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Hello,

I thought that it was odd that the US Fast Battleships had the same guns as the pre-war Colorado's so I did some checking. All the US fast battleships had the new 16/50 rifle as their main guns, not the 16/45s that the tables (in Pac War)are showing for the 6 earlier fast BBs (NC and SD classes). Please have someone make a note of this for correction in WITP and UV as needed. Thanks.

Perhaps you'd like to recheck your source. Only the Iowa class mounted the 16"/50 Mk7, the North Carolina and South Dakota classes carried the 16"/45 Mk6. This gun was slightly different from the 16"/45 Mk5/Mk8 aboard the Colorado class battleships, allowing the fast battleships to fire the Mk8 "superheavy" shells (which the older ships could not use).

Al,
I've dome some more checking, and I see the different guns. there were 5 different types of 16" guns, widely varying in performance, ecxept for the USN Guns, those were by far the best. Even the colorados has a 2300lb AP shell developed for them which made them much better performing than the Nagatos and Nelsons.

Would have loved to have seen how those 16/50's of the Iowa's would have fared against the armor of the Yamato and Musashi.

They'd have ripped Yamato to shreds. The USN 16/50 and 16"/45 were the best naval rifles in the world for penetration, owing in no small part to the ultra-high-quality alloy cap on the warhead. Yamato achieved in armor thickness what the Iowas achieved in armor quality, and the 16/50 standard shell was known to be able to penetrate (with an intact round with an intact explosive charge) a good deal more armor than covered the Iowas.

Originally posted by mdiehl
They'd have ripped Yamatos to shreds. The USN 16/50 and 16"/45 were the best naval rifles in the world for penetration, owing in no small part to the ultra-high-quality alloy cap on the warhead. Yamato achieved in armor thickness what the Iowas achieved in armor quality, and the 16/50 standard shell was known to be able to penetrate (with an intact round with an intact explosive charge) a good deal more armor than covered the Iowas.

Amen, Not only the guns were superior, the radar controlled gunnery would have made the encounter something like the M1 tanks vs the Iraqui armour in 1991. The Iraqui tanks were being hit and the Iraquis couldn't even detect the attackers. The Yamatos would not even know what was hitting them. Also remember the faulty armour construction that was exposed when the Yamato took a torpedo in 43. It would have needed 5000 additional tons of armour to remedy the defects identified, so the IJN just patched up the ship and pretended that there was no problem.

The US was years ahead of Japan in metallurgy, not only with guns and ammunition (too bad they didn't apply this attention to detail to the pre-war Mark 14 torpedo), but also in aircraft engine development. It was the higher and higher powered engines that the US was capable of designing AND producing in large numbers that made the mid to late war planes so superior to anything that the Japanese could produce.

In fact, when the B-29 first appeared over Japan, the Japanese Army & Navy did not have a fighter that was capable of reaching the high altitude that the "B-sans" initially preferred to operate from. They literally couldn't reach the bombers to engage them. This is one of the reasons that all this talk of Japanese "super planes" that would have been available in late 45 - 46 amuse me to no end. It's all so much fantasy talk.