River Plate: were the British outgunned?

From the Washington Naval Treaty to the end of the Second World War.
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RF
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Re: River Plate: were the British outgunned?

Post by RF »

I have often been puzzled by the apparent slow rate of fire of the AGS 11inch guns - lwd quoted 2.5 rounds per minute and the Millington-Drake conpendium stated 2 rounds per minute. This is a slower rate of fire than Bismarck and obviously reduces the effectiveness of AGS in a long action.

Why was the rate of fire so slow, in what by 1930's standards was supposed to be a state of the art warship?
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
lwd
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Re: River Plate: were the British outgunned?

Post by lwd »

Good point about time of flight calculations.
dunmunro wrote: ...
This is the ToF for the USN 12"/50 as I couldn't find data for the KM 11"
The USN rounds started out with a lower MV but are moving significantly faster at 20,000 yards. Probably not a bad approximation but we have to be careful with it.
I should also add that GS could use base or nose fused 11" HE rounds that were far more destructive than the SAP rounds used by the RN, and the weight of broadside or even total weight based upon RoF doesn't take this into account. The base fused HE rounds could probably still penetrate any armour carried on the RN cruisers.
I'd mentioned this but not to this detail it's rather offset however because the Spee couldn't afford to take as much damage as the British cruisers could. As I think I mentioned if this battle had taken place within say 4 or 5 hours of a friendly port the Germans would have regarded it as a tremendous victory although the British would have still been happy that the she wouldn't be putting to sea for some time. As it was if she took enough damage to doom her in spite of good shooting and some decent luck with gunnery.
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