Comments by "Vikki McDonough" (@vikkimcdonough6153) on "Naval Gunnery - Why do battleships miss after they get their first hit?" video.
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1. Historically, Beatty's "turn in succession" signal (rather than "turn together") at the end of the Run to the South, combined with Seymour's failure to haul the signal flags back down to actually execute this signal, sent Fifth Battle Squadron charging south at nearly the entire High Seas Fleet, resulting in heavy damage to Warspite and Malaya before Evan-Thomas doubled back on his own initiative. However, if Seymour'd promptly executed Beatty's signal, Fifth BS would've turned back while still significantly north of the surviving battlecruisers, and, thus, instead of the German battle squadrons and part of I Scouting Group concentrating their fire on the Queen Elizabeths (the toughest ships in Beatty and Evan-Thomas's combined force by a considerable margin, the only ones aside from New Zealand to not already have taken significant damage, and the ones able to deal out the heaviest return fire to the German ships to cover the British battlecruisers' retreat), Scheer and Hipper's heavy guns would've been concentrated on the remnants of the Battlecruiser Fleet, which had already been quite roughly-handled just by Hipper's ships, were less able to take hits than the QEs even in their undamaged state, had considerably less heavy firepower with which to return the German fire, and would've also, in this scenario, been slowed in their retreat by the 24-knot top speed of the QEs ahead of them, with the trailing ship, having the brunt of the German fire directed at it, being (depending on whether Beatty makes the "turn in succession" or "turn together" order) either New Zealand (whose divine protection probably isn't rated for quite this level of incoming fire, and which, being by far the thinnest-skinned of Beatty's surviving ships, has no capability to withstand any non-glancing hit should this protection fail) or Lion (which's already down a quarter of its main battery and lugging a magazineful of water). Given, historically, how badly even the much-tougher QEs got smashed up during this phase of the battle, it's hard to believe that Beatty's remaining battlecruisers would've survived if they'd been the ones taking the brunt of the German heavy gunfire instead; additionally, with these ships lost at this stage in the battle, they can't join up with 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron for the Windy Corner action, meaning that Hood's three twelve-inch tin cans're going to be facing Hipper's ships alone rather than as part of a force that also includes three Splendid Cats, in which case I wouldn't be surprised if all three of the Invincibles go kaboom instead of just the class's lead ship. All in all, did Beatty and Seymour's poor signalling at the end of the Run to the South actually save the Battlecruiser Fleet from destruction?
2. Why did the German hexagonal dreadnoughts slow down so badly in turns? Given that the increase in the frontal area that a ship presents to the oncoming waterflow at a given sideslip angle is relatively lower for a fat, low-aspect-ratio ship like a Nassau than it is for a ship with a higher aspect ratio, one would've thought that the early German dreads would've been less affected by turn-induced increases in drag than most other dreadnoughts. Did their low aspect ratio allow them to yaw quickly enough to cause them, when turning, to reach a sideslip angle so much higher than that of a finer-lined ship as to outweigh the lesser increase in frontal area for a given sideslip angle?
3. How much of a numerical disadvantage could the USN have been at Midway and still been willing to give battle? Historically, they were willing to give battle outnumbered four CVs to two (although they ultimately didn't have to), and may've been willing to give battle outnumbered five CVs to two, but that gap could've widened even further with some altered decision-making on the part of the Kido Butai; if the IJN'd kept their forces together whenever they possibly could, rather than splitting their forces again and again and giving the Americans the opportunity to defeat them in detail, then by the time of the Midway operation the numerical disparity could've been as large as seven CVs and three or four CVLs on the Japanese side (Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, Hiryū, Shōkaku, Zuikaku, Jun'yō, Hōshō, Ryūjō, Zuihō, and possibly Shōhō), backed up by a powerful surface force including up to eleven battleships and battlecruisers, against just two or three CVs on the American side (Enterprise, Hornet, and hopefully Saratoga if it can get there in time) backed up by no escort meaner than a heavy cruiser (and the cruiser and destroyer force they did have still being outnumbered 2-to-2.5-to-one). Would the U.S. fleet still've accepted battle despite being outnumbered effectively 4.5-to-one in carriers (taking two CVLs as roughly equivalent to one CV) and at a grievous disadvantage in the surface department as well?
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