Best Armoured Cruiser Design

[VoidSamukai]

Okay guys, so what do you think is the best armoured cruiser design and why.

Definition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armored_cruiser

For the sakes of fairness, the Invincible and Duetschland class (1930) don't count as armoured cruisers even if their navies initially consider them as such, as neither had much relationships with the original armoured cruiser concepts.

[Thorsten Wahl]

CA means - cruiser armored

[VoidSamukai]

I always thought it meant Cruiser-Type A. Guess I learnt something.

Anyways Lets just try and stick with typical armoured cruisers, eg Blucher, Scharnhorst (the one that was sunk at the Falklands, not the battleship/battlecruiser or ocean liner ones). Otherwise all the world's heavy cruisers: Mogami, Baltimore, Zara, County etc, would be classified s armoured cruisers.

And the latter mentioned cruiser is by no means in my books that well armoured

[RF]

''Armoured cruiser'' is a term generally used for WW1 and pre-WW1 heavy cruisers and fell out of use post-WW1 when ''heavy cruiser'' became the common description. This was when speed rather than armoured protection was the main criteria.

In strict fairness I think that either WW1 or pre-WW1 cruisers only should be considered. In terms of ship combat achievement I would nominate Scharnhorst classe, in terms of achieving victory at Coronel and then taking a considerable battering from two battlecruisers at the Falkland Islands before sinking.

[Ross]

The definition of Armoured Cruiser comes from the three general forms of cruiser extant in the Nineteenth Century:

Unprotected Cruisers - Unarmoured cruising ships such as Frigates & Corvettes

Protected Cruisers - Cruisers with a protective deck - i.e. curved horizontal armour which (put very simply) provides some side protection via the armour's slopes - but no belt armour.

Armoured Cruisers - Cruisers with an armoured belt.

The definition was entirely (in vast majority of countries anyway - the Germans for instance rated their cruisers differently) based on the armour scheme. Thus the small 4.7in gunned Japanese cruiser Chiyoda was an AC due to being belted. However, the weight of belt armour at the time quickly elevated AC's into ships as expensive as and almost as battle capable as battleships.

By the time that WW1 began these definitions had begun to disappear with new construction of Armoured Cruisers morphing into Battlecruisers and Protected Cruisers being lumped into the new categories of Scout & Light Cruisers, which could have a belt thanks to improved armour & construction techniques.

The advent of the Heavy Cruiser stems from the two categories of cruisers eventually defined by the post-war Washington & London Treaties & was entirely based upon gun size. From 1930 anything with a gun larger than 6.1" became a Heavy Cruiser (although this term wasn't used by all nations - the Brits for instance just called their CA's '8in cruisers' ). The 19th Century forebear of the Heavy Cruiser was the Protected Cruiser rather than the AC despite some misleading similarities.

I'd nominate Blucher as the best AC.

[VoidSamukai]

Agreed

For the best design, I would say for the typical role of scouting and support, the German Blucher would be good. She was fast and had very good firepower. And like the Scharnhorst class, she took a lot of damage before sinking.

For battleline duties (fighting along side BBs and BCs) the Russian Rurik or Japanese Ibuki class. Both had very powerful main guns, the latter having the same 12inch guns found on battleships at the time, and both had good armour while still being faster than most pre dreadnoughts.

[BuckBradley]

Well Blucher obviously, right? I mean, all "biggest gun" main armament, fast as any, weebled wobbled but didn't explode, etc.....

[Alberto Virtuani]

Hello everybody,

thinking of successful older Armored Cruisers design pre-WWI, I would not forget the Italian built "Garibaldi Class" cruisers build in late 1800 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_ ... ss_cruiser).

The two ships (out of a 10 ships class) sold to Japan (Kasuga and Nisshin) participated to the Russian-Japanese war and fought both at Yellow Sea in 1904 and Tsushima in 1905.

Due to the sinking of two battleships (Yashima and Hatsuse) after hitting mines, Adm.Togo took the tough decision to employ Kasuga and Nisshin directly in the main battle line together with his 4 battleships and they played such a heavy role in a very good way in both the main engagement against the Russian Fleet and in almost all operations where the battleships were present (including the sinking of Makarov's Petropavlovsk and isolated actions against Russian battleships).

At Tsushima, Nisshin and Kasuga hit several times the enemy battleships (including Oslyabia and Oryol), Nisshin received the largest number of Russian shells after the flagship Mikasa (13 in total, including 6 shells of 305mm, that were clearly out of its class), but, despite lossing 3 out her 4 main guns, survided demonstrating the very good design of the class. Kasuga too received one 12" shell on board, that did not damage her significantly.


Bye, Alberto