Prince of Wales V Nagato

[Gary]

A newer 14" armed battleship against an older 16" armed BB.

1941 in the South China sea NO escorts on either side (highly unlikely but please humour me).

One against one.

[Tiornu]

Nagato is one of the few old battleships that can nearly equal a new battleship. She also has one of the most bizarre armor schemes ever given a dreadnought. Her major weakness may be the lack of deck protection amidships.
PoW is well known. Her main battery is unreliable.
Nagato actually has the size advantage here, and it can help offset her greater age. PoW has radar, though I'm not sure of the extent to which it was integrated with her FC.
It's quite a close call. I will pick Nagato on the basis of crew performance.

[nwhdarkwolf]

Yeah, I'm liking the Nagato as well.

Yes, she was older, but the PoW's issues are well known.

[Karl Heidenreich]

Nagato all the way.
Anyway I believe it´s worth give it a try with Fighting Steel tonight (in Central America 9 hours after Europe: for me the morning is just begining). Tomorrow I tell you.

Best regards!

[Gary]

Thanks to everyone who has replied.

Thank you Karl

We await your report

[Karl Heidenreich]

Tiornu:

Nagato is one of the few old battleships that can nearly equal a new battleship. She also has one of the most bizarre armor schemes ever given a dreadnought. Her major weakness may be the lack of deck protection amidships.

Hey, how is that about the armour scheme? Sloped or what? Why the Japanese let the amidship section disprotected?

Best regards!

[Tiornu]

Amidships the deck is 3in on the flat. That sounds mediocre, but it's actually worse than that because the 3 inches are two 25mm layers of HT with a 25mm D steel layer on top. The slope is two or three layers of 25mm HT. Nagato is like Hood in that a shell penetrating her upper belt can easily hit the slope.
On the other hand, the magazines have their own armor within the protection provided by the citadel. The slope armor gets as thick as 10in in spots--yes, that's 10in deck armor.

[ontheslipway]

PoW actually managed 3 hits. The entire Japanese heavy surface fleet scored about what, 14 confirmed hits? That's 12 heavy caliber battleships and 14 shells finding a target, hardly a stellar record...

[Gary]

Good point Foeth.

For a ship with the problems POW had yet to still score 3 hits was pretty good.

[Tiornu]

The Japanese BB force never got to fire at a battleship-sized target in daylight. The only battleship they got to engage was firing back, which was not the case for PoW when she got her hits (I think!). If we forget the final brutalizing of Bismarck, was the British hit rate against BB targets better than the Japanese? How many main-battery hits did British battleships score on destroyers? That would include Warspite at Narvik.

[ontheslipway]

How many main-battery hits did British battleships score on destroyers? That would include Warspite at Narvik.

Of all the nrealy zero German destroyers encountered in the Atlantic? Don't know about Warspite though... I don't know if Japanese heavy caliber shooting was really particularly bad, but the track record is not so good. The British did manage to hit other capital ships and cruisers (Italian) and so forth. I know this is not an objective measurement, and afterall, some of the Japanese ships were actually British...

[Karl Heidenreich]

Hey Gary and friends:

Fighting Steel results for PoW vs. Nagato: PoW won three out of three! In the first combat I achieved to close the PoW to some 15K - 18K yards from Nagato in order to reduce the 16" advantage; in the second I maintained the Nagato at 20K - 232K yards in order to give the 16" their advantage and in the third I just let them fight alongside from 19K.
The PoW also resulted with heavy structural damage in the three combats and important hull damage too; many fires. If the game doesn´t stop when the enemy sinks then I believe that PoW would have sunk en route to port due to the fires, flooding and general damage.
Well that´s Fighting Steel verdict, against my original believe!

Very best regards.

[ontheslipway]

That's just a silly game with nice grapics...

[Bgile]

That's just a silly game with nice grapics...

The graphics aren't that great, but it's a good simulation. Unfortunately Karl has a very old version, and I'm afraid it may be using the 14" gun like people once thought it was and not the ballistics of the real one. I honestly don't know.

I don't think it has anything duplicating the serious problems with the guns being out of action due to breakdowns, either.

Even so, it is interesting that he got those results, because 3 out of 3 is significant even with an old version.

A couple questions I have. One is crew quality. The original game gives the British better crews than the Germans or Japanese, and sometimes that gives inaccurate results.

I forgot what the other one was, LOL.

[Karl Heidenreich]

Bgile:

I don't think it has anything duplicating the serious problems with the guns being out of action due to breakdowns, either.

Even so, it is interesting that he got those results, because 3 out of 3 is significant even with an old version.

A couple questions I have. One is crew quality. The original game gives the British better crews than the Germans or Japanese, and sometimes that gives inaccurate results.

You´re right: the game gives the British crew a better quality than to Germans or the Japanese. But you can edit each individual ship and modify the crew´s behaviour, which I did. But regarding the PoW´s problems with their quadruple mounts that doesn´t show, because all the turrets work 100%! Anyway you can draw your own conclusions with the fact that PoW´s got out of the brawl seriously damaged.

Foeth: I was just doing the Fighting Steel simulation as an exercise I offer to Gary and to the other forum users as friends. If you doesn´t have anygood to say about it then don´t say anything please. Your arrogance is annoying.