Naval History Forums

Ark Royal only added two 8 barrelled pom-poms during her time in service - no radars were ever fitted. She was last docked in Nov 1940, but AFAIK her machinery was in good shape, however S&G had machinery problems constantly - every time they tried to use overload power. Renown was outrun at St...

Gentlemen,
Two questions. Would not the British carrier have had some scouting aircraft aloft to avoid being surprised and would the twins have attemped to engage if it was Nelson instead of Renown? After all, they ran away from Rodney when she was escorting a convoy

Gentlemen, The last Coastal command Shackletons were retired sometime in the early 1990's, I believe that some still had the RR Griffon engines as well as turboprops, I wonder where the RAF got their spares (or complete spare engines) from, bearing in mind that Merlin and Griffon engines had not bee...

Dave, thanks for your valuable input, I know we have gone a bit off track on this as the original question was the Twins v the two QE's (which I still think the QE's would have won even if they did not sink them) The various books i have read re the loss of the Scharnhorst state that there was a mas...

Gentlemen, Many thanks once again for all your input. I'm afraid my lack of knowledge on armour v shells means that I cannot really dispute any of your theories, but I regret that I am still puzzled. It would seem that after many years of navies designing ships with more powerful guns to defeat heav...

which would almost even up the amount of shells flying through the air at each other with the weight of shell being on the RN's side Weight of shell is irrelevant in this scenario as in most. If those shells can't defeat S&G's vitals protection at normal battle ranges they might as well be 333k...

I disagree. The twins were well protected vs 15" direct hits. It's unlikely in a normal battle scenario that 15" will be able to penetrate the vitals of the twins. They may still do significant superficial damage out side the citadel, but that is also the case of the 28cm vs the old battl...

Gentlemen,
As ever, your contributions are facinating, were broadsides (all guns) ever used, for instance by KGV & Rodney or by the QE's at Matapan?

Would it not be a more practical proposition to have one of these ships engaging the twins rather than both? I'm not so sure, after all the RN counted the twins as battleships and eighteen 11" against eight 15" hardly seems a fair fight, bearing in mind that although modernised the two QE...

Hi Paul, Many thanks for the info, I went into the site you suggested and read it all, it seems to me - as a non expert, that PoW had an awful lot of problems and not only with her guns, some of which I think occurred on KGV (it was lucky that old Rodney was there!) I also find it difficult to belie...

Gentlemen, We are all aware of the various theories and statements put out by eye witnesses from various ranks to the Hood/PoW and Rodney/KGV battles against Bismarck and of course the other famous battle DoY v Scharnhorst regarding the failure or part failure of some of the 14" guns during tho...

probably better armoured battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau There's no probably about it. S&G were much better protected. The protection of all the British (and American and Japanese) old but modernized battleships does not compare to S&G. Of course S&G would be better off with an up...

Gentlemen, Had a look back through some of the old posts and don't think this has come up We have two old but heavily modernised battleships Warspite and Valiant (16 x 15") againsts two modern but lighter armed and probably better armoured battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisnau (18 x 11"), b...

Gentlemen,
i believe that after PoW and Repulse were sunk the Japananese navy tried to get hold of the radar on PoW, did they get it?

Gentlemen, As ever your views are highly respected and thought provoking, particularly on the aspect of war graves. But I do wonder whether a naval war grave has any more or less right to be left alone for ever. After all, divers go down to wreck sites of all kinds and retrieve objects and some make...