We also don;'t know how many shells hit Kirishima, how many were damaging near-misses, how many explosions seen on board were actualy explosions of the ship's own supplies, and how many were interpretations of shocked officers, which were assessing damage in a devastated ship, in the darkness of the night.Steve Crandell wrote:Statistically, 20% hits is what one would expect at that range given the trajectory and dispersion of the 16"/45 gun. We don't know how many hits Rodney made on Bismarck because many of them were just re arranging the wrecked superstructure.alecsandros wrote:... I am also sorry, but the idea that Washington obtained ~ 30% main battery hits firing between 7-12km while Rodney obtained ~ 10% while firing most of her ordnace between 3-9km against a non-manouvreing, 7kts target, can not be taken seriously.
For the record, from reconciling eye witness accoutns from KGV, Rodney and Bismarck, authors Skiot and Prusinowska arived at a total number of 34 - 40 heavy hits on the German battleship, with about 50% coming from the Rodney. That's 20 hits out of 380 fired, or 5.26%
Older analysis tend to go higher, at about 60 or 70 total heavy hits, but even so (and disregarding their work and analysis), the % of hits would only go to about 8-10%.