That´s fair enough, Duncan. We know that variances with the exact timing reconciling the event from different sources exist. One may whish to consider only effective times of the engagement but the statistic is still very heavily in disfavour of PoW in this engagement. BISMARCK was able to consistently produce straddles and PE nearly developed a similar gunnery.Your analysis is interesting, but the timing is a bit off, as PoW fired 18 salvos under director control of 0553 to 0602:
http://www.hmshood.org.uk/reference/off ... encIVa.gif
or about 2 per minute.
I have read that part in another thread and thought it was a good thinking exercise. One may easily develop definitions by which some of the hits didn´t count as hit [...on the waterline target area, similar as defined by Bill Jurens in his article on HOOD´s demise] but how do You claim that they were no straddles? That requires that You know the fall of shot of the other shells -among other things.Bismarck may have scored some hits that were not, nominally speaking, straddles, due to the flat trajectory of her guns.
Thus, while I appreciated it, I did not agree entirely and am fearing that one may run quickly into terminological issues, loosing grip to actual gunnery performances.
A target represents not only the hull but all aspects of the vessel, including observation tops and funnels but also all elements of the submerged hull. You will notice, f.e. that the aiming point for gunnery wasn´t the waterline, which often was obstructed by waves but the CT (compare BISMARCK´s final battle or SOUTH DAKOTA at Guadacanal) and correspondingly, a larger number of hits has to be reckoned with in these areas, even while actual hits are extracted randomly from straddles and beyond the actual precision of the GO. Still, if You use a Monte Carlo or Bayesian approach on probability of hits related to the aiming point, You will see that a disproportional quantity of hits are attained in vicinity of the aiming point.
This view is further substantiated by an assessment of hits in ww1. Only exceptionally was the aiming point deliberately at the waterline choosen, usually after the engagement was already decided and in order to hasten sinking of the ship by penetration of or the waterline area. RODNEY f.e. attempted with salvo 98 and following to deliberately aim for the waterline of BISMARCK 10:03 from 4000 yard and closer. That doesn´t make hits outside the waterplane hull area (f.e. important hits on her FCS (NORFOLK) or B-turret (RODNEY)) as non-actual hits or non-actual straddles. A flat trajectory gun has the advantage to attain more hits due to the larger dangerspaces created by vertical target area in addition to the fixed areas of beam of the vessel and an area in fron of it where diving is possible (sometimes chancy like the deep underwater hits attained by short delay action 14" APC on BISMARCK and even deeper hit on PoW with long delay action-probably yawed and defused 15"APC.
In both cases the projectile should -under normal conditions- not have reached the place were it detonated or landed inert, respectively. But in both cases the hit was amidships, where a wave alley forms at high speed and exposes more hull without water and in both cases the ship quite possibly was in the process of turning, heeling over to faciliate the however low probability of hitting.
PoW has a beam of about 31m. If You hit anywhere 12m in front of it a projectile may just strike the lower hull. Of course, if You hit 20m behind, You may still hit something of the hull with ease. The area increases if You account for funnel, turrets, CT and other obstructions considerably. Thus, I wouldn´t be suprised to see that the actual danger zone was larger than 120m for such a vessel beamside at the fighting distances of 210hm to 140hm+- if You account for superstructures. Given the dispersion of BISMARCK at this range, the actual straddle-to-hit rate may be considered low from a statistical point of view but within the normal variances often encountered in these conditions. PoW´s actual straddle-to-hit rate has to be considered as very high given that every straddle quite likely resulted in a hit but then again 3/3 is also within the range of possible results.
Even during the period of effective PoW FCS, that´s the six and one half minute within the director controlled salvos after ranging in -roughly salvo five to salvo eighteen 05:55:30 to ca. 06:01:55 where PoW indeed averaged 2.1 salvos per minute -a more rapid fire than BISMARCK- but HMS was not attaining more than ~0.46 straddles per minute and was somehow lucky that Fortuna selected these 0.46 straddles/minute to extract also 0.46 hits/minute out of them. During this period Y-turret missed the first three salvos but cleared the A arcs for the remainder eleven.
it has been my opinion that a lone PoW is not going to survive for long if it´s forced to continue an action against an opponent who is almost consistently straddling in the period after ranging in and before the fall of shot couldn´t be observed anymore, producing more than 1 straddles per minute in addition to what the CA has to add on that. Leach was sensible and a professional. He retreated behind smoke screens and some wild turning but not because he had no faith in his vessel, he just wanted to change the conditions of the engagement as it clearly was not advisable to continue an action where he got outshoot on a continous base.
