Karl Heidenreich wrote: Not a single issue that has been brought have been contested properly... Not a reference on why Friedman, R&R or G&D comments... I have tried to be objective in all these, listening and giving space to what could be mistakes or misinterpretation on my behalf. I do not see the same kind of intelectual open mentality in the other side.
Been a while responding since my last post on page ~36 as I have been following your advice and reading R&R as well as all three G&D books at the library...
I'll preface this by saying
I'm not trying to convince you that your wrong - rather I think you need to follow your own advice and be more open minded about the conclusions drawn by the authors of the sources you quote. I am still reading R&R and generally it seems like a high quality book on
British Battleship Design. However I have fully read their Comparison with foreign Battleships uponb which you’ve based your argument and am less impressed...
They themselves acknowledge as much:
P415 – These of course are very simple generalizations which cannot take into account of the many variables that may result from tactics, inclination and so on.
The reason I asked you about the accuracy of the quotes you posted on page 35 of this thread was that, unless *every* book on the US BBs I've ever read is wrong, it was obviously factually incorrect.
Karl Heidenreich wrote:It´s also interesting to bring up some information and comments from R&R´s summary on comparison of British BBs and their contemporaries:
R&R, page 414:
"...The British ships, threfore, have a better side protection in terms of depth covered protection against a diving shell, while the Italian ships have the worst. (The Japanese Yamato did in fact have a better protection against diving shell, because her belt armour was continued vertically downwards to the bottom of the ship, in the form of a very thick torpedo bulkhead, gradually reducing in thickness). The American ships of the South Dakotaand Iowa classes, which are not shown in the Table, had protection against diving shell which in the case of the former ship was worse than that of the Italian ships, and in the latter, better than the British ships.
As the Iowa and SD shared virtually identical protection systems my assumption, erroneous as it turns out, was that they made a simple slip and either by accident or because they didn't know better and were confusing SD with NC which had substantially less protection against diving shells. However when I explored the full context of the quote I discovered that was not the case - they weren't confusing the two 35,000 ton ships which would have been at least understandable - they simply had not done sufficient research to understand the ships they were comparing:
North Carolina:
This class had an external belt, set at an angle of fifteen degrees to the vertical, at the bottom of which was a small external bulge....
South Dakota:
This class had a belt, 12.2 inches thick, set at an angle of nineteen degrees and fitted at the top of a 1-inch protective bulkhead. Thus the belt was about 16 feet inboard of the skin plating, with the underwater protection compartments outside it... With the side armour so far inboard, there must have been a very real danger that a shell could penetrate the ship’s vitals under the belt, and it would not necessarily have to dive, to do so. At a suitable angle of descent, a shell striking at the waterline, could have reached the machinery or magazines by passing through only the thin structure of the bulge protection and the torpedo bulkhead.
Iowa:
The 12.2” thick side armour of Iowa was arranged in a similar manner to that of SD. The main belt was about 14’ deep, but it was extended to approximately thirty feet below the deep waterline, in reduced thickness tapering down to 1” at the lower edge. This system thus gave better protection against diving shell.
Montana:
The 19 degree sloping main belt of this class was arranged on similar lines to that of the North Carolina, with an underwater protection system partly inboard and partly outboard of the citadel. They did however, have an additional internal belt in the form of a very thick protective bulkhead, which extended from the middle-deck to the ship’s bottom. It tapered in thickness from eight inches at it’s top edge, to one inch at its bottom edge.
SD's belt tappered down to the bottom of the hull in exactly the same fashion as Iowa's and so there was no more "real danger" of a shell entering her vitals. As you like sources you can check out Friedman's US BBs, p314:
Protection against shellfire duplicated that of the SD... However the armored box of the new ships was 464' long, compared with 360' for the SD, with a proportionate increase in weight...
Karl Heidenreich wrote:On other issues I must come to find boreatwork´s comments on Montana quite confusing because both, Friedmann and Raven& Roberts finds the Montana as a clear departure of previous design doctrine of the USN. As a matter of fact the divergence in the design criterias is specifically addressed by the latter.
R&R:
This point serves to illustrate the lack of consistency in the schemes of protection adopted in the battleships of the US Navy..."
R&R state that the US used 4 different schemes and imply that was evidence of poor design, which you have been keen to repeat - however Friedman and G&D make it clear that the US really only used 2 schemes: The North Carolina/Montana scheme and the SD/Iowa scheme and they place the decision to use two different schemes in the context that the former could not be scaled up in effectiveness within the Panama canal limits.
The "additional internal belt" which they cite as a "new" feature of the Montana class had already been adopted for the magazines of the North Carolina class - Friedman p.336
this was an Internal sloped belt, similar in principle to the magazine protection of the North Carolina, but made continuous to cover the machinery spaces as well
Furthermore 12x16”/50 weapons was not unique to them the 1919 SD design had similar armament. The TDS was merely a scaled up version of that employed on NC as even R&R states, which itself was merely an updated version of that first used on the Tennesse class – compare cross sections on Friedman’s US BB’s on pages 284 & 136. Her subdivision and machinery layout while different from the beam restricted treaty ships
revived the arrangement used in the old Lexington class battlecruiser
Compare the diagram on p340 with those of West Virginia and NC on p127
– Hence part of the justification for my comments that the Montanas were not so much a departure from US design practice as you have implied but more of a return to it from the solutions forced upon US designers by the treaty restrictions.
R&R do correctly point out the hull form of the US ships was not hydro dynamically optimum however they attribute it purely to keeping the beam within the lock dimensions without acknowledging that the ships were deliberately designed to maintain beam over a larger part of their length to give more depth to the TDS ajacent to the magazines. Friedman US BBs p. 269:
Speed characteristics were deliberately sacrificed to provide sufficient volume for torpedo protection. A model basin memo of 1935 noted that the form ‘is not expected to be a record breaker’
R&R p415 Very little is known of the value of the underwater-protection systems used by the various navies and in order to make an accurate comparison, the results of scientific tests carried out on the arrangements would be required...
R&R P416 The Italians appear to have produced the best system, about which, unfortunately the authors know little...
Again from what I’ve read R&R have done a thorough job at researching the subject of their book - british BBs - but the amount of research used to support their comparison is questionable.
I looked at their bibliography and their British sources are extensive but their sources for other nations are virtually non-existant.
Finally...
Karl Heidenreich wrote:
Anyway it seems to me that there is a serious misconception in all this:
How can the US design and built an appropiate BB before November 1942 if the USN had no previous combat experience from surface fleet actions?...
Basically all of these goes the way that it wasn´t until USS Montana concept came when the USN did achieve a technical proficiency that can only show after particular "learning curve" procedures. Which is, in this case, war experience that the British (and in a lesser degree, Germans) had.
You seem to be basing this on the following *opinion* from R&Rs:
P416. General conclusions:
The successful design of Warships depends to a very great extent on the amount of previous experience that has been accumulated by the designers. It follows therefore, that the nation with the greatest amount of sea and battle experience will be the one most likely to produce a successful design.
...
For this reason the authors believe that the USA and Britain produced the most efficient designs, and that the RN almost certainly had the edge before 1942, the American dreadnought fleet had acquired little battle experience. It is true that there were many faults in the British designs, but most of those could be corrected without involving fundamental changes to the basic design of the ships....
I would argue that their fundamental premise that successful design is dependent upon “sea and battle experience” is POTENTIALLY flawed. They cite no examples to support their case but I can easily cite examples that counter it:
The Royal Navy was considered the dominant navy during the glory days of sail and yet in general the French and Dutch ships were considered superior in design.
The Royal Navy had much more sea experience when they produced the Dreadnaught and Invincible than either the US or Germans had when they designed the South Carolina and Van der Tann. Given your preference for the 4x2 main battery arrangement you’ll note that the SC was designed with a vastly superior turret arrangement 6 years before the British – and is there any doubt as to who built the better WW1 battle cruisers?
Karl Heidenreich wrote:
The shortening of citadel lenght and the economy on armor logically presented themselves as reasons to adopt the AoN armor scheme: displacement limitations will never allow for more than that.
Continuing the theme – Friedman p101
The logic of “all or nothing” protection was that at very long ranges, ships would be attacked primarily with AP shells since hits might be anywhere on a ship and HE would be useless against a thick belt or deck armor. In consequence only the heaviest armour (or no armour at all) was worth using: anything in between would only serve as a burster...
Only after WW1 did the Royal Navy adopt all or nothing protection in the abortive 1921 [i.e. pre-treaty] battleships and BCs, and in the Nelsons, all of which were expected to fight at longer ranges than those envisaged for the earlier British Dreadnoughts. To the extent that the U.S. BBs then were designed specifically to fight at extreme ranges [extreme by 1910 standards] they were well ahead of their time. For example, the protection of the US battleships was not significantly revised in view of the lessons of the battle of Jutland, although other navies distinguished their pre and post Jutland designs.
Again though I don’t have a specific page references I direct you to find and compare the cross section of an American BB of the Tennessee class – ie a ship designed before Jutland and before the WW1 exchange of technology, that of Royal Sovereign designed about the same time, and that of the KGV designed 20 years later... and with your own eyes tell me which KGV most resembles.
Finally the British had alot of direct war experience but technology improved between the wars and IMO R&R fail to allow that other navies can have their own innovations, and at the same time the conservative Royal Navy wasn’t necessarily always quick to react to those innovations: You might be interested in DK Brown’s well footnoted book - Nelson to Vanguard - which although it deals with the RN as a whole, has very interesting comparisons between US and British naval technology – given your assertion of the relative experience of the designers you might find it fascinating – it’s far too much to post in an already too long reply however it can be summed up nicely by the concluding paragraph analysing the Daring class Destroyer design of 1945:
At last the RN had a modern destroyer with a longitudinally framed, welded hull, efficient and compact machinery, AC electrics, and an effective dual purpose armament. These ‘innovations’ were introduced a decade later than the USN
Even the British, as R&R, are severe to their own ships, but it seems that this issue of critizising the USN is regarded as heretical, which is the common not the exception.
In conclusion I’m not trying to convince you that you’re wrong, Nor do I think the American ships were particularly better or worse than their foreign contemporaries - merely that you might be interested in reading Friedman’s US BBs and it might cause you to re-evaluate some of the conclusions you’ve drawn about US BB’s from reading R&R.
It is an excellent read and thoroughly places the various design decisions and compromises within proper historical context as opposed to “designer inexperience.”
Unlike G&D which I found disappointingly opinionated and pro-American in their “design analysis” Friedman presents comparisons and criticisms of the US designs in the form of actual primary source quotes along with appropriate context so you can make up your own mind.
Of particular interest to you might be the British DNC evaluations of US ships versus their British contemporaries, the extent the US was influence by the Hood and the Nelson, and the late and postwar evaluations by fleet officers of the strengths and shortfalls of various US BBs based on War experience.
...and this took 5 MS Word pages to write... I shudder to think how long the post is going to be...
