AC Blucher: Best role for this warship?

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As some commentators have pointed out to treat her as a 'failed Invincible' is incorrect.

Quite right. I regard both Bluecher and Invincible as failed versions of....

In comparison with the sadly-never-built Unapproachable, Bluecher is a bit too slow and wastes tonnage on the 15cm battery (no AP shells, so useless against anything bigger than a DD).

If the RN had built an Unapproachable (probably turbine-powered) rather than Invincible, I imagine the Germans' alt-VdT would have been a larger and faster Bluecher, with no 15cm and at least sixteen 21cm.

 

[Slider6]

Well, I don't consider the Blucher or Invincible failed unless you think heavy cruisers of WW2 as failed also. They wouldn't have done well against the BB either The blucher was not a battlecruiser but rather an large AC...aka heavy cruiser. I think things were done with these ships that just shouldn't have. At the job of hunting down AC and CL they did just fine. Stacking them up against a mainfleet battleline wasn't a good plan.

In game, I just got done using the Blucher and P. Heindrick for a channel sweep. They performed great. The channel fleet showed up and the german battlecruiser line (ie..seydiltz..etc) abliterated the tiny line of obsolete ships. A withdrawing night action continued after that in which the british BC popped up in the broadside of the german main battle line in the dark at less than 6k yards. (Oops) They lasted about as long as they would have in real life.