Battleship Questions

Battleships (Iowa?)and 406 mm guns (1.333 feet)

To the gentleman, Mark? … thanks for the correction on the BIG guns (IOWA, etc. ) that i posted awhile back.

My data as to these big fish is ages old (3 years or more) . But the scuttle on the one used in GW 1 is for real..

A “Shipsup”, i talked to 3 months ago at the San Diego shipyard i worked for ( DDG Burke class overhaul ing ) said….. ” the battleship (forgot which one he said) can sail in 6 weeks if need be” .

sounds good to me :rolleyes:

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Okay….. 16″ guns

When i was at Mare Island NAVSHIPS / Napa channel, just around the corner from San Francisco Bay…. this was 1979 (Mare island ship yard was a SSBN capable submarine repair base). I was a machinist @ X31 , the huge machine shop. One day a low-boy rail car brought in a “shore gun from Hawaii”. It was made in the lery late 30s or earily 40’s.

The tags on the breach said134 feet or 134 tons (i cant remembver which…. cause i waz 27 years ago !!!) . Any way they cut the barrel off with a big “air arc” cutting lance and left the breach on the rail car and dragged the barrel to the scrappers.

The breach was left and we were to plug the end and make it a “JIT” pressure chamber for testing sensitive components.

As a machinist…… i remember the “rifling” maybe 2 or even 3” deep WOW. But for me, the 10 or 12 start buttress threads that ended up terminating into the square sholder of the breach was unforgetable. I think i got a woodie. It was in near perfect condition. Double WOW.

( The angled buttress threads is the curved thread form that allows the breach cap to be rotated closed + / – 15 degrees , and close the breach for detonation. ) I had never seen so may “start” threads in my life….. very cool!

thats it folks

GD

Anyway we started some work on how to plug it…… then they took the rail car and the breach out of the shop for mor trimming or we needed the main bay space for more current work,,,,,, then i lost track of the breach cause we were doing so many other cool stuff.

Yeah, it may be the best option…and it is close…I would just like to see the Iowa go somewhere where it’s right in the mix of things (a big city port like the inner harbor at Baltimore) where the Iowa would get the attention it deserves…in my opinion San Fran, after being a major Naval destination for YEARS, has REALLY and Unexplicably DROPPED THE BALL on this one, especially at a time when the prevailing sentiment is to show SUPPORT for our troops…seems San Fran is running against the wind on that particular point….and while Stockton mightbethe best (and probably will be the winning) choice…ask yourself…how many people got to Stockton compared to San Francisco?

Mark

Stockton has offered a big chunk of a mile-long pier, a 90,000 square-foot building, and a 15-acre parking lot, along with money for the tow and to set up a museum.

I think Stockton has really stepped up for the right to host the Iowa, and they really put SF to shame!

If the terrorists MUST nuke an American city, might I sugest san francisco?

Well Goddamnit…that really pisses me off…I think the Iowa oughta be withdrawn completely from the Bay area (they now no longer DESERVE such a treasure as her) and put it in San Diego where they HONOR the navy’s legacy, or some such other place (word has it they have a big ship in Long Beach….care to make it 2?)

We need to find her a better home….maybe even further NORTH along the western coastline, like Seattle or Portland or something like that…

Mark

The San Francisco city Council has voted NOT to allow the Iowa in their pacifist paradise!

They specifically said that it didn’t fit their future vision, and should be put somewhere else.

Many of those involved in the drive to place her in San Fran said that the personal statements and attitudes of the councilpersons (gotta be PC in SF) clearly indicated that a major part of their personal reasons was as a rejection of “militarism” (especially the Iraq situation)!

Actually the Iowa is in limbo while the city of San Francisco and the city of Stockton battle over which city will get it…I find myself pulling for San Fran as they will attract more visitors to the ship than Stockton ever could, they plan on putting it at a pier formerly used by cruise ships and making quite a display out of it….

So now we have a home for all four of them (or will soon)…the Missouri in Pearl Harbor, the New Jersey in Camden, NJ, the Wisconsin in Hampton Roads, VA and now the imminent installation of the Iowa at a place NEAR San Francisco…so far I’ve been on a whole ONE of them…LOL.

Mark

In Suisun Bay, just a short N.E. splash way from San Francisco bay is the ghost fleet of many large ships. The in-famous Glomar Explorer was there for countless years in the 80s and 90s. It was built @ a west coast / San Diego ship yard that i just got through working at. It was built in a mini-style derigable (sp?) (air ship) style dry dock…… totally covered up. The mystery fab / dry dock still makes Darpa or black projects from time to time. I dont really believe that anyone with have a brain really bvelieved that the Glomar Exp was realling “mining manganese modules” on the sa floor. Balderdash!!!

MONSTER BATTELSHIPS STILL RULE 😮 NO ****E
I am not 100% sure, but i do believe the remaining New Jersey (?) is in storage with 20 or more large ships in the Suisun Bay “bone yard bay”. I know for a 200% fact it is in a “moth ball status ” some where on the calif west coast and that U.S. NAVSHIPS status can have under sail in 6 weeks.
Regan spent $$$$$$$$ on it, with teak decks no less and it kicked ass @ GW I in 1991.

More later on the 16″ deck guns….gotta ZZZZZZZZ

Gringo Y

More on the 16″ guns? Sound good to me! 😀

The JERSEY / IOWA class is still kicking… just you wait N C!!!

In Suisun Bay, just a short N.E. splash way from San Francisco bay is the ghost fleet of many large ships. The in-famous Glomar Explorer was there for countless years in the 80s and 90s. It was built @ a west coast / San Diego ship yard that i just got through working at. It was built in a mini-style derigable (sp?) (air ship) style dry dock…… totally covered up. The mystery fab / dry dock still makes Darpa or black projects from time to time. I dont really believe that anyone with have a brain really bvelieved that the Glomar Exp was realling “mining manganese modules” on the sa floor. Balderdash!!!

MONSTER BATTELSHIPS STILL RULE 😮 NO ****E
I am not 100% sure, but i do believe the remaining New Jersey (?) is in storage with 20 or more large ships in the Suisun Bay “bone yard bay”. I know for a 200% fact it is in a “moth ball status ” some where on the calif west coast and that U.S. NAVSHIPS status can have under sail in 6 weeks.
Regan spent $$$$$$$$ on it, with teak decks no less and it kicked ass @ GW I in 1991.

More later on the 16″ deck guns….gotta ZZZZZZZZ

Gringo Y

I am going to cheat and say I prefer Des Moines, a heavy cruiser with the rapid fire of a light cruiser.
But if no cheating is allowed, then we have to decide what the foreseen role is. If you want to protect your capital ships from the charge of enemy destroyers, you probably want light cruisers. If you need large numbers of ships rather than individually strong units, you can probably get more balance in a light cruiser of modest size rather than trying something like the truncated Exeter and York. If you want something like a mini capital ship to exercise sea control in the absence of dreadnoughts, you might prefer a heavy cruiser. If you have to scramble to put together a force to take on Hiei and Kirishima in a knife fight off Guadalcanal, the heavy cruiser offers a hope of genuine armor penetration.
I think history gives a strong hint that the 8in gun was a “tweener” without the rapid fire of a useful light gun and without the heavy punch of a heavy gun. To make matters worse, the 8in treaty limit coincided with the 10,000-ton displacement limit, and it proved nearly impossible to fit a balanced 8in design into that size. This all conspires to put the heavy cruiser in a bad light; and yet some of the best cruiser designs of WWII were heavy cruisers. Zara was a superb piece of design, it’s just that she achieved this via total disregard for treaty limitation.

The Des Moines Class Heavy Cruiser were impressive to say the least. To bad they entered service so late. How could you beat the power of a Baltimore Class Heavy Cruiser with the rate of fire of a Cleveland! Surely, the best of both worlds! That said, most surface engagments are between groups of ships. So, maybe we need both? Really, they compliment each other very well.

What would you concider the German “pocket battleships” to be? Cruisers?

I always considered Germanys “pocket battleships” as Heavy Crusiers. To tell you the true. The term Large Cruiser as the USN’s Alaska Class was refered to maybe closer. The pocket battleships really showed alot of promise except for there diesel engines. Remember, you want to out run what you can’t out fight! 😮

I’ve bruised my forehead many times trying to distinguish BCs from BBs. The fast battleship of the post-treaty period is basically a BB-BC hybrid, so splitting the hair tends to be a futile pursuit. You can call them BB or BC, and that’s fine with me. If we really feel compelled to pick one way or the other, I’d say the best choice is BB–that’s what the Scharnhorsts were officially rated as, and I feel no need to disagree.

I would think that the USS Alabama is a Battleship. The USS Iowa a Fast Battleship and the USS Alaska a Battlecruiser. Of, course some example are alittle harder to define……………….

I’ve bruised my forehead many times trying to distinguish BCs from BBs. The fast battleship of the post-treaty period is basically a BB-BC hybrid, so splitting the hair tends to be a futile pursuit. You can call them BB or BC, and that’s fine with me. If we really feel compelled to pick one way or the other, I’d say the best choice is BB–that’s what the Scharnhorsts were officially rated as, and I feel no need to disagree.

Agreed………not much armor to them………..The ww2 Scharnhorst class I find very interesting…….battleship or battlecruiser………I’d go with “fast battleship”…..as they had BB style protection.

As commerce raiders, they fit the traditional role of a cruiser, and they had the size of a cruiser. They were officially re-rated as cruisers during the war, once the fiction of the “armored ship” was deemed unnecessary.

What would you concider the German “pocket battleships” to be? Cruisers?

I am going to cheat and say I prefer Des Moines, a heavy cruiser with the rapid fire of a light cruiser.
But if no cheating is allowed, then we have to decide what the foreseen role is. If you want to protect your capital ships from the charge of enemy destroyers, you probably want light cruisers. If you need large numbers of ships rather than individually strong units, you can probably get more balance in a light cruiser of modest size rather than trying something like the truncated Exeter and York. If you want something like a mini capital ship to exercise sea control in the absence of dreadnoughts, you might prefer a heavy cruiser. If you have to scramble to put together a force to take on Hiei and Kirishima in a knife fight off Guadalcanal, the heavy cruiser offers a hope of genuine armor penetration.
I think history gives a strong hint that the 8in gun was a “tweener” without the rapid fire of a useful light gun and without the heavy punch of a heavy gun. To make matters worse, the 8in treaty limit coincided with the 10,000-ton displacement limit, and it proved nearly impossible to fit a balanced 8in design into that size. This all conspires to put the heavy cruiser in a bad light; and yet some of the best cruiser designs of WWII were heavy cruisers. Zara was a superb piece of design, it’s just that she achieved this via total disregard for treaty limitation.

Massachusetts’s action report for the Battle of Casablanca mentions the extreme difficulty in trying to engage destroyers with the main battery. Probably one hit, at most three, scored on the French ships.
The American experience around Guadalcanal indicated that even the 8in gun firing as fast as 5 rpm was less useful than the rapid fire of 6in guns.
I’m trying to remember cases of destroyers being hit by battleship-caliber guns. Saumarez took three 28cm hits at North Cape. Warspite used her main battery at Narvik, but I can’t say if she got any hits. Johnston, Hoel, and Samuel B Roberts all took 14in hits off Samar. The only hits scored destroyers by Americans battleships at Guadalcanal were 5-inchers. (In this action, the 5in/38 looked like a very good anti-ship gun; Ayanami was crippled by six hits and later finished off.) This is all from memory, so take it with a grain of salt.

Which, would you prefer? The higher firing 6in Cruiser Light Cruiser or 8in Heavy Cruiser?

It is not really healthy to be on the wrong end of 14in gunfire…………Saw a docu on Military chan the other day………Brit team dove the Wrecks of Queen Mary, Indefatigable, Invincibe, Deffence, and Lutzow………VERY interesting stuff…….The Brit battlecruisers are in “pieces”……Deffence and Lutzow are reletivly intact……

The Japanese developed the Type 3 Common shell, which was hardly a common shell. It was better described as an incendiary-shrapnel shell. Fitted with a time fuze, it was meant for AA fire and bombardment. I cannot say whether or not any US plane was ever shot down with this shell, and it might be impossible to sort out which shell did in any given target. Perhaps the most important thing the Type 3 ever did was to keep the San Francisco afloat. She was hit by about fifteen 14in shells at close range off Guadalcanal. If they had been AP shells or even HE shells, she would have been shredded, but the Type 3’s did as little damage as a 14in shell could.