Explanation of Battleships

Hello everyone, the previous chapters about destroyers and battleships may have caused misunderstandings among many readers because I did not explain them clearly.

First, let me quote a historical fact:

When the battleship Yamato was decided to be built, the most radical aviation advocate, Colonel Onishi Takijiro, deputy commander of the Yokosuka Air Force, rushed into the Naval General Staff to fight with others. He said to the Deputy Chief of the Naval General Staff, Koga Mineichi: "Building Yamato is a mistake of the times. The money to build a Yamato can build 3,000 planes. If you give me 3,000 planes, I can sink all the fleets."

Koga Mineichi did not scold Onishi Takijiro, but struggled to find words to persuade him: "Onishi, I am not against aviation, but you must know that the emperor must ride in a carriage pulled by eight horses when he goes on tour. The same is true for a country. It must have battleships. If others have them, we must have them too. This is called the face of the country and the face of the navy, you know? "

Onishi Takijiro was still struggling desperately: "Then can we have fewer horses? We don't need eight horses, just four horses. A carriage pulled by four horses is also very impressive."

"No, Onishi, this is not something I, Vice Minister Koga, can decide."

……

The above conversation took place in 1937, when aircraft carriers had no record of any battles. Koga Mineichi was the Vice Chief of the General Staff of the Combined Fleet at the time, a vice admiral of the navy, and the one who later took over as the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet after Yamamoto Isoroku died.

This shows that the Japanese had already realized the importance of aircraft carriers and knew that aircraft carriers would replace battleships before the outbreak of World War II.

But for various reasons or inertia, they continued to build battleships.

The war that took place in World War II later proved that this theory was correct.

The reason is that almost all battleships are designed for ship-to-ship naval battles. The "cannons" are for destroying enemy warships, and the "armor" is for defending against enemy attacks. This is the "big guns and big ships" theory.

However, throughout World War II, there were almost no large-scale "ship-to-ship" naval battles. Aircraft carriers pulled the enemy and our fleets apart, and it was normal for battles hundreds of kilometers away to determine the outcome.

For battleships, the "cannons" are completely ineffective because even the shadow of the enemy ship cannot be seen, and the "armor" is also ineffective. The aircraft attacks from top to bottom, and the torpedo attacks are below the waterline.

Throughout World War II, battleships were mostly a burden to the fleet. With cannons and heavy armor, their speed inevitably became a shortcoming, and the large target easily became the target of siege by aircraft. As a result, destroyers desperately covered these ineffective battleships to escape.

The only large-scale ship-to-ship "close combat" should be the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which was also caused by the US military being deceived.

I describe it from memory, and I don't remember the names clearly. Interested book friends can search "Battle of Leyte Gulf" online.

The general situation was this: although the Japanese combined fleet had aircraft carriers, their carrier-based aircraft had almost been used up, so they decided to take a risk and use aircraft carriers as bait to trick the main US aircraft carriers away and escape from the pursuit of the landing fleet.

Then the fleet, which was mainly composed of battleships, hiding in the rear, suddenly rushed into the US landing fleet.

The Japanese succeeded, and this led to a close combat between the fleets, but in the end, the Japanese fleet still fled in panic under the powerful firepower of the US military and did not achieve much results.

Therefore, it was the aircraft carrier that eliminated the battleships. It changed the mode of naval warfare and made the battleships useless. This is beyond doubt.

The elimination period was World War II. Before World War II began, many countries, including the Japanese, realized that battleships were going to be outdated. After the end of World War II, basically no battleships were built. I have the impression that they all finished the unfinished ones. The Russians seemed to have built one, and the last completed one in France was also the sequel to the unfinished one during the war.

Some book friends think that it was missiles that eliminated battleships. This should be misleading by self-media. I searched online and found that there are self-media that really gave this conclusion.

Anti-ship missiles were not taken seriously until the Falklands War, which was already 1982.

The last battleship was the French "Jean Bart", which was completed in 1955 and served for only 6 years. In addition to bombing Egypt, it was used as a training ship. It disintegrated in 1970, which was basically at two levels with the development of anti-ship missiles.

Simply put, when anti-ship missiles appeared in front of the world, battleships had been eliminated. Of course, it was impossible that missiles eliminated battleships.

...

Finally, the idea of ​​this book is actually to use aircraft to help the French Navy seize sea power.

France is in a very special location, only more than 100 kilometers away from the UK, and Germany is right next to it.

Britain and Germany are working hard to develop battleships, and France is far behind and it is impossible to keep up in this regard.

Besides, why should it follow?

It has long been known that battleships are targets for aircraft, and all of the British and German battleships are within the combat radius of aircraft. Wouldn't it be enough to directly develop bombers to put the British and German fleets under bombing?

There is no need to develop aircraft carriers to eliminate British and German battleships.

France is the largest aircraft carrier, and it is an unsinkable aircraft carrier!

That's why the navy has to develop torpedoes. Bomber bombs are easier to develop, and it is enough for the army to develop them!

As for the danger of torpedo attack aircraft, that was during World War II. In World War I, anti-aircraft weapons had not yet been developed and there were even no anti-aircraft guns. All warships were basically in a state of no air defense, so of course there would be no danger. Torpedo attack aircraft could safely find angles to attack battleships at close range.

Finally, I would like to add that torpedo attack aircraft already existed during World War I, but the war ended soon after they were developed, so they did not have a chance to be used.