BattleCruisers v Battleships which is better?

I reckon Battlecruisers are better because they are a lot faster

 

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

 

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

 

Now is the same as pocket battleship vs battleship?

 

yes but what about the bcs guns?

 

Which one are you, Repair or Refit?

 

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.

 

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

 

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.....

 

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/wwii/articles/capitalshipsurfaceactions.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

 

Excellent article, Terry! Very well done!

 

My very ship I must say is probably the Renown