Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

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aurora
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Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by aurora »

Vice Admiral Cunningham's fleet steamed toward Taranto, in order to cut Italian's return route and at noon on 9 July the two fleets were 90 miles apart. Cunningham could not close the distance to engage with the significantly slower Royal Sovereign and Malaya (18 knots vs 28 knots) and took Warspite in on its own. The Italian Supreme Command had planned to keep the action close to Italy and were deliberately moving north in order to draw the Allies closer to their airbases. By 14:00, however, Cunningham's plans to cut off the Italian fleet from Taranto had succeeded.
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The Allied cruiser group was spread out in front of Warspite and at 15:15 they caught sight of the Italian main battle force and the two groups opened fire at 21,500 meters (23,512 yds). Splinters from a 6" (152mm) shell fired by the cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi hit HMS Neptune, damaging her catapult and the reconnaissance aircraft beyond repair. Vice Admiral John Tovey decided to disengage and by 15:30 fire ceased.
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Shortly, the Italian commander decided to take on Warspite, and started moving his two battleships into position. At 15:52 Giulio Cesare opened fire at a range of 26,400 metres (28,871 yds). Conte di Cavour had been assigned to Malaya and Royal Sovereign, which were further back and did not enter the engagement.
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At 15:59 two shells from Giulio Cesare fell very close to Warspite. Almost immediately after one of Warspite's 15" (381 mm) rounds hit the rear deck of Giulio Cesare, setting off the stored ammunition for one of her 37 mm anti-aircraft guns. Two seamen were killed and several wounded. The fumes from the burning ammunition were sucked down into the engine room, which had to evacuate and shut down half of the boilers. Giulio Cesare's speed quickly fell off to 18 knots and Conte di Cavour took over. Giulio Cesare and Warspite were over 24,000 metres (26,000 yards) apart at the time of the hit, which was one of the longest-range naval artillery hits in history.
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At 16:01 the Italian destroyers generated smoke and the battleships got under cover. There is some debate about this point today, the Allied position being that the battleships were leaving battle, the Italian that they were attempting to make a torpedo attack with their destroyers from within the smoke.
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Battle continued whith cruisers firing at each other and long range torpedo attacks with destroyers. The battle ended at 16:50 with both sides withdrawing. Both sides claimed victory, but in fact the battle was a draw and everyone returned to their bases as soon as possible. After the battle the Allies claimed to have achieved some sort of "moral ascendancy" over the Italian Navy; conversely, the Italian propaganda depicted the clash as a victory of their own.

Luck or good Shooting.????

aurora
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Re: Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by tommy303 »

A bit of both, I would say: good shooting acquired the target, but it was to a measure luck which got the hit as 26000 yards was somewhat in excess of Warspite's most practical range to engage.

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Re: Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by Mostlyharmless »

Good shooting gets straddles, good luck brings hits.

However, note that the RM had obviously not practised two ships firing at the same target as demonstrated by Hood and Prince of Wales at Denmark Straits (OK, even such superb skill cannot always win). If Giulio Cesare and Conte di Cavour had been firing at Warspite, naturally timing their salvos so that the fall of each ship's shells could be easily distinguished, their chances of hitting first would have roughly doubled.

The other RM weakness may have been that their salvos had a wider spread than British or German salvos.
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Re: Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by aurora »

"At 15:59 two shells from Giulio Cesare fell very close to Warspite. Almost immediately after one of Warspite's 15" (381 mm) rounds hit the rear deck of Giulio Cesare, setting off the stored ammunition for one of her 37 mm anti-aircraft guns."

I agree with "straddling is good shooting" and "a hit is fortunate." However the accuracy of Italian main armament guns did need some attention-their spread of shot was too widely dispersed;,but this action had been decided by the quality of RN gunnery. Warspite's hit may well have been lucky-there was also the effective salvo from Neptune which hit Bolzano thrice-the Italian Fleet retired.

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Re: Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by pgollin »

.

The RN always regarded hits out at that range as "lucky" (However, "lucky hits" were part of its documentation). The RN, however, wanted consistent and heavy hitting, not "lucky" hits. The Fighting Instructions encouraged opening fire on approaching enemy at as long a range as possible as a way of putting pressure on enemy commanders and gun director crew, but they did not expect decisive results except in exceptional circumstances.

As for the result of the engagement, Aurora I think you have been reading the Italian revisionists again
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Re: Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by alecsandros »

aurora wrote:"At 15:59 two shells from Giulio Cesare fell very close to Warspite. Almost immediately after one of Warspite's 15" (381 mm) rounds hit the rear deck of Giulio Cesare, setting off the stored ammunition for one of her 37 mm anti-aircraft guns."

I agree with "straddling is good shooting" and "a hit is fortunate." However the accuracy of Italian main armament guns did need some attention-their spread of shot was too widely dispersed;,but this action had been decided by the quality of RN gunnery. Warspite's hit may well have been lucky-there was also the effective salvo from Neptune which hit Bolzano thrice-the Italian Fleet retired.

aurora
Didn't one of Caesare's salvos cause splinter damage to one RN destroyer ?
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Re: Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by aurora »

Not that I am aware of alecsandros-the only RN ship damaged in this action was Gloucester-hit by bomb or bombs-she had to retire.

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Re: Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by alecsandros »

aurora wrote:Not that I am aware of alecsandros-the only RN ship damaged in this action was Gloucester-hit by bomb or bombs-she had to retire.

aurora
Found some info , but don't know how good it is:

"At 1552, Italian battleship Giulio Cesare moved within 26,400m to Warspite and commenced firing. Battleship Conte di Cavour was told to hold fire to give Giulio Cesare's spotters an easier time; while that might had been accomplished, it also decreased the Italian fleet's firepower in half. One of Giulio Cesare's shells landed long and exploded near destroyers Hereward and Decoy, damaging them. At 1554, the slower British battleship Malaya caught up and joined the battle. After Giulio Cesare fired two near-misses, she was hit on the rear deck by Warspite's 381mm shell. The hit set off anti-aircraft ammunition, forcing half the boilers to shut down as a precaution, and the speed dropped to 18 knots as a result. "

from here:

http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=94
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Re: Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by aurora »

Hi alecsandros-it would seem that you may well be right-both ships you mention are shown in a book of mine as having suffered D1 damage-splinter damage presumably. :ok:

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Re: Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by wadinga »

Hello All,

This battle has been the subject of a Conspiracy Theory generated by a number of Italian Naval historians, namely that Warspite was also hit about the same time by Guilio Cesare, and the Royal Navy went to the most extreme lengths to cover this up during the war and still continues to do so! :shock:

These allegations can be seen on the web at http://www.regiamarina.net/detail_text_ ... id=1&cid=7 which neatly summarises Enrico Cernuschi's "research" which was the basis of an article in Storia Militare, an Italian naval magazine. As can be read Cernuschi claimed British reports were falsified, summaries of Warspite's damage disappeared and observations by US dockyard personnel a year later suppressed. That any damage noted might possibly be a result of numerous German air attacks in the year before the battleship made it to Seattle is ignored/suppressed in the interests of a good story.

Interestingly it appears that Cernuschi was basing his story on an original account in a book by Marco'Antonio Bragadin The Italian Navy in World War 2 translated and published by the US naval Institute. Then he went to the National Archives at Kew UK, and failing to find any confirmation, decided that this proved the story was true.

A reviewer said of Bragadin's book:

This is an English translation, published in 1957 by the U.S. Naval Institute. The Italian original appeared in 1948. It is a remarkably objective assessment of the Italian Navy's performance during World War Two, the politics that drove its operations, its strengths as well as its weaknesses. Bragadin had been a serving officer and writer in Il Duce's navy from before the war.

Posters on other websites are less convinced Davide, an Italian writing on Axishistory said
P.S. - there is an Italian naval writer (Enrico Cernuschi) who swears upon anything that he once saw a PRO paper claiming that Warspite had been hit at Punta Stilo by our 320s, but the paper has disappeared when he checked it the second time. I don't trust him very much, I quote his story just for info.

Davide:
Nobody has ever come forward to support Bragadin/Cernuschi's story, and it would be amazing if RN wartime security managed to suppress this information into the 21st century!

It is apparently the case that Marco'antonio Bragadin died 1986 was a descendent and namesake of a martyred Venetian commander tortured, flayed alive, and whose skin was subsequently stuffed with straw and paraded through the streets (even Game of Thrones hasn't done that!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Antonio_Bragadin

Recently a further Italian generated Conspiracy theory alleging distortion of facts, record removal etc etc by the the RN in WWII has been published in Storia Militare.

All the best

wadinga
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Re: Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by paul.mercer »

Gentlemen,
Much has been said in other posts about the amount of 'dispersion' from the Italian Battleships guns, but it would seem that if two shells landed 'very close' to Warspite at the same range that Warspite hit, their gunnery cannot have been that bad!
Or was it a couple of lucky shots?
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Re: Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by Dave Saxton »

paul.mercer wrote:Gentlemen,
Much has been said in other posts about the amount of 'dispersion' from the Italian Battleships guns, but it would seem that if two shells landed 'very close' to Warspite at the same range that Warspite hit, their gunnery cannot have been that bad!
Or was it a couple of lucky shots?
Luck plays a role in naval gunnery. By definition shooting salvos means that only a percentage of the rounds has a likelihood of scoring a hit. If your scoring straddles then you are shooting about as accurately as you can. You may score and may not score, but your still shooting about as accurately as you can. And sometimes, you may have a better chance of scoring, in practice, if the MPI (Mean Point of Impact) is slightly off, because the first standard deviation of the dispersion pattern may place more rounds within a zone that the target is located in. In this case a larger salvo pattern may have a better chance a scoring a hit than a tighter salvo pattern.

If your from America then baseball batting average offers an analogy about the chances of scoring hits even if your shooting good salvos. A very good hitter will settle into an average of around .300. Actually the heavy hitters who hit home runs and doubles and triples, will usually have a batting average of around .270 because they tend to strike out more often. What this means is that 7 out of ten times they make out. But that doesn't mean that if the batter has made 7 outs during the last 7 at bats that the next 3 will produce hits. He has a 70% chance of making out every single time. That's why Mighty Casey struck out with game on the line in the bottom of the ninth inning in the famous story. The 30% chance of getting a hit each time comes from a large sample of at bats over a long period of time. And it is usually inconsistent, without the hits coming at regular intervals, such as a string of hits coming at times, and a string of making out coming at other times.
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Re: Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by tommy303 »

I like the way you used Casey at the Bat to illustrate your point

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Re: Warspite's Very Long Range Shot at Battle of Calabria

Post by Dave Saxton »

It is good to hear from you Tommy. I hope all is going well for you.
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
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