The Spanish Navy in 1898 - Armada Options

[Music] [Music] hello everybody and today we're going to have a brief look at the state of the Spanish Navy and yes it was still called the Spanish Armada in 1898 at the eve of the outbreak of the spanish-american war now when the said war broke out one of the first things that the US Navy had to figure out was just exactly what force it would be fighting although the Americans had kept abreast of developments in various navies that might pose a threat to US interests and the spanish caribbean holdings if nothing else were uncomfortably close to the US coastline the massive changes in naval technology in the past few decades meant that any evaluation might be obsolete even before it been fully compiled for example there is a naval report prepared for the u.s. navy in 1896 but when you compare what it lists including ships under construction compared to what was the case two years later on there are some rather glaring deficiencies but anyway for much of the period between the end of the American Civil War and the 1890s it had actually been in the Armada that was very much in the ascendancy the US Navy had entered the 1870s with the bulk of their massive civil war-era fleet and ceremoniously scrapped and most of the pre-war fleet had either been burnt sunk or was battle damaged and all badly worn out by contrast the Spanish who hadn't faced a major naval conflict since they'd ended up on the wrong side of the Napoleonic Wars almost a century earlier had accumulated a fairly substantial force of large frigates and last-generation ships of the line along with just over half a dozen modern ironclads ranging in size from a floating battery of under a thousand tons through a number of small frigates and indeed a monitor type as well as conversions of wooden capital ships all the way up to a couple of fairly serious second generation ocean-going capital ships indeed during the Virginia's affair of the 1870s which was also connected with tensions in Cuba the US media's demand for war had been somewhat tempered by the government's realization that sitting in a major u.s. port undergoing maintenance at the time was the Spanish ironclad air appeal a which was not even the most powerful ship in the Spanish Arsenal at the time but there was literally nothing available in the u.s. Navy austell at the time that could actually have dealt with it had the media got their way and war been declared at that time this meant that any battle outside of the immediate US coastline in this period would have been heavily biased in favor of a Spanish task force but by the 1890s things had swung about quite massively firstly much of the older Spanish ironclad force had become obsolete and broadside and central battery ironclads were yesterday's news the Barbet ironclad and the all steel battleship and what we would nowadays call an early pre-dreadnought were the real arbiters of naval power now alongside the emerging fleets of protected and armoured cruisers and the relatively new torpedo boat torpedo gunboat and torpedo boat destroyer classes that were also entering service with most major navies thus in a span of not much more than 15 years the existing Spanish fleet had gone from being easily capable of dealing with the US Navy and to suffering the same block obsolescence issues that the increasingly geriatric fleet of American Civil War era monitors had gone through sometime earlier but it wasn't just technology that had changed economically and politically the landscape had changed quite considerably as well the advent of a number of small regional navies purchasing modern warships alongside the Virginia's incident had acted as something of a wake-up call to the US Navy and Congress when confronted with reports such as one that stated that a whole plate people the Brazilian Navy was now entirely capable of rolling up any US Navy task force if they so chose a huge push to expand and modernize the US Navy was begun but like almost every other such attempt until world war ii congress help was fully in favor of enhancing u.s. power in this way right up until they've been given at the potential bill at which point the proposal was quietly taken round the back of the building and beaten with sticks until it had stopped twitching however one of the advantages of aiming high and the USN had aimed to go from basically zero to almost royal navy size in the matter of a decade was that with almost everything else cut away even a small percentage of what was left of the procurement bill was actually still the reasonable amount for what at this point was still a regional Navy the US Navy now at the end of the 1890s possessed a number of battleships albeit the first one USS Maine which would end up being the catalyst of de spanish-american war was rather quickly demoted to armored Cruiser status this was followed by a small flick that consisted of a pair of one-offs and a class of three first the USS Texas then the three strong Indiana class and then the USS Iowa no not that one of these only the Iowa could truly be described as fully ocean-going but all of them were still relatively powerful ships for the time five more vessels were in various stages of construction as of 1898 which would of course double the US Navy's order of battle in short order at least as far as capital ships were concerned they're also half a dozen supposedly sea capable monitors and another half dozen coastal only vessel still in service but these were so old and so slow that they only really mattered in an invasion scenario or perhaps a blockade of very slow merchantman but the US Navy did also possess two modern armored cruisers the Brooklyn and the New York along with over a dozen protected cruisers that ranged from excellent such as USS Olympia through to ships like the Cincinnati and Montgomery classes which were really more suited to worrying merchant ships as opposed to warships although it should be noted that a number of US Navy cruisers of this period were very heavily armed for their displacement with a typical displacement of between three and six thousand tons seeing 8-inch guns as not being an uncommon sight on the protected cruisers this was supplemented by a small fleet of gunboats around half a dozen torpedo boats a single submarine the Holland and a small collection of miscellaneous ships including the dynamite cruisers of Vesuvius a torpedo Ram some training ships a few patrol vessels and when it came to wartime a number of merchant liners merchantman and yachts that were converted to be to varying degrees of usefulness in military purposes as Scouts auxilary cruisers and the like comparatively Spain had lost a significant portion of its overseas Empire in the early 1800s a courtesy of Simon Bolivar but the resurgence of Spain in the 1870s had owed much to the tragically short-lived Alfonso the twelfth and now Spain held only a few islands in the Caribbean chief amongst them Cuba a plus the Philippines various assorted small Pacific Islands and if you ran a bits of Africa because after all you couldn't be a proper European colonial empire in the nineteenth century without owning at least some African soil and due to both a falling economy and somewhat understandable political turmoil after the King's death Spain had sold some of its Pacific Holdings to the up-and-coming German Empire and was thus having to split the Armada between Cuba Spain and the Philippines whilst the destruction of the main removed the US Navy's likely least useful capital ship from the equation it didn't materially affect the balance of power in naval terms the armadas capital ships at this point numbered three at least in theory but really only one in practice the Numancia and the vitória were suddenly large both topping 7,000 tons but they were also a broadside ironclads from the first generation that had succeeded hms warrior and whilst they could still probably comfortably deal with the US Navy gunboat or any of the older monitors that happen to show up in practical terms they weren't really worth the crews that manned them as even compared to the smallest US Navy capital ship the USS Texas they really weren't worth all that much however the one ace in the hole that the Spanish did have in this category was the battleship Pearl Isle whilst not exactly a world-leading design she was still a solid enough ship that at least on paper she could comfortably deal one-on-one with practically anything the US Navy could throw at her in large part thanks to her being actually fully ocean capable something that everything apart from the USS Iowa in the US Navy's capital ship department really wasn't albeit of course she was heavily outnumbered in this category if she should go into coastal waters such as I don't know the Caribbean in armored cruisers however there seemed to be some salvation the Armada had five as opposed to the US Navy's two with three more building and most of these were very heavily armed with eleven inch guns as their main battery unfortunately this on paper strength which might seem at first to even possibly counter some of the American battleships was undermined by every vessel having one significant problem or another the infanta maria theresa Vizcaya and owner ante Oquendo seemed to be almost second-class battleships on paper with in class battleship thicker belts until you realize that that main armor belt which was up to 12 inches thick was so narrow that it would actually be something of a surprising feat to actually hit it with an incoming shell instead of I don't know the rest of the hull emperador Carlos Quinto had a wider spread but really only fuse initiating a two inch belt and Cristobal Colon originally an italian is giuseppe garibaldi class vessel which as designed had an excellent balance of speed protection and firepower had been delivered with only its secondary 6-inch battery after her main 10 inch battery had been rejected by the Spanish Admiralty in the small cruisers again in theory the Armada might find itself as something of an advantage with a slightly larger number than the US Navy but once more a deep look shows a significant number of issues in theory there were five protected and ten unprotected cruisers available the Spanish having managed to lose three cruisers in the past decade to Rex and storms but that latter designation of unprotected Cruiser was not as much of a problem as it might at first seem since a number of u.s. cruisers might as well have fallen into that category as well but of the protected cruisers the three Elida Luzon class were really actually barely a step above gunboats and the two remaining reign regime take lost the Alfonso d'Este mortis arrow and Lepanto were not quite finished yet albeit that they could be made serviceable in a pinch now of the unprotected ships Castilla the three Alfonso duodecimal class and the six Velasco class well they were all bit small and carried fairly weak armament a handful of guns up around six-inch caliber give or take a little bit depending on the class and slightly more and/or a few four point seven inch guns again depending on the class they were also generally quite slow now granted as mentioned previously some of the u.s. cruisers weren't exactly a large fast or really protected either but even at this lower end of the scale the Cincinnati and Montgomery classes did at least carry significantly more guns in this size range than many of the Spanish vessels now when it came to small craft the destroyers torpedo gunboats and the like the Armada did in fact have a definite advantage with a dozen torpedo gunboats which were the precursor to destroyers and so designed to hunt torpedo craft either in service or about to enter service against the US Navy's half-dozen issue or so torpedo crab boats in addition twenty-one actual destroyers of varying ages were in service these gave the Armada a huge margin of superiority when it came to small craft and actually left the US Navy quite vulnerable to a torpedo strike if sufficient vessels could be concentrated and an attack launched in optimal conditions ie basically night or other low visibility weather but the majority of these vessels were based in Spain with only a few scattered across the Caribbean and philippine naval operational areas and even then they weren't concentrated all in one place as these small torpedo boats and destroyers were considered to be excellent ships to use economically to God Minor far-flung areas such as Puerto Rico matching the Americans the Spanish also had a single submarine although it was about as much use in a prolonged overseas war as the Holland was along with around three dozen gunboats of varying descriptions many of these actually being present in the colonial fleet now with all that said and done you might imagine the Armada stood no chance whatsoever especially if you know how the spanish-american war actually turned out but it wasn't quite as clear-cut as that as the beginning and whilst there were a number of seven significant other issues in the Armada including poor maintenance shortages of gunpowder gunnery practice and indeed shortages of actual working live ammunition all of which would return to plague the Spanish squadrons during the conflict there were some factors that were in favor of the Spanish as whilst the US Navy now enjoyed over superiority the majority of the ships that granted them that capacity were not especially or in some cases at all suited for long overseas deployments and so whilst attacking the continental United States was out of the question and it was relatively likely that holding Cuba would not been possible at least from a naval perspective the Philippines were another matter entirely the u.s. actually had a relatively small squadron in the area and whilst its flagship the Olympia was a very powerful for its size the Spanish in theory could have deployed a vastly stronger force mostly from Spain to defend the area including armored cruisers and the Palio as the same restrictions that confined much of the u.s. Navy strength to their side of the ocean precluded much of any assault on Spain itself not that that prevented the Spanish government and press from panicking about it however in this respect to the escalation to war was a very much a surprise for the Spanish and thus the US Navy found itself with some time to prepare and get on a war footing whereas the Armada was caught somewhat more flat-footed and thus scrambling for a response and so it was that many of the armadas newer and more powerful units saw most of the war sitting home in the one operational theater that saw no conflict Spanish home waters and being close to home also meant that their ammunition and supply issues which really did plague the colonial fleets were not quite as bad for them and so the abortive attempt by a squadron led by pelayo to relieve the Philippines may well have been very successful had it been launched earlier albeit obviously that this would require more notice to Spain of the war and thus a chance to prepare the ships for deployment so with all that said and done was there really anything that the Armada could have done to not necessarily win the spanish-american war but at least to have salvaged something from it well hindsight is obviously a wonderful thing and in pure hindsight terms if you're acting completely from a military perspective yes there's plenty they could have done however it also has to be acknowledged that war is a political creation as well and there's certainly a fair amount of suggestion that the Spanish authorities knew that they couldn't win the war in the long run and so they just wanted to get it over and done with as quickly as possible even if that meant throwing away significant portions of the Spanish fleet in a kind of well we tried and there was a heroic lost and and so now we can't do anything so we might as well give up kind of attitude but politics can of course change so was there anything they could have really done to hold Cuba to win the battle of Santiago to Cuba no not really though as we've covered the Spanish fleet just did not have the numbers the technology all the ships to stand up to the US Navy of 1898 - 1899 in what was effectively their home waters could they've held on to Puerto Rico again no they had a nun protected Cruiser and a destroyer there but the interesting thing is the fleet the ultimately faced off against the US Navy at the Battle of Santiago to Cuba was not there when the war broke out the Caribbean was not particularly well staffed by Spanish warships the Spanish government chose to send several sets of reinforcements including the armored cruisers that would inevitably be the ones that got victimized in that battle so if they had instead decided perhaps the the best way of getting the war done and over with would be to effectively leave Cuba to the Americans which let's face it off the - Cuba was the much preferred target rather than the Philippines although America ended up notionally either in charge of or in a dominant position over both of them the what they could have done instead was to as I said leave Cuba there and if they'd sent that reinforcing squadron plus not drained the Philippines of some ships and instead stent the sent those four armored cruisers to the Philippines now that could have been very interesting because whilst it would almost have shades of the second Pacific squadron a few years to hum the line yet the Spanish ships could have used that journey time to brush up on their gunnery skills check on their suppliers etc and when they then arrived in Manila Bay it granted the Spanish forces it men in Manila Bay were not exactly top of the line as the USS Olympia and her contingent would later prove but if you then drop in for armored cruisers plus escorts into that mix that changes things quite considerably all of a sudden whilst Olympia is arguably a match for any of them given the various states that they were in and the questionable nature of a lot of their design as we outlined up but previously yep there are still four and there's only one of Olympia and everything else is lesser than that so if the Spanish had concentrated their overseas naval forces in the Philippines then while that's not going to change the fate of Cuba all that much but it would mean that the Americans would have a very difficult choice either they just have to stand there and watch the Spanish keep the Philippines at which point Spain will come out of the war somewhat better off than they did historically or the US Navy sails in to attack the Spanish anyway and there's a reasonable chance they lose that engagement of course it could go the other way it could well be that the journey from Spain to the Philippines might tax the Spanish armored cruisers so much they might be in just as broken down and clapped-out condition as the Spanish ships are already there historically so you know it might be an even greater victory and we might be seeing Olympia's praises even more than we already do but if the spanish do manage to pull a win out there and destroy or capture the USA z attic squadron then that leaves everything in a bit of an interesting conundrum because most of the heavy us overseas units or well for a given notion of heavy have been destroyed they could send Brooklyn and New York the two armored cruisers around I really really wouldn't want to bet on sending any of the battleships at round all the way across the Pacific but they could send Brooklyn in New York and I think it's arguable to say that certainly by the time they'd actually arrived with presumably a few more escorts as well there's a reasonable chance the pro kleh in New York might be able to deal with what's left of the Spanish fleet however that would take an awful long time because remember at this point the Panama Canal doesn't exist so the two ships would have to go back to a West Coast port they'd have to restock refuel probably refit after all the operations off Cuba so let's say that takes a month it's then gonna take about a month to a month and a half of them to get around South America to say San Diego to replenish stocks and supplies again then they've got a header across the Pacific and finally they'll wind up in Manila probably a quarter of a year after that calls for them to actually go there a quarter of a year of quote-unquote war when nothing much happens other than well we get there eventually probably not going to go down too well and the numerical issues unless Olympia pulls off something absolutely magical and wipes out half of the Spanish squadron Eaton's going down is not really the odds not really gonna look very attractive so if the Spanish had decided to concentrate the Armada in the Philippines and that still allows them to keep an armored Cruiser and the Pelayo back in Spain just in case then it's conceivable the Spanish might have been able to hold on to the Philippines where the victory over the USA sea antic squadron now that happens the peace treaty this negotiate is gonna be a lot more delicate the Spanish still want out of the war so they're probably not going to press for too much extra but it then does have rather interesting knock-on effects because if Spain keeps the Philippines at least for the minute then that what happens then in World War two I mean in World War one Japan was friendly to the Western powers so doesn't make much odds there but come World War two if the Philippines is either still Spanish or has gained its independence the u.s. doesn't actually have any other major interests in the western Pacific now maybe they've managed to take Guam off the Spanish as they did historically in this particular war maybe not but Guam is not really going to be very high up of the Imperial Japanese Navy's hit list if the Philippines are independent or Spanish it makes it very easy for the Japanese to roll over them but it also means there's not really any cause for war for the United States in particular in that region and without a direct problem for the Japanese Navy of an American control Philippines standing in their way it also renders it questionable as to whether or not the Japanese would go for Pearl Harbor and because after all Pearl Harbor was predicted on and executed on the fact that the Japanese would have to take the Philippines the Philippines were owned by the Americans if the if they provoked the Americans the Americans have to come after them therefore the best strategy is to hit them first and now we're on to did it still be a lot of economic concerns and neek possibly the blockade in a monopoly embargo of goods like oil that the United States might impose on them and that might well eventually spark some kind of conflict but without a Pearl Harbor because the Japanese would reason that the there's not really any particular American cause for war if the Philippines don't belong to them then what else are the Japanese can do well they roll over the Philippines it's - well that's too bad for either the independent Philippines or the Spanish they keep going they hit the various colonial powers that serves the American interest a weakened chip well we can both Japan and the colonial powers in the inevitable battles so as and when America gets involved in the war and whether or not they're quite as determined to break Japan as they were historically they could potentially throw off the whole course of World War two one way or the other so yeah there's an interesting counterfactual for you just by sailing East instead of West the Spanish Armada of 1898 might well have had a very long-term effect on the outcome of the Second World War but with all that said and done I hope you've enjoyed this video having a quick look at the state of the Spanish Armada in 1898 and perhaps gives you a little bit more of an idea of what went down and why were it went down in the spanish-american war which are battles that we will look at in more detail in future videos and hope see again in another video at some point that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for drydock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 233,772

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Pelayo, Spanish-American War, Spanish Navy, Armada, Critobal Colon, Vizcaya, Furor, USN, 1898

Id: MTB-kEN7cvw

Length: 27min 52sec (1672 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 22 2020