Pocket Battleships

[Vonz90]

First off, there was no such thing as a pocket battleship. The actual name for them was Panzerschiff, or armored ship, (later changed to heavy cruiser) and there was no intention of the things being battleships or being used against battleships. The PB thing was a nickname from the British.

They were an excellent design considering the limitations they were designed under. The Treaty of Versailles intended to force the German navy to be a purely defensive force, thus the requirements were based around the coastal battleships used by the Nordic countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverige-cl ... fence_ship The idea being that this would prevent the Germans from every posing any threat to British on the high seas (thus also not being allowed submarines).

They were very innovative ships and were the first large combatants with all welded hulls and diesel engines and they actually predated the Nazis. The weight savings from those innovations (about 15% of the total ship weight) allowed them to have a balance of power and speed which was not contemplated under the restrictions of the treaty. They were allowed to build 30 of them by treaty, that prospect scared the crap out of the Brits and Hitler backed off on building them both because he did not consider the Navy to be very important and he did not want to antagonize the Brits in the mid-30's. This is also why the battle cruisers Scharnhorst & Gneisenau were built with 11" guns instead of the 15" as originally planned.

The leaders of the German navy had no intention of going to war with Britain with what they had in '39. They had plans in place for a mixed fast battleship and aircraft carrier force which was supposed to be in place by '45, which was when Hitler had said was the earliest date they should have to worry about such a thing. Had they had that in place, they would have been a rather nasty force to deal with, but as always Hitler was not someone to really be trusted.

[MiddleAgedKen]

The leaders of the German navy had no intention of going to war with Britain with what they had in '39. They had plans in place for a mixed fast battleship and aircraft carrier force which was supposed to be in place by '45, which was when Hitler had said was the earliest date they should have to worry about such a thing. Had they had that in place, they would have been a rather nasty force to deal with, but as always Hitler was not someone to really be trusted.

I am not defending Hitler here, but I don't think he thought Britain and France would honor the Polish guarantee.

[Aesop]

Names, schmame.
Panzerkampfwagen means armored battle wagon, but no one was fooled thereby into thinking it wasn't a tank.*
When you put 15" guns on a hull, you've made a battleship, despite the noted limitations on a smaller ship.
No small part of the naming conventions in pre-WWII Germany was to also obfuscate their real goal in building them.
I suspect they'd have named them "flauschigen häschenpantoffeln" if they thought it would've helped.

But Hitler absolutely hosed the military, esp. the navy. God complexes and megalomania will do that. Thank the heavens.





*(which name, itself, was a British attempt to confuse the enemy into thinking what was being built was a water tank, not an armored fighting vehicle.)

[Greg]

First off, there was no such thing as a pocket battleship. The actual name for them was Panzerschiff, or armored ship, (later changed to heavy cruiser) and there was no intention of the things being battleships or being used against battleships. The PB thing was a nickname from the British.

Well yes. I think I wrote that they were actually specialized cruisers.

They were an excellent design considering the limitations they were designed under. The Treaty of Versailles intended to force the German navy to be a purely defensive force, thus the requirements were based around the coastal battleships used by the Nordic countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverige-cl ... fence_ship The idea being that this would prevent the Germans from every posing any threat to British on the high seas (thus also not being allowed submarines).

They were clever, certainly. Anvils with 70 moving parts are very clever, too. Excellence is arguable- the whole program was arguably mistaken, an attempt to repeat (but more cleverly) some of the most foolish errors of the previous war.

They were very innovative ships and were the first large combatants with all welded hulls and diesel engines and they actually predated the Nazis. The weight savings from those innovations (about 15% of the total ship weight) allowed them to have a balance of power and speed which was not contemplated under the restrictions of the treaty. They were allowed to build 30 of them by treaty, that prospect scared the crap out of the Brits and Hitler backed off on building them both because he did not consider the Navy to be very important and he did not want to antagonize the Brits in the mid-30's. This is also why the battle cruisers Scharnhorst & Gneisenau were built with 11" guns instead of the 15" as originally planned.

6 of them. The treaty allowed for 10k ton vessels, replacing 6 (on a 1 for 1 basis) pre-dreadnaughts that Germany had been allowed to keep for coastal defense. And Hitler may have been on to something there.

The leaders of the German navy had no intention of going to war with Britain with what they had in '39. They had plans in place for a mixed fast battleship and aircraft carrier force which was supposed to be in place by '45, which was when Hitler had said was the earliest date they should have to worry about such a thing. Had they had that in place, they would have been a rather nasty force to deal with, but as always Hitler was not someone to really be trusted.

Tirpitz Plan, Ver 2.0. What is it *for*? What does it get you, that is greater than the result of spending those same resources elsewhere in a way that is more in line with your actual strategic goals and needs?

[Vonz90]

They were clever, certainly. Anvils with 70 moving parts are very clever, too. Excellence is arguable- the whole program was arguably mistaken, an attempt to repeat (but more cleverly) some of the most foolish errors of the previous war

You are confused. They were good ships in that achieved what they were trying to do under very extreme limitations. That is develop a ship with some blue water offensive capabilities under restrictions designed to prevent such capabilities. Obviously they would have less capabilities than ships built without similar limitations.

As far as treaties, you are referencing the wrong one. 1935 Anglo German Naval Treaty allowed the Germans to have up to 35% of the tonnage of the British navy. As a side to that the Germans agreed to switch away from the Panzerschiff design because the British were worried about how many the Germans could make under that treaty.

The problem was not the ships the Kriegsmarine had or the way their admirals planned to fight (both Raeder and Donitz were very good leaders). The problem was that the political leadership pursued a suicidal path which was doomed to self immolation no matter what the military leadership did.

To paraphrase Clausewitz, a tactical level mistake can be fixed at the operational level, an operational level mistake can be fixed at the strategic level, but there is no fixing a mistake at the policy level. That is where the problem was.

[D5CAV]

They were clever, certainly. Anvils with 70 moving parts are very clever, too. Excellence is arguable- the whole program was arguably mistaken, an attempt to repeat (but more cleverly) some of the most foolish errors of the previous war

You are confused. They were good ships in that achieved what they were trying to do under very extreme limitations. That is develop a ship with some blue water offensive capabilities under restrictions designed to prevent such capabilities.

+1 vonz knows his history!

As Rommel said, "Amateurs talk tactics; professionals talk logistics"

During the battle of Guadalcanal, both the Japanese and the Americans had plenty of battleships. Neither side used them to any significant extent. The one time the Japanese used theirs was devastating to the Americans defending Guadalcanal.

Pretty much all the battleships damaged at Pearl Harbor were ready for combat by Guadalcanal. The US didn't employ them because they could send 3 or 4 cruisers for the fuel of 1 battleship.

I bet both American and Japanese admirals wished they had a few pocket battleships.

[Aesop]

Arizona (Kidd's flagship): hit by an armor-piercing bomb, exploded; total loss. 1,177 dead.
Oklahoma: hit by five torpedoes, capsized; total loss. 429 dead. Refloated November 1943; capsized and lost while under tow to the mainland May 1947.
West Virginia: hit by two bombs, seven torpedoes, sunk; returned to service July 1944. 106 dead.
California: hit by two bombs, two torpedoes, sunk; returned to service January 1944. 100 dead.
Nevada: hit by six bombs, one torpedo, beached; returned to service October 1942. 60 dead.
Tennessee: hit by two bombs; returned to service February 1942. 5 dead.
Maryland: hit by two bombs; returned to service February 1942. 4 dead (including floatplane pilot shot down).
Pennsylvania (Kimmel's flagship):[110] in drydock with Cassin and Downes, hit by one bomb, debris from USS Cassin; remained in service. 9 dead.

So in reality, 5/8ths of the battleships attacked at Pearl Harbor weren't available for Guadalcanal, leaving only three of eight that were. And Nevada was immediately transferred to Atlantic convoy escort and patrols once repaired.
And by October of '42, 6 of the few available US cruisers in the Pacific had been sunk or severely damaged tangling with the Japanese.
1942 was generally not a pretty year for the surface navy.

[Greg]

They were clever, certainly. Anvils with 70 moving parts are very clever, too. Excellence is arguable- the whole program was arguably mistaken, an attempt to repeat (but more cleverly) some of the most foolish errors of the previous war

You are confused. They were good ships in that achieved what they were trying to do under very extreme limitations. That is develop a ship with some blue water offensive capabilities under restrictions designed to prevent such capabilities.

And you utterly miss the whole point. Why would Germany have need of blue water offensive capabilities? What does it get you? What are the reactions to that action going to be, and do you want them? (Achieving what you intend to do despite difficult circumstances, is clever. Achieving something *stupid*, is not excellent.)

To put this in larger context, what did the Tirpitz Plan cause, on a geopolitical level, that turned out to be a major contribution to a fatal result for German aspirations, hopes, and the Hohenzollern-led Imperial government? (To add an ironic twist, it was a fleet mutiny that ultimately led to the downfall of the monarchy.)

You would think a German government would have learned not to so strongly aspire to blue water naval offensive capability. (Why exactly do you want to encourage Britain and France to re-arm? Over something that isn't really actually important to you, strategically?)

+1 vonz knows his history!

But he apparently didn't understand it.

As Rommel said, "Amateurs talk tactics; professionals talk logistics"

And this relates to neither.

During the battle of Guadalcanal, both the Japanese and the Americans had plenty of battleships. Neither side used them to any significant extent. The one time the Japanese used theirs was devastating to the Americans defending Guadalcanal.

And also cost the Japanese both battleships used. The battleships were considered too valuable to use in those narrow waters, where too many things could go wrong (high level of torpedo threat, especially). Maybe there was something to that.

Pretty much all the battleships damaged at Pearl Harbor were ready for combat by Guadalcanal. The US didn't employ them because they could send 3 or 4 cruisers for the fuel of 1 battleship.

Er, no. The battleships that were available, which was definitely not all of them, were generally on convoy escort duty. Important and somebody had to do it, but lower threat and tended to be handed off to the units that were perceived as not quite front-line combatants.

I bet both American and Japanese admirals wished they had a few pocket battleships.

They already had something better. Cruisers. Compare the record and effectiveness of American 6" and 8" gun cruisers against Japanese light units, and why, and then ask yourself if (as I mentioned previously but apparently it was missed) a ship of cruiser size and level of protection, but armed with an even smaller number of 11" tubes would have been an improvement.

When we did attempt to scale up our cruisers to build a reasonably balanced combatant with guns similar to a PB, they were pretty ships. And also white elephant waste of resources.

[Greg]

As far as treaties, you are referencing the wrong one. 1935 Anglo German Naval Treaty allowed the Germans to have up to 35% of the tonnage of the British navy. As a side to that the Germans agreed to switch away from the Panzerschiff design because the British were worried about how many the Germans could make under that treaty.

And you are conflating 2 different treaties.

The panzershiffe were built under the restrictions of Versailles, which is where the 6 10k ton ships as direct replacement for 6 pre-dreadnaughts that Germany was allowed to keep, comes from.

The Anglo German Naval agreement was where the tonnage ratio came in, was distinct from the restrictions of Versailles and was de facto repudiation of some of them. Note that after the 1935 agreement, Germany didn't keep building panzerschiffe.

The problem was not the ships the Kriegsmarine had or the way their admirals planned to fight (both Raeder and Donitz were very good leaders). The problem was that the political leadership pursued a suicidal path which was doomed to self immolation no matter what the military leadership did.

To paraphrase Clausewitz, a tactical level mistake can be fixed at the operational level, an operational level mistake can be fixed at the strategic level, but there is no fixing a mistake at the policy level. That is where the problem was.

I'm not entirely sure how you can write that, and not even suspect that the very design of the panzerschiffe themselves was intimately tied to a very serious strategic and policy error.

[Vonz90]

But he apparently didn't understand it.

Speak for yourself. You are mixing up two completely unrelated topics. The question was specific as to whether the ships were good or not. Considering their intended role - yes they were.

As to why they might want a blue water navy, well there are a heck of a lot of reasons to need a blue water navy that did not involve picking a fight with Britain and France.

The size of the German navy was not the problem nor were the ships they had in the 30's particularly worrisome to the British (which is why they agreed to the 1935 treaty in the first place). You will look long and hard to find anyone who thinks the German navy caused WWII.

The problem was the policy. Hitler was pursuing a national policy which was never going to work because it was destined to put him in conflict with the rest of Europe. If the Kriegsmarine had a better Panzerschiff or a worse one or none at all, it did not matter.