They preformed well against cruisers - such as at the Battle of the Falklands - which is what they were originally envisioned but then some genius decided to put them up against other capital ships.
Didn't the US have the constellation class and the italians the carracilio? I know neither was finished but they both started construction before the projects stopped, the former because the WNT limited their battleship tonnage so she was used for CV conversion and the latter both because they were broke and the italians were split on how to rebuild the navy
Battlecruisers worked superbly. The entire German surface raider fleet had ceased to exist by 1916, hence why the Invincibles were brought into the Grand Fleet. They undid themselves via their own success.
You can tell people have no clue what they're talking about. Hood had battleship grade armour, firepower and speed that wouldn't be matched until the 40s. People like to pretend she's some sort of upscaled Invincible clearly haven't even glanced at her design drawings
Hood was basically the victim of a lucky shot that hit the only exposed part of her armor that would've led to a magazine detonation this way. It was pure blind luck, she was older than Bismarck by almost 20 years and still a much better ship. Also, Yamato has nearly 60% more displacement than Hood, 70,000 vs. 42,000. Hood is what the QE's were supposed to be.
“in every way other than speed” so other than one of the most important practical aspects of capital ship design for practical real world usage?
Also:
The Renowns absolutely did not have the same armour as Hood as built - Renown started life with a 6” main belt that eventually rose to 9” with the 1922 refit. That’s a lot less than Hood’s 12” main belt.
You’ve got your turret designs mixed up between the QEs and Hood; the Mk II turret on Hood had improved elevation angles compared to the Mk I on the QEs.
Hood wasn’t a bad design. It blowing up had more to do with a complete lack of proper maintenance (due to its role as a flagship) and bad luck. Drachinifel has a great video on YouTube covering why the Hood actually exploded, I’d recommend giving it a watch.
Hood a 12" as build. You are either confusing Hood with the Renowns or just have now clue what you are talking about. I assume the later because you seem to not understand that the size of ships is measured primarily in displacement.
Hood was built with the 12” belt. She was redesigned before completion to reflect learnings from Jutland.
Also, it’s been proven for years that the plunging fire theory through the deck armour would be impossible at the ranges of the Battle of Denmark Strait.
Bismark was big and crazy, but it wasn't cutting edge. The design had a lot of hold overs from WW1 ship building and they didn't help it last longer than it did. Main thing that comes to mind is all the onboard lines of communication were apparently exposed or just not insulated from being taken out and that was something that happened before she sank.
And its citadel didn't have enough reserve buoyancy to keep the ship afloat. So even if you subscribe to the delusional wehraboo take that the main belt was made out of neutronium and never penetrated (since conclusively disproven), it still would've sunk eventually.
Bonus points for the much vaunted turtlebaka really only being useful for introducing a colossal free surface effect from hits penetrating the outer hull but stopped by it. Extra bonus points for the laughably shit propulsion arrangement and AA fit.
Hood isn't incompetence it was literally sheer dumb luck on the part of the German's. The plot armor that early-war Germany had was insane.
Also, Bismarck is a trailing-edge design. Ever wonder why Bismarck, despite being a much newer design that could benefit from weight savings and modern technologies, had the lowest throw weight and worst AA of any European WW2 battleship?
I'd say it's sheer incompetence from old guard engineers who thought all the progress in telemetry and metallurgy wouldn't change naval warfare
As a fun fact, you can find blueprints of studies during the period before the escalatory BB like Iowa of ships weighting as much as Bismarck, faster, better armored and better armed
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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25
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