Montana Class Battleship!

[J_A_B]

RAM--

Thanks for the inof on the Bismarck.  Good information on German ships is a bit hard to come by where I live.

But I *still* think it was a good design for when it was originally planned...it's just that other designs surpassed it while it was being built.  True, though, the armor layout wasn't well-concieved.  BOTH of the fire-control centers were without any armor at all, and the turret machinery was also un-armored.  

But it looked sooo cool, almost shark-like (why is it that so many German war machines are "shark-like"?).

Also, I have practically no information on Scharnhorst except that it was under-gunned and saw action in a few encounters (convoy raiding, chanel run, etc) before being destroyed.   A brief description of the basic design would be helpful to me    

Note:

Actually, the Washington vs Kirishima WAS a 1 on 1.

The other American Battleship, the South Dakota, had suffered a complete power failure earlier and never caught up to the Washington until well after the battle (South Dakota was also pummeled pretty good and stood up to it well).   True, though, Kirishima was a bit obsolete.  Washington closed to 4 miles without firing--which doesn't say much for Kirishima's gunnery.

Also--I say speed is important meaning that a faster ship can stay out of range and run away from a slower more powerful one.  This happens in Aces High with the planes, and happened at times in naval warefare.  Weaker American Fast Battleships would have, in a 1 on 1 situation, simply stayed away from Yamato.  True, in a slugging match speed is of little help.  

Also about speed--Jutland involved Battle Criusers, which weren't armored like a battleship.  An IOWA-class battleship is fast AND well-protected.   At Jutland, speed wasn't proved useless--battle cruisers were.  The battle cruisers, like German Pocket Battleships, are better suited for destroying convoys and their light escort warships.

Why do you disagree on the amount of damage absorbed by the Japanese ships?  Granted it was from airplanes, but still....they took a heck of a lot.


Here's another interesting fact...

ADM.  Spruance wanted to fight the YAMATO and her fleet with his IOWA-class battleships, and actually ordered the carrier aircraft NOT to engage.  The commander of the carrier task force ( I can't spell his name) ignored the order and destroyed the super-battleship.  Had his planes failed (or suffered excessive losses)he probably would have been court-martialed.

If the great battleship battle HAD happened.....Americans would have won (superior numbers), but it would have been a helluva fight.  


J_A_B

[Karnak]

J_A_B,
Interesting that you note the failure of battlecruisers.  Did you you know that the Kirishima was a battlecruiser?

The US Navy classified all Japanese battlecruisers as battleships.  Look at the armor on the Kirishima, its battlecruiser armor, like the Hood.

Sisu
-Karnak

[RAM]

Lets see  

 

Originally posted by J_A_B:
I *still* think it was a good design for when it was originally planned...it's just that other designs surpassed it while it was being built.  True, though, the armor layout wasn't well-concieved.  BOTH of the fire-control centers were without any armor at all, and the turret machinery was also un-armored.  

I have to disagree. KM Bismarck was an outdated ship from the same moment that it was designed, in all regards it was only a modernized Ersartz York from WWI, and the little experience that German Design Bureau had won with Scharnhorsts.

The lack of DP secondary battery is not that important when one thinks that DP guns were good for weight savings to make the ships comply with Washington Treaty, and germans weren't interested in saving weight to comply any treaty...But the lack of All-or-nothing armor is an horrible thing,not only because the armor protected non-vital zones, but because the same armor that was there to "protect" a non vital zone can arm a AP round's fuse.

PoW's hit on the Bow of the Bismarck won't have had fused to explode like it did if it had not hit an armored surface. It would've gone through, but with no explosion. As you see, sometimes armor is far from protecting the ship... .

 
But it looked sooo cool, almost shark-like (why is it that so many German war machines are "shark-like"?).

Oh..YES!   It is the meanest looking ship in history, no doubt about that.

 

 



[This message has been edited by RAM (edited 10-16-2000).]

[RAM]

Also, I have practically no information on Scharnhorst except that it was under-gunned and saw action in a few encounters (convoy raiding, chanel run, etc) before being destroyed.   A brief description of the basic design would be helpful to me      

Well, Scharnhorsts were the only design of WWII that made Bismarcks look a quality design. In short words, they were HORRIBLE.

If Bismarck had few horizontal armor to protect her against air bombing and/or long range plunging fire, Scharnhorsts were virtually unprotected, with only 3 inches! of armor deck. Again ,the armor deck was UNDER the waterline...

But the inexplicable blunder, the amazing thing, is that nearly half the boilers of the ship had virtually NO armor over them due a design deficiency. Amazing as it is, the boilers were unprotected against a deck hit.

Not only that, but Scharnhorsts were real devils for their crews. They had so much latest technology equipment (none of it worth the weight)and so many advanced features (virtually none of them working like it should), that when the time came to fight against a outdated WWI dinosaur (Renown, in Norway campaign) and three destroyers, both Battleships had to run like screaming girls because:

1-) the A turrets were inoperable due the terrible nose heavyness of the ship making the sea come into the guns.

2-) the tracking system was so advanced that it was broken half the time. Or all the time, for that matter.

3-) the ships' equipments were so terribly complicated that after 15 minutes their rate of fire had been halved.

Was the classic example of "too much tried with too few experience" thing. After Norway campaign, and while they were in drydocks repairing torpedo damage, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had most of its "advanced" equipment removed, nearly 3 miles of useless cabling gone and more reliable systems fitted.

BUt the ships were still nose-heavy overweighted monsters that at full displacement had their armored belt barely over the flotation line. As I said they were terribly bad designed ships.

Good points?...they were terribly fast, 32knots, and had a bit more of belt armor than Bismarcks, 13 inches. Ah, and their 11' triple turret was very efficient (the turret, not the shells).

And they were handsome ships, again.  
   




[This message has been edited by RAM (edited 10-16-2000).]

[RAM]

Actually, the Washington vs Kirishima WAS a 1 on 1.

The other American Battleship, the South Dakota, had suffered a complete power failure earlier and never caught up to the Washington until well after the battle (South Dakota was also pummeled pretty good and stood up to it well).   True, though, Kirishima was a bit obsolete.  Washington closed to 4 miles without firing--which doesn't say much for Kirishima's gunnery.

You are ignoring a big fact here, apart that what karnak said ,that kirishima was a BC,not a BB. Kirishima had spotted South Dakota but had NOT SIGHTED USS Washington. They kept on firing SD all the time (and got several hits, some of them barely stopped by SD's armor).

Washington's presence caught Kirishima completely unaware and sealed her fate. Was a two on one, not an one on one, regardless the electrical breakdown aboard South Dakota.

Also--I say speed is important meaning that a faster ship can stay out of range and run away from a slower more powerful one.  This happens in Aces High with the planes, and happened at times in naval warefare.  Weaker American Fast Battleships would have, in a 1 on 1 situation, simply stayed away from Yamato.  True, in a slugging match speed is of little help.  

See this scenario. Yamato ,Mushashi and Shinano (imagine she was completed as BB) are heading towards American beachhead in, say, Guadalcanal. They can go only at 27Knots. You have USS Iowa, USS Wisconsin and USS New Jersey.

Tell me what do you want your 33 knots for?. you MUST engage. BB vs BB scenarios don't happen because they happen, one of the forces has a task and the other force tries to deny the chance to complete it. Again, highest speed is a tactical asset, but is nothing compared with firepower and/or armor. In that scenario, probably, 2 out of 3 US BBs would've gone down for maybe one Yamato (and very probably only if Aerial support came into the battle).

Remember too, that a 67.000 ton ship will ALLWAYS stand more damage than a 50.000 one. It has way more reserve buoyancy to play with, and can handle more damage in a better way.

Sorry, Iowas were awesome ships, but Yamatos were, again, IMHO, better   .

Also about speed--Jutland involved Battle Criusers, which weren't armored like a battleship.  An IOWA-class battleship is fast AND well-protected.   At Jutland, speed wasn't proved useless--battle cruisers were.  The battle cruisers, like German Pocket Battleships, are better suited for destroying convoys and their light escort warships.

I am going to shake some classical misconceptions that people have about Battlecruisers. People uses to think that BCs were unprotected ships, right?.

Wrong. The British concept of the BC was a lighlty armored ship with heavy firepower and outstanding speed.

German Ships traded FIREPOWER for speed, letting armor at BB levels. So most of the Germans BCs sported guns 1 or 1 1/2 inches less than their British counterparts...but then you must look at some facts...following are the stats of three contemporary ships, one german BC, one British BB and one british BC

German Derrflinger BC class stats:
   


Displacement: 26.000tons
Speed: 26Knots
Armor:
Belt:    12'
Deck:    1.2'-3'
Citadel: 10'
Turrets(face): 10.6'
Barbettes: 10.4'
Conning Tower: 11.3'

Weapons: 8x12' guns
-----------------------------------
British Lion Class BCs:
   


Displacement: 29.000tons
Speed: 27 Knots
Armor:
Belt:    4'-9'
Deck:    1'-2.5'
Turrets(face): 9'
Barbettes: 9'
Conning Tower: 10'


Weapons: 8x13.5' guns
-------------------------------
British Iron Duke Battleship stats:
   


Displacement: 26.000tons
Speed: 21Knots
Armor:
Belt:    12'
Deck:    up to 3'
Turrets(face): 11'
Barbettes: up to 10'
Conning Tower: 10'

Weapons: 10x13.5' guns
---------------------------------

Surprising isnt it?...turns out that German Battlecruisers were as well armored as their contemporary enemy's Battleships, and way better armored than the enemy's Battlecruisers.

But the war was won by the british...and so the British BC standard whas the one that was widely used. Ships that sacrificed armor for speed, and so were unreliable in battle and prone to blow up.

German ships were the toughest in the world, and their battlecruisers were with no doubt the best ships afloat in 1914-1918.

So, as you see, Battlecruiser isnt always a synonim of "unprotected fast ship"  




[This message has been edited by RAM (edited 10-16-2000).]

[RAM]

Why do you disagree on the amount of damage absorbed by the Japanese ships?  Granted it was from airplanes, but still....they took a heck of a lot.

Because speed will never help a ship against a plane. You seemed to use Musashi's sinking by aircraft as a proof that speed was better than armor. Once again, is better a 27 knot ship armored as Yamatos than a 30 Knot Iowa that won't absorb half the ammount of damage that Yamatos did.


Here's another interesting fact...

ADM.  Spruance wanted to fight the YAMATO and her fleet with his IOWA-class battleships, and actually ordered the carrier aircraft NOT to engage.  The commander of the carrier task force ( I can't spell his name) ignored the order and destroyed the super-battleship.  Had his planes failed (or suffered excessive losses)he probably would have been court-martialed.

AFAIK it was Adm. Lee's desire that the battle should be a Battleship one. Spruance was the one who ordered the aircraft carriers to attack and declined the BB action.

If the great battleship battle HAD happened.....Americans would have won (superior numbers), but it would have been a helluva fight.  


I agree completely. But it would've been much costier for US Navy in lifes. Only 10 planes were lost in the attack over Yamato, but only one 18' hit on a US BB would've done tripe that damage.

It was better as it was, that for sure.
---------------

Sorry for the 3 consecutive posts...dunno what happens with my browser, it doesnt post long posts.  

[Dune]

Ram, if I remember correctly, the loss of the Queen Mary, Indefatigable and Invincible at Jutland had less to do with the thickness of their armor plates and more to do with the poor design of their turret-powder room connections.  I remember that the British only used one set of doors  between the turret and the powder room, whereas the Germans used two.  Similar to an airlock.

It is believed that flashes from strikes on the turrets entered the powder room and blew the ships up.  In fact Beatty's flagship, the Lion, almost had the same thing happen to it.  However a seaman ordered the powderroom flooded to prevent a fire.

But I could be wrong.  It's been awhile.

------------------
Lt Col Dune
X.O. 352nd Fighter Group
"The Blue Nosed Bastards of Bodney"

"Credo quia absurdum est." (I believe it because it is unreasonable)
- The motto of the Republic of Baja Arizona

[RAM]

Not exactly, Dune. True, there is a heavy chance that Indefatigable and maybe Invincible were lost due to open flashtight doors, but Queen Mary was surely lost because armor weakness, and maybe structural weakness too. And Invincible's loss is very doubtful that happened due the flastight doors.

The doors themselves were well designed, not faulty. But Beatty, later to be First Lord of the Admiralty, ordered his ships to fire at the highest rate of fire possible. That meant to keep the Flashtight doors open ALL the time, I.E. not let them closed until the shell and powder were being lifted from the magazines, but opened all the time.

Indefatigable was probably lost this way, with a shell bursting into a turret and the fire going down thru the barbette into the Main Magazines. But Queen Mary suffered four consecutive straddles from Seydlitz, and in all of them there were multiple hits. It was reported by eyewitnesses that the ship was ALREADY sinking when the magazines blewed up, the ship was virtually tore apart by the consecutive fast hits on her and seems that she had already lost speed and was going down quite fast before the last explosion. And the explosion itself, we'll never know, may have been due the flashtight doors, or due a direct magazine hit.

Invincible most probably was lost because a direct Magazine hit, because she was under Jellicoe's command, not Beatty's; and Jellicoe had ordered to shut the flashtight doors. A ship that is blown up due for a magazine explosion means that it is a ship with a fatally wrong design and armor layout.

British BCs were hoppelessy unprotected for a direct gun battle. sure, ships as Lion survived with very heavy damage (Lion herself was saved by a miracle, as the magazine caught fire and a heroic mortally wounded officer flooded it before dying). But ships of 30.000 tons are expected to stand some damage.

Bad armor means exposed zones, mostly magazines and machinery...and you see, one ship was virtually disintegrated by gunfire, other was blown up by a magazine explosion,the third because the magazine caught fire because imprudent cordite handling, and another was a hair off blewing up, too.

Then remember HMS Hood.  

Not a good reference for the british BC concept, for sure.

[This message has been edited by RAM (edited 10-16-2000).]

[RAM]

Here is the photo I talked about before. Note the tremendous nose weight of the Bismarck after only a 14' hit in the bows. The ship had serious weight problems by itself but that hit really made their day. Only because this hit Bismarck was reduced to a speed of 20 knots, showing how relatively light damage could ruin a raider's mission.


   

 



[This message has been edited by RAM (edited 10-17-2000).]

[RAM]

OOPS double post  

[This message has been edited by RAM (edited 10-17-2000).]

[StSanta]

Hey RAM, while you are at it, gimme coordinates for the Battle of Jutland please  .



------------------
StSanta
9./JG 54 "Grünherz"

[J_A_B]

I was unaware the Kirishima was a battle cruiser.   My primary source of data on naval engagements is USN and Royal Navy information.  I have very little from the Axis perspective.

Thanks


Also:   My point on YAMATO-class ships sustaining damage was only to show how durable they were--I didn't mean for it to have anything to do with speed (since those ships, at 27 knots, weren't that fast).  It was more a testimonial to the effectiveness of their armor.

Regarding ADM. Spruance and Lee--perhaps I got names confused.  It has been several years since I read much naval history.

Finally, part of the reason Bismarck was slowed down so much was the fact that much of its fuel was trapped and contaminated by that one shell hit.  The largest fuel tanks on Bismarck were in the bottom of the bow, directly under where the shell struck.  I read somewhere that the damage itself only slowed Bismarck to 27 knots (from 30), but the lack of fuel is what forced it down to 20.

As for Bismarck's vulnerability...other similar battleships were just as vulnerable.  A single aircraft-launched torpedo hit (less than 450kg of explosives) on Prince of Wales cut the ship's speed in half and created an 11-degree list, as well as pulling the stern down to only two feet above the water--not to mention completely cutting electrical power the aft half of the ship (no electricity meant no steering ability).  

Compared to that, Bismarck help up a little better--a torpedo caused a speed loss and loss of steering, but did not affect the guns and didn't create a massive list. Of course, the ability to steer is rather important.

(Ironically enough Repulse--a battle cruiser--did much better than Prince of Wales as it could maneuver better.  Unfortunately a mass of torpedos launched from every direction proved to be unaviodable.)


Totals required to sink each ship (appox)

Bismarck:  +/- 5 torpedos, massive number of close-range shell hits, plus scuttling

Prince of Wales:  5 torpedoes, 1 500kg bomb.

Yamato-class:  15-25 torpedos, untold quantities of bombs.

Judging by that, Yamato-class appears to be the winner by a large margin, with Prince of Wales and Bismarck being roughly equal.  All of them are shown to be especially vulnerable to hits below the waterline.

Moral of the story:  water is bad inside a ship.

J_A_B

[This message has been edited by J_A_B (edited 10-17-2000).]

[RAM]

I'll resist my temptation to put another line drawing, this time of the Kongo Class BB  

But yes, Kirishima (A Kongo class "fast BB") was designed as an improved Tiger Battlecruiser, with similar looks ,armor and speed, but with 14' guns instead 13.5' guns. In the late 20's and early 30's all the four Kongos (Kongo, Haruna, Hiei and Kirishima) were extensively modernized, fitting them with somewhat better equipment and refitting them with new engines that gave them a tremendous boost to their speed. From 27Knot ships they were up to 30 knot ships.

But the armor remained virtually untouched all through their careers. The only armor improvement was the deck armor, but the rest remained as designed and built.

 They were called by the japanese as "fast battleships" but in fact they were pure battlecruisers:

Armor:

Side:  8" (203mm)
Deck: 3.8"-6.5" (96.5-165mm) (after 1930's refit)
Turrets: 9" (229mm) faces (design)
Barbettes: 10" (254mm) sides
Conning Tower: 10.5" (267mm) sides
----------------------------------

As you can see this class of ships were lightly armored.

And NO! you didnt escape without the line drawing (HA HA HA!!!  )

 

Noone will deny her that she was beautiful  

[Hamish]

All the line drawings are great, and although those are some nice looking ships, i think the Montana would have been the MOST beautiful by far, had she been built.  

And in Second, this baby:

 

She just Looks Mean.

Hamish!

[MC202]

RAM said

............SNIP............. .

> They were called by the japanese as "fast battleships" but in fact they were pure battlecruisers:

> Armor:

> Side: 8" (203mm)
> Deck: 3.8"-6.5" (96.5-165mm) (after 1930's refit)
> Turrets: 9" (229mm) faces (design)
> Barbettes: 10" (254mm) sides
> Conning Tower: 10.5" (267mm) sides
                     
> As you can see this class of ships were lightly armored.

The displacement was 30,500 tons (normal). Let compare to the Italian Doria class.

Displacement  23,622 tons

Armor:

Side: 9 3/4" to 8" inch main belt, 5" at the ends
Deck: 3"
Turrets: 11"
Barbettes: 9 1/2"
Conning Tower: 11"

Guns
Ten 12.6" (two two gun turrets, two three gun turrets)
12 5.3"

Speed
27 kts

and the Littorio class

Displacement 35,000 (standard, closer to 40,000 in use)
 
Armor:
Belt 280mm + 70mm, bulkheads 210mm-70mm
Decks 162mm-45mm
Barbettes 350mm-280mm
Turrets 350mm-200mm

Speed 30kts

Guns

The below is a quote from:

BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TREATY BATTLESHIPS by Chuck Hawks at: http://www.teleport.com/~chalu/treaty.htm
A darn nice site.
...Start quote.......
These ships were designed to carry 9-15in guns (3x3), even though the London Treaty allowed 16in guns. The choice of caliber was determined by the limitations of Italian ordinance manufacturing capabilities. Instead, they built an innovative, high velocity 50 caliber gun which fired a 885kg (1,947 pound) AP shell at 2,800fps, generating very high energy. The maximum range was 46,800yds at 35 degrees elevation. Unfortunately, the barrel life was very short. Broadside weight amounted to 17,523 pounds. Magazine stowage was only 74 rounds per gun.
.....end quote.........

Back to me now, I think they looked better too :-)

mc202
Dino in Reno