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World's Worst Warships?

JayUtah said:
Were there treaty limits on Japan in the 1930s? I'm familiar with the ones imposed on Germany.
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Certainly. As others have pointed out, Japan was a signatory to the Washington and First London Naval Treaties. These were highly controversial in Japan, as Japan was limited to 3/5 of the tonnage allowed to the UK and USA. The logical reason for this was that the USA had two coasts to defend, and the UK a far-flung empire; while Japan's interests were limited to the Western Pacific.
More practically, the US had broken Japanese codes in the early 1920's so our negotiators knew in advance the minimum the Japanese negotiators were allowed to settle for. And that was what they got.
As SpitfireX says, Japanese heavy cruisers were probably the most egregious treaty violators. The Mogami class were probably closer to 13,000 tons than the allowed 10,000. And they were introduced as "light" cruisers, meaning they had only 155mm guns rather than the 8.0" allowed to heavies. Fifteen of them, no less. That was because the Japanese were only allowed a certain number of heavies. The USN responded with the similarly armed Brooklyn class, not realizing that the Mogamis had been designed for rapid conversion to 8" twin turrets replacing the 155mm triples, as was done as soon as Japan refused to agree to the 1936 London treaty.
 
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Oh, regarding light and heavy cruisers! The Washington Treaty didn't specify a difference, IIRC, but the 1930 London one did. The US Pensacola class, with 10 8" guns, were originally classed as light cruisers due to their thin armor and decent speed. After the London treaty they had to be rated as "heavy".
The London treaty limited "light" cruisers to 155mm (6.1") caliber but heavy to 8" (203mm). This was because the French navy had ships in service with 155mm guns. The US and UK stuck to 6.0" but Japan, determined to to make the most out of what they were allowed, actually built new 155mm weapons to replace their former 6.0" and 8.0" to replace their former 200mm. Something of a waste of resources, that was.
 
Trebuchet said:
Can you just ignore the restrictions, like Japan did with treaty limits in the 1930's?
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Of course.

You can go totally wild.
But after a while it gets a bit boring, designing 500.000 ton battleships with 60 cm armour and 25 inch guns in sextuple turrets.

It's most fun to set yourself some restrictions and get the most out of it.
Or even. Given the tonnage the Japanese ships ultimately turned out to. Can you do better than what was realized in reality?
 
Trebuchet said:
Can you just ignore the restrictions, like Japan did with treaty limits in the 1930's?
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Well, in UA Dreadnoughts each hull has a maximum tonnage, but they seem to be based purely on the tech level that unlocked that one and on scenario. (The alpha doesn't have a campaign.) Treaties are not even mentioned, much less enforced.

At any rate, by the time you get to WW2 hulls, you can recreate the Yamato, if you so wish. Or one-up the Yamato. I'm sure I've seen a hull that went to 80,000 metric tons, if that's what floats your boat.

And since the tech for the various ship parts isn't kept in sync, and in fact the Naval Academy encourages you to choose a bonus to one at the expense of the others, you can make some rather ahistorical combinations. Pre-dreadnought tumblehome ship with 13" guns and oil fuel? Knock yourself out. Or wait for the enemy to do it for you. Fill a BB only with 8" guns, strip the armour down and call it a really heavy cruiser? Go for it. Etc.
 
erwinl said:
You can do that as well with Springsharp. And that one is free. :)

The development has stopped, but for designing warships up to the end of WWII, it is still very, very good.
It's rather difficult to make a truly balanced ship, given some reasonable restrictions. Whether they be cost, tonnage, endurance or whatever.
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Well, the difference here is that there's also a game attached to the ship designer. So you then get to see how your design does in practice. Like, can you sink a dreadnought with 3 older tumblehome ships? Can your cruisers sink a convoy defended by a BB?

With seemingly detailed calculations for all sorts of stuff, including partial penetrations, flooding or fire only in certain compartments and the effect of bulkheads on that, etc. So a bit above the level of WoWs.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, the difference here is that there's also a game attached to the ship designer. So you then get to see how your design does in practice. Like, can you sink a dreadnought with 3 older tumblehome ships? Can your cruisers sink a convoy defended by a BB?

With seemingly detailed calculations for all sorts of stuff, including partial penetrations, flooding or fire only in certain compartments and the effect of bulkheads on that, etc. So a bit above the level of WoWs.
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True. And that's where you pay for.
On the other hand. In Springsharp you're really not constricted in what you can do and try in making any kind of warship.
Anything is possible. From a Faà di Bruno type of 'ship' (no bow, no stern and basicly being a box with a turret) to the aforementioned 500.000 ton battleships with 30 inch guns (if you so desire) and anything in between.
The fun is in trying to make these concepts work.

But I admit. It's more a kind of intellectual challenge and there is nothing like graphics or game behind it.

Although. If I look at some of the screenshots of the game, I do wonder if at least some of the formulas from Springsharp (or more likely it's predecessor Springstyle) are used on the background.

Which is eminently logical, because these really work.
 
I have no idea where their formulas come from, but I guess it would be logical not to reinvent the wheel if someone already figured that out.
 
Just as an update, one of the newer missions had me going against a 105,000 ton BB. So, yeah, I think any pretense of treaty limitations is right out :p
 
HansMustermann said:
Just as an update, one of the newer missions had me going against a 105,000 ton BB. So, yeah, I think any pretense of treaty limitations is right out :p
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I'm just wondering how vulnerable something like that would be to a salvo of Long Lance or equivalent torpedoes.

It can't be very manoeuvrable, so the torpedo effective range would be greater
 
Well, after doing some more repeats of that mission, basically the AI takes advantage of the same design flexibility when designing its ships. I've seen that behemoth with 18" guns, 26.5" of belt armour (LITERALLY!), and barely able to do 16 knots. And I've seen it with 12" of armour tops, but with the engines to do well over 30 knots, making it essentially the world's largest battlecruiser. My DDs, which didn't have Long Lances, could barely keep up with it.

That goes both ways. I've had missions where the briefing said I had to stop a battlecruiser, but when it showed up it only did 23 knots tops, had 16" of belt armour, and generally it was basically a renamed Yamato. Needless to say, my clever plan to stop it with a few heavy cruisers was... somewhat less than successful :p

Just like in real life, there's not a whole lot of difference between a BB hull and a BC hull. You up the armour enough, it becomes effectively a BB, you lower it and up the engines, it becomes a BC, no matter what the hull says it is. Well, the BC hulls let you drop the armour thickness even more, but that's about it.

And the AI gets just about as creative with it as anyone.

Also, if any moderator wants to split this into a separate thread, I wouldn't be particularly opposed.
 
Anyway, back on topic, I would propose the Deutschland Class of Panzerschiffe, more aptly described as battlecruisers.

The general idea of a ship that can outrun anything it can't out-shoot, and out-shoot anything it can't outrun was a sound one, and really describes any battlecruiser ever. The problem is that at the time that these four ships were built, the UK had ships that were both faster and able to out-shoot them. E.g., the Renown -- with which British intelligence scared the Graf Spee into scuttling itself -- could do 32 knots, as opposed to the 26 knots of the Deutschland class, was armed with 15" guns as opposed to 11" on the Deutschland class, and had a belt armour of 6" as opposed to 3.9" on the Deutschland.

Hell, even battleships like the King George V class could actually more than keep up with the German pocket ship, being able to do over 28 knots.

So on the whole I would say the ship class was basically obsolete before being even laid.
 
They wereintended as commerce raiders, they weren't expected to have to fight.
 
Yeah, I'll give those a bit of a break. They were the best Germany could do at the time under the Treaty of Versailles, although they cheated rather egregiously.
 
Well, as they eventually discovered, the UK could get rather annoyed if you wanted to raid its convoys, so eventually you'd have to fight or run away. And not being very good at either could turn out to be a bit of a problem.
 
Again, those ships were heavily constrained (although they cheated a bit) by the Treaty of Versailles. Other nations were having considerable difficulty building 8" gunned cruisers within 10,000 tons. They were designed in the 1920's as well, so their use of Diesel engines and welding was highly innovative.
Were they competitive in WWII? No, they were obsolete. But they were the best Germany could do at the time.
 
I don't think we're disagreeing. Yes, they were the best they could get away with. But they were obsolete before being even laid.
 
I would like to re-nominate the Nelson class, AS DESIGNED, although not for some "half a battleship" silliness.

And duly noted, it IS a treaty BB, and the UK does deserve kudos for being pretty much the only ones who even tried to stick to the treaty limits (even if redefined in their favour) while almost everyone else simply lied their ass off. So, hats off to the UK.

The problem isn't with its being cut down to size or to weight, but with HOW it was done. The ship tended to damage its turret rings while firing and basically jam a turret. The first blast also tended to simply shatter the bridge windows and concuss any unfortunate soul in there. Some half a dozen decks had to be evacuated before firing, because anyone there would be concussed by the blast and get such fun stuff as bleeding inside the eyeballs. It also tended to damage or outright destroy anything on the deck in the forward half of the ship. The off-center tower tended to create torque in a sideways wind and basically turn the ship off course, as would the asymmetric blast from the turrets. The choice of light shells also was later shown to be based on some flawed tests, and while on paper the ship did throw a respectable amount of steel into the air, drag slowed them down considerably and limited its penetration at high range. Etc.

Now I say AS DESIGNED, because most of those problems would be fixed over the course of the next 10 years. (Then again, others like the light shells never could be fixed.) Which in the process brought its weight back way up.

So yes, it's the class that spent a lot of time sinking the Bismarck, but that was the fixed version. As designed and launched I dare say it was a much worse ship, and would have probably jammed its own turrets long before destroying those on the Bismarck.
 
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As I recall, the light shells were supposed to be combined with high muzzle velocity, which turned out to cause unacceptably short barrel life. So they wound up with a 16" gun which hit little, if any, harder than the previous (and excellent) 15".
 
HansMustermann said:
I would like to re-nominate the Nelson class, AS DESIGNED, although not for some "half a battleship" silliness.

And duly noted, it IS a treaty BB, and the UK does deserve kudos for being pretty much the only ones who even tried to stick to the treaty limits (even if redefined in their favour) while almost everyone else simply lied their ass off. So, hats off to the UK.

The problem isn't with its being cut down to size or to weight, but with HOW it was done. The ship tended to damage its turret rings while firing and basically jam a turret. The first blast also tended to simply shatter the bridge windows and concuss any unfortunate soul in there. Some half a dozen decks had to be evacuated before firing, because anyone there would be concussed by the blast and get such fun stuff as bleeding inside the eyeballs. It also tended to damage or outright destroy anything on the deck in the forward half of the ship. The off-center tower tended to create torque in a sideways wind and basically turn the ship off course, as would the asymmetric blast from the turrets. The choice of light shells also was later shown to be based on some flawed tests, and while on paper the ship did throw a respectable amount of steel into the air, drag slowed them down considerably and limited its penetration at high range. Etc.

Now I say AS DESIGNED, because most of those problems would be fixed over the course of the next 10 years. (Then again, others like the light shells never could be fixed.) Which in the process brought its weight back way up.

So yes, it's the class that spent a lot of time sinking the Bismarck, but that was the fixed version. As designed and launched I dare say it was a much worse ship, and would have probably jammed its own turrets long before destroying those on the Bismarck.
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Bollocks, they were nowhere near being the worst warships 'as designed'.
I think you are just writing stuff to be controversial now.
 
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