Washington and WWI

[Guest]

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.

I will have to point out that by not putting nine pints into a gallon jar, the Aganos probably did indeed caused Japanese naval constructor the least amount of lost sleep. And indeed by having allowing something of slack margin to be built into those ships, they probably were adaptable from naval constructor's point of view in terms of ability to take more top weight.

But they were hardly very successful or very versatile cruisers from operational point of view. They were weaker than the Leanders, and roughly comparable to the Orions, despite being 10 years later than those British cruisers. Japan did not have a role for an Orion like cruiser, and they would have hardly stood any better chance than a typical destroyer had they come under either air attack or attack by any modern US cruisers. They were essentially monster destroyer leaders at a time when destroyer leaders as a class was already obsolete.

[Werner]

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.

Another anonymous hit for a phantom Japanese crew?

Even the mechanical cycle takes longer. You have a variable distance between breech and powder and shell, people get tired and so on.

I suggest you retract or back up your insult. In the putative Des Moines battle, the American cruiser was chosen because she had automatic magazines and loading systems which would keep the rate of fire steady up to 10 rounds/minute/gun (some sources say 12 was possible).

[Guest]

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:

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.

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.

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.

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%?

[Guest]

I think we operate under the misconception that naval constructors all think equally clearly and work equally hard, and only experience, differing vision by operational staff or the intransigence of politically imposed limits separate the qualities of their works.

I think that is not true, even accounting for differing levels of experience, naval staff demands and other other different external factors, we still see evidence that some works are indeed better thought out, more thoroughly analyzed, and takes less for granted than others. I think the British took quite a bit for granted in the actual design of KGV, perhaps more so than anyone else except the Italians. Bismark and Richelieu were, on the other hand, was probably the most thoroughly designed and analyzed from naval architectural perspective.

[Laurence Batchelor]

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?

It was some years after WW2 until Yamato's full design was known.

The Royal Navy paid the penalty for obeying Treaty's it held the honour to uphold.
Furthermore in the 1920s-30s the money was simply not there for them test and evaluate things to the same technical level as other nations who were pumping more time and money in.

Despite this I still hold the KGV class in design terms quite lacking.
I've discussed them before with David K Brown & John Roberts and they simply see it as too much of a compromised design.

[ar]

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%?

On this last point I will admit my lack of knowledge. Which means that I cannot respond.

[Guest]

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?

It wasn't Yamato. It was Richelieu.

[Guest]

I am not sure if the decision to focus on economy at maximum speed rather than cruising speed was forced on the British by displacement limitations. It would seem to be an engineering choice with little effect upon displacement. The only reason I can think of for this odd choice would be that Britain was very confident she would have bases near wherever KGV would operate, and KGVs' normal operating mode would be to sit at readiness in port and dash out of anchorages like interceptors for specific missions only rather than to operate in more usual sea keeping or patroling roles.

[Laurence Batchelor]

Sorry point taken about Richelieu.

On KGV I also vaguely remember reading it was the overiding rule about adopting the unit principle for her machinery for surviability reasons.

[Filipe Ramires]

Why was this moved down to "Rant and Rave" section?