Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Discussions about the history of the ship, technical details, etc.

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alecsandros
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by alecsandros »

Antonio Bonomi wrote:Hello everybody,

@ Alecsandros,

the King George V quadruple turret loading mechanism problems were probably improved at the time of Howe and Hanson being commissioned.
I know,
I wanted to point out that the problems were already known to the officers on board the PoW, and that they could expect breakdowns at any moment. With the Hood gone, and the 2 heavy cruisers out of effective range, I don;t know how much confidence could have been left...

It is was not that bad though, as the ships carried 10 heavy guns, and even at 70% output, they could still fire just as many shells/salvo as a German 8 guns battleship (Bismarck had 89% output , so roughly 7 guns out of 8 available to fire for each salvo).
The difference would appear when and IF firing for effect would be ordered...
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Antonio Bonomi
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by Antonio Bonomi »

Hello everybody,

@ Alecsandros,

well I see you know pretty well the KGV class quadruple turret problem originated by their own intention to have more guns ( 10 instead of 8 - 4x2 turrets or 9 - 3x3 turrets ).

I am glad about that because at the end that was the reality and had nothing to do with "teething problems" it was a design problem that reduced KG V to have only the twin turret correctly working at the end of the final battle against Bismarck on May 27th, 1941.

A well known design problem only located on the quadruple turrets loading mechanism that once the ship was twisting and turning at fast speed was showing up frequently.

When I read on specialized books about that ( Peter Hodges on The Big Guns 1860-1945 by Conway press ISBN 0 85177 144 0 ; from page 98 to page 105) I understood why they were using that as an additional excuse to justify what happened on Denmark Strait to Prince of Wales.

http://www.amazon.com/The-big-gun-Battl ... 0870219170

When Prince of Wales was firing on an almost straight run she had her 70/80 % firing output.
Once she started turning away the 2 quadruple turrets loading mechanism started providing the expected problems and she went down with only the twin turret still working = 20 % with 2 guns out of 10 usable. Exactly the same thing occurred to King George V on May 27th against Bismarck according to P. Hodges.

So it was not true that the guns problems were one of the reasons of the turn away in front of the enemy engaged, it was just the other way around, ... the turning away caused the problem on the 2 quadruple turrets, just as they should have expected and probably already experienced during trials.

This is the true, ... and the reason why I will never accept the gun efficiency justification to explain that retreat.

@ Dunmunro,

I agree with you about the progressive firepower reduction during a long engagement.
Peter Hodges declared a 68 % DoY efficiency against Scharnhorst, but only one gun on the twin turret defect free that day :( .

@ Paul,

OK, I am glad of being helpful to you.

Bye Antonio :D
In order to honor a soldier, we have to tell the truth about what happened over there. The whole, hard, cold truth. And until we do that, we dishonor her and every soldier who died, who gave their life for their country. ( Courage Under Fire )
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by alecsandros »

Hi Antonio,
If I remwmber right the early design for KGV had no less than 12 main guns, but of a smaller calibwr. Increasing the caliber meant reducing tje number of guns..
All battleships could suffer from turret issues, especialy in long battles.
Scharnhorst had problems at stromvaer, massachussets at casablanca, littorio during the battle of sirte.. Rodney during bismarck's final battle..
Usualy triple and qiadruple turrets woild be quite complex systems and with every increase in complexity vomes a higher probability of error..

It is interesting to see that the quad arrangement implemented on the richelieus also caused big problems , with rate of fire very low and a tendency to jam which were onlu resolved postwar, in American shipyards
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by phil gollin »

.

The MAIN problems with the 14-inch turrets was with the inter-lock system (specifically the safety interlocks). These were identified before PoW was finished but needed time at a dockyard to be fixed (these are noted in the KGV class Ships Book).

After 1941 there seems to have been little problems - the DoK problem at North Cape was due to a freak wave jamming a shell .

After the initial problems, the KGVs didn't have performances any worse than others - it is just that too many people who live in the world of wargames expect 100% performance in the real world.

Again myths live on despite the truth having been published many, many times.

.
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Antonio Bonomi
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by Antonio Bonomi »

Hello everybody,

@ Phil,

I have an electronic engineer skill, not a mechanical one dedicated to naval gun weapons, so I let Peter Hodges to summarize his view about the 14 inches quadruple turrets.


Bye Antonio :D
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In order to honor a soldier, we have to tell the truth about what happened over there. The whole, hard, cold truth. And until we do that, we dishonor her and every soldier who died, who gave their life for their country. ( Courage Under Fire )
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by alecsandros »

phil gollin wrote:.
After 1941 there seems to have been little problems - the DoK problem at North Cape was due to a freak wave jamming a shell
.
"11) During her battle with Scharnhorst at North Cape, Duke of York was shooting for a total of two hours. Mechanical problems suffered included failures of the bridge flash tubes in the working chambers to close completely, the collapse of shell arresters in the lower hoists and a shell-cage defect in A turret, all of which caused some guns to drop out of firing opportunities. All guns suffered at least some failures to fire, with B1 gun being the most reliable, having missed only three out of the 77 broadsides. Notable among these missed salvos: Poor loading drill put A3 gun out of action for 71 of the 77 broadsides. Three guns in Y turret were unable to fire for a 15 minute period, causing them to miss 17 broadsides. "
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by dunmunro »

alecsandros wrote:
phil gollin wrote:.
After 1941 there seems to have been little problems - the DoK problem at North Cape was due to a freak wave jamming a shell
.
"11) During her battle with Scharnhorst at North Cape, Duke of York was shooting for a total of two hours. Mechanical problems suffered included failures of the bridge flash tubes in the working chambers to close completely, the collapse of shell arresters in the lower hoists and a shell-cage defect in A turret, all of which caused some guns to drop out of firing opportunities. All guns suffered at least some failures to fire, with B1 gun being the most reliable, having missed only three out of the 77 broadsides. Notable among these missed salvos: Poor loading drill put A3 gun out of action for 71 of the 77 broadsides. Three guns in Y turret were unable to fire for a 15 minute period, causing them to miss 17 broadsides. "
So loading drill errors caused the loss of 74 rounds and the problem in Y turret 51 rounds, for a total of 126. Adding these back to the total rounds actually fired gives us an 87% output for a 2hr battle fought in very rough seas, which differs very little from any other BB action, where we have available stats. It also has to be noted that most other actions were very brief, in comparison.
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by alecsandros »

dunmunro wrote: So loading drill errors caused the loss of 74 rounds and the problem in Y turret 51 rounds, for a total of 126. Adding these back to the total rounds actually fired gives us an 87% output for a 2hr battle fought in very rough seas, which differs very little from any other BB action, where we have available stats. It also has to be noted that most other actions were very brief, in comparison.
...
Duke of york fired 450 out of 770 possible shells.

That is 58%.

Why and hhow were the other 42% lost may be interesting to analyse, yet fact remains that she fired with 58% output.

P.S.: what kind of percentage output would Bismarck or Massachussets, or Washington have if eliminating the errors in drill, the same way you eliminated them above? :lol:
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by Byron Angel »

..... A question which remains to be answered, however, is whether the mechanically complicated nature the KGV Class 14in quad turret required an unusually complicated loading drill on the part of the turret crews. One hint is that the breakdowns seem to have occurred after the turrets had been in action for a period of time; this suggests perhaps a physical or mental crew fatigue factor coming into play.

B
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by dunmunro »

alecsandros wrote:
dunmunro wrote: So loading drill errors caused the loss of 74 rounds and the problem in Y turret 51 rounds, for a total of 126. Adding these back to the total rounds actually fired gives us an 87% output for a 2hr battle fought in very rough seas, which differs very little from any other BB action, where we have available stats. It also has to be noted that most other actions were very brief, in comparison.
...
Duke of york fired 450 out of 770 possible shells.

That is 58%.

Why and hhow were the other 42% lost may be interesting to analyse, yet fact remains that she fired with 58% output.

P.S.: what kind of percentage output would Bismarck or Massachussets, or Washington have if eliminating the errors in drill, the same way you eliminated them above? :lol:
No. DoY was chasing Scharnhorst so Y turret was wooded for much of the action. A broadside refers to a full gun salvo from all turrets that can bear on the target.
I agree with you about the progressive firepower reduction during a long engagement.
Peter Hodges declared a 68 % DoY efficiency against Scharnhorst, but only one gun on the twin turret defect free that day
so 448 rounds fired = 68% for a total of 659 possible. 448 plus 126 = 574 out of 659 = 87%.

I didn't eliminate all errors in drill, just the single error that caused a loss of 74 rounds, and the single problem that resulted in the loss of 51 more. However it is interesting that in the USN each error is called a single "casualty" regardless of how many missed rounds that error caused:

http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.c ... dhlcvnVBqI
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by alecsandros »

Byron Angel wrote:..... A question which remains to be answered, however, is whether the mechanically complicated nature the KGV Class 14in quad turret required an unusually complicated loading drill on the part of the turret crews. One hint is that the breakdowns seem to have occurred after the turrets had been in action for a period of time; this suggests perhaps a physical or mental crew fatigue factor coming into play.

B
... Obviously.
the more complicated the system, the more likely the error.

The 2-gun turrets were the simplest used on WW2 battleships; then came the 3-gun turrets, and then the 4-gun turrets.

Interestingly, the Royal Navy went back to 2-gun turrets for her last and most powerfull battleship, the Vanguard.
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by alecsandros »

dunmunro wrote:
I didn't eliminate all errors in drill, just the single error that caused a loss of 74 rounds, and the single problem that resulted in the loss of 51 more.
Why don't you eliminate them all, and conclude once and for all that all KGV class battleships had 100% output ?

IT's simpler that way. :whistle:
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by dunmunro »

alecsandros wrote:
Byron Angel wrote:..... A question which remains to be answered, however, is whether the mechanically complicated nature the KGV Class 14in quad turret required an unusually complicated loading drill on the part of the turret crews. One hint is that the breakdowns seem to have occurred after the turrets had been in action for a period of time; this suggests perhaps a physical or mental crew fatigue factor coming into play.

B
... Obviously.
the more complicated the system, the more likely the error.

The 2-gun turrets were the simplest used on WW2 battleships; then came the 3-gun turrets, and then the 4-gun turrets.

Interestingly, the Royal Navy went back to 2-gun turrets for her last and most powerfull battleship, the Vanguard.
The RN didn't "go back to 2-gun turrets" for Vanguard, because of a preference for 2 gun turrets, but because they had 4 x twin 15in turrets in storage and it was much cheaper to do this than build new turrets. I don't consider Vanguard as the most powerful RN battleship - as she was probably less powerful than a KGV equipped with updated radar and FC. Vanguard with 3 x quad 14in, for example, would have been a much better ship, IMHO.
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by dunmunro »

alecsandros wrote:
dunmunro wrote:
I didn't eliminate all errors in drill, just the single error that caused a loss of 74 rounds, and the single problem that resulted in the loss of 51 more.
Why don't you eliminate them all, and conclude once and for all that all KGV class battleships had 100% output ?

IT's simpler that way. :whistle:
I did that analysis to look at the effects of the other problems - and they are very minor in consequence.

We only have information on several long shoots. DoY versus Scharhorst, KGV + Rodney versus Bismarck, Massachusetts at Casablanca and the practise shoot by USS Idaho, and in every case output declined to very similar levels, despite the fact that Massachusetts and Idaho were shooting under almost ideal conditions. The long (but shorter than above) practise shoots by Hood and Rodney, prewar, showed 79% output for Hood and 90%+ for Rodney but it is noted that Rodney had several long delays that helped in preventing losses of output, although the same is true for Idaho as her shoot was split into two segments.
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by Pandora »

dunmunro wrote: so 448 rounds fired = 68% for a total of 659 possible. 448 plus 126 = 574 out of 659 = 87%.

I didn't eliminate all errors in drill, just the single error that caused a loss of 74 rounds, and the single problem that resulted in the loss of 51 more. However it is interesting that in the USN each error is called a single "casualty" regardless of how many missed rounds that error caused:

http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.c ... dhlcvnVBqI
dunmunro, are you the one posting in the navweaps forums as Andy01?
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