Would you say battleships had more effect on WW2 as a resource/money diversion?

[gagenater]

Well, it is always better to hit a pillbox directly than somewhere 100m apart

Believe it or not they are already more accurate than that with the electromechanical WWII vintage computers on them. Anything that requires a 16" (40cm) shell for a fire mission is very big or immobile and underground. In either case they are accurate enough. You don't waste munitions that useful and valuable tank plinking. You save them for headquarters areas, major infrastructure destruction, division mustering points, etc.

 

[bcoop1701]

With the benefit of hindsight, I think a case could be made that for the US the money and time spent designing and building the fast battleships was well spent. As was pointed out, in addition to their shore bombardment capabilities, the fast battleships were the best anti-aircraft platform in the pacific war. But the US is kind of a special case. They had the resources, shipyard capacity and manpower to build pretty much whatever they wanted. For the Japanese, I would argue that as much as I like the Yamato class, they were a crippling waste of resources and shipyard capacity. If I remember correctly, The Japanese only had 4 shipyards capable of building battleships/fleet carriers and the 4 Yamato class hulls took up 4 critical large slipways and a large amount of steel that could have been used to build more Shōkaku class or the follow on Taihō or Unryū class carriers. The Yamato battleships took about 4 years from keel laying to commissioning. The Shōkaku took 3 years and the Taihō and Unryū took about 2 to 2 1/2 years to put into service. Not all of that time takes place on a slipway but still, how much of a difference would another 3 or 4 Shōkaku class carriers have made in 1942? And it's even worse when you consider the operational history of Yamato and Musashi. I don't believe that they ever fired their main guns in anger at anything bigger than a CVE. Other Japanese crews nicknamed them hotels because of all the time they spent in port because they were fuel hogs. Again, this is all with the benefit of hindsight but it's fortunate for the US that the Japanese battleship admirals maintained their influence until after the start of the war.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

Silly Japanese, "Hotel" Yamato was hanging around in Truk when the battle for Guadalcanal raged. Could realy have made an impact there but nooooooo.

 

[th3freakie]

They must have had some sort of "in being" effect, though, no?

 

[Finnish Dragon]

Silly Japanese, "Hotel" Yamato was hanging around in Truk when the battle for Guadalcanal raged. Could realy have made an impact there but nooooooo.

I think fuel was the major factor why IJN didn´t send Yamato, Musashi and their escorts, couple of cruisers and a destroyer flotilla there:

http://www.combinedfleet.com/guadoil1.htm

If one of those attempts would burn around 5% of all fuel allocated to the IJN per month then it should have some kind of positive impact from the Japanese point of view.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

They must have had some sort of "in being" effect, though, no?

Not in Truk at this point of the war.

I think fuel was the major factor why IJN didn´t send Yamato, Musashi and their escorts, couple of cruisers and a destroyer flotilla there:

http://www.combinedfleet.com/guadoil1.htm

If one of those attempts would burn around 5% of all fuel allocated to the IJN per month then it should have some kind of positive impact from the Japanese point of view.

They burned helluvalot fuel at Guadalcanal and commissioned alot of ships. It is also not that far from Truk. The whole Japanese doctrine was tailored around a deceisive battle which they had there. No they didnt send the Yamato out of fear to lose it. Prestige and all that.

 

[Herbert West]

Not in Truk at this point of the war.

They burned helluvalot fuel at Guadalcanal and commissioned alot of ships. It is also not that far from Truk. The whole Japanese doctrine was tailored around a deceisive battle which they had there. No they didnt send the Yamato out of fear to lose it. Prestige and all that.

one more point against such oversized eggbaskets.

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

Not in Truk at this point of the war.

They burned helluvalot fuel at Guadalcanal and commissioned alot of ships. It is also not that far from Truk. The whole Japanese doctrine was tailored around a deceisive battle which they had there. No they didnt send the Yamato out of fear to lose it. Prestige and all that.

I believe the actual answer is that the Japanese Admiralty clung to the naval theory of the decisive engagement, where our big fleet meets your big fleet for a winner take all show-down, until the end. Yamato was held in reserve for this engagement, not realizing that flock of Essex class CV's under construction would render that engagement moot. In hindsight, they'd have rained those 18" shells all over Henderson Field on an regular basis; and the Cactus Airforce would have been much the worse for it.

 

[krieger11b]

It is for exactly this reason that all four of the Iowa class battleships are maintained in ready reserve status even though they are also officially museum ships. The USMC wants to have them available if they are ever needed for a massive amphibious invasion. there is quite simply nothing like them anymore. For example they are immune to all modern anti ship missiles - they have to much armor. All the discussions about bunker buster bombs and deep penetrator bombs are a moot point - none of them perform as well as the 16" AP projectiles at punching through steel and concrete. During their last active duty period in the 80's and 90's they were refitted with modern sleeping arrangements, radar and communications gear, nuclear armed cruise missiles, etc. Aside from their guns, the other thing that has kept them in service for so long are their engines. They are some of the few non nuclear powered capital ships able to keep up with modern aircraft carriers. A friend of mines dad served on the Missouri for a number of years and stated that during flight launching maneuvers in the mid 80's they kept up with the USS enterprise at 38-40 knots for the several hours it took for that evolution to be completed. That's impressive. Very few destroyers and almost no other ships are capable of doing that. Also interesting to note is that he mentioned that when it accelerated to top speed the Enterprise actually leaned backwards and threw a rooster tail like a speedboat - he had never seen anything like it. Newer carriers aren't that fast topping out at 34-36 knots - the Enterprise was the first nuclear powered carrier and (as it turned out) was massively overpowered.

I know a guy that was on the Enterprise and said the ship would start shaking near top speed, in fact I think he said they never did find out what the real top speed was because they thought it would tear the bow off.

 

[bcoop1701]

I believe the actual answer is that the Japanese Admiralty clung to the naval theory of the decisive engagement, where our big fleet meets your big fleet for a winner take all show-down, until the end. Yamato was held in reserve for this engagement, not realizing that flock of Essex class CV's under construction would render that engagement moot. In hindsight, they'd have rained those 18" shells all over Henderson Field on an regular basis; and the Cactus Airforce would have been much the worse for it.

I believe you and Finnish Dragon are both right. The Japanese High Command was slow to take Guadalcanal seriously and recognize it as a decisive campaign and when they did they were reluctant to commit Yamato because of her fuel consumption and the already worrisome status of Japan's fuel reserves.

 

[Delta107]

What I mean is that battleships had so little do contribute to WW2 in direct combat, that it's indirect effects were orders of magnitudes larger.

First lets talk about how it diverted other resources.
-They were incredibly expensive and used large amounts of steel that could have gone to other things, such as a lot more tanks, destroyers, submarines, etc. Most important would have been towards carriers.

- It's a also a good thing that the effort made for the Bimarck/Tirpitz and the Scharnhorst/Gneisenau were not put towards U-Boots. Yes the UK would have responded with more destroyers but lets face it, for the first couple years the ASW abilities of destroyers was quite lacking and I believe more U-Boots would have made a hell of a lot more difference even with more ASW to run against.

Then there is the more in direct effect of fleet in being.
-The Tirpitz in perticular tied up many times it's tonnage in Royal Navy ships being diverted to escort convoys in case the Tirpitz decided to show up. I have read this also slowed down the convoy system when they had to wait for a Battleship to arrive to protect against German surface raiders. Which the convoy system on it's own made delivery of their cargo have an overall 30% decrease in efficency compared to having them go out as soon as an individual ship leaving as soon as it's cargo was aboard. A needed thing don't get me wrong, just making a comparison from peace/wartime.

Aside from the occasional rare BB/BC to BB/BC combat, most of the direct action BB/BCs did was bombardment, which could have been handled by aircraft from carriers that might have otherwise been made in their place.

What are your thoughts, were they really worth the effort in the end? You could argue that it would not be a 1 to 1 ratio of battleship resources going to say U-Boots since there was a limitation of space at shipyards for example. Though it would be 1 to 1 with carriers.

I think that there were officers in the German marine who understood the value of submarines. But well, in the end it's a matter of politics. A Bismarck class looked more impressive on the photo. Hence looked good for Goebbels propaganda. Of course eventually they sacked Raeder, for all the good it did anyway. Too late.

 

[krieger11b]

I think that there were officers in the German marine who understood the value of submarines. But well, in the end it's a matter of politics. A Bismarck class looked more impressive on the photo. Hence looked good for Goebbels propaganda. Of course eventually they sacked Raeder, for all the good it did anyway. Too late.

That pretty much sums it up. Raeder was a surface fleet man and yes a Battleship is 20 times the propaganda value as a U-Boot.

Looking at wiki it seems not only did Raeders Plan Z doom Germany to an unrealistic naval shipbuilding plan but he also partly screwed it up in the years before WW1, here is a tidbit from wiki

During and after World War I, the German navy had been divided into two factions. One faction led by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz were avid followers of the teachings of the American historian Alfred Thayer Mahan and believed in building a "balanced fleet" centred around the battleship that would, if war came, seek out and win a decisive battle of annihilation (Entscheidungsschlacht) against the Royal Navy.[9] Another faction led by Commander Wolfgang Wegener argued that because of superior British shipbuilding capacity that Germany could never hope to build a "balanced fleet" capable of winning the Entscheidungsschlacht, and that as such, the best use of German naval strength was to build a fleet of cruisers and submarines that would wage a guerre de course .[10] After reading all three of Wegener's papers setting out his ideas, Admiral Hipper decided to submit them to the Admiralty in Berlin, but changed his mind after reading a paper by Raeder attacking the "Wegener thesis" as flawed.[11] This marked the beginning of a long feud between Raeder and Wegener with Wegener claiming that his former friend Raeder was jealous of what Wegener insisted were his superior ideas.[12]

 

[th3freakie]

I believe you and Finnish Dragon are both right. The Japanese High Command was slow to take Guadalcanal seriously and recognize it as a decisive campaign and when they did they were reluctant to commit Yamato because of her fuel consumption and the already worrisome status of Japan's fuel reserves.

In other words, Japan was playing war like most of us play video-games: holding your biggest spell/unit/potion for just the right moment... and then realizing that was 20 minutes ago.

 

[gagenater]

In other words, Japan was playing war like most of us play video-games: holding your biggest spell/unit/potion for just the right moment... and then realizing that was 20 minutes ago.

Bingo. They also realized that they had geared up to fight the wrong sort of opponent. The Japanese were waiting for the chance to fight the epic boss battle where victory would all come out in the end. They kept using up more and more resources trying to push the war towards that final epic battle and they suddenly realized that there wasn't going to BE an epic final battle - just that every single engagement would get more and more difficult until they couldn't fight back any more.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

Bingo. They also realized that they had geared up to fight the wrong sort of opponent. The Japanese were waiting for the chance to fight the epic boss battle where victory would all come out in the end. They kept using up more and more resources trying to push the war towards that final epic battle and they suddenly realized that there wasn't going to BE an epic final battle - just that every single engagement would get more and more difficult until they couldn't fight back any more.

Well at least they had a plan, unlike Germany. They main plan was to setup a perimeter, seek a deceisive battle and when that fails retreat on the home island and make any invasion attempt to costly.It didnt work but it wasnt a bad war plan for Japan. I mean not bad compared to their other blatant incompetent stuff.
The only flaw I see is that without Pearl Harbor the US fleet might have sailed to engage them at the PI at the start of the war. That battle was winable for them and in this case the US could not simply get their lost ships again like in PH.
Infact that might been a war winner since without the public outrage from PH and being now at war with Germany too the US migh thave negotiated at this point.

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

Well at least they had a plan, unlike Germany. They main plan was to setup a perimeter, seek a deceisive battle and when that fails retreat on the home island and make any invasion attempt to costly.It didnt work but it wasnt a bad war plan for Japan. I mean not bad compared to their other blatant incompetent stuff.
The only flaw I see is that without Pearl Harbor the US fleet might have sailed to engage them at the PI at the start of the war. That battle was winable for them and in this case the US could not simply get their lost ships again like in PH.
Infact that might been a war winner since without the public outrage from PH and being now at war with Germany too the US migh thave negotiated at this point.

It depends on how aggresively they would have moved against the English and Dutch colonies to recoup their oil losses due to the US embargo. The military and the government would have been willing to go to war, a large segment American people would have resented taking part in a foreign war. Of course, Pearl Harbor solved that problem, and Herr Hitler declaring war on the USA the following day made Churchill dance for joy in the street because he knew the war was all but won.

 

[pithorr]

Indeed. I still cannot understand the mad idea of PH trip. If they decided to poke the monster they should at least seize Hawaii altogether.

 

[yezhanquan]

Indeed. I still cannot understand the mad idea of PH trip. If they decided to poke the monster they should at least seize Hawaii altogether.

Apart from Yamamoto, there appears to be large scale racism and non-understanding among the Japanese leadership on how the US works. They sincerely believe that once PH goes down, the US will sue for peace without digging in.

 

[bcoop1701]

Indeed. I still cannot understand the mad idea of PH trip. If they decided to poke the monster they should at least seize Hawaii altogether.

They didn't really have the capability to invade the Hawaiian Islands. It was too far away to effectively resupply an invasion and occupation force. Really, Midway was probably too far as well considering how thin their merchant marine was but Midway was more for drawing out the US carriers and finally getting their decisive victory. The two biggest mistakes I believe Japan made in the attack on Pearl Harbor was:
1. They failed to destroy the oil storage farm, the drydocks, and the repair shops because VADM Nagumo chose not to launch a third strike. That would have forced the US Pacific Fleet to retreat to the US mainland for supply and repair.
2. They failed to coordinate their declaration of war with the airstrike so the DOW was delivered after the raid had already occurred. That made it a sneak attack and aroused the rage of the American public.

If they had avoided the first, it would have probably added at least a year if not two to the timeframe needed to defeat Japan. The longer the war continued, the better the slim chance of a negotiated settlement that was at least partially favorable to Japan was of happening. However, the second failure entrenched public opinion against Japan and helped maintain the determination to continue until Japan's unconditional surrender had been achieved.

 

[Avernite]

They didn't really have the capability to invade the Hawaiian Islands. It was too far away to effectively resupply an invasion and occupation force. Really, Midway was probably too far as well considering how thin their merchant marine was but Midway was more for drawing out the US carriers and finally getting their decisive victory. The two biggest mistakes I believe Japan made in the attack on Pearl Harbor was:
1. They failed to destroy the oil storage farm, the drydocks, and the repair shops because VADM Nagumo chose not to launch a third strike. That would have forced the US Pacific Fleet to retreat to the US mainland for supply and repair.
2. They failed to coordinate their declaration of war with the airstrike so the DOW was delivered after the raid had already occurred. That made it a sneak attack and aroused the rage of the American public.

If they had avoided the first, it would have probably added at least a year if not two to the timeframe needed to defeat Japan. The longer the war continued, the better the slim chance of a negotiated settlement that was at least partially favorable to Japan was of happening. However, the second failure entrenched public opinion against Japan and helped maintain the determination to continue until Japan's unconditional surrender had been achieved.

I don't think the American public would care too much for the technicality of receiving the DoW 5 minutes before their unprepared naval base gets blown to smithereens.

As to the 'mad idea' of the PH trip, it made perfect sense. The British managed twice to 'destroy' a fleet at anchor effectively removing it from the war (Mers-el-Kebir and Taranto), or so it may have seemed. If the Japanese managed to remove the American pacific fleet from the war, they suddenly have all the freedom they need to win decisively against the Anglo-Australian fleets. Eventually, sure, the Americans will get back, but by that time they could again concentrate on one foe (as the British fleets were effectively gone).

Sure, IF they had not attacked, the Americans might fight at the Philippines - where they will have support from land-based aircraft, and perhaps get reinforced by British fleets (rather than the British, Anglo-Dutch-Australian and American fleets all being reduced separately). History proves that a somewhat exaggerated worry as the British and ADA fleets were caught on the wrong foot enough to neuter them before the Americans could ever have sailed for the Philippines even with intact PH, but it seems a reasonable worry (and for all we know, the western allied fleets would have avoided the Japanese far longer if they knew the American cavalry was just around the corner).