Naval History Forums

The second link posted by Ulrich is really interesting. The chemical composition range specified by the standard is very close to what Tirpitz's Wh tested at. In fact the type 1 material is essentially the same, minus the .17% copper. The chemical composition of the experimental Krupp material teste...

I'm sorry, I'm not familar with it, at least not off the top of my head under that designation. Armour materials can have several designations. Today, differing grades of RHA may simply be given a MIL-Spec number. It can be hard to keep track off. I'm familar with Stahl 61. This is a low alloy const...

Probably so. Some secondary battle accounts indicate this. The ships comand may have limited the use of rapid firing of full salvos to periods only where it could be most effective, to conserve armour piercing amunition. Bismarck was embarked on a raiding cruise, and may have been stocked with great...

Hi Steve, I usually try to avoid re-fighting the Denmark St. battle as it's virtually impossible to draw firm conclusions and it's very argument indusive. Bismarck fired only 93- 38cm shells during this combat. If we use the most accepted time line, Bismarck fired it's first salvo at about 0555, and...

As far as I know, Schmalenbach's writings are not currently in print. The best place to find this stuff is the research library of a large university. Most of his writings are in German only. I have seen some materials were the captions, and some text feature English translations. The twin gun turre...

As originaly designed, the Nelson 16" had a MV of 2,700 f/s. This was later reduced to avoid un-acceptable levels of bore errosion, when using shorter than normal projectiles at such MV.

Von Mullenheim was gunnery officer on Bismarck and Scharnhorst., so he probably had a very good understanding: "..Either the main battery or the secondary battery could be controlled from any one of three stations, whose directers were brought to bear on target by two petty officers under the d...

The composition %'s closely match what the US analysists found of the Japanese VNC materials in 44, except the C% was actually a bit lower. Of course the C levels of a face hardened plate can be higher, because cemented armour is considered unweldable, and with a likely pearlite micro-stucture of th...

................... Perhaps they even increased some figures on purpose to have some margin of security. If in real battle it turned out that their assumptions were overestimated, well, so much the better for them. ............. This type of thing is done all the time by various military and Itel o...

"As The GkDOS 100 materials are from the 40's it could well be an V-drop estimate of then current British projectiles, and be mislabeled as a MKI projectile." the document actually specifies which projectile it is referring to, or just the gun? what projectiles does it give for other fore...

FWIW, The British 6 crh 15" projectile was introduced in 1937. The V drop is obviously much less compared to the 4 crh models, as the range is increased about 10% at porpotional gun elevations. As The GkDOS 100 materials are from the 40's it could well be an V-drop estimate of then current Brit...

Ray, Steel weighs about 490-496 lb's per cubic foot. This is regardless of the type. Rolled plates will weigh a bit more. You can calculate the approximate weight if you know the correct demensions and the reduction in volume by rolling. One must be carefull when reading an amour weights breakdown, ...

These Carbon levels are very high, compared to typical naval homogenious armours. This illustrates how tank RHA reqiures slightly different properties than naval armours to deal with different threats. Carbon is of course the most important alloy used in steel for both hardness and strength. Carbon ...

The Wotan materials worked into Tirpitz had the amounts of Cr and Ni basically inverted compared to usual practice, with much greater Mo concentrations than expected. Here we find a Cr/Mo alloy design with reduced Ni and C content, in a pre-war application. Tirpitz was launched on April, 1, 1939. Th...

Sometimes the context for "transverse" elongation ratings, seems to actually be the through thickness direction. At other times it may be the direction perpendicular to the rolling direction? The French place much less importance on elongation than do the Germans, or especially the America...