Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "Drachinifel"
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Thinking on this a bit more, the Washington treaty allowed France to lay down a new, treaty compliant, BB in 27 and 29. With two of the Normandie class hulls at 65% complete, France could have pressed to have the 1927 and 1929 construction windows revised to allow for completion of existing, unfinished, hulls as an alternate to laying down new hulls. Then France could have closed up the hulls of Normandie and Flandre and laid them up for 5-7 years, while a new, longer, drydock is built. When construction resumes, as their original displacement was only 25,000T, there is plenty of room for doing the work considered in 1919 to make them 28kt ships, along with building a modern superstructure with modern secondary armament. Then scrapping two of the Courbets in 30-31 A Normandie built to late 20s standards, could easily defeat a Deutschland, so the Dunkerques would probably never have been built.
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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 A year earlier, December of 34, Japan had withdrawn from the treaty system.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.
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wrt the question about the Axis having adequate fuel supplies. The Vichy government was increasingly accommodating to the Axis. Luftwaffe aircraft were operating out of fields in Vichy held Syria. The Germans and Italians supported a coup in Iraq that put an Axis friendly regime in power. Oil was being produced at that time in Iraq. A 12" pipeline was operating, which ran between Kirkuk and Haifa. After the formation of Israel, part of that pipeline was repurposed for a new line to Baniyas, Syria. A rail line had been built by the Ottoman Empire from northern Iraq to the Med, but, after WWI, part of that rail line ventured into Turkey, which was neutral in WWII. In April 41, the Axis could have landed on friendly beaches in Syria, driven into friendly held oil fields in Iraq, and begun construction of rail and pipeline connections to bring the oil to friendly ports in the Med. The British invaded Iraq to reinstall a friendly regime in May 41, then invaded Vichy Syria in June 41, closing the window of opportunity the Axis had to secure a major oilfield. Can't help but wonder why Hitler decided invading Russia in June 41 was a better idea.
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American AA guns on Yamato. imho, would not have made a difference, due to the number of USN aircraft used in the attacks. The Japanese Type 89s on Yamato and Type 98s that were probably mounted on most of the escorts don't give up that much to the 5/38. The Type 96 topped the Oerlikon in both projectile weight and range, but had a much lower rate of fire. The only gap in the Japanese AA capability was a midsize autocannon. Building the Italian Model 1938 37mm under license, while not as good as the Bofors, would have filled that gap. But none of this would matter due to the weight of the USN attack. RAF Wing Commander Pat Gibbs DSO DFC & Bar worked out the principles of successful air attack against ships. during the war. The RAF didn't have dive bombers, so relied on torpedo bombers. Against a single ship, like Bismark, torpedo bombers did well enough. Against escorted ships, where the torpedo bombers had to fly over a destroyer screen, the aircraft were torn to shreds by AA fire. The tactics refined by Gibbs while commanding a Beaufort squadron on Malta were, first, use an overwhelming force to saturate the defenses, and second, bring along aircraft, in his case Beaufighters, to strafe the ships to suppress AA fire. Accounts of the attack on the Yamato show the pilots were following Gibbs' book.
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wrt the question about carrier conversions if the Washington treaty occurred a few years later. I agree with Drac that the Japanese would have been looking at converting the Kiis. wrt to the USN, SecNav Daniels had proposed another building program to follow the 1916 program that included the Lexigntons. But Daniels was gone with the change of administration in 1921. A four year delay in the treaty would put the conference during the Coolidge administration. Coolidge was even less interested in defense spending than Harding had been. As Drac said, given the attitude in the US during the time, I doubt the USN would have had a big capital ship program in the 20s. It was apparently the US that proposed the battlecruiser conversion clause of the treaty. Without battlecruisers under construction, the US would not have proposed the clause. If the UK has a G3 follow-on under construction, it might propose the conversion clause, but why would the US agree to it? I am not sure the conversion clause would have existed at all. Without the special clause, conversions would be limited by the treaty's general carrier specification of 27,000 tons. Or, the conference could fail entirely, as the 1927 (Coolidge administration) conference failed. There may not have been a successful naval conference until First London, in 1930, motivated by the depression.
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@solutionless123 the arms trade in general has always been a bit shady. Basil Zaharoff, an agent for Vickers, had a tendency to oversell their products. An incident relayed in "Reilly Ace Of Spies", pitted Riley, a British spy, against Zaharoff, for contracts for new ships for Russia. Riley maneuvered himself into position as the representative in Russia for Blohm und Voss. Reilly then advised British Intelligence, that, if B&V won the contract, he would forward full sets of drawings of the ships to the British government, giving the British government an incentive to hobble Zaharoff's efforts, cost Vickers a fortune in profits, cost thousands of British shipyard workers their jobs, to gain intelligence about German ship design. meanwhile, Reilly would pocket a massive sales commission from B&V. The US government made sizeable trade concessions to Argentina to aid US yards in winning the contracts for the Rivadavias, even though the Curtis turbines the ships were equipped with were considerably inferior to British Parsons turbines. The Admiralty bought some 14" guns that Bethlehem Steel had built for the Greek battleship that was building in Germany. The Brits discovered the gun design was defective, the guns tended to droop. I have not seen specific numbers, but I have read that the price Chile paid for Latorre and the destroyers was at a significant discount to their original contract price. Latorre was no longer a new ship, and was becoming obsolete by 1920. The destroyers were from an order for six Chile had placed before the war. Chile received two destroyers just before the war started, but the other four were requisitioned by the Admiralty. One of the four was sunk at Jutland. The other three were very active during the war, with HMS Broke being involved in two particularly lurid brawls. The two ships that Chile had received new from the builders in 1914 lasted until 1945, but the three that had been with the RN during the war went to the breakers in 1933. I wonder how serviceable those three had been for several years before they were scrapped, as Chile rang up Thornycroft in 1928 and ordered six more destroyers.
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If you look at the actual data, the per-capita murder rate in Chicago is well below that of several other cities. Two factors lead to the media hype and hysteria: Chicago has a large population, so there are more murders in total, and many members of the media have offices in Chicago, but not in the other, more violent, cities, so it is easier for them to cover violence in Chicago. So far, for 2023, Chicago ranks 10th in per capita murder rate, behind such garden sports as St Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans, Detroit, Cleveland, Kansas City, Memphis, and others. No, I am not a Chicago resident. I live in the burbs of Detroit.
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@kingswagii1607 the ships that were designed from the outset for TE drive had a layout intended to take advantage of the drivetrain. The boiler rooms were located along the sides of the hull, to act as a secondary torpedo defense system, with the turbine/generator sets inboard, along the centerline. There was only room at the inboard end of the prop shafts for the motors. To rebuild the ships to take 1930s vintage geared turbines would require a complete rearrangement of the boiler and engine rooms so that all four turbines could be installed in line with the prop shafts. Secondly, the WNT only allowed defensive improvements in ships: armor, torpedo protection and AA armament. Drac has mentioned that, if the QEs had been built with small tube boilers, they could have made 28kts. Several of the QEs were modernized in the late 30s, including new boilers, but still only made low 20s speeds, so I would assume that the Admiralty's interpretation of the treaty was it was illegal to significantly increase their speed. Italy was granted more leeway in improving their ships as they were so obsolete to begin with, and Japan dropped out of the treaty system, so was no longer constrained.
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@whispofwords2590 I commented on the general carrier history post that the Lexingtons were horribly inefficient as carriers. The Navy compounded the mistake by building them after the tonnage limits of the Washington Treaty were known. The Yorktowns had hanger decks 200' longer than the Lexingtons, on a third less displacement. The two Lexingtons could have been replaced by two Yorktowns, with enough tonnage left over to build another Yorktown, and still have enough tonnage available to build the Wasp as another 20,000 ton carrier. Additionally, the Navy was in a dilemma designing the Yorktowns because every ton added for capability or surviveability took a ton away from the Wasp, edging the Wasp closer to uselessness. Without the Lexingtons hogging tonnage quota, the Navy would have been able to design in more capability and surviveability into Yorktown, Enterprise, Wasp and, ultimately, Hornet, because Hornet was built to the best available design, even though the Navy knew of the compromises made in the Yorktown design.
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@michaelsnyder3871 intelligence operations always involve a degree of guesswork. Remember the conversation between Charlton Heston and Hal Holbrook, as Rochefort, in "Midway"? Heston asked how much of the IJN correspondence they could actually read. Holbrook said words to the effect "we don't really read them. we see a hint here, a glimmer there". Heston says "you're guessing!" That is about it, educated guessing. The Admiralty designed the Admiral class battlecruisers, based on their best guesses about the Mackensens. The Alaska class cruisers were designed based on best guesses about an IJN class of heavy cruisers. The 1938 conference between the US and UK regarding where to set the new displacement limit, was based on their best guess about the size of the Yamato, and their own facilities. Reportedly, the UK wanted a limit of 42,000 due to limits of facilities around the empire (which really makes you wonder if the G3 and N3 were intended to be built, or a bluff, only bargaining chips to be traded away for concessions by other parties to the treaty), while the US wanted 45,000, because that was what was needed to achieve their goals for speed, protection, and firepower. The only thing the US and UK could be reasonably sure of was that Yamato was going to be considerably over 35,000, which triggered the escalator clause. The estimates of how much over 35,000 could have been colored by the parties own agendas. I have read that the assessment was Yamato would be 45,000, which was what the US wanted. I wonder if British Intelligence was saying 42,000, because that was what the Admiralty wanted? The actual data in hand was imprecise. As we saw with Bismark and Littorio, you could be significantly over the treaty limit, without the UK and US catching on. That is why I suggest that, had Yamato not been so far over the limit, but closer to Bismark and Littorio, the US and UK might have not had the confidence to call the IJN on it, and increase the displacement limit.
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wrt the New Yorks using VTE power, the Wiki entry gives a somewhat different answer to that question. The Floridas and Wyomings used Parsons turbines, from the UK. When the New Yorks were ordered, there was apparently pressure to "buy American", but the US turbine manufacturers could not meet the Navy's performance specifications, so the Navy reverted to VTE. Of the next class, Oklahoma still had VTE power, while Nevada used Curtis turbines, then the Pennsylvanias were a head to head comparison of Curtis and Parsons turbines. It is entirely possible that Parsons understood something about turbine efficiency that Curtis did not. There had been earlier head to head comparisons, where the USN would build one BB with VTE power, and it's sister with Curtis turbines and the Curtis powered ships were horribly inefficient. The range and coal capacity for the two classes is incomplete in the 1919 edition of Jane's and somewhat divergent in the Wiki entries, but there is some indication that the Parsons turbines were quite competitive with VTE. The 1919 edition of Jane's also reports an inability/unwillingness of US turbine manufacturers to meet USN specifications motivating the reversion to VTE.
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@t.r.a.e.3218 That bracing, iirc "diagonal riser", was a discovery during Constitution's last restoration. Large frigates had an issue with "hogging", where the bow and stern sag, due to the weight of the ship and guns, where the hull forward and aft is too narrow to provide enough buoyancy to support the load. The diagonal braces direct the loads from the gun deck toward the keel amidships, where there is enough buoyancy to support the load. Apparently, those braces were removed somewhere during the ship's life. The restoration crew was reviewing the small amount of documentation that has survived from the ship's construction and saw mention of "diagonal risers" in the documents. The British had captured USS President, a sister of Constitution, and, per usual Admiralty procedure, made up a set of drawings for her. Those drawings still exist in the Admiralty archives, so the Constitution restoration crew was able to review the drawings, which showed those diagonal braces. Seeing them on the drawings it became obvious how critical they were for the ship's structural integrity, so they were recreated and installed during the restoration.
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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?
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@pedenharley6266 In the late 30s, several old C Class (older than Delhi) cruisers were tagged to be converted into AA cruisers, with, first, single, then twin 4"/45s. That work seems to have been suspended when the war started. Navweaps says that, no matter how many 4"/45s were built, the Admiralty never had enough of them. The USN's supply of 5" guns was probably as tight. I have read about how the USN ramped up production of 4 and 5 inch guns during WWI, farming production out to a large number of companies, but never had enough to arm all the convoy ships, and escorts. I would expect the situation to have been the same in WWII.
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The WNT has provided hours of covid isolation entertainment. The Steve plan of tweaks: first, set the battleship maximums at what was already in commission. Setting gun size at 16" forced the Japanese to lie as the Nagatos had 16.1", so I would set the maximum at 16.1". Hood was far above the 35,000 ton limit, so I would set the individual ship tonnage where Hood was, according to treaty measure, 41,200. Because I hate waste, I would allow ships already in the water to be completed, provided that a corresponding tonnage of existing ships were eliminated. The cutoff date for what is "in the water" would be the same as the cutoff date for "experimental" aircraft carriers, November 12, 1921. This was done with Colorado and West Virginia, in exchange for the two Delawares. I would extend it to allow completion of Washington, at the cost of the two Floridas. I would give the UK the stink eye for crying about not having any 16" gun ships as the RN had a large number of ships with 15" guns while the bulk of the USN and IJN were armed with 14". The Japanese would feel pretty ill-used as Tosa and Kaga missed the "in the water" date by one month and by five days, respectively, so I might offer them the choice of scrapping the Tosas, or completing them, and scrapping three of the Kongos instead.
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I see Ranger as the true heir to Langley, with the same sort of aft boiler room and swiveling funnel arrangement. To my thinking, the Lexingtons should never have been built, with carrier development proceeding directly from Langley to Ranger. Yes, I hear the cries. The Lexingtons are big, and they look nice, but they were horribly wasteful of displacement for the air group they carried. Reading newspaper reports of the time, the cost overruns on the Lexingtons were horrendous, with the ships ending up costing twice as much as originally claimed. The Lexingtons also had an excruciatingly long build time, evidence the USN didn't know what it was doing, and was changing the design frequently as experience was gained with Langley. And, without the Lexingtons, the USN would have had displacement available to build three Yorkowns, with enough left over to build Wasp as another full size Yorktown.
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@janwitts2688 iirc, the US paid Spain some $20M to give up it's claims on the Philippines and Guam. The balance of the Marianas and Carolines were also Spanish colonies, but, with the crown jewel, the Philippines, gone, Spain had little interest in the rest of it's Pacific holdings, so sold the island groups to Germany the next year, for some $4M. Japan, being allied with the UK, overran the German held islands in 1914, and continued to occupy the former German colonies north of the equator, after the war, under a League of Nations mandate. As for the US forcing the citizens of the Philippines to submit by force of arms, that was what imperial powers did at the time. Kipling wrote "White Man's Burden" around the turn of the century to try and make a moral case for imperial conquests.
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