On the role of heavy cruisers in the fight for communications in World War II
As is well known, the success of armed forces largely depends on the systematicity of their construction and use. This simple thesis is very important in assessing the possible role of "Washington" cruisers in the fight against enemy shipping. The question is not what such a cruiser could do on communications as a proud loner, but whether it could become a useful and important element of the system of counteraction to enemy sea transportation during the Second World War.
In this article I will consider the tasks of fighting on communications, which could be solved by ships of the "cruiser" class of special construction, and then we will see how relevant the "Washingtonians" are for solving these tasks.
But before I begin, I must apologize to my esteemed readers for the vagueness of my wording. When I write "specially built cruisers (raiders)", I do not mean a cruiser specially designed and built to fight enemy shipping. I mean only a cruiser that was originally designed as a warship, as opposed to auxiliary cruisers, which were converted civilian ships. That is why I allow myself to call "specially built cruisers", for example, the Kaiser's light cruisers of the First World War, which, in fact, were built for squadron service, but not for ocean raiding.
Means of combating communications in World War II.
Submarines. The emergence of submarines capable of operating on sea and ocean communications became a real revolution in the fight against enemy shipping already in the First World War. It was submarines that became the main weapons interruption of ocean and sea communications. In fact, other means of combating sea transportation have become either auxiliary or providing for the work of submariners. This thesis applies fully to specially built cruisers.
Aviation. As is well known, it was aviation in 1939-1945 that established itself as the main force in the struggle for supremacy in the ocean expanses. Nevertheless, the impact of strike aviation on sea and ocean communications was very limited. Here, the relatively short combat radius of strike aircraft of tactical aviation of those years made itself felt (strategic bombers had a long range, but low effectiveness in naval warfare). Accordingly, as a means of destroying enemy shipping, aviation could only prove itself in a certain proximity to the coast and land airfields, or in the presence of a sufficient number of aircraft carriers carrying strike aviation. But aircraft carriers had enough tasks without destroying transports, and their escort subclass acted as a means of protecting communications, not interrupting them.
Accordingly, in coastal seas the influence of aviation on enemy communications could be decisive, but in distant sea and ocean zones – no. Nevertheless, in the ocean aviation performed an extremely important function of reconnaissance and search for transport ships and warships. This task was carried out by both land-based and ship-based aircraft.
For the specially built corsair cruisers, the development of aviation was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, equipping the raiders with seaplanes greatly increased their situational awareness, allowing them to both spot transports and evade enemy warships. But on the other hand, the same aviation in the hands of communications defenders allowed them to "scan" previously unimaginable areas of the ocean in search of enemy warships.
Auxiliary cruisers. As has been said before, the most important factor in the combat stability of a ship operating on enemy communications is speed. This is true, but this statement is true only for specially built ships. At the same time, during the First World War, the Germans sent not only specialized but also auxiliary cruisers, converted from civilian ships, to communications.
At first, they were also chosen from the fastest, using the same passenger liners. But then it turned out that such liners were too noticeable - there were not many of them in the world. Having discovered a giant passenger ship where it seemed to have nothing to do, the English sailors had every reason to be wary. And the Germans reconsidered their approaches: they began using conversions from ordinary dry cargo ships at sea.
They did not have high speed, but were equipped with good armament, including torpedo tubes. But their main trump card was their invisibility: simply put, their armament was located so that it could not be seen from the side. In some cases - except for one gun, which was equipped with armed steamers of the English, which gave a certain similarity to the latter.
And these measures had an excellent effect. British warships often could not recognize who was in front of them, and even merchant ships did not understand until the very end that that steamship approaching them was in fact an auxiliary cruiser of the Germans. And the latter achieved remarkable results. The most famous corsair of the Kaiser during the First World War, the cruiser Emden, captured 23 merchant ships, destroyed the Zhemchug and a French destroyer, and died with honor in battle during her very first combat mission. And the auxiliary cruiser Mewe, a 13-knot slow-moving ship, made two large ocean voyages and three short raids, during which she sank (with mines) a British battleship and intercepted 41 merchant ships. At the same time, the Mewe was never caught, safely surviving until the end of the First World War.
In World War II, auxiliary cruisers, although they did not demonstrate such outstanding results, still acted very effectively. Thus, "Atlantis" during a raid that lasted almost 2 years, captured and sank 22 ships with a capacity of 145,7 thousand registered tons, which repeatedly justified the costs of its re-equipment and the operation.
The future Atlantis (not yet refitted)
Another auxiliary cruiser, Penguin, achieved similar results - 28 ships with a capacity of 136 thousand GRT during a raid lasting 10,5 months.
About convoys
During World War I, submarines proved to be a terrible enemy of merchant shipping. In this case, a submarine, acting against a single civilian vessel, as a rule, forced it to stop while in the surface position, under the threat of torpedo and artillery attacks. Incidentally, this method of combat was absolutely legal from the point of view of maritime law. It could be countered by equipping merchant ships with artillery, but by using force, a civilian ship and its crew ceased to be considered as such, and in this case its destruction by torpedoes became completely justified. A more effective measure to counter the underwater and air threat was the introduction of a convoy system, when civilian ships were forced to gather in groups of up to several dozen ships and proceed to their destination under the cover of warships.
In essence, the introduction of the convoy system should already be considered as a significant limitation of maritime transportation. In peacetime, ships proceed to their destination port when ready. Now, being fully prepared for the voyage, they were forced to stand idle waiting for a sufficient number of ships to assemble to form a convoy. In addition, merchant ships had different speeds, and a convoy could move at the speed of the slowest ship in its composition. Of course, when forming convoys, they tried to take this fact into account, but still a significant part of the ships that made up the convoys had the technical ability to move at a higher speed than the convoy.
All this, according to some data, reduced cargo transportation by 25% of the pre-war level (with the same number of ships) when the convoy system was introduced, and in itself could be considered a significant impact on the enemy. However, a single submarine could not act against a convoy with the same effectiveness as against single merchant ships. In fact, it could only attack such a convoy from underwater, and to do this it was necessary to be "in the right place at the right time", that is, to take a position on the convoy's route and spend expensive and relatively few torpedoes during the attack.
Submariners did find a way to combat convoys: the so-called "wolf packs." Their essence consisted of a simultaneous attack on a convoy by a large number of submarines, usually at night and on the surface, with torpedoes remaining the main weapon. In this case, the escort forces were scattered, and it was also difficult for them to pursue the submariners after their attack — they had to rescue the crews of the sunken ships.
However, the "wolf pack" was not a panacea for combating convoys, as its tactics were quite difficult to implement. The Germans carried out an attack like this. First, the convoy was detected either by long-range multi-purpose aircraft (Focke-Wulf Fw 200 "Condor") or a submarine.
Information about the convoy was transmitted to the submarine command headquarters fleet (Befehlshaber der Unterseebooten, abbreviated BdU), and it was already targeting a convoy of other submarines. Organizing such an attack was very complicated, but even in case of success, losses were to be expected: after all, it was difficult for a submarine in a surface position to compete with a frigate, not to mention a destroyer.
But the main problem was that the submarines included in the "wolf pack" had to make the transition to the assembly point/attack line in the surface position. The same applied to the submarine that detected the convoy - it was forced to follow a parallel course until darkness fell. The reason for this is obvious: the batteries of diesel-electric submarines did not provide either the speed or the range to make such transitions.
This is why escort aircraft carriers became such an important means of combating "wolf packs." Aircraft based on them could detect submarines making a transition in a surface position and attack them, forcing them to go underwater. And, if it was rational, they could direct combat escort ships or special groups not connected with convoy protection and intended to search for and destroy submarines.
Land-based aircraft could effectively combat convoys only if they were within their reach and if the pilots were well trained to operate over the sea. Aircraft carriers had their own tasks and could not be involved in systematic "anti-convoy" operations. Auxiliary cruisers focused on intercepting individual merchant ships - they lacked either the speed or the armament to operate against a convoy.
On the tasks of cruisers in the fight for communications during the Second World War
Specially built cruisers had only two forms of combat against enemy shipping. They could search for and attack convoys or hunt for single ships. Moreover, to achieve these goals, different tactics were required.
A cruiser intercepting individual ships would simply enter a busy shipping area and then search for targets on its own. A cruiser hunting a convoy could do the same, but it would still be extremely desirable for it to receive target designation.
In the case of hunting a convoy, the raider had to avoid detection in every possible way: even a group of ships without an escort could disperse, simply running in different directions and thus depriving the cruiser of its "legitimate" prey. Of course, the convoy would disperse at the moment of the raider's attack, but this was already accompanied by significant losses. The cruiser, surpassing civilian ships in speed, chased them and quickly sank them with artillery and torpedoes. As a rule, a single raider could not completely destroy the convoy in such an attack, but it was quite capable of sending 5-7 ships to the bottom.
And again, in some cases, when submarines and aircraft could operate in the area of convoy dispersal, such dispersal in itself could lead to heavy losses. A textbook example is convoy PQ-17. The departure of the German squadron, led by the battleship Tirpitz, led to the convoy dispersing, as a result of which submarines and aircraft destroyed 22 ships, which were carrying 210 aircraft, 430 tanks, 3350 vehicles and 100 tons of other cargo. Moreover, the main reason for the convoy to disperse was precisely the Tirpitz. Of course, there is a conspiracy theory that the British were not afraid of this battleship at all, but simply used its departure as a pretext, sacrificing their people and cargo and receiving in return grounds to stop the passage of northern convoys to the USSR for some time. But even if this were so, if the Germans did not have the Tirpitz, there would be no reason to “disperse” the convoy.
Let's try to compare the cost of the lost cargo of the PQ-17 with the cost of building a German battleship. To do this, we will estimate the cost of the lost cargo in Reichsmarks (RM), as if the transported cargo was produced in Germany. The famous Messerschmitt, according to my data, cost 100 thousand RM, a three-ton truck tractor - 22 thousand RM, but there is a small problem with the T-IV tank. The cost known to me is 103,5-116 thousand RM, but it seems that this amount does not include weapons, equipment and ammunition. Thus, the Tiger tank is estimated at 260 thousand RM, but in full configuration with weapons and fuel - 350 thousand RM. But even taking the cost of the tank at 110 thousand RM, we get:
210 aircraft – 21 million RM;
430 tanks – 47,3 million RM;
3350 vehicles – RM73,7 million.
In total, it turns out to be 142 million Reichsmarks, even without taking into account the cost of 100 tons of other lost cargo and 000 sunken ships. The Tirpitz itself cost something around 22 million RM. That's how it turns out that the construction of the giant battleship Tirpitz, which many fans of the naval stories assessed as nothing less than “money down the drain”, in fact, it paid off with the defeat of a single convoy, forced to disperse under the threat of attack by this ship.
Of course, you can find fault with my calculation method, but other calculations will probably be even sadder. Russian-language sources often indicate that the cost of the cargo transported by PQ-17 was something around 700 million US dollars (according to D. Irving, apparently). About 2/3 of the cargo was lost, so the total losses were around 467 million. The American battleship Iowa cost around 100 million dollars. That is, even if the amount of 700 million is many times overstated (I don’t know, but my gut feeling is that it is), the losses were still extremely high and, in all likelihood, comparable to the cost of a large battleship.
But let's return to the cruisers. Although in some cases convoy dispersion is useful, in the classic version of a raider attacking a convoy it should not have been allowed. Therefore, German cruisers in World War II avoided attacking single British ships while searching for a convoy. If a cruiser was hunting for single ships, then there was no reason to avoid them.
If the attack on the convoy was successful, the cruiser-raider had almost no chance of remaining anonymous. When attacking a single ship, one could count on the fact that it would not be able to use the radio transmitter at all or that its operation would be suppressed by interference, but when attacking a detachment of ships, one could not count on this. Therefore, after attacking the convoy, the cruiser had to either return home or go to other areas, switching to hunting for single ships. And when hunting for singles, the raider could cruise in one area for a long time until there was a threat that its presence there became known to the enemy.
Combat against convoys, with reconnaissance, could be carried out by performing short raids. Combat against single ships required the cruiser to remain on the communications for many months.
So, in my opinion, which does not claim to be the Absolute Truth, during the Second World War, sending a specially built cruiser to hunt for single ships was counterproductive. And here's why.
Some statistics
Let us compare the effectiveness of the “pocket battleships”, one of whose tasks was precisely to operate on the enemy’s communications, and the German auxiliary cruisers.
If we compare the best raid of a "pocket battleship" with the best raid of an auxiliary cruiser, it turns out that Admiral Scheer recorded 113,1 registered tons of intercepted tonnage, and Atlantis - 145,7 registered tons. But Scheer's voyage took only 161 days, that is, less than half a year, while Atlantis pirated for as many as 655 days, that is, almost 2 years. An auxiliary cruiser intercepted an average of 36,4 thousand GRT in six months, while Scheer intercepted 113,1 thousand GRT in just under six months, that is, more than three times more.
That's all true, but there's a nuance. Admiral Scheer intercepted convoy HX-84 on just the ninth day of its voyage and in one day, November 5, 1940, destroyed 6 ships and an auxiliary cruiser of the British with a total capacity of 58 registered tons (I also counted the transport Mopan, which was not in the convoy, but was also destroyed that day). Then it moved on to intercepting single ships and caught them with a total capacity of 273 registered tons in 5 months. It turns out that when Admiral Scheer was not destroying convoys, its effectiveness was little different from that of Atlantis - the former sank an average of 54 thousand registered tons per month, and the latter - 861 thousand registered tons.
If we take the second most successful auxiliary cruiser of Germany, the Kormoran, then in 10,5 months of its campaign it managed to intercept ships with a total tonnage of 136 thousand registered tons, and another 4 ships with a tonnage of 18 thousand registered tons were blown up by the mines it had laid. But even ignoring the mines, we get almost 13 thousand registered tons of destroyed tonnage per month, which is already noticeably higher than the results of the Admiral Scheer.
"Admiral Graf Spee" in its only combat mission, during which it hunted for transports for 2,5 months, destroyed 9 ships with a tonnage of just over 50 thousand registered tons. This gives a very significant average monthly "catch" of 20 registered tons, but it must be taken into account that the raid began at the very beginning of the war, which is why the British simply did not have time to take the necessary measures. But when they did take them, "Admiral Graf Spee" was in trouble. Again, it can and should be said that Langsdorff could have won the battle at La Plata if he had acted more aggressively, but still, most likely, after such a battle he would have had no chance to return to his native land.
In general, it can be stated that in solving the problem of intercepting single transports, in terms of its "average monthly" effectiveness, an auxiliary cruiser is quite capable of competing with a specially built ship. But at the same time, an auxiliary cruiser costs several times less than such a cruiser.
For example, a "pocket battleship" cost on average something like 85 million RM, while the magnificent liner "Wilhelm Gustloff", being almost four times larger than a "pocket battleship", only 25 million RM. An ordinary merchant ship, which the Germans used as auxiliary cruisers, was obviously much smaller, even taking into account the cost of refitting and armament. What can we say about submarines? The most numerous submarines of the Kriegsmarine (Type VII) cost around 4,2 million RM each.
Of course, one can say that German warships were excessively expensive, and the "Washington" cruiser could have been much cheaper. But even if we take the British "County" instead of the "pocket battleship", which at the exchange rate of those years cost about half of the "Deutschland" type ship, then using a cruiser to catch loners still looks unjustifiably expensive.
Final World
Of course, cruisers of the Second World War could be engaged in the destruction of single enemy merchant ships. But according to the criterion of "cost/effectiveness" such use of them looks completely unjustified. This task was solved by auxiliary cruisers and submarines at much lower costs; there was no need to build cruisers for such a hunt.
Accordingly, the only role left for cruisers in the fight on communications was the destruction of enemy convoys. This use of cruisers seems entirely justified, since:
1. An escort, necessary and sufficient against submarine attacks, will not be able to repel cruiser attacks. Consequently, the enemy will have to significantly increase the cover of convoys. But even England, with its huge number of cruisers, could not provide cruiser escort for all its convoys. Consequently, a certain number of convoys, having received acceptable protection from submarines, will not be able to resist cruisers.
2. The value of a transport vessel is relatively small, but the cargo it carries can be very expensive. The probability that a ship in a convoy is carrying something valuable is higher than that of the next ship alone, because a convoy provides better protection and it is obvious that important cargo will be sent in convoys (there were exceptions, of course). The potentially higher value of the "prize" to some extent justifies the risks of using an expensive warship, such as a cruiser, in the operation.
3. The appearance of heavy warships on communications and even the danger of such appearance will necessitate the use of much more powerful forces to counter such a threat. Accordingly, these forces will not be able to be used anywhere else.
The importance of the third point may not be obvious, but let us look at the history of the naval war of 1939-45. The small number of German battleships and heavy cruisers so hampered the Royal Navy that it was unable to provide the modern ships that Admiral E. B. Cunningham desperately needed for its Mediterranean Fleet. In effect, the Kriegsmarine created the necessary conditions for the Axis victory at sea in the Mediterranean. That the Italian fleet failed to take advantage of its opportunity does not mean that it was not given one.
But the defeat of the Royal Navy in this region would have led to the death of the British army in Africa and put an end to Churchill's entire Mediterranean strategy. Which, in turn, could have put an end to Churchill himself as Prime Minister, with very unpredictable consequences, including England's withdrawal from the war. In addition, England, waging the Battle of the Atlantic and forced to take into account the risks of the appearance of heavy raiders, was unable to seriously support the United States in their struggle in the Pacific. And there, before the Battle of Midway, the Japanese had an overall superiority in forces and held the strategic initiative. But even after it, the situation was in an unstable equilibrium, so the help of the Royal Navy would have been very useful.
So, the creation of cruisers aimed at operations against convoys seems in theory quite expedient. But could they effectively solve such a task?
To be continued ...
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