Your Favourite Warship of World War II

From the Washington Naval Treaty to the end of the Second World War.
lwd
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by lwd »

Karl Heidenreich wrote: .... Yamato did have three turrets for the same reason as Iowa or South Dak: the design for a four turret batteship killer as Yamato called for 80+K tons and a draft that no Japanese port could take, so they shortened the citadel with the three turrets (Garzke and Dullin). However those turrets were so heavily armoured that there is no issue in them being hit by lesser (16" or less) shells.
Wrong again. Yamato would have had serious issues with 16" hits on her turrets anywhere other than the face plates and even there could have had.

According to both: Friedman and Raven the naval artillery experts prefered the two twin turret front and aft for several reasons that have been refered in this forum in numerous ocassions.
...
Not "the naval artillery experts" some naval artillery experts and indeed from previous posts it seems to be from those who had doctrined which was designed to work with twin turrets. Not a big surprise is it?
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Lee,

I see that you are back again at the forum, which is good. I am sorry that lately, and for a while, I will not be that able to post (a lot at least) because I am starting a new construction project in Barranquilla, Colombia (I was due to Jamaica but the job there was cancelled) and this is a challenging place. However it is good to hear from you now.

Don't get me wrong but after Dave Saxton spanked you with the Twins issue at Norway I feared you will withdraw from posting again, which would have been a loss to all of us: even being an antagonist from what is trying to be tested here in this forum I respect and like you very much and your knowledge has helped us all to enhance our own. If not for you I have never come across the vital information that Friedman, Raven, Skulsky, Garzke and Dullin, Bruce Talyor and Mullenhein Rechberg gave us through their respected literary works. If not for you I have never credited the superiority of the space arrayed armour in Bismarck and have never believed in how flawed the South Dakota design was.

I only want to give you an advise: arrogance is a very bad adviser, arrogance and underestimating of the rest of people are a sure mix to failure and disaster. I hope that as I, the lessons are learned.

Instead of disecting the other guy's post you should answer them in a comprehensive way, not by using a misleading method of putting out of context specific quotes. The way dunmuro, alecsandros, wadinga (even being against what I posted), Dave, Thorsten and even Bgile are much better ones and with less proposed antagonism. :wink:

My two cents on this and a sincere friendly advise, my good old friend.

Karl
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Sir Winston Churchill
alecsandros
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by alecsandros »

lwd wrote: Not "the naval artillery experts" some naval artillery experts and indeed from previous posts it seems to be from those who had doctrined which was designed to work with twin turrets. Not a big surprise is it?
The discussion regarding the relative qualities of double, triple and quad turrets is quite complex. It's always a trade-off, and what matters most is on which side of the "trade-off" do the designers and approvers of the project lie ?

If you take the British KGV and the French Richelieu, you'll find people obsessed with weight-saving for the benefit of thicker armored citadel (KGV) and more powerfull propulsion plant (Richelieu).

If you take the German Bismarck, you'll find designers obsessed about precision, salvo patterns and probability of a single hit to take out 25/33/50% of the ship's main armament. This went against a deeper belt, thicker turret armor and thicker MAD.

The middle-road was chosen by the Italians (Littorio) and Americans (NC, SD, Iowa designs), which adopted triple main turrets. This naturaly had advantages (a shorter ship, shorter citadel, less weight, less circuitry and communication system redundencies). The disadvantages were mainly a larger salvo pattern (very large for the Italian turrets, for a variety of reasons) and a lower rate of fire.
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by lwd »

Karl Heidenreich wrote: ... I am starting a new construction project in Barranquilla, Colombia (I was due to Jamaica but the job there was cancelled) and this is a challenging place.
Hope things work out for you there. The Colombians have certainly turned things around in the last few years but from what I read it's still an "interesting" place to live. When you get a chance if you have the time you might read the comments on the strategy page about Colombia. Might be useful and I'd like to hear what you think of them based on your experiance.
Don't get me wrong but after Dave Saxton spanked you with the Twins issue at Norway
He hardly "spanked" me. I was wrong on a few of the particulars but it was clearly a RN victory which was my point.
If not for you I have never credited the superiority of the space arrayed armour in Bismarck and have never believed in how flawed the South Dakota design was.
It's a shame you seem to to take things to such extremes. Against some threats and in some areas the Bismarck did have a very good armor scheme but the same is true of SoDak.
I only want to give you an advise: arrogance is a very bad adviser, arrogance and underestimating of the rest of people are a sure mix to failure and disaster. I hope that as I, the lessons are learned.
I'm going to refrain from commenting on this one.
Instead of disecting the other guy's post you should answer them in a comprehensive way, not by using a misleading method of putting out of context specific quotes.
Disecting is not necessarily misleading or taking out of context. If you are trying to construct a logical argument flaws at any stage can invalidate the argument. For that reason I point out the flaws and will continue to do so. I know you don't like it but that's the way of things.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Lee:
Hope things work out for you there. The Colombians have certainly turned things around in the last few years but from what I read it's still an "interesting" place to live. When you get a chance if you have the time you might read the comments on the strategy page about Colombia. Might be useful and I'd like to hear what you think of them based on your experiance.
:ok:

Thanks for your support: in the Caribbean things are quite difficult, workwise. Barranquilla seems a cool place, anyway with a lot of progress but also a lot of poverty and bad infrastructure.
People tell me that Uribe's goverment did OK and that he anhilitated a lot of the FARC which is now a tiny fraction of what it was five years ago. People are a but frightened of Chavez in Venezuela (as I am).
As soon as I can I will read the comments of the strategy page. Good advise.
It repeat that is good to have you around here: the forum is pretty boring without a good challenger which is a friend also.
Now, this is OT by far so I say good by.

By the way: Alex made some good points, as always! :D
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by Bgile »

alecsandros wrote:[The middle-road was chosen by the Italians (Littorio) and Americans (NC, SD, Iowa designs), which adopted triple main turrets. This naturaly had advantages (a shorter ship, shorter citadel, less weight, less circuitry and communication system redundencies). The disadvantages were mainly a larger salvo pattern (very large for the Italian turrets, for a variety of reasons) and a lower rate of fire.
Triple turrets have no effect on rate of fire unless all three guns are sleeved together, and in the earlier US triples there were also only two hoists and all three guns had to be loaded together for each salvo. If there was a problem with a loading cycle for one gun it could effect all three guns. In the Modern US turrets all three guns have their own separate elevation mechanism and ammunition loading arrangement and rate of fire is the same as for the British twins.

The principal disadvantage of a triple turret arrangement is that the barbettes have to be larger than twin turrets with the same spacing between guns, so the side protective system can't be as deep. Obviously this effect is even greater in a quad turret.

The principal advantage of triple turrets is that you get more guns on the ship for a given displacement.

Triple turrets were a problem for the British, because they wanted to fire half of their guns in every salvo, and that doesn't work well when you have an odd number of guns. They also had problems with the loading cycle peculiar to the Nelson class. One problem with firing half the guns at a time is for the first few salvoes they are at different temperatures so the muzzle velocity is different for each salvo. Bill Jurens and Brad Fischer found in their study of US battleship gunnery that you get better consistency from one salvo to another if you fire all guns in each salvo.

You can have dispersion problems if you lack delay coils and try to fire all guns in a turret at once, especially if the guns are very close together. This problem can exist in a twin, triple, or quad turret. Also, if you fire only one gun in a twin turret there is a small amount of whip in the turret from the off center recoil. I don't know if that is why the Germans didn't do that but fired both guns together or whether it was for another reason. It may have simplified their hoist arrangement; I believe they hoisted the ammunition for both guns together. In any case, they obviously didn't think it was necessary to fire one gun in each turret in each salvo.
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by Bgile »

I'm sorry ... I realized after my last post that in responding to Alexandros I was way off topic. The post will get lost, as many do for that reason.
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by alecsandros »

Best firing cycle for US 3x16'' turrets was 2.53 rpgpm, against a target at 1000-2000y away. The rate of fire was actualy achieved during combat exercices, shortly before the war.

Best firing cycle for Italian 3x15" turrets is unknown to me, but it was nevertheless < 1.5rpgpm.

best firing cycle for British 3x16" turrets (Nelson) was apparently 3rpgpm, achieved agaisnt Bismarck, in the opening stages of the final battle.

German 2x15" turrets achieved up to 3.3rpgpm, firing at medium range, and that could go even higher if they woudl have fired in the same conditions as the triple turrets mentioned above.

-----

There are several technical reasons why a larger turret implies a somewhat rate of fire. One of them is that waiting for 3 guns to be ready to fire is more likely to cause errors than 2. Regardless, the actual achieved firings point towards the German double turrets as the fastest reloadable ones.
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by Bgile »

alecsandros wrote:There are several technical reasons why a larger turret implies a somewhat rate of fire. One of them is that waiting for 3 guns to be ready to fire is more likely to cause errors than 2. Regardless, the actual achieved firings point towards the German double turrets as the fastest reloadable ones.
Yes, but that wasn't because they were twin turrets. And when did they achieve 3.3 rounds per gun per minute? For how long?

Also, why do we care if they can fire that fast when they can't observe fall of shot that fast? How often was that rate of fire used?

You have given one ship as an example and said that proves all twin gun turrets are faster.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Things are being torn bad here: the fact that a citadel could be shorter or a battleship "lighter" is not, by any means, a sign of better design. The Treaty battleships such as Nelsons, KGV, North Cal, Schanhorsts or South Daks were forced to be smaller and weaker because of the displacement limit. Those countries that not abide the Treaty inmediately seek for bigger and stronger ships such as Bismarck and Yamato.

In order to confirm this Friedman, Raven and Garzke explain that pretty well in their books.

Of course that having triple or quadruple turrets save space, save supporting structures and save citadel lenght. When you need to reduce your ideal 45 or 40 k tons design to a mere 35 K tons those are good ways. A doubt that any admiral or captain would have liked that done with their battleship fleets.

Regards.
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by Bgile »

Karl Heidenreich wrote:Things are being torn bad here: the fact that a citadel could be shorter or a battleship "lighter" is not, by any means, a sign of better design. The Treaty battleships such as Nelsons, KGV, North Cal, Schanhorsts or South Daks were forced to be smaller and weaker because of the displacement limit. Those countries that not abide the Treaty inmediately seek for bigger and stronger ships such as Bismarck and Yamato.

In order to confirm this Friedman, Raven and Garzke explain that pretty well in their books.

Of course that having triple or quadruple turrets save space, save supporting structures and save citadel lenght. When you need to reduce your ideal 45 or 40 k tons design to a mere 35 K tons those are good ways. A doubt that any admiral or captain would have liked that done with their battleship fleets.

Regards.
Yamato and Montana were not designed with treaty displacement in mind, and they both used triple turrets.
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by alecsandros »

Bgile wrote: And when did they achieve 3.3 rounds per gun per minute? For how long?
During firing trials ?
Also, why do we care if they can fire that fast when they can't observe fall of shot that fast?

It was used only after the parameters of the target (range, speed, bearing, etc) were properly assessed and "rapid fire" ordered.

Of course, it wasn't the "usual" rate of fire, but I'm trying to write about their capabilities... Just as for the other ships I have mentioned above...
You have given one ship as an example and said that proves all twin gun turrets are faster.
That's because I'm lazy and haven't written my reply properly.

But the only double turret design "modern" design that I know is that of Bismarck. The way in which it was engineered allowed for very rapid rates of fire. I'm leaving Vanguard out, because it used 30 years old turrets and guns.

One of the reasons why the Germans opted for double turret was obtaining a higher rate of fire... Otehr reasons were salvo spread, accuracy, minimizing the effects of one enemy shell hit on one turret and others...
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by Bgile »

The way that the turrets and ammunition on USS Des Moines were engineered allowed for very rapid rates of fire. They were three gun turrets.

The way that the turrets and ammunition on USS Brooklyn were engineered allowed for very rapid rates of fire. They were three gun turrets.
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by lwd »

Karl Heidenreich wrote:Things are being torn bad here: the fact that a citadel could be shorter or a battleship "lighter" is not, by any means, a sign of better design. The Treaty battleships such as Nelsons, KGV, North Cal, Schanhorsts or South Daks were forced to be smaller and weaker because of the displacement limit. Those countries that not abide the Treaty inmediately seek for bigger and stronger ships such as Bismarck and Yamato.
Not really. It's all about efficient use of what tonnage you have. If you save some weight in one place you can use it in another. This holds no matter whether there's a treaty restriction or not. What the treaty restriction did do was focus more attention on such matters.
In order to confirm this Friedman, Raven and Garzke explain that pretty well in their books.
Based on what you are saying apparently not well enough.
Of course that having triple or quadruple turrets save space, save supporting structures and save citadel lenght. When you need to reduce your ideal 45 or 40 k tons design to a mere 35 K tons those are good ways. A doubt that any admiral or captain would have liked that done with their battleship fleets.
....
The same design considerations that can reduce a 40k ton design to a 35 k ton design can also be used to produce a better 40 k ton design. Often when there are signficant constraints it encourages the engineers to be more creative and results in better designs.
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Re: Your Favourite Warship of World War II

Post by alecsandros »

to Steve:
However, for BB designs of the war, the German double turret design proved to have the fastest reload cycle.
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