I reckon Battlecruisers are better because they are a lot faster

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"The Dark lord and his companions have returned!" (insane giggling)

haha....I knew your vote just by looking at your name!!

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Facta non verba. "Deeds, not words"

i know repulse was a battlecruiser still they were alot faster than battleships..but didnt carry the same guns and armor

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"The Dark lord and his companions have returned!" (insane giggling)

Now is the same as pocket battleship vs battleship?

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!

When talking within the time frame of this forum, that is not true. If we are talking about ships' speeds during the years 1939-1945, we see the numbers below

Comparative speeds
Battle Cruisers
HMS Renown 31 knots
USS Alaska 31
HMS Hood 29
IJN Kongo 27.5

Battleships
Iowa Class 33 knots
South Dakota Class 27
DKM Bismarck 30
HMS King George V 28
IJN Yamato 27
IJN Nagato 27

The battlecruiser concept was found to flawed before the war began. Yes, BCs were faster than most BBs in the twenties, but not enough to make a difference in gunnery effectiveness for the attacking ships. Lacking adequate armor, they simply could not stand up against an equally heavily armed but better armored opponent. There ample examples of this in both wars.

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Best Regards,
JW

yes but what about the bcs guns?

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"The Dark lord and his companions have returned!" (insane giggling)

Which one are you, Repair or Refit?

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Bah!

I really don't think there is any great advantage by WW 2 one way or the other and that the WW 1 distinction between a battleship and a battlecruiser was no longer relevant.
The speed advantage of the battlecruiser that existed in WW 1 really had diminished to virtually nothing by WW 2. Battleships were now doing 25 to 30 knots just as the remaining battlecruisers were. Tactically, speed is of virtually no advantage in a surface action with regard to battleships / battlecruisers in WW 2. So, any slight advantage in speed a battlecruiser possessed in WW 2 was tactically irrelevant. Cruising range and cruising speeds on the other hand were very significant.
As for armor and or gun power this too was becomming more and more blended to a point where there was little to choose between the two. Yes, there were older battlecruisers that had weak armor and or armament relative to newer ships but, they were still quite capable in many roles as capital ships.
As an example the two weak capital ships Repulse and Reknown proved very useful as carrier escorts and in operations in general. The Reknown at the Lofoten Islands in 1940 fought both Scharnhorst and Gneisenau successfully even though out matched in guns and armor. So, it is possible for a ship with limited capacity on paper to do quite well in actions where other factors give the advantage.

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Best Regards,
JW

But what about the hood that was good even though one blow it was gone

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"The Dark lord and his companions have returned!" (insane giggling)

Correct and it was a battlecruiser (Hood) squaring off against a battleship (Bismarck). Both sides were *roughly* evenly match in the Battle of the Denmark Strait. The Hood did land a shot or two on the Bismarck before it suffered a telling hit, igniting the 4" magazine and leading to a an even larger explosion of the 15" magazines. Sounds a lot like what happened to some of Beatty's battlecruisers at Jutland in 1916.

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Best Regards,
JW

Pardon my ignorance but I was just curious what kind of gun this might be. The biggest FA pieces that the Iraqi's had, to my knowledge, were the S-23 (Towed 180mm). We brought a few back to Bragg along with the D-30's to place in front of our Brigade HQ as trophys. The U.S. 8 inch (203mm) SP is bigger than "that" and the U.S. Multiple Launch Rocket System (M.L.R.S.) outclassed and outranged everything, as far as Field Artillery pieces, by ALL forces in-country. O.K., no more off topic questions.....

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I don't remember what it was, I just remember the press harping about it. I was just using it as an example, apparently not the best choice.

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Best Regards,
JW

Here's an article I wrote covering in detail every battleship on battleship action in WW 2. The conclusions are worth noting

http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com...ceactions.aspx

Their speed wasn't so much to outrun battleships, but instead to out-range them more.

Try to remember they were designed for different roles.

The Battlecruiser was to deploy battle-ship size guns and fire-power to the other side of the world literally. They gave up internal armour and sectioning for more space for victuals, supplies to be able to patrol further longer without having to make pit stops all the time. Respond to hot spot faster, so to speak.

So in the same vein, they were better sea-lane raiders as well.

Looking at the design history of the original battlecruisers, the Invincible class, in 1902 Admiral Fisher and Chief Naval Constructor W.H. Gard were formulating a new armored cruiser design to be more powerful than any previous. This resulted in the Minotaur class (2 x 9.2" 10 x 7.5" 23 kts, 6" armor).
Following Tsu Shima and looking at foreign developments that occured with armored cruisers in the following years the step up to the "battlecruiser" was an inevidablity. Thus, the Invincibles were really just replacements for previous armored cruisers and intended to fill the same role; that of a scouting force for the battle fleet. In fact, official documents refer to them as armored cruisers as late as 1912 when the first mention of the term "battlecruiser" appears.
If anything, the original concept of an all-big-gun armored cruiser was a mistake in retrospect. It was too much ship for too little mission. A fast battleship or a better protected less well armed cruiser would have been better paths to follow as other nations did and Jutland proved.

Both were good in there own terms

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"The Dark lord and his companions have returned!" (insane giggling)

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Best Regards,
JW

Excellent article, Terry! Very well done!

My very ship I must say is probably the Renown

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Time is only enemy you'll never get rid of.

yes the renown class were good for there day i mean battlecruisers didnt actually last long at all.

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"The Dark lord and his companions have returned!" (insane giggling)