The Ship Model Forum

Laurence Batchelor wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
4. Would not operational experiences have suggested that something must be wrong with the claim that the shallowest torpedo defense system in the world would in fact outperform the deepest by 25%?

How on earth could the Royal Navy design team in the early to mid 30s know of Yamato's torpedo defense system and then make the comparison regardless of operational experience?

Anonymous wrote:

ar wrote: The navy with the greatest amount of sea time combined with combat experience usually produce the best in a general sense.

Royal Navy designs were by far the most conservative over the decades and I believe had the greatest utility. Not always the best but not too bad either.
The RN had by far the greatest amount of experience of all types over a very long period; a huge and hidden asset.

Experience and conservatism certain has its value, and undoubtedly it gave British some insight denied to others. But I am not sure if overall, it indeed turned out to be a net boon. I would like to point out several instances in British service where experience and conservatism not only did not light the path to more operationally suitable designs, but combined to generate false confidence in inferior designs:

Your first sentence is flawed.
"some insight". Not true, it gave an enormous amount of of insight.
"net boon"? Not true.
This is experience/utility. The large and hidden asset that I wrote on earlier.
It is impossible for me to prove the above to be true.

1. KGV's power plants were designed to maximize endurance at top speed rather than economical speed. Endurance at top speed is seldom a factor in any warship operation since warships seldom need to travel for extended periods at top speed. In any case, no destroyers could have kept up for long next to a fast battleship running at full speed in any realistic seaway. KGV's utility was indeed severely threatened by her short cruising range during the final battle with the Bismark. All indications are experience would above all other things have prevented such a mistaken priority, yet the most experienced navy was the only one to make such a mistake.

A deliberate decision taken within the limits of available displacement.

2. KGV were the only battleships to both demand a zero-elevation dead ahead fire capability and made no provision whatsoever to address the problem of low free board forward that must result. Zero elevation ahead fire is perhaps worth 1 more salvo by just the guns of the A turret in the unlikely situation where ships engage at point blank range and it is tactically necessary to swing the bow across the bearing of the enemy. Sacraficing general sea keeping to facilitate a feature of such limited utility would seem to bespeak of a lack of experience to determine what is operationally more likely to count. Yet the navy with the greatest operational experience was the only one to get it wrong. Incidentally, other ships which had relatively low freeboard forward took the precaution to flare their bows to improve dryness and sea kindliness forward. Not so with the KGV. KGVs were wet and no design provisions were made to reduce that wetness and enhance sea keeping for operation in severe seas.

The RN did not expect to have to maintain a fleet in the artic. Perhaps thay should have done, but I don't think that anybody else did either.
This was the area of operations where wetness forward became a problem. the Americans especially had many problems operating in these waters with the RN as they related to weather.
American ships of all types had greater flare forward than RN ships and in theory this produces a dryer ship. The problem with artic work was that the weather was often bad to the point where the greater flare on US vessels produced "slamming". This actually made the ships wetter forward, and often forced a reduction in speed. Additionally it produced a greater strain on the hull leading to weather damage to a greater degree than their RN counterparts took.

3. KGVs had ring main electrical systems that allowed a single site of flooding to short out electrical power to half of the ship. Again operational experience should have suggested much higher levels of damage tolerance.

I believe that this was addressed after the loss of the Prince of Wales.

4. Would not operational experiences have suggested that something must be wrong with the claim that the shallowest torpedo defense system in the world would in fact outperform the deepest by 25%?

Anonymous wrote:
4. Would not operational experiences have suggested that something must be wrong with the claim that the shallowest torpedo defense system in the world would in fact outperform the deepest by 25%?

ar wrote: The navy with the greatest amount of sea time combined with combat experience usually produce the best in a general sense.

Royal Navy designs were by far the most conservative over the decades and I believe had the greatest utility. Not always the best but not too bad either.
The RN had by far the greatest amount of experience of all types over a very long period; a huge and hidden asset.

Chuck wrote:I see no reason why the Japanese can not at least achieved their stated salvo rate at least during the initial period of an engagement. Cyclic firing time of ~30 seconds for normal battle range engagements is extremely typical amongst all battleships. Some like the Bismark can theoretically do it in as little as 20. Number of salvos fired, when plotted against the amount of time available to fire them in, suggests that cyclic rates of fire are routinely approached during the opening stages, in good aiming conditions, by a well worked up crew manned worked up equipment.

BTW, Werner would be the first to regale with tales of US cruisers shooting at rates 50% faster than their designed cyclic rates.

ar wrote:AS a postscript of a somewhat general nature is assessing design, construction and performance. I was told by the Japanese Naval Constructor Fukui* in his home in Yokohama in 1973, that the most sucessful cruisers of the Japanese Navy were those of the Agano class. According to Fukui they had the greatest utility because they were conservative in that they (the designers) did not try to get nine pints into a gallon jar, which was one of the major problems that Japanese designers had, and that was because of lack of experience.

Dustermaker wrote:since this has gone pretty off topic any way i may as well say this......The Iowa class BB's are the BEST BB's ever made. Now i will explain why. They were modernized so, the "best" ww2 BB would stand no chance vs a modernized Iowa.......now thats off topic.

Anonymous wrote:

ar wrote:I have to disagree with you disagreement on Vanguard. The only battleship to FULLY exploit lessons learned in ACTUAL COMBAT, of which the RN had the most, and that is what matters the most.

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Vanguard was started too early to fully incorporate the fundamental lessons of the war. She mostly incorporated only the superficial lessons that are also incorporated into the latter units of KGV class. She still had the same sorry torpedo protection inherited from KGV, which proved devastatingly inadequate, making the POW the modern battleship that took the fewest torpedos to actually sink.

I should have written after thinking, "to exploit substantially", which I stand by. The torpedo protection may not have been the best, but internal protection was GREATLY improved in Vanguard along with many other features.

Incidentally, the slopiness of KGV torpedo defense design can be measured from the discrepency between the performance claimed by the designers, and the performance that can realistically be expected due to overall inadequacies of fundamental design, even if all minor technical and implementations problems were ironed out. The KGV designers expected the ship's torpedo defenses to fully absorb a 1000 lb TNT contact explosion. No other WWII design actually built claimed even 75% of that resistance. Yet in all material aspects, such as depth midship, depth abreast of the magazines, bulkhead thickness, etc, KGV's torpedo defenses were the weakest of any WWII battleship. Only the Italian ships, which uses a different, unique and appearently deeply flawed concept, can claim to show evidence of being as weak or weaker than the torpedo defenses of KGV.




level of performance that KGV's designers expected from that sorry system was by far the highest of any WWII battleship. The British expected KGV's torpedo defenses to be able to resist torpedo warheads 33% heavier than what Yamato's designers had believed their system to be capable of resisting, despite the fact that fundamentally KGV's torpedo defenses were materially the weakest of any WWII battleship other than Littorio.

Anonymous wrote:

ar wrote:.

Rate of fire for Yamato; no way mate, not in actual combat. However I am open to be proved wrong if you can quote a reliably source that says that the designed rate of fire was sustained/achieved in an action.
Actual combat performance is what matters the most.

I see no reason why the Japanese can not at least achieved their stated salvo rate at least during the initial period of an engagement. Cyclic firing time of ~30 seconds for normal battle range engagements is extremely typical amongst all battleships. Some like the Bismark can theoretically do it in as little as 20. Number of salvos fired, when plotted against the amount of time available to fire them in, suggests that cyclic rates of fire are routinely approached during the opening stages, in good aiming conditions, by a well worked up crew manned worked up equipment.

BTW, Werner would be the first to regale with tales of US cruisers shooting at rates 50% faster than their designed cyclic rates.

Dustermaker wrote:since this has gone pretty off topic any way i may as well say this......The Iowa class BB's are the BEST BB's ever made. Now i will explain why. They were modernized so, the "best" ww2 BB would stand no chance vs a modernized Iowa.......now thats off topic.

ar wrote:I have to disagree with you disagreement on Vanguard. The only battleship to FULLY exploit lessons learned in ACTUAL COMBAT, of which the RN had the most, and that is what matters the most.

.

ar wrote:.

Rate of fire for Yamato; no way mate, not in actual combat. However I am open to be proved wrong if you can quote a reliably source that says that the designed rate of fire was sustained/achieved in an action.
Actual combat performance is what matters the most.

Laurence Batchelor wrote:.

Italian high performance 15" guns don't mean squat when their ships are always in harbour;