Should the Deustchland class pocket battleships be called battlecruisers?

@ABWorsham4

Iowa’s faster and outranges the, hypothetically (not including fire control) Iowa can take out a ton before it runs out of ammunition.

If they’re fighting close Iowa losing to 8 pre dreadnoughts with 14 inchers sounds right. 👍

There is an interesting report by the US Office of Naval Intelligence on the Battle of the River Plate, with quite a few photos and ship damage reports.  It can be found here, at the Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library, and downloaded for free.

http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org

As for a battle between the Admiral Scheer and a Baltimore–class cruiser, I would bet on the Baltimore-class ship, unless the Scheer got some early lucky hits on gun turrets, as the Spee did on the HMS Exeter.  The USS Salt Lake City, one of our two oldest heavy cruisers in World War 2, with an older gunfire control system than the Baltimores, was able to score hits on the IJN Nachi at ranges in excess of 21,000 yards.  The following comment from the ONI report applies to the Spee’s gunnery.

German shooting was described as quite good, initially, but the accuracy fell off rapidly.
(a) 11-inch opened with two 3-gun salvos, very close and on in deflection.
(b) 5.9-inch also fired at Exeter; no definite hits determined, but many splinters came aboard.

@jim010:

Good analysis. +1 to you.

Had the Germans had these, though, it would be hard to say what they would match up against.  Britain and France would have ships to counter these.  Instead of being an answer to the Deutschland class, they would have had to have built answers to the more powerful Mackensens.  The KGV very likely would have had 15 guns rather than 14s.Â

Very hard to figure out what France and Britain would have responded with.  And in turn, whatever the French did would influence the Italians.  My guess is you would have seen a much more aggressive battleship race between the major powers.  The super battleships planed by everyone probably would have materialized sooner.

Well said.

The official USN designation for the class was ‘heavy cruiser’.

The only ‘battle-cruisers’ the USN ever built were the six Lexington class; none were completed as such, two being converted into carriers and the other four scrapped per the WNT.

Rob.

@barnee

Well, the battle takes place during daytime, the most favourable conditions. I read the article in my research, and the battle really was tough to decide. Many people point to Leyte Gulf as proof of how bad Japanese battleships are. But one of the reasons for the Japanese failure off Samar was because of the Japanese using armour piercing shells, which often flew right through the unarmored American ships without exploding. Mistakes in commanding the Japanese ships was another reason for why the American fleet was not destroyed. As I said, it was really hard to decide, and it was very close. As you noted though, the Japanese has inferior radar and sighting, the Japanese had superior armour and had just so many guns that it would have eventually have hit several times, especially if the Missouri went to point blank range, like how I thought the battle would have worked out. It honestly could have gone either way.

Ships come with a crew and to compare ships has nothing to do with crews and also has nothing to so with comparing SHIPS.  I’m glad you agree as well!

http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm

And this site has done something similar, (which obviously does not compare crews because this is a comparison of ships) concluded rightfully that Iowa class BB is the best ship all around based on all basic stats.

@RJL518:

i sometimes wonder what would have happened if Germany had put together a massive battle fleet in the Atlantic like Japan did in the Pacific

They  didn’t have the naval knowhow that Japan and US had. The Germans had plans for building carrier vessels, but they weren’t able to do it.

But if they had done it, it would be much easier to knock out UK pretty early, and then Barbarossa also would be easier, but far from guaranteed.

Also, imagine being on the flight deck when you fired those things off.  Say good buy to sound.

With the Russian design, you would also have to be careful not to fire the guns pointed over the flight deck, or you’d blast away the deck with just the fireballs.  :-D