Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
I think you have mixed up your battleships. The newest of ours in that fight was I think the West Virginia, launched in 1921. All had been considerably modified of course and the West Virginia was sunk on Dec 7 and brought back to life.
You answered your own point--Except for the Arizona, the battleships sunk/damaged at Pearl in 1941 were all substantially recapitalized, which was also my point about new--particularly with regard to fire control radar. The reason that the three other battleships were only minimally engaged at Surigao Strait was that, being without the new radar, they were unable to derive timely firing solutions to engage the Japanese.

Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs
Skagerrakschlacht/Battle of Jutland was a battle of unequal forces as well.
The German High Seas Fleet blew up some vulnerable battlecruisers, but it had no chance against the squadrons of new 15" armed QEs and Rs which came into action only at very long ranges.
The vastly weaker side slipped away after blunting the vulnerable vanguard of the enemy.
Most of the British fleet never got into action. The first engagement between Beatty's and Hipper's battlecruisers was pretty much of an even match. The 4 QE battleships supporting Beatty did not get in range. In the main event, only 2 of Jellicoe's battle squadrons were really engaged. Capital ships (heavy cruiser and above) in the two fleets numbered 45 Brit to 27 German while capital ship loss was 6 Brit to 2 German.


Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs
The same goes for the "size of ships" criterion. By today's standards the ships of the line at Trafalgar were corvettes or small frigates!
Trying to compare an 18th century sail-powered ship of the line to a 20th century diesel powered armored battleship or even a guided missile frigate is comparing tree frogs to kangaroos.