US nomenclature for BattleCruiser. They would have mounted the same 16" mk 1 weapons that their contemporary Battleships, the original South Dakotas, would have carried, just fewer of them.

The Alaskas were purposefully not given this nomenclature since they were just enlarged cruisers, on an enlarged cruiser hull, with an upgraded cruiser armor scheme. Even though the gun they carried, the upgraded mk 8 12", as a BB scale weapon, it was inferior to the 14-18" guns used in all front line Battleships, and followed the thoughts of the foreign supercruisers, that such ships should carry "light" battleship grade armaments to counter any CAs they encountered.

tlb wrote:"Propaganda" or just a British description? "Pocket" battleship does not make them sound any less fearsome. Could they have been called battlecruisers? Is battlecruiser what "CB" is trying to suggest?

Frankly "Armored Ship" is not very descriptive, because every military ship from a destroyer escort upwards has some armor.

Though for whatever reason Panzerschiff (armored ship) was a different term than what the Imperial German Navy had called their heaviest cruisers during WWI. They used the term Großen Kreuzer or Grosse Kreuzer (large cruiser).

However the used that same timer both for ships the Royal Navy categorized as armored cruisers and for ones categorized as battlecruisers. But I admit not being aware of why the German terminology changed.


As for the USN hull classification code CB, no I don't think that was trying to indicate battlecruiser. The USN already had a battlecruiser code, from the Lexington-class that were converted to aircraft carriers. Battlecruisers were CC. The doubled letter meant that it was the normal version of that class. Modifier, like CB (cruiser big), CL (cruiser light), CS (cruiser scout) or DE (destroyer escort), adjusted that second letter (or later added a 3rd or more letter; like CVE (escort aircraft carrier), CVL (light aircraft carrier) or even CV(N) (night-rated aircraft carrier; not to be confused with the later CVN for nuclear aircraft carrier).

Oddly, given the sizes they rapidly grew to CV for carrier grew out out Cruiser-Aviation (from the French voler; to fly) - indicating the original conception of their use; scouting for the fleet which was historically a cruiser mission.


I think CC as the unmodified base equaling battlecruiser was an artifact of when the USN switched to 2 letter codes. Originally the single letter C was the hull classification for cruisers, and B was for battleships. When they went to two letters they were already pushing to get battlecruisers of their own, so the old cruisers were assigned CA and CC was reserved for the hoped for larger and faster Lexingtons (but not noticeably heavier armored).

Fireflair wrote:I understand about the variable geometry of the two stressed bands of space created on either side of a ship to propel it along. I get the sidewall concept and how it protects the ship, along with why there's an open throat and kilt. I also understand how the larger ships are worth so much more in battle due to armor, weapons, defenses, etc. That a battlecruiser can eat up an equal tonnage of destroyers.

What I don't get is why those same destroyers can't attack from enough angles to get those up the kilt or down the throat shots? Say 4 destroyers and 1 battlecruiser. Why couldn't the destroyers come at the battlecruiser from enough directions that it can't block every shot, thus letting the destroyers get that down the throat shot that is far more damaging?

What stops the swarm method from being an effective way for smaller ships destroying larger ones?

Because to be able to swarm something, you need to get close first, not only that but also with a very small speed difference and on the same vector.
Try to imagine that. Try to imagine destroyers attempting zero/zero intercept under fire from a capital ship. Getting slower and slower, coming into the range of grazers...

This is not Star Wars/Star Trek where capital ships do not have point-defense or move only a bit faster than a running horse. Where they fight an opponent in visual range, using weapons propagating/traveling with a speed slightly faster than a bullet.

This is Honorverse, where ships accelerate up to 0.6-0.8c, engaging opponents at distances in excess of 30 Mio km, can fight off missile swarms consisting of hundreds-thousands relativistic missiles, where laser/grazer are light-speed weapons. An where they can't stop on a dime. If a ship accelerating for an hour, then it will need an hour to decelerate. No workarounds for that.

vovchara wrote:If a ship accelerating for an hour, then it will need an hour to decelerate. No workarounds for that.

Well there's one - but it doesn't usually come into play in tactical combat.
Changing levels of hyperspace bleeds off huge amounts of energy and slows the ship dramatically.

So, assuming you were outside the hyper limit and below the 0.3c max speed for hyper entry you could slow down faster by popping into and back out of hyper. Or if you're already in hyper then going up or down a band also bleeds off velocity (though we can see on the chart of speed by hyper band than at the higher bands you lose less velocity moving to the adjacent band)

Popping across the Alpha wall bleeds of 92% of your velocity; so popping into Alpha and back kills 99.36% of your original velocity! (Of course it takes a bit of time to charge and recharge your hyper generator; but even for the largest SD it'd take less than an hour to do that; making the hyper hop still the fastest way to cancel velocity)

Fireflair wrote:Thanks for the replies everyone!

So basically what I'm getting out of this is that:

1. Smaller ships weapons just aren't massive enough to penetrate the hammerheads or do serious enough damage even if they do.

2. The chase weapons of the larger ships, and their defenses, are strong enough to discourage lesser ships from spreading out to try and get the angle on larger ships. If they do their success rate isn't very high.

A point no one else seems to have made about fighting out of your class, is the real difference in processing and targeting accuracy of the larger vessel.

If you look into HOS, Havenite heavy cruisers (Mars-a) had 11 lasers per broadside; the StarKnights 9 beam weapons include 6 lasers. This was due to uncertainty in target location as the sidewalls degraded sensors--to get a hit, you fired all around the target.

The Graysons decided that the improvements the RMN achieved in sensor tech, and computer support, allowed them to move to fewer and more powerful beam weapons and still hit the targets. A lot of that was superior targeting algorithms, and likely a lot of that was superior miniaturization of the signals processing and computational equipment.

But anyone's bigger ships can be thought of as having much more capable tactical sections, not just bigger weapons.

And not to disregard the significant difference in range if a defending BC is using grasers against a ship with lasers.

Regards,

Rob