15 cm secondary artillery

Laurenz · Post by **Laurenz** » Sat May 19, 2007 9:22 am

Dear Sirs,

ich have a question about the secondary artillery, please.
Very often i red about the worse performance of the 15 cm artillery on German ships.
How important was this artillery to defend the ships against destroyers and cruisers?
Or it would have been better to remove this artillery?
The British had some certain reason when they removed this artillery on Hood?
Kind regards,
L.

Tiornu · Post by **Tiornu** » Sat May 19, 2007 10:35 am

If you look at the modern battleships, you'll see that the Japanese, Italians, Germans, and French all used CL-caliber secondary guns. In each case, these guns were of no use against aircraft (even though the French, at least, specifically intended their 6in guns as AA weapons). This meant that a separate battery of heavy guns was needed.
The British attempted a dual-purpose secondary battery withe their 5.25in guns. Unfortunately, the gun was not successful. As the French had found out, it was difficult to make a weapon with lots of stopping power against ships and the agility to engage aircraft.
The Americans used a 5in weapon, and this was a great success. It was a superb AA gun and at least useful against ships. But this was an exception. The British had a good 4.5in gun which they declined to put aboard their modern battleships. The Japanese 5in gun was pretty good, but it was not used as a secondary battery.
In my opinion, each navy would probably have done best to use its largest AA gun as a secondary weapon. The Germans eventually made a very nice 5in AA gun, but it never went aboard a ship. The British should have stuck with their 4.5in gun until the improved 5.25in was available (in Vanguard). Maybe the French should have continued work with their 130mm gun.

Laurenz · Post by **Laurenz** » Sat May 19, 2007 11:45 am

Dear Tiornu,
ok, thank you, understand.
But that means the German 15cm on Bismarck, Tirpitz, the Twins and the Pocket-battleships had been useless?
Should they had been removed like on Hood to increase the speed?
Kind regards,
L.

Bgile · Post by **Bgile** » Sat May 19, 2007 1:23 pm

You'd have to do a major rebuild. You couldn't just get rid of the 15cm guns without leaving the ship vulnerable to attack by smaller ships.

Tiornu · Post by **Tiornu** » Sat May 19, 2007 7:59 pm

The shielded 15cm mounts were especially poor. The turrets were not useless, but I think a good DP gun would be a better choice.

marcelo_malara · Post by **marcelo_malara** » Sat May 19, 2007 11:54 pm

The secondary battery comes from the predreadnought era (it was tertiary battery then), when it was thought that a battleship would have to defend herself from torpedo boats. With the increment in power and speed, when a battleship was almost as fast as a destroyer, the latter would have difficulty in reaching a launching position, so the battery was useless then. But may be no admiral was willing to put his sign in a BB without it, so it was carried to WWII days.

Bgile · Post by **Bgile** » Sun May 20, 2007 5:22 am

Marcelo,

Ask the Japanese at Samar if destroyers are a problem to battleships.

Tiornu · Post by **Tiornu** » Sun May 20, 2007 6:11 am

Samar? What about Surigao?

marcelo_malara · Post by **marcelo_malara** » Sun May 20, 2007 3:21 pm

Yes, it was at night in confined waters, hardly the scenario battleships were designed for.

Laurenz · Post by **Laurenz** » Mon May 21, 2007 1:08 am

But may be no admiral was willing to put his sign in a BB without it, so it was carried to WWII days.

Dear Marcelo,
ok, but Holland did it on Hood?
Kind regards,
L.

marcelo_malara · Post by **marcelo_malara** » Mon May 21, 2007 3:15 am

I think that in 1940 Hood was so overweight that deleting the secondary armament was seen as a viable solution, but is just a thought.

RF · Post by RF » Wed May 23, 2007 9:45 am

The German 15 cm. guns were best suited, as I understand it, for sinking abandoned merchant ships, such as on Operation Berlin, although that was not the original purpose of the guns.
These guns also sank the Acasta and Ardent during Operation Juno at fairly long range - although they still failed to prevent Scharnhorst from being torpedoed.

The one time the 15 cm. came up trumps was when Kormoran ambushed Sydney, although obviously here they were the main assault weapon and not a secondary battery. Further we can add the battle damage to 3 AMC's by the Thor to this.

Would a configuration of say the Japanese 6.1 inch gun as secondary and the 5 inch gun as tertiary be the best solution?

Tiornu · Post by **Tiornu** » Wed May 23, 2007 10:12 am

Would a configuration of say the Japanese 6.1 inch gun as secondary and the 5 inch gun as tertiary be the best solution?

I'd say no. The Japanese abandoned the 155mm secondary in their final BB designs. If we want the best of all world's--and who doesn't?--we'd go with a 6in DP secondary. However, the technology was not available during WWII. That's what hampered the Richelieus.
If we wanted to list all the successes of 6in guns, we'd be here a long time.

Laurenz · Post by **Laurenz** » Wed May 23, 2007 3:13 pm

Dear Sirs,
when i read correct, i understood that at Denmark strait Bismarck's main artillery opened fire on Hood and the secondary (15cm) on PoW. Is this correct?
Did they launched any hit on PoW?
Kind regards,
L.

Bgile · Post by **Bgile** » Wed May 23, 2007 3:16 pm

PoW fired her secondary battery as well, and neither side achieved any hits with those weapons.

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