The Ideal Warship for Fisher
By Stephan Redbeard
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Some historians point to Admiral Fisher apparently
having very little confidence in traditional
warships, like battleships and armoured cruisers.
He wanted to replace them with revolutionising
designs using the latest technology. In Fisher’s
time frame (1904-10 and 1914-15) that was
torpedoes (on destroyers and subs), all-big-guns
with centralised fire control, and turbines
for high speed. The combination of the last
two gave rise to the battlecruiser (Invincible), which when opposing its contemporary AC’s
and predread’s could use it’s superior speed
to choose the time, place and range of the
action, and from there outgun any opponent(s).
At the time when Fisher took office the first
time the British could see that even with
their excellent pre-WWI economy, it would
not be possible to keep the British naval
supremacy simply by outbuilding the potential
enemies in AC’s and battleships.
So, seen from 1904, a fleet of Invincibles
in numbers and cost being less than the existing
fleet of pre-dreads and AC’s, would have
a fair chance of defeating any of Britains
potential enemy fleets before they could
unite. In this context I clearly see why
he wasn’t interested in armour. Heavily protected
but slow ships would only be interesting
if you could count on having enough to always,
anywhere, outnumber the enemy, or if the
enemy would for certain come to you. Fisher
could count on neither superior numbers nor
the enemy coming by himself, but superior
speed and firepower would give the decisive
local superiority, even with inferior numbers
in total. Be strong where the battle is,
and don’t give a damn about all the other
places. That is I believe a good way to success
in all warfare, love and business
The world is never static however, and by
the time of Fisher’s second office (1914-15)
the main enemy weapon was not predreads and
AC’s any longer, but fleets of all big-gunned
dreadnoughts and super-dreadnoughts (incl.
BC’s). That obviously left the original BC
concept without the superiority it had had
against the AC’s and pre-dreads, but Fisher
still didn’t have the option of for ever
outbuilding any likely combination of enemies
in ships individually equal to those of the
potential enemies. So he had to be looking
again for ways to ensure his inferior numbers
the ability to be locally superior. By 1914-15
technology that would be by going for even
faster and even more heavily armed battlecruisers.
In this context the Incomparable design study from Fisher’s second reign
is interesting, as it was made to seek out
the potentials and limits of the battlecruiser
to fulfil the Fisher dogma. The result was
a true monster with a 1000’ hull, 50.000
tons, six 20” guns, 35 knots, long range
and marginal armour. Such ships would necessarily
be very costly, and even if counting on the
armour protection not being as important
as the Jutland experience apparently showed,
it is a good question if six 20” would give
the necessary superiority over all big-gunned
dreadnoughts. With centralised fire control
guns much smaller than 20” were already reaching
to the practical limit for any gunnery, no
matter how long the gun could fire it’s shell.
I guess wire-less and air-observation would
have born some hopes to utilise the over-the-horizon
range of the biggest guns, but it would be
overly optimistic to hope for hit-rates at
those ranges high enough to enforce a decision
- even with 20" shells. And enforcing
a decision on enemies in detail was (IMHO)
exactly the point behind the Fisher dogma.
I have no sources upon Fisher’s reaction
to this design, but I have often wondered
if it’s shortcomings as a superior weapon
system was the real motive behind his resignation
in 1915. With the technology available in
1915 it just wasn’t possible to get the weapon
he and Britain needed. And the problem wasn’t
skinny armour but guns and gunnery having
reached a limit of development.
Fisher died in 1920, but if we now imagine
that the Fisher spirit is kept alive and
intact in the admiralty, would a weapon system
being true to the Fisher spirit show up?
Obviously yes – the aircraft carrier. Not
the armoured British version, that approach
owed its origin more to the German BC operating
only in confined and heavily contested waters,
and without the killer-punch needed for enforcing
the decision. The kill still relied on the
ridiculously short reaching battleships,
a strange compromise certainly not being
in the Fisher spirit.
The ideal Fisher weapon would be something
like the Essex class CV. With 100 state-of-the art naval
aircraft it had a weapon system out ranging
and out fighting any battlefleet, and only
very little displacement or space was wasted
on silly armour plates being penetrable by
any serious weapon anyway. Speed and range
was of course superb, in itself making it
a difficult target, especially for torpedoes,
but also giving the necessary operational
versatility. Defence counted mainly on active
devices like radar directed CAP and AAA (and
of course good damage control). Don’t just
sit there and let the enemy hit you, knock
‘em out before they reach you – that’s the
true Fisher spirit.
No navy could of course count on having a
monopoly on aircraft carriers, but had the
RN after WWI seriously invested in naval
airpower from a Fisher perspective it could
probably have kept it’s supremacy for a decade
or two longer. It is much disputed when the
aircraft became a serious naval weapon, but
IMHO a combination of heavy scouting capacity
(BC’s) and numerous torpedocarrying aircraft
from CV’s would be fatal to any battleline
before the advent of radar directed CAP from
big CV’s. The aircraft of the 20’s and 30’s
might have been flimsy, but try and look
at the AAA of the contemporary battleships
or their TDS – they have practically none!
Someone once said that the battleship didn’t
become obsolete because it was vulnerable,
but because it was inferior in inflicting
damage upon the enemy. That is also true
for the battlecruiser, but you may argue
that it lasted a little longer because it’s
better speed (and bigger hulls) gave it a
greater operational versatility.
But the armour really was of very little
significance.
Regards
Steffen Redbeard