My point is solely that carriers have a far greater range than battleships. I apologize if you took that the wrong way.
Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, and Graf Spee
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My point is solely that carriers have a far greater range than battleships. I apologize if you took that the wrong way.
So I ask you, what sane admiral would task a CTF to convoy escort? That's not their purpose. CVE's were deployed because they were an excellent counter to submarines by allowing for the air umbrella to be continuous, but they didn't sail in close formation with convoys. Also, yes you flee with your CTF and let the convoy die. In response your air wing then comes back and ruins the BB's day. No one would make that trade willingly. Trapping a BB or Heavy cruiser far from port while raiding convoy's is an ideal way to removing capital ships from your enemy.
To your 'perfect' observation you point to an instance of Incompetence and shout ah ha! Hoping your enemy is dumb as a brick isn't a good reason to build BBs. Further more, and this is much more damming, RADAR was introduced in WWII eliminating the potential of a legitimate surprise attack. Remember your screens with RADAR should be picketed around the Carriers so that they will pick up other Surface Ships before they can 'see' the Carriers with their own RADAR and plot a firing solution. Against air craft the picket is brought in to tighten up the AA umbrella.
So I'm still going to disagree with you. Outside of dumb decisions BB's are never more effective than a CV. You also have to accept that in really heavy sea's a BB can shadow a fleet but won't be able to effectively engage given the pitching and rolling throwing off the firing solution. In very sever weather (hurricane+) they like all ships will just try to survive and be scattered from their foe. By the mid 40's RADAR had made it into planes and totally rendered BB's redundant.
The Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst should definitely be in the 1939 bookmark, both were capable of sailing in September 1939. The Scharnhorst apparently went back to the docks until November to fix some problems, but that's close enough.
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Why do you think lighter ships would be faster than a CV? They are all displacement hull designs and as such their speed is limited by their hull length. CV's would do 33-34 knts easily while everything else tended to limit out around 32-33 knts.
I mean the big CVN's can do 45-46 kts. The argument about power limitations basically went away with the introduction of steam turbines to ships which is why you could build fast BB's in the first place. They are the only other ship of the war that can keep up or catch a CV.
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200 miles is just 5hrs sailing, at a combined speed of 40 knots - two fleets unknowingly approaching each other at night.
Remember, WWII carriers don't do flight operations in the dark.
Oh aye - it's just whether there'll be a way to do it without making it a fiddly micro nightmare (ie, manually having to return each of 200 destroyers to the build queue any time there's an AA upgrade....) If there's no way to add cost without making it a fiddly micro nightmare, than I'd personally err on the side of making it free (or maybe having a one-off event or something - but with no resources stockpiled those kind of things become trickier than in HoI3)
If Yamato and friends hadn't have turned away off Samar, I reckon our discussions on the late-war benefits of BBs would be very different
. CVs were definitely less useful than BBs at night off Guadalcanal as well. I'd argue they have their role throughout the game, but that our historical examples aren't as useful as they could be because the balance of naval power in WW2 was so one-sided, combined with a bit of luck on the part of the USA. I wonder how the Pacific war would have played out if the CVs and not the BBs had been taken out in the Pearl Harbour raid?
Come on man...you're saying that a battleship will defeat a carrier if it accidentally finds it in the middle of the ocean at night time. I don't disagree with you, but what are the odds of that happening?
@Axe99
I wholeheartedly agree there cannot be any micro in the solution.
As to the reference about Samara, it just proves the point that BBs were hopelessly out classed by CVs!?!
You have an optimal situation for the SAG with 4 BBs + 6 CA, 2 CL and 11DD litterly stumbling upon a force of 6 CVEs and 3 destroyers. The CTF didn't even have a proper load out for a naval combat engagement (having few torpedoes) since it was on ground pounder duty.
This is the absolute best match up you could ever ask for FFS. The CVEs were slower than the SAG so the only way they could escape was if the 3 destroyers and attendant air craft could hold up the SAG long enough.
Even after all that, without enough ordnance for the air craft the Japanese managed to only sink 2 CVE and 2 DD. Sure the other American ships were damaged, but the Japanese lost 3 heavy cruisers of their own and were forced to withdraw. What should have been a straight up slaughter was at best a draw.
@bcoop1701
CVN declassified speed is 35+ knts, but as they aren't power limited (see nuclear reactor on board) their hull length gives them a max speed of 44-47 knts. It's very simple hydrodynamics.
Destroyers can sprint because of their planing hull design at higher speeds as you said, but that's only good for a few hours. I think the fuel burn goes up by something like a factor of 5 from your optimal displacement speed.
I wholeheartedly agree there cannot be any micro in the solution.
As to the reference about Samara, it just proves the point that BBs were hopelessly out classed by CVs!?!
You have an optimal situation for the SAG with 4 BBs + 6 CA, 2 CL and 11DD litterly stumbling upon a force of 6 CVEs and 3 destroyers. The CTF didn't even have a proper load out for a naval combat engagement (having few torpedoes) since it was on ground pounder duty.
This is the absolute best match up you could ever ask for FFS. The CVEs were slower than the SAG so the only way they could escape was if the 3 destroyers and attendant air craft could hold up the SAG long enough.
Even after all that, without enough ordnance for the air craft the Japanese managed to only sink 2 CVE and 2 DD. Sure the other American ships were damaged, but the Japanese lost 3 heavy cruisers of their own and were forced to withdraw. What should have been a straight up slaughter was at best a draw.
@bcoop1701
CVN declassified speed is 35+ knts, but as they aren't power limited (see nuclear reactor on board) their hull length gives them a max speed of 44-47 knts. It's very simple hydrodynamics.
Destroyers can sprint because of their planing hull design at higher speeds as you said, but that's only good for a few hours. I think the fuel burn goes up by something like a factor of 5 from your optimal displacement speed.
I wouldn't say that - the Japanese shouldn't have turned away, and absolutely didn't turn away due to tactical considerations, but rather because they thought the main US battlegroup was a lot closer than it was. They were also tactically inept during the encounter, not forming a proper battle-line - for a navy that had prided itself on its battleships, it was a very poor showing, but I wouldn't blame the ships for it, but rather the tactics/commanders.
As a counterpoint, imagine if the IJN had proper air cover, so that the Musashi wasn't lost on the way in, and the US CAGs couldn't necessarily smash those ships before they got to the beachhead (a perfectly plausible hypothetical for HoI4) - what's going to stop them then, if the US doesn't have BBs of its own? Ie, if the US doesn't have a BB counter in that situation, the landing fails, and hard, and a lot of ships get sunk in the process.
You also didn't mention Guadalcanal
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If this is a task that carriers cannot do then other ships are needed to do it - such as battleships. That is the point I am making.
I specifically flagged that that ship was lost in part due to incompetence, so it's not much of a rebuttal to repeat that. Although that specific circumstance might be a one-off, it is illustrative of a more general problem. In conditions where carriers would be lost to sudden attack even when being handled correctly they tended not to be lost for the simple reason that they were never deployed in that way. The British didn't send a carrier to fight at North Cape nor did they send unescorted carriers into the Mediterranean in support of convoys. The inability of carriers to perform these tasks meant that other ships were needed to perform them.
The progressive introduction of radar (which wasn't common in 1939) did change things, and today radar carried by aircraft make carriers capable of the full range of missions. But radar doesn't help if the picket is out of position. It doesn't help if the radar on the key ship has broken down (which happened all the time and still does). It doesn't help if weather conditions mean your planes simply can't take off. Or if weather and night mean that carrier planes simply can't find or attack the enemy themselves.
I don't have to accept that because the Battle of the North Cape is a living counter-example. A well-handled carrier would have been less effective at North Cape than a poorly handled battleship.
This, higher performance aircraft, and larger carriers greatly alleviated many of the problems carriers faced. But not all countries had the luxury of being able to wait until almost the end of the war to start fighting! Especially Britain did not have a choice to simply ignore the North Sea and Arctic regions, or the Mediterranean regions; these were the British navy's key theatres until 1943.
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So I certainly don't disagree that a BB at close range (<20km) is going to absolutely ruin a CV. The point is it's bloody impossible to get without a mistake.
Even a shore landing situation no admiral worth their salt will take the CTF in to the beach. The air umbrella will certainly extend there, but the CTF stands off while the LCIs and shore bombardment ships head for the beach. So no the naval landing doesn't fail, the enemy SAG is too busy fighting off the enemy air attack.
And you cannot separate ships from their crew. Battle of Jutland could have gone so differently because of ship differences, but it didn't. Crew matters, and when you just had your SAG smashed by 400 planes, lost 3 CAs and have little to no situational awareness since your aircraft are all gone then of course you withdraw. No sane admiral would gamble that SAG to chase a few lame CVEs if it meant risking your capital ships.
If the IJN had proper air cover they'd be operating a CTF, and then what are you trying to argue? That a CTF supporting a SAG in close action against an enemy CTF without screens gives the attacking Admiral a hard on? Of course he's gonna need a change of pants after watching 16" shells gut an enemy CV/CVE.
But again that just never happened. The only close action engagements between big guns and CVs was due to a massive mistake handling the CVs.
Sorry, I don't know about Guadalcanal in detail to know what you're referencing specifically. Let me go read about it.
Even a shore landing situation no admiral worth their salt will take the CTF in to the beach. The air umbrella will certainly extend there, but the CTF stands off while the LCIs and shore bombardment ships head for the beach. So no the naval landing doesn't fail, the enemy SAG is too busy fighting off the enemy air attack.
And you cannot separate ships from their crew. Battle of Jutland could have gone so differently because of ship differences, but it didn't. Crew matters, and when you just had your SAG smashed by 400 planes, lost 3 CAs and have little to no situational awareness since your aircraft are all gone then of course you withdraw. No sane admiral would gamble that SAG to chase a few lame CVEs if it meant risking your capital ships.
If the IJN had proper air cover they'd be operating a CTF, and then what are you trying to argue? That a CTF supporting a SAG in close action against an enemy CTF without screens gives the attacking Admiral a hard on? Of course he's gonna need a change of pants after watching 16" shells gut an enemy CV/CVE.
But again that just never happened. The only close action engagements between big guns and CVs was due to a massive mistake handling the CVs.
Sorry, I don't know about Guadalcanal in detail to know what you're referencing specifically. Let me go read about it.
Apologies, when I said escort, I meant close escort, CTF work better than SAG as ocean escort, so it doesn't situationally change the value proposition of CVs vs BBs.
So besides bad weather hampering flight ops your only chance of a BB killing a CV is a combination of luck by the SAG and incompetence by the CTF.
The battle of north cape doesn't prove that BBs can kill CVs, but that lone BBs are vulnerable.
The thing that did in the Scharnhorst was the cruisers killing it's radar. Next for some unknown reason while blind and against superior enemy numbers Scharnhorst choose to close with the enemy after having made good it's escape. A CTF would just tuck tail and run, they would never engage in a surface action.
Also, where's this crazy idea of sending unescorted carries anywhere coming from? No one would send an unescorted carrier to the mouth of the harbour let alone into potential combat. BBs are designed as self contained fighting platforms. CVs are designed as the lynch pin of a power projection fleet. They always need DDs and CLs with them to fulfill the complete fleet role.
So carriers were used everywhere in the conflict, from NA to the Pacific, whenever available since they provided striking power that was capable of crippling or sinking capital ships, and were much better at escorting convoys against sub attacks given their superior response time and wider coverage area.
The Brits happen to have lots of BBs, so of course they got used. Furthermore neither the Germans nor Italians had the CTF (or even SAG) to even threaten the RNs surface ships. Thus the RNs BBs could operate with relative impunity.
Please note that I am not discussing death matches between individual capital ships. This was very unusual in the European theatre in WWII, where ships were instead deployed mostly to secure or disrupt supply lines. It does not matter that a carrier would have been able to escape a battleship in a North Cape scenario; what matters is that the carrier would not have been able to achieve anything useful while there. The purpose of deploying Scharnhorst was not to sink Duke of York, it was to destroy a British convoy to the USSR; the purpose of deploying Duke of York was not primarily to sink Scharnhorst, it was to protect that convoy and allow it to reach its destination.
If the British had deployed a carrier, the Germans would not have pursued the carrier when it ran, and the carrier would likely not have been destroyed. Instead they would simply have proceeded to sink the now-undefended convoy. If the Germans had deployed a carrier, they would not have been able to sink the convoy pretty much regardless of the British response. A ship that can preserve itself by running away while conceding all its strategic objectives is not useful.
What you are saying makes a lot of sense when applied to the US and Japan in the Pacific. In that theatre there was a lot of space to manoeuvre. Ships could easily concede hundreds or perhaps thousands of kilometers without conceding control of anything of strategic significance. Such manoeuvres could be conducted purely to preserve ships or try to get into a position to launch a strong attack in future. In the European theatres conceding even tens of kilometers could be of strategic significance. Hundreds could mean conceding e.g. the entire English East coast - with potentially disastrous consequences. If you simply cannot give ground then you have to be able to fight in any conditions. In WWII, there were many conditions in which battleships could fight much more effectively than carriers. Again, these conditions were rare for the US and Japan in the Pacific theatre; they weren't rare in the European theatres.
If the British had deployed a carrier, the Germans would not have pursued the carrier when it ran, and the carrier would likely not have been destroyed. Instead they would simply have proceeded to sink the now-undefended convoy. If the Germans had deployed a carrier, they would not have been able to sink the convoy pretty much regardless of the British response. A ship that can preserve itself by running away while conceding all its strategic objectives is not useful.
What you are saying makes a lot of sense when applied to the US and Japan in the Pacific. In that theatre there was a lot of space to manoeuvre. Ships could easily concede hundreds or perhaps thousands of kilometers without conceding control of anything of strategic significance. Such manoeuvres could be conducted purely to preserve ships or try to get into a position to launch a strong attack in future. In the European theatres conceding even tens of kilometers could be of strategic significance. Hundreds could mean conceding e.g. the entire English East coast - with potentially disastrous consequences. If you simply cannot give ground then you have to be able to fight in any conditions. In WWII, there were many conditions in which battleships could fight much more effectively than carriers. Again, these conditions were rare for the US and Japan in the Pacific theatre; they weren't rare in the European theatres.
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But the British SAG was specifically deployed to end the Scharnhorst and the threat it posed. They used the convoy as bait.
No one hunted convoys with BBs or BCs on purpose, it just happened to be all they were good for in the Atlantic. The Scharnhorst got into trouble because it sent it's escorts away to find the convoy. A CV doesn't have to do that. It seems out a few air craft.
In no way would BBs and a SAG be better than a CTF. For most of the war nations didn't have enough proper fleet CVs, but they had BBs and BCs so they got used. If the weather is bad today, you wait and fight tomorrow. What's it matter if you sink your target on day 2 or day 5 of a 6 day journey?
A secondary British objective was to sink Scharnhorst so that she couldn't threaten future convoys - but keeping Scharnhorst at arm's length without sinking her would still have been a victory for the British.
This is not correct. The British convoys to the USSR were in range of land-based aircraft. The relative ineffectiveness of aircraft against them was the primary reason these convoys were even possible. At least during Winter: the British stopped running Summer convoys in 1942 and 1943 after the PQ17 disaster. A German carrier would have been even more constrained in its operation than German land-based aircraft.
First, you are overestimating how many good days were actually available, given the weather conditions in the Arctic for a a convoy that would be at sea only for about a week and of that out of range of UK and USSR land based air only two or three days.
Second, it matters a lot if those five days are not five days of stationary invulnerability but five days of running from threatening forces in a confined area. In five days a ship making 30 knots will cover 4,000 miles. That puts your carriers somewhere in the middle of Africa. Realistically running means returning to port and not being able to leave again except under observation.
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You dont have to reach the carrier to force it away and that can be enough to continue your naval oprations or force away the enemy which can be a disaster during an amphibious assult.
Carriers are basically artillery while battleship is basically infantry, both important but for very different reasons.
Carriers are basically artillery while battleship is basically infantry, both important but for very different reasons.
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That's somewhat incorrect, at least for the era the game takes place -- if you look at WW2 carriers, none would exceed 33 knots (at least on American/British side, late war Japanese carriers could slightly exceed 34 knots). While this more or less matches the speed of light cruisers of that period, lighter ships like destroyers would regularly go faster, achieving typically 35-38 knots and in few cases more than that. As such I wouldn't dismiss the role of "light ship screen", at least not on the grounds of "carriers were faster than anything else".
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/popcorn time. Thank you CV's fanboys you are making me laugh quite alot.
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Radar made appearance quite late in WW2, and by no means should be an excuse to make CVs virtually immune in a game which takes place from 1936 onwards. Argue all you want, but there were combat ships not equipped with radar during WW2 which were sank as a result of this limitation, as well as poor decisions regarding deployment, escorts etc. This includes CVs. Which imo trumps the generalized "no commander worth their salt..." musing on how things would be in ideal circumstances. The thing it more than a few commanders weren't 'worth their salt', as their nations found out the hard way.
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We're talking about a sustained chase speed, not planning sprints. Do you understand fluid mechanics and how hull speed is limited by length in displacement mode? If not you should go look it up.
A longer hull will always be faster given that propulsive power is available to hit the max displacement speed.
Shorter hulled carriers in laid down early, or as CVEs are slower than most cruisers, but fleet carriers are typically the longest hull so the fastest.
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