Post
by winterfell » Tue Nov 17, 2009 9:26 pm
I’ve never realized that there was so many battles during which 8-inch hits where obtained. However, the thing that really surprised me is precision of fire continuously presented by ‘Prinz Eugen’ and ‘Admiral Hipper’. Most probably some other heavy cruisers are winners of Jose’s competition, but their hits were achieved during long battles (Java Sea or Komadorski Islands) where it seems that statistics helped a bit or maybe it were just single luck hits (Italian cruisers).
But German heavy cruisers…
I’ve done a little bit of research and it seems that they were able to hit their opponents in every clash they take part in.
‘Hipper’ – ‘Glowworm’, ‘Berwick’ and British ships during attack on JW-51B.
‘Prinz Eugen’ - ‘Hood’, “Prince of Wales’ and British destroyers during the Channel Dash.
And on some of those occasions German cruisers achieved hits or straddles just moments after they commenced fire.
About two years ago I read an essay about ‘Lutzow’ (first of that name) and ‘Seydlitz’. Author, Andrei Platonov, is a Russian and the essay was focused on Soviet period in history of both ships. There was presented a thesis that one of Soviets’ reasons to buy ‘Lutzow’ was their assessment of fire control capabilities of German heavy cruisers. According to the author German heavy cruisers used were equipped with very advanced and capable fire control system (including state-of-art rangefinders and two-dimensional stabilization).
Main artillery could be controlled and feed with data from several locations in the ships (it might also use DP guns fire control systems). Additionally it seems that Germans equipped 8-inch turrets with three independent directing and loading mechanisms i.e. hydraulic (main one), electric (reserve one) and manual.
Dual purpose 105mm/4.1-inch guns also had sophisticated fire control system and supposedly possessed dedicated fire control system for firing illuminating projectiles.
The author was quite critical about results achieved by German i.e. heavy cruiser of 14,000-ton standard displacement/18,000 -ton full loaded displacement with only 8 main caliber guns and 80-90 mm main belt armor. According to him German cruisers’ artillery weighted much more than in case of its contemporaries.
German cruisers’ artillery equipment weighted more than 2,000 tons without ammunition and 2,540 tons with ammunition while their machinery equipment weighted only 2,230 tons. According to Platonov that’s an exceptional case. For comparison some data on artillery equipment of some other heavy cruisers (I don’t know whether it includes ammunition) – ‘Bolzano’ -1,450 tons, ‘Trento’ – 1,000 tons, ‘Maxim Gorky’ 1,246 tons. Sophisticated German fire control system was not only very heavy but also needed a lot of space. To sum it up Andrei Platonov believes that attention that Germans paid to effectiveness and reliability of cruiser fire control resulted in large ships with mediocre armor. For until now I’ve regarded his reasoning for a quite convincing.
I think that Germans’ decision about investing in their ships’ fire control capabilities paid off (I can imagine Java Sea or Komandorski Island with ‘Hipper’ firing like during Battle of Barents Sea or ‘Prinz Eugen’ during Denmark Strait).
Last edited by
winterfell on Tue Nov 17, 2009 9:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.