Naval battle

[Big Nev]

...

Similarly, what about a potential situation where a fleet with limited carriers decides to focus its carrier forces on air superiority and then try and close with the carriers - so use its planes to defend as well as possible from the other carrier's aircraft, and then try and do damage with surface craft? It may be more effective to just try and use those limited planes to bomb the enemy fleet, but would it be possible for this tactic to achieve at least an expensive victory (say you had two fleets, one with fewer CV capacity and more heavy capital ships, and the other with more CVs but generally supported around a cruiser/destroyer screening force)?

Sorry, I completely missed this.

You raise a very significant point and I was wanting to at least try this in HoI IV.

Looking at the historical effectiveness of a handful of fighters in protecting a fleet against large numbers of bombers, especially torpedo bombers, I see this as a viable strategy.

Consider the Battle of Midway with historical set-up as the scenario. The number of aircraft on each side was about the same but this time, there's one notable exception.

Instead of ⅔ of the Japanese aircraft being a strike force, the IJN turns-up with ⅔ of their carrier-bourn aircraft as fighters and no torpedo bombers at all.

What I think would happen is this.

The Japanese strike at Midway. Using dive bombers screened by Zeros and take down many of the defenders as they did.

The USN strike at the Japanese CVs and, as historically, their first strikes get ripped to pieces by defending CAP. But this time it's even worse for the US aircraft because they are outnumbered by Japanese fighters and nothing gets through.

Instead of striking at the US carriers, because of their comparatively limited strike capability, the IJN, including the invasion fleet & its "supports" closes on Midway, daring the USN to stay within Zero range.

The USN, as historically, pulls back but their aircraft strike at the invasion fleet this time (slow transports = easy targets, invasion troops = priority target) and, once more, get ripped to shreds by vastly superior numbers of fighters. It would be even worse if they tried to hit the CVs due to the amount of AA they would have to get through after running the gauntlet of hundreds of zeros.

Yamato gets parked off Midway & creates a few more lagoons.

The SNLF supported by Ka-Mi toting a pair of type 93s each (for taking out bunkers & machine-gun nests :blink: ) wade through the surf virtually unopposed.


A battleship, any battleship, is a terrible thing to be on the wrong end of and, if it's protected by fighter cover & good screens, something like Yamato would be able to sail right up to Hawaii & sink Pearl Harbour.

 

[Midden]

Nah, battle ships are useless overuse of steel. They are actually the ones that turn and run if they think CV's are out there.

Is there anything in WW2 that a Battle ship did that cruiser couldn't have done? the only thing I can think of is Rodney clobbered a wounded Bismark. Battleships contribution really meagre.

US Fleet carriers have radar ... can spot SAG all weather and at night, (even if the spotter planes miss), have over 30 knots to get out of dodge, no way a SAG can run down undamaged Fleet CV.

Glorious had radar, I think not?

 

[Denkt]

Depends on what your navy is supposed to do, how good your aircrafts are compared to your enemies, enemy navy and many other things.

 

[Big Nev]

Nah, battle ships are useless overuse of steel. They are actually the ones that turn and run if they think CV's are out there.

Is there anything in WW2 that a Battle ship did that cruiser couldn't have done? the only thing I can think of is Rodney clobbered a wounded Bismark. Battleships contribution really meagre.

US Fleet carriers have radar ... can spot SAG all weather and at night, (even if the spotter planes miss), have over 30 knots to get out of dodge, no way a SAG can run down undamaged Fleet CV.

Glorious had radar, I think not?

Bombard Henderson Field or the Normandy coast up to ten miles inland and remove (as opposed to disable) fortifications.

Batter the Scharnhorst. (Duke of York after three heavy cruisers were “persuaded” to keep their distance)

Keep both battlecruisers Scharnhorst & Gneisenau away from convoys of merchant shipping just by being there. (Ramillies, Malaya)

Sink Kirishima. (Washington. Kirishima & her buddies had already battered & blinded South Dakota so cruisers would have been sunk)

Survive a battering from another battleship (South Dakota after being battered by Kirishima. Yeah, I know SD had electrical trouble but a cruiser, any cruiser would not have survived those circumstances)

Obliterate a squadron of heavy cruisers in a few minutes (Cape Matapan night action)

I’m sure I could go on if I thought about it for a while.


And you're right, Glorious didn't have RADAR fitted. She was lost very early in the war.

 

[Secret Master]

A battleship, any battleship, is a terrible thing to be on the wrong end of and, if it's protected by fighter cover & good screens, something like Yamato would be able to sail right up to Hawaii & sink Pearl Harbour.

I think you have a point. We're not talking about open sea engagements with 100% freedom to maneuver. We're talking about being obliged to defend a stationary geographic point. This does change the equation.

However, let me counter your scenario with a question. Let's say your IJN fleet parks off the coast of Midway and runs the invasion as you describe. What's to stop the USN carriers from switching to an interdiction approach and trying to cut Yamamoto's ships off from their support and supply and acting as a fleet in being to hamper any effective use of Midway as a base? If they think fighter coverage for the opposing fleet is too strong, they could just refuse to engage. With the island held by Japanese forces, the US carriers are no longer bound to defend a single location, and ironically have the freedom to maneuver they did not have before. They can still be supplied from Pearl Harbor, and the fleet itself wasn't lost.

Does taking Midway while an intact US fleet is still wandering around the area actually improve Japan's position substantially? And what can Japan's fleet do to stop the US fleet from doing anything if the Japanese fleet has plenty of fighters, but not a significant number of strike aircraft? They'll just end up pointless chasing the Americans around, won't they?

 

[Axe99]

Does taking Midway while an intact US fleet is still wandering around the area actually improve Japan's position substantially? And what can Japan's fleet do to stop the US fleet from doing anything if the Japanese fleet has plenty of fighters, but not a significant number of strike aircraft? They'll just end up pointless chasing the Americans around, won't they?

Riffing from where I was coming from earlier, if the Japanese have an advantage in BBs (which I don't think they had historically, although I'm not full bottle on this), then could they split up into 2/3 groups and try and pin a US carrier fleet between two groups? So use their CV's to ward off fighters, and the BBs to do the damage? One of the 'problems' we've got theorising with this is that, historically, there really haven't been many big fleet actions with CVs/BBs, so very small amounts of data to draw on even for understanding how the standard 'both fleets have a go at each other with their CV strike force' model works, let alone for alternatives (beyond knowing that capital ships without air cover are in a lot of trouble).

I'd say that CVs should be more powerful than BBs - quicker and cheaper to build aircraft, and to replace losses (as long as the CV doesn't go down), but what if mid-war a combatant finds themselves on the wrong end of the CV balance - does it make sense to load the CVs up with fighters to cover the BBs (particularly from a defensive perspective, where there are landings and the like that can be attacked - and possibly covered from ground-based air as well).

Just throwing thoughts around, by all means shoot me down like a flight of torpedo bombers at Midway .

 

[Director]

Battleships & battlecruisers typically carried 100-150 rounds per gun. That is, at most, two hours of continuous firing. TWO!

More usually, it would be only one.

And, even worse, after about four hours firing, you're looking at re-lining your barrels.

Exactly right, from what I know. Oldendorff's old battleships put paid to the Japanese force in Surigao Strait but had to limit their firing because they were low on ammunition after providing fire support for the ground forces. Battleship main gun shells weigh in at roughly a ton apiece - not something you casually transfer. But if the old BBs had stayed off the invasion beaches and met Kurita's force... the old US BB's versus Yamato and the rest of the Japanese battle line... that would have been a bell-ringer.

In the case of a Japanese occupation of Midway, I think Secret Master has it right. The US strategy would have been to interdict with submarines, observe with long-range aircraft and wait. The Japanese supply situation would have been far worse than it was at Guadalcanal or Attu and Kiska. Either a counter-invasion would have been launched or - more in keeping with later island-hopping strategy - the islands would have been bypassed and the troops as lost as if they had all been killed. Midway's only value to Japan was as a base for reconnaissance aircraft; it could not have functioned without supplies and could not have been supplied without risking the Imperial Navy over and over. Of course the Guadalcanal offensive might not have come off and the supply lines to Australia cut or imperiled - but ultimately Midway could not have been held by Japan for logistical reasons.

One thing that's been left out of this discussion is our 20/20 hindsight. Plenty of officers thought that aircraft and submarines had a role to play in a future naval war; few foresaw the eclipse of the battleships and the utter dominance of land-and-sea-based aircraft, or the effectiveness of American submarine warfare. We have access to the histories and we know, from evidence and analysis, what makes for 'correct' use of 'best' ships. We can assume that the game mechanics will probably reward tactics that we now know to be best. But the officers of the day were setting production priorities a decade or more in advance of when the ships and systems would be built, and were trying to correctly predict what would be needed without having any idea of how well the projected weapons would work. If nations were 'wasting' money on battleships and failing to build carriers and convoy escort ships, it was because their admirals were navigating complex treaties, fighting for money in a Depression-flattened world and building what they thought they needed - and what they could get - with sometimes eerie prescience and sometimes agonizing error. None of us would voluntarily choose the complex and fragile German high-pressure steam propulsion plants or the complex and failure-prone British quad turrets, or take the torpedos off of American cruisers and on and on. We know better; the officers of the time did not, and their ability to guide procurement was limited.

Nor does the game allow for the effect of a separate, centralized air force on a separate fleet air arm. This virtually destroyed the Royal Navy's ability to develop fleet carriers (likely also for Germany and Italy ), and could easily have been the case in Japan or the US had the politics gone a bit differently. Just one example of how a navy's power of decision can be limited by factors out of its control.

I think it is important to remember that no navy pre-WW2 committed to base its strength on carrier aircraft - and the only navies that did end up using carriers as their main striking force were the Japanese, who never stopped trying to deliver the main blow with the battle line, and the US, forced to use carriers because that was what they had left after Pearl Harbor. Even as it became apparent that carrier-based aircraft would dominate the oceans, every major naval power continued to build battleships (except Japan, who couldn't afford to build any once the war began). So in game terms it may be best to build nothing but carriers, AA cruisers, DDs and subs from 1936 on, but the real people doing the work at the time would never have done so - they didn't have our perfect hindsight.


Well, that's too much of letting my hobby-horse run away with me. I would like to see information on what percentage of aircraft-delivered munitions actually hit a sea-going target. For battleship guns, landing 3% to 5% of the shells fired on-target was considered good shooting (that means, for 100 shells fired getting 3 to 5 hits). I have a hunch that aircraft did better than that, but no hard data.

 

[Director]

Riffing from where I was coming from earlier, if the Japanese have an advantage in BBs (which I don't think they had historically, although I'm not full bottle on this), then could they split up into 2/3 groups and try and pin a US carrier fleet between two groups? So use their CV's to ward off fighters, and the BBs to do the damage? One of the 'problems' we've got theorising with this is that, historically, there really haven't been many big fleet actions with CVs/BBs, so very small amounts of data to draw on even for understanding how the standard 'both fleets have a go at each other with their CV strike force' model works, let alone for alternatives (beyond knowing that capital ships without air cover are in a lot of trouble).

The difference in theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference - but in practice there is. Any general or admiral will tell you that separate forces can only be co-ordinated with difficulty. Add in sketchy reconnaissance, information not passed along or garbled and the fact that forces are cruising around at 25 miles per hour or so (effective spotting distance from a sub maybe 5 miles, from a ship maybe 12 miles, from an aircraft maybe 30 miles - so if you lose contact an enemy force can get lost in a hurry) and it becomes very difficult to predict where the enemy is - and will be. Sometimes it's hard to know where your own people are.

If you want to take out carriers your best bet is to use fast, light forces and hit them in the dark. Of course that supposes you can find them and force them to engage, which is doubtful. Could it happen? Yes - but could you plan for it and cause it to happen? I don't see how. A carrier task force can spot and strike at ranges of 200-250 miles without much trouble. That's a long way to come without being spotted, and if they see you they will just open the range.

 

[Axe99]

The difference in theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference - but in practice there is. Any general or admiral will tell you that separate forces can only be co-ordinated with difficulty. Add in sketchy reconnaissance, information not passed along or garbled and the fact that forces are cruising around at 25 miles per hour or so (effective spotting distance from a sub maybe 5 miles, from a ship maybe 12 miles, from an aircraft maybe 30 miles - so if you lose contact an enemy force can get lost in a hurry) and it becomes very difficult to predict where the enemy is - and will be. Sometimes it's hard to know where your own people are.

If you want to take out carriers your best bet is to use fast, light forces and hit them in the dark. Of course that supposes you can find them and force them to engage, which is doubtful. Could it happen? Yes - but could you plan for it and cause it to happen? I don't see how. A carrier task force can spot and strike at ranges of 200-250 miles without much trouble. That's a long way to come without being spotted, and if they see you they will just open the range.

Aye, good call - I was just throwing ideas around, you sound like you know much more about this kind of thing than me (I'm more of a plane person, ironically, given I'm theorising uses for BBs!) Thanks for your thoughts .

 

[Smileyou]

was anything said about CAGs getting any benefit of RADAR mounted on BBs,CVs ?.. didn't notice it in hoi3, so
is radar modifier present in naval ops also?..

 

[Big Nev]

…
However, let me counter your scenario with a question. Let's say your IJN fleet parks off the coast of Midway and runs the invasion as you describe. What's to stop the USN carriers from switching to an interdiction approach and trying to cut Yamamoto's ships off from their support and supply and acting as a fleet in being to hamper any effective use of Midway as a base? If they think fighter coverage for the opposing fleet is too strong, they could just refuse to engage. With the island held by Japanese forces, the US carriers are no longer bound to defend a single location, and ironically have the freedom to maneuver they did not have before. They can still be supplied from Pearl Harbor, and the fleet itself wasn't lost.

Does taking Midway while an intact US fleet is still wandering around the area actually improve Japan's position substantially? And what can Japan's fleet do to stop the US fleet from doing anything if the Japanese fleet has plenty of fighters, but not a significant number of strike aircraft? They'll just end up pointless chasing the Americans around, won't they?

Personally, I think for the USN to expend their carrier fleet to “interdict” a sand bar with a hole in it that’s so small all you can base there is a few dozen aircraft and… maaayyybeee a couple of thousand men.

You couldn’t, realistically, even base a single submarine there. A stop-off to refuel, yeah, but that’s about all.

Japan could, possibly, have made better use of the lagoon as a base for some of their large flying boats (supplied by submarine?) but Midway would never be anything much more than a forward observation post, for either side. As such though, denying it to the enemy would be worthwhile.


I’m sure you’re not forgetting that the primary objective of the Battle of Midway was for Japan to draw the last US CVs in to battle & destroy them so… no, capture of Midway doesn’t actually help Japan much at all unless that primary objective is achieved which my scenario doesn’t even attempt.

In fact, as you point-out, it could well be counter-productive as the place would be just as untenable for Japan as it was for the USA.
What my scenario does achieve though, is to turn the USN CVs in to “toothless tigers”* by destroying their “veteran” strike capability. Which opens-up other possibilities.

With the four fleet carriers from Midway intact, Shokaku patched up, her (& her sister Zuikaku) replenished with pilots and the CV's brought back from the Aleutians, the IJN would have eight carriers to fill with fighters & a sand-bar-with-a-hole-in-it full of replenishments. This force could be used to escort an invasion fleet on an attack of Hawaii.

The Yamatos would lead the blockade against any possible intervention by a US SAG. The North Carolinas & South Dakotas would have been no match for these monsters twice their weight as again, the game is changed by stationary geography.

A pipe-dream for an historic Japan? Probably. But the question posed by Axe99 is, will this work in HoI IV?

I think it should be a viable strategy.





*Like Shokaku & Zuikaku which didn’t take part in Midway due to damage & lack of flight crews.

was anything said about CAGs getting any benefit of RADAR mounted on BBs,CVs ?.. didn't notice it in hoi3, so
is radar modifier present in naval ops also?..

I don't think so, no. It would be highly appropriate though. Radar direction of the CAP resulted in the first waves of USN aircraft to be so decisively countered. It was just bad luck for the Japanese that the dive-bombers turned-up while the CAP was out of position having splashed the torpedo planes.

RADAR & doctrines to research to improve fighter direction should be just as important to a CTF as it was for Britain in the Summer of 1940.


IMHO

 

[Secret Master]

I’m sure you’re not forgetting that the primary objective of the Battle of Midway was for Japan to draw the last US CVs in to battle & destroy them so… no, capture of Midway doesn’t actually help Japan much at all unless that primary objective is achieved which my scenario doesn’t even attempt.

Well, the scenario you postulate doesn't really kill the CVs, though. It just kills their strike capability, as you point out...

In fact, as you point-out, it could well be counter-productive as the place would be just as untenable for Japan as it was for the USA.
What my scenario does achieve though, is to turn the USN CVs in to “toothless tigers”* by destroying their “veteran” strike capability. Which opens-up other possibilities.

But the carriers aren't dead. The likelihood that they can be sunk in this way is tiny. The US can afford to lose pilots and planes. The carriers might be toothless tigers, but those planes and pilots can be replaced sooner than dead carriers. The US lost over half their planes historically anyway. I'm not sure killing the rest of the planes and pilots leaves Japan that much better than they were before the battle starts.

I mean, I know the US could also have afforded to lose all carriers at Midway, but making good on those losses would have taken longer.

With the four fleet carriers from Midway intact, Shokaku patched up, her (& her sister Zuikaku) replenished with pilots and the CV's brought back from the Aleutians, the IJN would have eight carriers to fill with fighters & a sand-bar-with-a-hole-in-it full of replenishments. This force could be used to escort an invasion fleet on an attack of Hawaii.

But now you are facing the USN at its home anchorage, complete with much more substantial land based air coverage (which you better believe would be there after Midway falls). Sure, you have eight carriers with wings on them ready to go, but I'm not entirely sure you can count on Midway being a good place to put replacement aircraft or pilots as the carriers lose strength in an extended campaign. (Related note: I'm not sure Japan can replace her aircraft losses substantially in such a scenario anyway, unless they spend a year building up, which gives the US a year to fortify Hawaii, which is what will happen.) It still looks ugly to me. But you raise an interesting point here:

The Yamatos would lead the blockade against any possible intervention by a US SAG. The North Carolinas & South Dakotas would have been no match for these monsters twice their weight as again, the game is changed by stationary geography.

A pipe-dream for an historic Japan? Probably. But the question posed by Axe99 is, will this work in HoI IV?

I think it should be a viable strategy.

To put it in different terms, you want to use carrier air coverage over battleships to give Japan the chance to fight an actual Mahan-style decisive naval battle with capital ships. And I think you are right that if you force such a battle between Yamato/Mushashi and the US Pacific Fleet, it will go bad for those Dakotas and Carolinas. But Mushashi was still getting fitted out in September of 42, and needed time until early 43 to be ready for any serious combat action.

The longer you wait on Mushashi, the more time the Americans have to dig into Hawaii with planes, AA guns, and probably a decent number of submarines. And wouldn't you feel silly if Yamato took a torpedo in its rudder or screws while invading Hawaii? The IJN wasn't known for its meticulous ASW, was it?

 

[Midden]

He he, you Battleship guys have a romantic notion of them.

The battleships need such special care... overwhelming air superiority. Then they have to get passed the destroyer / submarine screens of torpedo's, which in my reading of naval engagements seem to have wrecked the battleships fun far more than there contribution of broadsides to the war effort.

Leaving CV and air out of the equation it seems to me, more destroyers and cruisers is better bang for your $ than battleships.

 

[Axe99]

He he, you Battleship guys have a romantic notion of them.

The battleships need such special care... overwhelming air superiority. Then they have to get passed the destroyer / submarine screens of torpedo's, which in my reading of naval engagements seem to have wrecked the battleships fun far more than there contribution of broadsides to the war effort.

Leaving CV and air out of the equation it seems to me, more destroyers and cruisers is better bang for your $ than battleships.

I think (and the naval guys can correct me if wrong - I'm no expert) that if there was no air power available to either side (WW1 DLC perhaps? ), then the problem you've got if one fleet doesn't have BBs, and the other does, is that the cruisers that can protect the destroyer screens can be flattened by the BBs (often from outside the range of the cruisers) - so a fleet with destroyers/cruises/BBs would be at a tactical advantage to a fleet of lots of destroyers and lots of cruisers (as long as everyone had similar spotting/radar/fire control).

 

[Secret Master]

The catch with cruisers versus battleships (assuming same tech and RADAR, but no air coverage) is that the battleships have the capability to demolish the cruisers, while the cruisers have a hard time penetrating battleship armor to hit vital areas. The cruisers can remove antenna, smaller guns, RADAR, masts, and whatnot, but they have a hard time silencing the battleship's guns. The Battle of Cape Matapan demonstrates cruisers versus battleships well in a night action: the Italians lacked RADAR, so the battleships got within optimal range to fire. It took three minutes to sink the cruisers and destroyers. Even if the cruisers could have returned fire, they wouldn't have had a chance to inflict serious damage on their adversaries. The engagement with Bismark bears this out; Hood was sunk by Bismark, but lasted much longer than any CA would have lasted in such a fight. And this doesn't even address Yamato and Mushashi.

But...

The engagement with Bismark, as with several other engagements, demonstrates that even battleships can be crippled with one lousy torpedo if it hits the right place. This lends credence to those who argue that long before WWII, the battleship was already obsolete. If a ship as valuable as Bismark could be rendered combat ineffective by a lucky shot like that, it raises the question of whether the dreadnought race of the early 20th Century was worthwhile, or whether it took two World Wars before everyone figured out that submarines, light cruisers, and carriers were the wave of the future. Perhaps Mahan was wrong after all, even in 1900.

I don't have an academic opinion either way (I am not knowledgeable enough to make a determination), but it's a question worth pondering.

 

[Peekee]

He he, you Battleship guys have a romantic notion of them.

The battleships need such special care... overwhelming air superiority. Then they have to get passed the destroyer / submarine screens of torpedo's, which in my reading of naval engagements seem to have wrecked the battleships fun far more than there contribution of broadsides to the war effort.

Leaving CV and air out of the equation it seems to me, more destroyers and cruisers is better bang for your $ than battleships.

Effective range of BB guns >>> effective range of torpedoes. So BB vs massed DD is likely going to end up with dead DD before they can do anything. Its not impossible some would get close enough to fire torps but it would be pretty nasty.

Subs might get closer or even get closer without being spotted at all. But that is really separate from fleet vs fleet combat. In fleet combat then then the subs need to get through the DD screen. Which although not impossible again is far from easy.

 

[Axe99]

The catch with cruisers versus battleships (assuming same tech and RADAR, but no air coverage) is that the battleships have the capability to demolish the cruisers, while the cruisers have a hard time penetrating battleship armor to hit vital areas. The cruisers can remove antenna, smaller guns, RADAR, masts, and whatnot, but they have a hard time silencing the battleship's guns. The Battle of Cape Matapan demonstrates cruisers versus battleships well in a night action: the Italians lacked RADAR, so the battleships got within optimal range to fire. It took three minutes to sink the cruisers and destroyers. Even if the cruisers could have returned fire, they wouldn't have had a chance to inflict serious damage on their adversaries. The engagement with Bismark bears this out; Hood was sunk by Bismark, but lasted much longer than any CA would have lasted in such a fight. And this doesn't even address Yamato and Mushashi.

But...

The engagement with Bismark, as with several other engagements, demonstrates that even battleships can be crippled with one lousy torpedo if it hits the right place. This lends credence to those who argue that long before WWII, the battleship was already obsolete. If a ship as valuable as Bismark could be rendered combat ineffective by a lucky shot like that, it raises the question of whether the dreadnought race of the early 20th Century was worthwhile, or whether it took two World Wars before everyone figured out that submarines, light cruisers, and carriers were the wave of the future. Perhaps Mahan was wrong after all, even in 1900.

I don't have an academic opinion either way (I am not knowledgeable enough to make a determination), but it's a question worth pondering.

We could set up a zany 'no aircraft' mod after HoI4's launched and find out (in game terms) .

 

[Secret Master]

We could set up a zany 'no aircraft' mod after HoI4's launched and find out (in game terms) .

I've run the tests in HOI3, and I can tell you that ultimately, CLs beat SHBBs and BBs when enough are brought to the fight.

Let's just say that 80 CLs versus 6 SHBBs plus 12 DD flotillas did not end well for the SHBBs. I have visions of the lookouts on Yamato seeing the wakes for 160 torpedoes heading towards the ship and, rather than warning the captain, instead composing a quick haiku on the futility of life before they impact.

 

[Director]

In regard to the effectiveness and power of the battleship, please realize that torpedos, naval attack planes on carriers, and submarines, were all developed to fight battleships - not each other. The fact that forty years of effort succeeded in deposing the battleship just points up the fact that every weapon loses superiority sooner or later (and they don't work on how to kill you if you're not dangerous). Combined arms became the key to victory at sea just as it did on land and in the air during WW2. A battleship is in roughly the same place at sea that a heavy tank occupies in a land battle (IMHO). Unsupported by aircraft, infantry and artillery they are dead metal; properly used and supported they can deliver crushing power. There are reasons why no major (or second-tier) naval power abandoned battleships for a purely cruiser-and-destroyer force, and romance is not one of them.

Secret Master, I'm sure that mobbing battleships with hordes of cruisers works in-game. In reality you couldn't make it work - constraints of time, space and speed control how many ships you can get into close action at one time. There's a reason that warships tended to fight in 'line-ahead' columns of ships (surface action, not anti-air defense) and reasons that they became severely disordered when dispersed (as the Japanese had a habit of doing with their DDs). In a game of table-top miniatures, in surface action and under most conditions, a balanced force built around a battle-line will win out over a cruiser horde.

Everything we have discussed changes in a night engagement. That's when you can get close enough for successful torpedo attacks, and get close enough for devastating surprise.

Battleships can indeed be disabled by a single fluke shot, rarely if ever sunk by one (even Hood was likely hit multiple times). They can also absorb incredible punishment and keep going, much more so than any other class of warship. Hiei and Kirishima, Yamato and Musashi, Bismarck and Scharnhorst, Prince of Wales (at Denmark Strait), South Dakota, Nevada, and others are examples. It's just that no ship is perfect or unsinkable if the conditions are right.

A wise admiral who has the resources will want it all: big guns, cruisers, destroyers, land-and-sea-based aircraft, mine layers and sweepers, submarines, the whole works. If the game doesn't reward combined arms tactics, then that's a failure of the game.

 

[Smileyou]

agree with @director.. in reality combined arms is the solution, those who have it will win hands down..

but on a different note about CV vs. SAG, even today in our modern times with incoming technology of rail-guns
and other laser/energy based weapons we might see the downfall of CV fleets and re-birth of massive BBs armed
with energy weapons..why? well, rail guns will be able theoretically to fire projectiles 400 miles away, and LOTS
of them, showering the whole enemy fleet with deadly piercing pellets of projectiles and doing it more cheaply
then firing cruise missiles and other much slower more expensive ordnance.. not to mention planes carrying those
missiles..

carriers will play a role, but i think carriers are slowly turning into BBs and BBs will be the new carriers, energy
platforms will require lots of well energy, only nuke reactors can provide it, which means BB kind of ships
will be the way to provide it with such energy, while CVs will lack that power as they will be loaded with planes
that will deliver the "old" ordnance-missiles that are much slower than the new energy based weapons that
will need to be launched from ships(that have the energy2do that)-BB.


so huraaa for the BBs, we might see the return of them in the future..