Should the Graf Spee have gone down swinging?

[lwd]

Roughly 3/4 of all commercial shipping during the war went unescorted, not being part of any convoys.

Paul, agreed! People forget the HUGE amount of "coastal" freighting that went on - not only around the coast of the UK, but still around the coasts of Europe...and HUGE amounts along the Atlantic coasts of North and South America, the Pacific Rim, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic coast of Africa.. For overall lack of escorts for most of the war, the convoy system could only cover certain vital sealanes and routes......

And you just pointed out that the traffic was concentrated. The British can arm merchants also and they don't have to be the equal of a raider to end a raiders cruise. Also if you go from 6 to 100 raiders you will have gone well past the point of diminishing returns. An increase in raiders will result in more lost British ships especially before the US enters the war. However it is far from clear that it will be enough to make a difference. By late 43 the day of the raider is over in any case. Just too many opposing ships and planes.

[phylo_roadking]

tiornu, The deck protection was constructed from high tensile (HT) steel, arranged as follows:

Fo'c'sle: 1 3/4 to 2" ;

Upper deck: 2" immediately over magazines; 3/4" everywhere else

Main deck: 3" immediately over magazines; 1in elsewhere; plus 2" slope in those areas where it met the main belt;

Lower deck (forward and aft): 3" over propeller shafts; 2" magazine crowns; 1" elsewhere.

The 3" plating on the main deck was added at a very late stage of construction, after live firing trials with the new 15" APC (armour-piercing, capped) shell in late 1919 showed that this shell could penetrate the ship's internals via the 7" middle belt and the 2" slope of the main deck. Further trials showed that the additional plating when added was just adequate to defeat this threat - from CPC shells, not APC! It was proposed to extend the new plating to the whole of the upper deck, removing the conning tower, torpedo tubes and four 5.5" guns as weight compensation, but in the event, only the areas immediately above the magazines were reinforced. As completed, Hood remained susceptible to plunging fire and bombs, and had no margin of protection against the next generation of heavy guns.

However, the combination of deck and side armour STILL did not provide continuous protection against shells arriving at all angles - as per the RN's battleships. As I said, the deck protection itself was flawed — spread over three decks and designed to explode an incoming shell on impact with the top deck, with much of the energy being absorbed as the exploding shell had to penetrate the armour of the two decks below. But the subsequent development of effective time delay shells AFTER her planning changes in 1916 made this much less effective, as the intact just slower-travelling shell would penetrate successive layers of weak armour and explode deep inside the ship.

As originally designed, the Hood was heavy with frontal armour - both side armour belts and foredeck - as per RN battlecruiser design doctrine - but with markedly weaker sidebelts towards the rear of the ship than a comparable battleship, Also, her maindeck rearward of "A" turret was originally to be unarmoured. Its THIS armour that was added after Jutland caused the navy's panic rethink, though battlecruiser magazine fires at Falklands, Coronel, and the Dardanelles should have given them pause for though as well! BUT there were weak points where armour belts met and overlapped that although slopped were too close to vital internal installations, and significant portions of her hull where there was only 1" of armour between the "sandwich" construction of her panic-designed maindeck armour and her sidebelts. Its dropping fire on these areas that would have penetrated, as well as into the large portions of her maindeck that relied on the three-deck armour "sandwich" for protection. The very small areas of her deck above the magazines that were uparmoured would only have protected her from perpendicularly-dropping fire - anything dropping on her at an angle would have penetrated the thinner sections.

[Tiornu]

At least we now know where the problem lies. Cutting and pasting from Wikipedia is not likely to advance the conversation. You've wasted your time giving a bunch of details that do not address the point of focus, your claim that Hood was destroyed via a uniquely BC-ish quality. In fact, most of what you posted actually shows the commonality between Hood and RN battleships.
You did make the assertion that "the combination of deck and side armour STILL did not provide continuous protection against shells arriving at all angles - as per the RN's battleships." But this is factually incorrect. The RN units whose deck protection most closely resembled Hood's was the "R" class of battleships. The division of deck protection over multiple levels and the use of HT steel was the norm in RN battleships.
Your comments regarding frontal armor and BC magazine fires at Falklands and Coronel remain mysteries to me.
I have already said that Hood's protective weakness reflects her obsolescence rather than a BC-level of armor. You have cited her obsolescence but characterized it as BC-specific which it is not. Bail out of Wikipedia and look into such books as British Battleships of World War II by Raven & Roberts and British Battleships 1919-1939 by Burt. You can also look online for the Warship International article on Hood's loss, though this will not necessarily orient you regarding general RN capital ship design.

[phylo_roadking]

Tiornu, I've now had a look, and whoever cut into Wiki has used something very similar to mine for the Hood's technical details, armour, armament etc. .....which is a VERY old copy of Jane's of my dad's. Ragged and dog-eared and minus its cover but at least 30 years old. I prefer my english to whoever painstakingly typed that up for Wiki lol

As for Falklands and Coronel - I didn't say British magazine fires, did i?

You have cited her obsolescence but characterized it as BC-specific which it is not.

No, as HOOD -specific!
"Further trials showed that the additional plating when added was just adequate to defeat this threat - from CPC shells, not APC! It was proposed to extend the new plating to the whole of the upper deck, removing the conning tower, torpedo tubes and four 5.5" guns as weight compensation, but in the event, only the areas immediately above the magazines were reinforced. As completed, Hood remained susceptible to plunging fire and bombs, and had no margin of protection against the next generation of heavy guns."

You did make the assertion that "the combination of deck and side armour STILL did not provide continuous protection against shells arriving at all angles - as per the RN's battleships." But this is factually incorrect.

Um, how can it be factually incorrect when there are large sections between several of her armour belts and her strengthened upper deck that were only ptotected by her normal thickness of armourplate, NOT BELT armour?

The division of deck protection over multiple levels and the use of HT steel was the norm in RN battleships.

Yes...but as part of a contiguously-designed whole using thicker armour, not the thinner armour used in the Hood that left her vulnerable as it did. As a comparison....the difference between, say, normal plywood and "Marine" ply? The same idea...but VERY different strengths!

your claim that Hood was destroyed via a uniquely BC-ish quality.

er, there was me thinking I'd written this....

No, didn't say she sank because she was a battlecruiser, but she sank because of a major problem that ship-for-ship affected battlecruisers more than others

Instead, shall I sum up? The Hood was a design laid down just before a number of VERY major design faults with the battlecruiser class manifested themselves in combat. Immediately after that she was redesigned to an extent to ameliorate those problems, but although copying defensive measures incorporated successfully on BB designs in the Royal Navy, she was still vulnerable because those measure did not go far enough as she was already far overweight. They were copyed but not in the strength used elsewhere. NOR were any further changes made to update her either immediately before or immediately after commissioning despite gun technology leaving her protect far behind. So yes she was obsolete - but she wasn't obsolete by 1941 - she was obsolete when she left the stocks! Hood's weakness was that she was a battelcruiser - heavy and oversized though she may have been - in which attempts had been made to engineer out the weakness of the class BUT these had in effect been left IN by changes in technology or by the improvements simply not being enough.

If you have a product thats dangerous to use, and you bring out an "upgraded" product in which some of the problems have had half-hearted attempts made to fix them - any judge in any compensation case will rule its the original dubious product thats at fault.

"if you know the class of ship you're designing has major faults, and you don't engineer them out but instead try to paper over the cracks - and she explodes and sinks because of one or more of those vulnerabilities..."

The use of time-fused APC shells had negated any of the upgrading done when she was on the stocks. More than any other, the "dreadnought race" was a technology race - and in this one fatal moment the Royal Navy accepted on their books a vessel that was fatally flawed - by being locked into one particular very narrow time-window. It returned to haunt them 20 years later; IF negotiations with the US hadn't led to the Washington Treaty - it could have been discovered a LOT earlier....

[Paul Lakowski]

You guys don't seem to understand the point I'm making. About 1/2 of the german naval ship building industry was diverted into producing sufficent coastal craft to fill the KMs most important mission coastal defense. Most of that capability was built around small warships that could just as easily been filled by commercial vessels converted into patrol craft at a fraction of the cost and ship building capacity.

If thats done what do you do with the rest? more Uboats is pointless since their numbers already reached point of diminishing returns. A small surface fleet could be built up with this capacity something like

3 BB
3 CV
7 CA
15-20 x DD

But it would take ~ 3-4 years to build and commission these, thats 1942/43, to late . The capability is needed right away at the start of the war not near the end. Auxiliary warships could be converted in a matter of months after capture, and captured enemy warships can be recommissioned with in 6 months to a year of capture depending on availablity of trained crews....in NOrway some torpedoboot were commissioned a couple of months after capture.

BTW the Germans did sieze 2/3 of the Italian naval fleet plus similar portion of merchant vessels.

pp 46 "The Historical Encyclopedia of World War II" reports the Germans captured 217 Italian warships in 1943, while the allies captured 118 warships [ 217 out of 335 = 65% or 2/3].

[phylo_roadking]

And unfortunately too many of even these ended up as moored flakships whereas the said converted commercial ships could have filled that role far better. So you could have made do with fewer coastal craft, had AS MANY "static" assets, AND still had the resources to build - or in the German's case re-build a surface fleet.

I happen to agree that the U-Boat's time had come and gone as a weapon of attrition by WWII. The first "happy time" was truly in WW1 when they only had to contend with rolled depthcharges and microphones, nothing more advanced, and could roam the Western and Northern Approaches virtually at will - sea lanes within range where the greatest amount of traffic bound for the UK had to concentrate. By WWII they were throwing an essentially WWI weapon - I mean, it may have looked like a stroke of genius then, but Donitz' wolf-pack idea is simply "force multiplication" with a different hat - at the convoy problem. But ALL the technological advances in killing were with the defender, whereas the technological advances that benefitted the U-Boats were just performance and range-tweaking. Very few of which gave them any real advantage in a hunt by a knowledgeable captain or captains when twisting and turning in a confined space defined from above by ASDIC. It doesn't matter what capabilities a submarine has if you've negated its original covert-ness and it has to put itself in harm's way to be effective.

Let's face it - apart from the capability to fire SAMS from torpedo tubes, and for a very few to launch IRBMs - even today's submarines still "rely" on the torpedo, albeit with a great different in range and accuracy courtesy of various homing and guidance types.

[Tiornu]

Is it possible to sue the Wiki people for the plague they have visited upon mankind?
You are correctly pointing out some of Hood's flaws. And your claim that the decision to complete her was a dubious one (even with the upgrades) has substance. My only beef is in positioning the argument in the context of battlecruisers. The flaw was generalized obsolescence of concept, rather than the inherent weakness of BC protective schemes.
You might want to go one step further and say the obsolescence pre-dates Jutland. The Nevadas were laid down in 1912. These were the first dreadnoughts with a modern concentration of deck armor (though mdoest in its total thickness). That means SOMEBODY had already figured out the implications of the increase in potential battle range. The widening of the horizontal deck over Hood's magazines shows a partial understanding of the new standard, but it wasn't until the N3/G3 designs that Britain got a true "post-Jutland" armor scheme.
Just to clarify...

Um, how can it be factually incorrect...

The factually incorrect part was not your saying that Hood had a weakness but your saying the battleships did NOT have that weakness.
I understand that the upcoming issue of Warship will have an account of the Baden firing trials. I am very excited about it. These trials showed very clearly what the new AP ammo could do to the old-style armor scheme, even in the famously rugged German ships. My favorite example was a 15in hit to the upper belt. The shell went on its way and did its dirty work in the funnel uptakes. But at the same time, a chunk of the upper belt itself went shooting in a straight line across the entire width of the ship and stopped only after it had pounded a dent into the upper belt on the opposite side of the ship. In so doing, it went through two splinter bulkheads and destroyed all watertight boundaries in its path.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Paul,

As I pointed out above, most of the Italian merchant fleet had already been lost or otherwise been rendered hors de combat by the time the Germans seized what was left in September 1943. Nothing like 2/3 fell into German hands in a serviceable condition. Your source is simply wrong. (Get hold of Feldgrauer Enrico Cernuschi if you want full details).

Besides, what on earth could the Germans usefully have done with Italian vessels after September 1943, in a landlocked sea in which the enemy had total air and naval superiority?

The Germans may well have captured more Italian warships than defected to the Allies, but these included mostly light coastal craft, ships under repair or ships yet to be launched. Virtually the entire surviving seaworthy ocean going Italian fleet reached allied lines, leaving very little of value to the Germans.

Certainly one can quickly stick guns on merchant ships, but it only has any value if they can be effective. I am sure the Allies would have been delighted if the entire German merchant marine had put itself in harm's way in such a foolhardy fashion by putting into the open ocean where it could be sunk in a one-sided slaughter.

There is a reason why warships and merchant ships are built differently in the modern age. The days of converting merchantmen into competitive warships ended in the age of sail. Since then, each has become too specialised to operate effectively as the other except in exceptional circumstances.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Paul Lakowski]

Sid and I will never agree on these issues so we will have to let that one go by....But for the record the figures about how many Italian ships were captured by the germans was to give a yardstick as to what could very well have happened if seizing enemy shipping was policy from day one. Since we are speaking of a different prewar reamament policy what would follow, would not resemble what actually happened

With regards to British Armed Merchant Cruisers.The following site reports..

http://uboat.net/allies/warships/class. ... 5&navy=HMS

reportedly 51 merchant ships were converted into Armed Merchant Cruisers. Of these 80% [40/51] spent the first 2 years of the war as convoy escorts . When that role was taken over by suitable warship escorts, they had to find other roles for these ships. About 1/2 were returned and converted into troop transports and repair ships while one even was converted into escort carrier. The rest were sent to the southern hemisphere to patrol , something their design lent itself well too.

If these were deployed to counter Auxiliary Cruisers , there were 25 vs 5 in 1942/43. So for every Auxiliary Cruiser the Germans deployed, the Brits had to deploy 5? Sounds like a good deal, does that mean if the Germans deploy 50 Auxiliary Cruisers, the Brits would have to deploy 250 AMC.

The few AMC that actually encountered german Auxiliary Cruisers came off baddly in these encounters. Three were damaged, while the Germans escaped, but on one occasion an AMC sank a german armed replenishment ship. Reportedly 14 others were sunk during the war one by the twins and another by Scheer while Japanese planes sunk another. Most seem to have been sunk by Uboats.

As I said before of the 6 German Auxiliary Cruisers that were lost only one was by a merchant ship [American liberty ship], while the rest were sunk by warships.

[sid guttridge]

Hello Paul,

The fact that we may disagree doesn't mean that it is a toss up who is right.

As I pointed out above, most of the Italian merchant fleet had already been lost or otherwise been rendered hors de combat by the time the Germans seized what was left in September 1943. Nothing like 2/3 fell into German hands in a serviceable condition. Your source is simply wrong. (Get hold of Feldgrauer Enrico Cernuschi if you want full details).

Besides, what on earth could the Germans usefully have done with Italian vessels after September 1943, in a landlocked sea in which the enemy had total air and naval superiority?

The Germans may well have captured more Italian warships than defected to the Allies, but these included mostly light coastal craft, ships under repair or ships yet to be launched. Virtually the entire surviving seaworthy ocean going Italian fleet reached allied lines, leaving very little of value to the Germans.

Certainly one can quickly stick guns on merchant ships, but it only has any value if they can be effective. I am sure the Allies would have been delighted if the entire German merchant marine had put itself in harm's way in such a foolhardy fashion by putting into the open ocean where it could be sunk in a one-sided slaughter.

There is a reason why warships and merchant ships are built differently in the modern age. The days of converting merchantmen into competitive warships ended in the age of sail. Since then, each has become too specialised to operate effectively as the other except in exceptional circumstances.

No. The high ratio of perhaps 5:1 only applies if a few raiders are employed. The more raiders that are employed, the easier they are to find and so the lower ratio of hunters need to be used. Besides, what use would 50 raiders have been in the obscure waters they could survive in? Even those few actually employed there could go up to a year without sinking anything!

As I have already pointed out, the German raiders were better armed than the British AMCs, yet in the encounters you mentioned, the Germans "escaped". You must ask yourself why better armed German raiders found it necessary to "escape" from AMCs. Surely this proves the AMCs were an effective deterent?

The AMCs were gradually converted to other uses because by mid war their job was done - German raiders were by then a declining threat.

At the end of the day you have to ask yourself why the specialist warship existed if all that needed to be done was stick a few guns on merchant ships?

In fact you answer this yourself when you write ".....of the 6 German Auxiliary Cruisers that were lost only one was by a merchant ship [American liberty ship], while the rest were sunk by warships." Except under exceptional circumstances involving surprise and/or incompetence, armed merchantmen were simply not competitive with specialsied warships.

Certainly one can quickly stick guns on merchant ships, but it only has any value if they can be effective. I am sure the Allies would have been delighted if the entire German merchant marine had put itself in harm's way in such a foolhardy fashion by putting into the open ocean where it could be sunk in a one-sided slaughter.

PJ

[Enrico Cernuschi]

Hello Sid.

you are, of course, right about PL's argouments. No merchant ship was a match for a men.of.war; the German auxiliary cruisers were, by 1943, only a remote menace in the Indian Ocean and they needed, above all, a lot of first class cadres and personnell. It was simply impossibile to man more than three-four of such vessels at the same time. Men fight, not ships.

Let me add, anyway some further considerations.

The Italian Navy did not "defect" to the Allies. She obeyed her legitimate government and sailed for an Italian base (La Maddalena) not under Anglosaxon control or remained in her harbours, like Taranto. Thing changed the German attacks on 9 Sept. morning against La Maddalena and in ther places.
As the following Italian Fascist Republic government was born after these facts it's clear the verb defect is not a logic one.

The Italian ships, then, were not "captured" by the Allies. The British boarding parties were sent only on the V Division ships (five at all) on 10 Sept. afternoon at Malta, but were stopped in the deck without allowing them to do anything against the weapons, the scuttling charges ect. The remained frozen on the deck untiul they were retired the next day, at sunset, by Adm. A.B. Cunningham's initiative as a good will gesture to Adm. Da Zara who appreciated, of course, such an act.
The situation remained pending until 23 Sept. 1943 when the De Courten-Cunnigham agreement formalized the Italian naval collaboration with the Allies even before the following Italian declaration of war against Germany on 13 Oct. 1943.

The datas about the Italian tonnage situation are someway different from your picture.

On 10 June 1940 Italy had, in the Med.. 2.305.004 GWT (included 203.512 German ones).
On 8 Sept. 1943 there was in the Med. an Axis total of 2.124.553 GWT with further 400.000 ones damaged in the yards.

About 4/5 of these merchant ships remained in German hands (mostly with Italian crews) and were more than enough to grant traffic until Autumn 1944 and, later, in the quite smaller sectors still available in the Ligurian and Adriatic Sea until the end of the conflict.

About the former Italian warships used by the Kriegsmarine after the 8 Sept. 1943 armistice is clear that the source quoted by PL is rubbish.

The German Navy could use (not considering MTBs) a big total of 5 Destoryers, 27 Torpedo Boats and 14 corvettes, about all found in the yards during repair or refitting or completed in 1943-1945.

Bye

EC

About

[sid guttridge]

Hi Enrico,

Sorry. I mistakenly used "defect" as a shorthand to avoid going into a detailed explanation as to the Armistice conditions.

Your figures for the Italian Merchant fleet seem to refer only to the Mediterranean. Hundreds of thousands of tons of Italian shipping was trapped outside the Mediterranean. In addition, you are probably also including the ±600,000t of Vichy French shipping that the Italians took over in 1943.

Sid (in a hurry).

[Enrico Cernuschi]

Hello Sid,

as a matter of fact I wrote "in the Med." as that was the only place where Italian shipping could have a strategic influence on Axis operations.

The blockade runnuer activity was a brilliant effort, but had no real strategic effect. about 150.000 tons (the italian freighters and submarines carried little less than 50% of the big total from Europe to Asia, America and viceversa faced the 260 millions ferried by the the only USA merchant marine since 1942 until 1945.

However Italy had, on 10 Jue 1940, beyond Gibraltar, Suez and the Dardanelles, 1.209.000 GWT (quite a natural per cent for a 3,4 millions GWT fleet who, toi allow the coultry to live, had as a rule a third at sea sailing for its destinations, a third coming back and a third in the harbour charghing, discharging, refitting and repairing.

The usual idea Italy would have to call back her freighters through the world in time before the declaration of war is a ridiculous one. Some ships were off Australia, others were in Canada, South America, China ect. How would be possible to recover them with the British and French naval blockade waiting quietely at Gib. and Suez is beyond any imagination. And how tre hell Italy industries and economy would have survived with a two or three months stopping of the flew in and out is an other mistery.
Armchair strategist (unfortunatly their name is legion, among historians too).

From the a.m. total of 1,2 millions of GWT, anyway, 34.000 were recovered from the Black Sea in 1941; 200.000 were used beyond the Med. as blockade runners and for Axis traffic along the French, Belgia, Dutch abd German coasts; 200.000 were seized by Britain (most of them yet since March 1940) and 240.000 by USA.

Bye

EC

[Andy H]

I understand that the upcoming issue of Warship will have an account of the Baden firing trials. I am very excited about it. These trials showed very clearly what the new AP ammo could do to the old-style armor scheme, even in the famously rugged German ships. My favorite example was a 15in hit to the upper belt. The shell went on its way and did its dirty work in the funnel uptakes. But at the same time, a chunk of the upper belt itself went shooting in a straight line across the entire width of the ship and stopped only after it had pounded a dent into the upper belt on the opposite side of the ship. In so doing, it went through two splinter bulkheads and destroyed all watertight boundaries in its path.

Yes the latest annual does indeed include an article about the Baden by William Schleihauf.

In addition to the shell firings it also includes the information regarding the Bomb trials against it. All very fascinating

Regards

[Tiornu]

And that photo gallery on Soviet cruisers--simply brilliant, don't you think?