How many pre dreadnought class battleships could the Iowa have taken on?

@linkon

That wasn’t the question, but cool.

Very cool, reminds me of the efforts to catalog and examine all the fortifications and pillboxes of the Invasion Scare era.

There is an interesting report by the US Office of Naval Intelligence on the Battle of the River Plate, with quite a few photos and ship damage reports.  It can be found here, at the Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library, and downloaded for free.

http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org

As for a battle between the Admiral Scheer and a Baltimore–class cruiser, I would bet on the Baltimore-class ship, unless the Scheer got some early lucky hits on gun turrets, as the Spee did on the HMS Exeter.  The USS Salt Lake City, one of our two oldest heavy cruisers in World War 2, with an older gunfire control system than the Baltimores, was able to score hits on the IJN Nachi at ranges in excess of 21,000 yards.  The following comment from the ONI report applies to the Spee’s gunnery.

German shooting was described as quite good, initially, but the accuracy fell off rapidly.
(a) 11-inch opened with two 3-gun salvos, very close and on in deflection.
(b) 5.9-inch also fired at Exeter; no definite hits determined, but many splinters came aboard.

@jim010:

Good analysis. +1 to you.

Had the Germans had these, though, it would be hard to say what they would match up against.  Britain and France would have ships to counter these.  Instead of being an answer to the Deutschland class, they would have had to have built answers to the more powerful Mackensens.  The KGV very likely would have had 15 guns rather than 14s.Â

Very hard to figure out what France and Britain would have responded with.  And in turn, whatever the French did would influence the Italians.  My guess is you would have seen a much more aggressive battleship race between the major powers.  The super battleships planed by everyone probably would have materialized sooner.

Well said.

@Imperious:

Yep thats pretty much the sinker.

Id like to see a poll on the best Great War Battleship

The Great War is awesome to study. Wish I knew more about the ships of that era.

so when do we get to find out the results?

@RJL518:

i sometimes wonder what would have happened if Germany had put together a massive battle fleet in the Atlantic like Japan did in the Pacific

They  didn’t have the naval knowhow that Japan and US had. The Germans had plans for building carrier vessels, but they weren’t able to do it.

But if they had done it, it would be much easier to knock out UK pretty early, and then Barbarossa also would be easier, but far from guaranteed.