Battleship thread

FCS wasn't some miracle system like you are led on to believe. The Japanese actually had superior tech.

No they didn't. They had vastly inferior tech.

combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm

The Bismarck

Thats from an American site.

>slow, bad aa-suite, dedicated anti-ship secondaries instead of all dp, poor subdivision, poor tds, unnecessarily large caliber main guns in an attempt to combat shit shell quality

What? Is this bait?

Ahahahah

*blocks your path*

So?

I think we can all agree, that pre-dreadnoughts are the sexist battleships ever made, and of those, despite the flaws, the tumblehome design is the sexiest.

That pathetic jap dick compensator, the "Pride" of the IJN, was sent running with its tail between its legs by the most hilariously small and out gunned task force comprised of literal tin cans. The TBM's didn't even have torpedoes yet they were able able to scare the Yamama into running like a black maid in a cartoon when a mouse shows up.

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The nips had better optical FCS while the burgers had better radar FCS which allowed firing up to 30km which was over the horizon. However, American doctrine made them engage at ~20km because firing over that range had abysmal accuracy and did little other than wearing the barrel away. In Surigao, Nishimura was spotting 40km away but the burgers didn't start firing until 20km because firing beyond that was a waste of ammo and barrel life. However, the height of Yamato's rangefinders meant that by the time Americans can fire with decent accuracy, they would be within Yamato's firing range.
>unnecessarily large caliber main guns in an attempt to combat shit shell quality
There is no such thing as unnecessarily large calibre guns if you are willing to build a battleship to such a displacement.

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Being vulnerable to aircraft was a trait that all battleships shared. It wasn't a special weakness for the Yamato. It was a weakness of all battleships and is a very large part of why people stopped building BB's after WW2 was finished.

>The Iowa class's better FCS means they'd beat the Yamato in a gunnery duel.

It's important to realize that the Iowa is going to have to hit the Yamato many, many, many times to actually disable the Japanese battleship, whereas the Yamato only has land 1 solid broadside on the Iowa to put her out of business. There is a reason why the US used planes against the Yamato and her sister instead of trying to engage her with battleships.

>It's important to realize that the Iowa is going to have to hit the Yamato many, many, many times to actually disable the Japanese battleship, whereas the Yamato only has land 1 solid broadside on the Iowa to put her out of business.
u wot m8

>The nips had better optical FCS while the burgers had better radar FCS
nigga what, the japs fcs was outdated as fuck, it was WW1 tier

in average 1 out of 75 shots hit the target

>third turret cockblocked by second turret
really activates my almonds

>not having two turrets blocked by super structures
Nelson class is like a little baby

>not having three turrets blocked by superstructure
Get on Agincourt's level.

*Tirpitz

>7x2
ok cool I guess

The big gun battleship is coming back.

That works for Japs as well...they ain't hitting anything at 40km, and not much at 20km, while radar FC means the US is hitting at 20km.

Yamato's recorded a 20 mile hit aka the longest successful gun strike by a battleship.

No. The longest gun strikes from battleships were
>Scharnhorst hitting HMS Furious at ~28,000 yards and sinking it
>HMS Warspite hitting Giulio Cesare at 26,000 yards at Calabria

At 20 mile shot against a ship would be damn near impossible with modern technology, let alone with WW2 Japanese tech.

neat gizmo

The event that he's referring to is a theory that as far as I can tell, is advanced by one guy (and nobody else) named Robert Lundgren, who based on his small body of work seems to be something of a battleship fanboy who wants to dispute the common wisdom that aircraft carriers were the dominant capital ships of WW2. Indeed, he goes so as to suggest that Japan should have built more battleships and fewer carriers.

Anyway, in one of his books, he advances a theory that the Yamato actually scored a 31 km (about 20 mile) hit on the American CVE-66 "White Plains" during the Battle Off Samar. The basic thrust of his theory seems that one of the Kamizakee attacks that hit the CVE was actually a hit from the Yamato's main guns and the crew misreported it in the after-action because the shots were fired from so far away that the crew didn't know where they came from in all the chaos and simply assumed that it was a kamikazee hit.

If this strains plausibility and sounds like a desperate attempt to bolster the Yamato's reputation and make WW2 battleships seem more important, then that's probably because it looks like exactly that.

Nips had the best optical FCS with a 30m rangefinder on the Yamato which was unparalleled.
No one is hitting anything at 40km.

Did the Japanese Navy consider 30km to be within the effective range of the Yamato's main guns?

To be fair, he's right that BBs weren't obsolete. They're necessary if you want the enemy BBs dead now, rather than after several strikes (look how Kurita's Center Force only lost two ships during the air attacks in the Sibuyan Sea). On the other hand, if you're capable of waiting and making multiple strikes, then your carrier fleet will fucking murder any BB fleet.

The guns could exceed 40 km at maximum elevation (45 degrees). At that distance, the shell would have 98.6 seconds of travel time in the air before impact. But nobody could have lead a shot to hit at that distance. So I'm going to estimate that the real maximum effective range was somewhere in the neighborhood of 19 km because at that distance the projectiles would have a travel time of less than 30 seconds which seems much more doable in terms of aiming. Firing the guns at ranges way beyond where you can actually hope to score hits accomplishes nothing but wearing down the barrels.

As for what the Imperial Japanese Navy themselves thought? Impossible to know. They burned most of documents regarding the Yamato and its specifications after they lost the war, and interrogating the crew wasn't an option because they all went down with the ships. And many of the documents we do have a riddled with intentional errors, such as listing the main guns as 40 cm to hide their true size.

Find a copy of Japanese Destroyer Captain.
Author was in engagements from Guadalcanal onwards. He was very impressed when he witnessed a first salvo hit due to American radar.

>They burned most of documents regarding the Yamato and its specifications after they lost the war
Time-travel raids of historians to recover documents lost to history when? Because that sounds like a fucking awesome idea for a game.

I think the closest thing to that would be Darkest of Days, though "going back in time with future guns to shoot people from the past to ensure history proceeds as it needs to" is the closest I can think to "go back in time to recover lost documents"

Though shooting at a roman legion with a assault rifle from the future is neat

I was thinking more Veeky Forums than /v/.

I dunno if there's any boardgames with that particular premise but if all else fails you could always just get a few friends, pick a system you like, and make something up

You have no idea how long I have been searching for that painting. I guess searching for 'get rekt spaghettiniggers' isn't that accurate

Post good navy march music. I'll start

youtube.com/watch?v=L_MCBwKUMQo

It's the third result when you search "battle of cape matapan"

underrated post, lol@operation ten-go

The Iowa could peg Yamato over the horizon all day and literally at night without Yamato being able to retaliate.

Nothing is wrong with combinedfleet.com most of his info is from :

amazon.com/Naval-Weapons-World-War-Two/dp/0870214594

which is pretty much the best book you can read about ww2 naval guns.

>pic related is my fav ww2 BB

Rather than posting my B.A in History from a good school. I feel posting a pic of my port in WoWS is a better way to present my credentials when it comes to arguing about ships that were obsolete by about 1935...

>Admiral Steven Seagal
Shouldn't he be on the Missouri as a cook?

He's just saying that a full broadside of 18 inch shells landing on the less armoured Iowa would fuck it up big time.

I mainly use him on Mo(i love that ship so much great firepower, good frontal armor, radar, best bb speed in the game), but I recently got a friend into the game and he bought a Tirpitz and wants to play a lot of t8 so I just movef Seagal to the NC do I can play with my friend.

my fav ships to play are:
>Bismarck-full secondary build
>Mighty Mo- full AA build
>Yamato- balanced build
tied for 4th
>NC-AA build, GKF- secondary build

Yamato had pretty shitty AA, America had primitive-but-capable radar guided central AA control with 3" and 5" guns, as well as the capable Bofors. Most of Yamato's AA was gimpy manually aimed 25mm dakdaks.

>Britain had pom poms and a prayer

beep beep, most effective design for the tonnage coming through

>WoWS
>proving that you're -right- about anything
user, I...

3-inch AA wasn't really a thing during WW2. It was the fiddycals, 1.1"s, and 5-inchers at first, then 20mm, 40mm, and 5-inchers with VT later.

I'd rather have an Iowa class than 2 Dunquerque class vessels.

>The Iowa could peg Yamato over the horizon all day and literally at night without Yamato being able to retaliate
US combat manuals dictate that engagement should be started at 22,000yd which is ~20km. This was followed when the USN engaged Nishimura in Surigao Strait, when they were spotted at 40km but didn't fire until ~20km. The Iowa would likely fire within the same range which was well within Yamato's horizon with its high rangefinder. Firing over your effective range did little more than waste your ammunition and wear out your barrels.

This, also the japs didnt had a central AA fire control and their AA guns were shit, add the fact that they had terrible radar that could only detect airfleets at 50 km and a single plane at 30

Yamato had fire control directors. They were not radar guided and rather primitive compared to their American counterparts with director separate from the rangefinders.
However, the main weakness in for the Japanese guns are their mounts rather than the FCS which was passable. Not great, but better than nothing.

God I hate this Yamatofag

t. iowafag

rather have a pair of QEs quite franly

But they're so slow. That might not matter much in a pure gunnery duel with another battleship, but that's not everything a BB does.

sure they are slower than a dunerque but the are better armed and armored for very similar tonnage and better able to fight another battleship.

and while you are correct in stating that thats nt everything a battleship does its a very important part of it, and for the rest if i want a escort i would be better off with the same tonnage in cruisers or destroyers rather than a pair of battlecruisers

Given that carriers were the primary striking arm in WW2, I think that the single most important characteristic of any BB is enough speed to keep up with a carrier force. A QE does what? 24 knots? Maybe that'll keep up with the Argus, but not a real carrier.

North Carolina class could escort and keep up with a carrier group. Why not a QE?
Oh wait, they did.

Some of the more outlandish but realistic features:

>railgun powered by nuke, could have a range of two hundred kilometers, could fire cheap ammunition

>tethered quadcopter with laser weapon, so it can be powered directly by the nuke, knock down missiles on their way in, alter the course of dumb shells

>60 knots top speed

>a few flights of drones for anti-submarine work

>missiles in banks like the arsenal ship concept

>super-cavitating torpedoes, can't really guide themselves, but move underwater at 200 knots

Anything over the horizon will have a bad day. Anything beyond the horizon could have a bad day too.

Put one of these next to a supercarrier, make some fast destroyers as pickets, add an unknown number of submarines underwater nearby, and you've got naval win-mode.

When did Japan get RADAR?

On ships? 1943

Only a very few selected ships had it, not even the mayority carriers

>Over 70 replies in battleship thread
>Ctrl-F "Warspite"
>Only one
>Ithoughthiswasabattleshipthread.jpg
>Only mention is Warspite setting record
>mfw

Warspite is love
Warspite is life

What was the point of adding three turrets in the front? Did the designers have something in mind when designing HMS Rodney?

Muh weight savings, muh shorter belt armor.

Vanguard was a grotesque frankenstein shit. Build from random parts found in storage and only useful as an AA escort. Bleurgh.

Treaty limitations. Weight was limited by the Washington Naval Treaty, but the RN wanted a 3X3 configuration with 16in guns. So to keep weight down by shrinking the total area being armored, they grouped all the turrets together.

No boat like the Show Boat.

What was with the brits and retarded turret configurations? 2x-4x on the bow and 4x stern on The Prince of Whales. wtf was that? They had to send it to sea with construction workers on board to continue working on the guns to accompany the Hood on their way to getting BTFO by Bismarck/Eugen. Luckily the Japs sank that piece of shit with such little effort.

2x-2x bow, 2x-2x stern, or 3x-3x bow, 3x stern is the best design. The 3x-3x bow, 3x-3x stern on the Montana would have been too heavy and. It's best than the USN never built it. The main reason USN BB were the best of ww2 was because they could serve as fleet carrier escorts.

15 battlestars. easily the most based USN BB. I loved the Enterprise sailor's quote in Enterprise 360 that the first time they were escorted by NC they thought it had been hit by bombs and was burning, but really it was just it firing about 40,000 lbs of hot metal into the air to help keep Big E protected.

>The 3x-3x bow, 3x-3x stern on the Montana would have been too heavy

Not for a 72104 ton (full load) battleship.

KGVs were meant to be triple quads, but the top quad caused balance issues or something. It was the same thing with the NorCars before the US said "ha ha we escalator clause now" and swapped the quad 14s for triple 16s.

"Lundgren upends the conventional wisdom by showing that the battle line was an essential tool for the exercise of seapower"

How is that upending anything? Who says it wasn't?

Conventional wisdom has that by WW2, especially in the Pacific, it's the carrier air group, not the battleship battle line, that is the primary tool of exerting seapower.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean that the battle line wasn't essential. "Essential" isn't the same as "primary" or "only". You still needed guns to escort your carriers, plus coastal bombardment was still hugely useful.

What are the benefits/drawbacks of a 7-8" secondary armament vs 6" secondary armament on pre-dreadnought (post-KC) era (eg Germans and Americans vs British)?

How effective would a pre-dreadnought with a normal main battery but with a secondary battery of two echeloned 8" twin turrets be versus the other ships of its day (1896-1905)?

>You still needed guns to escort your carriers

You can do this with cruisers, or even other carriers.

I haven't read the book myself, and I can't speak to the accuracy or precision of the review, but judging from the comments of the other user,I'm betting the book does in fact mean it as the BB was the primary weapon of the Pacific, and that statements like

>The Japanese Navy's undue reliance on aircraft carriers alone was a key factor in its loss of command of the sea

can't neatly be fitted into an understanding that they were necessary but non-primary. After all, I can't think of any time that the Japanese CVs, straying from their battleship escorts as they did on occasion, were particularly put in danger because of it, and I don't think any of them were sunk by naval gunfire. And that therefore, he really does mean "primary", which would upend conventional wisdom if proven.

Dubs for the nose gun

Fair enough. I'm just railing against the stupid "hook" description, which seems so common with historical book publishing.

Get on my level

FRANCE YES

The Americans used 203 mm guns on their battleships, but essentially nobody else did. This was because the Americans didn't have access QF 152 mm guns used by others , so substituted by a powerful but slower firing, cruder, weapon. Eventually they switched over to 152 mm guns, although some naval officers did like the old 203 mm guns.
From my recollection of reading a book on US battleships a year, maybe two, ago, there was a benefit in that a lot of ships had armor that protected against 152 mm guns, but not against 203 mm guns.
However, it was problematic because the 203 mm guns had a lot slower rate of fire than the 152 mm guns. The quick firing 152 mm guns would be able to pummel the upper decks and set afire an enemy battleship, and effectively render it combat ineffective, much more effectively than an 203 mm gun.
As combat ranges started increasing, both as gunnery became more accurate and as torpedoes became more effective, the advantages of a 152 mm gun became much less, since if you were shooting at that range you had to wait for the fall of shot to land and your accuracy was less. This meant that instead of it being rate of fire that was important, it was the effect of the gun. Thus heavier guns started coming to the forefront, and pretty much all the pre-dreadnoughts made the shift to guns of 194 mm, 203 mm, 234 mm, 240 mm, and 254 mm
This quickly ended though since the same logic meant that if you're shooting at long ranges, you might as well as shift all to big guns. As rate of fire improved on these guns (it was dismally low initially, like 1 shot every 5 minutes iirc), you could get much better firepower at long range.
So technically I guess that there is a short period where 203 mm guns make some sense, after gunnery had moved beyond the 152 mm ranges but before the heavy guns had fast enough reload, but it is pretty short lived, just probably a few years between 1900 and 1905.
You could fit more guns though, Danton had 12 for example.

i just bought it, it will probably take at least to read it since this weekend since this weekend is MLB opening weekend and the only thing I love more than BBs is baseball.

i'm a big time BB fanboy, but i'm highly skeptical on this guy's argument on how BB were still needed during ww2. it really seems like cruisers were much cheaper to built, did great AA, and could also shell coastal defenses effectively.

a week*

>it really seems like cruisers were much cheaper to built

A cruiser could cost more than 1/3 the cost of a battleship, and a battleship would easily be able to defeat more than 3 cruisers in a head-on fight. Compare the cost of a Baltimore-class vs. an Iowa-class. As far as (non-carrier) surface combatants go, battleships were the undisputed kings until missiles came along.

>not using light cruisers as destroers squad flagship
>not using the heavy cruisers as spearhead of destroyer squads
shaking my ricefarmer hat family

Not him, but if the cruisers are CV escorts, it's not a head on fight. They're not there to engage in a gunnery duel, they're there to buy time, guard the carrier (if necessary, allowing it to flee), and in any even likely wouldn't be unsupported, as that aircraft carrier is likely going to be scrambling planes. The Battle off Samar was an absolute shitshow from the American PoV, but it nonetheless showed how even tinier vessels than cruisers could hold off battleships, at least long enough for the planes to start chewing on them.