PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

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Alberto Virtuani
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hello everybody,
HMSVF wrote: "POW only obtained hits up to the point of Hoods sinking after that nothing"
I have several times (even in my previous post) admitted that hit rate was favorable to Bismarck, but PoW hit first (and as logical from a longer distance)....

PoW managed to hit the enemy 3 times. Bismarck managed to hit the enemy 5 times, while switching fire between two ships).

PoW 3 hits were obtained in 4 minutes, from 05:56 till 06:00 (PoW fired for 4,5 minutes without hitting the enemy). Bismarck 5 hits were obtained in 5 minutes, from 05:58 to 06:02 (BS fired for 9 minutes without hitting the enemy). No ship hit the other when maneuvering herself, not only PoW, also BS and PG.

However, the (apparently very annoying :wink: ) table (download/file.php?id=3418) is proposing a comparison between RoF, not between hit rate, efficacy of hits or performance of shells. For a more complete (and authoritative) comparison of gunnery performance, please refer to "Bismarck and Hood" of Adm.Santarini whose conclusions are extremely lucid and illuminating regarding a "certain obstinacy" (visible here on the forum) in the refusal to accept PoW good gunnery performances :

Santarini_pag.54_Bismarck_Performance.jpg
Santarini_pag.54_Bismarck_Performance.jpg (45.83 KiB) Viewed 1260 times


Bye, Alberto
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by HMSVF »

Alberto Virtuani wrote: Fri Mar 15, 2019 10:25 pm Hello everybody,
HMSVF wrote: "POW only obtained hits up to the point of Hoods sinking after that nothing"
I have several times admitted already that hit rate was favorable to Bismarck, but PoW hit first (and from a longer distance)....

PoW managed to hit the enemy 3 times. Bismarck managed to hit the enemy 5 times.

PoW 3 hits were obtained in 4 minutes, from 05:56 till 06:00. Bismarck 5 hits were obtained in 5 minutes, from 05:58 to 06:02. No ship hit the other when maneuvering herself, not only PoW.

However, the table is showing a comparison between RoF, not about hit rate or efficacy of hits / performance of shells.


Bye, Alberto

POW had a free shoot effectively as Bismarck was engaged against HMS Hood. Bearing in mind the time and expense put in to developing the KGV's I think that the Admiralty would have expected that POW would (given a free hand) landed a few hits. As a comparison the HSF on two occasions (at Dogger Bank and Jutland) were gifted free shoots at British vessels due to Beatty's incompetence. At Dogger Bank it resulted in HMS Lion being hors de combat, at Jutland it almost ended up with HMS Lion blowing up and in HMS Queen Mary being sunk. The range wasn't that much greater and they (the HSF) were using equipment that was a generation (at least) behind.

HMS Prince of Wales did ok up till 06:00, whilst not under fire. That she managed to loose of a fair few 14 inchers can be shown. However if she couldn't get them within an acre of Bismarck so what? Everybody who plays golf will bore you with their "glorious shot at the "X" hole". They tend to forget the multitude of wayward shots that occurred along the way or afterwards.


There seems to be a misconception that the British thought that the Denmark Straight wasn't a defeat and still do today. It was, and a right royal one at that. I don't think that anybody has ever said otherwise. The end result of the Bismarck's operation was her sinking. I would say that Denmark Straight was a conclusive tactical victory for the Germans but that the operation ended up a strategic defeat (and not a huge strategic victory as the real enemy was the U-Boat and in the grand scheme of things a mere footnote in WW2).
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hello everybody,
HMSVF wrote: "POW had a free shoot effectively as Bismarck was engaged against HMS Hood"
Correct, but being under fire (while is a very dangerous situation) doesn't affect much own gunnery performances, except when a gunnery equipment is directly hit: McMullen never mentioned the splashes surrounding PoW and he was not even aware of the hits that had been received (not even of the compass platform and the HALA director ones that happened few meters far from his position).

The same for Bismarck, the Baron said that it was very difficult to realize that the ship had been hit and in no way Schneider seems to have complained about the PoW splashes (as well as Jasper about Hood splashes).


Bye, Alberto
Last edited by Alberto Virtuani on Fri Mar 15, 2019 11:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by José M. Rico »

wadinga wrote: Fri Mar 15, 2019 1:29 pmOnce again this thread is burdened with repetition of the Tiresome Table, but at last its promoter begins to prevaricate about its manifest manipulation of mathmatics:
Agree to disagree with Mr. Virtuani or just don't say anything at all.
No more accusations please.
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by José M. Rico »

As for the table in question, both sides have made their points clear by now.
Mr. Virtuani has presented his calculations including the first 18 salvos from POW fired from 0553 to 0602 hours. No problem at all with that.
If others prefer to have the last 3 salvos fired under local control added to the calculations, that's fine too.
As I just said, agree to disagree.
Now everybody move on!

There is no need to reply to this message.
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by HMSVF »

Alberto Virtuani wrote: Fri Mar 15, 2019 10:55 pm Hello everybody,
HMSVF wrote: "POW had a free shoot effectively as Bismarck was engaged against HMS Hood"
Correct, but being under fire (while is a very bad tactical situation) doesn't affect much own gunnery performances, except if a gunnery equipment is directly hit: McMullen was not even aware of the hits that had been received (not even of the compass platform and the HALA director ones that happened few meters far from his position).

The same for Bismarck, the Baron said that it was very difficult to realize that the ship had been hit and in no way Schneider seems to have complained about the PoW fire.


Bye, Alberto
Hi

I'd imagine because the 3 gentleman were "in the zone" so to speak whilst the events carried on around them. In POW's case Leach had to undertake manoeuvres to tack round HMS Hoods wreckage which cannot have helped her finding a decent firing solution. She (POW) never made another hit after 06:00 if I remember correctly (i.e after Hoods immolation). Bismarck hit up to 06:02 or there abouts and then nothing (but she has managed to land 5 hits?). That she didn't afterwards? Well... HMS Prince of Wales in the process of hightailing it and making smoke at this point (give or take a minute)?


POW did ok. I just think that its stretching it a bit say that she was a sharpshooter. The RN spent around 7.5 million per KGV - a lot of wonga. You would hope that she would get some hits in (which she did before 06:00).If she(POW) landed 1 hit after 06:00 I think that the case would be stronger.




Best wishes


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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hello everybody,
HMSVF wrote: "If she(POW) landed 1 hit after 06:00 I think that the case would be stronger"
I do agree.
The reason for not hitting anymore after 6:00 is (IMHO) quite understandable: the avoiding maneuver around Hood remains surely affected gunnery as the ship heeled violently (even if her course apparently did not change much).


Bye, Alberto
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by dunmunro »

Alberto Virtuani wrote: Fri Mar 15, 2019 9:50 pm Hello everybody,

according to the above (confused and evidently angry) post "everything is unknown".
We can add that also the PoW open fire time is unknown because there was not an atomic clock to exactly measure this timing. :negative:
No, it's incorrect, we have several usable data (and the inability to read them, or the refusal to accept them, speaks for itself).
PoW GAR is a carefully prepared detailed report - we have nothing like it from the KM side but we also don't know how clock timing in PE compares to PoW's timing.

No, it's a table showing average values in a methodologically correct way. The obstinate determination in the attempt to deny it, shows the irritation of "naive viewers" who still would prefer to blindly trust Tovey+Kennedy's fairy tale about a green ship that fired poorly and "forced" her Captain to retreat, the old tale that British had told to the world for 78 years.
It is NOT methodologically correct to compare a detailed subset from one dataset whilst excluding additional data that is unfavourable to your thesis, and then comparing this subset to a two other data sets that make no exclusions and in Bismarck's case no ceasefire time is known with any certainty, so there are large error bars there, which are not noted.


He would have been expelled from the RN, had he produced a table to evaluate PoW gunnery performance including the meaningless local salvos, fired after the "evading maneuver" and after the control was passed to the aft director and then to the Y turret crew.
Why not to include also the second engagement salvos and the interval between the two actions ?
Why not to include for Bismarck also the salvos that Schneider could possibly have fired had Lutjens given permission to open fire before 5:55 ?
Come on, let's try to be at least serious in this discussion....
Please provide a reference that Mcmullen would have been expelled from the RN if he tried to evaluate PoW's gunnery performance whilst in local control or in aft director control. You included all of PE and Bismarck's output over a probable time frame but you have opted not to do the same for PoW because it contradicts your thesis. The rest of the above is plain nonsense and appears to be stated to try and deflect attention away from your errors of logic.



Dunmunro wrote "The same war diary records Brinkmann as stating that Bismarck opened fire before PE and does not state a ceasefire time for Bismarck."
Totally incorrect and misleading statement. Who cares here whether BS opened fire before or after PG ? The KTB (both Brinkmann and Schmalenbach) says that BS opened fire at minute 05:55 and (Jasper) that Bismarck came across his line of fire just when he received the order to cease fire (06:09). As we see Bismarck still firing when in PG line of fire (download/file.php?id=3254), we can say that Bismarck ceased fire at around 06:09 (or even later), surely not much before.
My statement above is completely correct and is supported by PE's war diary.

This forum member cannot hold back from occasionally resurrecting his "theory" that Bismarck opened fire at 5:53: possibly he has forgotten that, using 05:53 as open fire time for BS in the table, the final result will be even worse for him, with BOTH effective RoF and effective # of shells are better for PoW...
The overwhelming body of historical evidence points to Bismarck opening fire at 0553. I don't try to modify her open fire time to fit my thesis, rather I point out that the evidence points to 0553 and I point out that Bismarck's RoF was not likely constant over the time from open fire to ceasefire and I suspect that Bismarck ceased fire before 0609.
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by paul.mercer »

Gentlemen,
In a previous post Dunmunro wrote:
Except that Mcmullen excluded the salvos fired via local control and also any salvos requested but not fired after Y turret ran out of ammunition.

I'm a little puzzled by this, surely given the relatively small amount of shells fired during the engagement, a turret should not have run out of ammunition?
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hello everybody,

I had ardently hoped that the discussion was over by now, agreeing to disagree, after Mr.Rico's intervention, but I see it's not the case.

I will try to answer in the most kind possible way to a forum member who has spoken of "plain nonsense", "deflect attention", "error of logic", "try to change timings" instead...

Dunmunro wrote: "You included all of PE and Bismarck's output over a probable time frame but you have opted not to do the same for PoW because it contradicts your thesis"
The table (download/file.php?id=3418) is intended to show a comparison between PoW, BS (and PG) regarding their average RoF during the battle. The choice to include in PoW table only the centrally directed salvos to show her RoF was not mine: it was McMullen's choice (of course a correct one, because you cannot show anything meaningful re. RoF mixing centrally directed salvos with the attempt of a single turret to fire some isolated rounds after some delay due to the switch to aft director and then to the Y turret).
No local control sporadic firing was needed by Germans, who continued to fire "rapid, well-placed partial salvos" (Jasper) up to the end of the engagement, also in case a turret was not bearing (as McMullen had done when his aft turret was not bearing, including all salvos in his GAR table).

Adding the PoW local salvos will provide no meaningful information about PoW actual RoF when firing as a coordinated war machine (as McMullen correctly realized), it would just be helpful now to support the old tale (the one of a green ship not ready to fire in battle).




I don't comment much about Bismarck open and cease fire timing, for open fire time we have PG KTB crystal clear statements, while this forum member has only accounts, mostly from remote British observators. For cease fire we have Jasper account + photo (download/file.php?id=3254) , while he has his unsupported "suspects" (his words) only.



Bye, Alberto
Last edited by Alberto Virtuani on Sat Mar 16, 2019 12:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by HMSVF »

paul.mercer wrote: Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:32 am Gentlemen,
In a previous post Dunmunro wrote:
Except that Mcmullen excluded the salvos fired via local control and also any salvos requested but not fired after Y turret ran out of ammunition.

I'm a little puzzled by this, surely given the relatively small amount of shells fired during the engagement, a turret should not have run out of ammunition?

I thought the shell ring jammed resulting in not only a jammed turret but a jammed feed of shells? I didn’t think that her magazines were empty.
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hi Paul,

Mr.HMSVF is right, it was the shell loading mechanism ("shell ring"), the one that allows to move shells from the platform at the level of the shell room (fixed) to the rotating part of the turret (the "trunk") to jam. Here is what happened (as per PoW GAR http://www.hmshood.org.uk/reference/off ... 09guns.htm) :

PoW_Y turret_jam.jpg
PoW_Y turret_jam.jpg (36.23 KiB) Viewed 1145 times

Due to this, the upper part of the turret ran out of shells, but the ship still had plenty of them available in Y turret shell room.


Bye, Alberto
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by wadinga »

Fellow Contributors,

After specific admonition from the website owner, I leave the matter of the Tendentious Table.
The reason for not hitting anymore after 6:00 is (IMHO) quite understandable: the avoiding maneuver around Hood remains surely affected gunnery as the ship heeled violently (even if her course apparently did not change much).
Can somebody with expertise in ship stability, ideally Bill, comment on the idea that ships heel violently without actually changing course "much".

Here is Busch's observation from Ersten Gefecht:
The opponent turns now somewhat towards us, since – as it became known shortly thereafter – he had to dodge the ruins of his flagship.


and from The Story of Prince Eugen
The range was constantly changing now as the British, obeying the last signal of their flagship to open the range, were caught while turning to port, and suddenly steered hard to starboard and towards the Germans to avoid the wreckage of their badly hit comrade.
Brooke:
Another salvo had just gone when I heard Guns warn his director layer 'Stand by to alter course to port'. This long-awaited move— presumably we were going back to the original heading so that 'Y' turret could bear for the first time—had begun to take place, in that we heeled to starboard and it became temporarily more difficult to hold the Bismarck steady in one's glasses, when the ship suddenly rolled upright again and then continued to heel over the opposite way; moreover, with the urgency and excessive vibration that comes only from violent rudder movement. We were going hard-a-starboard. Back towards the enemy again
Another tendentious statement:
Correct, but being under fire (while is a very dangerous situation) doesn't affect much own gunnery performances, except when a gunnery equipment is directly hit
This statement is at odds with the recorded reality of the Denmark Straits action. The whole reason for PoW's Y turret firing in local control at all, was because shell splashes from near misses had disabled the after DCT's glasses temporarily.

Brooke:
there was an almighty splosh as a number of 15-in shells (either four or eight) landed only few yards short, plumb in front of us. I was conscious of a slight but distinct jolt and then the entire scene was obliterated by a mountain of green and white water that rose up high and, helped by the wind behind it, cascaded down on the rear part of the ship. For a few seconds even the fury outside our small our world was drowned by the splatter of hundreds of tons of water tumbling all round, pouring down vertical surfaces, splashing and bouncing off others The three of us were drenched through our small open ports and our binoculars covered in water. As this happened the ship heeled violently towards the enemy and akin vibrate heavily to the wheel as she altered course to port. (A) We had our binoculars reversed and were feverishly wiping the lenses dry with our hankerchiefs when the cry we had secretly prayed for rang in our headsets: ' 'Aftcr director take over. After director take over'. Guns and his team were clearly obscured as the stern swung round towards the target. But we were temporarily blind too (though probably not for more than 15 seconds) (they were blind from wet optics, not smoke!) and Claude Aylwin in 'Y' turret, not receiving the expected control orders, assumed we were hors de combat and switched to local control.
Abandonment of central control obviously has a serious deleterious effect on gunnery performance unless one maintains, as some do, without any evidence, that the shots fired under local control while heeling violently and with serious trunnion tilt are the ones which are photographically recorded as landing close to PG, speculatively timed by some at about 06:09. Oh, and fired without a view of the target, or indeed of where those shells landed......in the vicinity of a ship which was not the target. This assertion contradicts both the photographer Langemann and Busch that these shots came from Hood and occurred ten minutes earlier.
a 15-inch salvo (or it may well have been a broadside, ie, all guns firing together) landed about 20 yards short of the quarterdeck.(E) It fell in the smooth 'slick' made by the skidding stern, exactly where that stern had been about three seconds before.
All the best

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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hello everybody,

while I still find insulting the repeated usage of the word "tendentious", I will try again to answer in a polite way, assuming the frustration of these guys for having no arguments to present is so acute that prevents them to reflect before writing....

Wadinga wrote: "Can somebody with expertise in ship stability, ideally Bill, comment on the idea that ships heel violently without actually changing course "much""
Can somebody with basic expertise in geometry comment on the idea that Y turret (that had been already wooded on course 300°) could still bear during the avoiding maneuvers if her platform significantly changed course toward the enemy from 280° ?
Due to the course of the two divisions, the arcs were (very slightly) closing (see PoW salvo plot bearings). Thus, despite any witness, if a course change ever occurred, it was in the order of around 10° max.

Wadinga wrote: "Abandonment of central control obviously has a serious deleterious effect on gunnery performance"
Quite trivial observation, but correct, and that's why local salvos were excluded from the very "annoying" table by McMullen...
Anyway we are speaking here of centrally controlled fire before 6:02, thus this argument (and Brooke's dramatic observations in a book and not in an official report) is totally irrelevant for comparing PoW and BS gunnery.



The attempt to re-propose the long time dead theory that in the PG film we see splashes from Hood (that never fired at BS, AFAIK) demonstrates that someone here has not yet studied the available images, showing Bismarck firing aft of her beam (thus on course around 270° download/file.php?id=3251), while BS was never on such a course before 6:04 (when Hood was already gone since a while)....

What's the relation between a (full-)salvo landing behind PG (ref. Busch), and 2 isolated splashes (PG film) belonging to two different salvos ? :?:


Bye, Alberto
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by dunmunro »

Alberto Virtuani wrote: Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:43 pm

Wadinga wrote: "Abandonment of central control obviously has a serious deleterious effect on gunnery performance"
Quite trivial observation, but correct, and that's why local salvos were excluded from the very "annoying" table by McMullen...
Anyway we are speaking here of centrally controlled fire before 6:02, thus this argument (and Brooke's dramatic observations in a book and not in an official report) is totally irrelevant for comparing PoW and BS gunnery.


Bye, Alberto
So lets compare all ship's gunnery up to 0602...oh wait we can't because we don't know the KM ship's salvo timing.

We can compare the output from open fire to ~0604 or from open fire to ceasefire but you won't do that because you want to show PoW's output in the best possible light. This is in direct contrast to your insistence on trying to show KGV's output in the worst possible light. Again, your treatment of the facts varies depending on your thesis, rather than treating facts independently and building a thesis to fit the facts.
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