Are BB undervalued by WITP

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: niceguy2005
I agree no BB commander is going to close to 1000m.

Certainly not by choice.., but two Kurishima's wound up dueling DD's at ranges so short the couldn't depress their armament enough to hit anything but superstructure. As someone said.., "The best laid plans of mice and men..."

[engineer]

Original:  csatahajos
Which is very strange 'cos IRL for a given range a larger caliber and longer caliberlength gun is almost always more accurate due to the flatter trajectory and higher shell weight (it carries the momentum further).

Be careful not to confuse precision with accuracy.  At extreme range the shells are in flight for about a minute and a 30 knot target will travel a half mile.  The shells don't have terminal guidance so a lot of the improvements in accuracy with shorter range comes from shortening the time of flight so the target doesn't have a chance to move as far or change course between the firing solution and the arrival of rounds on target.  

There's also a minimum range issue that I haven't seen addressed (not that it's a critical issue) since inside a certain range, the main guns wouldn't be able to depress far enough to target small ships like PT's or destroyers.  The shells would simply pass overhead.     

[Akos Gergely]

Be careful not to confuse precision with accuracy.

True but still that does not change my point: a 14" or 16" gun for example at 10kyards is no worse in hitting the target than a 5" gun, given the same circumstances otherwise. IMHO they are not only not worse, they are much better of. At some point in time during the design of the Nevada class BBs designers wanted to omit the 5" secondary battery altogether passing the work to the main guns - and the logic behind it was exactly what we discussed.

[Feinder]

other than other BB main guns and torps.

 
Some details are more important than others...[;)]
 
-F-

[mdiehl]

True but still that does not change my point: a 14" or 16" gun for example at 10kyards is no worse in hitting the target than a 5" gun, given the same circumstances otherwise.

Depends on whose 14" or 5" to which you refer and what point during the war. By 1944, a US 5"L38 firing under FD radar direction was far more accurate and far more precise at 10K yards than any Japanese weapon system directed by any Japanese fire control device. Johnson's gun director's work at Samar should be required reading for anyone talking about trends in naval gunfire accuracy and precision during WW2.

[niceguy2005]

Not to mention the that it seems what 2by3 was terming "accuracy" is actually more like probability of a hit. For any given time unit if you fire twice as fast with one gun then you do another you are more likely to score a hit.....not sure but that seems to be what the earlier posts were getting at regarding accuracy calculations.

[John Lansford]

The secondary armament on prewar battleships was a direct descendant of the "quick firing" guns on WWI dreadnoughts and predreadnoughts, and intended to stop torpedo boats and light craft before they could get in torpedo range.  Those WWI dreadnoughts positively bristled with smaller guns, mostly aimed and fired individually like wooden ships of the line.
 
As destroyers got bigger and torpedoes developed longer ranges, though, the secondary armaments really became less useful.  One or two 5" shell hits are not going to be enough to stop a determined DD captain from making a torpedo attack unless they hit something critical.  That's why some nations went with 6" (or with the Germans, 5.9") secondary guns on their BB's; better stopping power and longer range than the 5".
 
Then airpower demonstrated its effectiveness and suddenly secondary weaponry was not only useful again, it was downright critical for a BB to put as many smaller guns as possible on the ship.  It's why the old US prewar BB's had their superstructures ripped off and rebuilt, along with their secondary armaments, to look like the SoDak's.  Better fire control systems, plus radar, plus rapid fire loading and well trained crews, meant that a BB's secondary guns could pump out a LOT of shells in a given amount of time.  Maybe they wouldn't punch through a cruiser's armor, but they will seriously mess up anything not protected and were death to destroyers and smaller craft.
 
It ticks me off no end to see a naval engagement result in only a small number of large caliber shell hits from the BB's, but historically that's what happened.  IIRC Washington hit Kirishima with only 9 16" shells, but there were also 40 or more 5" hits from her secondary guns. 

[Cavalry Corp]

Did not Kaga and Akagi still sport those semi fixed 6 inch guns also other Jap BB still had them

Mu

[John Lansford]

Thought Akagi had 8" guns from her capital ship days, but yes IIRC they were in casemates fore and aft of the main hull.  Think Nagato and Mutsu had single mounted 6" secondary guns too, and of course Yamato and Musashi had those big 6" triple turrets from when the Mogamis were CL's...
 
BTW, when were the Mogamis converted into CA's?  It was right before the war started wasn't it?

[Cavalry Corp]

Was that not the Lex ?
I was thinking of the single guns in rows near the waterline
M

[John Lansford]

Combined Fleet says Akagi and Kaga both had casemated 8" guns near their waterline:
 
http://www.combinedfleet.com/akagi_c.htm

[Cavalry Corp]

of topic

Do you notice that on the combined fleet website that gets used a lot here and people take a lot of respect for ...

All Jap CV seem fater and carry more aircraft

M

[engineer]

The Lexington class had four dual 8" turrets, two forward and two aft of the superstructure.  These were gone in the first wartime refit. 
 
Back to BB firepower, ROF is a good point.  A theoretical ROF of two rounds per minute doesn't mean much when you're fighting at 20,000 yards and have a minute or two between fire:  Time flight, spotting, recalculation of firing solution, relaying the gun, and next fire.  In the opening ranging shots, full salvos may not even be fired until the splashes are at least close.  Non-radar directed fire simply wasn't very accurate.  At Jutland the Germans and British had low single digit hit probability with their main guns.
 
There's another factor at work with the relative cost and time for coping with gun barrel wear.  A DD captain could plausible maintain a high rate of fire and walk his fire onto the target.  Daytime battleship main gun fire would typically maintain spotted fire rather than continuous fire to conserve ammo and postpone yard time for re-lining the gun barrels.  
 
Still, WitP surface combat is a poor abstraction. 

[Akos Gergely]

It ticks me off no end to see a naval engagement result in only a small number of large caliber shell hits from the BB's, but historically that's what happened. IIRC Washington hit Kirishima with only 9 16" shells, but there were also 40 or more 5" hits from her secondary guns.

If you take into consideration the time envelope, the number of available guns and their ROF the 16" guns hardly did worse....

[John Lansford]

Yes, and Washington had the advantage of closing to pointblank range undisturbed by such things as shellfire and torpedoes, while Kirishima fired at South Dakota (missing most of the time too).  In my copy of US Battleships, I believe there was only one 14" shell hit on SoDak; the rest were 8" and smaller shells.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

The secondary armament on prewar battleships was a direct descendant of the "quick firing" guns on WWI dreadnoughts and predreadnoughts, and intended to stop torpedo boats and light craft before they could get in torpedo range.  Those WWI dreadnoughts positively bristled with smaller guns, mostly aimed and fired individually like wooden ships of the line.

As destroyers got bigger and torpedoes developed longer ranges, though, the secondary armaments really became less useful.  One or two 5" shell hits are not going to be enough to stop a determined DD captain from making a torpedo attack unless they hit something critical.  That's why some nations went with 6" (or with the Germans, 5.9") secondary guns on their BB's; better stopping power and longer range than the 5".

Then airpower demonstrated its effectiveness and suddenly secondary weaponry was not only useful again, it was downright critical for a BB to put as many smaller guns as possible on the ship.  It's why the old US prewar BB's had their superstructures ripped off and rebuilt, along with their secondary armaments, to look like the SoDak's.  Better fire control systems, plus radar, plus rapid fire loading and well trained crews, meant that a BB's secondary guns could pump out a LOT of shells in a given amount of time.  Maybe they wouldn't punch through a cruiser's armor, but they will seriously mess up anything not protected and were death to destroyers and smaller craft.

It ticks me off no end to see a naval engagement result in only a small number of large caliber shell hits from the BB's, but historically that's what happened.  IIRC Washington hit Kirishima with only 9 16" shells, but there were also 40 or more 5" hits from her secondary guns. 

I'll add that the USN 6" gun cruisers were designed to serve with the battle line, basically to augment the anti-DD defence. That's why the Boise had such enormous (but essentially non-armour-piercing) firepower.

[Feinder]

Interesting point of note -

The figured out that it was best not to put more than 3 different calibers of guns on warships just before WW1, because too many different types of weapons made for too many types of splashes to try to keep track of fall of shot.  So the pretty much settled on

1.  Main guns of 12" - 14".
2.  Secondary guns of 3" - 6" vs. smaller vessels.
3.  Light weapons of 20mm or smaller (which wouldn't be firing during shoots with the main batteries anyway).

But with several classes (don't know off top of my head), they ended up putting a wide range of weapons to handle a wide range of threats.  But it was problematic, because you couldn't fire them all at once, because you couldn't tell which splash belonged to which gun (was it the 3" or the 5" gun?).  So they limited it to gernally two sizes of (large) guns.

Just thought it was interesting.

-F-

[wild_Willie2]

oops

[Speedysteve]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

Yes, and Washington had the advantage of closing to pointblank range undisturbed by such things as shellfire and torpedoes, while Kirishima fired at South Dakota (missing most of the time too).  In my copy of US Battleships, I believe there was only one 14" shell hit on SoDak; the rest were 8" and smaller shells.

Think I remember Nik/Tiornu (?) posting stuff on this before. Did the 14" penetrate?

[tsimmonds]

Did not penetrate.

Here's a link to pics of the battle damage. The 14-incher is hit number 26 IIRC - direct impact on the number 3 barbette armour.

Thud!