SMS MarkGraf V USS Texas.

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Gary
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SMS MarkGraf V USS Texas.

Post by Gary »

The Grand old USS dreadnought against the smaller gunned German ship.

I've heard comments made that Texas would not have been very suited to standing up to repeated enemy gunfire.
Derfflinger took considerable damage at Jutland and survived.
MarkGraf is better protected than Derfflinger and I pressume she doesnt have the vunerable forward torpedo room that can be flooded (didnt that contribute to Lutzows downfall?).

10 X 12 inch guns versus 10 X 14 inch.

I assume the German fire control was better?
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Re: SMS MarkGraf V USS Texas.

Post by Tiornu »

Yes, markgraf had three of her torpedo tubes forward. That seems to have been standard for German ships at the time.
What was the thickest armor penetrated by a German shell at Jutland. Texas has an extensive cover of armor. In the context of later AP shell developments, her armor scheme obsolesced quickly, but during WWI she may have been well off.
I don't think there'd be much real-world difference in FC systems, but the Germans had a much higher level of crew training. American AP shells were comparable in quality to the British.
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Post by RF »

Would the WW2 Scharnhorst do better than Markgraf - a more modern design of ship, but limited firepower?
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Post by Tiornu »

Scharnhorst can outrange Texas.
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Post by Gary »

And outrun by a considerable margin should things go pear shaped
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Post by _Derfflinger_ »

The USN "old" BB's were VERY vulnerable to underwater attack.

Look at the huge torpedo blisters that were applied to them when they received refits.

Derf
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Post by Tiornu »

The bulges weren't there simply to give torpedo protection. Perhaps more importantly, they provided extra buoyancy to compensate for the thousands of tons of new deck armor etc.
The most torpedo-resistant old battleships in the world were probably the American ships of the Tennessee and Colorado classes. These were the first with the modern, layered TDS.
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Post by RF »

_Derfflinger_ wrote:The USN "old" BB's were VERY vulnerable to underwater attack.

Look at the huge torpedo blisters that were applied to them when they received refits.

Derf
Then its just as well that the U-boat that encountered Texas in 1941 did so while the US was still neutral and not in 1942 during Pauckenschlag....
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Post by Bgile »

Even the most modern of WWII battleships were vulnerable to full size submarine torpedoes. I think 3 or more hits on the same side would put any of them in danger of sinking.

I think it was the US Technical mission to Japan which states that 4 torpedoes on one side of a Yamato class ship would probably sink her. IMO that would be because of loss of stability due to the assymetrical flooding. I imagine any battleship would have trouble counterflooding fast enough to counteract damage like that.

Some of the old US battleships had turbo electric propulsion, which gave them better compartmentation than their contemporaries. It also tended to make them slower on a given weight of power plant, but I believe the Lexinton and Saratoga were turbo electric ships also.
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Post by Gary »

Hi Bgile.

The number of Battleships that survived more than just 2 torpedo hits (in a single enemy attack) is very small.

We do of course, have to disregard the theory book where Yamato is concerned.
She was NOT an ordinary run of the mill battleship. :angel:
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Post by Bgile »

Gary wrote:Hi Bgile.

The number of Battleships that survived more than just 2 torpedo hits (in a single enemy attack) is very small.

We do of course, have to disregard the theory book where Yamato is concerned.
She was NOT an ordinary run of the mill battleship. :angel:
No she wasn't, but was still subject to the laws of physics. Her sister ship Shinano (converted to a carrier but with the same TDS) was sunk by 4 torpedoes from Archerfish. Her watertight integrity wasn't very good (newly completed), but the main cause of the sinking was the rapid list and inability to counterflood because the flood valves on the other side of the ship were either out of the water or close to being so.

The class also had a serious defect in their TDS which tended to multiply the effect of a torpedo hit. I expect Yamato would have taken longer to sink because of better damage control, but would have eventually done so as well.
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Post by Alatriste »

I don't think Shinano TDS was like the Yamato. Maybe the same design but the bulkhead of the battleship is much thicker like 200mm.
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Post by Tiornu »

I believe Shinano had a different main belt than Yamato, but the same lower belt. We know Yamato's TDS couldn't stand up to a Torpex warhead, so I don't think it's much of any issue. The key factor for Shinano was the lack of watertightness and the poor performance of her personnel...all right, that's two factors.
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Post by Bgile »

Tiornu wrote:I believe Shinano had a different main belt than Yamato, but the same lower belt. We know Yamato's TDS couldn't stand up to a Torpex warhead, so I don't think it's much of any issue. The key factor for Shinano was the lack of watertightness and the poor performance of her personnel...all right, that's two factors.
Armor thickness is probably irrelevant in this instance.

While it's true that her interior watertight integrity was leaky due to bad workmanship, I don't think that was the proximate cause of her loss. It might have been the cause eventually if she hadn't lost stability, but I think in the actual instance the ship sank because of asymmetrical flooding. That is a particularly dangerous thing in ships with large amounts of outboard void space.

Could better damage control have saved her? I doubt it, but maybe if counterflooding had been started within a minute or so of the torpedo hits it would have made a difference. I think West Virginia was saved from capsizing at Pearl Harbor by prompt action of that nature. I believe her state of readiness was in some ways much worse than Shinano's.

Just my opinion, of course.
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Post by Tiornu »

West Virginia is a good example of the quality of the TDS in those five old ships. Not one of the torpedoes that hit her managed to defeat the TDS. The sudden flooding in the TDS itself was enough to make her list, and flooding went over the top of the TDS. She was nit by something like eight torpedoes.
Regarding Shinano, it wasn't simply poor crew performance but the panicking crowd of civilians on board, not to mention her skipper's decision to speed out of the attack area. I would have to say she was in much worse circumstances than WeeVee.
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