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World's Worst Warships?

theprestige said:
Firepower plus stealth. According to Wiki, the Surcouf specifically was developed to provide heavy cruiser firepower without violating the Washington Treaty.

Apparently they were slow to dive and not very maneuverable. As anti-submarine warfare doctrine and technology improved, these limitations made it obsolete. A smaller submarine, caught on the surface by aircraft, had a better chance of diving and escaping. Before submarine-hunting aircraft were commonplace, this wasn't as much of an issue, and cruiser subs still had some value.

Anyway, my point is that being rendered obsolete by advancing technology is not the same as being rendered "worst warship".
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lobosrul5 said:
The big gun cruiser submarines were never a good idea, they didn't become a bad idea years after they were designed. Think about it, they were going to sneak into combat, go toe to toe with other ships that had guns... then submerge and escape. With their 50 to 100 nm range at maybe 5 kn's. Oh, and if they took any sort of damage to their unarmored hull then they can't dive anyways! It was a folly. And its not as if ASW technology just didn't exist at all when they were built.

That said, the idea of putting some seaplanes in a long range submarine, especially for use in the Pacific wasn't a bad idea at all. Especially in the days before radar. See Japan's subs. They misused them badly, but that wasn't the vessels fault.
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Yes, those were some of the problems I was thinking of. Also the gun would have had a fairly short aimed range, due to the submarine being low in the water, so the horizon would be closer - obviously this would make it harder to detect, but it does reduce the advantage of a big gun over a torpedo. I'd also guess that such a vessel would be inherently more prone to rolling than a non-submersible vessel, so the gun would be less accurate on a submarine, as well as being more limited in the traverse of the turret. So you have a large gun that could outrange its target vessels, but which can only actually aim at those when within the range of far smaller weapons on say corvettes or equivalent small ships, and the submarine would be equally vulnerable to their weapons as they would be to its gun, but the smaller calibre weapons (say 4" guns) would have a faster rate of fire.

If you are going to attack a fleet, as a single vessel, you want to do what the German commerce raiders attempted, outfight anything that can catch you and outrun anything that can outfight you. Having the ability to fire a few shells a long distance by dead reckoning, and a few miles aimed when in something that can't withstand return fire is pointless.

I'd give you stealthy, but then smaller submarines would be stealthier, and able to dive quicker. Submarines showed themselves to be able to successfully attack large surface warships, but this was using their torpedoes, not their guns.

The lack of seaworthyness - especially amongst the M-class was what I considered the clincher though.
 
Additionally the Surcouf lacked the sophisticated fire-control systems of contemporary cruisers. I can think of one potential use for the boat, however; hit-and-run bombardment of enemy installations that lacked shore-battery protection. This could have been particularly useful against remote Japanese bases in the Pacific.
 
SpitfireIX said:
Additionally the Surcouf lacked the sophisticated fire-control systems of contemporary cruisers. I can think of one potential use for the boat, however; hit-and-run bombardment of enemy installations that lacked shore-battery protection. This could have been particularly useful against remote Japanese bases in the Pacific.
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But presumably, one could have designed a surface craft of a similar displacement to carry the same guns, more cheaply. Maybe, if treaty requirements were the issue, a big-gun submarine that was only nominally designed to submerge.
 
SpitfireIX said:
I was thinking of bases that couldn't be approached by surface ships due to distance and lack of air cover.
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So looking at the Surcouf's stats on wiki her maximum dived range was 60 nm*. And I presume she would need several hours on the surface to recharge the batteries. So really your looking at 30nm dived to get to the target, then 30nm back out. So if the Japanese could've scrambled airplanes then she'd be sunk. OTOH sending in a fast cruiser/destroyer force that could make 30+ kn's would likely be able to get in and get out fast enough. Plus they'd probably have much better air defenses. In reality, we used air raids to neutralize small Japanese outposts in the pacific. But the French only had 1 small aircraft carrier in their entire navy as I recall. So that wouldn't have been much of an option for them.

*And that was about inline with the newer "V-boat" cruiser subs of the US Navy.
 
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SpitfireIX said:
Additionally the Surcouf lacked the sophisticated fire-control systems of contemporary cruisers. I can think of one potential use for the boat, however; hit-and-run bombardment of enemy installations that lacked shore-battery protection. This could have been particularly useful against remote Japanese bases in the Pacific.
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SpitfireIX said:
I was thinking of bases that couldn't be approached by surface ships due to distance and lack of air cover.
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And this is what set me thinking about the big-gun submarines in the first place... It was Trebuchet's comments about the Zumwalt class, which led me to recall some of the earlier ideas about "arsenal ships" - one idea I seem to recall seeing was a semi-submersible vessel to improve stealth characteristics.
 
lobosrul5 said:
So looking at the Surcouf's stats on wiki her maximum dived range was 60 nm*. And I presume she would need several hours on the surface to recharge the batteries. So really your looking at 30nm dived to get to the target, then 30nm back out. So if the Japanese could've scrambled airplanes then she'd be sunk. OTOH sending in a fast cruiser/destroyer force that could make 30+ kn's would likely be able to get in and get out fast enough. Plus they'd probably have much better air defenses. In reality, we used air raids to neutralize small Japanese outposts in the pacific. But the French only had 1 small aircraft carrier in their entire navy as I recall. So that wouldn't have been much of an option for them.

*And that was about inline with the newer "V-boat" cruiser subs of the US Navy.
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Surcouf could have traveled submerged during the day, and surfaced at night. That's how USS Argonaut and USS Nautilus delivered the Marine force for the Raid on Makin IslandWP, and it's also how many US submarines operated when patrolling near Japanese bases. And that's how the Japanese used submarines to attempt to supply isolated garrisons later in the war.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
I give you HMS Terror and similar ships.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Terror_(I03)
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The HMS Terror was laid down before the Washington Naval Treaty, which limited gun sizes on surface ships. The Surcouf was built after the treaty, in order to get around its limitations. In fact, the whole point of the Washington Treaty was that although it was possible to build ships like the Terror, the signatories would refrain from doing so.
 
SpitfireIX said:
Surcouf could have traveled submerged during the day, and surfaced at night. That's how USS Argonaut and USS Nautilus delivered the Marine force for the Raid on Makin IslandWP, and it's also how many US submarines operated when patrolling near Japanese bases. And that's how the Japanese used submarines to attempt to supply isolated garrisons later in the war.
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Yes, for putting commandos ashore, submarines were useful. But I don't believe Argonaut or Nautilus used their guns for any shore bombardment on Makin. How effective would a night bombardment have been anyways?

Yes Japan tried using subs to resupply garrisons. It was not very effective and a total misuse of their submarine force. They didn't need big gun sub cruisers for it anyways.
 
That wasn't my point. My point was that Surcouf could have approached submerged during the day in order to avoid detection or attack from the air. And at Makin the plan wasn't for the subs to bombard; they were just supposed to deliver and recover the raiding force.

Additionally, a few Japanese submarines did bombard US installations during the war, and a few US boats returned the favor.
 
lobosrul5 said:
Yes, for putting commandos ashore, submarines were useful. But I don't believe Argonaut or Nautilus used their guns for any shore bombardment on Makin. How effective would a night bombardment have been anyways?

Yes Japan tried using subs to resupply garrisons. It was not very effective and a total misuse of their submarine force. They didn't need big gun sub cruisers for it anyways.
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A tale of the Nautilus, and its guns.

Nautilus was an unusually large submarine, with, very unusually, six inch deck guns. A much older co-worker of mine had served on her during WWII and was on the deck gun crew. One day they were on the surface and practicing, or something, with the guns and a Japanese aircraft flew over. As it departed, the gun was pointing in the right general direction so someone fired the gun at it. Scoring a hit.

I've never been sure whether to believe that or not.
 
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