Comments by "Bruce Tucker" (@brucetucker4847) on "Matsimus" channel.

  1. That is 100% nonsense. Battleships' main role was control of the sea; shore bombardment was purely secondary and not given much priority in their design. Armor was absolutely vital and under-armored battleships suffered terribly in battleship battles, as seen with the British battlecruisers at Jutland. Battleships carried armor-piercing shells for use against other battleships and heavy cruisers and regular high-explosive shells for use against smaller ships and land targets. The main defense against torpedoes was not armor, it was having multiple watertight compartments, preferable ones filled with air alternating with ones filled with water or fuel, between the outer hull of the ship and the interior. That's why so many capital ships were fitted with "torpedo bulges" late in WW1 or in the interwar years. And battleships have never had thin armor. HMS Dreadnought, the first really modern battleship (which instantly made all other battleships obsolete) launched in 1906, had 11" of Krupp steel armor on her turret faces, conning tower, and main side belt. USS Iowa has up to 19" of armor in some places. The hatches through that armor look like bank vault doors.
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  2. That was a 100% psychological victory, not a material one. And if you're firing at another battleship 90 8" are an annoyance while 10 16" are ship killers. In the entire history of battleships the only battleship I know of that was crippled by 8" shellfire was the Hiei, and she was really more of a battlecruiser and took a lot of finishing off by bombers the next day.
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  3. Well the USN never sank (or encountered) any major German surface vessels, so more likely IJN.
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  4. Battlecruisers did not and were never intended to replace battleships, they were intended to replace cruisers. However they were as big and expensive as battleships and their speed turned out not to be a replacement for armor, as the Royal Navy found out the hard way at Jutland - and again when the Hood took on the much better armored Bismarck. As for saying cruisers replaced battleships, that's just silly. They had completely different missions. Cruisers continued being useful after battleships became obsolete because the mission of battleships was taken over by aircraft carriers but the carriers still needed escorts.
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