Iowa Class Battlecruisers - We Ask If America's Most Powerful Dreadnoughts May Actually Have Been...

A few niggles with the story. The "cruiser" nomenclature was invented by the British and their sole purpose was commerce raiding. "We cannot fight you ship for ship on the high seas, so we will instead starve you to death by sinking your commerce shipping." To that extent, a cruiser's goals were just guns and speed. As cruisers were already fast, a number of nations started putting heavier convoy escorts like battleships and other cruisers. A "battle cruiser" was therefore a ship as fast as - or faster than - a cruiser and with guns big enough to deal death to a battleship. Now in the early days of this, a 9.5 inch gun was pretty devastating. Germany and France armed their battle wagons with 11 and 12 inch guns with America adopting the 12 as well.

Britain bumped the arms race up by introducing a fast firing 13.5 inch gun. Germany, Italy and France soon followed suit and it became apparent that everyone's battlewagons were going to mount 13.5 pieces. So the British battle cruiser concept was simply a large cruiser sized vessel with a cruiser's high speed and a battle ships' 13.5 inch guns. HMS Tiger proved the concept. She had the guns plus a faster speed. HMS Hood on the other hand, went the other way and put 15 inches onto a longer hull which increased her speed even more. In both Tiger and Hood's cases and failures, the failures were command related and not ship related. Hood approached Bismarck and Prince Eugen with a force of eight ships but the ineptness of Admiral Holland resulted in the cruisers and destroyers remaining out of range while Hood and the brand new battleship Prince Of Wales battled.

The USA would keep the name "battle cruiser" as a category to define ships that were allotted to fight an as-yet un-named new Japanese heavy cruiser class which ended up not materializing. By this point in time, all American ships regardless of name are relegated to the role of carrier escort and the emphasis is on AA weaponry and not anti-ship. Past 1943 nothing Japanese will be sunk by ship - aircraft only (submarines excepted). Today, the term cruiser is used to signify a ship that has fleet command facilities/capabilities.

Thank you for the interesting read/article on Iowa class Battlecruisers.

I never really saw the argument that because the Iowas weren't slow lumbering gun platforms that they weren't Battleships.