Richelieu vs KGV

[tommy303]

Richelieu and Jean Bart were hardly battle worthy at that point in time

[alecsandros]

Richelieu and Jean Bart were hardly battle worthy at that point in time

The criticism brought against JB and Rich concerns their rate of fire, dispersion and armor quality. All of those elements took a long time to repair, and that only in the US, during several years of testing. And, of course, the armor quality was not improved.
As designed and built, the Richelieu class had a very poor rate of fire, awfull dispersion and highly questionable armor array (TDS and deck armor especialy).
And, at least I tend to judge the performances based upon WW2 capabilities. That is, I realy don't care that JB had a 32 sec firing cycle in 1948.

@Gary: I've also read about a hit on Barham, but most sources state that there wasn't any hit, and that all Rich hit was water.

[RF]

Richelieu and Jean Bart were hardly battle worthy at that point in time

Yes, this another interesting point. The French would have realised that during the twilight period of 1939/40 that the phoney war would not remain phoney for ever and that Italy, a substantial Meditteranean naval power, was likely to enter the war on Germany's side - so the battleships should have been readied for action...... Instead there seemed to be a timidity to match that of the Italians.

[lwd]

The criticism brought against JB and Rich concerns their rate of fire, dispersion and armor quality. All of those elements took a long time to repair, and that only in the US, during several years of testing. ....

That's not quite right. The intial problem with the shells seems to have been corrected fairly quickly and certainly Jean Bart did not have the problems that Richelieu did when she fired during Torch. Some of the dispersion problems seem to have been fixed during the US stay as well. The post war reductions may not have helped that much in the WWII environment.

[alecsandros]

The criticism brought against JB and Rich concerns their rate of fire, dispersion and armor quality. All of those elements took a long time to repair, and that only in the US, during several years of testing. ....

That's not quite right. The intial problem with the shells seems to have been corrected fairly quickly and certainly Jean Bart did not have the problems that Richelieu did when she fired during Torch. Some of the dispersion problems seem to have been fixed during the US stay as well. The post war reductions may not have helped that much in the WWII environment.

What do you mean by "post war reductions" ?

[alecsandros]

That's not quite right. The intial problem with the shells seems to have been corrected fairly quickly and certainly Jean Bart did not have the problems that Richelieu did when she fired during Torch.

From French sources, cited in G&D:

"At 0708 the lean Bart fired two shells at a cruiser at a range of 22,000 meters.
Smoke prevented accurate spotting, and she had no fire-control radar, only surface and
air-search equipment. She fired four salvos but ceased fire at 0719, because the
target was further obscured by a smokescreen laid down by French destroyers to cover
their departure from the harbor".

This is hardly good shooting, and, in any case, it can't be an argument FOR the corection of the initial problem.

[Bgile]

This is hardly good shooting, and, in any case, it can't be an argument FOR the corection of the initial problem.

From lwd's earlier post. Augusta seems to have been impressed.

http://kbismarck.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 084#p33672

[alecsandros]

This is hardly good shooting, and, in any case, it can't be an argument FOR the corection of the initial problem.

From lwd's earlier post. Augusta seems to have been impressed.

http://kbismarck.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 084#p33672

Steve, JB only fired five 2-gun salvos throughout the battle, a total of 10 shells. I can't understand how it could have made "several straddles" against Augusta without radar and without a few first-salvos, for corrections and heating up the guns.

[lwd]

The criticism brought against JB and Rich concerns their rate of fire, dispersion and armor quality. All of those elements took a long time to repair, and that only in the US, during several years of testing. ....

That's not quite right. The intial problem with the shells seems to have been corrected fairly quickly and certainly Jean Bart did not have the problems that Richelieu did when she fired during Torch. Some of the dispersion problems seem to have been fixed during the US stay as well. The post war reductions may not have helped that much in the WWII environment.

What do you mean by "post war reductions" ?

Post war the cut the dispersion in half again from just under 600 yards to around 300. (Could be meters see the navweapons artiicle).

[lwd]

This is hardly good shooting, and, in any case, it can't be an argument FOR the corection of the initial problem.

From lwd's earlier post. Augusta seems to have been impressed.

http://kbismarck.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 084#p33672

Steve, JB only fired five 2-gun salvos throughout the battle, a total of 10 shells. I can't understand how it could have made "several straddles" against Augusta without radar and without a few first-salvos, for corrections and heating up the guns.

One question is where she was getting observations from. If it was from one of the forts they may not have been obscured. Furthermore they should have had a pretty good initial range. Of course some of this would bring into question just how transferable the results would be to a sea battle.

[lwd]

That's not quite right. The intial problem with the shells seems to have been corrected fairly quickly and certainly Jean Bart did not have the problems that Richelieu did when she fired during Torch.

From French sources, cited in G&D:

"At 0708 the lean Bart fired two shells at a cruiser at a range of 22,000 meters.
Smoke prevented accurate spotting, and she had no fire-control radar, only surface and
air-search equipment. She fired four salvos but ceased fire at 0719, because the
target was further obscured by a smokescreen laid down by French destroyers to cover
their departure from the harbor".

This is hardly good shooting, and, in any case, it can't be an argument FOR the corection of the initial problem.

Yes it can. In Richelieu's initial shot she lost one barrel and had two other barraels put out of action by shells jammed in them. One was subsequently destroyed trying to clear it. Jean Bart showed no sign of this problem. The same shell problem that caused this was likely a major factor in the high dispersion of her intial shoot.

[Gary]

Richelieu Left France in June 1940 about 95% complete where as JB was barely 75% complete.
Also, at that time the only fast true battleships that Britain had were Hood and KGV.
But yes, it would have made for an intresting encounter with the Italians

Getting back to topic, maybe I'm just being patriotic but I think that KGV would probably have a better crew than Richelieu.

[tommy303]

Among other things, Jean Bart lacked her secondary armament and B turret remained unfinished since the guns intended for it and its armour plating were lost when the cargo ship carrying them to North Africa was torpedoed and sunk by a U-boat.

Neither ship had its full compliment of main battery ammunition, and delivery of powder charges had lagged behind delivery of shells by a fair margin, to such a degree that only Richelieu had charges for about 40% of the rounds she arrived at North Africa with, while Jean Bart appears to have had no charges at all. The shortage was made up for by rebagging reserve powder charges intended for Dunkerque and Strassbourg. While the propellants for these were very similar chemically to those intended for the 380mm gun, the grain size was different, leading to different burning characteristics. The SD19 charges produced less pressure than the SD21 intended for the 380mm gun resulting in less velocity and range; on the other hand, the lower pressure insured that the faulty base plug design of the 38cm shell did not cause the bore prematures experienced on Richelieu.

[boredatwork]

Richelieu and Jean Bart were hardly battle worthy at that point in time

The criticism brought against JB and Rich concerns their rate of fire, dispersion and armor quality. All of those elements took a long time to repair, and that only in the US, during several years of testing. And, of course, the armor quality was not improved.

I don't think it's fair to judge the severity of the problems by how long they took to fix because unlike all of their contemporaries neither was finished to be able to run trials before loosing (almost) all access to the skilled builders and designers who might have quickly rectified (or at least lessened the impact of) any problems reported.

As a parallel look at the US North Carolina class - if she had been forced to leave the US before her trials were complete she would be considered a disasterous design - a fast (by previous US standards) battleship that couldn't approach her design speed without suffering crippling vibration. It was only because she had access to the people who built her and the full resources of her country that, after months of trials a workable solution was found.

If the Richelieu and JB had the same support from French industry in late 1940 I don't see why from a design POV they couldn't have matured into effective ships.

[alecsandros]

Yes Michael, but we are talking about hypothetical WW2 naval battles (or at least I am )
That is, we have to draw a line somewhere between "what was the historical situation" and "how good could the improvements have been, if they were to happen". The French BBs were rebuilt in the US for several years (IIRC Richelieu 18 months, JB 4 years). Purely the amount of work involved hints to the fact that they were poorly constructed.

Now, it is very difficult to assert that the same rebuilding work done in the US would have been done in pre-war France. After all, the US naval yards had extensive BB experience (to a degree which the French did not possessed even remotely). Also, several questions of judgment and decision arise:
- would the French consider the 1.33 rpm rate of fire as appropriate or would they have worked towards redesigning the loading system?
- would the French correctly and efficiently adress the dispersion problems, or would they have let their big BB shells in poor condition in the same way the Italians did with the 381 mm?

Besides those 2 main armament problems, which I have presented several times before, there is also the big (and never resolved) problem of poor quality armor, which was discussed several times on the forum.
A brief overview (from what I remember):
- Richelieu was next to sunk by a single torpedo.
- Jean Bart's main armor decks (150 + 40 mm H-armor) performed as a 124mm armor.
- Jean Bart's defensive scheme was defeated by 4x227kg bombs though it was designed to resist 450kg bombs. Compare that to Tirpitz's attack in 1944, when the ship was hit by 16 bombs, 5x454kg and 11x227kg. Tirpitz received moderate damage, and was repaired in 3 months. Jean Bart was almost sunk.
Of course, the JB was not complete at the time of the attack, so the comparison should be done with a certain degree of caution. However, the armor scheme of the JB, from what I know, was completed by 1941...