German Light Cruisers

Sloppy of me not to find that

You may actually have a point here, the "standard" displacement was defined later in the Washington treaty so thee 10.000t of Versailles cannot be the 10.000t of Washington, what they are is open to debate there is space for more than 40% variation according to to what you pick, even the measument unit (not just what to measure) is ambiguous Germany and France used metric but Britain didn't.

The full French is at the link I provided, section V (Military clauses), uses the term cuirassés several times, including to refer to SMS Ostfriesland and her sisters that were dreadnoughts, (BTW without the accent it means armour) but I haven't searched the rest.
The story I know is they were thinking of coastal battleships, that's why I mentioned Sverige. It seems to me there are big differences between the French and English texts, if you compare the link I provided you can find some very intetresing detalied tables on land forces completely missing from the English text !!!

 

I have been requested to give my 2 cents here, so I hope this will help you a bit for what(s it's worth.

Cuirasse in French comes from "cuir" = leather. In the middle ages the Cuirasses were worn by soldiers as a protection in combat (breast-plated, armor-plated) . They were then replaced by iron ones which later gave the names of Napoleon's "cuirassiers" ( Breast plated cavalry )



.This was then used for ships also. So a close translation would be would be breast plated ship or Panzer shiff

The last picture is a wink to our southerner friends.

 

The original intent (IMO) in versailles was probably the most restrictive. Then later came the Washington treaty which specified standard disp, not full load, so Germany chose to interpret it that way.
So if the Deutschland's were 10,000 tons (or tonnes) standard and ~ 13,000 full load, they would be compliant.
However the standard disp. was 12,000, so they were some 20% over limit, even using the greater defenition in Washington.
It should be noted that Japan & Italy were also building cruisers well over the limit too

This is also rather moot, as Hitler denounced Versailles about 3 months after Deutschland was commissioned anyways...


Anyways, the point that I was making is that the Deutschland class works on a 12,000 ton basis, if it had in fact been built to the 10,000 ton limit, the ship would have to have some major reductions somewhere.

 

There is no specification in Versailles of what "tonnage" means so we can't assume "full load" or anything else, IMO when something is unspecified you can assume whatever is more convenient. I can't find figures for the Deutschland "light" displacement but given a full load of 15.900t (metric) and that she carrierd 2784 tonns of fuel her standard displacement would be around 13.000t (I don't have figures for engine water) which would put her "light" displacement (no ammo no stores no crew) not very far from 10.000t (long tonns) . Her sisters were shighly heavier with a full load of 16.200t (metric). A lot of second and third generation "treaty" cruisers were in that range, It's fun to play with figures but getting very accurate comparisons is beyond my capability as I only have naval books (secondary sources) and the "official" figures are too often fudged.

According to this site http://www.deutschland-class.dk/technicallayout/generaldetails.html apparently Graf Von Spee was 2000t larger than Deutschland but there is no inkling to where all that tonnage went to (thicker armour?). There is a lot of unexplained stuff about WW2 ships like (current favourite) the chunk of KMS Tirpitz armour in the IWM that measures over 40cm in it's smallest direction when "everibody knows" she had 32cm plates.

 

Actually that was already done in July 1932 by the then SecDef. Refering to the Entente's refusal to disarm as required by the ToV, he announced Germany would no longer be bound by its limitations. A few moths later a modest plan for naval expansion was presented. It included the construction of submarines and the formation of a naval air force.

 

The Versailles Treaty is actually the least restrictive, since, as TiredOldSoldier points out - there was no specification of what tonnage was to be used. IIRC, the light ship load of the Deutschland/Lutzow was about 10,500 metric tons, and according to Marine-Arsenal Band #12, the Scheer came in at 11,550-11,960 metric tons(although "officially" it was 10,000 tons). The displacement discrepancy between Deutschland and Scheer can be explained; the Scheer's engineering plant was some 200 tons heavier than the Deutschland's, and the Scheer was completed with a massive bridge structure - whereas the Deutschland had the much narrower tower structure, also the Scheer had slightly more armor in some areas - for instance, the turret barbettes were 125mm as opposed to the 100mm of the Deutschland. The Graf Spee probably had similar modifications done to her in an effort to improve her over the Scheer, but I lack a good source on the Spee, although I do know that her engineering plant was some 200 tons heavier than the Scheer's(400 tons heavier than the Deutschland's - if anyone's keeping track).

You should note that the Washington Treaty not only specified the use of "standard" displacement tonnage, but also how it was to be measured...Since, there were several national signatories, and many of those nations calculated standard displacement differently.

The panzerschiff "works" on a 10,000 ton "light ship" displacement limit, it is made better with more tonnage.

 

Takao,

Interesting information on the panzerschiff's engines. It reminds me that I read in Hough's "Dreadnaught" that one of the reasons that led to the Graf Spee's scuttling was that he had info that suggested engine trouble unrelated to battle damage. He also said that these huge diesel engines were unreliable. Anything you (or anyone) can add on this?

 

The problems seem to be mostly concerning the auxiliary engines according to Joseph Gilbey.
Langsdorff of the Grafspee
And then there was the fuel problems of the Graf Spee as discussed some years ago on another board:
Graf Spee - 16 hours fuel?

 

For what it's worth, author Vincent O'Hara in his fairly recent "German Fleet at War", after rather authoritatively outlining how many hits Spee had received, and her ammo situ, states that "Graf Spee was capable of full speed, and had fuel enough to cruise at that velocity for 16 days"; I should add that O'Hara can appear to have a bias.

 

RE: "auxillary engines": Are these also connected to the screws or are they just for power to other systems? The references I have or know of don't go into that specific of detail so sorry about all the questions.

 

It would almost work only for the Deutschland/Lutzow at 500 tons over limit. The following ships are 1,000 - 1,500 heavier

 

Was this used for all armored ships or just what in English are called "battleships"? For instance would the term be applied to "armored cruisers as well?

 

AFAIK armoured cruiser was croiseur cuirassé Croiseur cuirassé - Wikipédia, just cuirassé was battleship Cuirassé - Wikipédia, pretty confident on this though my "non military" my French is rusty and I may be influenced by my native Italian where battleship is corazzata and armoured cruiser incrociatore corazzato (there'se lots of translation traps where languages overlap with military doctrine) .

 

Thanks, that sounds quite reasonable.

No question about that. Particularly when we are also talking a considerable period of time. Then there's some of the fine details of semantics for instance are coastal battleships, second rate battleships, or obsolete battleships really "battleships"? As I understood the English term originally meant ships that could stand in the "line of battle" vs the battleships of the opposing side with some decent chance of success (got to quallify that or you get DDs and DEs being considered battleships due to events in WWII). As such when a qualifier such as the above is added it seems to be implying that they are no longer "true" battleships yet they were often built as such so depending on just what's being said their status may change...

When we started this exchange I had no idea that things were as murky as they are....

 

Part of the problem is comparing ships more then 5 or so years in difference. What was cutting edge one day is obsolete the next. THe other issue is how to compare the different factors especially when some factors are closer to cruiser class then BB

 

Evolution is a never ending process, but sometimes old becomes new again. The trend in WWII was for "Fast Battleships", fast enough to escort carriers, but for their mutual protection, as the big gun ship by itself was obsolescent in the face of the aerial bomb and torpedo. Sometimes special characteristics, which gave a ship a raison d'être, remained in favour, or returned to favour, allowing a ship type to remain viable in the face of progress.

One feature that always challenged obsolescence was speed. There was always room for a fast ship, the British Abdiels remained in service a long time. Also, the British BC's, although the BC concept was getting long in the tooth, found rebirth as the 1st of the "Fast Battleships", as defined above (consider Renown's WWII career), and as counter-Panzerschiff. Sometimes obsolescence comes fast, I think it was Friedman who noted that the Panzerschiff concept, developed by Germany when Britain was not in consideration as a possible opponent, became obsolete as soon as Germany and Britain became combatants, it's a valid point.

The Coastal Battleships referred to above, remained viable for a long time because of low draught/Baltic operations, ships designed & built for littoral ops. have always had a place in 2nd tier navies, the major navies went littoral when the Cold War ended.

The Iowa Class were retained so long, that they remained viable as a weapons platform in the face of modern sea skimming missiles because no non-nuclear weapon in service could penetrate their armour!!

 

I don't think this is correct. By 45 a US battleship and escorts could expect to savage an attack by the airgroup of a single carrier and suffer little damage in the process. IMO it was guided missiles and jets that post war made the BB's obsolete. Not to mention the fact that the British, French, and US had such an overwhelming number and quality of battleships that it simply wasn't worth anyones (especially the Soviets) time or effort trying to match them.

Fast battleships were becoming important well before WWII and had little to do with escorting carriers as far as thier desing rational. Increased flexability both strategic and tactical combined with improvements in propulsion systems and hull designs were the impetous from what I can see.

 

I said “The trend in WWII & big gun ship by itself”:

Consider:

Bismarck, a modern Fast Battleship w/o carrier or land based aircover - disabled by aircraft,
PoW, a modern Fast Battleship w/o carrier or land based aircover - sunk by air attack,
Yamato, Musashi, even Vittorio Veneto, et. al.?

All the above featured, “Increased flexability both strategic and tactical combined with improvements in propulsion systems and hull designs” over their Battleship predecessors, yet succumbed, or almost did, to disabling air attack, at the minimum. And these are their nations best, in terms of obsolescence it goes downhill from there i.e. those older ships still in service.

I would even suggest to you that a US Fast Battleship, sailing in the place of any of the above in the same circumstances, would be liable to the same result. Take note, we’re not talking 1945 US Task Force i.e. a war worth of experience, an enemy with comparatively limited resources left, or overwhelming air & naval strength here.

 

But none of them had an AA suite comparable to late war US or British battleships. Futhermore their designs predate the carrier being considered a real threat to a battleship.

I disagree.
If for instance the Iowa, Alaska, and several US DD's with their AA suites as of 1944 or 45 are put in place of force Z I doubt any would be sunk.
Same goes for Iowa replacing Bismarck or Vittorio Veneto.
Yamato and Musashi were overwhelmed by attacks from how many carriers? That's like saying replace Yamashiro by any other battleship and the results will likely be pretty much the same.

 

Absolutes are hard to state since the U.S. never had to face that kind of attack. I would disagree about the AA since it only takes one hit in a critical spot to disable a ship. AA never killed one hundred percent of an air attack. What might have been the result if the BB's were the target instead of the carriers. Put an Iowa in the same position as the Yamato and absolutly it can sink.