RN Powder/Cord and Hood

[phil gollin]

Admiral Holland is not to blame for following doctrine. Let's remember Admiral Byng was executed for not doing so. Although it would have been highly unlikely that Holland or any other WW.II Admiral would be shot for failing to follow fighting instructions, the point was institutionally sound and from the same point-of-view fairly recent in nature.

After all, Holland could have saved Hood simply by turning Northeast instead of West to engage.

I really do think you are confusing things (at least to me).

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[Werner]

I meant Holland could have saved Hood by disobeying orders and turning away from Bismarck.

[phil gollin]

I meant Holland could have saved Hood by disobeying orders and turning away from Bismarck.

Still no clearer I'm afraid - Hood was finishing the (more) dangerous phase (the approach) and was just getting into the "proper" phase (the decisive gun duel) - Her belt armour was sufficiently good to engage the Bismarck.

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[Werner]

I meant Holland could have saved Hood by disobeying orders and turning away from Bismarck.

Still no clearer I'm afraid - Hood was finishing the (more) dangerous phase (the approach) and was just getting into the "proper" phase (the decisive gun duel) - Her belt armour was sufficiently good to engage the Bismarck.

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You're being too literal. Cheez, between you and Chuck, it's hard to have any fun. Don't drill down so deeply into the argument. You're examining the engagement from the standpoint of a policeman in the witness box explaining an auto accident. We in this forum can talk about the car's design and the events leading up to the crash, too. We can even discuss how driving evolved in order to understand this engagement.

I said the Hood was a fine and beautiful ship, which is something her designer got that has somehow been lost since about 1960. I said in my opinion she had no particular defects in comparison to her contemporaries, and that we could look to some unusual sources like doctrine and maybe propellant as the real reason for her loss, not her design or her Admiral or crew and their interpretation of doctrine or orders.

I said these things is because the "conventional wisdom" on Hood was she was a defective ship and Admiral Holland was a boob for approaching as he did and turning when he did. In my opinion Hood was a fine ship with no complaints, especially considering her age. In my opinion a physical problem may have been the powders she was supplied, not the equipment or even the way the crew handled it. Holland was no less gifted a commander but he was handicapped by doctrine which had him fighting in close. In order to get to 12,000 yards he had to cross an area of increased probability plunging fire would hit his ship. Based on the fine shooting of the 15-inch/42, the weather and the ship he was in, he would have been relatively better off discarding doctrine and staying at very long ranges where the chances of a disabling hit from plunging fire were equal for Hood or Bismarck, rather than trying to cross the region of vulnerability for his ship, where he was almost certain to get straddled and hit, in order to get to North Sea Ranges where the two would have had similarly equal chances against side armor. Unfortunately, that was the doctrine for major ship combat, and had been since 1919.

If he was certain his ship would be lost, he could have avoided combat, too. He did not have to be Craddock and bury his medals as he had done in the Falklands. There would be other chances and perhaps weather would favor the British in those chances.

[Werner]

Campbell did know what he was talking about - mainly because he was a REAL expert in what he talked about, he went through the archives (leaving some few pencilled notes) and, possibly most importantly for those more modern "experts" talking to the people involoved.

I have also read the Cordite Committee's working papers and reports, so am quite happy with my state of knowledge re. cordite.

IF the cause of Hood's loss is as was the Board of Inquiry found then it is extremely unlikely (as in nearly impossible) that any different propellent would have had any other effect.

What does the "Cordite Committee" say? Obviously, something Nathan Okun does not believe. It appears you and perhaps this report are alone in your opinion. Okun is a recognised expert in this area, as are Campbell and The USN.

The generic name should really be "propellent", rather than cordite, cord, powder or grain.

Getting unnecessarily pedantic again. For the level we are discussing, how has the physical construction of the powders mattered one iota?

Hood was deficient compared with Bismark in terms of deck armour and it was that rather than doctrine that led to her loss. She was unlucky because a minute or so later and the "lucky" hit would have been almost impossible. (But never "impossible" - the British always realised that "lucky hits" were a possibility - they realised throughout their design processes that even a mast or spar might deflect a shell sufficiently to cause a fluke/lucky angle of attack.)

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Are you saying Hood could not penetrate Bismarck's deck at the ranges under discussion? If she can, than the state of her deck armor is less meaningful than the combustibility of her powders.

As I see it, there are two locations where Hood and Bismarck have even chances against one another. Beyond the outer edge of the immunity belt, or inside it. Doctrine required Holland to cross the belt of vulnerability to plunging fire to reach Bismarck's horizontal armor vulnerability zone. In the outer zone (vulnerable to plunging fire) and the innermost zone (vulerability to horizontal fire), their risks are similar. Doctrine placed Hood at unnecessary risk to even the odds. The chances of hits are, admittedly, much lower in the outer zone, but they are still both vulnerable, and Hood does not have to charge across the zone of greatest risk to herself to get to this zone.

[Lesforan]

Werner,

You are reading a bit too much in my comment about Adm. Holland. I did not intend it as a criticism of his actions...only a speculation of "what if" he had chosen another plan of attack. Adm. Holland had sound reasons for doing what he did, it just happened to be the wrong thing to do in that instance.
He knew the strengths and weaknesses of his ship. The planned improvements to deck protection had not been performed. He needed to get inside the zone of immunity from plunging fire.

Bismarck and Hood carried similar main armament in the same layout. If he maintained his course, he would only have been able to fire with his forward four guns while Bismarck could have engaged all eight of his. If he had gotten much closer, Bismarck would have been able to engage with its secondary guns. Hood had been stripped of hers as an "improvement" (to save weight for more armor, not yet installed). It will be the 15" guns that would decide such a battle, not the secondary 5.5" guns anyway.

Turning Hood to allow X and Y turrets to engage was a logical thing to do. Like everything else in a battle, this had a potential downside. the downside was presenting a bigger target, and in this case it resulted in the fatal hit. Did this hit have to be fatal? That is a question of design and armor arrangement. Too much armor and speed is sacrificed, and speed was Hood's hole card. It was her battlecruiser legacy. If the battlecruiser concept had really been discredited at Jutland, Hood could have been replaced by another Queen Elizabeth (basically a modified Hood with less steam generation capacity, and therefore shorter, with more armor protection and less speed). Hood could then have been converted into an outsized aircraft carrier, much the equivalent of Lexington and Saratoga.

[Werner]

Hood's vertical armor (discounting forecastle deck) is 2in (UD) + 3in (MD) +1-3in (LD). = 6-8
Bismarck's vertical armor is 1.97 + 0.5 + 3.5 = 6.5

We need to apply the formula found at http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-024.htm to determine the effective thickness of this armor, and in addition we have no idea of the figure of merit for either ship's armor.

Both are worth appoximately 4 inches of solid plate. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, we could say Hood is 3-4 and Bismarck is 4-5.

Much as I hate referring to Dulin & Garzke, the Hood could penetrate Bismarck's deck beyond either 22,000 or 27,000 yards. Bismarck could penetrate Hood beyond either 20,000 or 25,000 yards. US doctrine would require the US ship to remain outside the 22,000 or 27,000 yard range at all costs (I'm sorry I don't have the accurate data on the ships' armor).

Using a broader brush, Holland would have had a chance of sinking Bismarck if he had remained in the range of 20,000-25,000 yards and he would not have had to run the gauntlet of closing to the doctrinaire 12,000 yards, which was evidently his intention. Hood appears to have been about 16,000 yards from Bismarck at the time of her loss.

[Werner]

Werner,

You are reading a bit too much in my comment about Adm. Holland. I did not intend it as a criticism of his actions...only a speculation of "what if" he had chosen another plan of attack. Adm. Holland had sound reasons for doing what he did, it just happened to be the wrong thing to do in that instance.
He knew the strengths and weaknesses of his ship. The planned improvements to deck protection had not been performed. He needed to get inside the zone of immunity from plunging fire.

No need to apologize, Les. I am doing exactly the same thing by imposing US tactical doctrine on a British task force!

How do Tovey's maneuvers a few days later differ from Holland's? How about Cunningham at Matapan?

Interesting, looking through my sources a moment ago (AOTS, Dulin & Garzke, Breyer and so on), I noticed that at no place is Hood's horizontal armor actually thinner than Bismarck's. I wonder if the whole "thinner armor" and Holland's rapid close to offset his inferior armor is a post-war wives tale, or a red-herring....

US doctrinal policy appears to be "never give a sucker an even break", hence the secrecy and priority applied to the ability to shoot accurately at phenomenally long ranges, where an enemy would be powerless to strike back.

Tracy shared a document with me where the CNO suggested the ranges of USN gunfire were state secrets and should not be shared with the British, French, Japanese and others at the arms-limitation talks. Similarly, The General Board protested sharing detailed ship weights with the British in the run-up to the 1930 talks because the perfection of the welding of armor plate skewed the numbers enough to interest the negotiators of the other countries.

[phil gollin]

[quote="Werner]:

You're being too literal. Cheez, between you and Chuck, it's hard to have any fun. Don't drill down so deeply into the argument. You're examining the engagement from the standpoint of a policeman in the witness box explaining an auto accident. We in this forum can talk about the car's design and the events leading up to the crash, too. We can even discuss how driving evolved in order to understand this engagement.

I said the Hood was a fine and beautiful ship, which is something her designer got that has somehow been lost since about 1960. I said in my opinion she had no particular defects in comparison to her contemporaries, and that we could look to some unusual sources like doctrine and maybe propellant as the real reason for her loss, not her design or her Admiral or crew and their interpretation of doctrine or orders.

I said these things is because the "conventional wisdom" on Hood was she was a defective ship and Admiral Holland was a boob for approaching as he did and turning when he did. In my opinion Hood was a fine ship with no complaints, especially considering her age. In my opinion a physical problem may have been the powders she was supplied, not the equipment or even the way the crew handled it. Holland was no less gifted a commander but he was handicapped by doctrine which had him fighting in close. In order to get to 12,000 yards he had to cross an area of increased probability plunging fire would hit his ship. Based on the fine shooting of the 15-inch/42, the weather and the ship he was in, he would have been relatively better off discarding doctrine and staying at very long ranges where the chances of a disabling hit from plunging fire were equal for Hood or Bismarck, rather than trying to cross the region of vulnerability for his ship, where he was almost certain to get straddled and hit, in order to get to North Sea Ranges where the two would have had similarly equal chances against side armor. Unfortunately, that was the doctrine for major ship combat, and had been since 1919.

If he was certain his ship would be lost, he could have avoided combat, too. He did not have to be Craddock and bury his medals as he had done in the Falklands. There would be other chances and perhaps weather would favor the British in those chances.[/quote]


No wonder you confuse people if the idea is not to take you literally !

Hood DID have deficiets (no one seriously believes otherwise. Doctrine and propellent had nothing to do with her loss, so bringing them up was a mistake.

Holland was not "handicapped" - for Hood with a strong belt and weak decks the "doctrine" (and "doctrine" is NEVER the right word to use about the RN's fighting instructions) was correct.

You ignore the fact that it was not "12,000" yards, but 12-15,000 yards.

In fact you mis-understand so comprehensively that I suggest you go back and try reading one of the standard treatments of the battle and try to get the facts straight.

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[phil gollin]

[quote="Werner]:

What does the "Cordite Committee" say? Obviously, something Nathan Okun does not believe. It appears you and perhaps this report are alone in your opinion. Okun is a recognised expert in this area, as are Campbell and The USN. ..........

Getting unnecessarily pedantic again. For the level we are discussing, how has the physical construction of the powders mattered one iota? ......

Are you saying Hood could not penetrate Bismarck's deck at the ranges under discussion? If she can, than the state of her deck armor is less meaningful than the combustibility of her powders.

As I see it, there are two locations where Hood and Bismarck have even chances against one another. Beyond the outer edge of the immunity belt, or inside it. Doctrine required Holland to cross the belt of vulnerability to plunging fire to reach Bismarck's horizontal armor vulnerability zone. In the outer zone (vulnerable to plunging fire) and the innermost zone (vulerability to horizontal fire), their risks are similar. Doctrine placed Hood at unnecessary risk to even the odds. The chances of hits are, admittedly, much lower in the outer zone, but they are still both vulnerable, and Hood does not have to charge across the zone of greatest risk to herself to get to this zone.

[/quote]

You really do need to read what was written, not what you imagine. No one who understands the properties of WW2 cordite and the proposed reason for the explosion on the Hood would thiink that any other propellent would have saved the ship.

Actually the physical structure of the propellent DOES matter - why do you think cordite size/shape and powder size mattered ?

Which range are you talking about for this discussion of deck penetration (and do you know what sort of hit rate was expected at that range) ?

"Doctrine" is not the word to use for the "Fighting Instructions".

The whole point about the battle was to get a result - long range exchanges would probably have been pointless and allowed more room for the Bismarck to escape.

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[Werner]

You really do need to read what was written, not what you imagine. No one who understands the properties of WW2 cordite and the proposed reason for the explosion on the Hood would thiink that any other propellent would have saved the ship.

Had Hood carried single base propellant instead of cordite, there is in fact a good possibility that the fatal explosion might never have occurred.

Obviously you believe yourself to be more of an authority than Nathan Okun. I will leave it to the two of you to hash this out.

As in our previous discussion, I have tried to back up my writing with authority, but this is evidently insufficient for a know-it-all.

[Werner]

A few final references, Mr. Gollin:

US WW.II propellants were slower burning than cordite, typically with 89% as much energy per unit weight as British SC. In 1943 USS Boise was hit underwater by a diving Japanese 203mm (8 in) (Type 91) shell, which burst in the forward magazine. Analysis concluded that, had she had British powder on board, she would have suffered a fatal magazine explosion because the charges would have produced too much gas before the magazine vented and flooded

Friedman, Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era, USNI 2008. ISBN13:978-1-59144-555-4.

Perhaps some other time we can discuss the performance of American powders vs Cordite in the 14-inch gunned WW.I monitors.

Of course, neither of these issues address the third, known issue of deterioration through evaporation or sublimation of volatiles from powders (err, cordite, hex grains, whatever) which was demonstrated by the USN in the 1980s and well known to the RN in the WW.I era.

In both of our arguments, I have yet to see a shred of evidence, citation or quotation to support your position. Just sound and fury, signifying nothing.

It is a common thread, when cornered by facts, accuse the opposition of misunderstanding, or of being an idiot, of not understanding the special nuance of the business at hand.

Mr. Gollin, I applaud your skill.