# Talk:Battlecruiser

.... I just read this long, thorough, interesting article, but I was struck by what seems like a major omission. At the end, it currently says "In spite of the fact that after World War II, most navies abandoned the battleship and battlecruiser..." So -why- were battlecruisers/(& battleships?)(I'm no expert here) abandoned? Can that info be included? thanks. (This is the first time I've entered anything on a Wikipedia talk page!)Sqzx (talk) 06:55, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I edited the above to make it easier to understand. Basically by the end of WW2 the CV had been shown to be the dominant naval force, and BCs and BBs were struggling to find a useful role. As offshore batteries they were useful but not cost effective, for AA more, smaller, ships were better, and in all other respects CVs had them beat. So they got turned into razor blades.Greglocock (talk) 10:15, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
That's a good idea - certainly something that should be clarified before the article goes to A-class/FAC. Parsecboy (talk) 11:58, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

In Battlecruiser#World War II, an editor is wanting to strike out reference to the Yavuz (battleship) in the last sentence of the first paragraph, shown here as struck through:

She [Renown]was the only battlecruiser to survive the war, except for the largely inactive Yavuz.
and is insisting on the grounds that Yavuz did not participate in the war.
My take is that "survived the war" means "existed at the end of the war" and would apply to battlecruisers in service with Argentina and other neutrals. The editor disagrees, thinking (I gather) that "survived the war" means "participated in and survived the war". (FWIW Turkey was technically a belligerent in WWII, but only for a brief period at the very end, and the Yavuz did not fight and AFAIK probably didn't even leave port or act as a potential counter to local Axis naval units (there were none left), so it's reasonable to treat it like a neutral power ship IMO.)
So impasse, the editor is invited to make his case, and I'm also interested in what our colleagues think, is the Yavuz in the class of battlecruisers to "survive the war" or not, or maybe the sentence should be rewritten? Herostratus (talk) 15:04, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

I think that the thing to do is to break out Yavuz into her own sentence as she's the only other prewar BC to exist after the war. I don't want to imply that she participated in the war.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:39, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
For the record, the material was added here, Sturmvogel was just reverting its addition, he wasn't striking out anything that had existed for any significant length of time. Parsecboy (talk) 16:49, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
Oh OK did not realize that. So the current stable version is without the reference to Yavuz. It's a good addition though IMO.
I think its just false to imply that the Renown was the only battlecruiser in commission at the end of WWII which is what the "only surviving" certainly does imply, to this reader. It's true that "survive" has two meanings -- "to exist" and "to live through some life-threatening ordeal" -- but the first is the default and (to me) clearly what is meant. When we talk of anything which "survives" in this kind of context we are not implying that it survived armed combat -- "surviving side-wheel steamers" (for instance) need not have passed through some ordeal.
But this remains contested, so... what do do. We could change it to "only battlecruiser to survive active combat" or whatever, but that's relatively unhelpful information and an uncalled-for division of the two existing battlecruisers into two random classes. How about
She was one of only two battlecruisers still afloat at the end of the war, along with the largely inactive Turkish vessel Yavuz
How's that? Herostratus (talk) 17:12, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
Clarify that they were the only two prewar BCs still afloat, because the Alaskas were still in service.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:11, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
I think the general consensus is that the Alaska was not a battlecruiser. (I'm not sure I agree, but just reporting what I think is the general consensus here.) Herostratus (talk) 02:01, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
The article calls them battlecruisers, so...--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:27, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
Well it does and it doesn't. The article USS Alaska (CB-1) does not use the term "battlecruiser" anywhere in the article, while Alaska-class cruiser says "They were officially classed as large cruisers (CB), but others have regarded them as battlecruisers". This article describes the Alaska class under "Large cruisers or 'cruiser killers'", which are described as "Described by some as battlecruisers, but never classified as capital ships" and there's some more hemming and hawing later on, on both sides of the issue. I don't think the question has been settled or can be. Herostratus (talk) 14:29, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
It goes both ways. Garzke and Dulin say that they're obviously battlecruisers in everything but name (paraphrased), but the US Navy pretty definitively disagrees. Maybe some language like "the only two battlecruisers classified as such still remaining" with a footnote clarification? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:54, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
That could work; the most important thing, I think, is to differentiate the Alaskas from the older ships.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:01, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

From the lede:

Improvements in armor design and propulsion created the 1930s "fast battleship" with the speed of a battlecruiser and armor of a battleship, making the battlecruiser in the traditional sense effectively an obsolete concept.
Is this statement backed up by sources? Because it does not make sense on its own. If the division between battleship and battlecruiser would have be found useful, "improvements in armor design and propulsion" would have created bigger and faster battleships, and battlecruisers that are faster and less well armored then those improved battleships. The union of the two types into fast battleships just demonstrates that the differentiation was no longer considered useful.
So again, is there a source? - 91.10.25.190 (talk) 06:41, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

See the Interwar section, where the topic is discussed in more detail, you will find sources.
But your premise is wrong - like most things, the law of diminishing returns governs the speed at which large vessels can be propelled through the water, so the difference in speed gained by removing a few thousand tons of armor in the 20-knot range is quite a bit more than the difference the same weight reduction makes when you're in the 30-knot range. In the Interwar section, you will note it refers to the Japanese Amagi and Tosa classes, which, though classified as battlecruisers and battleships, respectively, had a difference in speed of only a quarter knot, which is not exactly a meaningful difference. In a nutshell, one cannot build a battlecruiser with a significant speed advantage over a 33-knot Iowa that is, A, of reasonable size, and B, of reasonable cost. It's not that a 37-knot capital ship wouldn't have been useful, it's that it was essentially impossible to do. Parsecboy (talk) 11:58, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
If that's the case, the explanation given should reflect that. As it is, it seems to explain that people simply made faster battleships.
But if there are sources backing up the claim as given, the discussion is moot. Thanks for your response! - 91.10.25.190 (talk) 13:06, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

> and chase down any ship with lesser armament;
That seems wrong.   They can chase down a speedboat with no guns?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:602:9000:6A:616B:EAFA:9C5D:8769 (talk) 20:50, 25 March 2020 (UTC) 

No need to resort to Reductio ad absurdum-type arguments.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:31, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Turnbulltrump: - this article, the List of battlecruisers (and sublists like List of battlecruisers of Germany), and the individual articles themselves should all present ships consistently. Long-standing consensus is that the ships you want to add are not battlecruisers, so they should not be presented as such in this article. Yes, some sources refer to them as such, and for that reason, they should be mentioned briefly here, with the caveat that that view is not predominant. Parsecboy (talk) 12:47, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

In this article, for the WWII era ships I noticed that Alaska-class gets a lot of coverage, while Scharnhorst-class, Deutschland-class, and Dunkerque-class gets only a brief mention despite being sufficient justification to merit the battlecruiser classification on Scharnhorst and Dunkerque.  If we remove the following sentence "Since neither their operators nor a significant number of naval historians classify them as such, they are not discussed in this article", then we can treat all such classes more fairly. Turnbulltrump (talk) 12:55, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to trimming some of the content on the Alaskas, but I would point out the difference being that the American ships are more likely to be referred to as battlecruisers than the others (probably in part because the German and French ships had a "legitimate" alternate ship type, whereas nobody really bought the USN's "large cruiser" nomenclature). Even some official USN publications referred to them as battlecruisers, for example. So I think we are not exactly comparing apples to apples here. Parsecboy (talk) 13:08, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
Do agree that the Alaskas content could be trimmed on this page (the Alaska article has a great section on the large cruiser vs battlecruiser debate), while retaining the technical arguements for and against battlecruiser classification, similar to how Dutch Design 1047 and Japanese Design B-65 are presented. For Scharnhorst and Dunkerque, at least permit a sentence for each class arguing why the battlecruiser classification applies on a technical standpoint. Turnbulltrump (talk) 13:23, 20 May 2025 (UTC)