TiornuAs 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.
TiornuI 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.
TiornuThe 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.
TiornuMassachusetts’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.
TiornuFor smaller targets, the secondaries would be preferred; for larger targets, the main battery.
TiornuThe Germans used 15cm secondaries right from the start of dreadnought construction; every dreadnought they ever built had 15cm secondaries. The Japanese also started out at 6in, later dropping to 5.5in around the same time the British were doing so. The British and Americans started out with 3in for their first classes; the British then went to 4in, but the Americans went to 5in. The 5in was in all old US battleships completed from 1910 on. The British escalated to 6in in part because of agitation by those who believed in the “rain of fire” approach–that is, people who didn’t trust the dreadnought type itself! Later the RN decided on 5.5in; it was felt the smaller shell was offset by higher rate of fire, which would also have been the case with the US 5in gun.
TiornuNo US dreadnought carried 6in secondaries, but almost; they were planned for the SoDaks and Lexingtons before the Washington Treaty.
Intended for AA work like the 25cal and for anti-ship work like the 51cal, the 38-caliber length lies exactly halfway between the two. In terms of design evolution, the 38cal WAS a 25cal improved for anti-ship work. The first 38cal gun was a shortened 51cal barrel.
TiornuYes, the standard heavy AA gun was the 5in/25, and the standard anti-ship secondary was the 5in/51. Then came the 5in/38 to replace them both. See the pattern?
TiornuSpeaking of compromises, do you recall the two 5in models that were already in USN service when the 5in/38 was developed?
TiornuThe British had a capable weapon in the 4.5in DP gun fitted to the rebuilt QE, Valiant, and Renown. Reservations over its modest size versus surface targets led to the 5.25in gun, which proved a big disappointment. The wartime model was far too slow in firing to be a good AA gun. Rate of fire was one thing that made the 5in/38 such a great weapon; it also had a nimble mount.
The main drawback to the Japanese 10cm gun was its limited barrel life, which was no better than that of a US 16in rifle–no joke! It was no more rapid than the 5in/38, and its shell was only 55% as large.
TiornuBattleship secondaries versus enemy warships:
Warspite at Narvik
Scharnhorst & Gneisenau against Glorious’s DD escort
Bismarck vs Vian’s DDs
Bismarck’s final battle
First Battle of Guadalcanal
Second Battle of Guadalcanal
Iowa vs Katori
New Jersey vs a trawler
Scharnhorst vs the World at North Cape
There were certainly others, but I’ve included only those for which I have a specific recollection. It would not be posible to account for all the times battleships fired their heavy AA at aircraft.
TiornuWas that the one that had Bill Jurens as their consultant?
TiornuThe latest Warship International has an overview I wrote on the 1.1in Hudson gun.
In the context of WWII, guns of less than 3in bore had a serious disadvantage in that they were too small for VT fuzes.
The American advantage in AA lay in the world’s best HA fire-control system, the remarkable 5in/38 gun and its 20mm and 40mm teammates, plus the VT fuze. The huge number of barrels was also a help!
I agree that the 15cm gun was better than the 5in gun as an anti-ship weapon, but was a broadside of six 15cm guns better than, say, twelve 5in guns? Perhaps. I can’t agree that the 10.5cm gun was better than the 5-incher as an AA weapon, and certainly a battery of twenty-four 5in guns will outperform sixteen 10.5cm guns. The next issue to consider is what constituted the greater threat for battleships at this time, aircraft or destroyers. In my opinion, Bismarck would have been better served by a homogeneous secondary battery of 12.8cm guns.
TiornuOf all the countries building WWII battleships, only the Americans, French, and British attempted dual-purpose secondaries, and only the Americans succeeded. It certainly would have been better for the Bismarcks to have had a DP secondary battery, and the Germans developed a fine 12.8cm gun that would have been perfect for the job, but I don’t see a major criticism here. Richelieu, Littorio, Sovetskiy Soyuz, and Yamato all had split batteries, so Bismarck has plenty of company.
After the war, Vanguard came out with what was arguably the best DP battery ever fitted to a battleship.
TiornuHey, you sound like you’re quoting me! In my book, I commented on German battleship design: “The end result was a ship undoubtedly difficult to sink, but easy to cripple.”
Bismarck was quick out of the starting gate with a reputation as a supership. This wore out after a time, and scoffers retroactively turned her into a heap of metallic incompetence. The truth naturally lies in between the extremes, and it’s necessary to take a close look at the facts to separate reality from reputation.
Bismarck was hit by dozens and dozens and dozens of shells. If war were a scorebook, Bismarck would have earned a high score. But what does this really show? The fact is that ships are not sunk by lots of shell hits; they are sunk by loss of buoyancy. If shells cause a loss of buoyancy and the ship still manages to stay afloat, that’s impressive; if they the shells don’t diminish the target’s buoyancy, they will not sink it.
Bismarck’s armor belt shows signs of only about three large-caliber hits (all of which penetrated). The superstructure, on the other hand, got blasted to pieces, literally. After some detailed surveys of the Bismarck wreck, we can confirm that the final point-blank bombardment of Bismarck had relatively little impact on her buoyancy. I say “confirm” because this idea was set forth from an early date. Charles Lillicrap, a chief RN designer, responded to a 1949 paper from Oscar Parkes by commenting, “we could have continued shooting at that close range for a week and would never have sunk the ship. To sink a ship one must let the water in!”
In fact, I can attribute this explanation to an even earlier date–one preceding Bismarck’s destruction. Between the wars, the RN had a stated preference for combat at relatively short range, in the 12-16,000yd band. One of the reasons for this was the fact that short-range gunnery tends to present a lesser immediate threat to a ship’s existence. Since the RN anticipated having more battleships than any foe, it preferred to fight long, drawn-out duels rather than long-range fights where a lucky hit might eliminate a numerical advantage. In other words, the RN sought short ranges to keep ships from sinking quickly. Well, guess what–they were right! Adm Tovey should have known this and should not have let his ships get as close as 4000 yards from Bismarck. Of course he had trouble sinking her that way.
Sign In
