Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 308 (Part 1)" video.

  1. 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.
    7
  2.  @Drachinifel  one of the books I read, when I looked in to this issue, two years ago, said 12,500 tons of armor where ordered from Czechoslovakia. Where that specific armor went is probably immaterial. The point is how capacity limited British industry was. That same book says that British capacity to build mounts and fire control equipment was also limited, to the point where the armor was not necessarily the only impediment to completing the ships. I think other sources have said Anson and Howe were specifically delayed waiting on fire control systems. From what I have read, the UK was the driver of the move to 14". The decision on gun size needed to be made by the end of 35, before the conference started, to meet completion targets. It was the US indicating that it would accept 14", if Japan agreed, that was the green light for the UK to commit to 14" for the KGVs. I don't know which book that information came from. It was not Friedman, or Raven. All I have is photographs of the pages, that I took when I had the book in hand.
    5
  3. wrt the question about the USN's superimposed turrets, these were the brainchild of a young officer at BuOrd named Joseph Strauss. Strauss was the same bright spark who, years later, as head of BuOrd, decreed that the 14" was the perfect gun, because combat at ranges greater than 12,000 yards would never happen. As Drac said, improvements in rate of fire of the main guns rendered the superimposed turrets redundant. Someone else in the Navy Department figured out that, what was needed in the large turrets, was paying a little attention to ergonomics, and training the crews better. The Navweaps article on the 12"/40, the gun mounted on the Virginias, shows the rate of fire improving from 0.66 round per minute when the ships were first commissioned, to 2 rounds per minute after the modifications to turret ergonomics and training had been implemented in 1906.
    1