Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "Drachinifel"
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@WALTERBROADDUS when I visited the LST museum ship in Muskegon, MI a few years ago, I had them start up the old Army training film on how the ship operates. As you said, first, schedule the landing on a rising tide. So. between the landing craft being lighter, after discharging it's cargo, plus the rising tide, they can back off. The LST was much more elaborate. They had ballast tanks that would be pumped out before hitting the beach, then refilled to plant the ship firmly on the beach for unloading. They also kept the engines going forward, to keep the ship forced onto the beach. After unloading, they pumped out the ballast tanks, started reeling in the kedging anchor they dropped on the way in, reversed the engines, and, with the rising tide, pulled themselves off the beach.
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@M.M.83-U The Normandies, Caracciolos and Mackensens all had obsolete armor and TDS systems by 1919 standards. I have seen drawings of a Caracciolo that show the last modification, in 1919, with 110mm of armor added to the weather deck. Those same drawings show most of the boilers arranged in compartments along the sides of the hull, separated by an additional bulkhead from the centerline compartments that contained another half dozen boilers and the turbines for the inboard shafts, so the side boiler rooms act like a TDS. I have seen a photo of Caracciolo dated December 1915 that shows the weather deck being installed. The interesting thing about the photo is most of the decking is not yet in place and I can see that there are no compartment bulkheads below the weather deck and I can see the turtleback armor deck. I interpret that photo as showing a temporary deck being put on to protect the hull from the weather in preparation for work on the ship being suspended. Seems that, with the turtleback being exposed like that, the reasonable thing would have been to add more armor to the turtleback, before completing the first deck and the permanent weather deck. Alltogether, considering the way the boiler rooms were arranged to mimic a TDS, the opportunity to reenforce the turtleback offered by where construction was when suspended in early 16, speed, and the 15" guns, I would much rather go into WWII in Caracciolo than a Normandie or Mackensen.
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wrt the 1.1"/Bofors 40mm/Vickers pompom question. iirc, one major issue with the Vickers was that it did not work right using USN propellant, and no-one in the US made cordite. Another gun tested in the USN shootoff that the Bofors won, was a 37mm gun the US Army was using. The 37mm had a significant range advantage over the Vickers, though range and shell size were slightly less than the Bofors offered. In the absence of the Bofors, I would expect the 37mm to receive the mods it historically did later: metallic link belt feed, in place of clips, and feed from either right or left. With belt feed from either right or left, I envision a quad mount quite like the quad Vickers mount, with the same rate of fire as the Vickers, but significantly longer range.
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@stormy0307 I agree a mongrel fleet is not ideal from a supply standpoint, but if you order a Yarrow widget, you should receive a Yarrow widget, not an Ansaldo widget. The fact that the RM used several German and Austrian ships for a number of years, rather than scrapping them outright, as the UK, US, and France did, with their war reparations ships, tells me the supply problems paled at the prospect of a free ship. In the case of battleships, the RM would not have wanted UK castoffs anyway, due to the running costs. While the RM was happy to run Austrian and German cruisers and destroyers, they sent the Tegetthoff to the breakers as soon as they received her. I did some back-of-the-envelope figuring a while back. The RM had a significant destroyer building program in the 20s. I figured that, if they had foregone about half of those destroyers, they would have had enough money to complete Caracciolo, but the RM's priorities said destroyers, not battleships.
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wrt the question about USN alternatives to the Oerlikon and Bofors guns: the US Army had two 37mm guns, the lightweight, low velocity, M4, which was used in aircraft, such as the P-39 that Drac mentions, and the high velocity M1, which was used as a ground based AA gun. Comparing the M1 to the Bofors, the Bofors fired a heavier shell with greater range and ceiling, which would make the Bofors the winner in a head to head competition. The Bofors clips being gravity fed also simplified loading as the clips needed to be pushed into the M1 by the man loading the gun so that the feed pawls would grab it. The M1 also had an awkward cooling system, using a water chest. M1 firing had to be stopped every 60 rounds while water was flushed through the gun to cool it. The M1 was later developed into the M9, where the rigid clips were replaced by a disintegrating metal link belt, like the Vickers used, and redesigned for both left and right side feed versions. If the Bofors had not existed, the M9 would probably have been developed sooner, a more effective cooling system developed, and the gun could probably be adopted to any style mount that was developed for the Vickers, as they were both side fed, metal link belt, guns.
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@Zonkotron I think the velocity vs size debate was cited wrt the guns on the Nelsons. The formula E=M(Vsquared) argues that a higher velocity shell will deliver more energy. A Nelson gun fired at about 150fps higher muzzle velocity than a 15"/42. Penetration at 20,000 yards was 12.2" for a 16" vs 11.7" for a 15". Barrel life for the 16" was 200-250 rounds, vs 335 for the 15", so not a lot of penetration gained for the 30% reduction in barrel life, considering the 16" shell was also slightly heavier. The difference was even more stark between the USN 14/50 and 16"/45, The 14" Mk 4 (New Mexico and Tennessee class) fired a 1400lb shell at 2800fps and could penetrate 6.7" at 20,000 yards, with a barrel life of 250 rounds. The 16"/45 Mk 1 on the Colorado class fired a 2110lb shell at 2600fps, and could penetrate 11.5" @ 20,000 yards, with a barrel life of 350 rounds. It is hard to imagine, now, how a debate between the 14" and 16" could rage in the USN at the time, but it did.
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This question received several likes, but no answer, when posted a while back, so, with a shipbuilding video, lets try it again: At what point were a battleship's turbines and boilers typically installed? "The Battleship Builders" says the powerplant was installed during fitting out, so that the hull would be lighter at launching. But, the Wiki entry on the North Carolina class shows boilers being installed in NC, on 16 January of 39, while the ship was launched in June of 40. I have seen an aerial photo of Washington being launched, which shows midships decked over, implying the powerplant has already been installed. Which was the usual sequence of powerplant installation on a BB, before or after launch? Thanks!
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The naval treaties have been brought up in comments a couple times recently, and that got the wheels turning wrt the Deutschlands. Some articles mention that, as the allies were trying to figure out a way to prevent their construction, Germany offered to break up Deutschland on the ways, if the allies agreed to replace the naval limitations of the Versailles treaty with the existing naval treaties between the five powers, with a capital ship quota of 125,000 tons, vs 175,000 for France and Italy. Ultimately, France opposed the proposal and it was dropped. What if Germany had come under the 5 power treaties? The Deutschlands would immediately be outlawed as cruisers as their 11" guns exceeded the treaty limit. However, Germany then could go directly to the Scharnhorsts, which were comfortably under the naval treaty's 35,000 ton limit for battleships. Drach's video on Scharnhorst says that Germany had lost the ability to build really large guns, so, instead of the desired 15". the Scharns received the 11" developed for the Deutschlands. But if the Deutschlands are not built, then that 11" gun is not developed either. By the time the Deutschland would have been laid down, the treaty change agreed, Deutschland broken up on the ways, and the Scharnhorsts designed, Hitler was in power. By 34, Hitler could ring up his buddy in Rome and say "hey Benny, could Ansaldo run off some extras of the 15"/50 it's making for your Littorios? I have an idea." So, which would work out better for the allies? With the treaty switch, the Deutschlands, which churned up their share of mischief early in the war don't exist, but the Scharnhorsts are more potent.
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@jetdriver Yes, you are correct wrt Tennessee and Maryland. All of the big 5 were promptly laid up at the end of the war, along with the North Carolinas and South Dakotas, where they languished for a dozen years before going to the breakers. All the QEs, Rs and Nelsons went straight to the breakers in the late 40s. I think the US hanging on to the big 5 was the aberration, not the Brits sending 30 year old ships straight to the breakers. Besides the 4 surviving KGVs, the Brits also had Vanguard. Reading about the construction of the Lions and Vanguard, I get the impression that the UK was having chronic shortages of workers and material during the war, far worse than the US ever had as work on the ships started, and stopped, several times. A severe shortage of workers and material in the UK could also contribute to skimping on refits for old ships that weren't long for the world anyway, while the US was relatively flush with resources, so could do work the Brits couldn't manage.
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@coltaxe100 There would actually be two different "if you coulds', one with the naval treaties and one without. Without treaties and an unlimited checkbook, the sky is the limit, especially if you include contracting with yards in Canada and the US. With the treaties, then you get out the calculator and a copy of Jane's to see what decisions to make differently. wrt Carriers, the Washington treaty specified that all carriers in service or building at the time of the treaty were deemed "experimental" and not subject to the 20 year replacement schedule, so they could be replaced at any time. Argus, Eagle and Hermes all fit that criteria. Eagle was not efficient as a carrier, but had a bit of size and a bit of speed, not fast, but fast enough to cruise with QEs, so it might be worthwhile to retain. Argus had no speed, and Hermes had no size. so remission both as seaplane tenders to free up the tonnage to build a second Ark Royal. Depending on the assessment of the situation, Renown and Repulse had size and speed, and could have been converted to carriers, after the treaty collapsed, faster than new carriers could have been built from the keel up. As for BBs, instead of building the Nelsons, the RN could have taken deferred construction windows, like France and Italy did, so they could have built two, modern, fast, BBs in the early 30s, rather than the eccentric and slow Nelsons. Outside of that, the RN really couldn't do anything more within the framework of the treaties. The 1930 London treaty extended the BB building moratorium through 1936. KGV and Prince of Wales were laid down New Year's day of 1937. The other three KGVs had all been laid down by July of 37. Really, when it comes to BBs, the Brits did about as well as they could, within the limits of the treaty, without having 20/20 foresight.
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@greg_mca the first thing is carrier aircraft tend to be built stronger to withstand the rigors of carrier ops. The first day out when I was on the Lexington, I was taking a shortcut through the hanger when, with no warning, I heard *WHAM*. I was wondering what part of that old ship had broken, when a guy walking with me said "plane landed". I also, by luck, got a photo of an A7, that had just trapped. The deceleration was so strong the pilot can be seen in the photo thrown several inches away from his seatback, in spite of the harness he was wearing. I used to know at what deceleration rate a person's eyeballs will pop out of their sockets. Obviously, the deceleration on a carrier landing is safely below that limit, but not hugely below it. Consequently, a land based plane, like a Hurricane or Spitfire, will usually require structural strengthening, in addition to the expected arresting hook and life raft. The strengthening will usually degrade performance due to the extra weight. The aircraft will be changed to suit the ships, not the other way around. The Brits were hurting for single seat fighters in 40. They bought the Grumman F4F, know in British service as the Martlet. The Martlet I, like all early Wildcats, did not have folding wings, so the Brits tended to leave them ashore. The Martlet II introduced Grumman's folding wing feature to the Royal Navy, so more of the planes could be accommodated on board. When Drac does his video on the Graf Zepplin, he may get into how the 109s and Stukas were modified for carrier service. If you get a chance, see "Ships With Wings", a British 1941 production. It gives some good looks at Swordfish and Skuas coming up the elevator with their wings folded. A lot of that footage was shot on the Ark Royal, less than a year before it was sunk.
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wrt making Wasp more survivable. I don't think trying to use the same torpedo and AA protection tonnage allowance as the Lexingtons would be viable, because, iirc, the tonnage added for those systems was counted in the displacement of the ship, and that additional tonnage was not available when Wasp was built.
The best thing that could have been done with Wasp was to route all the gasoline mains outside of the hull. A lesson learned from the loss of Lexington was, when an inbound attack is detected, drain the gas mains and fill the mains and pump rooms with CO2. When Yorktown and Hornet were lost, they did not burn. That was not possible with Wasp, as she was actively operating aircraft at the time, and hit without enough warning. A running modification that was being made on carriers, as they came in for refit, was to reroute the gas mains outside the hull. Wasp was in Norfolk for some work at the beginning of June, before deploying to the Pacific. The material I have access to this morning does not say if the gas main modification was done on Wasp. Late war photos of Enterprise show what I believe to be that external gas main, running horizontally down the starboard side, just below the hangar. There are a couple photos of Wasp, taken in Norfolk. in June 42, that do not show a similar pipe system.
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@angelomaset1441 my first guess would be the KM would look a lot like the Italian RM, except with smaller quotas under the naval treaties: a couple of WWI BBs, probably the two Bayerns that were completed, cruisers, DDs, probably no Deutschland class, as the 11" guns exceeded the treaty limits for cruisers, but with the Scharnhorsts built a few years sooner, but with 15" guns developed from the Krupp 38 cm SK L/45 used on the Bayerns. The 11" would not have been available, as the Deutschlands not being built means the 11" is never developed. Then you get into speculation: would the Germans have radically updated the Bayerns the way the Italians updated their old BBs, or just press ahead with the Bismarks as soon as the naval treaties collapsed.
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@bkjeong4302 I remember my grandfather talking about how the Japanese used a little latch, rather than the large, and heavy, mechanisms the USN used. I'm thinking weight was the factor, with the IJN choosing to maintain aircraft performance, at the expense of not carrying quite as many aircraft.
wrt, the folding wings on dive bombers, the multi-G stress was a consideration. That being said, while the SBD did not have folding wings, the SB2U and SB2C did have folding wings. I found a pic on-line of three SB2Us in the hangar of Bearn, with their wings folded. The Skua and navalized Stuka also had folding wings.
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How about this one: instead of trying to do a piecemeal update on Tiger, which, iirc, had never been converted to oil fuel, nor had torpedo bulges installed, so add that to the work order. let's take a Sawzall to the Revenges, about midships, and add an 80 foot, or so, plug in the hull to house more propulsion machinery, and improve the length to beam ratio. An 80 foot plug amidships would give almost exactly the same length to beam ratio of the Lion class battlecruisers, that could make 27.5kts. without the modern propulsion machinery the Revenges would be retrofitted with.
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@brendonbewersdorf986 as they say, everything is relative. HMS Rawalpindi and HMS Jervis Bay could manage about 15kts and carried seven or eight 6" guns. A Connecticut class pre-dreadnough could touch 18kts, and carried 4-12" and 8-8" in twin turrets, as well as some casemate mounted 7" that might be useable in a flat calm. I would not bet a lot on the Connecticut against both Scharnhorsts. Connecticut's 12"/45s, even with unmodified mounts that are restricted to 15 degrees, can reach out 20,000 yards. Her 8" mounts could elevate to 20 degrees, good for 22,000 yards. At ranges greater than that, Scheer could not penetrate Connecticut's 11" main belt, but at any range they can reach, Connecticut's 12" and 8" can punch through Scheer's 3.1" belt. Against the Scheer, with the Connecticut positioned so the Scheer would have to go through it to get at the convoy, I rather like Connecticut's chances, if given modern fire control.
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@arivael the Courageouses were called "large light cruisers". I would run with that, use them as light cruisers, that happen to have very large guns. A triple 8" turret weights less than half what the twin 15" turret's weight, but I don't know if a quad would fit on the existing barbette. Would the greater rate of fire, vs throwing smaller shells, be worth the effort? Thinking of them as cruisers, I don't see a need for significant additional armor, as they are about as well protected as treaty era cruisers. Replace the six triple 4" mounts with six, or more, twin DP 5.25" and some medium AA, and they would not seem absurd to me.
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wrt the question about reusing existing guns to expedite battleship construction, the first option that crosses my mind is to have the Admiralty retain all of the 13.5" Mk V heavy shell guns when their original ships were scrapped. By my figuring, that would be 80 guns, plus whatever spares were in inventory to support the ships originally built with them. Using the 13.5s would also comply with the reduction in gun size to 14" in Second London. Alternately, the USN apparently had ordered 14"/50s for the battlecruisers at the same time as the guns were ordered for the Tennessee class BBs, then the battlecruisers moved on to the 16"/50, leaving the USN with a large, surplus inventory of new 14" guns. Reportedly 119 14"/50s were built, to support only 5 BBs that used them. Even allowing for 24 spares, 2 complete sets of replacements, to support the USN BBs, USN need would be 84 guns, leaving 35 available for potential sale to the UK, enough for 2 KGVs, plus a full set of spares. The problem with using the US guns would be powder, as they would need to be fed USN smokeless, rather than cordite, for optimal performance. During WWI, the RN used US built 14"/45s on one class of monitors. They experimented with cordite in them and, reportedly, suffered a significant loss of range. The problem with any existing 13.5" or 14" gun would be turrets, which are also time consuming to build. Salvaged 13.5" would have twin turrets. USN 14" would require new turrets to be built. Twin turrets are not weight or space efficient, which becomes an issue when complying with the treaty displacement limits, and the displacement limit was not increased until mid 1938. The gun size escalator triggered in April 1937. The return to 16" guns a year before the displacement limit increase makes me want to cast a lustful eye on the triple 16" turrets on the Nelsons, moving them to more capable hulls.
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@RedXlV Yes, I was thinking of using the twin 13.5" on something along the lines of a Scharnhorst. Of course, any scenario using 13.5" would depend on the Admiralty retaining the gun and turret sets and armor when the Iron Dukes were scrapped in the early 30s. I read somewhere they did retain some of the guns, but I don't know about the rest.
Once the gun size escalator triggered in April 37, the Admiralty could do something with the 8 twin 15" turrets that were in inventory: the 4 from Courageous and Glorious, the two on the Erebus class monitors, the one on Marshal Soult and one new one in warehouse. Again, prior to the displacement escalator triggering in June 38, they would be looking at a Scharnhorst. After June 38, they could build two Vanguards. As Drac noted, armor would be an issue, as they were already making the armor for the five KGVs, unless it was feasible to strip the armor off the Revenges.
That brings us back to the Nelsons: triple gun and turret sets, and armor. wrt the 2,375lb shell, my concern would be overpressuring the tube by going to such a heavy shell, but if the 2.250 had proved out, use that. Using the Nelson turrets would enable building something along the lines of a North Carolina, and, as the turrets had been debugged, they might not have the issues that were experienced with the KGV quad turrets early on. But, stripping two serviceable battleships, even if to build two much more capable ones, on the eve of war, would be controversial.
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@johnfisher9692 I understand where you are coming from, but the hazard is in sacrificing good enough for better, to the point that nothing ever gets built. At some point, a design needs to be frozen, so it can be built, while the designers keep working to improve on that design for the next generation. The other hazard is, of course, that a design element could be entirely wrongheaded, and the subsequent design heading even farther off in the wrong direction, before the flaw in the logic is discovered. An example of the first case is the first generation carriers. Eagle and Hermes were six year builds. The Lexingtons were seven year builds, and C&R was complaining, in it's annual reports, about how disappointed they were in the slow progress. Akagi and Kaga were also slow builds. In the case of the Lexingtons, I am thinking the delays, and the huge cost overruns, were the result of a massive number of change orders as new ideas were birthed, or experience was gained with Langley. In comparison, Ranger was built in only 3 years, with only a $2M, about 10%, cost overrun. Ranger had one major change order while construction was underway: the addition of an island, which probably accounts for a good share of that $2M overrun. I have no doubt that the original $23M conversion cost for the Lexingtons was intended to be accurate. The estimate given in 1922 for a clean sheet dedicated carrier was $27M. Extrapolating Ranger's cost to 20,000 tons gives a cost of $28M. Lexington's cost ballooning from $23M to $40M was probably unforeseen and the result of starting the ships when the USN was still too far down the learning curve. A few days ago, I asked my local public library to transfer in a copy of Friedman on carriers to see if he can provide conformation of my suspicions that the Lexington's cost overrun, was due to change orders.
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@ILurk-v9o Yes, several USN and IJN carriers had enough overhead clearance to store spare aircraft suspended from the overhead. The number of spares that could be carried that way varied between the different classes of carriers. At some point, I saw a listing for carriers that broke out the number of spares, vs number that were ready for service, but, right now, I don't recall where. Some British carriers had very low overhead clearance. F4U Corsairs had to have some 6" clipped from their wingtips so they would fit in some British carrier hangars with their wings folded, because, as with most USN aircraft, except Grumman's, the Corsair's wings folded upward. All RN aircraft wings folded back, parallel to the fuselage, so they could fit in the hangars with low clearance.
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@Lubyak it may be a matter of how much a gun does or doesn't irritate it's crews. The US 1.1 jammed, a lot, in several different ways. There is color combat footage of Midway, shot by the USN, that has several short looks at a couple 1.1" mounts on one of the ships. In the first couple looks, the mount in the foreground is banging away just fine and looking very potent. In the third glimpse, only the right end gun is firing. As the loading machine of the 1.1" held two clips and switched between clips automatically when one clip was empty, the three guns that are stopped are probably not stopped for a reload, but because the things jammed, again. That is probably a total, of all the glimpses, of 10 seconds of looking at that mount, and the camera caught 3 of 4 guns jammed. Any machine will engender a degree of loyalty, if it simply works as intended. Doesn't matter if the 96 has to stop to reload every few seconds. Doesn't matter if the 96 throws a light shell. Doesn't matter if the 96 has a short range. Doesn't matter if the 96 vibrates. If the thing shoots when you pull the trigger, it will be appreciated.
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