PoW 14in guns out of action

[dunmunro]

"Y" Turret
The following defects occurred in "Y" turret:-

Salvo 11 - No. 3 central ammunition hoist was raised with shell but no cordite; No. 25 interlock having failed to prevent this. The interlock was functioning correctly before the engagement. There has been no opportunity to investigate this. It is also reported that the reason no cordite had been rammed was that the indicator in the cordite handling room did not show that the cage had been raised after the previous ramming stroke. This caused the gun to miss salvoes 15 to 20.

Salvo 12 - Front flashdoors of No. 2 gun loading cage failed to open and cage could not be loaded. Flashdoors on transfer tubes were working correctly and investigation showed that adjustment was required on the vertical rod operating the palm levers which open the gun loading cage doors. To make this adjustment, three-quarter inch thread had to be cut on the rod. This defect was put in hand after the engagement had been broken off and was completed by 1300. It would appear that the operating gear had been strained, possibly by the foreign matter in the flashdoor casing making the doors tight. The doors were free when tried in the course of making the repair. This caused the gun to miss salvo 14 onwards.

Salvo 20 - Owing to the motion of the ship, a shell slid out of the port shell room and fouled the revolving shell ring while the latter was locked to the trunk and the turret was training. The hinge tray was severely buckled, putting the revolving shell ring out of action. The tray was removed, but on testing the ring it was found that No. 3 and 4 hinge trays of the starboard shell room had also been buckled and were fouling the ring. The cause of this is not yet known. The trays were removed and as the action had stopped by this time, No. 4 tray was dressed up and replaced. The ring was out of action until 0825.

I have often puzzled over the fact that Y turret shell ring was not in action until 0825 yet two guns were reported in action at 0720. I believe that this refers to #2 and #3 guns and so they were both out of action until 0720 when they were repaired and were ready for action pending the repair of Y turret's shell transfer ring.

[Alberto Virtuani]

As per McMullen (PoW gunnery officer) "everything was fine with the guns".
Therefore temporary problems were considered solvable in few minutes by the gunnery department. If Leach had a crystal ball and was able to predict what was unknown to his gunnery department...... then he should have replaced Churchill as overall strategist for the rest of the war.

Bye, Alberto

[Alberto Virtuani]

@Dunmunro: Hi Duncan, I'm sorry, the above post (including comments re. Leach and McMullen) was intended to go to the other thread "The Plot".... My mistake in a too quick copy/paste.....

However from your posted report above, it looks like gun n.3 was already firing salvo 21 (missing salvos 15 to 20) , only the n.2 was unserviceable at cease fire (missing salvos 14 onward).
Still a doubt about the fact that the report mention a complex repair ended at 13:00 while the gun was reported ready at 7:20..... Perhaps a temporary patch / bypass before ?

Bye, Alberto

[dunmunro]

W-W CS1:

Addressed Admiralty, C. in C. Home Fleet.
XXXXXXXX. IMMEDIATE.
Following received from H.M.S. PRINCE OF WALES Addressed C.S. 1 begins.
A and B turrets in action. Y turret 2 guns in action. About 400 tons water in ship mainly abaft after bulkhead. Compartment above steering compartment flooded but steering gear in action. Estimated best speed 27 knots. T.O.O. 0720/24 Ends.

Leach:

The 5.25" opened fire at a range of 18,000 yards but only fired 3 salvos. "Y" Turret's shell ring jammed during the turn away and the turret was out of action until 0825.

After retiring on a course of about 160 degs. "Prince of Wales" circled to port, steadying up on a course of 250 degs. And joining "Norfolk" came under orders of C.S.1 who at 0633, stated his intention of keeping in touch with the enemy. The extent of the general damage to the ship was reported to C.S.1. At 0707 C.S.1 ordered "Prince of Wales" to follow at her best speed giving his course 210 degs. Speed 26 knots. Two guns of "Y" Turret were again in action by 0720 and an amplifying report of damage was made to C.S.1.

B.S. 5, footnote 2, p10 states:

Four guns of the after turret were serviceable from 0613 to 0720 and two guns up to 0825.

Yet the 14in shell transfer ring was out of action until 0825 which would have rendered all guns out of action due to a lack of shells - the problems with Y2 and Y3 were separate issues from the shell transfer ring. The two guns that were unserviceable until 0720 must have been Y2 and Y3 and the author of the footnote mistakenly assumed that they were then ready for action, but in fact it was their own issues that were repaired and they were only ready for action pending repair of the shell ring at 0825.

The data presented is confusing and contradictory but the best explanation is that Y2 and Y3 were out of action from salvo 15 and 14, respectively until 0720 when they defects effecting those two guns were repaired and at 0825 the shell transfer ring was repaired restoring the turret to action.

[Alberto Virtuani]

@Dunmunro: hi Duncan, strange however that the report mention gun n.3 as missing salvoes 15 to 20, while gun n.2 missing salvos from 14 onward.
We know 4 shells were fired in local control, and this points to the fact that at least 1 out of the 2 was able to fire again before cease fire.

Bye, Alberto

[dunmunro]

@Dunmunro: hi Duncan, strange however that the report mention gun n.3 as missing salvoes 15 to 20, while gun n.2 missing salvos from 14 onward.
We know 4 shells were fired in local control, and this points to the fact that at least 1 out of the 2 was able to fire again before cease fire.

Bye, Alberto

2 guns in action (Y1 + Y4) can easily fire 4 rounds in 3 salvos.

[Alberto Virtuani]

@Dunmunro: yes, but they were semi-salvos, therefore 2 guns = 3 rounds in normal conditions under RN usual firing practice in central control.
Please correct me if I'm wrong as I don't know exactly what was the local control fire modality on RN ships.
Still the sentence that Y3 was missing salvos from 15 to 20 seems to point out that it fired at salvo 21, as opposed to Y2 that was declared unserviceable from salvo 14 onwards.

Bye. Alberto

[pgollin]

.

A very good question Alberto.

The Fire Control Manual meant that almost any fire could be ordered, or assumed.

Unfortunately, whilst we have a reasonably detailed gunnery report, we don't have the proper detail.

.

[wadinga]

Hi Alberto,

How easy it is for a simple statistic to befuddle the situation.

Still I see NO compelling reason to break off the engagement due to gun status (as per McMullen statement in his interview: "everything is fine"), before being sure BS had been damaged.

Especially if you have vested interest in presenting a particular picture.

Half the available guns fire on each salvo for PoW. Therefore the Group A guns in the two forward turrets (perhaps 3) fire on approx 05:53:10 and the Group B (also 3) guns at maybe 05:53:35. However, whatever the time of flight and shell splash spotting plus adjustment overhead, the Group A guns don't fire again until 05:54:25, one minute and 15 secs later. The group B guns aren't any faster, since they don't fire until 05:54:50, a one minute interval. When the A arcs open, two more guns join each group from Y turret, but the Rate of Fire remains the same.

Only when a gun fails to make this relatively leisurely ROF is it officially called "failed" and features in the 25% down. (Statistics massaging?). Whether it gets added to the other group, when it is actually ready to fire is unknown. Maybe to maintain the ratio it has to wait for its "slot" to come round again. McMullen is shooting artificially slowly to give the men sweating with crowbars and sledgehammers a chance to fire a gun on its allocated slot.

Only in the minute after 06:00 itself does PoW actually manage to get three salvoes away during the same minute, after the 13th salvo straddle, (Rapid Fire?) but the rate of change estimate is still so poor( over on one salvo way under on the next two) that these are all clear misses. With a nominal 30 sec reload time for the 14" rapid fire would mean 4 salvoes a minute. The attempt to co-ordinate with Hood via the F/C wave did not work so I assume McMullen was doing his own thing, spotting each salvo, but with a rate slow enough to give his baulky guns a chance of making their allocated salvo, except 25% of the time they didn't even do that!

Poor Leach, on the bridge, must be aware his main armament is firing well below half its maximum rate, and even then also that some salvoes are even less than half his armament. Antonio's account on the Hood website (updated May 2014) makes it clear he thinks (thought) every bearing gun fires on every salvo, but 55 shells fired gives an average of 3 shells per salvo, even when Y turret is available to help. See Dunmunro's excellent table on the Plot thread (?)

Time of flight for 14"

Note: Time of flight for APC Shell with MV = 2,400 fps (731.5 mps)
10,000 yards (9,140 m): 14.1 seconds
20,000 yards (18,290 m): 32.4 seconds
30,000 yards (27,430 m): 57.4 seconds

Nowhere is there a need for either group of guns to delay salvoes to over a minute spacing. This is just to give a chance to get faulty loading mechanisms a chance not to miss salvoes. Even doing this, 25% missed their allotted slots. PoW's real output per minute was down by 50% or more over what it theoretically could have been, had they got and held the range and gone to rapid. Or just got desperate and blazed away because they were being hammered and Hood was sunk. Trying to load the shaky installations faster would have provoked more missed shots and even more breakdowns, some perhaps permanent. McMullen himself admitted things were not actually "fine" when he sent the boy to the Bridge.

Things had not been "fine" with the guns since McMullen fired his first salvo and one gun failed for the rest of the engagement, and Leach had the lives of his entire crew in his hands (having just seen 1400+ snuffed out), and little immediate prospect of hurting his enemies who were both achieving 80+% output on a much higher RoF. Oh, yes and he had just been blown up.

All the best

wadinga

[paulcadogan]

Half the available guns fire on each salvo for PoW. Therefore the Group A guns in the two forward turrets (perhaps 3) fire on approx 05:53:10 and the Group B (also 3) guns at maybe 05:53:35. However, whatever the time of flight and shell splash spotting plus adjustment overhead, the Group A guns don't fire again until 05:54:25, one minute and 15 secs later. The group B guns aren't any faster, since they don't fire until 05:54:50, a one minute interval. When the A arcs open, two more guns join each group from Y turret, but the Rate of Fire remains the same.

Nowhere is there a need for either group of guns to delay salvoes to over a minute spacing. This is just to give a chance to get faulty loading mechanisms a chance not to miss salvoes. Even doing this, 25% missed their allotted slots.

Hi Sean,

A possible reason for the gap between semi-salvo pairs was that Hood and PoW were firing in time sectors as ordered by Holland in order to avoid fall of shot confusion - since they were supposed to be firing at the same target. As you said the only time McMullen seemingly gave that up was after 0600 when Hood was no longer in the picture! Quite the coincidence otherwise.

Had Hood been firing at Bismarck, the GIC/time sector shooting from the two ships would theoretically have resulted in heavy shell salvos falling around Bismarck approximately every 15 seconds - not a very pleasant situation for Bismarck had it occurred! Unfortunately for the British, all that unravelled thanks to Hood's targeting error.

I would think that Leach expected variations in output based on experience with the gunnery exercises over the previous weeks. As long as Hood was there and firing all her guns, some output loss from PoW might not be as significant. Once Hood was gone though, with two enemy ships still pouring in shells of all sizes - "falling on top of each other with whirlwind rapidity" (Grenfell), any loss of output became much more significant. This is basically what Leach explained in his narrative.

[Alberto Virtuani]

@all: please, before writing about the poor PoW gunnery performances, have a look at data from Marco Santarini's statistical analysis of the engagement.

PoW average rate of fire was very good (1 full salvo per minute, identical to the celebrated rapid fire of BS that fired 13 or 14 full salvos in 14 minutes battle), firing accuracy was better then BS's (1 hit every 18 shell vs 1 hit every 20 shells for BS). Just the output was slightly worse (75% vs 83% or 89% depending on the unknown number of salvos from BS).

If you prefer to believe to the story invented to justify Leach retreat, I have no other argument here. Facts are fully clear and they are not supporting the decision to disengage taken by this officer, based ONLY on his lack of confidence after Hood blew up (as Paul correctly points out).

Bye,Alberto

[dunmunro]

@all: please, before writing about the poor PoW gunnery performances, have a look at data from Marco Santarini's statistical analysis of the engagement.

PoW average rate of fire was very good (1 full salvo per minute, identical to the celebrated rapid fire of BS that fired 13 or 14 full salvos in 14 minutes battle), firing accuracy was better then BS's (1 hit every 18 shell vs 1 hit every 20 shells for BS). Just the output was slightly worse (75% vs 83% or 89% depending on the unknown number of salvos from BS).

If you prefer to believe to the story invented to justify Leach retreat, I have no other argument here. Facts are fully clear and they are not supporting the decision to disengage taken by this officer, based ONLY on his lack of confidence after Hood blew up (as Paul correctly points out).

Bye,Alberto

You neglect to mention the fact that PoW was engaging Bismarck and PE.

[Alberto Virtuani]

Byron Angel wrote: "........Your argument for discounting the failure of Y turret appears to be that it was directly caused by PoW's radical turn away (which may be true), but it also implies in an unspoken manner that everything would have remained fine and dandy in Y turret if only Leach had remained stuck in and fought on...... "

Hi Byron, I answer here to your question as Antonio Bonomi correctly stated that we were using the wrong thread for discussing this aspect.

I agree with almost all your analysis. Leach, before been assigned to PoW, was a gunnery expert and he was Ordnance Director, directly involved with the development of the 14" gun and turret. He was aware of the problems related to the design of turrets.
This is why he correctly delayed the acceptance of his ship trying to solve all the problems before, then he accepted the ship but he pretended to have the technicians of Wickers still working on-board, while training for 6 weeks "day and night" his gunners and during the mission itself.

However, the turrets were NOT giving severe problems yet while in action, until his decision to sharply turn to port to disengage. The Y turret jammed when the counter-turn to follow the smoke was ordered.
You are right, I can't be sure that no problem was going to occur, had he continued on his course or turn to a parallel or slightly diverging one "to open range".

However the "bad" fact here, from a military viewpoint, is that he ordered the turn away BEFORE any problem happened, not just AFTER the problem occurred. He did it before for his own admission, when he was not aware of any serious damage inflicted to the enemy he was ordered to stop and while his gunners were firing and hitting BS (PoW turn away started between salvo 16 and 17 at 6:01:30, while salvo 13 had straddled and hit landing just after 6:00:00.......) .

The reason of his disengagement was not the actual gun status, but the fear that some problems could possibly happen (plus the first hit in Compass Platform......)

Bye, Alberto

[wadinga]

Hello Alberto,

If you are an enthusiast for Santarini's statistical approach, you will notice he assesses PoW's gunnery efficiency on p41 as

"=55 shells /(18 salvoes x 6 theoretical shells until 06:02 ) = 50.9%"

Yes, like the rest of us without an agenda, (and Leach of course), he realises not really 75% but 50%! Also PoW's problems were evident on salvo 3 when A1 was already out and the ship's output permanently 10% down.

Antonio and Alberto, you have done a sensational job in expressing yourself in English, for our benefit, through the years, but can you expand on what you mean by Leach "pretending" to have Vicker's contractors on-board, so as avoid confusion. You cannot seriously be suggesting these civilians were kept aboard under the false pretences because everything with the guns was already "fine"?

All the best

wadinga

[Antonio Bonomi]

Hello everybody,

@ Wadinga,

you wrote :

Antonio and Alberto, you have done a sensational job in expressing yourself in English, for our benefit, through the years, but can you expand on what you mean by Leach "pretending" to have Vicker's contractors on-board, so as avoid confusion. You cannot seriously be suggesting these civilians were kept aboard under the false pretences because everything with the guns was already "fine"?

Thanks Sean, ... but I had anticipated all this analysis responding to Byron Angel on another post :

Hello everybody,

@ Byron Angel,

I think I am in agreement on the majority of the arguments you mentioned above.

Initially Capt Leach tried to associate to his retreat decision the real state/number of working main and secondary guns and the damages received on board.
The May 24th, 1941 8.00 am radio message and the May 27th one are a clear evidence of this.

Than he changed completely his own justifications on June 4th, 1941 narrative when he realized that many of the written reports were NOT going to support his previous declarations.

He went to the gunners training status, his own crew/ship state of overall readiness ( point b below ) ... but most important he mentioned the main guns reliability issue ( point a below )

3. Some explanation remains to be made as to my decision to break off the engagement after the sinking of H.M.S. "Hood" - a decision which clearly invites most critical examination. Prior to the disaster to the "Hood" I felt confident that together we could deal adequately with "Bismarck" and her consort. The sinking of "Hood" obviously changed the immediate situation, and there were three further considerations requiring to be weighed up, of which the first two had been in my mind before action was joined. Namely:

(a). The practical certainty that owing to mechanical "teething troubles" a full output from the main armament was not to be expected.

(b). The working up of the Ship after commissioning had only just reached a stage where I felt able to report to the Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet, that I considered her reasonably fit to take part in service operations. This was the first occasion on which she had done so. From the gunnery point of view the personnel was (sic) immensely keen and well drilled, but inexperienced.

(c). The likelihood of a decisive concentration being effected at a later stage.

In all circumstances I did not consider it sound tactics to continue single handed the engagement with the two German ships, both of whom might be expected to be at the peak of their efficiency.

Accordingly I turned away and broke off the action pending a more favorable opportunity.

At first those can appear superficial changes, ... but it is just as said a superficial way to read it, ... they are very important especially if read on the light you explained above.

Due to his own previous responsibilities we can read on his biography book, Capt Leach knew better than anyone else the KGV class 14 inch quadruple turret loading mechanism problems and overall design un-reliability.

This was the reason why he forced his battleship to 7 weeks full gunnery training, night and day and why he pretended the Vickers technicians still on board.

But nobody on the Admiralty on May/June 1941 wanted this problem to surface and being declared and discussed.

That is why Capt Leach wrote on his narrative :

... of which the first two had been in my mind before action was joined.

So, I agree with you :

No fair evaluation of Leach's decision process can be reached without some grasp of the actual state of delicacy of PoW's turret machinery as understood by Leach from his ship's performance @ Scapa.

That is another good reason why nobody wanted an inquiry that would have had the need to dig into that as you correctly wrote, for PoW as well as for KG V, with awful results.

They decided to " cover up " everything, ... they invented the " teething problems " ... and they even highlighted KG V performances on the final battle against the Bismarck ( forgetting to mention that A quadruple turret had exactly the same PoW Y turret problem ).

But I think that those post's would have been better into the PoW guns thread and not here on " The Plot " were Norfolk and Suffolk are on the spot, ... not PoW.

Bye Antonio

Now 73 years after we can discuss if you like in which real conditions Capt Leach accepted to declare PoW " combat ready " and what was his real mind status about it especially in the light of the very clear words spent by Colin McMullen on his IWM interview, where he stated precisely the concerns about those turrets and his knowledge about his Captain opinion about all this.

This was going to be probably the KEY argument of discussion in case of an inquiry was going to be called on June 1941 about the PoW retreat.

Bye Antonio