German Battleships and convoy hunting.

Yes, mate the open bridge was heavely damaged but the bridge I am talking about is the Admiral's bridge. ( my misstake )

It is strange that the Admiral's bridge broke off like it did.

Henk

From what I read, the admirals bridge didn´t suffered that much visibly. But it should be noted that AP rounds simply penetrate the bridge, making a hole, that´s it. There isn´t enough resisting force (armor) to set the fuze and blew the projectile up. On the other side the upper bridge superstructures (admirals bridge) delivers a huge hydrodynamical resistance during capsizing . If the structure is already weakned by impacts and holes it seems very reasonable that the upper works will break off. This is even more plausible since there is no armor reinforcement there.

Wow, mate you sure as hell knows a lot about ships hey. Now tell me why does the turret fall out when the ship capsizes?

I realy want to get the new expidition that National Geogravic did in 2001 I think because they show real great footage in that documentary. I have the first National Geogravic video of the Discovery of the Bismarck when Robert D Ballard did his expedition.

Are their any museums on the Bismarck in Germany?

Henk

The turrets are held in place by gravity. Ship rolls over, turret falls off.

Yes, I know that but why did they not fix it to the ship?

Henk

Why waste thousands of tons of steel to hold the turrets in place if the ship is upside down?

If the ship has roled to the point the turrets drop off, then theres far more important things to worry about.

If the ship has roled to the point the turrets drop off, then theres far more important things to worry about.

Click to expand...

LMMFAO...

lesofprimus said:

If the ship has roled to the point the turrets drop off, then theres far more important things to worry about.

Click to expand...

LMMFAO...

Click to expand...

If you take, why I ask is that the turret can jump out of its Barbette and jam it in that way and can cost you in battle. If the turret get hit in battle and move because it was not fixed to its Barbette.

Henk

Syscom delivered a good explenation. You cannot fix the turret rollers either. If hit, the turret in some (not all) cases will jam then you have a problem. Technically You may have tow possibilities to overcome this problem:
Either You use a dual barbette layout aka Yamato (this also has the benefit to prevent any non penetrating damage from hurting the turrets interior) or you refuse the turret rollers and therefor install ball bearings (correct word?=Kugellager) aka Scharnhorst or even both aka Bismarck( altough the second barbette layer is only to stop large fragmentation). The ball bearings will save a lot of weight for nearly the same benfit (1937 armor tests of a turret scale builded section proved this) but isn´t that effective at close distances where the impactforce (=weight*speed/impact area) is quite high. Otherwise it will do it´s job because the rollers cannot jump out of their track.
In the end the Bismarck´s turret A and B were jammed early in it´s last battle (turret A later came back to service in the battle) by some 16" hits.
Many say this was a single hit disabling both turrets but british eyewitnesses from KGV have seen multiple 16" penetrations through the upper belt between turret A and B. The barbette armor below the armored weather deck is only 220 mm (8.6"), a 16" hit will, depending on the longitudinal impact angle, most probably penetrate at such close distances.

You see why I ask is because I design battleships for fun and I would like to learn more about this to improve my designs.

delcyros why do you know so much about this technical things? You can PM me.

Henk

henk, just design your hypothetical battleships to the Iowa class and you will be fine, hehehehhehe

Delc, have you heard of this planned battleship?

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/usnshtp/bb/bb67.htm

And the Alaska class battlecruisers?

http://www.hazegray.org/navhist/battleships/us_bc.htm#ala-cl
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/usnshtp/cru/cb1cl.htm

syscom3 I di use the great things of the New Jersey and of the Bismarck and they go great together.

I wish I could show you but it is on paper not on the PC.

Mate your first link does not work.

Henk

8) Yes, the Iowa did came very close to an all around excellent battleship and will always remain as the ones to be measured with.

I do not like some minor points on them:
-completely unprotected bow and (except steering room) stern:
this means bow hits will not only reduce Iowas great speed but also bring the ship to a dangerous situation in bad weather (longitudinal weakness in metacentric height)
-unarmored outer hullskin:
Minor flooding can be caused by even 20mmAP rounds! They also can cause numerous oil leaks because some of the tanks were outboards
-waetherdeck: 38mm are too less to prevent medium calibre AP rounds penetrating. Even General purpose bombs have a good chance to penetrate the weather deck. On the other side a smaller weatherdeck contributes to the excellent main armor deck protection executed in the Iowas
-questionable torpedo defense system. Not really battle tested. One SS torpedo hitting the Washington had the potential to blew up the ship (the forward main magazine rooms fortunately have been flooded, the flashes caused by the torpedo otherwise would ignite the cordite storaged there. In this case the TDS simply failed in a vital region)
-Vulnarability in close distances: The vitals can be penetrated by almost all heavy calibre´s guns (except 11"?) from close range. "Close" range means 16.400 yrds in case of Bismarck´s 15"ers and even 20.800 yrds in case of Yamato´s 18.1"ers. This is usual fighting distance.
-weak secondary anti ship gunlayout (useless against Bismarck, Nagato, Rodney, Littorio and Yamato)
- my personal #1 troublemaker: Cartridges in silk bags! They are prone for igniting and causing catastrophic conflagrations (ever heard of a german capital ship to blew up? They had semi fixed metal cartidges)

I do not up- or downrate her for her All or Nothing armor scheme. As I told before, Every nation in ww2 developed the best armor protection system for their special purposes. So was AoN for the US. And it saved a lot of soldiers on South Dakota as well. You may argue that with the advent of Grand Slam- and Fritz X-bombs this scheme became obsolete, but this was beyond expectations in their design stage.
No. They are wonderful ships, milestones in naval capital ship design, don´t take my minor critics to hard.

The link works for me.

Both nice designs. But I am not sure which role the Alaskas can perform in the USN. The Montanas, however, they would have been worth their money. What a ship. It would have been so interesting to compare them with the Yamatos.

The Alaska class designs were an evolutionary dead end by 1942.

However, if they had been built in the late 30's, it would have been an interesting hypothetical matchup for the German pocket battleships and these ships.

I wonder how they would have performed as an AA cruiser. It had plenty of space and capability to have the 12" turrets removed and multiple dual 5" mounts installed.

Since the Alaska were more stable, they could have been formidable in the AA role, no doubt.
Against pocket battleships I would bet my money on them, too. They are superior in every single aspect except for range.
But against the Scharnhorsts, I don´t know. Both are looking similar in appearence and key specifications, some advantages for Scharnhorst, some for Alaska.

I just had an annoying discussion on another board regarding Iowas armor scheme. There is a wide distribution of a totally wrong Iowa armor scheme based on a drawing in S. Beyers book. (you may find it in the internet also).
factoring:
outer armor
no inclination
no decapping plate
(the thicknesses are the same)

I do use the armor scheme of South Dakota for Iowa (factoring inclined inbound armor belt with enforced hullskin. The decapping effect is existent but was unknown to the US designers in ww2. Only italian designers knew about the benefits of a decapping plate)
Syscom, can you help me out with a verification? They put forward the argument that inclined is only at the tuerrets and the centre may be uninclined but I do not believe. Sadly I don´t have a proper drawing for different transverse cuts for Iowa´s armor scheme.
Any help welcome.

I remember leafing through the following book, and it had some great pictures of the US battleships under construction and you can see the armour design. Plus it had some good drawing of the "frame by frame" armour layout.

Theres also a companion book about US cruisers of the post WW1 to end of WW2 era.

"U.S. Battleships: An Illustrated Design History"
By Norman Friedman
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0870217151/?tag=dcglabs-20