German Light Cruisers

The paradox is that a 10.000t 11" gun ship (as defined by Versailles) turned out to be a much more balanced deisign than a 10.000t 8" one (as defined by Washington).

 

I've usually seen "balanced" when used to describe warships to mean one of reasonable speed for the type that had some sort of immune zone vs her own guns. Something like the Aoba may have managed this. The panzershiffe clearly didn't. Just checked and Aoba fell well short of that as well although if they added another 1,000 tons of armor to get her up to 10,000 she might have. The British early treaty cruisers may have achieved it by dent of haveing SAP shells rather than AP shells.

 

IMO "balanced" makes more sense if you look at your probable opponent's guns, the early 8" cruisers, were vulnerable to 8" guns at practically all ranges and had a very small "immune zone" even against 6" or 5" ones, the panzershiffe had a gun range advantage that created a virtual "immune zone" against most probable opponend and armour that had some chance of stopping 6" shells . River Plate showed that despite a British 3:1 hull advantage and a 1.5:1 tonnage advantage a panzershiffe was capable of more than holding her own against conventional cruisers. IMHO if "soft" elements like stress and fatigue from the long cruise had not led Langsdorf to a couple of bad decisions he may well have gotten away with it after succesfully disabling HMS Exeter. In fact both ship types relied on the range of their guns more than on armour for protection, some early 8" ships had no no armour belt at all, but the German ships made a much better job.

 

But that changes over time does it not? A balanced design shouldn't become unbalanced because 10 or 20 or even 30 years later a newer ship by the then probable opponent has a better weapon. In any case when you use standard terms to mean something other than they are normally accepted to mean you should make the differences clear and you still risk confusion.

When they were built Britain was not their most likely opponent. Furthermore given the fire control of the time and the speed differential of Spee compared to light cruisers the range hardly gave them an "immune zone". It's even worse if you consider the US as a possible opponent. Graf Spee has no immune zone to the even the US 6"/47 if the tables at: United States Naval Gun Armor Penetration Tables are correct. Getting a pass because the British had a 6" gun that had light rounds and didn't have an AP round is a bit problematic.

I'm not so sure of that. It showed that on that occasion she was capable of inflicting significant damage on British conventional cruisers. However Spee's 11" guns were shooting very well that day (her 5.9" guns weren't) and at least one of the British light cruisers was having her spotting plane give her corrections based on the fall of shot of the other light cruiser. Had she run up against a Baltimore or a Brooklyn for instance the situation may have been considerably different.

Such as? Once he was heavily engaged I don't see how he could escape. He can't outrun the British light cruisers. Indeed according to http://www.bobhenneman.info/bhbrp.htm even before the Exeter was disable the British light cruisers had closed to 13,000 yards.

That simply doesn't square with what I've read of naval combat in WWII.

 

I haven't come across that definition of "balanced" in any of my books, it's a reasonable but far from perfect one as it only looks at armour thickness not extension and obviously favours the lighter gunned ships or, as you point out, those without good AP rounds. For me "balaced" meand a combination of firepower, armour and speed that makes a ship a tough opponent to her contemporary counterparts, the fast nearly unarmoured early cruisers were not balanced, the panzershiffe were much better in this regard.
Looking at the gun performance the panzershiffe, can count on over 6 salvoes of unopposed fire and the German gunners often got a hit by then, if that slows the opponent, and 11" shells are likely to do that to a cruiser, she's toast. BTW my comparison was with contemporary treaty cruisers not with third generation ships that were a lot more "balanced". IIRC the later US cruisers never engaged in daylight battles agaist their counterparts, had Boise not ran aground so missing the Java cruiser day actions, we would have some more data on their actual performance at the combat ranges they were theoretically designed for instead of the night "melees". [TABLE]
[TR]
[TD]Ship[/TD]
[TD]Gun[/TD]
[TD]Range[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Lutzow[/TD]
[TD]28cm/42 [/TD]
[TD]36,475 m[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Kent[/TD]
[TD]8"/50 Mk VIII [/TD]
[TD]28,030 m[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Norhampton[/TD]
[TD]8"/55 Mark 9[/TD]
[TD]29,131 m[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Wichita[/TD]
[TD]8"/55 Mark 12[/TD]
[TD]27,480 m[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Brooklyn[/TD]
[TD]6"/47 Mark 16[/TD]
[TD]21,473 m[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

 

Ah, but the Panzerschliffe (PB's) wern't 10,000 tons.
The Graf Spee was 12,100 tons (15,200 full load) so they fudged the number to build about 20% heavier than allowed.
By comparison the UK "Counties" were 9,750 - 9,900, the Brooklyn's & Northamptons were also under treaty, but the Clevelands were 11,700 and the Baltimores were 14,500.

But that's the key tradeoff isn't it?
The US, UK & Japan couldn't arm cruisers with more than 8" guns, otherwise they might have tried.

The Germans used a kind of a loophole that allowed them up to 11" guns.
However, the Deutschland's lost 4 knots of speed to carry the heavier arms & armour.
if it was just a straight battle, the PB's probably had the edge.
But if you needed cruisers to shadow the 30 knot Bismarck or Littorio, the PB designs were just far too slow, you need the 32 - 33 knot speed of the treaty cruisers.
This was in fact one of the tactics of the British to deal with raiders, to locate the enemy raiders, shadow them until superior forces could arrive, or launch CV strikes against them.

 

Protection against one's own guns is a common rule of thumb, but not an absolute. It would also be better to phrase it as guns of comparable caliber; just because you decline to carry AP shells for your 8" guns doesn't mean anyone else's 8" cruiser will!

We might consider the Mogami class cruisers, which had a reasonable degree of protection against their own 6.1" guns as built. They didn't suddenly become any more vulnerable when they replaced their guns with 8" (turrets were inadequately armored in either configuration).

 

Although the Mogami's weren't really "balanced" either, they had stress & stability problems, the result of trying to cram too much into the displacement.

 

IMO it was pretty hard to create something that would resist 8" shells and still be small and cheap enough to be built and operated in significant numbers, the County are a bit of a bluff tonnage wise, I suspect they were designed to be retrofitted with an armoured belt, most received it sooner or later, and even as built they were at the very limit of 10.000t, AFAIK some ships were marginally over it.

Not really a loophole as a different mindset, the panzershiffe according to the treaties were fast battleships not cruisers, nothing prevented other countries from building something like them out of their battleship allowed tonnage. Thinking "battleship" the designers could get away with a 26 knots ship with some armour and very good long range firepower, the rest of the world was thinking "cruiser" on the same tonnage so they went for 30+ knots, with the possible exception of the heavily protected Zara that could barely make 30. Add 8-10 8" to that requirement and there is nearly nothing left for protection.
The Mogami were slightly smaller than the earlier classes with basically the same intended armament , but the refit eliminated most of the initial problems.

 

Would such a ship really be of use to the UK or US?

 

I beg to differ. They certainly were not "fast battleships". They were the allowed replacements for Germany's obsolete battleships (built around or before 1910 if I recall corrrectly. By the standards of the day they certainly weren't battleships and they weren't particularly fast.

And you get a ship that is almost helpless when confronted by a real battleship or even a battle cruiser. Maybe particulalry when confronted by a one.

One could easily have built an Aoba like cruiser for instance though that came in at 12,000 tons and was balanced since the originals almost were and came in at around 9,000 tons.

 

I thought I replied to this one but don't see my reply so ..

It's most common in discussions about battleships.

I'm not at all sure that's the case. Optical range for battleships was about 30,000 yards and dependent on the height of the respective masts. I don't see Graff Spee having a good optical fire control solution at that range and correcting would be even more of a problem. Effectivly she has little or no range advantage over an 8" cruiser unless equipped with a good radar fire control set. Note also that the 30+ knot cruisers can use their speed to close only when the situation favors them in at least some circumstances.

 

One of the longest range recorded hits was by a German 11" though the guns of Sharnhorst were not identical top those of the panzershiffe.

The panzershiffe were "battleships" according due to the Versailles definition and at the time of their design actually the fastest "battleships" afloat (next in line would be the QE and some Japanese ships), of course they would have had big problems against any other contemporrary battleship or battlecruiser that were at least twice as big. IIRC the only post war designs built at the time were the Nelson and they put no enphasys on speed, it's only after panzershiffe pushed the French to build the Dunquerque and the Italians decided to respond by going the whole way with a treaty limit ship of 30+ knots that almost everybody else decided they wanted a 35.000t fast battleship of around 30knots, otherwise it's quite possible the battlewagons would have stayed at 25-26 knots, European navies weren't too worried by the Kongos.
Most navies relied on aerial spotters for fire direction beyond ranges where accurate observation of the fall of shot was possible, shooting beyound 30.000 yards was possible and occurred more than once in the Med, (of course HMS Malaya opening fire at 29.500 yards whern her guns couldn't shoot beyond 23.400 was a bit optimistic ).

 

The Scharnhorst also had it's spotting tops significantly higher than Graf Spee. The hit was also less than the maximum range of the 8" guns listed.

No they were not. They were called "armored ships" or in German "Panzershiffe". Again they were allowed as replacements for obsolete battleships (ones that weighed in at ~10,000 tons as well). Here's the English version of the wording:
First World War.com - Primary Documents - Treaty of Versailles: Articles 159-213

According to Die Geschichte Deutsches Schlachtschiffes von der Deutschland Klasse here are the stats for the Deutchland class battleships:

Hardly modern battleships even at the start of WW1 much less afterwards. And here's the wiki page on the "Lothringen" class:
SMS Lothringen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And Deutschland Class Battleship - SMS Deutschland, Pommern, Hannover, Schlesien, Schleswig-Holstein compares them to the some what newer Deutchlands as follows:

It lists them at ~14,000 tons by the way. There is simply no way you can reasonably consider them battleships in a post WWI environment.

If they are to be considered "battleships" then you have to consider the Hood, Renown, Repulse, and the Kongos battleships as well. The latter are still vastly supperior in armor, guns, and speed to the panzershiffe.

They may have relied on it but it proved impracticle and inaccurate in practice. Indeed most European navies didn't even plan on long range engagements expecting even battleships to fight at under 25,000 yards (unlike the IJN and the USN) whose doctrine called for long range engagements.

 

My point is that the treaty paragraph you quote explicitly mentions battleships, despite that from a technical standpoint the were not comparable to what ocean going navies called battleships, possibly it came about because the explicitly stating that Germany couldn't build "battleships", like it couldn't built tanks and aircraft, would have proved unacceptable but the fact remained that the term battleship was in the treaty and the panzershiffe were built according to that clause.
There is no such a thing as a panzershiffe in the treaties, anything with guns bigger than 8" according to the the Washington one (so that includes the battlecruisers, KMS Schlesien, HMS Terror, Sverige, RN San Giorgio but not the 8" gunned aircraft carriers) and anything over 6.000t according to Versailles is a battleship.
What actually came out of the Versailles limitations was a "cruiser killer", while the expectation was a costal defence battleship like most scandinavian navies had, so the term "pocket battleship" was coined to distinguish the panzershiffe from the others as they were battleships not cruisers from a legal standpoint.
So we really had many kinds of "battleships" under the treaty limitations, from a capability standpoint they can roughly be divided into:
- The "slow" dreadnoughts
- The "fast" dreadnoughts
- The coastal battleships (makes little sense to separate them into "designed as such", pre-dreadnought and armoured cruisers like San Giorgio and Averoff as they all had similar capabilities).
- The battlecruisers (though the differences with fast dreadnought are much less marked than in WW1, the armour of Doria and Renown are not all that different and why is Dunquerque a battleship and Sharnhorst a battlecruiser?).
- The "pocket battleships"

 

TiredOldSoldier,

Yes, the Versailles Treaty specifically mentions battleships in Article 181, however, the Treaty specifies, in Article 190, that the German battleships were to be replaced by "armored ships" of 10,000 tons, and not by newly constructed battleships. So, there is the switch, if the Allies had intended for Germany to have battleships, they would have said so, yet, they did not. IIRC, the Versailles Treaty did not specify as to what armament the German armored ships would be limited to, whereas the later Naval Treaties were specific about what armament could be carried. So, under the Versailles Treaty, the new German navy, and when built would consist of 6,000 ton light cruisers, and 10,000 ton armored ships. The Washington Naval Treaty had no bearing on what ships Germany was allowed to build, or what armaments she could put on them, since she was not a party to, nor signatory of, the Treaty.

 

From the English text it looks like the term panzershiffe was derived from the wording of Versailles, wasn't aware of that. Had a look at the treaty but can't find a German version of it (and I don't read Germam) But most likely the original was in French as that was the language of diplomacy at the time. A french copy I found quotes for article 190 http://mjp.univ-perp.fr/traites/1919versailles6.htm

Il est interdit à l'Allemagne de construire ou acquérir aucun bâtiment de guerre, autre que ceux destinés à remplacer les unités armées prévues par le présent traité (article 181).
Les bâtiments de remplacement ci-dessus visés ne pourront avoir un déplacement supérieur à :
10,000 tonnes pour les cuirassés,
6.000 tonnes pour les croiseurs légers,
800 tonnes pour les destroyers,
200 pour les torpilleurs. Sauf en cas de perte du bâtiment, les unités de différentes classes ne pourront être remplacées qu'après une période de :
20 ans pour les cuirassés et croiseurs ;
15 ans pour les destroyers et torpilleurs, à compter du lancement du bâtiment.

cuirassés in French is battleships, "armored ship" is a litteral translation of the term, also interesting is that the French specifies light cruisers not cruisers.

Confusing, on on one hand a battleship replacement is a battleship, on the other (looking at the English text) it looks like Versailles defined a new ship type called "armoured ship", that eventually became the panzershiffe.

 

I wasn't until recently either. In regards to this First World War.com - Primary Documents - Treaty of Versailles: Articles 434-440 and Annex says

So the German translation probably is of less significance.

The English version also specifies light cruisers. I wonder how widely used the term "cuirasses" was. Maybe Skipper can supply some help here.

Indeed and thanks for bringing the French part in. Well again by limiting it to 10,000 tons I don't see any of the English speakers familiar with naval matters calling those ships "battleships".

 

You imply there was cheating? The ToV did neither defined 'tons', nor 'displacement', so the Germans had the choice.

The German version of the treaty uses the term "Schlachtschiffe"(=battleships). Of course nothing with a displacement could reasonably be called a battleship but since when had the military clauses of the ToV anything to do with reason? The idea was that Germany would not be able to built anything but a 'coast defence ship' under these limitations. ... Then came the Washington Naval Treaty:

It stopped battleship construction and the 8"/10k tons limit for cruisers ensured no one could built super-cruisers for use as ersatz-battleships. Well, almost no one. Germany wasn't a signatory of the WNT. Unlike the rest of the world it was allowed to put 11" guns on 10k ton ships. Upps! That and a few creative definitions of displacement resulted in the kind of super-cruisers the WNT had tried to stop.

 

... the ships that the Germans were supposed to build were called "Battleships". When Versailles' naval terms were being wrangled over and put to paper, the intent was to keep the German navy in the Baltic, the ships the winning power naval types had in mind that the Germans were supposed to build were German versions of the then modern Swedish "Sverige Class" battleships. Most of the Baltic nations either already had, or would have, vessels of this type.

We know them today as Coast Defence vessels; the Sverige type i.e. Sweden, was the best at 7,000-8,000 tons, 400 ft. long, 60' beam, 20' draught, Yarrow type coal burner boilers good for 20,000-22,000 hp, capable of 20-22 knots, 4X11.1" main battery, 8X6" secondary, 8" main belt. For use in the Baltic, they needed a relatively shallow draught, they didn't have to contend with the Atlantic swell but they were small battleships (not Monitors), and at the time they were known, in English, as "Coastal Battleships". Jane's Fighting Ships, and I suspect Brassey's, called them "Battleships", the Editor of Jane's at the time, Dr. Oscar Parkes is still famous as THE definitive authority on British Battleships from the Warriors on.

Instead, the Germans refused to be hemmed in, and chose to build ships i.e. "Panzerschiff" that could challenge beyond the Baltic; larger and heavier, with similar armament but less armour, more speed and significantly more range. In a sense they were a cross between Sverige, and a large commerce type cruiser.

Ironically, had the German built Coastal Battleships for the Baltic, U-boats for beyond, and concentrated on war and defeating the USSR on land, with naval support, they might have prevailed.