Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 218" video.
-
7
-
With regard to Dunkerque and Strasbourg, I was reading Garzke's "Allied Battleships" recently. Garzke claims Strasbourg, with it's increased armor, was in fact a response to Littorio. The first two Littorios were apparently ordered June 10, of 34. The Italian government was openly talking about building 35,000 ton treatymax ships, which was widely reported in the press. Strasbourg was ordered July 16th, with increased armor, as a reply, according to Garzke. At the start of the 1930s, France had the 70,000 tons of capital ship tonnage as offered by the Washington Treaty, plus an additional 23,500, due to the France finding a rock in Quiberon Bay and sinking, in 1922. Given the replacement tonnage available due to the loss of France, Richelieu, combined with the two Dunkerques, did not violate the fleet tonnage limits of the treaty. France publicly renounced the fleet tonnage limits of the treaty and proceeded with Jean Bart, which did put France over the fleet tonnage limit. It occurs that, if France had decided an uparmored Dunkerque was not an adequate reply to Littorio, and gone directly to the Richelieu and Jean Bart, they would have been very close to being within the treaty displacement limit, and, without Strasbourg occupying a drydock in Saint Nazaire and consuming production resources, Jean Bart could have been laid down at the same time as Richelieu, and both would have been complete by the fall of France. Your thoughts?
4
-
For Ninja, the KGV 14" armament seems to follow the "more smaller guns means more hits" theory. I have been looking into that issue, as most of the justifications offered do not make any sense. The Admiralty produced a wide variety of designs for the KGVs with 14", 15", and 16" guns. In the fall of 35, the alternatives were analyzed by the Technical Division of Naval Staff. Their conclusion was that a 9-15" armament provided the best balance of hitting power, speed, and protection. The analysis said "The 14" gun ship should be ruled out, unless required by treaty." The Sea Lords agreed to go 15". Then, the US said it would be open to the upcoming Second London treaty imposing a 14" limit, contingent on Japan agreeing. A year earlier, December of 34, Japan had withdrawn from the treaty system. At that time, Japan said it's withdrawal was due to it's demand for parity with the US and UK. Japanese representatives said at the time, they were open to a new treaty, as long as the new treaty gave Japan parity. The US and UK were not going to give Japan parity, so I don't see how anyone could have taken the US offer of 14", contingent on Japan's agreement, seriously. The designs for KGVs with the different armament schemes show the 9-15" armament weighs less than the 12-14" under consideration. As the 15" armament has fewer guns, the lower parts count would indicate the 15" armament would cost less. Clearly, someone wanted the 14" armament badly enough to go against the Technical Division's analysis, against the issue of weight, and against the issue of cost. The only reason I can think of is adherence to the "more smaller guns equals more hits" theory.
4
-
@SPR-Ninja the promoters of 14" always base their position on the ships being able to close to a range where the 14" can penetrate. During 1915-16, Admiral Strauss at BuOrd kept insisting that engagements would always be fought at 12,000 yards, or less. SecNav Daniels and the General Board overruled Strauss in the summer of 16, after Jutland proved it was practicable to engage at longer range. Admiralty fighting instructions that the KGVs were designed for also dictated engagements be fought at relatively short range, less than 16,000.
An Admiralty analysis of a KGV with 14" guns and a hypothetical 15" KGV showed the 15" gunned ship would have a penetration range advantage on the order of 1,000 yards.
There was another factor one book brought up about those Admiralty fighting instructions: the instructions were, in part, based on the assumption that the remote gun directors would be knocked out, so the ship would need to be close enough for the guns to hit anything under local control. Apparently, Bismark's remote directors were knocked out. Scaling off of the map of the engagement I find on-line, KGV and Rodney appear to have been following the fighting instructions and been within 16,000 yards, but Bismark couldn't hit anything with turrets under local control, so the premise of the fighting instructions, that you could hit anything under local control at that range appears to be wrong.
But the "why 14"?" question, and why change the treaty limit, as nothing prevented the KGVs being built below treaty limits, are still there. Raven says the UK pushed the treaty change to prevent the US and Japan building 16" ships, but, by going to 14", the UK handed the French, Italians, and Germans, gunnery superiority with their 15" ships, so that makes no sense.
The only thing that makes sense is someone clinging to the "more smaller guns equals more hits" theory and everything else is excuses, intended to obfuscate embrace of a theory that had been discredited twenty years earlier.
Bottom line, I figure the KGVs did OK. Three of them squared off against other capital ships, and survived. (there are some claims that Lindemann wanted to finish off the PoW, but was overruled by Lutjens) The only one to be defeated, was defeated by aircraft.
3
-
2
-
wrt rangfinding, as Drac said, estimating range tended to be the more difficult problem. That lead to advocacy of higher velocity guns, as their flatter trajectory increased danger space at the target. But, when the fighting instructions say to head directly toward the enemy to bring range down to 12-16,000 yards, that offers the enemy a danger space, ie allowance for range finding error, the full length of the ship, 600-800 feet, to shoot at, if they fire in a high ballistic trajectory, rather than fire in a flat trajectory. Drac noted in his piece on one of the USN battleships he visited, the USN provided reduced charges for it's guns, so they had the option of firing in a high trajectory to better penetrate a deck, turning decades of gunnery theory on it's head.
2
-
As Matthew said, apparently, in the real world, a heavier shell retains it's momentum better than a lighter shell. The propellant charge in a larger gun is going to be larger than the charge in a smaller gun. If the same charge is pushing a larger shell, seems the PSI on the back of the larger shell will be lower, because the burning propellant can only generate a set amount of hot gas, and it has a larger space to expand into. The issue I have been wrestling with is I have been looking for the velocity of SC Cordite, so I can perform some recoil calculations, but have not been able to find it. I'm sure the difference in die size would made a difference too, as a smaller die size means more sticks of Cordite can fit in a given space, with more surface area exposed, so the burn rate is higher, but at this point, I will settle for any velocity spec for SC.
1
-
With regard to BuOrd and the Mk 14, the problem may be, not only the designers trying to protect their reputation, but, also, a degree of deference being given to the "experts". In the USN, the Mk 13 aerial torpedo, and the 1.1" AA gun joined their pantheon of designs that looked good on paper. The Tennessee class BBs could have had 16" guns, if not for the advocacy of the 14", by Admiral Strauss at BuOrd. The Nelsons could have had more effective guns, except for the embrace, by the RN Director of Naval Ordinance, of the light shell/high velocity theory, a theory that the Germans seem to have also embraced, considering Bismark's 15" shells were close to 200lbs lighter than a British or Italian 15". I am still trying to discover the real reason the KGVs mounted 14" guns. The 14" armament was neither lighter, nor cheaper, than the 15" alternative. The official excuses offered by most scribes, including Raven, make no sense. The only thing I can think of is embrace by either DNO, or someone else at the highest level of, or higher than, the Admiralty, embraced the same theory as Strauss, which had been discredited 20 years earlier.
1