Hello everybody,
first of all, I see that someone (who?) has totally removed a provoking post, insinuating low motivations behind my reasons for being here.
However, despite my gratitude for having saved my time in answering to the "poster", I must say that this way of cancelling a whole post, without leaving any trace, without a signature of who has done it, without the explanation of the reasons and without the communication of the subsequent decided sanctions, is not an example of transparency, IMHO...
Can we all know who has done that in this way and why, please ?
Having been very busy at work, I will answer to some previous posts and then I will provide the conclusions re. the topic:
"When you have one side disclosing sources and the other withholding them it's a pretty pointless exercise...Again, the case for prosecution is "unproven""
When one side has made an historical research, producing and presenting here so many, never published evidences from Official Documents, Archives, ship's plans, maps etc. while the other side has produced only a few "self-goals" (e.g. the May 31 Tovey's letter to Pound...) and few more, or has even tried to hide the crystal clear content of ADM 205/10 papers, it's a pretty useless exercise.
Again, the only line of defense of the "
adamant deniers" side is "insufficient evidences", "indeterminateness", "fog of war" and "innocent errors", because they prefer to still trust the old official story accounted by British to the world for so many years about this battle, instead of working to an analysis of the gunnery based on the available evidences.
"One faction has studied the evidence and produced what they ardently believe and assert to be the definitively accurate account of the event. Others, myself included, view the evidence as being in many respects far too inconsistent and contradictory to make such a claim."
Q.E.D. (see above)
Thanks for admitting that we have at least "studied", while others have just criticized someone else work.
"You have rightfully drawn a comparison to the disagreement between the parties of science (which is my translation of agnostics) and religion/ideology."
Agnosticism = Science ? Mathematical and logical demonstrations = Ideology ? Very curious statement above: I suggest to try to counter the arguments with facts instead of speaking philosophy....
"...We have seen various Admiralty documents stating the issues...."
.. and nobody says here that there was no issue with the guns/mountings, as well as we are sure there were issues with PG guns (see her KTB) and probably with Bismarck guns as well. I'm more than happy to accept that (as any new gun/mounting) there were needs for fixing problems, before getting to fully reliable weapons. We have to thank Mr.Wadinga for having posted Mr.Bevir very interesting document that details the ameliorations put in place to avoid the repetition of the major problems (of which one only happened to PoW, after the decision to disengage and is therefore irrelevant for the judgment of her gunnery performance).
Regarding the Vickers report, I have been the first one to say that they were very interested parties, and that they must be taken with suspicion.
That's why we should look for the official reports, like the one mentioned in the Vickers report with which the results of the formal acceptance gunnery trials were sent to the Admiralty by a "
commission composed of PoW officers, Admiralty reps and Vickers reps": it concluded that the above "
trials were satisfactory"...
As
closing statements re the topic:
We have already provided on this forum all the data and figures needed to prove that PoW guns, with all their problems, were fired in an "
excellent" way by a "
superb" G.O., even in line with the performances of Schneider with Bismarck (
download/file.php?id=3463).
KGV did not do much better on May 27, confirming that PoW fired in a very good way despite the readiness status of the 14" turrets in general.
I'm afraid that the judgement on PoW actual gunnery performance on May 24 cannot be based on the "convenient story" accounted in almost all reports/accounts, but it has to be based on data and figures (shots, shells, RoF and effective values), their analysis and their comparison.
The only author who has partially done such a work up to now is M.Santarini and his conclusion is the reference re. PoW gunnery (
download/file.php?id=3420), vindicating both PoW's and McMullen's performance. If you knows someone else, please let me know.
A better analysis might surely be done (and I hope it will be done when our book will be published or, possibly, even before if someone else will be interested in writing a serious analysis of the DS gunnery aspects).
As a plus compared to Santarini's one, our analysis will be based on a more detailed and precise reconstruction of the battle, compared to the one used by Santarini (timing and distances).
In any case, the false story of the ship that was unable to fire in a decent way during the battle, forcing the engagement to be broken off (invented only in order to easily justify the debatable decision of her Captain), it's over by now. No denial can change this fact.
All this forum members should be much grateful to Antonio Bonomi for having provided in the last years so many anticipations re. his work, with so many disclosures, also regarding gunnery aspects.
So said, I hope now some "posters" will at least answer the constructive question of Mr.Rico here (
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8576#p84207).... I must say I'm astonished by the ability of some "posters" to write long posts on almost any topic and by their reluctance to provide a simple, clear answer (yes or no, without any way out...)
Let's see if they will decide to hide once again behind the "indeterminateness" excuse, instead of telling us at what time PG opened fire according to their understanding of the battle.
Bye, Alberto