Best Battleship?

[Tiornu]

Yes, you're right. It's WAY more complicated. First of all, the belt armor isn't vertical alongside the magazines. Then there's the hull plating, which is not all that significant, but hey, it's 20mm of steel. The shell will lose its windscreen and AP cap against the belt, so they can't help in the impact with the turtledeck, and there's a good chance that the trajectory will flatten a bit after penetrating the belt.

Blah blah blah--in the end, it's all but impossible to get an intact shell through the belt-slope system. At most, you could end up with a shell carving a notch into the slope and, upon detonating, sending blast and splinters through the notch into the spaces beyond.

And I believe there's a nice steel bulkhead behind the slope.

[Yama]

Yes, you're right. It's WAY more complicated. First of all, the belt armor isn't vertical alongside the magazines. Then there's the hull plating, which is not all that significant, but hey, it's 20mm of steel. The shell will lose its windscreen and AP cap against the belt, so they can't help in the impact with the turtledeck, and there's a good chance that the trajectory will flatten a bit after penetrating the belt.

Blah blah blah--in the end, it's all but impossible to get an intact shell through the belt-slope system. At most, you could end up with a shell carving a notch into the slope and, upon detonating, sending blast and splinters through the notch into the spaces beyond.

And I believe there's a nice steel bulkhead behind the slope.

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For some reason, author of the page linked in the first post of the thread has ignored this respect in his comparison and has only taken account the nominal immunity zones of basic belt armour, in which Bismarck of course loses badly. Strange, given that his pages have two comprehensive articles about this very issue.

 

Here's other page with some essays where battleships are compared: http://www.chuckhawks.com/index3.naval_military_history.htm

[nitflegal]

Are we allowed to throw in design-only BB's? If so, the Lion would have made a strong contender had it gone forward and the Vanguard had not. I understand that the 16" on the Lion would have compared favorably with the Iowa's.

 

Matt

[Mobius]

, it's all but impossible to get an intact shell through the belt-slope system.

 

near impossible!? So I may be underestimating when I figure the slope deck as being impacted at 10° @ 15,000 yds.

 

Yama, I didn't see a clear comparison on that site you give a link to. But I read through some of the essays and the author gets the impression that the armor of the Bismark was substandard because of the mistake in assuming the conning tower was penetrated by one of Norfolks 8" shells. The gun director on top of the conning tower was destroyed by an 8" shell not the conning tower. It would have been a magical shell indeed because the hit that ko'd the conning tower hit the port side while Norfolk was to the starboard.

Edited January 10, 2005 by Mobius

[Tiornu]

"For some reason, author of the page linked in the first post of the thread has ignored this respect in his comparison and has only taken account the nominal immunity zones of basic belt armour, in which Bismarck of course loses badly."

There's more to protection than keeping low-trajectory shells out of the vitals. Bismarck's armor was very good against such threat, and she was well protected from cruiser fire, but these advantages came with distinct downsides. The low-lying turtledeck leaves much of the hull above unprotected, while the medium armor thicknesses are little more than fuze-initiators and splinter material for large-caliber shells.

The "baddest" page is fun and interesting, but there can be no definitive, objective comparison system for battleships--a point that Jon makes repeatedly on that page.

I've made a couple attempts to post today but without success. Am I the only one?

[Tiornu]

Lion would have been a fine ship as she combined KGV's hull armor with an excellent 16in gun. This weapon looks basically like a scaled-up version of the beloved 15in gun, though we can anticipate some mount problems of the sort that plagued KGV.

Other negatives would be the poor TDS and secondary battery repeated from KGV. Still, a good design and more than capable of handling a Bismarck or even an "H."

[Guest aevans]

Question...why did everyone go to 3 x 3 on the 16" gun ships, instead of sticking with 4 x 2?

[Tiornu]

Three turrets rather than four means a shorter citadel requiring a lesser weight of armor. Fewer turrets, fewer barbettes, all weight-saving.

[Bob B]

How much of an aid or a handicap would the two forward turret arrangement of the French Richelieu class be?

 

It would seem to me that a single disabling hit could cut your firepower in half, verses a third, or a quarter, with other layouts. Did the twin turret layout offer any tacticle advantage?

[Guest aevans]

Three turrets rather than four means a shorter citadel requiring a lesser weight of armor. Fewer turrets, fewer barbettes, all weight-saving.

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Hmmm...if you take a scale to the photographs of ships with more than one size of turret (sorry, no line drawings available to poor l'il ol' me), it seems that a rough general formula for barbette diameter can be determined. It works out to 2 + N, N being defined as the number of guns of a given size, and the unit of measure being relative to the smallest barbette. (IOW, overhead is apparently equivalent to the space needed to house 2 guns.)

 

Given this formula, one can calculate that a 4 x 2 arrangement would have a barbette surface area of 16 units (4 * (2 + 2), and 2/4 of barbettes will be tall ones) while the 3 x 3 arrangement comes out to 15 units (3 * (2 + 3) and 1/3 tall). (This of course takes into account that surface area of a cylinder's height is directly proprotional to its diameter.) Likewise, total barbette diameter for 4 x 2 would be 16; 3 x 3 would be 15.

 

Makes sense, but if my math is anywhere close to the actual case -- and I recognize that it might not be -- this seems a rather marginal savings, compared to the internal volume efficiency (4 x 2 => 4 * 2^2 = 16 or 2 units per gun; 3 x 3 => 3 * 2.5^2 = 18.75 or 2.08 per units per gun) and the improved system redundancy of 4 vs. three turrets. And I haven't taken into account the mass of 8 turret sides, vs. 6.

 

Still it is and interesting question to study. Was a 6-8% saved armor mass and a ninth gun worth the reduced flexibility and availability of four turrets? I don't know that I'm convinced.

Edited January 11, 2005 by aevans

[Mobius]

Still it is and interesting question to study. Was a 6-8% saved armor mass and a ninth gun worth the reduced flexibility and availability of four turrets? I don't know that I'm convinced.

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Instead of saving the weight it is reinvested back into the turrets as thicker plates.

[Tiornu]

The French accepted the risk of losing a lot of firepower because they also took steps to minimize the risk. You will note that the two forward turrets are widely spaced. Also, each turret had an internal bulkhead separating the left and right pairs of guns. This worked in the real world; Dunkerque took a turret hit that killed everyone on one side of the turret while the other side was largely unaffected.

In the end, a way was found to get a turret repositioned aft. Given this, I don't see any ultimate advantage for the all-front arrangement. It made more sense for Dunkerque than for Richelieu due to the former ship's role in chasing down cruisers. The all-front allowed some separation between the main and secondary mags, but I doubt that was worthwhile. The French also felt that moving a turret aft made it less likely to be hit, perhaps since enemy gunners would be focusing on the bridge area.

Yes, a 6% weight savings is a big deal. The efficiency of twins is less significant than having one more gun. I don't see an availability advantage to four turrets. Their greater target area implies a greater chance of some guns getting knocked out.

[Guest aevans]

Yes, a 6% weight savings is a big deal. The efficiency of twins is less significant than having one more gun. I don't see an availability advantage to four turrets. Their greater target area implies a greater chance of some guns getting knocked out.

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I was referring to availability in terms of the nuber of guns that can be taken out by any single casualty, whether self- or enemy-induced. With 4 x 2, a single turret loss leaves 6 guns, just as a single turet loss would for a 3 x 3 arrangement. Losing two turrets leaves a 4 x 2 ship with four guns, while a 3 x 3 ship would be left with three. Probably not enough to make a difference, but interesting to kick around.

[Mobius]

Tiornu, on the matter of armor quality. The page with all the gun penetration tables shows that shells rated vs GE EFF is approximately 9% better than agains US EFF. I thought Nathan Okun thought that german armor was inferior to US and British armor.

[Tiornu]

Yes, disabling a triple turret will remove three guns from the game, as opposed to two for a twin, but the twin is more likely to be jhit in the first place. That's why I don't think there's much of a difference.

No, Nathan Okun never said that German armor was inferior to US armor. German homogenous armor is slightly worse against large shells, but their face-hardened armor is better against large shells. British face-hardened armor is as good as anyone's against large shells, and probably only the Italians could match it. American face-hardened armor was so bad against large shells that even the relatively crude armor aboard Yamato is better against 18in shells.

[Daniel Papp]

Shouldn't putting four guns into a turret instead of three (or two) allow heavier armor on the turret itself, compensating for the higher loss in case of penetration?

(with the smaller surface/volume ratio)

[Mobius]

American face-hardened armor was so bad against large shells that even the relatively crude armor aboard Yamato is better against 18in shells.

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A class is face hardened and B class is homogenous?

 

I copied this out of another forum today.

 

"... Since then, I have learned more about various armors and

projectiles, as can be seen in the latest versions of my programs at www.warships1.com or www.combinedfleet.com. These results have forced me to downgrade BISMARCK's armor significantly -- the belt plus sloped deck at the waterline turns out to be much less protective than I originally thought since I now have the re-evaluated the effectiveness of German WWII naval Wh homogeneous armor and have discovered that the brittleness of this material (as indicated by a Percent Elongation before it snaps in two in tests of

only 18-20% (18% is the Krupp spec) compared to the better homogenous British NCA and U.S. STS/Class "B" armors at 25% or more) makes it significantly inferior against large-size projectiles, though against projectile 8" (203mm) and less, there is no penalty, to my knowledge. This

is reflected in the German Navy's "G.Kdos. 100" armor penetration tables developed by Krupp in 1940, not just by my own evaluations, which confirm them."

 

"... As I said above, I have learned more and some of

the things I said are no longer correct, but in almost all cases this makes BISMARCK worse and worse as a warship by WWII standards -- I rate it as a battle-cruiser, not a true battleship, by the criteria of having ranges where it would be at least partially invulnerable to enemy fire being the mark of a battleship and very little of BISMARCK can resist any enemy battleship fire of any WWII warship at any range. Use the German G.Kdos. 100 penetration tables and try to find ranges where anything but that narrow waterline area is immune to its own guns (to say nothing of foreign guns); you will not find any areas of the ship that are protected at any useful range, much at no range zone whatsoever. Turrets, barbettes, upper hull, conning towers, whatever; all the armor on BISMARCK is essentially useless at any range against any enemy if they get direct hits on those parts of the ship."

 

Actually, this is not correct as other than the heavy shell that tore off the door of the armored conning tower and killed all within later a witness was inside the conning tower at the time it was hit again by a heavy shell from some 10,000 yds or less and he was only affected by the concussion.

Edited January 11, 2005 by Mobius

[Tiornu]

You can save weight by mounting the maximum number of guns in one mount. What you do with the saved weight is up to you.

Keep in mind that none of these decisions occur in a vacuum. The Richelieu quads had a revolving weight and a barbette diameter almost the same as for the Yamato 46cm triples. That means a great concentration of weight right where you need to put those big cuts in the strength deck. It's all a juggling act.

In USN parlance, face-hardened armor is Class A, and homogenous armor is Class B (or STS if it is ordered by BuShips for hull protection).

[Tony Williams]

You can save weight by mounting the maximum number of guns in one mount. What you do with the saved weight is up to you.

Keep in mind that none of these decisions occur in a vacuum. The Richelieu quads had a revolving weight and a barbette diameter almost the same as for the Yamato 46cm triples. That means a great concentration of weight right where you need to put those big cuts in the strength deck. It's all a juggling act.

 

Indeed. ISTR that the Richelieu class minimised the vulnerability by spacing out the turrets a bit (so one hit couldn't knock out both) and also by putting armoured dividers between the two halves of each turret, so that a hit which just penetrated one side might allow the other half to keep functioning, provided that the turret mechanism wasn't damaged.

 

Another advantage of concentrating the guns in only two turrets is that it reduces the length of the armoured citadel required to protect the magazines and engines. The downside (with an all-or-nothing scheme) is that more of the ship is left unarmoured and therefore vulnerable to destruction by relatively small-calibre weapons.

 

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion

forum

[Icicle]

I tend to think that Richeleu type ships would have been more suited to British needs than the KGV's were.

 

Battle line combat, or carrier escort were not likely to happen in the ETO, and the design of the Richeleu seems to be focussed on hunting large raiders (Bismarck and Sharnhorst classes).

[Redbeard]

I tend to think that  Richeleu type ships would have been more suited to British needs than the KGV's were.

 

Battle line combat, or carrier escort were not likely to happen in the ETO, and the design of the Richeleu seems to be focussed on hunting large raiders (Bismarck and Sharnhorst classes).

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Agree, I'll even claim that the "petite" Dunkerque and Strasbourg would have been of more use in the RN than the Rodney and Nelson were. The French on the other hand, would have been second to none in utilising the "world's most powerful battleship" aura of the Nelsons in the interwar years.

 

Regards

 

Steffen Redbeard

Edited January 12, 2005 by Redbeard

[Tony Williams]

But the Nelsons made terrific monitors, with those high-elevation guns...

 

TW

[Tiornu]

"I tend to think that Richeleu type ships would have been more suited to British needs than the KGV's were."

The Richelieus were all-around superior to KGV and would have been better suited to anybody's needs. Getting Anglo-specific, Richelieu had significantly better range.

 

"But the Nelsons made terrific monitors, with those high-elevation guns."

Nelson and KGV both had 40deg max gun elevation. The French ships had 35deg but longer gun range.

 

"I'll even claim that the "petite" Dunkerque and Strasbourg would have been of more use in the RN than the Rodney and Nelson were."

Have I mentioned recently my pet theory that the old British battlecruisers might have been a better long-term investment than the old battleships? WWII was much more about mobility than battle-line bare-knuckles.

[Mobius]

"I'll even claim that the "petite" Dunkerque and Strasbourg would have been of more use in the RN than the Rodney and Nelson were."

The Rodney gets no respect.

 

Couldn't resist.

[Guest aevans]

The Rodney gets no respect.

 

Couldn't resist.

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Old, slow, and full of bad jokes -- what'd you expect?