Ark Royal vs Bismark

[delcyros]

Back to Versailles. It is indeed the fact, that no definition of displacement was given in the Treaty text. What is the relevance of 10,000ts? Long tons? metric tons? and for what condition of displacement according to our understanding? Light? standart? normal? deep displacement? The variance may make up the difference between 10,000ts and 16,000ts.
Former practice in the Reichsmarineamt through and before ww1 was to use a displacement called "Konstruktion", which would have been quite a bit higher than what Washington Standart is defined to be, and more close to our "normal" displacement (including half fuels and other liquids).
By 1922, when the definitions of the WNT were formulated, the RMA went along with the idea to formulate an own definition, based towards the Standart definition but more tight than it (and in fact a tad bit closer to our understanding of "light" displacement) in order to exploit the gap in the Treaty text. This was called "Typen-Verdrängung". In april 1923, the RMA informed the french and british marine attachee in Germany to use it for future calculations (by that time, they had the CL of the K-class in mind) and they agreed upon.
By the time they designed the Panzerschiff A (later to be called DEUTSCHLAND before beeing renamed LÜTZOW), the Typenverdrängung was used along the older definition (Konstruktion) in some cases.
When Admiral Zenker and Ministerialdirektor Dr. Ing. h. c. Preße had to decide about the new vessel at april, 11th, 1928, the official Typenverdrängung of "A" was 10,000ts and thus Treaty compliant. It was designed to be Treaty compliant by the standarts of it´s time.
When the ship was commissioned in december 1933, the ship ended up to be measured with 10,567t (metr- not long tons!) standart, which would well correspond to the official Typenverdrängung. Later additions in the 30´s and in wartime bloated up the displacement like many other ships.
"B" and particularely "C" were not completed before the situation changed and Germany got rid of the strict bounds of Versailles.

A much more valid case could be made for Treaty violation with regards to smaller classes of vessels than the Panzerschiff.

 

[delcyros]

double post.

More importantly, not to be lost amidst this quibbling over what makes a penetration a penetration, and which round was more relevent vs. another, is the salient fact that the tests were instrumental in the RN's decision to adopt A/N as it's future protection scheme as the newer quality shells clearly demonstrated that medium armor types were of little value vs. heavy shells.

You call it quibbling, but I call it precise differentiation. It is necessary because You made up the case that with MkVa GREENBOY, the GF certainly would get more ship kills at Jutland than it got historically. That´s speculation and I don´t buy it for many reasons. In order to do this, the projectile had to burst high order behind armour (compare the 15in APC hit inside the with medium armour protected barbette of DERFFLINGER). You say it can do that against heavy armour and this is not the case. There was not a single high order detonation when impacting heavy armour in any of the four APC and one CPC used in the trials (Schleihauf´s article gives EO definition (blind or low order burst) for fuse action for both "penetrations" -I already pointed out that only one complete penetration happened through the glacis of the turret (at somehow favourable conditions) and a partial one through the barbette, neither case was in a condition fit to burst.

And medium armour? At first, You have to consider that medium armour was at risk against the old shells as well. This is demonstrated by Jutland. Granted, the newer shells showed more reliable penetration but the delay action was not. The old shells would have non delay (including to move up to 10ft behind armour before detonation), the new ones had unpredictable delay. No obliquity tests were carried out against BADEN with medium armour thicknes range. And other than true fighting ships, BADEN was devoid of crew, equipment and parts of it´s side protection system (upper coal bunkers emptied), which allowed projectiles to travel longer time inside the hull.
How to extrapolate that against Jutland?
Probably LÜTZOW would have been battered, but survived. Historically, the non delay action when impacting light armour of the old shells in the foreship causes considerable holes in the light armour plating (much larger than the projectile area), particularely above the armour deck there (3 x 13.5 in hits between 16:00 and 16:15, another at 18:19 and four 12in hits between 18:26 and 18:34) and on the weatherdeck. When a projectile explodes while pressing up against a plate, it transmits more of its blast effects into that plate, as well as trying to push the fragments through the plate more forcefully as they will not decelerate as rapidly with the explosive blast pressure on their rear side. The result is a larger hole and more fragments through the plate for a given plate thickness that is penetrable. Correspondingly, these holes allowed later a lot of wateringress to come down into the ships foreship, when the foreship settled deeper. By experiences drawn from the unreliable delay time of the 16D fuse You may guess that 3/8 hits behave like historically, and the other with either normal or ultra long fuse delay would simply pass through the hull of the foreship without detonation inside or on the hull, just leaving a few calibre sized holes (the armour plating is thick enough to reduce the size of the hole to about calibre size unless a contact or non delay high order explosion happnens like historically with the so called "defective" old shells). The result would have been less critical for LÜTZOW with less associated flooding and less cumulative wateringress later that day.
Other cases could be made against or for the shell, but the GREENBOY APC does not automatically translates into a higher sinking rate. This cannot be stated generally, rather it has to be discussed case for case.

 

[Kurfürst]

Per the terms of the Anglo-German Treaty of 1935, Germany agreed to limit maximum size of new battleship construction to 35,000 tons.

Unfortunetly, this is complete bollocks, as the AGNT has no such in it.

 

[Kurfürst]

The German Navies violations of its treaty was proven to the best standards of International law at nurnberg.

Uhm..."best standards of international law" and reference to the Nürnberg trials in the same sentence seem to me, as a lawyer, a contradiction within the same sentence.

This subsequent denial of german war guilt

Huh? Are you lost a bit and trying to play the inquisition here? Only facts can be denied, and while delycros has well formulated and more importantly, well supported post, you seem to present only "declarations" of facts, and make up for the lack of supportive evidence for it with your usual ad hominem attacks.

Get back in the line buddy, as nobody made you arbiter here over "facts" and "war guilt"..

 

[Markus]

The disarmament clauses of the ToV were dying when the Deutschland was laid down as France, the UK and others had failed to hold up their end of the deal as specified by the ToV:

"In order to render possible the initiation of a general limitation of the armaments of all nations, Germany undertakes strictly to observe the military, naval and air clauses which follow."

At the end of the 20´s the Allies admitted Germany had fullfilled it´s obligations but they were not willing to start disarming themselfs anywhere near the level Germany had to. That gave Germany the moral and legal right to arm itself in the same manner as all its neighbours. Which the German government announced in 1932 and the UK´s governent accepted in 1935.

And the ToV neither defines displacement or a ton. 10k (long) tons light could be 12k standard.

Read for yourself:

The Avalon Project : The Versailles Treaty June 28, 1919

Anglo/German Agreement of 1935

 

[delcyros]

I want to come back to the discussion of twin versus triple turrets.

For german Krupp naval turrets I got some additional figures from Johow-Förster (1928):

-all figures only for turret and it´s armour (not Barbette armour!) as well as the revolving structure and gears below but without magazine weights.

15cmL60 triple turret: 148.2 t (only splinter protection)
15cmL55 twin turret: 108 t. (better armour protection)

28.3cmL52 triple turret: 600 t. (sub cal. armour protection)
28.3cmL54 triple turret: 750 t. (super cal. armour protection)
28.3cmL50 twin turret: 445 t.

35.56cmL50 triple turret (design 1928): 1050 t.
35.56cmL50 twin turret (design 1928): 740 t.

and from my guess basing on a graphical solution I would get:
38cmL50 triple turret: 1450 t.
38cmL50 twin turret: 1000t.

From this perspective, yes there is a nominal weight saving per barrel using triple turrets. But the effected total weight for 3x3 instead of 4x2 still is always larger:
3x3 15cm: 444,6 t.
4x2 15cm: 432,0 t.

3x3 28,3cm: 2,025 t. (assuming average level of turret protection, in between PBB twin)
4x2 28,3cm: 1,780 t.

3x3 35,56cm: 3,150 t.
4x2 35,56cm: 2,960 t.

3x3 38cm: 4,350 t.
4x2 38cm: 4,000 t.

Bottomline is that the four twin turrets always requires less weight than three triple turrets of the same type of gun with identic levels of protection (barbettes and magazines not included). BUT:
assume You would install two triple turrets and one raised twin turret (for an eight gun main battery in three turrets) the math looks different and this is where the slightly more efficient weight factor comes from -it stems from an weight for each barrel of the main battery:

15cm: 404 t.
28,3cm: 1,794 t.
35cm: 2,840 t.
38cm: 3,900 t.

But such an installation was never done to warships. BISMARCK with 3 x 3 38cm guns would likely have required a larger displacement instead of the alleged weight safings suggested by some authors. You then have to add magazine weights and barbette weights. A case could be made for better stability as only one superfiring turret and the associated topweight is necessary in a 3x3 scheme, but I doubt that this was considered to be a problem with a better margin of stability than any other BB ever buildt. Typically, You may end up with one barrel more, a shorter citadell and less protected space. It might have been an attractive idea for purely A/N armoured schemes, but as mentioned above, Germany passed over the A/N era and preferred the spaced array with large protected area for it´s choosen thread scenario. Therefore it was not really an option to reduce the protected space (particularely because the low placed armour deck required additional length of the citadel to fullfill the minimum protected space requirement).
Indeed all design criteria are carefully choosen, this certainly is not reflective for an approach without knowing .
[+]The low armour deck and slopes provide near immunity against shellfire from close to medium or (depending on attacking projectile) long range
[+]the lower deck meant that the citadell needs to have a larger coverage
[+]a high margin of stability and good subdivision was choosen so that even flooding above the armour deck does not affect drastically
[+]the larger citadell meant larger TDS coverage and armoured hullprotection against GP bombs and small to medium gunfire
[+] the larger citadel terminated close enough to the bow stern that the beam narrows down enough so that splinterproof armoubelts /decks can be applied to them without fearing that APC having their fuse triggered by them will go up inside the hull. They would rather pass it.

 

[Nikademus]

You call it quibbling, but I call it precise differentiation. It is necessary because You made up the case that with MkVa GREENBOY, the GF certainly would get more ship kills at Jutland than it got historically.

I call it quibbling.......more so given that I did not say that the GF "would certainly" have gotten more ship kills at Jutland. My exact words were:

"Had they used Greenboys, they might very well have disabled and/or sunk more German captial ships." This viewpoint is echoed by William Schleihauf at the conclusion of his report on the Baden trials. So much for necessity.

 

[delcyros]

That William Schleihauf echoe Your viewpoint does not automatically support Your position. To retreat on an authoritative statement when aviable evidence does not agree is a very questionable approach and not methodology (Popper anyone?). Beyond that, Mr. Schleihauf made mistakes in his article, such as not beeing firm in definitions and not doublechecking the primary source he is working with (there are mistakes in the original document, like the 18 deg. resultant obliquity for the hit on the turret face, while the horizontal and vertical impact angle was specified with 11 12 deg, thus resultant obliquity was wrongly calculated in the first place and should be 16.2 deg instead of 18 ). Also, he should have read Campbell more carefully, so that he don´t miss the second effective penetration through medium armour at Jutland.
He however also stated the inconsistent delay pattern of the type 16D delay fuse and the poor effect behind the plate (often undergoing low order detonations), which is literally what the ADM also states.
His conclusion is much more careful than Yours. Instead of speaking about disabled and sunk ships, he states that more damage becomes possible.
Anyway, my point was that not the shell but the propellant caused problems.
By the way, why do You think that naval nations gave up using HE at long range post ww1 in order to validate A/N?

 

[Nikademus]

That William Schleihauf echoe Your viewpoint does not automatically support Your position.

It shows your quibbling to good effect, which you tried incorrectly to justify by saying I said that use of Greenboys would have resulted in more German losses.
[/quote]

To retreat on an authoritative statement when aviable evidence does not agree is a very questionable approach and not methodology (Popper anyone?).

No retreat....a correction of your misquoting of me and backing that statement by showing it's conformity with the author of the report.

Also, he should have read Campbell more carefully, so that he don´t miss the second effective penetration through medium armour at Jutland.

I think it's you that should read Campbell more carefully as it clearly demonstrates the poor preformance of the pre-Jutland shells.

He however also stated the inconsistent delay pattern of the type 16D delay fuse, which is literally what the ADM also states.
His conclusion is much more careful than Yours. Instead of speaking about disabled and sunk ships, he states that more damage becomes possible.

His conclusions were certainly more careful than yours.....the report confirms that the Fuses were still too inconsistant but worked. They were not defective as you claimed. "More damage" could certainly have led to more disabled and/or sunken ships. This is not in conflict with the author's conclusion.

Anyway, my point was that not the shell but the propellant caused problems.

My point was that the new shells preformed much better than the Pre-Jutland shells.....a view in agreement with the author of the Baden report, the RN Admiralty, and other acredited authors. According to you, Nathan Okun also concurred.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I can already see where this is going to go. The same parties are always are already starting to get out of line.

This is the one and only blanket warning that will be given...

 

[Nikademus]

My apologies if I violated Forum rules.

I will cease and desist on this thread.

 

[jim]

Someone talked about treaty of versailles violation .This criminal treaty was very soon broken by its own creators ,by the Franco-Belgian invation of Ruhr in 1921-23 .
You talked about the nurberg trial. You mean the trial that in order to convict the germans used laws that did not exist at the time of the crime? Dont get me wrong . The criminals deserved their convictions. (So did bomber Harris)That trial proved that if you are a defeated admiral you got automaticaly 10 years in prison.
About if allies cheated. I read from Conways: 1922-1946 North Carolina 37484t standart South Dakota 37970 standart as completed. And its doubtful if they were fully equiped . Cruiser "Wichita " entered serviced with reduced secondary armament in order to be "legal" Of course it was very easy to install the additional weapons. That was the way the allies respected the treaties . Japan and Italy openly did not sign the treaties .
Hitles germany was hitlers germany, but that does not erase other nations illegal actions and crimes. In our days,We should judge both sides with the same criteria.

 

[delcyros]

my apologies, too.

Nikedamius, it´s not necessary nor do I like the idea that Your exit our discussion. For most part of it, it was informative, we do have different positions but I´m fine with that.

The discussion now has moved far away from the original topic caused by the lengthy excurse about different protective tds´ and general armour schemes and shell tech. I doubt that a Swordfish carries a GREENBOY so the point is interesting, but the discussion is unnecessary and misleading to the question of the thread.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

My apologies if I violated Forum rules.

I will cease and desist on this thread.

No one violated any forum rules yet. I just know from experience how these discussions among some of the "parties involved" ends up, and see the beginnings of it already. Therefore I am just letting everyone know, before it gets out of hand.

Please feel free to continue posting in this thread. It is a very informative thread, especially for someone with very little Naval knowledge like myself. I just want to see it stay civil.

 

[renrich]

I, like Chris, would also like for the discussion to continue. My good friend, delcyros, always has very well informed posts on naval matters and nikademus seems to know his stuff also. I am learning much of interest.

 

[vikingBerserker]

I agree, I've learned quite a bit from this thread, might not agree with some of the stuff but I have certainly learned much.

 

[parsifal]

Its a greawt debate. For the guys in the thick of it, hats off to both of you. It would be great if we had had some kind of poll about this, but then what even would be the question.

 

[RCAFson]

Someone talked about treaty of versailles violation .This criminal treaty was very soon broken by its own creators ,by the Franco-Belgian invation of Ruhr in 1921-23 .
You talked about the nurberg trial. You mean the trial that in order to convict the germans used laws that did not exist at the time of the crime? Dont get me wrong . The criminals deserved their convictions. (So did bomber Harris)That trial proved that if you are a defeated admiral you got automaticaly 10 years in prison.
About if allies cheated. I read from Conways: 1922-1946 North Carolina 37484t standart South Dakota 37970 standart as completed. And its doubtful if they were fully equiped . Cruiser "Wichita " entered serviced with reduced secondary armament in order to be "legal" Of course it was very easy to install the additional weapons. That was the way the allies respected the treaties . Japan and Italy openly did not sign the treaties .
Hitles germany was hitlers germany, but that does not erase other nations illegal actions and crimes. In our days,We should judge both sides with the same criteria.

The USN and RN did not cheat on the treaty and exchanged factual information on the displacement of their ships with the other treaty signatories. However, as has been pointed out the treaties expired when WW2 was declared.

Yes, the USN's Wichita and many other RN ships had to be completed with a reduced armament to be treaty compliant and this shows that the RN and USN did comply!!! Germany on the OTOH published false figures for their warship displacement and violated the VT and/or the AGNT, and used these treaty violations to gain an illegal advantage over the other treaty signatories. When Graf Spee fought the Ajax, Achilles and Exeter all the RN ships had their reduced secondary armament still in place. Japan signed the original WNT and the follow up LNT then grossly violated its terms by exceeding the allowed tonnage and tonnage per ship, as did Italy.

The relevant treaties:

Washington Naval Treaty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 1922, and included Japan and Italy.

London Naval Treaty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 1930, and included Japan and Italy.

Second London Naval Treaty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 1936, and did not include Italy and Japan.

An example of IJN cheating:
Mogami class cruiser - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The AGNT:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-German_Naval_Agreement

a relevant clause from the above:

The German Government favour, the matter of limitation of naval armaments, that system which divides naval vessels into categories, fixing the maximum tonnage and/or armament for vessels in each category, and allocates the tonnage to be allowed to each Power by categories of vessels. Consequently in principle, and subject to (f) below, the German Government are prepared to apply the 35 per cent. ratio to the tonnage of each category of vessel to be maintained, and to make any variation of this ratio in a particular category or categories dependent on the arrangements to this end that may be arrived at in a future general treaty on naval limitation, such arrangements being based on the principle that any increase in one category would be compensated for by a corresponding reduction in others. If no general treaty on naval limitation should be concluded, or if the future general treaty should not contain provision creating limitation by categories, the manner and degree in which the German Government will have the right to vary the 35 percent. ratio in one or more categories will be a matter for settlement by agreement between the German Government and His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, in the light of the naval situation then existing.

 

[tail end charlie]

When Graf Spee fought the Ajax, Achilles and Exeter all the RN ships had their reduced secondary armament still in place.

When the Graf Spee fought the Ajax Achillies and Exeter the Graf Spee was scuttled which means to me much of the theorising (before and after) about firepower and armour was way off the mark.

 

[Juha]

Hello TEC
to me the question of River La Plata action and its consequences is very complicated. Much depended on the orders under which the commanders fought, on their actions and personalities, ammo used, traditions and lastly but not leastly, where it was fought. GS was veeery long way away from the nearest friendly base, were it would have got proper repairs. And there were many enemy ships hunting her between La Plata and Germany.

Juha