Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Drachinifel"
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@Kreatorisbackyt Not even close to be "the gun most unaccurate gun of WW2".
Also "wear and tear" was not a problem. All the Italian naval guns, from 152mm on, were made for cold barrel swap (the rfling was changed without dismounting the gun from the cradle). So their barrel life was 1/2 of the others (due to the higher speed of the shell, not "poor linings"), but the time needed to change the barrel was 1/30.
It only needed a pair of days of work in port without any special facility to change the barrels of all the main guns of a ship while, for who didn't design his guns that way, it needed to remove the roof of the turret, remove the guns from the cradle, file the barrels in a gigantic lathe, put the guns in a specially built vertical furnace, insert the new internal barrel, etc...
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@Kreatorisbackyt Facts are more important than anyone's opinions, or pretended reason why something should happen, if it didn't happen in reality.
In the battle of Denmark Strait, the supposedly super-accurate POW guns, scored a grand total of two hits in 21 salvos, fired from 20.000m to 12.900m range, on a battleship that was not manuvering to not be hit, that's pretty crappy (Hood didn't score a hit in 10 salvos from 24.300 to 14.000m range). And yes, it had problems with the output (all the KGV had, still in 1943). In the first 18 salvos it fired 55 shells out of 74 ordered. But it fired a significative number of shells anyway.
Bismarck against POW obtained 4 hits in 5 salvos from 14.000m to 15.000m range, out of about 36 shells fired, that's more or less what you should expect at that distance.
Italian 15 inch gun shown a1.7% range single turret spread in real actions fought in 1940 (and that's what the pictures taken during the clash at Gaudo shown), that any navy at the time would have considered average. We have pictures of larger (about 2.1% of the distance) single turret spread from the Gloucester and Liverpool at the Battle of Calabria.
Italian cruiser guns are the only ones that obtained +20 km hits in WWII, and several of them, not a single one like the British battleship guns, being them single cradle or not. BTW, to indipendently elevate the guns of a turret is a pretty useless feature.
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The Russian report was pretty confused. According to it, the ship was attacked by the He 111 from the left side, while the torpedo hit it on the right side. The torpedo hit the ship at 01.26, and at the same time the Molotov shot down the aircraft, that crashed near the ship at 01.33, that's full seven minutes later.
At the same time, the Italian report is pretty clear, describing the attack of the MAS 569 from the right side of the cruiser, the torpedo hitting the ship at 01.30, and, after the MAS evaded, another explosion on the same spot at 01.34 (also seen by MAS 573), that the Italians concluded was the secondary explosion of the magazines, signaling the sinking of the ship (in reality it was the explosion of the He 111 shot down).
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It's an often repeated mith. The Littorios almost always fired few shots at extreme ranges. Had they hit something, it would have been by far the longest range hit in history.
Only in two occasions they fired more shots.
At Gaudo the Vittorio Veneto was steaming at 28 knots and trying to hit, from 23 to 26 kms distance, two light cruisers that were entering and exiting smokescreens and only manuvering to not be hit. At that time it had been already amply demonstrated that it was practically impossible to hit a ship that was only manuvering to not be hit, even at far closer distances and with far more rapidly firing guns (see the battle of the Espero convoy) if not firing thousands of shells.
The second battle of the Sirte had been fought in a storm, and the Littorio had been the most accurate ship of both parties in that occasion.
The pictures taken by the Brits at Gaudo show, for Vittorio Veneto's salvo, a consistent single turret spread of 1.7% of the distance. Any navy of the time would have considered 2% acceptable to good in action.
US Navy obtained 1.1% single turret spread, but that was in tests, with the ship standing still and not steaming at 28 knots, after years of peacetime tuning, with delay coils already installed (Littorios had them installed in winter '42-'43) and with slower shells (for a simple geometrical reason, flatter trajectory shells, all things equal, will show wider horizontal spread. That has little IRL effect since ships are not just horizontal targets and the flatter trajectory reduces the vertical spread - that's why flatter trajectory is preferred in rifle shooting - and reduces the error in distance and bearing, by reducing the flight time). Richelieu shown a 2.1% single turret spread in tests (four guns in it's case) still in 1948, after delay coils had been installed, and that was considered acceptable.
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@bluelemming5296 All is relative. According to Santarini, the OTO 351/50 of the Littorio were anyway more accurate than the 38 cm SK C/34 of the Bismarck at normal engagement distance (someone extended the study to the Sharnhorst, obtaining even worse results).
So why the Bismarck hit the Hood and the Prince of Wales?
Because it fired, from 18.500m to 15.000m distance on targets that were not trying to evade.
The same moment the POW steered to break the contact, the Bismarck ceased to hit anything, even if the target was at less than 16.000m distance, and quit firing at only 18.500m distance.
In the same engagement, the Hood did not hit anything at all, even firing several salvo at less than 20.000m distance and, according to the same Santarini, the POW shown a marginally better gunnery than the Bismarck, but not enough to change the outcome of the clash.
Mind that, having the fastest muzzle velocity than any WWII battleship gun, all things equal, the 381/50 should have a larger horizontal dispersion for purely geometrical reasons (firing two shots with a given error in vertical angle difference, the fastest shell with the flatter trajectory will fly more between the two horizontal drop points), but that has little practical effect, since ships are not only horizontal targets (the same Santarini, IE, calculated that the Hood was a vertical target three times larger than an horizontal one) and the same flatter trajectory of the fastest shell reduces the vertical dispersion (other than the error in bearing, by reducing the flight time).
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@bluelemming5296 I stated there was nothing wrong with the ammo quality. Santarini agree with that.
I stated it had always been fired at extreme ranges and/or on smaller ships that were manuvering to not be hit (in that case, it had been amply demonstrated that it needed thousands of shells to hit something). And infact Santarini found WWII battleship guns that had worse dispersion, without anyone complaining about that, and that had been quite effective, because they had been used on shorter ranges and on ships that were not evading.
Those guns had been used against ships that, according to Santarini, had among the better dispersion patterns of all WWII powers, and that had been throughly beaten. Mind that, the Brits, in the Battle of Denmark strait, opened fire at 24.500m, but them too didn't hit anything as long as the range had been over 20.000m (and the Hood didn't hit anything at all).
So, it doesn't seem that the 381/50 dispersion pattern could cause any real problem in actual engagement conditions.
A thing is a statistical analysis, another thing is complaining. It's like complaining of the 3MOA average accuracy of the M4 carbine, when there are 1-1.5 MOA DMR rifles. Firing on human-sized targets at actual fighting range, it doesn't make any real difference.
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@geordiedog1749 I'm sorry that this is proving so problematic for you, emotionally. Your "moral supremacy" kicked in long ago. It kicked in already when you decided to start talking about "moral supremacy" instead of facts and telling people they were "cherry picking" when they talked about episodes YOU specifically mentioned without any selection. Not having even noticed that simple fact demonstrates YOU were enough emotionally involved to ignore facts, or in bad faith. Choose one.
I suggest you to learn to differentiate facts from narrative (especially dubious moral narrative that, in your view, should change facts) and quit trying to adapt the first ones to the second.
Then you found a history book that tells at Sirte 1 the Brits DIDN'T flee the battle. DIDN'T end up on an Italian freshly laid minefield they didn't suspect the existence of, (but maybe they CHOSE to end on it). DIDN'T lose two ships and 830 seamen and DIDN'T have to retire the rest of the Malta Strike Force, In exchange for the the Regia Marina not having a single casualty?
You found an history book that tells at Sirte 2 the Brits DIDN'T have several ships badly damaged (The Kingston and Havock had been effectively lost) in exchange for no damages for the Italians. DIDN'T leave the merchants on their own. Then DIDN'T have the convoy almost entirely destroyed? I'm curious to know who wrote them.
What you consider "decent" is an opinion of you (and, if you consider decent the narrative above...). Vincent O'Hara is surely an historian and just told Pedestal had been a defeat. James Sadkovich is surely an historian and called it a disaster. Jack P. Greene is surely an historian and called it an Axis victory.
If Pedestal had been a "strategic success" for the Brits, then how PQ 17 hadn't? More ships get through, and PQ 18 followed at only 2 months distance. The strategic outcome of PQ17 had been than most of the shipment dind't arrive where it was expected to,. The strategic outcome of Pedestal had been that most of the shipment didn't arrive where it was expected to and several warships had been sunk or badly damaged as well. Involving "strategic victory" is like saying "but in the end the Allies won the war".
Maybe people want to discuss stuff without seeing it polluted by laughable moral considerations used to change obvious facts.
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@michaelsommers2356 After I provided the source, you stated: "That does not show that the Italians stopped using Enigma."
Your statement makes no sense. Of what "that" are you talking about? Do you know the source? Evidently not. So how can you talk about what it shows or not?
The Italian Navy didn't use Enigma at all. It adopted the C38m since 1940. In three years of war, before the armistice, only few hundreds of C38m messages had been decrypted by Ultra, most of them after several days and of no military value. IE the one relating to the loss, in December 1941, of a bag of shirts destined for the Governor of the Aegean, Admiral Campioni, message regularly noted by the British after a week of cryptoological efforts.
Better results the Brits had with the C35, used by the Regia Aeronautica, but with no practical value, since: "The time span between the interception of C35/38 traffic in the Middle East and his Typex encryption averaged 36 hours. They were followed by '50 hours on average' for radio transmission from Middle East to the United Kingdom, with the addition of other 4 hours between the receiving station and the Admiralty and further 4 hours from the latter to the decyphers".
At that point, the value of every message of the Aeronautica had long expired.
For the really important messages, the Italian Navy used manual cyphers, There were 14 kinds of them. Ultra managed to decypher some of the messages encrypted with the minor ones, but never broke the two really important ones during the war (SM16 and SM19) and completely gave up in 1942.
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CipiRipi00 We'll never know if the Bismarck hit the Hood EVEN ONE SINGLE TIME.
It was well known that the initial salvoes of the British ships were often off by kilometers.
In the clash with the POW, opposed to a BB that had HUGE teething problems, that reduced it to a single working gun, the Bismarck received worse damages that it inflicted.
None ever said that the POW had good groups. BB cannons had to be TESTED, for LONG to obtain good grups, and the POW was completely new.
The best groups are NOT the tighter ones but the ones that give the best probabilities to hit the target AT LEAST with a shell for every salvo at the optimal fighting range. IE Analyzing the results of the battle of Leyte Gulf, the US Navy concluded the Japanese had not understood how dispersion worked. Their salvoes were so tight that the inevitable error in estimating bearing and distance of the target made so that they were all misses.
Fact is that the Italian BBs NEVER had an enemy BB at less than 25 km, so any comparison with the battle of the Denmark Strait, fought from 20km to 15km, is completely useless.
In the battle of Gaudo, that's the one cited to "prove" the scarce accuracy of the 381/50, the Vittorio Veneto, steaming 28knots, fired on a couple of light cruisers, that were laying smoke screens and steering to not be hit, not at 15.000m, but from 23.000m to 26.000m. At that distance the Bismarck didn't even TRY to fire at a much bigger target that was not steering. It had been already amply demonstrated that, even at much shorter distances, and with much more rapidly firing guns, it was practically impossible to hit a target that was only manuvering to not been hit, if not firing thousands of shells (see the battle of the Espero convoy).
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It's an often repeated mith. The Littorios almost always fired few shots at extreme ranges. Had they hit something, it would have been by far the longest range hit in history.
Only in two occasions they fired more shots.
At Gaudo the Vittorio Veneto was steaming at 28 knots and trying to hit, from 23 to 26 kms distance, two light cruisers that were entering and exiting smokescreens and only manuvering to not be hit. At that time it had been already amply demonstrated that it was practically impossible to hit a ship that was only manuvering to not be hit, even at far closer distances and with far more rapidly firing guns (see, IE, the battle of the Espero convoy) if not firing thousands of shells.
The second battle of the Sirte had been fought in a storm, and the Littorio had been the most accurate ship of both parties in that occasion.
The pictures taken by the Brits at Gaudo show, for Vittorio Veneto's salvo, a consistent single turret spread of 1.7% of the distance. Any navy of the time would have considered 2% acceptable to good in action.
US Navy obtained 1.1% single turret spread, but that was in tests, with the ship standing still and not steaming at 28 knots, after years of peacetime tuning, with delay coils already installed (Littorios had them installed in winter '42-'43) and with slower shells (for a simple geometrical reason, flatter trajectory shells, all things equal, will show wider horizontal spread. That has little IRL effect since ships are not just horizontal targets and the flatter trajectory reduces the vertical spread - that's why flatter trajectory is preferred in rifle shooting - and reduces the error in distance and bearing, by reducing the flight time). Richelieu shown a 2.1% single turret spread in tests (four guns in it's case) still in 1948, after delay coils had been installed, and that was considered acceptable.
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@bluelemming5296 We know that the Brits didn't hit anything past 20.000m. We don't know why. We can hypothesize. But has a KGV class battleship ever hit something at over 20.000m distance in action, to make a comparison? Even in Bismarck's last battle, on an enemy that was practically adrift, the Brits opened fire only at 20.000m and, for when they hit something, they were so close that they were using their secondaries as well.
Surely, in the Denmark strait, the positioning of the sights on the Prinz Eugen was no better than on the British battleships, but it scored hits farther than them anyway.
It's not a mystery at all. And its pretty amusing to reason like the Brits were standing, waiting for the Italians to come close. The Brits never served a battleship to a Littorio at short distance. When the guns of the Littorio had been fired at extreme ranges it's because the enemies, that were light cruisers and destroyers, fled. The only time they (again, light cruisers and destroyers) engaged a Littorio at short range had been in the second battle of the Sirte, under a storm.
For when the Littorios had been fully operative, Brits and Italians knew the shortcomings of battleships, and tended to use them under their own air cover. That means that the possible areas of contact were really limited.
The only REAL possibility to have a clash between a modern British battleship squad (Nelson, Rodney and Prince of Wales) and the two Littorios had been during Operation Halberd, but there the Italian command miscalculated the route of the Britsh formation, and so the Italian squad failed to make contact (But Nelson was hit by an aerial torpedo anyway, and the Royal Navvy didn't risk a battleship so close to the Italian bases for more than a year after).
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