So, how about extra chance of critical hit for naval units carrying torpedoes, unless they already fired them in that battle?
Hearts of Iron IV - Developer Diary 10 - Naval Combat
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Right. In the Solomons, and other areas I guess, radar was key. It allowed the US to gain the upper hand at Cape St George, Cape Esperance, and in some occasions in carrier defence, but Hiei wasn't lost due to radar, if that's what you were implying. Callaghan used his radar pretty incompetently in that battle.
The Japanese seemingly had only a cursory knowledge of radar and were never capable of catching up to the US. That's not modeled in HOI, and neither is the importance of radar. It's to do with how technology is researched.
Let’s be clear on RADAR.
By 1941, Japan had RADAR that, whilst not as short a wavelength as the sets the USA & GB were using, was perfectly adequate for finding range to target. The massive advantage the USA (and GB) had was in gunnery control computers. Japan was way behind in automated target acquisition & tracking, RADAR, IMHO, wasn’t the balance tipper many people believe it to be.
"were never capable of catching the US"
One of my favourite factoids is that Hidetsugu Yagi & his associate Shintaro Uda were Japanese.
You may have heard of the dipole, directional beam or simply the Yagi antenna. This was the critical component for the development of RADAR and it was invented in Japan in 1926.
So, to say that the Japanese could never have caught up is, perhaps, not quite accurate. They could have been world leaders, perhaps a decade ahead of The West, if the leaders & politicians at the top of the IJN hadn't been so short sighted.
Yes, this could work. We don't really have "fall of shot" but a generic +½% or +1% for a nasty bang from your torpedoes every time you get hit would do nicely.
The Japanese invented a lot of things. That doesn't mean they had the technological capacity to catch up to the US in them. The production of radios and radar in particular requires precise machining of a type Japan was far behind the US in, even if their theoreticists were adequate. You are right I suppose that fire control computers were the difference, but that is a form of electronics that, again, was part of the more general problem that Japan was far, far behind precise machining than the US was. They were still importing machine parts from the US for warmaking material right up until the embargo.
Additionally - like I implied - possessing a radar set is not the same thing as being able to mass produce them - or, in the circumstances required, being trained, both in practice and theory, in how to use it. I know this sounds ridiculous, but the Soviet Union produced a working laser tank (the 1K17 'Compression', though it was more of a blinding weapon.) The amount of refined rubies required to produce them on any kind of useful scale (i.e. outside of a prototype) meant the vehicle has been confined to history.
I see what you did there - but the torpedo theory is only one of several valid theories (though probably the most believable.)
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No, I was saying Hiei was lost because it fought a nighttime engagement (which was the norm in the Pacific War) where the range was so close that cruisers could cripple it. The radar was a seperate paragraph to highlight its importance in later engagements when radar was sufficiently developed (Callaghan gets blamed somewhat unfairly IMHO since his ship didn't have the best radar in the fleet and it wasn't as though the Americans were already experts at reading their own radar screens at this point).
Big Nev's correct on the USN's fire control computer superiority as well, which already existed even during the Solomons; albeit the IJN FC issues were less obvious because they used torpedoes so much in most of their night engagements.
Callaghan talked his friend RK Turner into giving him the command over the more-experienced Norman Scott (victor at Cape Esperance), ignored radar and all spotting reports, led his ships into a slaughterhouse, lost all control of the battle and did not survive it. Unfortunately his ship ('San Francisco') fired on a presumed enemy that was actually the 'Atlanta' and killed Admiral Scott. The US lost all institutional knowledge of night-fighting gained to that point because the ships and men who learned it either didn't survive or went into repair.
It's not just the equipment - it is the doctrine. It is HOW you expect to fight, using WHICH weapons and systems and in WHAT manner you manage it. Good appropriate doctrine cures many ills; bad doctrine, or doctrine applied in situations where it does not apply, will get you killed.
Japanese doctrine emphasized slashing night attacks featuring destroyers led by 'destroyer leader' light cruisers, all armed with excellent torpedoes. Their crews were well trained in night vision, night maneuvering, torpedo aiming and night gunnery. The Japanese intended to use these tactics to whittle away at the US battle fleet as it steamed west toward the Phillipines, declining a daytime battle until the odds were in their favor. Studies have been done figuring out the loss-ratio the Japanese needed to achieve for final victory. Even without new production added in they only once - and briefly - made it up to that level. But in any case their destroyer captains and crews were superlative.
The USN had a more technological bent; their preferred tactics were built around long-range, daylight gunnery action - hitting early and often at extremely long ranges to penetrate deck armor, and before the enemy could hit back. For this reason the US took the torpedoes off of their heavy and light cruisers (plus US torpedoes were pretty poor), with the exception of the 'Atlanta' class which were intended to be used as fast destroyer-squadron leaders with AA capability. US gunnery (especially the 'Brooklyn' class, carrying 15-6" guns and fitted early with the best radar) was usually very good; US battleship gunnery at Second Guadalcanal was fast, accurate and lethal. The most advanced radar gave the fleet a good set of eyes and provided very accurate range information (early radar was really only good for air detection) but it could not tell you whether the blip was friend or foe. Additionally, US ships had two major vulnerabilities - they were loaded with flammables, including wood and linoleum, and the heavy cruisers carried their airplane gasoline in a central hangar - right where a shell would be most likely to hit. Secondly, US talk-between-ships was limited to one channel, so anyone who was talking was blanked by anyone else who tried to talk, and TBS discipline was notoriously bad. It will help you to understand the SW Pacific night battles if you understand that US ships mostly could not talk to each other.
If you look at the Guadalcanal-SW Pacific naval battles (plus Komandorski Islands) you can see a couple of things very clearly. The Japanese didn't make use of radar because they thought it could be detected (true) and because they didn't need an undeveloped system when they already had a developed system (night vision). The USN had no idea they were being hit by destroyer torpedoes (despite evidence and testimony at the front which didn't make its way back to HQ) and attributed the damage to mines and submarines. When they were lead by admirals who trained their units in night maneuvers and who implemented a solid battle plan, they won (Cape Esperance). Where they fought a gunnery battle in daylight (Komandorski Islands), they held their own. The three biggest American mistakes in night battles were 1) rotating command structure sacrificed the experienced commanders (Norman Scott, Thomas Kincaid for two) and 2) refusal to cut the destroyers loose from the line-ahead formation, and 3) failure to train in night maneuvering and operations.
For their part the Japanese had some serious defects, including, 1) overly complicated battle plans with multiple groups of ships operating independently. When it went into the pot in the dark and rain, the Japanese admiral didn't know whether he was shooting at his own ships or not (Cape Esperance, First Guadalcanal), 2) turning their destroyers and subs into supply ships that wore out engineering plants instead of concentrating on destroying the USN, and 3) gunnery that ranged from fair to pretty bad (really good at point-blank range, not-so-good otherwise) and 4) indifferent damage control and firefighting.
So... just because you have a great system (radar, oxygen-fueled torpedoes) doesn't mean your doctrine will hold up in the chaos of battle, nor do all navies train for the same things. Once the US set up cruiser squadrons who all had fire-control radar and set up independently-maneuvering destroyer squadrons, they better than held their own even in the dark - but a lot of sailors got killed before the ships, the training and the doctrine came together. By Samar, US improvements and the decline in Japanese crew quality from heavy losses made the IJN a brave but outclassed opponent. In general the performance of US ships was very poor in 1942 and got steadily better. Japanese destroyer squadrons were undoubtedly the best night surface combat teams on the planet in 1942 but fell off sharply thereafter; the performance of Japanese heavy cruisers and battleships was never better than middling IMHO.
It's not just who has the bigger gun or a new system. It is doctrine, training, appreciation of what a new system can do and building a system that does what you want it to do.
It's not just the equipment - it is the doctrine. It is HOW you expect to fight, using WHICH weapons and systems and in WHAT manner you manage it. Good appropriate doctrine cures many ills; bad doctrine, or doctrine applied in situations where it does not apply, will get you killed.
Japanese doctrine emphasized slashing night attacks featuring destroyers led by 'destroyer leader' light cruisers, all armed with excellent torpedoes. Their crews were well trained in night vision, night maneuvering, torpedo aiming and night gunnery. The Japanese intended to use these tactics to whittle away at the US battle fleet as it steamed west toward the Phillipines, declining a daytime battle until the odds were in their favor. Studies have been done figuring out the loss-ratio the Japanese needed to achieve for final victory. Even without new production added in they only once - and briefly - made it up to that level. But in any case their destroyer captains and crews were superlative.
The USN had a more technological bent; their preferred tactics were built around long-range, daylight gunnery action - hitting early and often at extremely long ranges to penetrate deck armor, and before the enemy could hit back. For this reason the US took the torpedoes off of their heavy and light cruisers (plus US torpedoes were pretty poor), with the exception of the 'Atlanta' class which were intended to be used as fast destroyer-squadron leaders with AA capability. US gunnery (especially the 'Brooklyn' class, carrying 15-6" guns and fitted early with the best radar) was usually very good; US battleship gunnery at Second Guadalcanal was fast, accurate and lethal. The most advanced radar gave the fleet a good set of eyes and provided very accurate range information (early radar was really only good for air detection) but it could not tell you whether the blip was friend or foe. Additionally, US ships had two major vulnerabilities - they were loaded with flammables, including wood and linoleum, and the heavy cruisers carried their airplane gasoline in a central hangar - right where a shell would be most likely to hit. Secondly, US talk-between-ships was limited to one channel, so anyone who was talking was blanked by anyone else who tried to talk, and TBS discipline was notoriously bad. It will help you to understand the SW Pacific night battles if you understand that US ships mostly could not talk to each other.
If you look at the Guadalcanal-SW Pacific naval battles (plus Komandorski Islands) you can see a couple of things very clearly. The Japanese didn't make use of radar because they thought it could be detected (true) and because they didn't need an undeveloped system when they already had a developed system (night vision). The USN had no idea they were being hit by destroyer torpedoes (despite evidence and testimony at the front which didn't make its way back to HQ) and attributed the damage to mines and submarines. When they were lead by admirals who trained their units in night maneuvers and who implemented a solid battle plan, they won (Cape Esperance). Where they fought a gunnery battle in daylight (Komandorski Islands), they held their own. The three biggest American mistakes in night battles were 1) rotating command structure sacrificed the experienced commanders (Norman Scott, Thomas Kincaid for two) and 2) refusal to cut the destroyers loose from the line-ahead formation, and 3) failure to train in night maneuvering and operations.
For their part the Japanese had some serious defects, including, 1) overly complicated battle plans with multiple groups of ships operating independently. When it went into the pot in the dark and rain, the Japanese admiral didn't know whether he was shooting at his own ships or not (Cape Esperance, First Guadalcanal), 2) turning their destroyers and subs into supply ships that wore out engineering plants instead of concentrating on destroying the USN, and 3) gunnery that ranged from fair to pretty bad (really good at point-blank range, not-so-good otherwise) and 4) indifferent damage control and firefighting.
So... just because you have a great system (radar, oxygen-fueled torpedoes) doesn't mean your doctrine will hold up in the chaos of battle, nor do all navies train for the same things. Once the US set up cruiser squadrons who all had fire-control radar and set up independently-maneuvering destroyer squadrons, they better than held their own even in the dark - but a lot of sailors got killed before the ships, the training and the doctrine came together. By Samar, US improvements and the decline in Japanese crew quality from heavy losses made the IJN a brave but outclassed opponent. In general the performance of US ships was very poor in 1942 and got steadily better. Japanese destroyer squadrons were undoubtedly the best night surface combat teams on the planet in 1942 but fell off sharply thereafter; the performance of Japanese heavy cruisers and battleships was never better than middling IMHO.
It's not just who has the bigger gun or a new system. It is doctrine, training, appreciation of what a new system can do and building a system that does what you want it to do.
By the way, Japan developed the 24" liquid-oxygen-fueled 'Long Lance' torpedo after it was reported that the Royal Navy already had it. If I recall, Britain developed it for 'Rodney' and 'Nelson' and then abandoned it for technical reasons (difficulty of keeping liquid oxygen on a warship, mostly).
As far a penetration goes, most of a WW2 period warship is unarmored or thinly armored. And if you get close enough, even 5", 6" and 8" will penetrate a thirty-year-old battlecruiser's armor - and at First Guadalcanal, some US ships were closer than 500 yards to 'Hiei'. You can blow the superstructure to bits, wreck the funnels and riddle the thinner-armored side (because the plate thins out at the top, bottom and ends).
Between the WWI survivors, the almost-unarmored and overloaded 'treaty-class' cruisers and then the new ships with highly efficient steam plants there are wide gaps in performance. In US terms, a 'Salt Lake City' is not a 'New Orleans' is not a 'Wichita'; an 'Omaha' is not a 'Brooklyn' is not a 'Cleveland'; a 'Nevada' is not a 'Colorado' is not a 'South Dakota'. All navies of the era (except maybe the German) have the same wide gaps in capabilities.
As far a penetration goes, most of a WW2 period warship is unarmored or thinly armored. And if you get close enough, even 5", 6" and 8" will penetrate a thirty-year-old battlecruiser's armor - and at First Guadalcanal, some US ships were closer than 500 yards to 'Hiei'. You can blow the superstructure to bits, wreck the funnels and riddle the thinner-armored side (because the plate thins out at the top, bottom and ends).
Between the WWI survivors, the almost-unarmored and overloaded 'treaty-class' cruisers and then the new ships with highly efficient steam plants there are wide gaps in performance. In US terms, a 'Salt Lake City' is not a 'New Orleans' is not a 'Wichita'; an 'Omaha' is not a 'Brooklyn' is not a 'Cleveland'; a 'Nevada' is not a 'Colorado' is not a 'South Dakota'. All navies of the era (except maybe the German) have the same wide gaps in capabilities.
I agree with about 95% of what you said.
I want to add a wrinkle to your assessment of the importance of doctrines, however.
You can't train crews/soldiers and officers/leaders to account for everything. There are only a finite number of training hours and days, not to mention budgets. So, you have to pick and choose what you prepare for prior to a war, and in a limited sense, you hope you get it right.
This means that, while Japanese destroyers were very good at doing all of the things you listed, they were atrocious at ASW compared to their American and British counterparts. Coupled with lousy damage control doctrines, this would be very costly in the long run for Japan. Even if Japan could have built enough DEs and DDs to cover her sea lanes with iron-clad protection, she still had to catch up in institutional knowledge regarding ASW. And since she was deficient in these categories for much of war, her lack of institutional knowledge compounded the lack of escorts.
I bring it up, because the doctrine trees in HOI4 seem to take this into account. You can't really have it all, although you can adapt to what you encounter in the war.
What I'm hoping is that there is a bigger place for doctrines in naval warfare in HOI4. In HOI3, naval doctrines are kind of "meh." You need them, but the flashy techs are all equipment related for the navy (with some exceptions for CAGs). And there is a big difference between a DD trained to prioritize ASW and covering capital ships and a DD trained to get her torpedoes in range to sink enemy capital ships.
Yes, but this is mostly irrelevant. Since the mid-nineteenth century a core concept in armoured vessels has been to have an armoured "citadel" that contains all the important elements to fight the ship. Unarmoured or lightly armoured bits are placed around that to hold the "nice to have" stuff and add streamlining. Penetrating that lightly armoured outer shell won't really damage much of any importance (unless the design of the armoured citadel is botched, cf. British battlecruisers...). To get to the ship's "vitals" you need to penetrate the armoured inner "box".
I have two questions about submarines, if I may. Please forgive me if they have already been answered, but it would take a week to read through all 22 pages and most of the discussion seems to be centered in the Pacific.
1.) I saw on your August 18th youtube video that you can customize your future units based on field reports, how, specifically will this apply to U-boats? Will we be able to develop a more powerful torpedo, or an electronic one for silence?
2.) How does the new naval game play take into account the German wolfpacks?
1.) I saw on your August 18th youtube video that you can customize your future units based on field reports, how, specifically will this apply to U-boats? Will we be able to develop a more powerful torpedo, or an electronic one for silence?
2.) How does the new naval game play take into account the German wolfpacks?
And I think you're rather overstating Scott's competence with radar, or that he would have done better at the big battle for Guadalcanal. Scott had trouble identifying his own ships in Esperance - he thought the Japanese ships were his own destroyers initially (and there were also friendly fire incidents on the USN side) and in many ways was lucky to have won that battle where both sides blundered into each other.
The issue, told to me by someone who actually looked at the early US radar sets and how they were put in US ships, is that US radar early in the war left a lot to be desired on the ergonomic side. Lots of phantom blips showed up, and radar screens were usually put in a room seperate to the command staff so that the Admirals literally could not even look at the radar screen for themselves.
Thus, in essence, you had inexperienced junior radar men passing reports to the admirals, and in some cases possibly hesitating because again their equipment isn't exactly that accurate yet. The Admirals themselves meanwhile - even had they known how to look at a radar screen (which they probably didn't) - weren't in the same room as the radar plotting in the first place to see for themselves all of the blips advancing on them. It took further redesigns to integrate the radar systems as part of the command & control room, which occured well after Guadalcanal (after which you had much fewer radar problems with US ships)
Fire could be dangerous, true - especially if your damage control wasn't fully up to snuff. But, even then, a fire outside the "box" was less dangerous than one inside it, since all/most of the explosive and flammable stuff was kept inside (or should have been).
I have to go with Vanguard44 on this. There are many, many instances of hits which either failed to penetrate armour (ie. bounced) whether on the citadel or elsewhere or hit a "soft" part of the ship which proved to be devastating.
There are too many to mention but fire from destruction of float-planes, wiping-out the bridge & most of the commanders to shell fragments from misses exploding to cause splinter damage to steering gear.
You can kill very heavily armoured warships without ever penetrating their armour. See Bismarck.
I've mentioned this before (so I'll be brief) the damage system we used in my teens went like this.
Hits armour, fails to penetrate. Damage scored= 10% shell weight.
Hits un-armoured part but not critical. Damage scored= 20% shell weight.
Hits armour & penetrates or hits soft area that's critical. Damage scored = shell weight.
Hits on critical areas had additional effects.
It was simple to apply &, IMHO, worked very well to represent how heavily armoured warships could (eventually) succumb to shellfire that they are resistant to and how light ships are actually difficult to take down with large guns.
Vanguard44 - sure; I wasn't trying to be contentious. I just care about naval combat a lot.
Secret Master - I completely agree with your point and never meant to say otherwise. The crews of each navy began, fought and ended the war with different skill sets, and had different skill sets from each other. I am sure it is the case from armies and air forces too. IJN destroyer anti-sub doctrine was good enough to kill a lot of US submarines, but their poor convoy doctrine and failure to build escorts and devote aircraft to ASW were curious lapses for an island nation. I think, like Germany and Italy, Japan depended on fighting a short war from a position of strength, knowing (as was the case in the Russo-Japanese War) that they only had the resources for a couple of big battles. In a short war, ASW doesn't matter as much (and it is dirty, tedious, inglorious work) but in a long war it does. Again, doctrine shapes how you use the forces you have. So I agree with you - and this is why.
Balesir - As you say, from the late 1800's on navies began moving toward 'All Or Nothing' protection, beginning with the smaller units like cruisers that needed higher speeds and had less displacement to spare and arriving at the USS 'Nevada' in 1914. (You could write a book about armor theory and people have). There was a furious debate about the effect of the vulnerable 'soft ends' but in general the debate was pointless because a ship could be weak everywhere or strong at only a few key points. The effect of a large-caliber shell hitting thin plate could vary; sometimes the thin armor would set off the bursting charge and keep the interior from being damaged, sometimes the shell didn't explode or passes through (see Big Nev's comments). But in the cases where it did explode, the damage was extensive. Flooding and fire are tough to deal with even if the engines and magazines are OK. And the 'box' isn't uniformly armored; there are a lot of chinks and cracks, plus a lot of places where the armor is thinned out to extend protection or just to save weight. An 8" or 6"-shell can penetrate the thinner top and ends of most capital ship armor at close range. And then we get into age of design and armor, intent of armor scheme, type of shell used, whether or not it was a USN 'super-heavy' round, and on - and on - and on.
In short, Vanguard 44 is right. At very close range - and most if not all night battles are fought at 7500 yards or less - small, quick-firing guns can do a lot of damage to a capital ship. Fires, flooding, explosions in AA munitions, destruction of the bridge and aux com, penetration of thinly-armored secondary mounts (and their ammo) and so forth is all possible. Capital ships have escorts because they can be hurt badly at close range, and few big-ship admirals and captains were willing to take them in close.
Zinegata - I'm not saying Scott was a master of radar warfare. I am saying that he had been given a chance before Cape Esperance to train his crews to maneuver at night at high speeds, he had a plan (and stuck to it) and he did a competent job of managing the battle, a better job with fewer critical mistakes than his opponent. Callaghan's fault can be laid at the feet of his superior: you just do not replace a commander with some experience with a man who has none and expect good results. With no time to train under Callaghan and no orders from him during the fight, his forces dissolved into a melee and were destroyed piecemeal. It was a tragedy of leadership, of Turner by appointing him and of Callaghan for accepting the command. Of course he didn't know he was unqualified, but had he been in battle previously instead of in a staff position, he might have known. Turner should have left the experienced, proven man in charge. BTW both Scott and Callaghan can be blamed for not shifting their flag from 'San Francisco' (8" guns and limited radar) to 'Helena', which had the best radar unit and operators in the task force. But doctrine said the flag rode the ship with the biggest guns...
Big Nev - good points and I concur. The loss of 'Hiei' owes much to her damaged and un-repairable steering system (from an 8" shell I think). As with 'Bismarck', if you can't steer and steam you won't float for long unless other units keep the enemy away. 'Vittorio Veneto' narrowly escaped this fate.
I grew up on Seapower II rules; even wrote a computerized version (for the Apple II - it was that long ago). Spent many, many hours fighting massive naval battles with friends. One classic scenario had a pocket battleship coming out of the fog to see two allied heavy cruisers (no radar) at 10,000 yards. Usually the question was not who would win but would any ship survive... Another favorite was adding USS 'Colorado' with latest radar to the First Guadalcanal setup. I added capital ships of all the other nations to my 'Jutland' board-game... I'm a naval nerd, what can I say.
Secret Master - I completely agree with your point and never meant to say otherwise. The crews of each navy began, fought and ended the war with different skill sets, and had different skill sets from each other. I am sure it is the case from armies and air forces too. IJN destroyer anti-sub doctrine was good enough to kill a lot of US submarines, but their poor convoy doctrine and failure to build escorts and devote aircraft to ASW were curious lapses for an island nation. I think, like Germany and Italy, Japan depended on fighting a short war from a position of strength, knowing (as was the case in the Russo-Japanese War) that they only had the resources for a couple of big battles. In a short war, ASW doesn't matter as much (and it is dirty, tedious, inglorious work) but in a long war it does. Again, doctrine shapes how you use the forces you have. So I agree with you - and this is why.
Balesir - As you say, from the late 1800's on navies began moving toward 'All Or Nothing' protection, beginning with the smaller units like cruisers that needed higher speeds and had less displacement to spare and arriving at the USS 'Nevada' in 1914. (You could write a book about armor theory and people have). There was a furious debate about the effect of the vulnerable 'soft ends' but in general the debate was pointless because a ship could be weak everywhere or strong at only a few key points. The effect of a large-caliber shell hitting thin plate could vary; sometimes the thin armor would set off the bursting charge and keep the interior from being damaged, sometimes the shell didn't explode or passes through (see Big Nev's comments). But in the cases where it did explode, the damage was extensive. Flooding and fire are tough to deal with even if the engines and magazines are OK. And the 'box' isn't uniformly armored; there are a lot of chinks and cracks, plus a lot of places where the armor is thinned out to extend protection or just to save weight. An 8" or 6"-shell can penetrate the thinner top and ends of most capital ship armor at close range. And then we get into age of design and armor, intent of armor scheme, type of shell used, whether or not it was a USN 'super-heavy' round, and on - and on - and on.
In short, Vanguard 44 is right. At very close range - and most if not all night battles are fought at 7500 yards or less - small, quick-firing guns can do a lot of damage to a capital ship. Fires, flooding, explosions in AA munitions, destruction of the bridge and aux com, penetration of thinly-armored secondary mounts (and their ammo) and so forth is all possible. Capital ships have escorts because they can be hurt badly at close range, and few big-ship admirals and captains were willing to take them in close.
Zinegata - I'm not saying Scott was a master of radar warfare. I am saying that he had been given a chance before Cape Esperance to train his crews to maneuver at night at high speeds, he had a plan (and stuck to it) and he did a competent job of managing the battle, a better job with fewer critical mistakes than his opponent. Callaghan's fault can be laid at the feet of his superior: you just do not replace a commander with some experience with a man who has none and expect good results. With no time to train under Callaghan and no orders from him during the fight, his forces dissolved into a melee and were destroyed piecemeal. It was a tragedy of leadership, of Turner by appointing him and of Callaghan for accepting the command. Of course he didn't know he was unqualified, but had he been in battle previously instead of in a staff position, he might have known. Turner should have left the experienced, proven man in charge. BTW both Scott and Callaghan can be blamed for not shifting their flag from 'San Francisco' (8" guns and limited radar) to 'Helena', which had the best radar unit and operators in the task force. But doctrine said the flag rode the ship with the biggest guns...
Big Nev - good points and I concur. The loss of 'Hiei' owes much to her damaged and un-repairable steering system (from an 8" shell I think). As with 'Bismarck', if you can't steer and steam you won't float for long unless other units keep the enemy away. 'Vittorio Veneto' narrowly escaped this fate.
I grew up on Seapower II rules; even wrote a computerized version (for the Apple II - it was that long ago). Spent many, many hours fighting massive naval battles with friends. One classic scenario had a pocket battleship coming out of the fog to see two allied heavy cruisers (no radar) at 10,000 yards. Usually the question was not who would win but would any ship survive... Another favorite was adding USS 'Colorado' with latest radar to the First Guadalcanal setup. I added capital ships of all the other nations to my 'Jutland' board-game... I'm a naval nerd, what can I say.
All warships are vulnerable. One of the most interesting things are cross sections of warships. The amount of space dedicated to armaments is very small. Most of the space is put towards actually being able to embark the complement and have the vessel move from point A to B (machinery and stores), the peripheral (but important) things like medical bays, kitchens and mess halls, boats, etc. Even on the most armoured vessels have a significant amount of unarmoured space.
In some designs, there is what is known as a taper - the armoured belt thins as it spreads out. Other designs have a short, or even nonexistent, taper. A perfect example is Vanguard.
This is an image of a cross-section of a Yamato, showing the armour.
What should strike anyone is the sheer amount of unprotected space. On a warship, absolutely nothing is wasted. To save weight the Japanese even cut down the stern of some of their cruisers in an incline (which makes them look extremely weird in cross-sections.) Most materials are flammable and an incredible amount of damage can be inflicted. One thing that is very noticeable is that the fire directors are scarcely armoured at all on most battleships. Bismarck lost all its fire directors before it lost its turrets.
Armoured warships were not designed to be able to take on a vast fleet of enemy ships and suffer no damage. They were designed to have longer staying power at the margins against a vessel of equivalent tonnage. A ship can take six months to repair and that is fine if the enemy warship is sunk. That's basically true of all warships, btw, even in the modern era when armour is only nominal. This is one of the reasons why the battleship lost out to the aircraft carrier. It was designed to trade fire at a favourable rate, not soak up damage.
In some designs, there is what is known as a taper - the armoured belt thins as it spreads out. Other designs have a short, or even nonexistent, taper. A perfect example is Vanguard.
This is an image of a cross-section of a Yamato, showing the armour.
What should strike anyone is the sheer amount of unprotected space. On a warship, absolutely nothing is wasted. To save weight the Japanese even cut down the stern of some of their cruisers in an incline (which makes them look extremely weird in cross-sections.) Most materials are flammable and an incredible amount of damage can be inflicted. One thing that is very noticeable is that the fire directors are scarcely armoured at all on most battleships. Bismarck lost all its fire directors before it lost its turrets.
Armoured warships were not designed to be able to take on a vast fleet of enemy ships and suffer no damage. They were designed to have longer staying power at the margins against a vessel of equivalent tonnage. A ship can take six months to repair and that is fine if the enemy warship is sunk. That's basically true of all warships, btw, even in the modern era when armour is only nominal. This is one of the reasons why the battleship lost out to the aircraft carrier. It was designed to trade fire at a favourable rate, not soak up damage.
This is veering to the "all or nothing" again. To be clear, I did not intend to suggest that non-penetrating hits do no damage at all - clearly, that would be nonsense. But 10-20% of damage potential seems to me like a significant reduction for a failure to penetrate armour - which is as I think it should be.
I was responding to a post that sounded like it was saying "armour doesn't matter, because even non-penetrating hits can kill a ship". Well, OK, they can, eventually - but that does not mean that they are as generally damaging as large, penetrating hits. The ratio of "damage soaking capacity" between big and little ships is a bit of a different discussion - but it's certainly true that CLs and DDs could sometimes soak up a surprising amount of punishment - "HMS Pepperpot" being a case in point.
I was responding to a post that sounded like it was saying "armour doesn't matter, because even non-penetrating hits can kill a ship". Well, OK, they can, eventually - but that does not mean that they are as generally damaging as large, penetrating hits. The ratio of "damage soaking capacity" between big and little ships is a bit of a different discussion - but it's certainly true that CLs and DDs could sometimes soak up a surprising amount of punishment - "HMS Pepperpot" being a case in point.
If all concerned would like to see the difference in changing tactics and radar, look up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vella_Gulf
I was on the USS Moosbrugger for several years as an Operations Specialist and spent another 10 years working as a radar engineer...
I agree with earlier statements... It doesn't matter how good your radar is, it matters how you use the information... i.e. fire control.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vella_Gulf
I was on the USS Moosbrugger for several years as an Operations Specialist and spent another 10 years working as a radar engineer...
I agree with earlier statements... It doesn't matter how good your radar is, it matters how you use the information... i.e. fire control.