by Karl Heidenreich » Wed Apr 07, 2010 2:18 am
Bgile: South Dakota had a partial electrical power loss for less than 5 minutes. She continued to fire at the Japanese throughout the battle, and did exactly the same amount of damage to her opponents as Bismarck did in her last battle. It isn't easy to fire back effectively when it's dark, you are illuminated by searchlights from alternating sources, and you are being hit repeatedly.
You are not mentioning that BEFORE the electrical problem South Dak, using the RDFC, didn´t hit any target at 8K yards away and those same "targets" landed tens of hits on South Dak without the RDFC... in the dark. You are not mentioning that Kirishima`s 14" could have been lethal if being AP rounds instead of shore bombardment ammo. You are not mentioning that Bismarck was doing 7 knots and cannot manouver during her last battle.
No problem; I'm sure I'm more touchy than I should be. Karl has used this one incident to argue that all six ships in the class were worthless.
How narrow are minds around here. If I do not accept that those ships were the BEST then it is assumed that I´m implying they are the worst... simply lack of mature thinking here.
I´m not implying nothing of that sort. So... in order for you to be happy I must say that those carrier escorts were the greatest naval achievement. So, explain to us why is it that the USN came afterwards with the Iowa design and, after that, decided to change the whole concept and came with the Montanas? If they decided to do that was, basically, because the same USN was not that convinced of the greatness of those vessels.... I do remember some caisson tests performed just before WWII...
[b]Bgile:[/b]
[quote] South Dakota had a partial electrical power loss for less than 5 minutes. She continued to fire at the Japanese throughout the battle, and did exactly the same amount of damage to her opponents as Bismarck did in her last battle. It isn't easy to fire back effectively when it's dark, you are illuminated by searchlights from alternating sources, and you are being hit repeatedly. [/quote]
You are not mentioning that BEFORE the electrical problem South Dak, using the RDFC, didn´t hit any target at 8K yards away and those same "targets" landed tens of hits on South Dak without the RDFC... in the dark. You are not mentioning that Kirishima`s 14" could have been lethal if being AP rounds instead of shore bombardment ammo. You are not mentioning that Bismarck was doing 7 knots and cannot manouver during her last battle.
[quote] No problem; I'm sure I'm more touchy than I should be. Karl has used this one incident to argue that all six ships in the class were worthless.
[/quote]
How narrow are minds around here. If I do not accept that those ships were the BEST then it is assumed that I´m implying they are the worst... simply lack of mature thinking here.
I´m not implying nothing of that sort. So... in order for you to be happy I must say that those carrier escorts were the greatest naval achievement. So, explain to us why is it that the USN came afterwards with the Iowa design and, after that, decided to change the whole concept and came with the Montanas? If they decided to do that was, basically, because the same USN was not that convinced of the greatness of those vessels.... I do remember some caisson tests performed just before WWII...
