tlb wrote:cthia wrote:This is an interesting discussion. It reminds me of several documentaries which spells out the fact that no navy wanted to accept what the battle of Jutland detailed. The age of the battleship had come to an end in less than two hours of fighting. But more and more were built, and they were built bigger. The Bismarck sits on the bottom of the sea.
I am quite certain that the Battle of Jutland did not signify the end of the battleship. The battleship's dominance was ended by air power, which was not in evidence at Jutland; it was not until after the war that Gen. Billy Mitchell demonstrated that a bomber could sink a battleship. What the Battle of Jutland mainly demonstrated was that the battle cruiser was never intended to fight a battleship, a situation made worse by the British commander's sloppiness about ammunition safety (driven by a push to increase rate of fire).
However there were some ominous signs elsewhere in WW1 about the value of aircraft versus ships. The first effective use of a torpedo dropped from an airplane occurred on Aug. 12, 1915, when a British Short Type 184 seaplane sank a Turkish vessel in the Dardanelles. Other navies’ torpedo planes also had some success during World War I.
The biggest problem with the battleship in WW2 was that it tied up enormous resources (in one sinkable package) that a resource poor country could have better used for planes or submarines. The poster child for this waste is not the Bismarck, but the Yamato. In those countries these ships were intended as much for prestige and ego, as for any purely military result.
You are going to have to argue that point with the producers of the documentary. Well, it is actually a docuseries. That line came from the documentary word for word. I should have included it in quotation marks. The docuseries is
Aircraft Carrier: Guardian of the Seas.It is available for free on Tubi. Along with so many more very good documentaries about war. A very short list:
- Aircraft Carrier: Guardian of the Seas (It also includes a very detailed explanation of the internal steam powered launch system that catapults the planes off the deck. Along with very detailed cutouts. Very nice.)
- The American Dreadnought
- Technology of War: Sea Power
- The Cold War: Submarines in Enemy Depth
- Legends of Air Combat: Jets of War 1950-2013
- U455: The Mystery of the Lost Submarine
- Lost Bombs: The True Story of America's Broken Arrows
12 of them? I am a good friend of a family whose father had to eject out of the bomber responsible for the Broken Arrow over Goldsboro, NC.
- Greyhounds of the Sea
- History Retold: Fire at Sea
- The Life and Death of the USS Hornet CV-8
- Battle 360: The USS Enterprise
- Jet Bombers: Blackburn Buccaneer (First Episode)
- Grey Wolves: The Terrifying Advent of the U-boat (Intense footage and narration)
And many many more. I found them by accident. A friend asked me to install Tubi because Battlestar Gallactica is featured on it. I had never watched Battlestar Galactica. So many of you on the forum recommended it too.
There are so many more titles about tanks, guns, etc. Too many to list.
And movies as well like Final Countdown.