Naval History Forums

One can say that the German Brandenburg class with four 28cm 40 cal and 2 28cm 35cal guns in three centre line turrets anticipated the all big gun battleships prior to Cuniberti's writings, as this class was laid down in 1890. Curious though, that the idea was never carried on in subsequent classes ...

Fisher's idea of the battlecruiser was similar to his view on the all big gun battleship (dreadnoughts). Dreadnought when she went into service immediately made previous battleships pretty much obsolete, thereby giving Britain a technical edge over the competition, provided of course she could maint...

As something of an aside, at the end of the war there were a number of 38cm guns surviving in coastal installations, plus a great deal of related material at Krupps, including several test and proof guns. All one would need to find the official designation would be to look at the breech ring of any ...

German official designations for weapons were frequently haphazard and confusing, even to the Germans themselves. The actual nomenclature for a gun could be the year in which the official specification was issued to manufacturers for development of a new weapon (changes in specifications before the ...

I would imagine that the big savings Amatol would have made would have been in saving high quality alloy steel rather than saving TNT. High quality alloy steels were better used in armour plate production and for AP shot and shell. There is little reason to presume the Soviets were short of TNT or l...

To clarify my above statement, RDX is the British name for hexogen, while Cyclonite is the name the popular name the Germans assigned to it. For secrecy purposes, so that production facilities were more difficult to identify, it was given the military designation Füllung 104.

RDX is one of those little military secrets which did not remain secret for very long. I am not aware of the exact extent to which the Soviets used RDX, but it was used in a number of smaller calibre AA shells and aircraft cannon, usually mixed with molten TNT which was cast into the shell, or mixed...

rather than launch into some long explanations, I would instead direct you to http://www.combinedfleet.com/metalprp2002.htm which has a very good overview of various armours from iron and wrought iron plating of the 1850s and 1860s through to the armours used in WK2. It is a helpful guide and starti...

Hi Ulrich,

That was about it. The primary equipment would have been each individual'sl life jacket. Rafts, both rigid and inflatable would have been carried in sometimes substantial numbers, but like the ship's boats might be destroyed in a gun action.

RDX, which is the British acronym for Hexogen was discovered in about 1932 and by 1935 was also being produced in Germany by at least one plant, and during the war by another ten or so. It's early usage was hindered by its expense and its relative instability compared with other explosives such as T...

I believe the choice of city names comes from the victories achieved by Prince Eugene of Savoy, if I am not mistaken.

trf

Nellie, Rangefinders work on a principle of triangulation. The left prism is fixed at 90 degrees to the base of the rangefinder, while the right prism is movable so that when it is adjusted to intersect the line of sight of the left prism, a right triangle is formed, solving a trignometric formula a...

Hi Ulrich, In the Kriegsmarine, chaplins were Marinebeamten usually with officer status but not officer rank. However, any ordained minister, even if serving in the ranks, could perform the offices of his vocation as well. I am not aware of any chaplin assigned to the Bismarck, although I would not ...

Most curious. John said that it has happened with several other peoples posts as well it seems. I wonder why John's site has come under such a vicious attack. Any ideas?

Hacking is somewhat analagous to breaking the inigma code. Pretty much some chap or chaps has to figure out how to bypass all the safety and security measures on a site, then go in and mess up posts, plant dubious files, etc. I am not sure how its done, not being that computer literate. I do wish th...