Washington

Historical what if discussions, hypothetical operations, battleship vs. battleship engagements, design your own warship, etc.
lwd
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Re: Washington

Post by lwd »

alecsandros wrote:I meant during the WW2...
I seem to recall hearing of a number of "turret events" over the years, some during WWII I believe, where the ships survived. Of course there's always Mutsu as a counter example no turret explosion required.
Here's a page which mentions Mississippi survived 2, one prior to WWII and one during.
lwd
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Re: Washington

Post by lwd »

Dave Saxton wrote:.... The American team on the Technical Mission Europe were surpized that the Germans openly talked about scoring hits first at long range out to the range of the guns in some tactical situations, and they were shocked by the range of the Tirpitz's guns as exceeding 36km (39,600 yards)....
Interesting as from the reports I've read of Prince Eugen in US hands the radar was about the only thing they weren't interested in. Something very strange had to be going on there.
lwd
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Re: Washington

Post by lwd »

Saltheart wrote:
alecsandros wrote: ...I sometimes think about the Yamato replacing Kirishima during Guadalcanal... I guess both SD and Washington would be studied today on the sea floor... :)
Yes. I think there's a very good chance as Yamato is less likely to have been ambushed at all. With the crew Yamato had in late 42 Washington would have been spotted and taken on. Then fire switched back to South Dakota. ....
I don't see even Yamato surviving those hits at that range. The only armor protection she's got that will reject a 16"/45 shell at that range is on her turret face. By the time she switchs fire to Washington she'd already be hurting. For one thing given her size she's going to be hit even more often. SoDak might even be able to do some damage.
Canyon.DS

Re: Washington

Post by Canyon.DS »

Every one speaks about the armor and shells, no one mentions the Fire Control system, except to say when Bismark maneuvered it lost the solution. Washington had radar directed fire control, linked to a system which could adjust both for own ships movement, and the movement of the target, which would have been hard to beat by any one at longer range. As for disabling that fire control, remember Washington had 6 radar direction stations, (2 for main armament, 4 for secondary and Anti-Air defence) which were interchangeable, (depending on range), as well as 2 battle control areas, (the citadel and after battle) and a Combat Information Center, (which also may have been duplicated) and therefore would have been tough to completely disable by a single hit.

Remember by some definitioins, all of the fast battleships could have been considered battle cruisers. I recommend the book "thunder in their courses," if you want to learn about a confusing ship catagory. :?
Canyon.DS

Re: Washington

Post by Canyon.DS »

Let me also add something about dispersion here. Any one who is an enthusiastic muzzel loader (me! me! me!!!) or handloader (guess who) knows that consistancy is the most important thing in loading. I understand that when hand loading carefully, (not practical in combat) the dispersion of the 16" 45 cal was neglegable. How was the dispersion figured for Washington. Realistically, using the automatic loaders, or in some fantasy land. The Bismarks disperson seems fantastic to me, (German propagandists being somewhat prone to adapting the truth to their needs) however I wonder if it would hold true should the ship be continuously firing and and rapidly loading in hot barrels. I don't know of any measurements made of this, as I'm not sure if Bismark ever fired like this for an extended period of time in simulated battle conditions. I know neither she nor Tirpitz ever had the chance in battle. An interesting, and necessarily open ended and unprovable (where Bizmark or Tirpitz are concerned) consideration.

Have fun. :wink:
alecsandros
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Re: Washington

Post by alecsandros »

Canyon.DS wrote: Washington had radar directed fire control, linked to a system which could adjust both for own ships movement, and the movement of the target, which would have been hard to beat by any one at longer range.
For the record, Washington did not use RPC firing during his attack on Kirishima. Bismarck did, though, and it's probably one of the explanations why it obtained a higher % of hits than Hood and Prince of Wales.
Canyon.DS

Re: Washington

Post by Canyon.DS »

Was that Hood and Prince of Wales combined. I understand POW could only get 4 Guns operational. I wonder what it could have done with all 10 going.
alecsandros
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Re: Washington

Post by alecsandros »

Canyon.DS wrote:Was that Hood and Prince of Wales combined. I understand POW could only get 4 Guns operational. I wonder what it could have done with all 10 going.
The ship had 5 guns operational at the end of the battle. At first salvos, it had 10 guns operational.

PoW fired 55 shells during the action, scoring 3 hits (5.45%). Hood around 40 shells, for no hits. Bismarck 93 shells for 6 (or 7) hits (6.5% - 7.5% hit ratio)

Also, Bismarck straddled and hit the enemy while under fire. Prince of Wales failed to score any more hits immediately after being attacked by Bismarck.
ede144
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Re: Washington

Post by ede144 »

@Canyon
I wonder which radar and superior fire contro lWashington had at 1941? If I remember correct than she got most of here radar 1942.
Regards
Ede
lwd
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Re: Washington

Post by lwd »

alecsandros wrote:... At first salvos, it had 10 guns operational.
While technically accurate a bit misleading isn't it? For the first salvoes her rear turret was unusable and she lost a gun for A turret with the first salvo so until she turned she was down to 5 guns after the first 6 gun salvo (if it was a full salvo). It's also worth notieng the following from:
http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono ... 0Wales.htm
21st - Ship reported to CinC Home Fleet as ready for Fleet service.



(The PRINCE OF WALES had had less than two months working up, which was completely inadequate considering all the new systems and the fact that 80% of her crew were Hostilities Only and had never been on a ship before. Further she still had major problems with her main armament and 100 Vickers Armstrong staff were embarked attempting to fix the problems.
...
By turning on to course 300 degrees the HOOD and the PRINCE OF WALES were driving directly into the wind; this caused spray to wet the lenses of the forward rangefinders and allow water to enter A turret through the gun ports, soaking the gun crew. The water shipped then ran down the ammunition hoist into the shell room wetting the interlock and hoist mechanisms and affecting the efficiency of the handling room personnel, all of which affected the performance of A turret.

The bow-on approach also negated the gunnery advantage of the HOOD and PRINCE OF WALES as neither ships after turrets could engage the enemy vessels
...
At 0603 hours the PRINCE OF WALES completed her turn to port and made smoke and was now on a southerly course. At this time, because of the smoke, Y turret went into local control and fired three salvos.
PoW fired 55 shells during the action, scoring 3 hits (5.45%). Hood around 40 shells, for no hits. Bismarck 93 shells for 6 (or 7) hits (6.5% - 7.5% hit ratio) ....
All things considered I don't think PoW has anything to be ashamed of as far as her firing went.
alecsandros
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Re: Washington

Post by alecsandros »

lwd wrote: All things considered I don't think PoW has anything to be ashamed of as far as her firing went.
PoW did not obtain any more hits as soon as Bismarck took her under fire. Bismarck on the other hand obtained hits on both British capital ships while straddled and hit repeatedly...

Technical unreliability of quad turrets also played an important part in PoW performance that day.

Nothing to be ashame of, as far as the crew goes, but not up to Bismarck's output, precision or hit ratio nonetheless..
lwd
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Re: Washington

Post by lwd »

alecsandros wrote:... Nothing to be ashame of, as far as the crew goes, but not up to Bismarck's output, precision or hit ratio nonetheless..
And why would you expect a crew of mostly new recruits with only a couple of months on the ship to be up to a fully worked up ship? Indeed given that she was having major issues with her ordinance and the tactical factors in the engagement I don't think you can make a very strong case for the superiority of the German ship.

Indeed it occured to me that we have enough data to run a statistical test. If I've done the math right then the standard deviation for PoW is ~.19 and for Bismarck with 6 hits ~.24 (where a hit is a 1 and a miss is 0) if we plug that into the equation (form: http://www.monarchlab.org/lab/research/ ... mpleT.aspx )
t = (.0645-.0545)/Sqrt(.19*.19/55+.24*.24/93) ~.27. If we check the table at http://www.stattools.net/tTest_Tab.php for 54 degrees of freedom we see that for no alpha greater than .05 can we conclude that the distributions are distinct.

Adding another hit for Bismarck won't make much difference and indeed subtracting the Y turret rounds fired under local control would make considerably more.
ede144
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Re: Washington

Post by ede144 »

@lwd
Why Do you think BS was fully worked up?
The Baron mentioned that it would have need 24 months to fully traib the crew and do all necessary tests. Also the AVKs mentioned the lack of training and tests.

Regards
Ede
lwd
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Re: Washington

Post by lwd »

ede144 wrote:@lwd
Why Do you think BS was fully worked up?
The Baron mentioned that it would have need 24 months to fully traib the crew and do all necessary tests. Also the AVKs mentioned the lack of training and tests. ...
Looking for instance at the USS Colorado it looks like she was fully worked up after ~1 year. Bismarck had close to a that, but even if she wasn't fully worked up at that point compare it with the 2 months for PoW crew and consider also that much of that time was spent fixing problems especially with the main armament.
alecsandros
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Re: Washington

Post by alecsandros »

@lwd

There are to many errors in your posts above.

First of all, PoW gunnery problems were mechanical problems, having little to do with crew training. Firing 55 shells out of 74 possible is not ok at all in a battle to the death. Same kind of problem arose on KGV 3 days later, so it was not a problem specific to PoW. And, hiting the enemy only when the ship IS NOT under fire is not that good at all. PoW had some 20 minutes of salvos exchange with Bismarck (6:00 - 6:20), during which it fired erraticaly, did not hit anything, but received crippling hits instead.

Second of all, Bismarck's crew was FAR, FAR from being prepared for battle. You can read AVKS-700 here on the site, and see how little training was actualy done until Rheinubung....
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