/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>36402877
Anglo-German naval race happens and both sides end up with shitload of dreadnoughts, super-dreadnoughts and battlecruisers (ironically enough bongs actually studied the concept of combining those 2 concepts into a fast battleships but it wasn't pursued further because they calculated that for every 4 fast battleships built RN could had gotten 3 battleships and 2 battlecruisers instead). Some Austrian aristocrat gets gunned down by an angry Serbian nationalist and 1st kraut chimpout starts, during this war bongs decide that their existing 6" gun armed light cruisers are bit under-armed for taking on raiders and shit out Hawkins-class armed with 7.5" guns and displacing slightly under 10 000 tons, Hawkins end up being the basis of WNT's cruiser displacement and gun size limitations and thus are the 1st heavy cruisers.

So by WW2 you have 6 types of cruisers around: old WW1 battlecruisers kept around (Kongous, Renowns, Hood, Yavuz), attempts to up-gun heavy cruisers with bigger guns (Deutchlands and Alaskas), heavy cruisers (Takaos, Baltimores, etc.), heavy light cruisers (Clevelands, Mogamis before IJN did their whole gun switching thing), light cruisers (Leanders), and destroyer leader cruisers/very light light cruisers (basically all Japanese light cruisers). These ships are used during as war as destroyer leaders, escort ships for larger ships in battles, convoy escorts, raiders, bombardment vessels, etc.

By the end of the war battlecruisers&up-gunned heavy cruisers are obsolete as fast battleships like Iowas, Vanguard, and Richelieus can do whatever they can do just as well while also being capable of going toe to toe with enemy battleships, surface commerce raiding is obsolete as concept as well so that renders most of the light cruisers obsolete too. Add-in guided missiles and destroyer size bloat (remember, even during WW2 destroyers still were too small to handle long term operations on their own) and we reach the modern day in which cruisers have more or less died off and whatever remaining roles they had (i.e. independent operations that don't require a capital ship, and escort duty) are nowadays handled by ships classified as destroyers (even if said ships tend to be same size as a WW2-era cruisers).

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