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Now I am drawing the line. DonL is getting out of hand. Njaco already confronted him. Now I will confront you. You are making it personal now, I will not tollerate that! I will ban both of you! I will not tolerate such talk about anyones nationality. If you don't like Germans, Americans, or anyone else, keep it to your self!
Do you understand?
I already write this Parsifal, reading accurate naval weapons the tabel of US 12" and british 14" aren't in same conditions and methods so it's not true that US 12" it's best of british 14"
Vincenzo
I understand what you are saying, however it would be most unlikley that the 14/45 would lose approximately 2 inches of armour penetration (roughly the difference between the 12/50 and the 14/45 at the ranges we are talking about). The worn guns are what destroyed the Scharnhorst, so the new guns of the Alaska (remeber she was brand new in 1945) should r4etain that advantage.
Moreover the figures given from the Nav weapons site actually say that the 14/45 penetration tables are calculated values, meaning I think that they are worked out on the theoretical operating pressures and velocities for the weapon.
If you have different figures from those given in Nav weapons, please share them.
One final thing, the 14/45, once it penetrates wioll do more internal damage, because the shell is heavier
But for the moment we have to disagree, I think the 12/50 has superior AP capabilities over the 14/45
From "The Encyclopedia of Sea Warfare," "Although credited with great ingenuity of design the Bismarck was very conservative in conception, having an armour arrangement considerably inferior to current British and American ideas, and a cumberson arrangement of low angle secondary guns for surface work and a separate anti-aircraft armament. Her deck armor was badly placed to deal with either bomb damage or plunging shellfire and in her last action she was very quickly silenced by British shells." I have also read that "vital communication lines were placed above the armoured deck, unlike the new British BBs," and these were quickly cut. Her hull was penetrated at least twice by shells from POW in that short engagement. Doesn't sound like such a great design to me. In fact if POW had been fully worked up and operational and if the Hood had not been destroyed by a lucky hit, I believe that Bismarck and PE would have been very roughly handled in the first encounter.
That's what I read, too. I read that the Germans were lagging behind in big battleship design having had a standstill in design for about 20 years. The Bismarck indeed proved to be almost unsinkable, but very easy to put out of action because of faults in design.
I'm missing the discussion on the HMS Tiger. Didn't she only get in a shooting fight two times, Dogger Bank and Jutland? I think here shooting was terrible at Dogger (3K yards long) and pretty bad at Jutland. And she had the more advanced of the FC setup.
At least that is what I'm getting from "Castles of Steel" (in the middle of rereading it).
I keep hearing about Tiger also and I am wondering which Tiger. I believe WW1 Tiger was not a good gunnery ship. Are youall talking about HMSTiger, the CL in WW2?
Well against the AMC . Rawalpindi the Schaarnhorst hit with the first, second and third salvo. but I dont know the range. I do know that the Glorious was hit with the third salvo at 26,000 yards.Picking one event is hardly choosing a representative sample though I notice from the above that we have now moved from one event to hitting usually every 2nd or third salvo....thats at odds with every observed shoot I have ever studied, or observed, which leads me to suspect it is not the same as wwII examples....
I keep hearing this 1% hit ratio but there is nothing to support that statement. Have you got the details? You may complain about my events but they were real events open to comment and review.If you are going to choose an event, and analyse that sample, you need to look at the whole sample. For the Glorious battle, the Scharnhost/Gneisenau team (and I dont think it valid to try and argue that the two ships were inhernetly different in their accuracy) managed a 1% hit ratio.
Again we have two problems.Thats under ideal conditions. The range for that battle was an average of 24000 yards, for most of the fight. The US undertook a study that revealed at that range for its heavy guns they could achieve, on average an 8% hit ratio, and I picked one example, in poor weather (in which you dispute the ranges) where the hit ratio was 4%.
This I agree with. I disagree with your statement that the Alaska would be four times more accurate.Every source I have consulted says that radar assisted gunnery is more accurate than optical, and that includes gunnery in clear conditions, though I concede it is probably a less pronounced advantage when the weather is clear.
Clearly I don't have copies of the practice shoots but I attach a link that gives general support. The main difference is that they say that the Lion a sister ship, normally hit the air target with the first shell which was one better than we managed.British 6"/50 (15.2 cm) QF Mark N5You produce an example in the HMS Tiger, which I cannot analyse because there just isnt the data, and then get all huffy because I dont attempt the impossible.
I have selected the only samples of action, if you know of others involving these ships then please let me know. However give me credit for using real live examples not studies.You select unrepresentative samples (by picking one incident and trying to pass that off as a "representative sample") and dont acknowledge the frequent occasions that Optical shooting (of any nationality) was attrocious (as radar assisted gunnery could be as well).
This I have covered as best I can earlier. Anything after the ranging shot is not valid. By using single shots and with a ROF of 15 RPM a shell was being fired every two seconds and once the range was found any correction that might be needed was almost walked onto the target. Nothing like that could be done during the war where you basically aimed to straddle the target and hope for a hit.If you have the results for the overall shoot (of the Tiger) , and can prove that the average accuracy was as you say, and that the conditions of those shoots are comparable to the wartime conditions, Iwe can have a closer look at this issue.
I should not have used that phrase and for that I apologise, it will not happen again.So why am I being funny, based on all of that.....
it's not the Tiger of Jutland battle but a cruiser of '60s
Feel better now. That one threw me.