Naval History Forums

Gentlemen, I have just had another look at Tarrent’s book on the KGV class ships and it appears that from the outset he was not particularly impressed with them in comparison with either Bismarck or Tirpitz particularly on a one on one fight. This is OT here, but Tarrant seems to have been overly i...

pgollin wrote: "No. Your claim was rubbish" No, the above post is an insult . "pgollin" can go and complain against McMullen for his (correct) choice to show PoW gunnery performances, excluding the local salvos. :lol: Btw, I have modified the "annoying table" to include the local salvos (this was a...

Hello everybody, Dunmunro wrote: "The splashes shown are probably closer to PE than to Bismarck" I disagree, as clearly visible in the PG film (http://www.hmshood.com/history/denmarkstrait/film.htm) where the last splash seems clearly directed to Bismarck (minute 5:57 and 6:15, correctly captioned ...

Hello everybody, Dunmunro wrote: " think the above is pretty conclusive that the KM and PE got it wrong and the shell fragment most likely came from Hood." I see Mr.Dunmunro point and I agree the most logical explanation is to attribute the splinter to Hood. However the photos (http://www.kbismarck...

The 2 splashes we see in the film are clearly directed to Bismarck (not to PG) and Hood never fired at Bismarck (see Skipwith who never saw any Hood splash close to Bismarck while assisting McMullen in the fall of shot observation). Thus they are from PoW (salvo 20 and 21 in local control, one shel...

RN 14inch and larger guns used single driving bands that were identical, although there was a gap in the band that might be mistaken for a double band: http://www.sfu.ca/~dmunro/images/drivingbands.jpg (BR932 - Handbook on Ammunition} only the HV 6in and 8in shells used double bands. AP shells can h...

Wadinga wrote: "No mention of shots from PoW landing anywhere near PG" ...except that a shell fragment, later identified as 14", was found on the deck of the German cruiser... :lol: This is the quote from PE's war diary (p.42): "...Personally, | observed nothing of the enemy's countermeasures. Acco...

Wadinga wrote: "Abandonment of central control obviously has a serious deleterious effect on gunnery performance" Quite trivial observation, but correct, and that's why local salvos were excluded from the very "annoying" table by McMullen... Anyway we are speaking here of centrally controlled fire ...

Hello everybody, according to the above (confused and evidently angry) post " everything is unknown ". We can add that also the PoW open fire time is unknown because there was not an atomic clock to exactly measure this timing. :negative: No, it's incorrect, we have several usable data (and the ina...

Hello everybody, Bill Jurens wrote: "one can indeed derive an average rate of fire of 93/14 = 6.64 rounds per minute (though the table seems to show 6.4)." Hi Mr.Jurens, 6.64 would be a rather crude approximation (not usable for PoW, btw). In PoW GAR all figures regarding RoF are correctly calculat...

Gentlemen, Once again i am going to throw my self open to your experience, only two questions this time! the first is the rate of shells fired by both ships, as PoW had 10 against 8 would it not be logical to assume that her rate of shells fired (until her guns started to play up) would initially b...

still showing that the "green" PoW had the pool of personnel in the royal navy was significantly larger than it was the case in the Kriegsmarine, the core of personnel came from older battleships. So a "green" crew appears questionable. Both german crews were also "green" in this context. The Royal...

PoW_BS_PG_Output_Comparison_McMullen_rounded.jpg Of course I'm ready to accept corrections to any parameter in the above table, if supported by solid evidences, but I'm confident the result will not change dramatically, still showing that the "green" PoW had a very good gunnery performance at DS in...

Accounts of the action after Hood blew up suggest that Bismarck's RoF declined dramatically: Brooke: ...‘After director take over. After director take over’. Guns and his team were clearly obscured as the stern swung round towards the target. But we were temporarily blind too (though probably not fo...

I am not sure. Close measurements of the drawings in Prince of Wales War Damage Report, which include quite detailed diagrams of the projectile trajectories, show that the compass-platform hit seems to have approached at very nearly 45 degrees off the starboard bow. Whether that's an actual angle a...