Naval History Forums

One masterpiece of naval construction got disabled by a biplane and the other destroyed a weather station before being bombed into destruction without ever engaging one of the numerous naval targets in its vicinity.

So it was the US who never risked their modern BB's in surface action. Probably their fault to fight all over the Pacific instead of attacking the main IJN bases where Musashi and Yamato spent almost the entire war - safe for two or three occasions. Tirpitz never fought an enemy BB in the entire war...

I thought that PoW would be, from keel to funnel top, about 10% higher than Kirishima.

Only over the main armament magazines the armor deck was 100 mm in that compartment. I've read a statement like that in the specification for the construction - do you know a better source, in particular plans like general arrangement and armour distribution (original sources) for more than the 4 c...

But switchboard room 4 is in compartment XV, not XIV, isn't it?

300m/s are high, though.

According to Dulin/Garzke, the bomb hit the switch board room in compartment XV, which was protected by 50+100mm.

What's your source?

In case you did not read what you wrote: "U.S. WWII base fuzes would be reliably set off by roughly 0.0625 caliber-thickness steel plates at 20o obliquity (16" (406 mm) projectile tests)" That's 25mm. That's hull thickness of KGV. Reliably sets off at 20°. So obviously, it wouldn't &q...

There are 6 hits into the waterline and 1 below (hitting the rudder) illustrated by Mr. Lundgren.

If underwater hits are impossible, why did Kirishima sink at all?

For example NAab states that at 36 deg total inclination and 1900fps SV, against RN 14.7in armour, that only a partial penetration will occur and there is enough uncertainty about the inclination, that this cannot be ruled out. You're joking, right? I wish people weren't through and through fanboys...

Mod 6 was said to be considerably better at obliquities 35° and up, afaik.

I'd consider all this a bit moot as it is 26+" vs. 15" required.

Source is the www. 1700fps is partial penetration.

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-040.htm

Edit: Brain fart on my part: 1700fps the armour was perforated, but the projectile did not penetrate. 1840fps were calculated to be necessary for penetration.

In order to achieve a total obliquity of 30.5° with a ship 20° off your beam, you'd need to present a total inclination of 23.5° (falling shot, inclined armour). The only instance of that (30°+ obliquity) occurring during that engagement would be if a shell hit the far side of the target, meaning ar...

I don't think that hits 1 to 5 would all have been hitting superstructure on PoW, it looks more like deck hits to me. I superimposed a PoW sketch over the shell sketch of Kirishima, both ships have similar lengths so you can rather easily find the probable hit locations on PoW. I know what the point...

The 300m/s and 70° are a very high assumption from my side, since they imply ridiculously high release altitudes. US bomb charts give penetration 7" of STS for these parameters. The dedicated dive bomb chart ends at 5" for 5000' release altitude (which is practical). I would like to know w...

The document contains the likely inclination for each hit, and the obliquity is in the "not nearly perpendicular" zone only for hit 19. You're assuming that 25mm do not fuse the shell? Or am I remembering thicknesses wrong? I'd say they'd fuse, based on the 16" performance against Ric...