Talk:Armored cruiser

First armored cruiser

"Armored cruiser General-Admiral (1873)"

"The first armored cruiser was the British Shannon (1875)."

I think there is a little contradiction--Moroboshi 20:35, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

US-Centrism

Is it really neccesary to have a section about US Armoured Cruisers yet only skim over the Royal Navy, who used them far more extensively - not to mention the German Navy and Japanese Navy, whose Armoured Cruisers are of far more historical importance... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Getztashida 15:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)Getztashida (talk • contribs) 15:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC).

Not at all. Please feel free to enhance the article.

I have noticed this too so I have tagged the article accordingly. 60.240.153.41 (talk) 05:05, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Line of Battle

I struggle to see the meaning of this sentence.

"The last armored cruisers were built around 1910, technological developments leading to their replacement in the line of battle by larger, faster and better armed battlecruisers."

Someone obviously has "line of battle" on their minds. Most ships larger than flottila craft used linnear tactics in this era, but to me "the line of battle" is the countries main battlefleet, comprised of battleships but sometimes augmented by aroured cruisers in this era. Its not correct to say armoured cruisers were replaced in the line by battlecruisers, they were replaced by them full stop.203.10.93.254 05:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

According to WP's own entry, the Line of battle is a naval tactic or disposition, which is the term that I am familiar with. Armoured cruisers were retained by all major navies into the First World War, and some even persisted as late as the Second World War. It wasn't an instant change; battlecruisers first showed up in 1908 and were still being used as frontline warships at the Battle of Jutland, by both sides. I would say that the most misleading part of that sentence is its grammar, which I will have a go at tweaking. Emoscopes ^Talk 06:35, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

In whatever sense the term is used the sentence is still incorrect as written. Battlecruisers replaced armoured cruisers in some powers* building programmes*. As you point out the Armoured cruisers remained in the order of battle until the 1920’s, and they fought (in a line) in 1914 and 1916 at least. British I class battlecruisers were retired before the US big ten armoured cruisers for example. If the line of battle is defined as any formation of warship using linear tactics then the Armoured cruisers continued in “the line of battle” till they were withdrawn from service. I doubt that the sentence is drawn from any reputable source. ChrisMCau 21:47, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

perhaps better changing it to "battle squadrons" or "battle fleets" then? Emoscopes ^Talk 22:44, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

how about now? Emoscopes ^Talk 06:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Tsushima and "burst of construction

Tagged this claim for a reference. IMHO Tsushima took place at the end of the battlecruiser era, with many ships ordered before this battle, but with the armoured cruisers already being replaced by battlecruisers or left out of the construction programmes. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ChrisMCau (talk • contribs).

Yes, I would agree. The RN ordered its last armoured cruisers in the 1904-5 naval programme, so in fact this really preceded the battle. Emoscopes ^Talk 08:15, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Spelling

According to WP:ENGVAR, articles should be internally consistent in their use of British or American spelling. It also says that the variety of spelling used by the first major contributor should be adopted. This article seems about evenly divided between British and American spellings, but the article was originally written in American English. Thus, I have replaced the instances of British spelling (e.g. "armour") with their American counterparts. 72.225.48.13 (talk) 20:18, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Far from equal division: currently 71 uses of armour, and 31 of armor. Article was started with the US spelling, but was very heavily biased towards the history of the boat class in the US. If most of the boats, and origins of the class, were European, suggest move of article and consistent spelling in UK English style. Kevin McE (talk) 08:30, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

So now an admin has gone through the entire article replacing armoured with armored, on the basis of WP:RETAIN, although the first edition of the article was extreme case of wp:bias. Kevin McE (talk) 09:27, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Everything can be called bias - wp:engvar and wp:retain rules conveniently allow to avoid wars over such issues. Materialscientist (talk) 09:37, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Did you read the first version? Do you consider it to be a balanced history of this class of ship? Kevin McE (talk) 19:11, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

No first version (of a WP article) is ever good in terms of content. Materialscientist (talk) 22:56, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not talking about whether it was good in terms of content: I'm saying that as it took an entirely US viewpoint, and that this was at variance with the historical facts, it should not be determinant of ENGVAR. WP:RETAIN is usually a sound principle, but it is based on the assumption that the first version made a reasonable call in this regard. Kevin McE (talk) 08:12, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, some articles changed their spelling upon editors consensus (say during FAC), denying wp:engvar and wp:retain, and this is fine with me. I just dislike the situation when an article mixes up spelling - this does stimulate spelling wars, especially between IPs. Thus unified. Materialscientist (talk) 08:34, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not particularly worried which spelling we use. When I'm writing new material, it's much easier for me to do so using British spelling, but if someone wants to change it then fine. We should probably consider whether the fact that Britain built the first armoured cruiser and ended up with nearly 4x as many of them as did the US counts as a "strong national tie" under WP:TIES, but I'm not sure it does. Fundamentally I'm more concerned with improving the quality of the article than standardising the spelling... The Land (talk) 10:03, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

A few comments on recent edits

First of all, I'm really pleased to see this article getting some attention! I did some work on it a bit over a year ago, and have been meaning to come back to it, but have been unable to, sadly. So thank you, Jonyungk! However, I do have a few comments on these changes;

• In the first 2 paragraphs of "Background", are the sources referring to cruisers specifically, or armoured ships in general? If the former, then great. If not, we need to think how this article fits in with ironclad, which (IMHO) is where most of the material about the development of the armoured warship in general belongs, while we should try to keep this one focused on the development of the armoured cruiser specifically.

• Yes and no. While I'll admit the need for focus, the potential for readers who may not have read the ironclad article and thus not know the "back story" on the need for armored cruisers and how they came about. Therefore, a certain amount of overlap is going be unavoidable, especially if we are supposed to offer these articles as a service to readers. It would be helpful, though, to see what others have to say about your point.

• In the 1890s section, I'm not sure how helpful it is to have Parkerson's quote from 1898 supporting Mahan's view from 1890. The technical developments which made the late-1890s armoured cruiser possible intervened between the two!

• Parkinson's not there to back Mahan. He's there to clarify the expected role of the armored cruiser at that time. If it's that distressing, I can take out the quote and rearrange the remaining material accordingly.

Parkinson has been removed—sounds a little like "Elvis has left the building." Jonyungk (talk) 14:10, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

• In the 1900s section "Some naval authorities overestimated the armoured cruiser's survivability in a battle line due to its superior speed to battleships" is a fairly controversial thing to say. I think we need to be cautious in this section that we don't rely too much on Mahan and other US sources. After all, the French, British, Germans, Japanese and Russians were in the majority, building armoured cruisers. Only Austria-Hungary joined the US in taking a dim view of the type. There is more to say on this subject.

• Controversial? Considering that kind of thinking led eventually to the disasters at Jutland, I don't think so. If it bothers you that much, though, I can remove it, rephrase it or add mention of Jutland to make the context clearer. As for Mahan, Hovgaard (who was Danish) is also quoted so far and I'd be glad to include others; the sources on Tsushima and its aftermath on Google Books have so far been scanty. The inference that I'm relying on US sources, even an internationally-respected one such as Mahan, to the near-exclusion of others seems just a little insulting, though, although perhaps not intentionally so.

I think the issue is that as written, it states "overstatement" as a fact. There were competing schools of thought at the time, and it might be worth balancing the quote from Mahan with someone like Fisher. We need to be careful about making after the fact judgements about who was right in that debate - there aren't any simple answers. (Obviously, I don't mean to cause offence) The Land (talk) 15:50, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

• Battlecruisers. "By the time the last armored cruisers were entering service, they were becoming outclassed rapidly by new technological and strategic developments. They were directly replaced in battle fleets by the larger, faster and better-armed battlecruisers," - actually, not quite. We should talk about why the armoured cruiser developed into the battlecruiser. So far as I know, Jon Tetsuro Sumida's argument that the battlecruiser was the outcome of the same strategic imperatives as lay behind the armoured cruiser, was important here. I'll try to find time to add it.

• Sumida would help. I think Hovgaard's argument for a "battleship-cruiser," already mentioned, plays directly into it. The paragraph with which you take issue is one I did not write and with which I have not been comfortable, so amending or replacing it as you suggest is one I welcome.

• Robert Massie. Please, please, please, please don't use Massie's books as a source. They are a fine read but are littered with contentious interpretations and errors of detail. We should be aiming for a much higher level of understanding than Massie has in this article.

• Massie was included only for citations on the WWI section, which was factual and not interpretive but still needed some source, and for the two quotes on Blucher, which echo other sources but are much better phrased. For those reasons, I don't mind including him—he was basically what I had on hand at the time—but I didn't realize he was apparently regarded so contentiously.

I hope these comments make some kind of sense, and thanks once again for the work that's gone into this in the last few weeks. The Land (talk) 10:04, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. Hopefully, more comments from you and others will follow to improve this article further. Jonyungk (talk) 13:59, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Differences between Armored Cruisers and Heavy Cruisers

This new section seems to start out repetitively but makes a couple of distinctions. However, it needs work and has no citations whatsoever (for which I'm personally pissed at MonkeyKingBar, who has apparently blown me off about adding them). What do you think—is the section worth keeping and fixing up or should it simply be deleted at least until appropriate sources can be found? Jonyungk (talk) 12:58, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

"Like their protected cruiser predecessors and contemporary light cruisers, heavy cruisers lacked a side armoured belt, saving weight to achieve high speeds." - Unless I amisreading, this certainly seems wrong, as both light and heavy cruisers had armored belts, and not just decks like a protected cruiser.Russ3Z (talk) 13:31, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the operating word here is "contemporary," as in operating in 2012. If so, this point should be rephrased more clearly. Jonyungk (talk) 22:48, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Since only 1 light cruiser is currently in operation I'm sure that isn't the case. I think this is simply wrong information, since the high speeds achieved by light and heavy cruisers were largely a result of better propulsion technology (steam turbines vs VTEs), combined to a lesser extent with the weight savings made possible by metallurgical advances allowing thinner armor plate to give roughly the same protection as older, thicker types. Still, I'd rather have some reliable input before making a change to it myself. Russ3Z (talk) 01:00, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Agreed that it may actually be wrong info but feel the same as you that more input would be good before making changes. Jonyungk (talk) 01:58, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

I think we have two choices with this section - we can either remove it, or we can put in a brief history of the heavy cruiser - development of the Hawkins class from the light cruisers of WWI, the Washington Treaty limit, and the subsequent development of 8in-gunned 10,000 ton cruisers, and then the definition of "heavy cruiser" in the London Treaty. That should help clarify the differences. I've not seen any sources that compare the armoured cruiser and the heavy cruiser explicitly (at least not in more than trivial length) - in part I suspect because from a naval historian's point of view the differences are so obvious as to not need stating. The Land (talk) 08:52, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Panzerschiffe

I don't particularly think the Panzerschiffe belong here. They're armoured, yes, and they're cruisers, yes, but "armoured cruiser" tends to mean means a specific range of ships starting with Shannon and General Admiral and ending just before Invincible. I've just had a look for sources applying "armoured cruiser" applied to the Deutschland, and not found much. There is [1] - not a particularly good source, and undermining its own credibility by talking about how they were faster than battleships (which they weren't!). Any other views.... The Land (talk) 19:32, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I tend to agree with you; they weren't part of the design tradition of those earlier ships, they were something "new". The Warship Profile article on Graf Spee notes that the ships were basically designed to overpower Treaty cruisers. Conway's 1922-1946 describes them both with their German designations (panzerschiff and then heavy cruiser), and also as a "heavily-armed, thinly-protected long-range merchant raider." In US Battlships, Friedman calls them "ultra-heavy cruisers" that were the specific target of the Treaty system's cruiser clauses (the type, not the ships themselves).

To play the devil's advocate, there's also this, which describes them as armored cruisers (even though it contradictorily lists them as battleships in the "infobox". There are also some other books, here and here, that refer to them in passing as armored cruisers, but with no real discussion of what that means. The Society for American Military Engineers called them armored cruisers in a 1942 journal. Perhaps most interestingly, the ships apparently were called Panzerkreuzer initially (as in the "Food not Panzerkreuzer" campaign plank of the SPD - see the fourth para) - Jackson's Kriegsmarine mentions the change in designation on page 17. He nevertheless refers to them as armored ships or pocket battleships. Parsecboy (talk) 11:53, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

So the question remains of whether to mention the panzerschiffe in this article. I would argue yes sit it appears their intended mission would seem to parallel the original one intended for the armored cruiser. I don't think I'm stretching things or delving into OR by suggesting this but you can tell me. Jonyungk (talk) 13:07, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

The mission of the panzerschiffe matched part of the mission of the armoured cruiser - the "commerce raiding" aspect. Armoured cruisers had other roles as well (while panzerschiffe didn't, really). However, plenty of other categories of vessel have also had the commerce raiding mission (frigates, unprotected cruisers, large protected cruisers, submarines, nuclear-powered heavy guided missile cruisers...) - why single out the panzerschiffe for special mention in this article? The Land (talk) 09:05, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

There was also the role of armored cruiser to act in place of a battleship, especially on foreign stations. Seems like the panzerschiffe served that role of substitution as well, though Germany had no colonies by the time they were constructed. Jonyungk (talk) 21:39, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Hoary old myths

Just a comment on this edit: the German 21 cm SK L/40 had a range of over 17,000 yards at 30 degrees elevation, while the British BL Mark X 12-inch gun had a range of just under 18,000 yards. So while the 12-inch gun technically had a further range, both were greater than gunnery control of the period would allow effective fire, and so the point is essentially irrelevant. The tired old myth that the BCs out-ranged Scharnhorst and Gneisenau is but one of many surrounding naval warfare in WWI that need to be put to bed. Parsecboy (talk) 16:38, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

The last section has a sentence which is just flat wrong

Like their protected cruiser predecessors and contemporary light cruisers, heavy cruisers lacked a side armored belt, saving weight to achieve high speeds. Gee this is news to me since to the best of my knowledge most heavy cruisers did in fact have an armored belt. Sticking with the US Heavy Cruisers as an example the Pensacola Class Cruiser had a belt that went from 2.4" to 4". The armor belt just got thicker later on. Modern warships for the most part do not carry armor anymore. I'm giving 24 hours notice before I remove the sentence.Tirronan (talk) 04:40, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Light cruisers usually had armored belts as well - nuke the whole sentence, I say. Parsecboy (talk) 10:33, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Done. The Land (talk) 13:49, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Suggested Article Improvements

I have some thoughts on this article if I might. I'm an American so take this for what it is worth. Reading John Campbell's book on Jutland, he made the point that the armored cruiser had a role in the rise of the British Battlecruiser. According to John, the armored cruiser of the day was both very large and required huge crews. They had been used in the maintenance of blockade as per the policy of Britain at that time in case of war. The battle cruiser was seen as a money saver whereas one BC could take the place of two armored cruisers. If so then this should be in the article. I wanted some buy in before adding this. Secondly I remember that three of the armored cruisers were sunk by a single U Boat in WW1 which very much called out their worth as a class at all. And finally I remember reading that some 40% of the losses at Jutland where from losses of armored cruisers each having a crew of 1000. That after the battle that the Admiralty had decided that as a class they had seen their day. If I am remembering correcting (and please correct me if I am wrong), That as a class they were too slow and too vulnerable to battle cruisers and dreadnoughts, not to mention submarines.

Lastly, I believe there isn't a single reference in the last section which makes that section more of point of pontification than encyclopedic.

Thoughts? Tirronan (talk) 18:46, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi @Tirronan: - I think most of this stuff is covered in the 2nd half of the "Tsushima" section, and then in the "World War I" section - apart from the specific point about crew costs, I think. The Land (talk) 19:13, 18 June 2017 (UTC)