Naval History Forums

That's a B indicator. These type indicators were not exclusive to the USN, in any way. The had also been in use for many years. A true PPI indicator (called panoramic indicators by the Germans) is a little different than Type B presentation. True PPI has the signal origin at the center of the screen...

..... It's also useful for spotting rounds. You center the display on your target and can see the individual splashes. .. Are you talking about spotting fall of shot using the SG? Mk8 had two displays, the main display was a B scope, with a back up A scope. It was possible to transfer the monitor o...

They may be useful at 40,000 yards but in a BB vs BB engagement optics aren't going to give you a good fire control solution beyond ~30,000 yards. It simply becomes too dificult to distinguish where the splashes are in relationship to the target......... When talking US fire control radars in almos...

A couple of things. It's not correct that optics were only usefull at less than 30k yards. Optics could be useful to 40k. We quickly make the assumption that radar was superior to optics, which may or may not be true. It would depend on the specific optics and the specific radars, as well as atmosph...

I thought I had better post the above before I became de-logged. Prior to 1939 the German Navy prohibited welding directly to armoured bulkheads. The rational was, that the heat would cause hard and brittle spots in the armour. By 1939, ways were found, through careful stress (pre and post heat) rel...

I guess it's been over two years ago that I wrote that intial post. A few key peices of information have come to light since then. One is a 1942 welding study of Stahl 52 welded joints, done in response to Prinz Eugen almost having it's stern blown off by a Mk38 torpedo. This study is a primary docu...

Not according to the data I have on hand. The 2240 lb'er gets more vertical penetration all the way out to 30k. It takes untill long ranges for the intially slower, but heavier projectile, to catch up in terms of vertical penetration. At the those ranges, the 2240 lb projectile is starting to catch ...

Better ballistics, and better armour penetration.

It's in a situation of a limited number shots that a few percentage points more, could be crucial. Say for example, you are able to get off 100 shots, and you score; say 8 hits. With a few % points better probability, you could have scored perhaps 11 hits, instead. That's actually scoring about 27% ...

A few percentage points better, when your talking average probabilities of of around 10%, is not all that insignificant.

Well, I feel the need to chime in and lend support to Thomas's views on danger space. By restricting the target area to above the waterline and and below the weather deck, danger space based on angle of fall appears to be relatively insignificant, but by what about target silhouettes, that include b...

Lutjens was still bent on the mission of commerce raiding, even after he knew the extent of Bismarck's injuries (btw, he could not know how dire the situation of POW was at the time she disengaged). He informed group west soon after, of his plans to release PG to refuel, and continiue the raiding mi...

Although, I also feel that Bismarck could have sunk POW, it probably would take more time than Lutjens could spare, barring some kind of a homerun hit. Taking the additional time, probably would have meant aborting the original mission, and a return to Northern waters back through the Strait. I don'...

I believe both ways of looking at this question have merit. There is no question that servicable radars, able to spot fall of shot out to 30-35k, are an advantage. Even in cases of day light, and good visability, such things as glare, can make feasable optical spotting, beyond 30k, difficult. I don'...

The immersion factor for the Bismarck class in warm sea water was 57.30 tons for 1 cm. If we apply this factor to the weights calculated by Jose for the date of the 3/4 power run, over the standard displacement, (comes to 48,686), the average immersion comes out to 8.49 meters. If we calculate the l...