Yuku free message boards

the Fast Battleship is argueably the merger between a battleship & a battlecruiser.

some say the Hood was the first fast battleship.

originally a battleship was slow, heavily armoured & had heavy firepower.

a battlecruiser sacrificed armour to increase speed.

the size of HMS Hood was such that she was able to have battleship levels of protection, firepower but also much greater speed. yes she had thin deck armour but so did all battleships at the time of her launch.

the Iowa class was an exceptionally fast US battleship design, armed with superb 16"/50 guns, she had a very long hull & powerful engines that gave her a top speed of 33knots but she did have weaknesses. her underwater protection was a weakness- torpedo blisters could have been added but calculations estimated it would reduce top speed by 1.5knots. her armour protection was generally good- however she was not protected to withstand hits from her own 16" 2700lb shells. But to protect her from such hits she would have had to have been considerably larger & probably fail to pass thru the panama canal. Besides the only axis guns that come close to the 16"/50 in power is the Italian 15" gun which was known to be unreliable due to poor quality shells. deck penetration was noticeably inferior to the US gun but side armour penetration was similar. Naturally Iowa's armour was no use at all against the Japanese 18.1" shells fired by the Yamato but the Yamato was 20,000 tons heavier. the 18.1" guns actually suffered from poorly designed shells- Iowa's 16" guns were almost as powerful as these. yes its debatable that the Iowa was a battlecruiser - but I think her overall levels of protection which are comparable with most treaty BBs means its best to regard her as a fast battleship.

when i came up with this thread- I was thinking of a battlecruiser more in the line of the Renown or refitted S+G. these ships were smaller than battleships, had good protection but a reduced firepower of 6 main guns. the results meant a 'light battleship' if thats an appropriate designation. the S+G were good examples of these- sadly due to time constraints they were hurredly armed with nine 11" guns which in a duel with a battleship (KGV) proved to be too light. had they'd been fitted with the six 15" guns as intended (like the Renown class) they would certainly have put up a much better fight.