Naval History Forums

Gentlemen,
I understand (rightly or wrongly) that full broadsides were usually only fired at a fairly close range, did firing all the guns at once put a big strain on the ship or was it factored into the design. I'm thinking of the damage Rodney did to herself when firing broadsides in the final part of the battle against Bismarck and the theory that was mentioned about the reason Graf Spee from the fight ran because of being an all welded ship the recoil caused damage to her hull by firing her all guns together on opposite sides against the RN cruisers (A theory I do not believe).

The stress of the cannons was factored into the design. I don't know of a loss due to recoil shock. https://www.historicnavalfiction.com/ge ... g-a-cannon

Battleships were designed to use their guns and the designers normally made a strong enough deck to resist the overpressure. As an extreme example, the Yamato Class had a deck of 35 mm to 50 mm of CNC armour around the turrets, which might also help to defend the barbettes.

However, the large light cruiser Furious may have been damaged by firing its 18" gun (s?). The Navyweapons site http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_18-40_mk1.php has "Only one 18"/40 (45.7 cm) gun was actually installed on HMS Furious and gun trials with it were carried out in July 1917. These trials showed that this lightly-built ship could not handle the overpressures generated and so the gun was removed and Furious was converted to an aircraft carrier".

A WW2 problem was that radar equipment could suffer. Dave could tell you more but the antenna initially needed to be connected to the electronics by rigid wave guides, so that pressure on the antenna could be damaging.

US doctrine was to fire full salvos because that generated a more accurate mpi on late war radar displays.

Did the introduction of the earlier, somewhat fragile, radar sets, cause Navies to try and stagger the broadside, hoping to limit the ship vibrations and not damage the radar sets.

Regards
Fatboy Coxy

I think they would have installed "shock mountings" to reduce the shake, rattle and roll. I've see electronic units mounted on what are essentially rubber balloons, like a big hockey puck.