Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 292" video.

  1. wrt the question about the 14" guns on the KGVs, British cordite seems to be considerably less dense than USN smokeless powder. While the weight of the charge in the British guns is less, the chamber size of the British guns is significantly larger. This is also true of the 16"/45 used on the Nelsons vs the 16"/45 used on the US Colorado class. The muzzle velocity of the British guns is a bit lower, but a lower muzzle velocity results in a higher trajectory and steeper angle of fall, which is better able to penetrate deck armor. The debate about whether to stay with 16", or having more guns by downscaling to 14", was a long standing debate. The USN had had exactly the same debate 20 years earlier. The head of BuOrd insisted that engagements would always be fought at 12,000 yards or less, a 14" could penetrate well enough, and, being smaller, more 14" could be carried. The USN General Board looked at the engagement ranges at Jutland, overruled the head of BuOrd, and made long range gunnery the priority. As Drac said, the choice for the KGVs was dependent on the same condition that the head of BuOrd had specified in 1915: engaging at short range. I have another theory about the move to 14" guns. UK industry's capacity to make large guns had atrophied since WWI. The guns for the KGVs had to be ordered by late 35, before the change to 14" was specified by the Second London Treaty, to meet the construction schedule for the ships. I have read that the new 14" was designed to fit in the same cradle as the earlier 13.5"/45. When Tiger and most of the Iron Dukes were scrapped in the early 30s, the Admiralty retained many of the 13.5" guns. Navweaps says 54 of those guns were in inventory in 1939. It may be possible that the Admiralty designed the KGV gun mounts for backward compatibility. If there was a development or production problem with the new 14"/45, I think it is possible the Admiralty was looking at completing some or all of the KGVs with the 13.5" as a stopgap.
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  2.  @dougjb7848  the Admiralty did not have sufficient quantity of 16" guns of any sort laying in a warehouse. I am proposing the 13.5" as a stopgap, if there was a design or production problem that prevented new 14" being built to equip all the KGVs in a timely manner. For that matter, there appears to have been close to 200 15"/42s built. With the Revenges, QEs, Renowns and Hood, that totals 100 afloat at any given time. With, say, 16 or 24 held in inventory for rapid replacements for serving ships, there would be plenty more available to equip the KGVs, at 8 or 9 guns per ship, if a new 15" suffered design or production delays. The bias at the Admiralty at that time was for more, smaller, guns, hence the shift to 14", of which they also had roughly comparable replacements in inventory.
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