I guess the several major naval battles in WWI never happened. Also, Britain never learned the hard way about magazine protection, an issue that plagued them into WW II. See HMS Hood. Yes, those were BCs and not BBs. Guess what sunk them? Large caliber gunfire.

They were the nukes of their time, with the understanding that you could actually use them without ending civilisation. If you had them, you could ride rough-shod over anyone who didn't. When a good part of your economy is dependent on shipping, being forced to stay in port lest you get curb-stomped doesn't do you any favors. Given how many European powers were heavily colonialist, that's basically everybody.

There's a reason major navies were still building them at the start of WW II. Carriers (eventually) made them obsolete, but saying that they didn't do anything is frankly bullshiat.

dywed88: GrendelMk1: I guess the several major naval battles in WWI never happened. Also, Britain never learned the hard way about magazine protection, an issue that plagued them into WW II. See HMS Hood. Yes, those were BCs and not BBs. Guess what sunk them? Large caliber gunfire.

They were the nukes of their time, with the understanding that you could actually use them without ending civilisation. If you had them, you could ride rough-shod over anyone who didn't. When a good part of your economy is dependent on shipping, being forced to stay in port lest you get curb-stomped doesn't do you any favors. Given how many European powers were heavily colonialist, that's basically everybody.

There's a reason major navies were still building them at the start of WW II. Carriers (eventually) made them obsolete, but saying that they didn't do anything is frankly bullshiat.

The Hood was sunk for very different reasons than the battlecruisers lost at Jutland.

The Hood was basically a lucky shot that could happen to any vessel, but if equivalent ships engaged in a hundred similar fights it probably wouldn't have happened again. In terms of armour, the Hood was pretty much equal to battleships of her era (and had been significantly increased after Jutland) and you can make a legitimate case that she was the first fast battleship. It was lacking by WWII (particularly with its outdated layout) but so we're other twenty year old ships that hadn't recieved and significant upgrades (which it didn't receive because it was the biggest and baddest thing afloat so they wouldn't take it out of service, literally the first warship larger than Hood was the Yamato).

The ships lost at Jutland were lost due to improper powder handling procedures (in order to increase the rate of fire) meaning that there were large amounts of powder stored outside the magazines and nothing stopping explosions or fires from reaching the magazines so any amount of magazine armour was useless.

That's nice, that's a great writeup.

Here's the thing.

"Modern" Royal Navy BC takes a magazine hit and blows the fark up. Why? She wasn't actually modern. She was laid down in 1916, when the RN still had a hard-on for reload times.

Biggest and baddest, you say.

Biggest, the Bismarck had a higher loaded displacement (ie, actual combat weight, not weight in the yard) than Hood. They pulled a lot of flim-flammery with weight. Not just ignoring fuel and ammo weight, but basically building him with blanking plates where a lot of equipment should have been, so they could point and say "see, only 42,000 tons!"

Hood got in under the wire, timewise, while most of her potential competitors were either broken up or converted to CVs because they weren't completed in time. Remember she was launched in 1918 and laid down in 1916, so the Washington Naval Treaty didn't affect her. Bismarck was laid down after Germany basically said "fark treaties".

20 years in tech advancements between starting construction.

Which leads to...

Baddest?

It got blown the fark up by a single 15" shell. The Brits SUCKED at "explosives 101" during WW I. Hint: Hood lacked a lot of the "airlocks" between the turret and magazine that were common in most other navies, and it was for the same reason the WW I BCs got blown the fark up: Safety mechanisms slow down reload. All those heavy armored doors. Remember, she was laid down in WW I, and still had the same design issues, so Hood basically WAS a WW I BC.

She'd have died under heavy bombardment. Period. "One in a hundred" is BS. There were major design faults in RN BCs. Bismarck kicked Hood's ass because 1 for 1, Bismarck was a better ship, because he was a LOT newer. Bismarck died because he was outnumbered and the Brits had carrier aviation. Which is how you handle a problem like that.

Frankly, if someone hadn't gotten a rudder hit with an air-dropped torpedo from a farking BIPLANE, (how it carried the pilot's generative organs is a matter for another thread) the RN would have had to work a LOT harder to put Bismarck down, even with Bismarck's radar getting shot up early in the fight.