Washington and WWI

[Laurence Batchelor]

I think HMS Incomparable would have a solid shot at being built had there been no WWI. The actual merits of a class of extra-long range, lightly armored, 6X20" gun battle cruisers is not the main point. The main point is such a ship would surely prompt a general rise in the average gun caliber of all subsequent dreadnoughts. If Incomparables were to become actualities, then as soon as data on the Imcomparable becomes general knowledge, I suspect all new battleships on the drawingboard anywhere in the world would be immediately reworked to incorporate guns at least 18" in caliber.

What huge beasties the guns of August deprived the naval world.

Well if it was actually to be built at all it would have to become the new class of British Dreadnought.
In service as part of the Grand/Home Fleet and not merely a Baltic Invasion Force Experimental job, 'Fisher having yet another day dream' warship
There would have to be a class of 4/5 of them say.

Did the USA & Japan start to build 18" guns ships in 1916 when Furious arrived on the scene, nope! they did only a few years later.

Also if the RN was to leap to a new class of 18" or 20" gun battleships she would do exactly what she did with the 15" and fool the world, for a while at least.

Name it on all official paperwork the Vickers 14" experimental, or in this case 16" or 18" experimental, and there would be total secrecy as to the guns performance and calibre.

Only when fitted aboard would other World's Navy's start to see it was infact larger.

[Werner]

There was no experience with such RF guns. It would remain for commanders to decide whether 8x15, 6x18, or 4x20 inch guns would provide an advantage.

It's pretty clear that even the shock of a 11 or 14 inch gun hit can disable essential systems, even if it does not penetrate armor plate directly. I wonder if the smaller salvos and lower rate of fire are worth the cost.

The real paradigm shift of the 1930s was to automatic or extremely rapid fire guns of moderate caliber (6-8 inch at 10-12 rounds/gun/minute) and accurate radar gunfire controls.

[Guest]

There was no experience with such RF guns. It would remain for commanders to decide whether 8x15, 6x18, or 4x20 inch guns would provide an advantage.

It's pretty clear that even the shock of a 11 or 14 inch gun can disable essential systems, even if it does not penetrate armor plate directly. I wonder if the smaller salvos and lower rate of fire are worth the cost.

If the shell fails to penetrate, it is true that all is not lost and the shock of the impact can still do a good deal of damage. But I think no one in his right mind would forgo a good armor penetration and live with the shock effect instead if he had a choice.

[Werner]

There was no experience with such RF guns. It would remain for commanders to decide whether 8x15, 6x18, or 4x20 inch guns would provide an advantage.

It's pretty clear that even the shock of a 11 or 14 inch gun can disable essential systems, even if it does not penetrate armor plate directly. I wonder if the smaller salvos and lower rate of fire are worth the cost.

If the shell fails to penetrate, it is true that all is not lost and the shock of the impact can still do a good deal of damage. But I think no one in his right mind would forgo a good armor penetration and live with the shock effect instead if he had a choice.

How many penetrating hits put Bismarck out of action?

[Guest]

If the shell fails to penetrate, it is true that all is not lost and the shock of the impact can still do a good deal of damage. But I think no one in his right mind would forgo a good armor penetration and live with the shock effect instead if he had a choice.

How many penetrating hits put Bismarck out of action?

Quite a few, exact number unknown, was required to silence her main batteries. I don't think no non-penetrating shock damage has ever lead to a catastrophic ammunition flash over or magazine fire, which is the surest way of defeating an opposing battleship. Capabilities have been degraded by non-penetrating shock damage, but no decisive results had ever been achieved by this means. Turret or magazine penetration, on the other hand, kill 4-5 capital ships just off the top of my head.

[Werner]

I'll leave a Bismarck enthusiast to chime in, but my understanding is the communications conduits above the armored deck were severed, making the coordinated control of her battery impossible; the radar was knocked out by the shock of her own guns, and she was either not sunk but scuttled, or sunk by the final blows of several torpedo hits.

[Laurence Batchelor]

There was no experience with such RF guns. It would remain for commanders to decide whether 8x15, 6x18, or 4x20 inch guns would provide an advantage.

Since when has lack of experience stunted technical progress in this area?

The concesus before WWI was still to have a good spread e.g. around a slavo of 8 heavy shells for a Battleship.

Just because the calibre goes up doesn't mean the barrel number has to drastically come done.
Think if no WWI all that tonnage free to use from non-implementation of extra deck armour and anti-torpedo defense systems.

You comments of non shell penetration are of course correct, but stay in the correct time frame guys.
The dreadnought designers haven't got Jutland to study and evaluate in this hypothetical naval arms race.

[Werner]

Turret or magazine penetration, on the other hand, kill 4-5 capital ships just off the top of my head.

You are obviously referring to the defective cordite in use by the British at Jutland. The failure of these ships was not design, but chemistry.

I even assert (and have asserted in this forum) that Hood's loss was because the Admiralty kept powders for large guns too long, allowing volatiles to evaporate making the powders more "tender".

[Laurence Batchelor]

It wasn't cordite, I don't know why you keep mentioning only that.
Is that a chemical science background/interest shining through?

The failure at Jutland was in mainly the fuses in use by the British.

British armour piercing shells if impacted on armour plate at an angle which was not close to 90degrees then the fuse would merely break up on impact.
This would mean it would detonate the shell on the surface of the armour plate and not, like the superior German shells, have the correct delay and let the shell get through the armour plate before detonation.

If Britain had in service her rectified 1918 shells and improved fuses in 1916 at Jutland she would have unquestionably have sunk 2 battlecruisers (Seydiltz & Derflinger sp?), 1 battleship and debatably a few more ships also.

[Werner]

British post-WW.I tests proved their formula was 10x more likely to detonate accidentally than US powders of the period. The real problem at Jutland was British powders were simply too dangerous.

[Guest]

I think another aspect people should remember is, even relative to its gun power and armored thickness, the conceptual "ideal" size of battleship has increased dramatically between WWI and WWII. For example, while Yamato displaced 69,000 tons in trial conditions, a ship with broadly similar key statistics such as speed, gun caliber and maximum thickness of belt, but built according to pre-Jutland principles, would probably only register in the 45,000 - 50,000 tons range. Much of the increased weight of WWII era ships are consumed by the heavy armored deck, which in its WWII form constituted the dominant portion of armor weight in any battleship. Other increases includes the need to provide underwater hull volume for torpedo defense, a consciousness for the need to provide higher margin of reserve buoyancy and stability, and the fact that even if its maximum thickness did not increase appreciably, belts of WWII battleships were more or less uniformly thick and covered a larger area where as WWI belts had more gradations of thickness and covered smaller area overall.

So in the no-war scenario, we will have seen ships with monster gun caliber and other intimidating statistics that displaced surprisingly little next to the sort of WWII bench mark that comes to mind, like the Yamato.

[Laurence Batchelor]

Having read the der facto Jutland analysis by Lambert I disagree.

He having looked at all the evidence, which he also presents,
He suggests the battlecruisers exploded from mainly iffy safety practices which had been allowed to go on in the Royal Navy to push for rapid fire, when common sense should have put a stop to it.

If you like I can email you the study? I have it scanned in somewhere and also have a printed copy.

That was what I was suggesting much earlier Chuck, without WWI by 1920 we might have the same gun calibres, but we have much less effective warships!
They are weaker and for their size would take less to sink in torpedoes say than a Yamato, Lion, Montana etc.

[Werner]

Yamato's generation also had an explosive growth in auxiliary features, from a stable element deep below the waterline to electrical generators and chillers, telephone switchboards, aviation facilities, radios and tankage for a war in the Pacific, not the North Sea.

[Guest]

Having read the der facto Jutland analysis by Lambert I disagree.

He having looked at all the evidence, which he also presents,
He suggests the battlecruisers exploded from mainly iffy safety practices which had been allowed to go on in the Royal Navy to push for rapid fire, when common sense should have put a stop to it.

If you like I can email you the study? I have it scanned in somewhere and also have a printed copy.

But it was still armor penetration that initiated the end of these ships, whatever the direct igniter of the magazine happened to be. All the debates merely centered around whether these ships could have been saved even after the penetration. I don't believe any of the battle cruiser explosions were ultimately initiated by shock effects of non-penetrating hits. If there were no armor penetration, there would have been no magazine explosion.

[Laurence Batchelor]

Right bedtime me thinks, damn why can't we all live in the same timezone!
This was just getting interesting

But it was still armor penetration that initiated the end of these ships, whatever the direct igniter of the magazine happened to be. All the debates merely centered around whether these ships could have been saved even after the penetration. I don't believe any of the battle cruiser explosions were ultimately initiated by shock effects of non-penetrating hits. If there were no armor penetration, there would have been no magazine explosion.

Yes but if only 1 turret is penetrated, it would help if the whole forward magazine wasn't sitting there exposed with a nice trial of powder leading from the breech, down the loading trays, down into the handling room, into the piles of shells in the gangway, and through the open doors leading to the full magazine.

1 penetration into a turret not following blindly the rapid-fire policy perhaps would not have lost the entire ship and 1000 or so souls!

The turret should have been self contained, and if a fire did start in there after penetration there would be enough time to flood the magazine.
With Rapid fire, there wasn't this time to react and so hence

I believe Invincible & Indefatigable would have been saved if they had not been following the above policy, just like Lion was and we can see the proof in the pudding there!

Really need sleep now

[Werner]

Bismarck was either scuttled or sunk by torpedoes from Dorsetshire. She was wrecked but not sunk by major caliber hits.

The WW.I battleships and battlecruisers were lost because powder arrangements were inappropriate.

[Guest]

Bismarck was either scuttled or sunk by torpedoes from Dorsetshire. She was wrecked but not sunk by major caliber hits.

The WW.I battleships and battlecruisers were lost because powder arrangements were inappropriate.

Major caliber penetrations certainly occurred to blow out the backs of some of her 15" turrets.

[Werner]

Bismarck was either scuttled or sunk by torpedoes from Dorsetshire. She was wrecked but not sunk by major caliber hits.

The WW.I battleships and battlecruisers were lost because powder arrangements were inappropriate.

Major caliber penetrations certainly occurred to blow out the backs of some of her 15" turrets.

I'm no expert, buy I think it was the 15cm turret that was blown out.

A major caliber penetrating hit would have started fires or explosions in the citadel ala Jutland. I do not believe this was the case for Bismarck. She had her own defects, such as the propeller/rudder arrangement which would have benefit from the South Dakota's stern design and an armor deck carried higher on the hull, but her side armor served her well.

[Guest]

Major caliber penetrations certainly occurred to blow out the backs of some of her 15" turrets.

I'm no expert, buy I think it was the 15cm turret that was blown out.

A major caliber penetrating hit would have started fires or explosions in the citadel ala Jutland. I do not believe this was the case for Bismarck. She had her own defects, such as the propeller/rudder arrangement which would have benefit from the South Dakota's stern design and an armor deck carried higher on the hull, but her side armor served her well.

I don't remember submersible imagine of the Bismark found any indications of major caliber hits on the main 12" belt. I believe her 6" upper belt were penetrated many times by 14" and 16" shells. But it might well be that her 12" lower belt played no role in the action. But the turrets are often considered to be part of the citadel, as is the armored conning tower. They are all protected to a degree at least equal to the main magazine and engineering spaces. Penetration to the turrets certainly contributed decisively to silencing the Bismark.

[Guest]

We may never know, but to what degree did main citadel penetration contribute to the end of Fuso and Yamashiro.