I think one of the factors is that if you lack the ability to deal with a BB, which often means having your own BB
I have a faint inkling that the whole big gun infatuation/arms race period of the early decades of the century was in part irrational or at best 'speculative.' Until bigger and 'better' was actually tested in war who could have easily dismissed the fact that a rival nation was building these things as being 'inconsequential?"
But then I seem to recall repeated instances during the early phases in which smaller, faster ships managed to do a whole lot of damage to the big beasties.
The Era of the Big Guns has certainly been eclipsed, arguably the final chapter was Dec 7, though certainly no later than the end of WWII?
This is what I'd like to know: was it really just a waste of time? Were DDs and torpedo boats, aircraft, mines, etc., just as good for 'countering' enemy BBs as building your own BBs would have been?
It just seems to me that about the only thing these things were 'good' at was (sporadically) sinking other big gun ships, and that in itself seems to be largely a result of luck or tactical brilliance, and not so much a manifestation of the 'design' or how big it was.
The battlecruisers were supposed to be largely immune by being fast. If I understand it correctly, this just did not work. The heaviest were supposed to be good at gunning down enemy ships or bombarding enemy shore batteries. Based on some of the stuff being quoted here, and in other threads linked in this one, this doesn't really seemed to have worked very well either?
Were these things really just a gigantic waste of human effort, perhaps one of the BIGGEST wastes of human endeavour in all of natural history?
Just stop and think for a second about all the tens, probably even hundreds of thousands of person hours that went into a vessel like Indefagitable or Queen Mary; the incredible quantums of natural resources; the reallocation of national resources from other areas; the intellectual effort; the money; the lives . . . then *KABOOM* a couple lucky shots combined with poor ammo handling and the whole thing is in Davey Jones locker along with 99% of their crews.
As an anthropologist, that to me seems just about as crazy as the ritual small-scale warfare that borders on 'gaming' albeit with life-and-death consequences among groups like the
Dani of Western New Guinea.
