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It doesn't really answer your question, but it may help to bear in mind that guns used in Jap. superdreadnoughts up until the Ise class were either directly designed and manufactured by Vickers, or replicated from this Vickers design. So I guess there shouldn't be any surprising divergence of firing performance between British and Japanese guns when the obvious factors are accounted for (elevation of and configuration of turrets, caliber). Speaking of turrets, I believe the Japanese opted to continue using two-gun turrets while the British kept increasing their turret size, the reasoning for that was that a larger number of smaller turrets would give them greater flexibility in attack. Whether this hypothesis was correct, we may never know.
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Feb 27, 2014 17:15
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Sidesaddle Cavalry posted:I would like to be Dreadnoughted all over. Especially since someone I was discussing interwar shipbuilding with said that His Majesty's Navy fell behind in all-gun ship quality because everyone else circumvented Washington. My memory of Garzke and Dulin says that the British were caught out by timing. The King George V class could have been built with 16-inch guns but the British didn't want to have to design them, and hoped very much to avoid escalation to that caliber. Accordingly they watched and waited and built them with protection against 16-inch fire while retaining the 14-inch gun. That makes them the only ships of the era to clearly prioritize protection over gunnery. They had other weaknesses, too, as revealed by the way Prince of Wales flooded so quickly after being torpedoed. She had no chance of surviving anyway, but some DC arrangements failed. If I recall correctly, Garzke and Dulin implied that one reason for those problems was the large gap in British BB design - there were basically no new studies between the early 20s and the KGV designs, so a lot of talented people with experience found other work or retired, and the folks drafting the KGVs didn't have the experience.
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Feb 27, 2014 17:57
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SkySteak posted:The firing arc blind spots at the bottom... It'll be fine, just need to snap a 90-degree aileron roll. Bombers can do it, so a spaceship is ok too right? steinrokkan posted:It doesn't really answer your question, but it may help to bear in mind that guns used in Jap. superdreadnoughts up until the Ise class were either directly designed and manufactured by Vickers, or replicated from this Vickers design. Good point on the Vickers guns, though that then makes me wonder about development of FCSs--were those generally centered around individual turrets or any combination of main armament on a vessel?
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Feb 27, 2014 18:06
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Zorak of Michigan posted:My memory of Garzke and Dulin says that the British were caught out by timing. The King George V class could have been built with 16-inch guns but the British didn't want to have to design them, and hoped very much to avoid escalation to that caliber. Accordingly they watched and waited and built them with protection against 16-inch fire while retaining the 14-inch gun. That makes them the only ships of the era to clearly prioritize protection over gunnery. They had other weaknesses, too, as revealed by the way Prince of Wales flooded so quickly after being torpedoed. She had no chance of surviving anyway, but some DC arrangements failed. If I recall correctly, Garzke and Dulin implied that one reason for those problems was the large gap in British BB design - there were basically no new studies between the early 20s and the KGV designs, so a lot of talented people with experience found other work or retired, and the folks drafting the KGVs didn't have the experience.  This is a thing. The way you described it really fits in with what I gathered regarding the British being abosolutely over-prepared for something that they couldn't predict.
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Feb 27, 2014 18:11
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Space Yamato is goddamn hilarious. "You know what'd make a great spaceship? A rusted hulk from a couple thousand feet down in the pacific full of bomb holes!"
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Feb 27, 2014 18:29
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Space Yamato is goddamn hilarious. "You know what'd make a great spaceship? A rusted hulk from a couple thousand feet down in the pacific full of bomb holes!" And then we're going to put a fuckhuge laser into the front of that to make up for the lack of armor and spaceworthiness  I was wondering though, before the invention of radio and wireless telegraphs, how was an admiral expected to control a battlefleet? I could see flags working for communication, but it sounds like you set everything up before hand, hoped that whatever your opponent did didn't counter what you had planned, and sent your ships sailing against each other to blow the poo poo out of each other.
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Feb 27, 2014 18:41
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Don Gato posted:And then we're going to put a fuckhuge laser into the front of that to make up for the lack of armor and spaceworthiness When I am without orders and unexpected occurrences arrive I shall always act as I think the honour and glory of my King and Country demand. But in case signals can neither be seen or perfectly understood, no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy. - Horatio Nelson, maybe. So yeah, basically.
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Feb 27, 2014 18:46
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Don Gato posted:And then we're going to put a fuckhuge laser into the front of that to make up for the lack of armor and spaceworthiness The Admiral put his flagship first in the line of battle and ordered everyone else to follow him. There was a junior Admiral at the rear of the line (the aptly named "Rear Admiral") who commanded the rear in the event that things didn't go as planned.
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Feb 27, 2014 18:52
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How bad were casualties among flagships? It seems like the first ship in the line would logically take the biggest beating. Presumably it would also be the toughest ship, but still, I feel like one ship could only take so much damage before it went down. It seems, at a gut level, like an odd choice to put your most valuable ship with your most valuable person up in the front like that. If it were me (which it wouldn't, because I'm lowborn), I'd put it in the middle or something.
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Feb 27, 2014 18:57
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Don Gato posted:I was wondering though, before the invention of radio and wireless telegraphs, how was an admiral expected to control a battlefleet? I could see flags working for communication, but it sounds like you set everything up before hand, hoped that whatever your opponent did didn't counter what you had planned, and sent your ships sailing against each other to blow the poo poo out of each other. That's pretty much it, yes. One of David Beatty's failings was apparently that he did not meet the Admiral (the name escapes me) of the squadron of Queen Elizabeth-class super-Dreadnoughts when he took command prior to the Battle of Jutland, and that the Admiral's lack of understanding with Beatty's preferred doctrine and manner of fighting contributed to the miscommunications during the actual battle. This also ties back to a Navy being much more than just having the hardware: Maneuvering as a line-of-battle took practice and lots of it. John Jellicoe's decision to deploy his battle-line to the east instead of west on very little information (because Beatty hosed up his scouting duty) was one of the more important ones of the battle, but it spoke volumes of the Royal Navy's seamanship that they could pull off the deployment at all, as coordinating the movements of more than a dozen ships weighing thousands of tons and moving at speeds over 25 speeds was no easy feat. The same could be said for the High Seas Fleet being able to execute a full-column about-turn not only once, but twice. ArchangeI posted:The Admiral put his flagship first in the line of battle and ordered everyone else to follow him. There was a junior Admiral at the rear of the line (the aptly named "Rear Admiral") who commanded the rear in the event that things didn't go as planned.  I learned something today!Ainsley McTree posted:How bad were casualties among flagships? It seems like the first ship in the line would logically take the biggest beating. Presumably it would also be the toughest ship, but still, I feel like one ship could only take so much damage before it went down. It seems, at a gut level, like an odd choice to put your most valuable ship with your most valuable person up in the front like that. This isn't like RTS games where all the ships would be focusing their fire on one ship at a time. Ideally the first ship of the line would shoot the enemy's corresponding lead ship, with the second ship in line shooting the second ship, and so on, because when you have multiple ships shooting the same target, you cannot observe which shell splashes are yours and so cannot adjust your aim accurately. So the lead ship would not really take much more of a beating than the rest (barring situations where the order of fire was not followed for whatever reason, which could and did happen) gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Feb 27, 2014 |
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Feb 27, 2014 19:01
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If your flagship is not up in the front, how would you lead (literally) with it? Also, because of the way naval battles work, with (typically) lines of ships side by side shooting at each other, the start of the line is not necessarily the most dangerous position.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:02
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Frostwerks posted:I remember reading on these forums a long rear end time ago and maybe in this thread's forerunner, the GBS history thread or maybe even an LF mil-hist effort thread that the labyrinthine side streets and alleyways of Paris in the Revolution were conducive to the uprising. I think the reasoning suggested was that thanks to the flighty local belligerents, the topography was great at breaking up troop units into smaller and smaller and more diffuse elements that lost their advantages of massed musket volleys and led to their loss of cohesion and chaotic defeat in detail. There was an implied addendum that the transition to broad avenues of post-revolutionary Paris was to counteract a repeat performance of just such an uprising. I've learned enough from these threads and others that what you've heard and read doesn't necessarily imply historicity and I'm just kinda wondering about how stupid/ how insightful/ or how incidental this hypothetical mattered to the course of history. Noted American expert Samuel Clemens stated as much while visiting Paris in 1867; so even if it wasn't true, it was still a conspiracy theory at the time.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:17
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I thought the Yamato blew the gently caress up into a ton of pieces when it sank. How did they explain that in the silly anime show? They should have raised the Bismarck, since its at least still in one piece. That why they could cater to the Wehraboo market.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:27
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So the space Yamato is meant to be the ACTUAL Yamato? Thought it was just a Yamato themed spaceship. I imagine there would be some issues with airtightness even during her heydays.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:32
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But the Bismarck is also full of bomb holes. Really the best ships would be whatever ones from the High Seas fleet that haven't been carved up for low count steel.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:32
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ArchangeI posted:The Admiral put his flagship first in the line of battle and ordered everyone else to follow him. There was a junior Admiral at the rear of the line (the aptly named "Rear Admiral") who commanded the rear in the event that things didn't go as planned.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:39
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steinrokkan posted:So the space Yamato is meant to be the ACTUAL Yamato? Thought it was just a Yamato themed spaceship. I imagine there would be some issues with airtightness even during her heydays. IIRC they built a spaceship inside the hulk of the Yamato to camouflage the fact that they were building a spaceship. So it's actually a spaceship wearing the Yamato's skin. It still wouldn't work because the Yamato exploded after sinking, but they didn't know that when they did the show the first time.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:41
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The Yamato is practically the literal embodiment of Japan. Of course there's a cultural significance in raising it and fighting space aliens with it. EDIT: Especially with so much of that era of anime being bound up with the resurgence of Japanese nationalism. See: e.g. http://animekritik.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/imperialism-translation-gunbuster-introduction/ Fangz fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Feb 27, 2014 |
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Feb 27, 2014 19:42
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If I recall my old issues of National Geographic correctly the wreck of the Bismarck is in two parts.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:44
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wdarkk posted:IIRC they built a spaceship inside the hulk of the Yamato to camouflage the fact that they were building a spaceship. So it's actually a spaceship wearing the Yamato's skin. Haha you weren't kidding.  Truly a space worthy craft.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:If I recall my old issues of National Geographic correctly the wreck of the Bismarck is in two parts. She sank in one piece and upright even. 
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Feb 27, 2014 19:48
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Even has all her turret mounts emptied out for new laser cannons.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:52
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Raskolnikov38 posted:She sank in one piece and upright even. A tiny bit of the stern broke off, which was apparently a common problem for German heavy ships of that era. 
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Feb 27, 2014 19:52
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Which makes room for space propellant reaction mass nozzles! 
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Feb 27, 2014 19:54
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Still its better than IJN Humpty Dumpty over there  .
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Feb 27, 2014 19:54
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Raskolnikov38 posted:She sank in one piece and upright even. Thanks, I must have misremembered - that was over a decade ago.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:This isn't like RTS games where all the ships would be focusing their fire on one ship at a time. Ideally the first ship of the line would shoot the enemy's corresponding lead ship, with the second ship in line shooting the second ship, and so on, because when you have multiple ships shooting the same target, you cannot observe which shell splashes are yours and so cannot adjust your aim accurately. So the lead ship would not really take much more of a beating than the rest (barring situations where the order of fire was not followed for whatever reason, which could and did happen) Maybe I'm just not thinking about it correctly—my image of a naval battle (which I realize may be misshapen by hollywood or other bad sources) of is of two lines of ships sailing towards each other from opposite directions, and trading shots as they pass each other before breaking into a melee; the lead ship of either line would take the most damage, because it's going to get shot at by the longest series of un-damaged ships with fresh crews at the ready, while ships further back in the line would get shot at by fewer ships, which have already been weakened by being shot at by the ships in front of them as they passed by. I acknowledge that I'm probably very wrong about how lines of battle actually functioned, or about how much damage it takes to actually sink a ship, or a hundred other things but asking dumb questions is how you learn when you don't know anything, so I did it!
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Feb 27, 2014 19:56
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Still its better than IJN Humpty Dumpty over there I was checking Musashi to see if it would be intact, but apparently "At 1936, MUSASHI capsizes to port and sinks by the bow in 4,430 feet of water in the Visayan Sea at 13-07N, 122-32E. Two underwater explosions are heard." Japanese ships just seem more prone to exploding. EDIT: Ainsley McTree posted:Maybe I'm just not thinking about it correctly—my image of a naval battle (which I realize may be misshapen by hollywood or other bad sources) of is of two lines of ships sailing towards each other from opposite directions, and trading shots as they pass each other before breaking into a melee; the lead ship of either line would take the most damage, because it's going to get shot at by the longest series of un-damaged ships with fresh crews at the ready, while ships further back in the line would get shot at by fewer ships, which have already been weakened by being shot at by the ships in front of them as they passed by. Due to how sails work, I'm not sure that you could do the bolded part at all. IIRC they always sailed in the same direction more or less.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:58
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Ainsley McTree posted:Maybe I'm just not thinking about it correctly—my image of a naval battle (which I realize may be misshapen by hollywood or other bad sources) of is of two lines of ships sailing towards each other from opposite directions, and trading shots as they pass each other before breaking into a melee; the lead ship of either line would take the most damage, because it's going to get shot at by the longest series of un-damaged ships with fresh crews at the ready, while ships further back in the line would get shot at by fewer ships, which have already been weakened by being shot at by the ships in front of them as they passed by. Sometimes a fleet would unfortunately happen into an enemy line-of-battle head-on, so that the shape of the fight looked like the enemy line was "crossing the T" of the advancing flagship and her followers. Then everyone in the fleet gets to sink! 
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Feb 27, 2014 20:00
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If they just continued sailing straight past each other, that would open opportunity for one side to turn 90 degrees and open fire from the broadside while the opposing side was facing them with unarmed bows (crossing the T). So the logical thing would be for two sides to tun to face each other, in a zipper fashion. Just guessin'
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Feb 27, 2014 20:02
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wdarkk posted:Japanese ships just seem more prone to exploding. drat right, and that's their charm! The IJN Taihou exploded from awful damage control of leaking aircraft fuel fumes, and the IJN battleship Mutsu exploded at port from what was possibly arson! Really, the damage control training for the whole navy was how a lot of things fell apart even faster than expected for them.
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Feb 27, 2014 20:04
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Haha you weren't kidding. Umm that's clearly an Imperial class star destroyer engaging a Mon Calamari star cruiser 
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Feb 27, 2014 20:06
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steinrokkan posted:If they just continued sailing straight past each other, that would open opportunity for one side to turn 90 degrees and open fire from the broadside while the opposing side was facing them with unarmed bows (crossing the T). So the logical thing would be for two sides to tun to face each other, in a zipper fashion. Back in the day when guns weren't accurate farther than a golf ball could be hit, this could have been a thing.
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Feb 27, 2014 20:08
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steinrokkan posted:If they just continued sailing straight past each other, that would open opportunity for one side to turn 90 degrees and open fire from the broadside while the opposing side was facing them with unarmed bows (crossing the T). So the logical thing would be for two sides to tun to face each other, in a zipper fashion. As I was writing out my description of how I thought naval battles worked, I did begin to realize that what you're writing makes much more sense, yeah. Sidesaddle Cavalry posted:Sometimes a fleet would unfortunately happen into an enemy line-of-battle head-on, so that the shape of the fight looked like the enemy line was "crossing the T" of the advancing flagship and her followers. Then everyone in the fleet gets to sink! Well, if it worked for Trafalgar...though I suppose there, the French/Spanish were "crossing the pi".
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Feb 27, 2014 20:15
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wdarkk posted:
Pfffft, you think that's bad, you should read what happened to the IJN Shinano. It barely made it out of port before being sunk by one torpedo. It didn't help the Type-93 torpedo the Japanese used had pure oxygen as a propellant. Sure, it made sure that the torpedo would explode the first time, every time, but on the other hand it would also explode the first time anyone got too rough with it, as the Chokai found out the hard way.
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Feb 27, 2014 20:18
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Ainsley McTree posted:Maybe I'm just not thinking about it correctly—my image of a naval battle (which I realize may be misshapen by hollywood or other bad sources) of is of two lines of ships sailing towards each other from opposite directions, and trading shots as they pass each other before breaking into a melee; the lead ship of either line would take the most damage, because it's going to get shot at by the longest series of un-damaged ships with fresh crews at the ready, while ships further back in the line would get shot at by fewer ships, which have already been weakened by being shot at by the ships in front of them as they passed by. I'm sorry if my tone came off a bit snarky - that totally was not my intention! Anyway, in the Age of Sail, wind direction limited where and how you could orient yourself, and ships mostly ended up sailing in parallel lines across from each other. This was also a huge factor in why many battles in the Age of Sail were rather indecisive: one would simply need to sail downwind to escape and one would generally always get away unless one's ships were so much worse than his opponent's. If I recall correctly Nelson at Trafalgar was hailed as such a hero because he was actually able to break this convention by closing in on the French fleet when the British had been failing to do that for a long long time (forgive me MilHist thread if I'm getting this wrong) Once ships started to become coal and turbine-powered, ships still ended up moving in parallel lines across from each other, but for a different reason: If you're on headlong courses against each other, then eventually one of you will be able to shoot the other from behind with no fear of retaliation because the gun orientations are all wrong, and then you both try to turn into each other to avoid this from happening and it's like two snakes wrapping themselves around each other. The goal was to cross-the-T: Orient your ships such that you're ahead of and perpendicular to the enemy's course so that your ships can all shoot their broadsides as they pass the lead enemy ship in a line while the enemy can only return fire with a portion of their guns, and this is where your idea of the lead ship taking a lot more damage would actually be true. Speed was a crucial factor in avoiding this situation - if you're traveling at 25 knots and the enemy can make 27 knots and both of you are on parallel courses, then he can draw ahead farther and farther until he can just turn into you and cross your T with little to no effort. If your speeds are equal, then your two parallel courses will only ever remain parallel and the advantage goes to the person with the better scouting because he can deploy his line better than the other and avoid an even-parallel match, or the guy with the better skilled crews/better built ships because any damage dealt to the line will start to unravel the balance of speed and weight of shell.
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Feb 27, 2014 20:25
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:It beats the incessant thrum of tankchat, constant as the autumn rains. Does that make you...a tankchat destroyer? steinrokken posted:....culminated in the Hussite wars aka the one bit of Bohemian history that is somewhat well-known abroad. This isn't true by the way, the only reason I know what defenestration means is because of your people. To the guy who specialises in the Dutch in the New World, why were they so outmatched by England? I would think between Brazil, New Amsterdam, etc. they would've been able to put together a reasonably strong navy and could pay for it via sweet sugar cash. Or were the wars closer run than I think?
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Feb 27, 2014 20:27
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Don Gato posted:Pfffft, you think that's bad, you should read what happened to the IJN Shinano. It barely made it out of port before being sunk by one torpedo. As full disclosure, the Shinano didn't really get the chance to be completed as a carrier that couldn't be sunk with one torpedo. That and the issue with trying to weave and dodge in a superduper-dreadnoguht-sized thing when it could have just outrun the pursuing sub. E: oh and also the thing with not having any planes yet, and the destroyer screen loving off and being unuseful Sidesaddle Cavalry fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Feb 27, 2014 |
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Feb 27, 2014 20:29
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm sorry if my tone came off a bit snarky - that totally was not my intention! Sorry if I got defensive! I get nervous asking dumb questions in front of smart people sometimes  That's interesting info, thank you!
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Feb 27, 2014 20:36
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Ainsley McTree posted:I get nervous asking dumb questions in front of smart people sometimes Besides, I realize I'm wrong about a thing I used to think like...every week. For instance, I read some things that make my last effortpost on 17th century tactics wrong in some places, and once I'm less lazy I'll post about that. It's not about "dumb" and "smart," it's about always learning. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Feb 27, 2014 |
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