Best World war two warships?

[carpenoctem1689]

Iowas underwater protection was not great, and thats being generous. she was said to be wet in heavy seas, her beam should have been wider, but need for the panama canal caused that.

Richeleu was in opinion not so good a battleship. First of all, its like a faster nelson, with better armor protection, especially against torperdoes. However all guns forward in two turrets made the damn thing defenseless as it ran (from a distance). I wouldnt imagine AA would be so good, since most of its on the aft deck, restricting forward fire with the secondary guns. hit she ship in the bow around the waterline, and the bow would sink, imagine steaming forward with a gaping hole in the armor and alot of the armor weight, and the main battery weight further forcing the bow down into the water and bring water into the ship. Would sink quite quickly i imagine.

Yanato as stated earlier had a cluttered deck, with alot of its vitals standing tall amidhsips, asking for a nice shell hole. It did however have the airacraft launchers on the fan tail, looks familiar on modern ships too doesnt it? I dont have much else to badmouth yamato.

Bismarck, awesome ship. Needed the rudder to be fixed. Ive heard from a bismarck special on the history channel, and read somewhere that bismarcks rudder inadequacy was made known, but didnt have time to be fixed. Other than that, nothing against it.

[Henk]

100% correct. I must say you took the words out of my mouth.

Henk

[Glider]

Sorry but I must disagree with some of your assumptions. Having all the guns at the front is a risk in that one shot could knock out all the guns, however ths was unlikely. The turrets were spread as far apart as possible to reduce the risk. The turrets themselves were split into two with thick armour between each pair of guns within the turret. The Dunquirk had a similar arrangement and was hit in the turret but only two guns were knocked out the other two kept firing. So the theory worked.

Saying that having the guns at the front was a disadvantage when running away, works on the basis that the battle had already been fought and lost.

Having all the guns at the front does give the French ship tactical advantages as it will always fire full broadsides. For instance it could reverse its direction and cut behind the opposing ship, or it could decide to close the range rapidly. Whereas the Bismark is stuck in one general direction and to close the range would involve losing half its firepower putting it at a significant disadvantage.

The battle would be close and luck would play a major part.

As for AA guns the heavy AA was not effective until the proximity fuse was developed and the light AA was more important. ON this basis the positioning of the light AA guns was more important and that was pretty well spread out.

[carpenoctem1689]

Yes, the theory about the guns not being knocked out worked the one time it did happen, buy why take the risk? I mean spreading the guns would eliminate the possiblity of that happening altogether.

Yes she could fire a full broadside at all times ill give her that, but paying the price listed above, and the fact that when running away you couldnt use the main battery. Yes the battle may have been lost due to hits, the wish to disengage, or the thought of enemy reinforcements on the way. BUT, why risk the ships total loss if only the battle is lost? Live to fight again another day, or at least cover your ass as best you can on your way out. Any engagement between battleships depends on many variables, as i said before, however i dont feel bismack and richeleu is really an even match. Granted the Richeleu wasnt horrible, but i would NEVER put all main battery forward.

Richeleus inability to have as suffecient amount of heavy AA forward would become a major hinderance as aircraft became more widely used in attacking battleships. Yes it had adequate Light AA forward, but with that theory, you couldnt shoot at the possible swarms of enemy aircraft (in the atlantic, many ships found themseleves in range of land based attack aircraft or bombers, especially since Richeleu being a french BB, would operate in the mediterranean theater quite possibly). Now that you cant shoot long range Heavy AA to at least brake up the attackers formations, your hit by waves of enemy aircraft and you cant shoot them until you yourself are in range of guns, soon to be bombs and torpedoes.

[delcyros]

I am going to finish my paper on Iowa vs Yamato armour scheme comparison. Only minor things left, all computations finished by now. From what I analyzed, Iowa is no one on one equal contender. You will read soon why but I can tell you now that the only chance would be to use it´s superior speed to either disengage on it´s own initiative or to close into less than 16.000 yrds range and hope that it will be still in fighting condition afterwards (what follows is a direct pounding where both can defeat each others protection). To stay in medium - long range (fighting doctrine of USN and IJN, and therefore the most plausible scenario) would be suicide for Iowa, it´s vitals are totally exposed while Yamato´s vitals on the other side are 16" - proof. Only a fluke hit on a small area behind turret B may blew up Yamato (unlike Iowa) at distance...

[syscom3]

Funny youre talking about the Yamato today.

April 7th 2006 is the 61st anniversary of the Yamato sinking.

The combined fleet webpage has a great hour by hour account of the final day of this great ship

http://www.combinedfleet.com/yamato.htm

[KraziKanuK]

Originally Posted by Henk

Oh yes those look great I wish I could get my hands on some of them. Thanks mate. Do you have some of them?

Henk

All but the Bismarck which I did not know about.

[Glider]

Originally Posted by carpenoctem1689

Yes, the theory about the guns not being knocked out worked the one time it did happen, buy why take the risk? I mean spreading the guns would eliminate the possiblity of that happening altogether.

Yes she could fire a full broadside at all times ill give her that, but paying the price listed above, and the fact that when running away you couldnt use the main battery. Yes the battle may have been lost due to hits, the wish to disengage, or the thought of enemy reinforcements on the way. BUT, why risk the ships total loss if only the battle is lost? Live to fight again another day, or at least cover your ass as best you can on your way out. Any engagement between battleships depends on many variables, as i said before, however i dont feel bismack and richeleu is really an even match. Granted the Richeleu wasnt horrible, but i would NEVER put all main battery forward.

Richeleus inability to have as suffecient amount of heavy AA forward would become a major hinderance as aircraft became more widely used in attacking battleships. Yes it had adequate Light AA forward, but with that theory, you couldnt shoot at the possible swarms of enemy aircraft (in the atlantic, many ships found themseleves in range of land based attack aircraft or bombers, especially since Richeleu being a french BB, would operate in the mediterranean theater quite possibly). Now that you cant shoot long range Heavy AA to at least brake up the attackers formations, your hit by waves of enemy aircraft and you cant shoot them until you yourself are in range of guns, soon to be bombs and torpedoes.

I think that you missed the point about having tactical options by having your guns at the front. The Bismark would have much fewer options and that is a disadvantage itself.

[Henk]

Ok, now you all have good points, but let me give you a little whiff of how I designed my battleships. I have two classes and they both look quite the same. The First class has three triple 16" gun turrets as main armament that is in the center line of the ship. My secondary armament is 8 11" guns 2 in each turret and two turrets on both sides of the ships hull. Now what you are thinking is that sounds totally insane and the hull would not be able to sustain the weight of the guns, I already solved that problem and look at WW1 designs of Battleships and you would see it is not so stupid or impossible.

Then for the smaller secondary guns there is one triple 5" ins at the back just above the aft turret. There is also missiles that can be fired at ships and land base targets. The AA are so spread that it could cover the whole ship and AA missiles also put down a hail of AA on a attacking aircraft.

Lifeboats are also put in places where they could be lowered quickly and has a smaller chance of getting hit by enemy fire. I have 3 controle spots or bridges with their own radar and everything that is in the main forward bridge. This is to make it so that the ship can carry on when the forward one is knocked out and the ship and still carry on with the battle.

The ship has water tight compartments and fire fighting equipment that will stop a fire dead in its tracks. Pumps make sure that flooding does not take over the ship and it is in the floor of each water tight compartment and pumps the water out of the ship or water can be pumped from the hull to fight fire on the deck.

So why so many largeguns, well my ship has all round protection and will be able to fight of a enemy from all sides.

Everything fits perfectly and the guns on the side is protected from above and can fire in 180 degrees.

That is just a rough sketch of how my battleships look like, but I modify them regularly and still finds flaws and correct them so yes there are flaws but they are not so great and can be corrected.

That is my Perfect BB.

Henk

[Glider]

Any idea how much this beasty is supposed to weigh? Make the Yamato look like a lightweight and look what happened to that!!

[carpenoctem1689]

It, with an armor scheme on par with Yamato would easily weigh upwards of 145,000 tons. With so many large guns, the pumping schemeatics, the numerous AA, the large amounts of wiring and technical equipment, storage for the many different types of ammunition needed (rockets, light and heavy AA, 5in shells, 11in shells, 16in shells.) Not to mention the massive propulsion systems needed to move such a creature through the water. How long was it, how wide was it at the beam?


Yes i am aware there are tactical advantages to having the guns all forward, but personally i feel as though the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages. Im curious though as how everyone else feels about this? anyone new want to shed some light on opinions...Is all main battery forward a good decision or no?

[carpenoctem1689]

My proposed battleship, if i could choose anything on it i wanted would have the basic layout of the bismarck, with two forward turrets, the foremost one having four barrels, and the uppermost having two, and the same in the rear. It would have Iowas propulsion system and fire control, with Yamatos optical back up in a seperate location (added castle or tower in the rear.) Those main battery turrets would be of 16in calibre. Firing the same rounds as the Iowa class. Armor would be the same as on the bismarck class, but the rudder problem would be fixed. AA armament would consit of two triple 5in turrets on the starboard side, and two triple turrets on the port side, and one dual all the way on the end of the deck at the stern. Five dual 40mm guns on port, and five on starboard sides, and evenly spread 20mm AA guns, 125 of them.

[Henk]

Glider I know what you mean

Wiring is not a problem since you can use the new bluetooth to cut out your wiring and the equipment are made of light weight metals. The thing is that I am stupid when it comes to working out the weight of the ship. Like I said I am not yet so good with this allthough I have been doing it for years now.

Well my main bridge or forward bridge is like the New Jersey bridge. The turret layout is like the Iowa class and is very low and thus can not bee seen from a disstance. The hull I designed my self and made a rudder that would be able to steer this monster. The fact that I made most of the other equipment light weight is to be able to carry so much equipment on such a large ship.

My armour would be like the Italians armour.

The powerplants would be 6 huge V16 Diesel engines that can generate a speed of 30 knots and up.

I do not like all my guns in front and like to spread them so that my ship can fire towards the enemy at all times.

Great idea for a battleship carpenoctem1689 you should get it on paper and also build a model of it. I want to be able to build mine into a model.

I did use things from other Battleships, but only because the fit in with the design and thus I will always give credit to the Battleships that gave me ideas on to use their things for my ship.

Henk

[delcyros]

Ammo feed problems are expectable with 11" wingturrets. WW1-ships always suffered from ammo-feed problems for them. Either you put the main armour deck on deck 2 or you loose underwater protection because of a very, very narrow TDS at the wingturrets (11" magazines may blew up your ship). This leads to the main obstacle:Stability. With that much weight placed so high in the ship you will almost turn over the metacentric height. Alternatively you would need to protect the bottom of the ship with a considerable amount of armour (5"+) and this will increase the draught and displacement of the ship. SO I would rather expect either a very unstable ship or a very vulnarable or something in the 140-000-180.000 t. class....Very heavy for 16" equipment, isn´t it?
I acknowledge the layout of Richelieu as limitation. While it is correct that it allows more firepower forward (and less secondary), it was recognized by the french as tactical disadvantage (the weight of a raised quadrupel 15" turret is considerable), so that the Gascogne was designed with two quadrupel turrets on the same level, one facing forward, one facing rearward. There are several tactical advantages for this even layout (weight savings, the recognicability of the ships heading is more difficult). From a point of protection, the quadrupel turrets prooved to be good protected except for the use of face hardened armour for the turret roofs (and the scaling effects of them), which isn´t a wise decision at all in view of non penetrating damage. Nethertheless the layout barely plays a major role, most combats -once the contender decided to fight- were broadside vs broadside.

[KraziKanuK]

Henk,

do you have these books by RA Burt?

British Battleships 1889-1904
British Battleships of WW1

Do you visit this forum?
http://p069.ezboard.com/falltheworldsbattlecruisersfrm1