Comments by "Nicholas Conder" (@nicholasconder4703) on "Drachinifel"
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@rogerhwerner6997 The irony is, if you watch "The Great War" with Indy Niedel, the front that caused the Central Powers to collapse was not the Western Front or Italian Front, but rather the Balkan Front. The Balkan offensive in 1918 caused the collapse of the Bulgarian army and Bulgaria's surrender. This was rapidly followed by the Ottoman's surrender (they had no troops to counter the British Army advance from Salonika on Istabul ), then the Austrian surrender (as there were very few forces between the Serbian and French Armies advancing towards Belgrade). Germany surrendered shortly thereafter, because they had not forces capable of stopping the Allies advancing towards Bavaria. SO, long story short, the concept (and I stress the word "concept") for the Gallipoli campaign was not a bad one, as a variation of it was what ended WWI. However, it was poorly planned based on little or no reconnaissance, hastily executed and lead by possibly the worst general in the British Army.
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@bkjeong4302 You might want to talk to the survivors of Taffy 3 about battleships being dead at the time. Had Kurita been on the ball and used his ships properly, he could have sunk the entire unit fairly quickly, and possibly one of the other Taffys as well. Again, I think you are approaching this not from the perspective of that time, but looking backwards from 80 years on and second guessing decisions that were made in 1940-1942.
The US was building a well-rounded fleet, and in this they succeeded. All ship types were required, and all served some function within the fleet. One has to be prepared, as much as possible, to counter any threat. Not having heavy capital ships leaves you vulnerable to a navy that has them. A line of battleships encountering a fleet consisting of light cruisers and carriers, as proposed above, would probably massacre the lot of them. If caught unprepared, the carriers would not be able to launch or more importantly land their aircraft as violent evasive maneuver play havoc with flight operations, just ask the Japanese at Midway. And while it is true that it would be difficult for enemy fleets to find your carriers and you not to detect them, it was not beyond the realm of possibility. This was especially true in an age where radar was still in its infancy, and satellite reconnaissance was something from science fiction.
So I will have to agree to disagree with you on this, as no one knew at the time how the conflict would turn out, or how much aircraft would relegate the battleship to obsolescence. Battleships were weapons, after all, and they do become obsolete. One need only look to medieval castles, the armoured knight, etc., to see that this is the case. But I don't think you ever hear of people saying, "The people of the middle ages shouldn't have built castles or had knights in armour because they were expensive and become obsolete. After all, muskets and cannons could take care of those".
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@bkjeong4302 As you may recall from Samar, the Japanese battleships were firing AP shells. So were the cruisers, initially. Had they realized their mistake, they would have turned the CVEs into scrap metal in short order (as illustrated by the hits that a number of them took from 14" and even one 18" shell). Also, if carriers are so great, why do you need a large screen of vessels around them. Even at the end of the war, the US Navy always accompanied their carriers with battleships. Why? Because they recognized the need for them. It is the same as the "All Arms" battle doctrine, you need everything. The whole concept that "all we needed were carriers" is in the same vein as the 1920s and 30s theory that "the bomber will always get through", or the predilection of many cavalryman to thinking that cavalry could win any battle by itself (one factor that lead to the "Charge of the Light Brigade").
Again, as I said before, it is obvious we won't see eye-to-eye on this, as you are extremely passionate about the subject that battleships were a waste of time. In this we differ. My own point of view is that they still had a place in navies, but as the events of 1941 showed, more as support ships and not as the premier vessel that pre-war naval planning envisioned. This is not the fault of the naval planners of the time, but rather the rapid changes in technology that took place just prior to WW2, changes that occurred so rapidly that naval strategy and thinking could not kept pace with the paradigm shift in warfare that was taking place. And as far as being a waste of time, you might want to talk to the German defenders of Normandy or the Marines at Guadalcanal about what it was like being on the receiving end of a 14" shell.
And we can discuss or argue "what if" all we like, but it won't change the facts of what happened before and during WW2. History shows that neither the Japanese nor United States nor British navies (I should also include the French Navy as well) ceased building battleships in favor of lighter AA ships and carriers. So in effect this entire argument is pointless anyway.
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