Naval History Forums

FWIW, I have records, from USN target practices, of quite a few first salvo straddles on targets at ranges well over 20,000 yards, even before WWII. So such an occurrence, while unusual, was by no means unknown, especially if the first salvo pattern was fairly large.

Bill Jurens

Participants may wish to make use of the Control Panel option to set 'Friends' and 'Foes', which allows one to block messages from a specified 'Foe' more-or-less entirely. If one wishes to register discontent or disagreement without becoming entangled, and still read contributions from a foe, one al...

It is my impression here that most of the discussions, though often in a highly indirect manner, seem to revolve around the following hypotheses, primarily championed by mssrs. Bonomi (who no longer paricipates) and Mr. Virtuani. In essence, I interpret these to be: a) That a historical analysis and...

Mr. Virtuani:

Please try to exercise a bit more restraint in the tone and content of your postings here.

Bill Jurens

Once again, I would ask members to at least try to maintain a reasonable and respectful tone in discussions here. We are clearly, once again, drifting away from that. As a personal note, even if very precise gunnery information was available for the firing rates and salvo intervals of various ships ...

OK.

Might you clarify one more time your reasons for not sharing any more information on the Vickers report, apparently with anyone?

Bill Jurens

Mr. Vituani wrote: "However, (reason is here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8523&p=82952&hilit=keep+word#p82952), I will not explain to you why Barben's report was never sent to the Admiralty." I am confused. Are you suggesting that you are withholding the actual reason why the report was not submitted to the...

The records recording radar performance are quite anecdotal. So far as 'warm-up' is concerned, I don't see that as much of an issue in any case insofar as the entire unit could probably be energized and warmed up without being connected to the antenna, i.e. keeping 'radio silence' would not require ...

For what it's worth, I would strongly agree with Herr Nilsson's commentary about Prince of Wales' gunnery. This sort of problem is so common that it actually has a name -- 'nibbling at the spot', and is usually indicative of an inexperienced or poorly-trained gunnery team. Herr Nilsson explains it i...

In the case of Denmark Strait action were are -- to take a simple metaphor -- confronted with a small collection of LEGO blocks of knowledge, that we know represents a rather small sample taken from a much larger set, and which we know may include a few odd blocks from other sets as well. It is not ...

Attachments are currently posing technical problems. In situations, e.g. the reproduction of graphics, etc., where the usage of attachments is unavoidable, there is of course, little alternative. Purely textual attachments, e.g. scans from books with or without underlining, etc. should be avoided if...

For what it's worth -- and I do have a bit of experience in this area -- I think Prince of Wales' gunnery was not very good at all. It's a very small sample -- on ship, one time, uncontrolled conditions -- but for whatever reasons PoW took, in my opinion, far to long to 'get on' to the target. Bill ...

The level of discussion has deteriorated to the state that I have, with some reluctance, chosen to lock this topic, letting existing commentary remain to stand on its own merit. Should it reopen in another form, which I suspect it will, users continuing to post offensive and inflammatory commentary ...

Although the debate has been heated lately, it remains (barely) within acceptable limits, and I will let it continue in the hopes that at least some progress will be made towards a resolution. As moderator, I must take exception to Mr. Virtuani's commentary that Mr. Bonomi was, in his words "... for...

The allegations of court martial threats, etc. are well known in the secondary literature and have been mentioned in a number of places. There is no need to repeat them here as no one doubts their existence or their phrasing. What I am looking for is some prior expression that these were intentional...