Were battleships just late Imperialism international prestige money sinks or did they serve a justified role

Were battleships just late Imperialism international prestige money sinks or did they serve a justified role

They served a justifiable role in a sort of conflict that never actually developed. A large part of this was the rather salient fact that for most of the "Battleship era", you had a naval hegemon in the form of Great Britain, and then she would be supplanted by the United States, an ally. You never really had a roughly even naval war in that time frame.

Since nobody who was hostile towards the great naval powers of the day had a snowball's chance in hell of winning a war by conventional battle in "deep" fleets, you saw a devolution to attempt to win wars on the ground in spite of said fleets, and what naval action there was was often raiding to throw the great naval power off balance.

>winning a war by conventional battle in "deep" fleets

>ywn live in a timeline where this happened
>why live

niggers didn't realize that a bi-plane with a torpedo could sink them.

They served a role in being that a navy without them was at a disadvantage to one that did have them. They were more of a deterrent than an actual tactical object.

>ywn live in a timeline where naval aviation, carriers and bombers never became a thing and battleships still rule surpreme
End my suffering

Battleships were the aircraft carriers of the day in terms of international policy. Putting even a single one in someone's port or sea territory was seen as bad news as it could lock down the area it patrolled.

The Battleship was only truly obsolete in WWII.

Wasn't Jutland a pretty close call for the english?

that's a pre-dreadnought, those where obsolete before wwI

Not really. The only vessels really at risk in a large scale were the battlecruisers, whose loss would have been bad but not crippling.

In any case, it didn't matter. Even of the entire Home fleet is erased by magic, the Germans still are in the same shitty situation. They can't invade England even with naval superiority owing to lack of amphibious training, sealift capacity, or ability to have enough warm bodies to create a third front. And they can't break the blockade, because their battleships don't have the operational range to go into the atlantic for any meaningful length of time without re-coaling. Given that all of the possible ports they could recoal at are hostile to them, this is a bit of a bind.

Ultimately, it would allow them to send cruisers to try to contest the blockade, but

A) The British have more and better of those too.
B) The British do have more access to ports, so they're not similarly restricted from sending their own BB that survived to mess you up.

how would they possibly not?

>They served a justifiable role in a sort of conflict that never actually developed.

They served a justifiable role in the sort of conflict that did actually develop. The British dreadnought fleet starved Germany into submission during WW1. It's very hard to imagine how the Entente could have won without the blockade, and the ships that made it possible. The dreadnoughts were also used extensively at Gallipoli, although that certainly was not their finest hour.

FLEET
IN
BEING

>late imperialism

It was though.

Imperialism half-died after WW1 and completely died after WW2, and the age of the nation was born.

Vittorio Veneto demonstrates their utility. Though repeatedly damaged by both aircraft and sub it was routinely repaired and put back into service. The threat to allied shipping in the Mediterranean increased the burden on allied war resources which had to place the more numerous British battleships on standby.

>The British dreadnought fleet starved Germany into submission during WW1.
No it didn't. The German fleet didn't have the range or the coaling capacity to break the blockade, with or without dreadnoughts. You're conflating the blockade with the dreads, which is simply incorrect. The British don't need to sink or threaten to sink the HSF to have a blockade; they just need to stop (unarmed) merchant ships. They need wide power projection, not deep power projection.

>The dreadnoughts were also used extensively at Gallipoli, although that certainly was not their finest hour.
It was also overkill when it was used. There's a reason that come later shore bombardment efforts, extending into WW2, cruisers are more often used than battleships. There's very rarely a position on land that will be vulnerable to a 15" shell but not a 6" one.

Mostly, they were used because they were expendable.

Battleships were pretty important during Normandy, since they could put rounds 30km inland while cruisers could only put rounds 15-20km inland.

Gallipoli was a huge embarrassment for the battleships. 3 of them were sunk by mines of all things.

China, russia, both grew and conquered contries after brainlet

>They need wide power projection, not deep power projection.

The blockade was maintained by very deep projection in very specific areas. The two red lines shown on this map show the two areas that needed to be patrolled.

>The British don't need to sink or threaten to sink the HSF to have a blockade

They did need a force capable to keeping the HSF contained, however. I don't see that happening without British dreadnoughts to counter the German dreadnoughts (same applies to battlecruisers).

>Battleships were pretty important during Normandy, since they could put rounds 30km inland while cruisers could only put rounds 15-20km inland.
And lighter cruisers were even more important, because interdiction efforts were primarily done by air, and it turns out that the shallower draft equating to getting closer equating to more accurate fire means more than just smashing with a heavier shell at a longer range.

> 3 of them were sunk by mines of all things.
Any ship can be sunk by a mine. Minefields are dangerous. I don't know why you'd think they weren't. What do you think kept the Italian fleet in the Med in WW2? Why do you think the British never attempted to go into the Baltic in either World War?

>The blockade was maintained by very deep projection in very specific areas. The two red lines shown on this map show the two areas that needed to be patrolled.
You're missing the point. Germany's pre-war biggest trading partner was..... Britain. That went down the drain without firing a shot. Their next biggest were China and the Netherlands (which includes colonial possessions). You can stop goods from flowing into either at any point along the trade route. Those red lines are the FIRST lines of defense, not the last or the most vital. From the German point of view, it doesn't matter if your ship is sotpped by the British in the North Sea or just outside Surinam, if the goods don't get to Germany, they don't help you.

>They did need a force capable to keeping the HSF contained
Why? Where would it re-coal if it broke out into the Atlantic?

> I don't see that happening without British dreadnoughts to counter the German dreadnoughts
Again, where does it re-coal? Go look up the flight of the Goeben immediately before the war. This is one of the most advanced, modern ships the HSF has, and it needs to stop to refuel roughly every 1,500 km. You want to escort merchant ships through the Atlantic with a reach that short? When literally every single port within a 1,500 km radius from Kiel is in the hands of your enemies? You'll see a lot of sailing around, flailing mostly uselessly occasionally bringing in a steamer, and the blockade only being 85-90% effective instead of 100% effective. The British at no point in the war needed to engage the HSF as a strategic necessity.

Just to illustrate, this is about a 1,500 km radius from the German coast. There is a shitton of water that they simply cannot cover, no matter how much guns and armor the HSF has

ehh, meant to quote

Okay, so let's imagine a world where the Royal Navy decides to build only light cruisers. Now the German navy battlecruisers can have a field day picking them off throughout the war, and the German navy dreadnoughts would be able to spend the entire war bombarding coastal targets in France and the UK because there are no British dreadnoughts to contain them. Imagine how demoralizing that would be for the British public. It might even be possible for Germany to disrupt the flow of men and material from Britain to France, effectively removing Britain's ability to contribute to the war. It's very hard to imagine the Entente triumphing under such conditions. Yes, the British dreadnoughts and battlecruisers were absolutely essential to the Entente victory. There is no way that the Entente could have triumphed without them. They were very expensive, but they were definitely worth it from a military POV.

>Okay, so let's imagine a world where the Royal Navy decides to build only light cruisers.
That, by the way, is NOTHING like what I've claimed or advocated, but okay.

>Now the German navy battlecruisers can have a field day picking them off throughout the war,
Well, no. Because there's going to be a metric fuckton of these things, and they're almost certain to travel in packs. The entire FOUR battlecruisers the Germans have can't really keep up.

>German navy dreadnoughts would be able to spend the entire war bombarding coastal targets in France and the UK because there are no British dreadnoughts to contain them.
I like how you mentioned the utter failure of the Dardanelles shore bombardment campaign and think that the much richer and more developed British and French don't have access to things like "Mines" and "Coastal guns".

> It might even be possible for Germany to disrupt the flow of men and material from Britain to France,
Remember those mines? The channel was mined. Heavily. Enjoy losing half of your dreadnoughts every time you make a raid. Remember how the Home Fleet was based in Scapa Flow and thus too far away to stop the Germans from raiding into the English Channel? And yet the Germans never sent their dreadnought fleet into it? Why exactly do you think that was?

>There is no way that the Entente could have triumphed without them. They were very expensive, but they were definitely worth it from a military POV.
Read pic related.

>Because there's going to be a metric fuckton of these things, and they're almost certain to travel in packs.

I'm going to stop you right there. A "pack" of light cruisers cannot defeat a battlecruiser. It doesn't work like that. The 6-inch guns of a CL aren't going to have any appreciable effect on the armored hull of a BC, and merely adding more CL to the equation doesn't change the result. And the British public is going to be very demoralized from constantly hearing about ships with hundreds of sailors onboard being sunk.

>The entire FOUR battlecruisers the Germans have can't really keep up.

They're operating in a target-rich environment without any really danger to themselves. You wouldn't really need a large number of battlecruisers, although it is safe to say that the Germans would have built more if they'd known that their enemy was going to be relying exclusively on light cruisers to do work that should be done by larger warships.

Yes, because removing mines is just impossible. Especially when you have battleships to protect those operations, and opponent doesn't.
>utter failure of the Dardanelles shore bombardment campaign
Believe it or not, they actually came pretty close to knocking Ottomans out of war.
Furthermore, while HSF lacked range, they didn't lack the range to literally ride around British ports and shut down any commerce. They didn't need to run around Atlantic to do that.
Don't be a fucking brainlet for fucks sake.

>I'm going to stop you right there. A "pack" of light cruisers cannot defeat a battlecruiser. It doesn't work like that.
Remember how I actually didn't admit that it would "Just be CL"? How they had things like protected and armored cruisers which did pack bigger guns, guns that could get through the 10-12 inches of BC armor? Or that torpedoes existed? That you completely made this up out of your fat, hairy ass? But anyway, ignoring this AGAIN, it doesn't matter. The British do not need to sink the Germans. They only need to stop transport ships.


>They're operating in a target-rich environment without any really danger to themselves.
No, they're trying to protect a bunch of completely defenseless merchant ships across the entire fucking Atlantic Ocean. They can only protect what's in range of their guns. Considering how much ocean there is to cover, they will never actually stop the interdiction of supplies, unless they're willing to babysit a convoy the entire length of the Atlantic Ocean at a snail's pace and wait for the entire fucking Royal Navy to show up.

>Yes, because removing mines is just impossible.
When under fire from shore batteries? It's not impossible in the mathematical sense, but it's prohibitively expensive and difficult. Again, show me some successful mine-clearing expeditions in the channel.

>Believe it or not, they actually came pretty close to knocking Ottomans out of war.
It didn't even come close to getting to Istanbul, nevermind the fact that other indirect bombardments from the air and of land-based artillery had a 0% success rate of panicking a country out of the war.

>Furthermore, while HSF lacked range, they didn't lack the range to literally ride around British ports and shut down any commerce.
Once AGAIN ignoring the availability of the British to use this magical thing called a "gun" to shoot at the German ships from the shore.

>Because there's going to be a metric fuckton of these things, and they're almost certain to travel in packs.

If they always travel in packs, then doesn't that negate the advantage of being able to be in more than 1 place at the same time? The whole point of light cruisers is that you can spread them out to patrol a large area. Keeping them clumped together would defeat their entire reason for existing.

>If they always travel in packs, then doesn't that negate the advantage of being able to be in more than 1 place at the same time?
Britain has different strategic priorities than Germany in this ridiculous hypothetical. And since it is GERMANY who is trying to skirt the blockade, and thus protect slow convoy ships, that hands Britian the tactical initiative.

Which means in practice that they're spread out to catch any merchant ships trying to run the blockade. When one is spotted, it's boarded and stopped. If it's spotted with a German escort, it's signalled, shadowed, and you wait until you have however many cruisers converge on the point as is necessary, which you can do because something weak and "slow" like a Bristol's 25 knot speed is still way, way faster than any merchant ship of the day.

>How they had things like protected and armored cruisers

You mean those things that battlecruisers were explicitly designed to hunt down and kill? That's your answer to the battlecruiser threat?

>No, they're trying to protect a bunch of completely defenseless merchant ships across the entire fucking Atlantic Ocean.

Why would they do that? If Britain has no capital ships (dreadnoughts or battlecruisers) then it would make far more sense to just attack British/French ports directly.

>Again, show me some successful mine-clearing expeditions in the channel.

There were none because the mere existence of the British Grand Fleet made any attempt to de-mine the channel impossible. But you're advocating to eliminate the Grand Fleet, which would made it possible for the German navy to conduct de-mining operations.

>But you're advocating to eliminate the Grand Fleet, which would made it possible for the German navy to conduct de-mining operations.
No, I'm not. I suggest you go all the way back here and learn to fucking read.

What I have been arguing is that the dreadnoughts were not necessary to keep the embargo on Germany intact owing to power projection issues in the form of range in the HSF. You have not ONCE even addressed this. I have said NOTHING about battlecruisers. I have said NOTHING about the dismantling of the Home Fleet. I have said NOTHING about alternate designs that would have necessarily come to the fore even if you (idiotically) assume that my posts advocated a complete elimination of battleships.

In the meantime.

>Why would they do that?
Because and the whole "Starving Germany into submission thing"? Remember the blockade? The need to import things like food and fertilizer into Germany. Even if you can shell British ports (Can you show me a single example of battleship bombardment that shut down a port in WW1 for over a month? Or even a week?) that doesn't end the strangulation of GERMAN trade.

>born too late to see their last deployment

>Britain has different strategic priorities than Germany in this ridiculous hypothetical

So now you're calling your own idea "ridiculous"? Well, I agree, not building any capital ships would have been pretty ridiculous. The Brits understood that they needed a powerful navy to keep the High Seas Fleet contained, and they further understood that a navy lacking capital ships isn't powerful.

>What I have been arguing is that the dreadnoughts were not necessary to keep the embargo on Germany intact

But that's wrong. Without British dreadnoughts to contain it, the German HSF is just going to do whatever it wants. There wouldn't be any way to maintain a blockade of Germany under those conditions.

If aircraft carriers hadn't prove so effective they probably would have played a bigger role.