New Decius wrote:My fleet is realistic for the force committment I have. My military is truly a massive machine due to a thiriving and constantly growing arms industry coupled with Prussian military traditions. As to the mention of Battleships these are not the dinosaurs of the past but modern nuclear powered behemoths whose main armaments are automated 9inch-16inch guns (Depending on class of warship) and VLS Pods containing cruise missiles.
Those 96 ships are split in four squadrons of 24 ships each. Thats six battleships and two carriers to a squadron with the remaining sixteen ships a mixture of guided missile cruisers and destroyers. These are four out of the seven squadrons of my Hochseeflotte, the Fleet Command whose main jurisdiction is the North Sea and direct home defense.
Aren't battleships obsolete?
I'm no naval expert, so perhaps you have a very good reason for using them. But the way I see it, they perform a function (providing huge fire support) which can be done much cheaper and more efficiently by aircraft. As far as I know, even by the time of WWII battleships were basically obsolete, accomplishing more by just sitting at dock (fleet in being) than by actually fighting. This because they were very slow and large, in comparison to the naval all-star of WWII which would go on to become the center-piece of modern fleets, the carrier, which by its very nature has a much larger range. In fact, as far as I know the only function which battleships ever performed reasonably in WWII was coastal bombardment- and even then aircraft are more effective at that. In modern warfare IRL a nuclear battleship has not yet been created (again as far as I know) because it would essentially be putting a bigger bullseye on an already immense target.
One could argue that due to their cruise missile armament, your battleships would have greater range and capabilities than historical examples. This is true, but redundant. Why not put the missiles on a smaller, faster, much less expensive warship? It would save immense amounts of money, and probably be more effective. Why pay for an extremely expensive and large, vulnerable ship, plus have to crew it with thousands of men, when one could instead build a smaller, faster, stealthier submarine or aircraft which has a much smaller crew, and get the same results?
Essentially my question is, what function are the battleships in your navy serving that couldn't be fulfilled at a much lower price-tag and more efficiently by less expensive craft, New Decius?
Admittedly I utilize battleships in my own navy, too, but I acknowledge that they are almost completely useless, and were commissioned by Hans Wilhelm for prestige reasons.
Posted: Sat Sep 21, 2019 10:00 pm
it's a reference to steiner's attack against the soviets in the defense of berlin; it never happened.