Naval History Forums

I understand how a warship's turrets are armored against Gunfire, but what about the actual barrels of the guns themselves? Are they armored too? What would it take to knock out the barrel of a large caliber naval gun? was this something that ever happened? As an example, at Denmark Strait, Prince ...

Another very interesting thing is that he had 2 times flight training at Flugzeugführerschule (Flight school) Parow and Warnemünde where he was trained as a flight observer. Sounds like training as an artillery spotter for the ship gunnery control. Whether as an artillery officer he would still hav...

There are official de-briefing documents from the interrogation of the Bismarck survivors by naval intelligence which may assist you. I do have some of these documents in PDF however this particular individual is not highlighted. Because no senior officers were captured there was little of practical...

Hi. I was a young 17 year old WEM who spent my action stations behind the stws tubes on Andromeda with an SLR fitted with match stick for repitition firing. I had to grow up very quickly over those few months in 1982 but had the honour of doing it with some wonderful people. I think 17 is very youn...

Given the state Bismarck was in at the time of the final battle Renown would have had a decent chance without Rodney. In the actual final battle there was also Norfolk and Dorsetshire as well as Rodney. A key factor was that an 8 inch shell from Norfolk knocked out Schneiders' gunnery position in th...

paul.mercer wrote: [, but we should not forget the hammering that Warspite took when her rudder jammed and she circled right under the German guns.

Warspite of course was a battleship and not a battlecruiser.

I find the concept of ''crossing the T'' difficult to understand. The ships being engaged from directly ahead by open broadsides are presenting the smallest target profile to the gunnery officers crossing the T. Unless the guns are exactly in line the target is going to be far more difficult to hit ...

Unlikely that Bismarck would be firing its main armament at POW whilst manoeuvring to avoid torpedoes.

Failure to properly co-operate and fight a joint war and instead fighting two separate wars in my view was the single biggest blunder the Axis powers made in WW2.

Ships such as Yamato would have been of far more use in the Atlantic than they were in the Pacific.

My understanding was that the VC was awarded when the evidence in German records and accounts of the action became available after Germany capitulated.

The only instance I am aware of a VC being awarded by specific recommendation by KM officers occurred after the raid on St Nazaire.

Dave Saxton wrote: .... by using the techniques used by American and particularly German shipyards.

With the concept of these ships the Japanese also missed a trick in not being party to the German naval Z Plan - not that the Fuhrer would allow such co-operation.....

The turrets and barbettes of Inflexible were known to be very vulnerable to flash. This is a key point. Knowing the opposition has only cruiser size guns instead of battlecruiser guns the Inflexible is likely to try to maximise its rate of fire by keeping the flash doors open. This will be particul...

I was thinking of the 1914 Inflexible (ie. Falklands battle) versus Prinz Eugen 1941 (ie. Denmark Strait battle). Thinking about it as this is entirely hypothetical you could look at it from two distinct scenario's - firstly as above and secondly with later versions of both ships, say 1918 and 1944 ...

, unless PE gets to within 12in gun range and then bad things happen to PE as her armour will not stop even a WW1 12in RN AP or Common shell. In 1914 it did take quite a lot of time and hits to sink the 'twins' though I suspect, from their name 'armoured cruiser' they were better armoured than the ...

I'd see Inflexible getting peppered with shell hits, disabled, silenced and sunk by torpedoes. Essentially Prinz Eugen was Dogger Bank Blucher on steroids! Quite possibly. Given the events at Jutland could the Prinz have the weight of shell impact to cause a major detonation within the shell handli...