Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Development of the North Carolina class - The Nelson that never was" video.

  1.  @kemarisite  interesting. Their problem was incomplete combustion? I have read of the British trying different diameters of cordite sticks. Sticks in my mind I have heard of hollow cordite sticks, to increase surface area, to increase combustion speed. It seems the energy density of RN cordite is quite a bit lower than USN smokeless, as British guns tend to have much larger chambers. The 16"/45 on the Nelsons has a 35,205cuin chamber, while the 16"/45 Mk I as used on the US Colorados, has a 23,506cuin chamber. During WWI, the RN tried cordite in the US built 14" on one class of monitors, and found a significant reduction in range, vs that obtained with USN powder. One wonders if the British issue with incomplete combustion would have been addressed by switching to USN smokeless, so there is less charge to burn in the first place.
    1