Pocket Battleship
Why was it called a "pocket" battleship? I never heard that term before seeing this movie.
shareIt's a term that was used in WWII to describe the new smaller battleships like the Deutschland class Panzerschiffe ("armoured ships") to distinguish between them and the massive battleships of WWI.
The pocket battleships were really heavy cruisers but Joe Public (& the newspapers) weren't able to make the distinction. They were liable to call any armed and armoured ship a battleship
The Graf Spee was armed with:
6 × 28 cm (11 in) in triple turrets
8 × 15 cm (5.9 in) in single turrets
8 × 53.3 cm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes
and was armoured with:
main turrets: 140 mm (5.5 in)
belt: 80 mm (3.1 in)
deck: 45 mm (1.8 in)
Compare that to HMS Exeter with her 6x8 inch guns and lighter armour and Ajax & Achilles with their 8x6 inch guns. The Graf Spee should have blown all three out of the water before they could land a shot on her. But by superior tactics, and sheer bravado, they harried her enough so that she took refuge in Montevideo
Steve
Thanks for the info,Steve. You know a lot more than I do on this subject.
With the recent anniversary of D-Day I have been watching a number of WWII movies. The Train is a very good one and A Bridge Too Far. I have The Battle of the Bulge coming from my local library. My father was in the battle of the bulge and went into Germany in the last year of the war.
Joe.
I watched The Longest Day on the anniversary of D-Day
A Bridge Too Far has long been a favourite of mine, a very accurate (as accurate as a film ever can be) portrayal of a very complex event. A lot of things went wrong. If only one or two of them hadn't gone wrong then the whole operation might have had a very different result
Steve
Steve,
The DVD of A Bridge Too Far had some interesting extras about the real operation and the real men in it, as well as how the movie was made. The bridge was more "modern" looking than I expected. It was not one of the old stone and wood bridges like most of the european towns had at that time, like the bridge at Remagen.
Just watched Battle of the Bulge last night. It was not what I expected. As I said my father was in the battle and he was in the woods, in foxholes most of the time and didn't even talk much about tanks. This movie was a 3hr tank battle. He must have been in a different section of this fight.
Joe.
Like most big battles there were many different aspects to the Battle of the Bulge. Most soldiers involved in it would only see their small part of it with little idea of what was happening in the battle as a whole.
It's only the senior officers who have the bigger picture - or should. Roy Urquhart (Sean Connery) in A Bridge too Far got stuck in a small part of his battle
Steve
There's also the Versaille treaty which limited the weight of anything Germany built to 10,000-15,000 tonnes, the Germans got round this by building battleship-capable vessels in the footprint of a cruiser. Hence pocket battleship.
Bismarck was the only official pocket battleship, Graf Spee and Tirpitz were cruisers, but they outgunned any equivalent cruiser of the time and had twice the armour.
Ya Kirk-loving Spocksucker!
After coming to power Hitler denounced the Treaty of Versailles and from at least 1935 openly proceeded to build up the German military (Werhmacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine) regardless of any previously agreed-upon restrictions. Hitler did enter into the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, but ultimately denounced this too, in April 1939. Creating pocket battleships may have been a way around any treaty restrictions (it may also have been dictated by economic considerations) but as we know neither Hitler nor Nazi Germany were in the least bit concerned with upholding or observing any treaty restrictions.
The Bismarck was not a pocket battleship, nor was the Tirpitz a cruiser. Both were full-fledged battleships, in fact of the Bismarck class. Indeed, Tirpitz was Bismarck's sister ship. The Prinz Eugen, the ship that accompanied Bismarck for part of her final cruise, was a cruiser.
Per the other posters' comments on different WWII films, Battle of the Bulge was largely fictionalized and filled with insipid characters, a much inferior film compared to contemporary WWII epics that stayed closer to the truth. The fact that it was filmed in Spain, in topography utterly unlike the Ardennes Forest, didn't help matters. Battleground is a much better Battle of the Bulge movie.
As to the German Navy, Sink the Bismarck is a reasonably accurate and very well done film about that famous sea chase.
Bismark and Tirpitz were large modern battleships carrying 8x15" guns.
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were lighter battleships or battlecruisers carrying 9x11" guns.
Admiral Graf Spee, Admiral Scheer and Deutschland (Lutzow) were heavy cruisers carrying 6x11" guns, heavier guns than other nation's cruisers. Some US and Japanese cruisers carried 9" guns, whereas the largest guns on British cruisers were 8". Hence these 3 ships were referred to as pocket battleships. The ships were designed as commerce raiders, the theory being that they could outrun any battleship and outgun and cruiser. The theory proved false.
During WW II The United States also had two oddball heavy cruisers, the Alaska and Guam, that were armed with 12" guns. Some consider them battle cruisers and others don't, just considering them oddball heavy cruisers. Arguments about what exactly defines a battle cruiser are best referred to Jackie Fisher.
shareWell stated - and apparently no reply posted from the First Sea Lord yet?
*Everything happens to me! Now Im shot by a child! (T.Chaney)