Comments by "Frank DeMaris" (@kemarisite) on "MN Normandie (NB) - Guide 178" video.

@jamessumpter2199 looking at the order of battle for Santa Cruz Islands 2.5 weeks earlier, you might substitute Northampton or Pensacola for Washington. 8" guns at that range should hurt Kirishima, much like Hiei two days before, but not ravage it the way Washington's 16" guns did. Of course, that means the cruiser is nore likely to be damaged and unavailable for its appointment at Tassafaronga a couple weeks later.
2
I'm trying to visualize this. The Omaha class cruisers had over and under casemate mountings for the majority of their main battery; did the Normandie class envision some kind of side-by-side mounting?
2
@jakebeller934 armored conning towers were a thing at this time, although rarely used by command personnel. The Iowa class still has a massively armored conning tower, although I believe the British largely abandoned the concept as the KGV class only has 3-4 inches on the conning tower for prote tion from secondary gun batteries.
1
@kelloggswag the 34 cm (13.4") aren't that much smaller than the 14" guns on the Standard types. I think the biggest issue would be increasing the elevation to about 30 degrees for decent range and ensuring that a modern shell design was available. Note that the Italian battleships only had their guns bored out to 32 cm (12.6").
1
@mauriceofnassau5476 I'd expect a Deutschland to be able to inflict fatal damage pretty quickly, and they have working torpedoes to ad to the mix. The Hippers have 8" guns and I would expect Kirishima's armor to largely protect it as with my earlier answer about Northampyon or Pensacola.
1
@sergarlantyrell7847 on the last question, decapping layers were absolutely effective. An inch or two of decapping layer reduces the penetration by 30-40%. An APC shell at reasonable distance will generally penetrate caliber-thickness armor, so that 1-2" decapping plate at 0.5-1 caliber thickness standoff provides (15" x 0.3) the equivalent of about 4.5" armor against a 15" projectile.
1
@niclasjohansson4333 you're overstating the situation. Kirishima, Atago, and Takao had not spotted Washington largely because they were preoccupied with South Dakota. Hard to say they "weren't ready for the fight" when they were already engaged in a fight. Completely unlike Quincy, Vincennes, and Astoria at Savo Island. I'll stipulate that the 8" shells could penetrate the belt armor because I believe the range was under 10,000 yards (I haven't seen any really good figures for range at that point in the battle). In any event, the original question was about the largest ship that would not be able to quickly gut Kirishima under the same circumstances. Remember that San Francisco dueled Hiei from only about 4,000 yards two night before, and while the 8" shells wrecked Hiei's steering, it was the air attacks the following day that convinced the Japanese to abandon the ship.
1
@sergarlantyrell7847 the Littorios are a special case, for two reasons: 1) the space between the decapping layer isnt just space, it's filled with a cement foam called cellulite. This has the potential to hold the cap in place (more so since the decapping layer is only 25 cm away from the main plate) so that it remains correctly positioned to function properly on the main armor layer, and; 2) the cellulite filled armor concept was tested to scale but not full-size. That leaves a lot of room to argue about whether the scale test means what the designers claim it means, i.e., that the 25 cm cellulite-filled space is as effective as a 60 cm open space. If it isn't, then a 25 cm gap will (according to Nathan Okun) only be sufficient to decap (25 cm ÷ 1.6) about a 15-16 cm (6" or so) shell. Here's Nathan Okun on the subject of decapping layers: http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-085.php
1