The ratio of victories and defeats in battles involving large ships is described by the well-known “Gauss curve”. Where on both ends of the spectrum there are epic heroes and outright outsiders, and in the middle - the "middle class", with its periodic successes and failures.
That is why the assertion that heavy cruisers and battleships were aimlessly “stood in their bases throughout the war” is at least incorrect. It’s even worse - when a hackneyed example is taken out of context and based on it, highly moral conclusions are made, in the style of “Oh, yes! This incident brought the final line under …”
Such statements are either a consequence of insufficient knowledge of history, or are caused by the underdevelopment of the neural network, which is not able to understand the simplest logical chains that make up this material. Which does not claim the value of a monograph, being a short and understandable collection of facts about the actions of ships during WWII for a wide range of readers.
In furious Internet disputes, respect for the opponent is not welcome, here everyone is ready to die for his innocence. If you collect all the statistics, there will always be those who will throw ridicule about the "average temperature in the hospital." If you give a long list of individual examples, then the argument immediately follows that individual episodes “do not make the weather,” you need to consider the whole picture.
To exclude unnecessary debate, the following is proposed. First, give well-known facts and statistics about large ships of the WWII era. Then - the stories of randomly selected ships.
In sight - highly protected surface ships. Battleships and heavy cruisers (TKr) of the WWII era. As already described in detail in the previous part of the article, the mentioned TKr were not inferior (and sometimes surpassed!) Their older counterparts in terms of the power of the power plant mechanisms, the number of crews and the complexity of the design (equipment of posts, the composition of weapons, sights and control systems, radar installations). TKRs were catching up with battleships in terms of characteristics, cost and labor intensity of construction, and, therefore, they deserve a place in this list, along with ultimatum warships.
Atlantic
A) The first battle with the participation of highly protected ships took place on December 13, 1939, the last - on December 26, 1943. After that, the order of the thinned out German surface fleet no longer pushed into the ocean. And the Italian capitulated back in September 1943. Nevertheless, a lot has happened over the four years of active hostilities.
B) The only large ship that never took part in sea operations was the Italian LK "Roma". He entered service too late, when Italy was already feeling "fuel hunger" in full. Roma are a classic loser at the very end of the spectrum.
C) With the exception of "Roma", there is no longer a single TKr and LK, who would never shoot the enemy with the main caliber. Everyone fought, even the unfinished Jean Bar LK.
D) In total, 13 known sea battles with the participation of TKr and LK thundered in Atlantic waters. Each battle influenced the strategic alignment in the theater of operations, resulted in heavy losses among the participants and / or during it some heroic episode or record was recorded. They all went down in history.
- Battle of La Plata.
- Attack on the French fleet in Mars el-Kebir.
- Fight "Richelieu" with the British squadron (events off the western coast of Africa).
- Shooting of the aircraft carrier "Glories".
- Shootout of TKr "Berwick" with TKr "Admiral Hipper".
- A short battle of Rhinaun with German battleships (the British battle cruiser managed to drive off the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, which were guarding the entrance to the fjord, which allowed light forces to break through and sink a flotilla of 10 German destroyers).
- Bright and deafening sinking of LKR "Hood".
- No less epic hunt for the Bismarck.
- Shooting of the battleship "Jean Bar" by the American battleship "Massachusetts" (the landing of the allies in Casabalanka).
- “Shot at Calabria” (during the battle of battleships a military-technical record was registered - hitting a moving ship from a distance of 24 kilometers).
- The night battle at Cape Matapan (2,400 dead, one of the bloodiest and most dramatic battles in maritime history).
- Battle at Cape Spartivento (once again flexed their muscles and measured their strength).
- "New Year's battle" at the North Cape - the British are eager to fight, the pipes breathe ominously hot; in the gray gloom of the polar night, the Duke of York catches up with the Scharnhorst!
The victims of these battles were a battle cruiser and three battleships, an aircraft carrier, four heavy cruisers and four destroyers. The battleships "Cesare", "Dunkirk", "Richelieu" and "Jean Bar", the leader of the destroyers "Mogador", the cruisers "Exeter" and "Berwick" also received serious damage.
In terms of the number of sunk and damaged ships of the 1st rank, the linear fleet and the TKr unexpectedly break out into first place in the European theater of operations, ahead of even the omnipotent aviation. To the displeasure of all who mutter about the uselessness of these units, which did not show themselves in any way during the war.
E) Despite the accusations of low shooting accuracy, there is an eloquent episode: the Bismarck gunners from the third salvo destroyed the battle cruiser Hood (distance - 18 km).
Another case: a squadron of British battleships, which turned the Italian cruisers "Pola", "Zara" and "Fiume" into rubble in minutes. It should be noted that the case took place in pitch darkness, while “Valiant” hit “in the top ten” with the first salvo.
A similar thing happened in the Pacific Ocean when the Japanese defeated the American unit at about. Savo.
Accidents - or mere coincidences? Only naive people can think so.
The above statistics do not take into account:
P. 1. Battles with an obviously weaker enemy, with an obvious result for it (example: sinking of the auxiliary cruiser "Rawalpindi" by the battleships "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau").
Another, unique in its kind, example: torpedo attack and ramming by the destroyer "Glovorm" of the heavy cruiser "Admiral Hipper" (during the clash the destroyer was sunk).
P. 2. Actions of raiders on sea communications. If submariners are proud of the tonnage of sunken transports, why should the crews of surface ships be ashamed? So, in February 1941, the German "Hipper" defeated the SLS-64 convoy, sinking 7 steamers in a couple of hours.
During its short career, the TKr “Admiral Graf Spee” managed to sink nine ships.
During one of their trips to the Atlantic (Operation Berlin), 22 Allied vessels with a total tonnage of 115 thousand brt became victims of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Such serious damage is comparable to the losses of the PQ-17 convoy, just the supporters of the theory of "obsolete battleships" have never heard of it.
P. 3. Inglorious from the point of view of the author, but very extreme in design. Example: the actions of the TKr “Admiral Scheer” on the communications of the Northern Sea Route (the heroic death of “Sibiryakov”, attacks on Dikson and the Soviet weather station in the Arctic).
P. 4. Fire support and shelling of coastal targets. Classics of the genre.
Interesting fact. “The largest gunboat in the Baltic” - the German TKR “Prince Eugen” had gratitude from the SS troops.
To provide artillery support for the landing and suppress the German batteries during the landing in Normandy, the Allies brought in five battleships and 20 cruisers. No less powerful forces were recruited to provide fire support for the landings in Italy and on the African continent.
P. 5. Losses of aircraft from anti-aircraft fire of ships. Due to their size, the TKr and LK have always been used as platforms for the deployment of numerous air defense systems. And, despite the general archaism of anti-aircraft weapons of the WWII era, the attack of SUCH TARGET was a deadly event. Thousands of brave pilots laid down their heads in an attempt to get closer to the “sea citadels”.
P. 6. The effect created by the very presence of a powerful ship in the theater of operations. As soon as “Tirpitz” raised the pair, the British abandoned the convoy and fled. Together with the transports left without cover, 430 tanks and 200 aircraft went to the bottom, not counting thousands of other important military cargoes. As Sun Tzu said: the best victory is to win without a fight.
Pacific Ocean
In view of the colossal size of the Pacific theater of operations and the peculiarities of the operations of the fleets, the meetings of "floating fortresses" took place here less often than in Europe. The overly thrifty Japanese kept their best LCs for the “general battle”. Nevertheless, they used their old LKR and LK very productively.
American fast battleships were mainly used to provide cover for aircraft carriers. In addition to the function of providing short-range air defense, the Americans feared a breakthrough at close range by Japanese TKr and Congo-class battle cruisers. And, as time has shown, they were not afraid in vain. It is still unclear how an entire sabotage unit (8 cruisers and 4 battleships) penetrated the American landing zone in Leyte Gulf, avoiding timely detection (and destruction) by numerous American ships and an aviation group of 1200 aircraft.
During the years of the war, five famous battles with the participation of highly protected surface ships of the 1st rank took place in the Pacific waters. Among them:
- Battle in the Java Sea, February 27, 1942. During it, the Japanese TKR sank the cruisers Exeter and De Reuters.
- “Second Pearl Harbor” - the massacre at about. Savo in August 1942. The Americans lost 4 cruisers and 1,077 people in the night battle. The Japanese cruisers did not suffer serious losses.
- The night battle at Guadalcanal on November 13, 1942 (the battle cruiser Hiei was sunk by the fire of cruisers and destroyers, the cruiser San Francisco was heavily damaged by the return fire).
- The night battle at Guadalcanal on November 14, 1942 (the battleship South Dakota was damaged by the fire of the Japanese TKR and LKR "Kirishima" (26 hits), the LK "Washington" arrived in time to sank the "Kirishima" in revenge. one ship - the destroyer "Ayanami").
- Fight at Fr. Samar on October 25, 1944 (three destroyers and an escort aircraft carrier Gambier Bay were sunk, another, Kalinin Bay, received 12 direct hits with armor-piercing shells, the Japanese lost three heavy cruisers). About 500 aircraft flew into the area of the sabotage breakthrough, from all nearby aircraft carrier groups and the Tacloban airfield on about. Pour. Nevertheless, the actions of the aviation turned out to be ineffective against highly protected ships (the aircraft were prepared against ground targets, were armed with bombs and did not have torpedoes). The Japanese owe their losses to the actions of American destroyers, which overshadowed the escort AB. The rest of the Japanese squadron marched for four hours under the blows of an air grouping, equivalent in number to the air wings of five heavy aircraft carriers! Nevertheless, all cruisers and battleships returned safely to base, incl. TKR "Kumano" with a torn off nose.
Among the heroes of the Pacific theater of operations:
- battleship South Dakota. Covering his unit in the battle of Fr. Santa Cruz, battleship shot down 26 Japanese aircraft. Even if this figure is considerably overestimated, the destruction of one or two dozen air targets at a time is an absolute military-technical record. The Americans themselves claim that they owe their success to new anti-aircraft missiles with a built-in mini-radar (a radio fuse that is activated when flying near an aircraft);
- battleship North Caroline. By the beginning of 1945, the battleship managed to cover 230 thousand nautical miles (this would be enough to circumnavigate the globe 10 times), most of them in the combat zone. In 1942 he was damaged by a torpedo of a Japanese submarine, three months later he returned to service. And he began to take revenge.
Here is just a short part of the combat chronicle:
Another forgotten hero is the battleship Colorado, which was in the combat zone for six months (from November 1944 to May 1945). Neither a hard landing of the "kamikaze" on the deck, nor other dangers interrupted his journey. The command kept him in the very sectors of the theater of operations, rightly believing that if the Colorado drowned, he would be the last to drown, after the rest of the fleet had died under the blows of the kamikaze.
The Japanese had their heroes. For example, the battleships "Hyuga" and "Ise", which broke through without loss from Singapore to Japan through a screen of 26 American submarines and the forces of the entire aviation of the US Navy (Operation Ki-ta, 1945). On board each battleship there were six thousand barrels of fuels and lubricants and aviation gasoline, as well as 4000 tons of other valuable cargo (tungsten ore, zinc, mercury, rubber) for the Japanese military industry.
Epilogue
Suddenly we see before us the most furious and active participants in the naval theater of operations of the Second World War. It turned out that the ships, which were mistakenly recorded as "obsolete and unnecessary junk", had the highest operational stress coefficient (KO) among all other classes of ships (which, of course, is explained by their size and resistance to battle wounds). They participated in the maximum number of battles, and most of them spent more time at sea than the most successful ships of other classes (less protected units, when trying to repeat the successes of the TKr and LK, quickly found themselves at the bottom).
Highly defended ships are the only ones that could fight and had a chance to win even in the most unfavorable conditions, with the absolute numerical superiority of the enemy. They were much less afraid of damage than ships of smaller classes. They could fight in spite of all the destruction and loss. But even in the most difficult moment, the losses among their crew did not exceed a few%. Having received a hefty dose of explosives on board, the “sea citadels” survived and returned to service in a short time.
TKr and battleships were often assigned the most dangerous missions and were attracted to the most difficult sections of the theater of operations. These ships fought valiantly against each other and confronted the entire spectrum of threats realized in naval warfare.
The author himself does not see any reason here for the dispute about "useless ships". Here one can only argue about the poor knowledge of history by readers who are eagerly trying to refute the obviously obvious things.
Battleships die laughing
Over the dusk of the cutting docks
In blind fire, under a salvo roar -
Battleships die in smoke.
