Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "Drachinifel"
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@genericpersonx333 a higher velocity shell, for a given range, will travel in a flatter trajectory, so it's chances of hitting are better because the distance between where the shell would hit the top of the hull and where the shell would hit at the waterline is longer because the shell drops less per unit distance. (there is a name for that zone, but it isn't coming to mind right now) If you want to go for a deck hit, then you want to fire at a lower velocity so you can fire at a higher trajectory. But, with a higher trajectory, the chances of a hit are lower because the shell sinks at a higher rate. The travel time to distance is listed in the gunnery tables. A USN 16'/45 firing with a reduced charge yielding a muzzle velocity of 2000fps at a target 23,500yards away: angle of departure from the gun 33 degrees, 20.4 minutes. Time of travel: 58.25 seconds. Angle of fall: 42 degrees 58 minutes. Firing the same gun with a full charge, yielding a muzzle velocity of 2600fps. at a target at the same range of 23,500 yards gives the following trajectory: angle of departure from the gun 15 degrees, 35.4 minutes. Time of travel 38.44 seconds. Angle of fall 22 degrees. 24 minutes. As you said, firing at a higher velocity makes it easier to hit the target, but, if the ship has heavy deck armor, and you hit on the deck, at 22 degrees, the shell may ricochet off. Drop a shell on the deck at 42 degrees and it punches through.
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Trivia bit that I didn't see anyone else mention. The troubles with the Mark 14 inspired a 1951 John Wayne movie "Operation Pacific". When Wayne's sub makes it back to Hawaii from patrol, some of the crewmen manage to be picked up by the SP. When Wayne goes to the brig to bail them out, the SP officer starts complaining about all the trouble he has with sub crewmen. He says "if it isn't Thunderfish (the fictional sub in the movie), it's the Tang, or the Wahoo, or the Silversides". So the Silversides got a mention in a Hollywood movie.
The sets in "Operation Pacific" look exactly like the inside of Silversides. I wonder if the studio bought a surplus Gato and cut it up to build the sets? Most sub movies show the periscope viewing station in the control room. "Operation Pacific" shows the scope station in the conning tower, as it is on Silversides. Can't help but wonder if all subs of that era had the scope station in the conning tower, and putting it in the control room is "artistic license" so the captain actor can interact with the control room crew actors?
The first time I visited Silversides, I didn't know there was a museum at the location. Didn't budget enough time to explore both in detail. So, on a later trip, when I visited the Milwaukee Clipper, I then drove around the bay to the Silversides, and gave the museum a more detailed exploration.
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The RN's situation, in the eastern Med in May 41, adds to an alt history scenario that I worked on a few years ago: after overrunning Greece and Crete, Axis forces land in Vichy controlled, Axis leaning, Syria, and drive to the oil fields in Iraq, which was then ruled by an Axis friendly dictator.
That scenario fell apart, when, by chance, I heard an audio recording of Hitler talking with a Finnish General. In that recording, made in 42, Hitler says that his meetings with the Soviets in late 40, during the preparations for the invasion of England, left him with the impressions the Soviets wanted a war with Germany, and were looking at overrunning Romania, threatening a major source of oil for Germany. Hence Hitler pivoted from trying to invade England, to invading the Soviet Union in June 41.
So much for my scenario of Axis occupation of Syria and Iraq, to get at Iraqi oil production.
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On the question of a world without Bofors: in the 1920s, John Browning designed a 37mm AA gun for the US Army. Due to lack of funding for the Army, the design sat on the shelf for several years, then was refined by Colt, and put into production in the late 30s. If USN BuOrd got over it's "not invented here" syndrome and adopted the Browning, instead of developing the 1.1", they would have gotten along quite well without the Bofors. The initial design of the 37mm, the M1, was fed with rigid clips from the left side, which would complicate multiple gun mounts. The M9 development switched to metallic link belt ammo, and was redesigned so both right and left feed versions could be built. I suspect that, fundamentally, any multiple mount designed for the Vickers could be adopted to the Browning, due to the similar ammo feed systems. The Browning had significantly more range than a Vickers, but a somewhat smaller shell. In US Army service, the Browning was replaced by the Bofors, starting in 43, as the Bofors offered advantages of longer range, larger shell, and somewhat more reliable operation.
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wrt the Anglo-Japanese alliance, the version I have read was that the alliance was intended to use Japan as a counterbalance to both the Germans and Russians in the Pacific. Germany purchased the Spanish colonies in the Pacific that the US had not rolled up in 98, including the Marianas, less Guam, the Carolines, and Palau, adding them to their existing colonies in the Marshalls, New Guinea, and other islands around the Bismark Sea, in 1899. The Anglo-Japanese alliance was formed in 1902. Japan rolled up the German colonies in WWI, and was given a mandate to hold the former German colonies north of the equator by the League of Nations. So Germany was no longer a threat to UK interests in the Pacific. The Soviets were still securing their position in Russia, so they were not much of a threat to the UK in the Pacific. I am thinking the Anglo-Japanese alliance had outlived it's usefulness to the UK. Additionally, having rolled up the German colonies, there were not many directions Japan could further expand it's empire, without bumping in to European interests. China was about the only independent nation in the area, and even there, the Japanese ran into European business interests. What was there in eastern Russia that would attract the Japanese? There is significant oil and coal production in eastern Russia now, but what was there in 1920, that would attract Japanese interest?
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The Italians being able to develop the Libyan oil fields in the 30s is a nightmare scenario. First, the Germans would have recognized that their war effort would be greatly aided by that oil, and Libya would have been far more stoutly defended, as João Rita posted. For openers, imagine an Italian fleet with unlimited fuel and aggressively lead, with cover from land based air. Early in the war, the RN was still trying to defend their interests in the far east, as well as patrolling the North Atlantic against German capital ships, so the odds against the Italians are not as overwhelming as they would appear on paper. The choke point between Sicily and Tunisia could have been one intensively defended point of obstructing Brit supplies to Egypt and squadrons of torpedo and dive bombers could have been based in Italian occupied Ethiopia to make supplying Egypt via the Red Sea equally problematic. I can see the Brits pushed/starved out of Egypt. A defensive line from Aqaba to Gaza looks appealing, but, with the Italian fleet dominating the eastern Med, that line could easily be outflanked. The Brits would probably have to pull back to a line from Basra to the Turkish border to defend the Iranian oil fields, where were being developed at that time. The Germans would probably move to preemptively occupy Algeria and Morocco to vigorously oppose any attempted landing, which would make the Libyan oil fields immune to air attack from the west. Axis occupation of all of North Africa would also make the Ploiesti oil fields out of range of air attack.
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wrt Brenden's question about armored cruisers, I was reading about British capital ships a couple weeks ago, and one piece talked about the armored cruiser/battlecruiser decision. An armored cruiser would cost a few hundred thousand Pounds less than a battlecruiser, but not enough less to enable more of the ships to be built for the same amount of money in the annual budget. The Admiralty was considering building another generation of armored cruisers, after building the Invincibles, as a budget cutting option, but then got wind of Von der Tann being built with battleship grade guns, so the Admiralty dropped the armored cruiser idea and proceeded with the Indefatigable class. Bottom line: 9.2" armored cruiser would cost almost as much as a battlecruiser, but could not stand up against a battlecruiser, nor could serve as an adjunct to the battleline. I was reading about the Courageouses in particular, and read that Fisher was specifying a maximum draft of 22.5 feet. The Courageouses failed that parameter spectacularly, drawing nearly as much as a Renown. I used SpringSharp to try to redesign Courageous to meet the 22.5 foot spec. By going to three twin 9.2" turrets taken from Lord Nelson class pre-dreadnoughts, to meet the cost and availability parameters of the Courageous, I could reduce the draft to 24.5 feet, which still missed Fisher's requirement.
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wrt the collapse of the naval treaties, Japan gave formal notice in 1934 that they would drop out of the treaty system at the expiration of First London, at the end of 36. Italy did not participate in the Second London treaty, due to the other parties being upset about Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. The Washington Treaty had licensed France to build up to 70,000 tons of battleships, beginning in 27 and 29, and that license was good until used, not subject to the continuation of the freeze on BB construction in the first London treaty. Dunkerque and Strasbourg used some 53,000 of the 70,000 ton allotment, so, when Richelieu was laid down in October of 35, it put France blatantly in violation of the treaty. Bottom line, by the time the Second London conference started, the US and UK were the only powers trying to comply with the treaty at all. The US insisted on the gun size escalator, to be triggered in April 37, if any party to the treaty system had not signed on to the Second London treaty. As Japan had given notice two years earlier that it would drop out of the treaty system, it was a virtual certainty that the escalator clause would be tripped. The tonnage escalator was nowhere near as clear. It would be tripped if it was determined that a power that was not a party to the treaty began construction of a ship that was not treaty compliant. When the clause was tripped, the powers participating in the treaty were to confer and agree on a new tonnage limit. Yamato was laid down in November 37. Intelligence reports regarding the amount of material being ordered for Yamato made it clear the ship would significantly exceed 35,000, so, at the start of 1938, the US and UK conferred on where to put the new tonnage limit. From my reading, the UK wanted a 43,000 ton limit, as that was the largest the RN facilities could support, while the US wanted 45,000. Negotiations continued for about six months before the US got the 45,000 ton limit it wanted for the Iowas. So, the short answer is the treaty system died a death of a thousand cuts, over a period of several years, starting in 1934.
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@AsbestosMuffins in a newspaper article on the decision to go to 16", the long running debate was recapped, with the note that the Navy had the same argument when it went from 12" to 14". Soon after the decision was made on the Colorados, there was discussion of changing the New Mexicos and Tennessees to 16". A Navy spokesman was quoted that the New Mexicos were too far along and such a change would have been prohibitively expensive. The barbettes on the Tennessees, from what I have found, were the same diameter as those on the Colorados, 32 feet. The twin 16" turret is slightly lighter than the triple 14", and the part of the 16" turret that extends down into the barbette is 6 inches smaller in diameter, so seems to me the 16" turret should fit a Tennessee fine. Neither California nor Tennessee had been laid down yet. I wonder how close they came to issuing a change order on the Tennessees to go to 16"? What probably made their decision was that the guns and turrets were on order and there would probably be cancellation charges if they made the change. Would they have made the same decision if they knew of the dispersion problems those tripe 14" mounts would suffer? Imagine the impact on the Washington Treaty. With 16" guns, the Tennessees would have been regarded as "post-Jutland", so, with them and Maryland, the US would have it's three "post" ships, and West Virginia and Colorado would be broken up. If the US completed West Virginia and Colorado, it would have five "post" ships, so the Japanese would demand to complete Tosa, to be it's third "post" ship, meeting the 5:5:3 ratio, while making a good argument they could built one ship over treaty limit, because of Hood. Then the UK would need to build four Nelsons for parity.
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A year or two back, I was looking in to the design choices made on the KGVs, and found that armor production was one of the bottlenecks. Some of the armor was subcontracted to a Czech firm, to ease the bottleneck. I looked at the armor produced for the cancelled South Dakota class in the early 20s: 13.5" vs 14.7" for the KGVs, and both were flat sided designs, rather than inclined. The greatest difference was, after the KGV design was revised, it's belt extended one deck higher. Cranked up the alt history generator, to create someone in the Navy Department, in 1922, suggesting to SecNav Denby " The Washington treaty will allow us to build battleships again in ten years. Let's keep all that very expensive armor that has been made for the South Dakotas, so it can be used in the future". When the future arrives, the North Carolinas are designed with sloped armor, so the armor that had been stored for 15 years can't be used. So FDR sends a note to the British naval attache at the DC embassy, asking if the Admiralty might have use of a large quantity of battleship armor, suitable for flat sided installation. Unfortunately, such a thrifty minded person did not seem to be in the Navy Department in 22. The SecNav annual report a few years later reported that the last of the armor that had been made for the :South Dakotas had been sold as scrap.
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wrt the question about ships being repaired in a neutral US, there were two cases of German ships coming to the US for fuel and repairs in WWI, which both turned into a preview of the Graf Spee's situation. The commerce raider Prinz Eitel Friedrich steamed into Newport News Virginia on March 10, 1915 for fuel and repairs. It became quite an event as, in a hot second, there were British and French warships barely outside the US' 3 mile limit waiting for the Friedrich to attempt a breakout. US shore batteries were put on alert and a USN battleship patrolled to enforce US neutrality in case the Brits or French tried to attack the Friedrich in US waters. Ultimately, the Friedrich's captain opted for internment, rather than try to elude the British squadron. Then, on April 12th, the Kronprinz Wilhelm steamed into Newport News, also for fuel and repair, and the dance was repeated, until the Wilhelm's captain also chose internment. I would say the difference between the two incidents in Newport News, and the Graf Spee's, and British ships refitting in the US, is, in the case of the British ships, the Germans did not have the naval force to try and trap the ship as it left the US.
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The Colorado class has provided hours of entertainment speculating on alternate treatments of the class. Drac didn't really note it, but the Colorados were a 1916 design. Maryland was laid down only days after the US entered WWI, but the other three were delayed until after the war, being laid down in 1919-20. This delay had the result of three of the class still building at the time of the WNT. West Virginia and Colorado were completed, in exchange for the two Delawares being scrapped/demilitarized, while Washington was used for target practice. One alternate scenario: the USN takes the same path as the Admiralty in cancelling outright the Colorados, for the same reasons the Admiralty cancelled their 1914 BB program. The same decision would also result in Tennessee never being laid down, and possibly California, on which little progress had been made, being cut up on the slipway to clear it for higher priority ships. Where would that leave the USN in 1922? None of the Tennessees or Colorados ever completed, and all the postwar South Dakotas and Lexingtons exceed treaty limits. Another avenue of inquiry is how could the Washington have been saved? It appears that the money spent modernizing the Floridas in the 1920s, equaled or exceeded the money it would have cost to complete Washington. So the US completes Washington, and scraps the two Floridas. If the UK complains, give them a license to build a third Nelson, but, as the RN is still well over it's tonnage limit, building another Nelson would require two Iron Dukes be scrapped. Similarly, if the Japanese demanded to be allowed to build another Nagato, they would have to scrap a Fuso or Kongo to make the tonnage available, so, net, they would gain little for all the money spent.
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On the question about having wing turrets, and Drac's note that Fisher liked the idea of more armament being able to fire forward: I have read that on the Dunkerque and Richelieu class ships, all the main guns were placed forward so they could all be used to fire at Italian ships as they ran away. Now, I have only read that in one place, have no idea if that was the author's attempt at humor, and freely acknowledge that some Italian forced acquitted themselves well. I will further note that ships with 3 main, centerline, turrets usually have 2 forward and 1 aft, except for the French Normanie class, that had one quad turret forward and two quads aft. Of course, the Normandies look to me like the designers were expecting a drydock 100' longer to be available for construction, and, when such a facility was not built, simply erased A turret and cut the bow off the thing.
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wrt the question of the Washington treaty being delayed for 3 years. That puts the start of the conference at November 24, during the US election. President Harding died in August, 23, so Coolidge is POTUS, running for a second term. From my reading, the US called the Washington conference because there was a sense that Congress would withdraw funding for the current construction program, regardless what other countries did, so Harding decided to try to get other countries to limit construction in sync with the US. In that light, Washington would have been completed, but all the Lexingtons and South Dakotas could very well have been cancelled and cut up on the slipway, regardless what anyone else did. In reality, Coolidge would probably have started the conference a month or two earlier, as a campaign ploy.
In Japan, the quake was in August, 1923. Amagi was laid down in December 20. Without the delays due to the treaty negotiations and conversion to a carrier, Amagi would have been in the water, and safe, when the quake hit. The second pair of Amagis were scheduled to be complete in December 24. There would have been an argument that the second pair of Amagis needed to be scrapped. Both Tosas would be complete. None of the Kiis or 13s would be complete. So, net, the IJN gains the two Tosas and first two Amagis. As the US would have unilaterally scrapped the Lexingtons in 22-23, there would have never been a clause allowing conversions that exceeded the treaty 27,000 carrier limit, so the second pair of Amagis, and the Kiis, are all broken up, rather than be converted.
In the back of my mind is the thought the G3s and N3s were a bluff. When the US and UK were negotiating the tonnage escalator in 37, the UK was looking for a limit around 42,000, because that was what their facilities could handle. As the G3 and N3 exceed that displacement, I suspect they were not intended to actually be built.
Of course, a 1924 Washington conference could very well have failed, entirely. In February 1927, Coolidge called a conference in Geneva to limit total tonnage of smaller ships, as the original Washington treaty limited capital ships. The conference failed. I have read the British were making comments to the effect "the US is trying to buy parity on the cheap". The US would probably walk in to a 1924 Washington conference with the same idea: force other nations to draw their naval strength down to what the US had. The other nations would probably react the same way they did in 27, and, effectively, tell Coolidge to take a flying leap.
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wrt the KGVs being built with 15"/42s. During the design process, the Admiralty's own technical analysis branch determined that a 9-15" armament would give the best combination of firepower, protection, and speed. Someone, I think First Sea Lord Chatfield, clung to the "more smaller guns equals more hits" theory, and pressed for 14". Just as raising the height of the armor belt caused B turret to be reduced from 4-14" to 2, I would expect the same increase in armor to result in B turret being reduced from 3-15" to 2.
The switch from 16" to 14" in Second London appears to have been pressed for by the UK. Without someone in the Admiralty pushing for 14", the gun size limit would probably have been left at 16".
First London had extended the construction moratorium, so it would not have been possible to start the KGVs any earlier than they were historically. KGV and PoW were laid down on New Year Day in 37, the first day after the First London moratorium expired.
Guns were not the only bottleneck in the construction of the KGVs. British production capacity for armor had also atrophied since the end of WWI. I have read that some of the armor for the KGVs had to be contracted out to a Czech firm.
When most of the Iron Dukes, and Tiger, were scrapped in the early 30s, many of their 13.5" guns were retained. I have read that the KGV's 14" was designed to fit the same mount as the 13.5". In the back of my mind is the thought that, had there been a shortage of 14", the Admiralty had a contingency plan to mount 13.5" in their place on the KGVs.
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This was a fascinating time for carrier development. I have offered, from time to time, that the USN was nuts building the Lexingtons. The USN had so little experience with Langley, and a bit of advice from the Brits, that they really didn't know what they were doing. It's a miracle the Lexingtons came out as well as they did. On the other hand, without the Lexingtons, there would have been enough tonnage in the treaty quota to build three more Yorktowns, with enough left over to build Wasp as another full sized Yorktown, or enough tonnage to build three 27,000 ton proto-Essexes, while refusing to go along with the Brit's push to cut carrier tonnage to only 23,000.
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Better yet: doomed when the Lexingtons were converted, as they used so much of the US' tonnage quota that the Navy was forced into a lot of compromises. The USN had intended to use the rest of the tonnage to build 5 the size of the Ranger. Once they had Ranger built, they realized that wasn't a good idea, so built the 2 Yorktowns. Decent carriers, but that only left enough tonnage for another under sized, under powered, under protected ship. Yes, three torpedo hits would do a lot of damage, but Hornet took 3 aerial torpedo hits, 3 bomb hits, and 2 Kamikaze Vals, then a spread of US torpedoes, 400 5" gun hits, and 4 Long Lances from Japanese destroyers before sinking. Now there is a tough ship!
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wrt the ships Chile acquired after WWI, I hope they didn't pay too much for those destroyers. The first two of the class, which Chile received new, just before the war, lasted through WWII. The three that the RN had requisitioned, had apparently been run hard (HMS Broke had a couple particularly lurid engagements), as they went to the breakers in the early 30s. The subs Drac refers to are probably the six British H class boats built in the US by Fore River. Those subs were part of the order the Admiralty placed with Bethlehem Steel in 1914. With the US being neutral at the time, the Wilson administration impounded the subs. The Admiralty hit on the idea of signing over the subs to Chile as partial payment for Latorre and Cochrane, when those unfinished battleships were requisitioned. As Chile was not involved in the war, the Wilson administration approved of the sale. The sub's departure from the US, bound for Chile, was reported in US newspapers at the time.
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wrt retaining the Courageous class as "large light cruisers", given the WNT's classifications, anything over 10,000 tons or with guns larger than 8" is a "capital ship", the Courageouses would count as capital ships. That being said, the treaty says, wrt the tonnage quotas for each power: " The total capital ship replacement tonnage of each of the Contracting Powers shall not exceed in standard displacement,..." it sounds like the tonnage limit only becomes a factor when a power starts replacing older ships. The original UK retention list totaled some 580,000 tons. When the two Nelsons were built, they replaced four older ships, and reduced total UK tonnage to 558,950 tons. Sounds to me that, in principle, the RN could have retained as many ships as it wanted to, but had to draw down the fleet to the 525,000 limit as those older ships were replaced. As for the Courageous' mission in WWII, I'm thinking convoy escort/raider hunter in the Atlantic or Indian Oceans. Before being attached to Force Z, Repulse was performing that mission in the Indian Ocean.
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wrt the question about 1939 AA upgrades, iirc, one of the issues with the Vickers Pom-Pom was that no-one in the US made cordite, and the Vickers did not work right with USN smokeless. My preferred alternate would be the Browning designed, Colt refined, 37mm, that the US Army used. Add the refinements that were added later in the war: ammo feed from either side, and ammo in metal link belts, rather than clips, and the 37mm could have been used in the same style of mounts as the Vickers. So the USN could have had a locally produced Pom-Pom, that had better range than the Vickers.
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wrt basing battleships in the Philippines, at one time, the Mississippi and Idaho, the two undersized ships that were sold to Greece, could have been based in the Philippines, as they were small enough to be accommodated in the Dewey drydock. That would also solve the problem of those two ships lacking the speed and range to steam with the Connecticuts, as they would be steaming by themselves.
Realistically, as Drac said, anything sent to the Philippines in 41, would be going to it's doom. The US could not forward deploy enough force to really be a deterrent. Drac reviewed USN pre-war battle plans some time ago. The plans seemingly imply that the Philippines would be written off if they were attacked. To get to the Philippines, from Hawaii, would have required steaming through thousands of miles of ocean, populated with islands the Japanese had held since 1918.
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