Bgile wrote: The point you seem to be missing here is that the KGV class had specific problems related to the quad turrets. That doesn't mean they weren't capable of satisfactory rates of fire. It just means that in addition to the problems experienced generically by battleship guns, they had this additional problem with their design (complexity related to the 4-gun turret) which occasionally interfered. It was particularly pronounced in the Bismarck episode, and in fact forced the withdrawal of PoW from the fight.
I don't think denying this is productive.
The problems experienced by the PoW had little to do with the turret design and a lot to do with the fact that the ship was not properly worked up. One gun in A turret had a problem that required dockyard repair, civilian workers were still on board to help the crew with the main armament and machinery, there was a command and control failure that effectively disabled her secondary armament, she only had one practice shoot and her fire control team appears to have been unable to process the radar ranging data received, in short PoW was not in a fit state to fight an action, much less one against a two fully worked up opponents. Denying PoW's state of efficiency is not productive, nor is trying to blame this state of affairs upon her quad turrets! No BB is likely to have done any better given a similar state of training and work up. In fact there is a good probability that many other BB's would have done a lot worse under the same circumstances.
Consider, that if KGV had replaced PoW in Holland's squadron, then there is a high probability she would have maintained a full output from her guns until well after the action had ended, in fact we might be commenting on their reliability! There is also a much better likelihood that her fire control teams would have found the range more quickly, and kept her secondary armament in action throughout the engagement. I suspect that KGV's skipper would have also decided to turn away rather than face a BB and CA in close range gun duel.
During Bismarck's final battle, the KGV was fighting at 20+ knots in a force 8 gale, and DoY in a force 10 gale which on land looks like this:
Beaufort #/mph/knots/description
8 39-46 34-40 Gale Breaks twigs off trees;
generally impedes progress.
9 47-54 41-47 Severe Gale Slight structural damage occurs
(chimney-pots and slates removed).
10 55-63 48-55 Storm Seldom experienced inland; trees
uprooted; considerable structural
damage occurs.
and at sea:
8 39-46 34-40 Gale Moderately high waves of greater
length; edges of crests begin to
breakinto spindrift. The foam is
blown in well-marked streaks
along the direction of the wind.
9 47-54 41-47 Severe Gale High waves. Dense streaks of
foam along the direction of the
wind. Crests of waves begin to
topple, tumble and roll over.
Spray may affect visibility.
10 55-63 48-55 Storm Very high waves with long over-
hanging crests. The resulting
foam, in great patches, is blown
in dense white streaks along the
direction of the wind. On the
whole the surface of the sea
takes on a white appearance.
The 'tumbling' of the sea becomes
heavy and shock-like. Visibility
affected.
The turret jams that PoW and KGV suffered, both occurred when shells rolled out of their trays and jammed the revolving structure of the turret. There were numerous occurrences of shells doing damage to other mechanisms in the ammo feed train. Given the sea state I think DoY's performance was excellent.
Rodney did fire more main armament ammo than KGV, but she also fired more secondary ammo than KGV (716 versus 660), and this supports my conclusion that Rodney was able to maintain a higher output because she was much closer, on average to Bismarck than KGV. It is interesting that the ratio of main ammo versus secondary ammo is similar 339/380 = .89 and 660/716 = .92. The fact that Rodney's secondary was able to fire that many rounds from fewer guns seems quite significant, in highlighting how close she was to Bismarck, in comparison to KGV, and how much longer she was able to bring the entire battery to bear. Another factor is that Rodney had her A arcs open for about 10 minutes longer than KGV, which is apparent if you examine this track chart:
http://www.navweaps.com/index_inro/no21993-pic3.jpg
so during those 10 minutes or so Rodney would have been able to fire about 20 - 25 additional rounds more than KGV, and of course, Rodney's main armament layout is more efficient when on the attack, and is more easily brought to bear on the enemy. In fact if we replaced KGV with Nelson, and steered her on the same track, her output would have been lower as well simply because she spent more time with her A arcs closed and was farther from the enemy.
In summary, I readily acknowledge that the RN may have desired more reliability from the KGV class 14" turrets, but that doesn't mean that they were actually worse in service than their contemporaries, and I find it doubtful that any other BB would have done much, if any better in the same circumstances. The two longest BB gun battles in WW2, were the sinking of Bismarck and North Cape, if we were to place KGV and DoY into any other engagement during WW2, then their turrets would not have seemed unreliable but would have performed as well or better than any others.
cheers
Duncan
