Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 335" video.

wrt the question about secondary armament mounted on top of the main turrets, I have seen a cutaway drawing of a two level turret on a Kearsarge class. The drawing shows internal ammo hoists serving the upper 8" mount, along side the hoists for the 13" on the lower level. The superimposed turrets were the brainchild of Joseph Strauss, during his earlier stint at BuOrd. The problem was the glacial reload times of the 13". The idea was to use the greater rate of fire of the 8" on the upper level to keep up fire while the 13" were reloaded. After Strauss had his way with the Kearsarge and Virginia classes, someone else figured out that, if the navy worked on the ergonomics of the 13" mount, and trained the crews a bit, rate of fire could be improved dramatically, rendering the superimposed 8" mount redundant.
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Thanks for your thoughts on the twin DP 4". On a Facebook group, recently, I proposed doing a mass "austere" update on all of the QEs and Rs, replacing all the casemate 6", with twin 4"., rather than spending so many resources on the more expensive rebuilds if QE, and Valiant, leaving the other ships unable to mount a credible AA defense. I credit their lack of AA as the primary reason Repulse, and, later, all of the Revenges, were banished to the Indian Ocean.
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