Admiral Scheer vs Baltimore Class Heavy Cruiser

@taamvan:

A fascinating discussion!

The ships were almost a decade apart, but as the crew has pointed out, the loss of the treaty restrictions and the move past the 10,000T=cruiser concept probably opened many design doors that couldn’t be exploited by the German shipbuilders who had to stick closer to that political but not helpful weight limit at a time when so many facilities were being added to ships (radar, sonar, AAA, ASW gear, seaplanes, wartime crew sizes)

Its difficult to see how these kinds of things would work out in practice, as only a single battle (kommandorski isles) was ever fought under the proposed hypothetical circumstances of “all-guns no air support”.

In my study I have found that (in regards to WW2 surface/submarine naval action not counting carrier aviation) while the Americans often had some technical or material advantage in most qualitative regards, that their performance was generally lower than would be expected because of inexperience, poor communication or tactics, unreliable equipment, or surprise.   The Germans often performed better than expected at sea, despite having a deficiency of numbers and equipment, and tactics, and the Italians much worse than would be expected given the size and expenditure on their navy.

As with tanks, the Americans did not have spectacular ships, guns, crews, torpedoes, but rather the benefit of having well-designed, average and reliable equipment in adequate quantity and available in abundance at critical times and places.   The opposite is true of the Axis;  while their systems were stronger in design and performance, (and their preparations for night fighting and innovations of oxygen powered torpedoes, guided missiles/torpedoes etc.) they suffered from over complexity, poor general strategy (fleet submarines, solo raiding by unsupported warships even after PoW/Repulse were easily sunk), weak logistical support and coordination, and substituting novel design and variety for numbers.

So, its a great question as posed, without a date or any help, it may have been a closer match than stated above;  the American ship is clearly a more robust, general design, a bigger, newer ship (and probably with a much better radar), even with those advantages, many US/UK ships with similar advantages were utterly mauled, and not just by submarines, mines, guided bombs, human torpedoes, air attacks, but also in face-to-face battles against similar ships.   This has a lot to do with the specific situations (savo island, the bismark chase) but not really luck, more Axis moxy.

Couple of lucky hits, and the “better ship” can have an ammo explosion or lose its steam.   And under the scenario of no-air no-helpers, 1v1, some luck or moxy might win the day, given the disparity in the attributes of each ship.

Have a great weekend!

Outstanding post.

I’d like to expand on what you’ve written. The Axis logistics were greatly inferior to those of the Allies; but that was largely by necessity. Germany had almost no natural resources except for coal. Coal was useful for powering trains, but a train could not get supplies all the way to soldiers at the front. That was especially true in a dynamic campaign, when the front would tend to shift far more rapidly than new rail could be built. Good logistics required large quantities of military trucks; and these in turn required large amounts of petroleum. (Without which they would be useless.) Had Germany been able to secure the Caucasus oilfields, and had Japan been able to better exploit the oil in the Dutch East Indies (without interference from American subs), the Axis would have had the oil required for good logistics.

As for tanks: during the Versailles Treaty Germany was not allowed to build tanks. Upon ridding itself of that treaty, it began designing tanks. But its future enemies had had an enormous head start. The Soviet Union had done an outstanding job with tank design. Its tanks were mobile–far more mobile than France’s, for example. Soviet tanks were less complex and easier to manufacture than Germany’s. They had sloping armor. And in 1941 or 1942, a Soviet T-34 or KV-1 could outperform any German tank in a one-on-one battle. During the 1940s the Soviets had far and away the world’s best tank designs.

For Germany, catching up to that represented a two part process. The first step was to redress the individual inferiority of German tanks. This was accomplished with the Panther and Tiger tank designs. In particular, the King Tiger was an absolute monster, and was individually far superior to almost any Allied tank it might encounter. But Tiger tanks were expensive: several times as expensive as Panzer IVs. Even Panthers were more complex and difficult to manufacture than T-34s. The proposed solution was the E-Series of tanks. “Compared to these earlier designs however, the amount of drilling and machining involved in producing these Standardpanzer was reduced drastically, which would have made them quicker, easier and cheaper to produce, as would the proposed conical spring system, replacing their predecessors’ torsion bar system which required a special steel alloy.” Not only would the E-Series have made German tanks much less expensive to produce, it would also have resulted in a modest improvement to individual performance. The heart of Germany’s tank strength would have consisted of E-50s and E-75s; both of which would have had the same gun as the King Tiger. (As well as optical rangefinders to improve long range accuracy, and infrared sighting equipment to improve night vision.) However, the war ended before development work on the E-Series had been finalized. Had the Germans and Soviets reached a temporary peace in late 1941, and resumed the conflict in 1946, Germany would by then have surpassed the Soviet Union to become the world leader in tank designs.

good discussion

I assumed the Baltimore’s advanced radar fire-control system would allow it to pulverize the Scheer, even if the Scheer was in firing range.

Wiki states:

The Baltimore class was equipped from the start with electronic fire control systems to determine the fire-parameters by which targets over the horizon could be hit. The main guns were controlled by a Mark 34 fire control system connected to an MK 8 radar. The anti-aircraft guns were guided by Mk 37 systems with Mk-4 radar.

Along similar lines, there was a heavy debate about Iowa class vs Yamato class.  Iowa class wins, because of far superior radar fire control.

http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm

A lot of the “Scheer does better than expected” posts seem more bent on wishful thinking and “well its German” more than actual facts. Much like the vaunted Bismarck… while it SEEMS like a really powerful battleship, it had multiple major flaws, and while it took a considerable amount of firepower (and debatable scuttling) to actually SINK the ship, combat-wise, it’s main guns were out of action almost as soon as the fighting began (a warship that is hard to sink sounds good on paper until you realize it can’t fight a few minutes into a fight).

Back on point… the Scheer was designed under huge treaty limitations, it had paper-thin armor compared to the Baltimore, its fire control was not nearly as impressive as the Baltimore, and has been brought up before, SIZE ISN’T EVERYTHING when it comes to gun caliber (like the Yamato vs Iowa discussion). Rate of fire, ranging, targeting radar, speed, compartmentalization… all of these factors, the Baltimore wins hands down… the only argument for the Scheer is mostly wishful thinking and the old “ya, well it’s German” that should do it alone. Sorry, but no… we’re not talking Shermans vs Tigers here… we’re talking about something the Americans were very good at by the time the Baltimore’s came on-line and something the Germans were never good at, even by the time of the Bismarck, and the Scheer predates that by more than a decade under massive treaty restrictions…

The Baltimore was roughly 50% bigger in displacement and that added tonnage wasn’t spent on pin-up pictures of Betty Page… it went into armor, fire control speed and a lot of other things the Scheer could only dream of. The Germans themselves rated-down the Scheer and its class-mates to Heavy Cruisers early in the war and forbade them from combined fleet operations because they were just too slow. These were obsolescent ships by the beginning of the war as it was, and they only faired well against unarmed or poorly armed ships… it went up against ships it was (in theory) designed to beat, and came up in very poor condition… against a Baltimore class ship, it would stand no chance at all.

It’s not even close… Kurt chiming-in and talking about it being German… well that pretty much should seal the deal that the Baltimore would win (we all know where the one vote of the Baltimore getting sunk came from, ty Kurt).

It should also be noted that the Scheer didn’t exactly perform like a superweapon even when she was was facing opponents which she hopelessly outclassed.  On November 5, 1940, the Scheer attacked convoy HX-84, which was “protected” by the armed merchant cruiser Jervis Bay.  The Jervis Bay’s specifications were: speed 15 knots, armour zero, armament 7 x 6-inch guns.  The battle between the two ships lasted some 22 minutes, even though it was largely one-sided.  Interestingly, the Scheer’s salvoes damaged its own radar set.  Later that day, the Scheer battled the cargo liner SS Beaverford (armament: 1 x 4-inch and 1 x 3-inch guns) for five hours (on and off) before sinking her, a task which took 71 5.9-inch shells and 12 11-inch shells.

Bloody Hell, Marc! Really? That is poor from the German ship. ( I pout a draw, as I said.)

It wouldn’t even be a draw… even taamvan who flat-out admitted the Baltimore is the better ship in every category basically pulled out the “Austin Powers Defense” for the Scheer… the belief that because the Scheer is crewed by Germans they will win because of their mojo-baby!

I’m pretty sure Hitler applied the Austin Powers Defense of the Germans at Stalingrad, much to the same conclusion the Scheer would have vs the Baltimore. Mojo doesn’t win battles.

I understand and believe you all amd am very happy fir the clarification. . I was only stating what  I had put.

@Wolfshanze:

It’s not even close… Kurt chiming-in and talking about it being German… well that pretty much should seal the deal that the Baltimore would win (we all know where the one vote of the Baltimore getting sunk came from, ty Kurt).

Actually I didn’t vote, because I wanted to gather more information first. If I were to vote, I’d vote for the Baltimore. In addition to the reasons already stated, I’ve read that the fire control on American surface ships allowed them to radically maneuver while keeping their firing solutions. Everyone else’s ships of the time were unable to keep their firing solutions if they maneuvered.

In my post, I talked about how, because of the Versailles Treaty, the Germans had fallen behind some other nations–and especially the Soviet Union–in terms of tank design. After throwing off the Versailles Treaty, they would have needed until 1946 to achieve the world’s best tanks in terms of both capability and ease of production. They had achieved the world’s best fighter design in 1944, and the world’s best medium bomber design in 1945. Other late war achievements included the world’s best handheld anti-tank weapon, and the only assault rifle of WWII. But Germany’s late war accomplishments do not mean that an obsolescent ship, designed under Versailles Treaty limitations, with an inferior targeting system and inferior armor to that of its opponent, would have been the equal of the Baltimore.

However, I am not as familiar with surface naval engagements as taamvan. On paper, the Baltimore wins this hands-down. No question there. But taamvan appears familiar with actual naval engagements in which German ships did better than one would have expected based on the combatants’ stats. Until I have more information about that, I don’t want to cast my vote one way or the other.

@ABWorsham:

Designed in the 1930s to out run any capital ship and out gun anything it could not out run.

Almost but not quite.  The Greman Panzerschiffe were basically designed to outrun battleships and outgun cruisers, but Britain’s latest battlecruisers – ships like Hood, Renown and Repulse – were both faster and more heavily armed.

To be more specific, at the time they were designed, they were designed to outrun battleships… ie: WWI dreadnoughts that could only do 20 knots… by WWII, the WWI dreadnought/battleships were themselves as obsolescent as the German “pocket battleships”, because the major powers in the 1930s designed and built the modern WWII “fast battleships” that could outrun and outgun the old treaty-restricted pocket battleships. Every major power, England, the US, France, Japan, Italy… they all had battleships by the start of WWII that could outgun AND outrun the pocket battleships. The Germans themselves lowered the classification of these ships to heavy cruisers and forbade them from participating in fleet actions due to being too slow to run if things got dicey…

The Germans also forgot one other important factor… ARMOR… its all fine and dandy to “outgun” an enemy ship, but if your armor sucks you may find that there seems to be something wrong with your ships today when you get in a fleet engagement.

Kurt, I recommend you lay off the propaganda catch phrases and concentrate more on actual schematics, capabilities and limitations… you’ll go a lot further then relying on catchy propaganda snippets.

@Wolfshanze:

To be more specific, at the time they were designed, they were designed to outrun battleships… ie: WWI dreadnoughts that could only do 20 knots… by WWII, the WWI dreadnought/battleships were themselves as obsolescent as the German “pocket battleships”, because the major powers in the 1930s designed and built the modern WWII “fast battleships” that could outrun and outgun the old treaty-restricted pocket battleships. Every major power, England, the US, France, Japan, Italy… they all had battleships by the start of WWII that could outgun AND outrun the pocket battleships. The Germans themselves lowered the classification of these ships to heavy cruisers and forbade them from participating in fleet actions due to being too slow to run if things got dicey…

The Germans also forgot one other important factor… ARMOR… its all fine and dandy to “outgun” an enemy ship, but if your armor sucks you may find that there seems to be something wrong with your ships today when you get in a fleet engagement.

Kurt, I recommend you lay off the propaganda catch phrases and concentrate more on actual schematics, capabilities and limitations… you’ll go a lot further then relying on catchy propaganda snippets.

Wolfshanze, the last sentence of your post left me scratching my head. It seems truly bizarre to characterize anything I’ve written in this thread as a “catchy propaganda snippet.” Since it’s not obvious what in particular you have in mind with such a vague and nebulous disparagement, maybe you could be more specific?

@Wolfshanze:

It wouldn’t even be a draw… even taamvan who flat-out admitted the Baltimore is the better ship in every category basically pulled out the “Austin Powers Defense” for the Scheer… the belief that because the Scheer is crewed by Germans they will win because of their mojo-baby!

This was hilarious, and I do appreciate being called out when I’m arguing from the hip rather than from all the facts in hand.  I did try to be straightforward in my assessment, but also a somewhat equivocal for the sake of a jaunty discussion.

Like most good discussions I did do more research after it began, and there are some flaws in my most cogent point;  a “lucky” hit by gunfire has sent many a stout iron ship to the bottom, but there is an astonishing record of seemingly “stout” ships like battlecruisers, esp. HMS Hood, that seemed to have sunk after taking more than their fair share of “lucky” hits.

I’m going to surmise that the reason why there is “something wrong with our ships” has to do with emphazising speed+firepower against armor.  Armor is probably the least sexy point of the triad, but there are plenty of examples where ships that had an adequate armor profile survived in situations that would sink “better, newer” but less thoughtfully clad ones.

So, if the Baltimore is the Sherman Tank of cruisers, solid but average, I do admit that it probably would have beaten the panzerschiffs.  Assuming (and its an assumption, for sure) that the Scheer has some small advantages in terms of range, crew, design, well its wishful thinking that would have a high chance of turning into a Baltimore-crippling hit…as long as the Americans have that solid armor… and WWI and WW2 were kind of different in terms of the high chances of a ammo explosion from a lucky hit.

I do admit to playing a bit of devils advocate, but I was also focused on the surprisingly ambivalent performance of American gunships during WW2.  Though America had an overwhelming advantage in general, destroyer vs destroyer and cruiser vs cruiser type actions traded ship for ship against the Japanese and though the Allies went on to win the war, the crews of those US ships still often fought at a sacrificial disadvantage when not supported by air, carriers, or the overwhelming numbers of a fleet action.

This question was asked in the absence of those extras, which gives us a good opportunity to play around with the what ifs.

The Germans had a grand total of 2+2+3+3 capital surface ships, most of which were sunk early or stuck in port, which is about how many the US produced in one season!  My comment about the Germans performing better than expected has to be seen in light of the fact that they only deployed about 10 legit ships and 30 destroyers…add a zero or so to those numbers to represent the US/UK fleet strengths.  Per ocean!

In addition to the armor question (to wit; HMS Hood and others seems to have had a much-revised and much less safe armor layout and in older condition than I recalled), the ranges involved wouldn’t give a superior or longer range gun much of an advantage.  Firing at targets on the horizon would be difficult, the ship with the laying radar would have a big advantage.  The ship with speed could close;  more likely the Baltimore would retire and call for air support (though that’s not permitted by the hypo)!  Without the benefits of a fleeing towards one’s base or buddies in a tail chase, the better (+faster) overall ship would probably win.

So perhaps, no, the “Germans wouldn’t always win, baby”, but it still an interesting though experiment.  Enjoying the opportunity.

This is to follow up on taamvan’s post.  Any sea fight in any era, including the period running from WWI to WWII, is subject to so many factors and so many imponderables, all interacting with each other in ways that are often unique, that its outcome can never be predicted with complete accuracy.  Just to give a couple of examples of factors that are in no way obvious when one looks at the raw statistics of a ship’s specifications:

• One of the factors that contributed to the loss of the British battlecruisers at Jutland in 1916 was the absence of anti-flash shutters on their main gun turrets.  This allowed blast effects from enemy hits to propagate into the ammunition magazines, with lethal results.  And ironically, the presence of anti-flash shutters (more specifically, of overly-complicated ones) on Prince of Wales during the Bismarck engagement in 1941 proved to be a disadvantage because they tended to jam the main guns.

• One of the (literally) hard-to-notice factors that potentially affects warship performance is whether or not they have a foul bottom.  If a ship has been at sea for a long time, it may – despite the use of anti-fouling paint – have accumulated marine growths on its hull which compromise its speed.  This is actually one of the factors that might have worked against the Graf Spee if it had tried to reach Germany from Montevideo after the Battle of the River Plate, if Langsdorff had been intepid enough (or foolish enough) to try it.

A set of very important factors affecting any sea fight, and which similarly don’t show up in ship design statistics, are those that involve the officers and crew: their training, their morale, the tactics they use, the operational orders under which they are functioning, and the doctrines that govern their naval service.  These vary greatly from navy to navy, and from era to era within a navy, and there’s also a lot of variation in terms of how well these doctrines are (or are not) applied in a given battle by the officers and crew of a given ship.  European naval officers studied with great interest the results of the Russo-Japanese War (notably the Battle of Tsushima) for many reasons, one of these being that the Japanese navy was trained in the British naval tradition and the Russian navy was trained in the French naval tradition – so it was no suprise that the British Admiralty took great satisfaction from the fact that Japanese clobbered the Russians.

All of that being said, ship design does matter.  Speaking in terms of broad averages, a properly handled superior ship design will tend to do better against a properly handled inferior ship design, even if one can never exclude possible wild cards like lucky shots by the gunners or brief (but disproportionately serious in their consequences) lapses in judgment by the officers.

For certain, wargames and speculation are just mind games, they don’t fully resemble real life, they shouldn’t, and can’t.  As I’m sure most here will agree, that doesn’t mean they lack potential insight.

Further on your ammo explosion point, I’ve read several sources that say the British Fleet at Jutland emphasized a rapid rate of fire with unimpressive accuracy, and this led to risky handling practices being retained or revived in spite of safety measures put in place after catastrophic losses.

Japanese Cruisers were equipped with longlance turrets, this was an expensive choice that on paper would make the ship “more powerful”.  However, Cruisers and heavier ships torpedo fire wasn’t all that accurate,  more difficult for them to get in position, and an incidental hit on an pure oxygen torpedo could cause a catastrophic loss.

A lot of ships had radars or critical electrical systems that failed under fire and reliance on systems like this could leave a ship an iron tub firing with 1880s technology and with accuracy to match.

In the age of sail, Britain spent the equivalent of modern billions on cladding of various types, which was outrageously expensive but gave them a key edge, as you point out.

So that tech can be a mixed bag, a lot of cost-benefit analysis that can only be examined in hindsight and after experience.

There weren’t any US vs Germany capital ship confrontations in WW2, that I know of.  Tons of DD vs sub and raider vs AMC actions but none of the interesting situations that US Japan had in the Pacific War, so its cool to imagine.    A huge part of the hypothetical would rely on what era it is set in and the war situation, since these setting elements are key; if Germany was being pounded into defeat, the captain would run like hell…Does he know what type of enemy he is facing?  Exactly what its capabilities are? How?  And whether help is close, or far away, whether ammunition and fuel are available or not…all these fog of war elements play on every decision that is made, in real life.    And in a really good simulation too.

USS Alaska vs KM Scharnhost

There’s something meatier to ponder in US vs German surface ships.

DKM Scharnhorst wins that

Alaska Class vs the big boys its a pretty even match we’ve posed there.  Germans win ties.  (See Austin Powers Rule).

USS Texas is a “slow” BB, he’s kinda an old guy during the period contemplated.  The ones they used for bombardments were usually recognized as unable to keep up with the carriers (and their purpose-built escorts) as they moved around.  islands and coasts cant run away so there is plenty of time to get in position and its much safer to deploy the ship under circumstances of overwhelming sea and air superiority rather than risk a ww1 style catastrophe where older, slower ships were destroyed by mines or submarines.

The “fast” battleships, battlecruisers, fleet carriers and ww2 era heavy cruisers were so much faster than the Texas-era/WW1 line battleship that they could choose either to run away or confront the enemy with the advantage of position.  The WW1 BBs were slow enough that the action was rarely still going on by the time they caught up and the carrier groups already moved on.

but that doesn’t mean useless…big guns…giant platform…Roll 4 or better to hit the beach.