Talk:Battlecruiser

Preliminary cleaning

I've done some work cleaning this up regarding conversions and general tidying up, but I have deleted the WW2 sections that solely involved the German pocket battleships and the Scharnhorst class. I've left the section covering them in the design section, as well as the Dunkerques until we have a better consensus about what to do about them. Personally, I think that all we need is a bit explaining why they aren't really battlecruisers, no matter what ignorant authors call them. This needs to be resolved soon as we're only a couple FA or FL class articles away from being able to submit the largest Featured Topic in all of Wikipedia. Admittedly we only need to get it past GA for the nonce, but we need to decide the basics now.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:04, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Once I get home in a week, I'll start adding cites and revising more of the text once I have access to my library. (We need to use a lot less of Breyer, IMO, since he's wrong on Tiger's design history and a number of other things.)--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:10, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Did some more clean up and added referencing for the last couple of sections. Getting ready to purge the section on naval rearmament to cover just the Dutch proposal, the O class and the Kronstadts. I'd like some guidance on what sections are thought to need expansion/contraction/rewriting.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 07:10, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Hang on. There was no consensus for changing the rearmament section. In particular the section describes the tit-for-tat evolution of German and French capital ship designs and how they move away from the battlecruiser concept. This is useful material and should not be removed. Wiki-Ed (talk) 10:23, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Since the article isn't going to cover the Dunkerques, Deutschlands, Scharnhorsts or Richelieus since none of them are battlecruisers, there's not much left other than what I mentioned earlier, n'est-ce pas?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:24, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

The article should cover ships which are considered (by a smaller but not insignificant number of historical sources) as battlecruisers and other ships which influenced their development. In this case, the ships you've listed illustrate the inter-war evolutionary move away from the battlecruiser and towards the fast battleship and are, therefore, an important part of the history of the ship class. We only agreed to remove the war time actions involving those ships because to include them suggested that the consensus view here was in favour of treating them as battlecruisers when the debate is seemingly weighted against that view. Wiki-Ed (talk) 11:41, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I think that the Deutschlands and Scharnhorsts shouldn't be included, as they are both clearly not battlecruisers, and the latter were not thought of by even the Germans as battlecruisers. While you have a point with the Dunkerques where do we draw the line? I think that instead of a paragraph focusing on each of these classes in turn, the article may be better served by having a section (or two paragraphs) explaining the shift from a more general perspective. This will sidestep this whole issue and allow us to focus on battlecruisers as much as possible. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 11:51, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to start this all over again, but the Scharnhorsts were considered to be battlecruisers by the British - as mentioned/referenced in the article - and by a fair number of historical sources. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with the section as it stands. It is well referenced, illustrated, and comprehensive, but not overly detailed on ships which don't fit quite as neatly into the category. By contrast the section on "Cruiser Killers"/the Alaskas is too long and has much less historical value. Anyway, trying to write something out of an article which contradicts a proportion of the sources is not compatible with WP:NPOV. It will just keep coming back so better to keep it as it is. Wiki-Ed (talk) 21:09, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

General comments

• Do we really need all those tiny subsections in the WWI section? It would be much better to merge the smaller ones
  • Done.
• In the rebuilding programmes section, it mentions first that Hood and Repulse did not get the same kind of modernization as Renown did. Then later it states that the only exceptions to the modernization programs were Hood and Yavuz. This needs to be straightened out.
  • How does it read now?
• "In the late 1930s navies began to build capital ships again, and during this period a number of large commerce raiders and small, fast battleships were built that are sometimes referred to as battlecruisers. " - I do think it's worthwhile to at least mention which ships these are - the Deutschlands, Scharnhorsts, Dunkerques, etc., and then make clear that the majority of historians/analysts/whatever consider them to be heavy cruisers/battleships/whatever.
  • This is covered in the lede by note 1. Is it really worthwhile to cover it again?
• In the WWII section - same as above. And why is the Denmark Strait section out of chronological order?
  • Reworked.
• In the large cruiser section, it mentions that the Soviet Navy considered building such ships, and then does not mention them.
• As far as I'm aware, GlobalSecurity isn't considered a good source. But I could be wrong.
• We need a citation from Jane's on the Kirovs - GS doesn't mention anything about that.

I hope this helps with further development of the article. Parsecboy (talk) 20:21, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

• • These were good suggestions. Do you have access to Jane's or Combat Fleets of the World? My copies of Jane's are older than I am and I need to document the translation of the name as well as which ships are still active to replace the Global Security ref.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:15, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
    • You know, I did a couple of days ago - was up in Calgary, and their military museum has most editions of Jane's in their library. Too bad I didn't know to check this while I was there. Parsecboy (talk) 19:04, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
      • OSU doesn't have any copies? Chicago does, but I somehow doubt that you'd be willing to drive there for me :-( --Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:18, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
        • I think that I have a solution.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:29, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

A request

.... I just read this long, thorough, interesting article, but I was struck by what seems like a major omission. At the end, it currently says "In spite of the fact that after World War II, most navies abandoned the battleship and battlecruiser..." So -why- were battlecruisers/(& battleships?)(I'm no expert here) abandoned? Can that info be included? thanks. (This is the first time I've entered anything on a Wikipedia talk page!)Sqzx (talk) 06:55, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I edited the above to make it easier to understand. Basically by the end of WW2 the CV had been shown to be the dominant naval force, and BCs and BBs were struggling to find a useful role. As offshore batteries they were useful but not cost effective, for AA more, smaller, ships were better, and in all other respects CVs had them beat. So they got turned into razor blades.Greglocock (talk) 10:15, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

That's a good idea - certainly something that should be clarified before the article goes to A-class/FAC. Parsecboy (talk) 11:58, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Yavuz?

In Battlecruiser#World War II, an editor is wanting to strike out reference to the Yavuz (battleship) in the last sentence of the first paragraph, shown here as struck through:

She [Renown]was the only battlecruiser to survive the war, except for the largely inactive Yavuz.

and is insisting on the grounds that Yavuz did not participate in the war.

My take is that "survived the war" means "existed at the end of the war" and would apply to battlecruisers in service with Argentina and other neutrals. The editor disagrees, thinking (I gather) that "survived the war" means "participated in and survived the war". (FWIW Turkey was technically a belligerent in WWII, but only for a brief period at the very end, and the Yavuz did not fight and AFAIK probably didn't even leave port or act as a potential counter to local Axis naval units (there were none left), so it's reasonable to treat it like a neutral power ship IMO.)

So impasse, the editor is invited to make his case, and I'm also interested in what our colleagues think, is the Yavuz in the class of battlecruisers to "survive the war" or not, or maybe the sentence should be rewritten? Herostratus (talk) 15:04, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

I think that the thing to do is to break out Yavuz into her own sentence as she's the only other prewar BC to exist after the war. I don't want to imply that she participated in the war.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:39, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

For the record, the material was added here, Sturmvogel was just reverting its addition, he wasn't striking out anything that had existed for any significant length of time. Parsecboy (talk) 16:49, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Oh OK did not realize that. So the current stable version is without the reference to Yavuz. It's a good addition though IMO.

I think its just false to imply that the Renown was the only battlecruiser in commission at the end of WWII which is what the "only surviving" certainly does imply, to this reader. It's true that "survive" has two meanings -- "to exist" and "to live through some life-threatening ordeal" -- but the first is the default and (to me) clearly what is meant. When we talk of anything which "survives" in this kind of context we are not implying that it survived armed combat -- "surviving side-wheel steamers" (for instance) need not have passed through some ordeal.

But this remains contested, so... what do do. We could change it to "only battlecruiser to survive active combat" or whatever, but that's relatively unhelpful information and an uncalled-for division of the two existing battlecruisers into two random classes. How about

She was one of only two battlecruisers still afloat at the end of the war, along with the largely inactive Turkish vessel Yavuz

How's that? Herostratus (talk) 17:12, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Clarify that they were the only two prewar BCs still afloat, because the Alaskas were still in service.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:11, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

I think the general consensus is that the Alaska was not a battlecruiser. (I'm not sure I agree, but just reporting what I think is the general consensus here.) Herostratus (talk) 02:01, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

The article calls them battlecruisers, so...--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:27, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Well it does and it doesn't. The article USS Alaska (CB-1) does not use the term "battlecruiser" anywhere in the article, while Alaska-class cruiser says "They were officially classed as large cruisers (CB), but others have regarded them as battlecruisers". This article describes the Alaska class under "Large cruisers or 'cruiser killers'", which are described as "Described by some as battlecruisers, but never classified as capital ships" and there's some more hemming and hawing later on, on both sides of the issue. I don't think the question has been settled or can be. Herostratus (talk) 14:29, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

It goes both ways. Garzke and Dulin say that they're obviously battlecruisers in everything but name (paraphrased), but the US Navy pretty definitively disagrees. Maybe some language like "the only two battlecruisers classified as such still remaining" with a footnote clarification? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 21:54, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

That could work; the most important thing, I think, is to differentiate the Alaskas from the older ships.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:01, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Source?

From the lede:

Improvements in armor design and propulsion created the 1930s "fast battleship" with the speed of a battlecruiser and armor of a battleship, making the battlecruiser in the traditional sense effectively an obsolete concept.

Is this statement backed up by sources? Because it does not make sense on its own. If the division between battleship and battlecruiser would have be found useful, "improvements in armor design and propulsion" would have created bigger and faster battleships, and battlecruisers that are faster and less well armored then those improved battleships. The union of the two types into fast battleships just demonstrates that the differentiation was no longer considered useful.

So again, is there a source? - 91.10.25.190 (talk) 06:41, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

See the Interwar section, where the topic is discussed in more detail, you will find sources.

But your premise is wrong - like most things, the law of diminishing returns governs the speed at which large vessels can be propelled through the water, so the difference in speed gained by removing a few thousand tons of armor in the 20-knot range is quite a bit more than the difference the same weight reduction makes when you're in the 30-knot range. In the Interwar section, you will note it refers to the Japanese Amagi and Tosa classes, which, though classified as battlecruisers and battleships, respectively, had a difference in speed of only a quarter knot, which is not exactly a meaningful difference. In a nutshell, one cannot build a battlecruiser with a significant speed advantage over a 33-knot Iowa that is, A, of reasonable size, and B, of reasonable cost. It's not that a 37-knot capital ship wouldn't have been useful, it's that it was essentially impossible to do. Parsecboy (talk) 11:58, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

If that's the case, the explanation given should reflect that. As it is, it seems to explain that people simply made faster battleships.

But if there are sources backing up the claim as given, the discussion is moot. Thanks for your response! - 91.10.25.190 (talk) 13:06, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

> and chase down any ship with lesser armament; That seems wrong. They can chase down a speedboat with no guns? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:602:9000:6A:616B:EAFA:9C5D:8769 (talk) 20:50, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

No need to resort to Reductio ad absurdum-type arguments.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:31, 25 March 2020 (UTC)