I spent 2 years in the US Navy as a helmsman for a Wasp-class Multipurpose Amphibious Assault ship. For those of you not familiar with this vessel it was modeled after the Essex-class Fast Attack Carrier, what does any of this have to do with a battlecruiser you may ask? Well several points really. My ship that I drove had a standard displacement (Standard, not full mind you) of roughly 40,500 tons, and I received alot of personal time learning her handling characteristics, also please keep in mind that this is a flat bottomed hull, less manueverable than the contoured, round hulls which most major heavy warships were built with. Also my ship had significantly /LESS/ shaft horsepower and only two screws (70,000 SHP unlcassified). Despite all these hinderances she was still very manueverable and when handled right could even turn in only a few boat-lengths.
The battlecruisers currently in the gold eddition on the otherhand were similiar to trying to steer a modern aircraft carrier with a canoe paddle. Also a major point missing I noted was the varying manueverability over speed ranges. The Wasp-class I drove was by no means fast, but at flank speed, even a single degree of rudder would render a higher turn rate than throwing the rudder hard over at 5 knots (hard over is 35 degrees of rudder). In addition to this WW2 warships such as the american South Dakota, Iowa etc. class warships used hull designs where it wasn't just the water moving to either side of the rudder that assisted in the turn, but the water traveling _under_ it. The hulls were shaped in such a manner that it was the full 3d effect of it flowing over the hull that lent these ships their manueverability. When (again I'm going to use the Iowa as an example here) one of these ships turned it naturally heeled over to the outside of the turn, however the water flowing along the underside of its hull actually sucked the ship through the turn, helping to pull it around, not just the sole action of the rudders. This is why when one of those ships entered shallow water where it couldn't get the proper flow underneath its keel it lost a significant ammount of its manueverability (which perhaps can be utilized when land is put in?). And incase all that isn't enough reason to make those ships more manueverable, I present my visual aid.
This is a shot from WW2 of the Japanese Super-battleship Yamoto manuevering wildly to avoid attacking carrier-born bombers and torpedo-bombers. This warship displaced over 70,000 tons and is a prime example of what (then at that time) modern engineering can accomplish.
The Yamoto is the one in the middle completing a circle, you can follow its wake and see where it zig-zaged a couple times before spinning around in what I'm estimating to be about 6-8 boat lengths though I could be wrong, I'm just using my Mark-1 Mod-0 eyeball on this.
Yaivenov
aka
CTR3(sel) Pugh
U.S. Navy
