Best World war two warships?

Accuracy During World War II......

A Naval War College study performed during World War II estimated that an Iowa Class (BB-61) battleship firing with top spot against a target the size of the German battleship Bismarck would be expected to achieve the following hit percentages.

Range Percentage hits against a broadside target Percentage hits against an end-on target Ratio

1: 10,000 yards (9,144 m)
2: 20,000 yards (18,288 m)
3: 30,000 yards (27,432 m)

Percentage hits against a broadside target

1: 32.7%
2: 10.5%
3: 2.7%

Percentage hits against an end-on target

1: 22.3%
2: 4.1%
3: 1.4%

Ratio

1: 1.47:1
2: 2.56:1
3: 1.92:1

Suddenly I feel soooo much safer on my ol' mountaineer battle wagon.

So even though the Iowa, S Dak and NC class battleships were faster, better armed for both surface and aerial threats, better armor and had more advanced damage control designs, were inferior to the West Virginia?

USS West Virginia Radar:

1941 : CXAM /
1944 : SK /
1945 : SK-2 /

USS Iowa Radar

1943 : SK, SRa /
1945 : SK-2, SC-2 /


To be good, you first need to HIT something when you shoot...Speed is usually good when you try to catch up or run away...

West Virginia: 8 dual 5"/38cal DP, 10 quad 40mm AA, 1 quad 20mm AA, 1 twin 20mm AA, 58 single 20mm AA
Iowa: 10 dual 5"/38cal, 18 quad 40 mm AA, 52 single 20 mm AA

West Virginia: Armor: 8-13.5 inch belt, 3.5 inch decks, 4.5-13 inch barbettes, 5-18 inch turrets, 4-16 inch CT
Iowa: Armor: 1.6-12.1 inch belt, 6 inch deck, 11.6-17.3 inch barbettes, 2.5-17.3 inch turrets, 7.25-17.3 inch CT...

Good way of learning....

Just showing some CLASSY ladies here.....

USS Nevada BB-36


USS Pennsylvania BB-38


USS Mississippi BB-41

USS Maryland BB-46


USS West Virginia BB-48


And of course USS Yorktown CV-5.


Now, what was it that Stevie Wonder sang again...... Isn't She Lovely?

Lucky13 said:

Accuracy During World War II......

A Naval War College study performed during World War II estimated that an Iowa Class (BB-61) battleship firing with top spot against a target the size of the German battleship Bismarck would be expected to achieve the following hit percentages.

Range Percentage hits against a broadside target Percentage hits against an end-on target Ratio

1: 10,000 yards (9,144 m)
2: 20,000 yards (18,288 m)
3: 30,000 yards (27,432 m)

Percentage hits against a broadside target

1: 32.7%
2: 10.5%
3: 2.7%

Percentage hits against an end-on target

1: 22.3%
2: 4.1%
3: 1.4%

Ratio

1: 1.47:1
2: 2.56:1
3: 1.92:1

Suddenly I feel soooo much safer on my ol' mountaineer battle wagon.

Click to expand...

These datas have been disproved mathematically recently and back then by ww2 combat records. The hit percentage for end on targets indeed is better than for broadside targets due to the dispersion field of the salvos and because it is easier to correct deflection than range. No US BB achieved 10% hit ratio (sustained) at 20.000 yards, nor 30% at 10.000 yards nor even a single hit at more than 25.000 yards against BB-sized targets, radar or not.
The closest You could come with ww2 era firecontroll is a straddle and the tighter the salvo dispersion field, the better the hitting chances.

So delcyros, are you actually saying that it's worse!? Or am I just thick....Oi! Don't bother answer that.....

I admit that I have been under the impression that the Bismark and the Nelson had better hit rates than these.

USS West Virginia (BB-48) Action Report: Leyte Gulf/Surigao Straits Is great reading. 13 salvos in 41 seconds.....hurts my ears just thinking about the noise!

Battleship Bismarck, German Kriegsmarine The Battle of the Denmark Strait.

Do you agree with this? Battleship Comparison

Lucky13 said:

Battleship Bismarck, German Kriegsmarine The Battle of the Denmark Strait.

Do you agree with this? Battleship Comparison

Click to expand...

Delycros found some mistakes in the methodology used in this comparison, especially in the armor protection.

It appeared to be a difference betwen peacetime trials against towed targets and wartime gunnery records.


The exact number of hits is not certain for Surigao Street. But with some probability the number of hit´s did not exceed 30 and could be as low as 20.
Which is - don´t take me wrong- an excellent display of gunnery averaging 10%.

Bismarck at Denmark street achieved a close to 10% hitting rate (at distances between 16.000 and 20.000 yards), which also is excellent.

KGV and Rodney achieved ~30 major calibre hits each on Bismarck during the final battle at distances between 2.500 and 15.000 yards but they only achieved 8% hitting rate against an almost immobilized target. Nobody says this was a bad performance. (the actual hitting rate could exceed 10% as the correct number of hit´s is a matter of debate)

DoY at Northcape achieved at least 13 hits against Scharnhorst but fired more than 300 rounds (4.3%) at distances between 5.000 yards and 21.400 yards in force 9 gale.

As You see, an ~10% hitting rate is what the best gunnery allowed in ww2 for distances up to 20.000 yards. A higher hitting rate was possible (at least for point blanc range) but in no case sustainable.

Thanks a bunch mate.....

If You want to spend some time reading the discussion regarding combinedfleet:

http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/ww2-general/german-battleships-convoy-hunting-2817-3.html

It´s a long one. We had a good discussion.

In order to justify my sentimental choices my criteria for best WW2 WARSHIPS will require that the ship had to be available for all or most of the war, had to have a good war record in action with the enemy, had to survive the war(helps to be lucky) and the ship must be cost effective(gets extra points if built well before the war because it was cheaper to build) CV- no contest--Enterprise(should have been preserved instead of Intrepid) BB--Washington(Ching Lee knew why)(honorable mention-Warspite) BC-Renown CA---Pensacola and Salt Lake City( both had good war records, both damaged more than once, both were lucky)( besides they had lots of guns) CL-Sheffield(good record, almost sunk by Swordfish, like her looks) DD-Onslow(she and Sheffield did good work on Murmansk run) DE-England- (Not much to look at but gave the IJN fits)

Like your approach. Following that I would make the following changes

BB - Warstpite (upgraded from Hon Mention)
DD - Ushio Served the entire war including nearly all the major battles and survived

Is it possible that the best cannot always be measured as a one on one comparison?

For example. Lets take 3 British heavy cruisers at 6 guns each and 2 American 9 gun cruisers and lets adjust things for fun. lets make the guns equal except for number and lets make the two groups of the same weight and resources utilized to build them. I am not sure which side I would want to be on.

Even that last comparison does not come to telling the whole story and prehaps it is impossible to have the whole story and just parts of it.

War is economic, it is resources but not just resources, it is the ability to convert the resources so that is infratructure of machines and transportation. It is the ability to turn them into weapons without the country falling apart internally. It is also about man power. Conversion rates of resources. Economics is not about money as some think but about things.

One thing that helped the US get some of the nice toys later is the fact that the US had 2 oceans providing alot of protection and we had the Isles to land on and form up first. That is an important consideration. We had lots of friends and we had nothing that was stopping our production. Does it mean we did the best that we could have with what we had. hard to say but I think that is why we had some nice ships.

Was the Iowa, and Baltimore the best. I like to think so but I an not sure. Perhaps we should have built fewer bigger ships, or perhaps smaller and more ships.

It is kind of funny that as battleships got bigger and bigger so did the cruisers until we reached a point that the new cruisers were really to big for the job we needed them to do. We might not have felt this problem as we had smaller ones as well but even that is not the whole story. We had allied ships helping us. Perhaps we didn't need certain fits because our friends had them.

The point I am getting at is naval battle is only rarely a one on one affair. The best ship seems to be the one that does and fits the fleet for the missions it has.

Maybe it is not the best battleship that make the difference but the best light cruisers punishing the enemies destoryers while your inferior battleship buys time and does not have to win. The enemy destoyers yeild to your light cruiser in cooperation with your destoryers and perhaps open the board for destroyer action against the battleship. I know things didn't play out this way but there are lots of what ifs.

Maybe having the best in each class is the goal you want. Maybe sometimes you want second best in each class and a little more of them.

I have wondered about other 1 on 1 match ups as well. The Sherman cleaarly was inferior the the Panzers and Tigers and many say we should have had better tanks early in the war. Lets say we did have fewer better tanks. Would we have done better? I really don't know. We might have had a case where our tanks were slugging it out with the fine German tanks but that is not what we had. The fact that he had lots of Shermans meant that the better tanks could not interdict them all. Shermans could get to certain targets and achive objectives and support infantry because we had lots of them. Like I said I don't really know what is right.

I am just making the argument that having the bragging rights to the best ship might actually hurt your war effort.

Just think if instead of the 4 Iowa Class we instead had 6 2 turret sub-Iowa's. That could be the wrong answer but is it?

The American Heavy Cruisers would have had an advantage over a Cleveland or Brooklyn class cruiser. Maybe we needed potent destroyer killers that could after the destroyers are clear at least put fire on bigger ships to assist the larger ships and hope for killing a director or something rather than a heavier hitter.

I didn't mean to ruin the fun just some thoughts.

I didn't proof read this but typed as fast as I could and made this up as I went along so forgive how ugly this post is.

Senarios,

The enemy has a supported big slow bruiser mid ocean and you want to shell and island and you have a greyhound of a ship. You don't fight the big bruiser you speed around him and get to your target.

Now we change things up a bit. You have an area to protect so instead of being deployed out to sea you are close to what you must defend. Here comes the big bruiser and its target is in a fixed location and you are the in the way.

It seems to me that what is best is what meets you goals.

Another thing to think about what is best might be better examined by looking at what you already have and what the enemy already has. What is best for you to fill out your fleet and counter the enemy fleet might in no way be considered best in a one on one comparison.

I have thought about the German Sisters a few times. They operated so much together. If they were upgraded as planed to be 6 15inch gun ships and got upgrades and they time and resources would have allowed. I don't think I would have wanted to meet the twins on any one surface combatant.

Alone they do not match up to the top 5 but together they could be a terror with the upgrade.

I actually think that there could be and edge on the best battleships of one better than the other. The Venito, Riechieue, King George, Iowa but I wonder if that is still what is most important. I think each of those ships can hurt each other. Sinking is one thing but you can still mission kill. Those ships were all capable but perhaps not equal. I am thinking how the lessor ships do in the right might be the deciding factor.

Following this line of argumentation, I think it worth noting the US american Casablanca - class escort carrier program. Each of them fielded 27 planes and they build 50 of them! Or the 23 Commencement Bay class escort carriers, each of them fielded 33 planes! The 26 laid down Essex class carriers are also worth mentioning.

Here Here Del the Woolworth Carriers did a heck of alot of sterling work the UK had 45, 6 built in the UK all the rest came from the States. a great work horse vessel that saved many a merchantman.