But why not just build more heavy cruisers and more battleships? The battlecruiser was too heavy and too expensive to waste on hunter-killer missions that could be better performed by flotillas of smaller ships.
Heavy cruisers were a post-WWI concept that was effectively a response to the failure of the battlecruisers against heavy firepower. But while Jutland was the faiture of the battlecruiser design against heavy weapons, the Battle of the Falklands was a triumph for the concept against it's intended target and in it's intendend role; long rage armoured-cruiser killing missions.
The only two naval powers that really left the war with battlecruisers were Japan and the UK who basically tried to refit them as close to battleships as possible, or convert them to aircraft carriers. Between naval treaties and technology allowing faster battleships, they could start doing more of the hunter role without the risk of running into larger ships. Heavy cruisers came in to be the advanced patrol ship that could risk contact with the enemy before turning away if outmached, and occupy screening vessels in an escort role to bigger ships. But the interwar heavy cruisers didn't have much success during WWII either, with more role specific light cruisers being preferred (the Atlanta class was basically just a floating AA plaform), along with the destroyers and corvettes for escorts and dealing with subs.
The Kriegsmarine fulfilled the spirit of the battlecruiser role with the Deutchsland-class and Scharnhorst class ships. Fast enough to run from battleships, well gunned enough to take on any cruiser fleet. The Allies had to devote a lot of resoruces to deal with a small number of ships.
Eventually it all got replaced in supremacy by the aircraft carrier anyway. Battleships, battlecruisers, heavy cruisers were all too heavy and expensive to waste on hunter-killer missions that could be better performed by air wings instead.
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The problem is the admirals who foolishly used battlecruisers as part of their fleets' main line of battle. That should have been exclusively the role of battleships and their escorts, never battlecruisers.
The Imperial German Navy, knowing that it would be outnumbered in any war with Britain, did plan to have to their battlecruisers fight in the battle line. But they designed theirs to have near battleship-level armor at the sacrifice of more guns. So at Jutland, they acquitted themselves well, by out-dueling the British battlecruisers in the first phase of the battle, then despite getting hit hard by battleship shells when the Germany Navy got its T crossed, managed to mostly limp home.
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Does anyone have a good book recommendation on the dreadnought arms race?
Not a book, but if you enjoy naval history from the Dreadnought era up to the end of WWII there's an absolutely fantastic channel on YouTube that covers all sort of ships, battles, treaties, arms races, etc. from that period.
The most impressive thing for me regarding the race was just how fast, especially Britain, ships were being constructed. Between Dreadnought and Jutland, there were more than 30 battleships and 10 battlecruisers built by Britain, probably less time than it'll take to get the first Canadian Surface Combatant from being laid down to commissioning.
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I posted this in the entertainment forum but might be interesting here. My uncle served on the Duke of York during WW2 and participated in the battle with the Scharnhorst. As I was making this music video I found some cool simulation of the battle from a guy in Turkey. He recreated battle scenes from models. You can skip ahead a minute to the footage if you don’t care about the song.
I wanted to write something new up here, I was looking at the new SU-75 fighter/interceptor that Russia is marketing as a Raptor hunter with an export price tag of 30 million dollars per plane.
Now that my coaching season is over, I might get back into dropping the occasional article in here.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
