RAMJB

Must be said that SD got "deaf, blind and impotent" due to the whole ship's electrics going haywire. Which was happening BEFORE the ship had been even hit. There were some serious problems with the design of the electrics of the ship as designed and, virtually ,everything that could go wrong with it at once, did in battle. So much so that most of the electrical problems SD suffered from, and which left them "blind and deaf" weren't because of japanese action, but because of problematic design of the electrics, worsened by the action of a (probably shell-shocked) operator who trying to solve the issues, only made them much worse. I'm quoting next the whole chapter (chapter C) analizing the electric problems of South Dakota from Navy's War Damage Report 57, which is the document produced after the official investigation of the battle of Guadalcanal (and released in 1947). You'll note that almost all the problems South Dakota suffered from can be traced back to her faulty design. Inclusing those derived from short-circuits that happened from enemy gunfire. Had SD had no such faults, she'd never blacked out in battle as she did. Summing up: it wasn't the japanese guns. It was the own ship, which had a faulty electrical system. Once her problems became apparent the USN revisited the electric systems of their battleships (most prominently changing the automatic bus tranfer switch to a manual one) - they never displayed any kind of unreliability with their electrics ever again. TL:DR before I put the quote (is a very long one): Japanese gunfire had really very little to do with South Dakota's ailings on the battle of Guadalcanal - she had problems with her own faulty design. In fact she managed to knock part of her own electrics just by the shock of firing her own guns (one of the aft main switchboard was knocked out when C turret began firing)...BEFORE she was even hit. So much for "small guns doing a number on her". Which - they really did not. Had she had proper reliable electrics, she'd never been rendered "deaf, dumb, blind nor impotent", and Lee would've never had much to complain about that warship. And at any rate whatever problems she had, again, had little to nothing to do with damage from japanese gunfire. C. Electrical Damage and Casualties 41. Extensive damage was done to electrical circuits in the superstructure. The loss of many fire control, interior communication, radio and radar facilities seriously impaired the fighting power of the ship particularly in night actions. The SOUTH DAKOTA Electrical Work List enumerated thirty-five different kinds of circuits needing repairs including such items as renewing all flexible wiring to main battery director No. 1 and to secondary battery director No. 1. From the information available, in most cases electrical damage cannot be associated with specific hits. 42. The loss of all search radar was a serious handicap to SOUTH DAKOTA. In this regard the Commanding Officer in reference (a) stated: "The trust and faith in the search radar equipment is amazing. After this ship lost both SG and SC equipment, the psychological effect on the officers and crew was most depressing. The absence of this gear gave all hands a feeling of being blindfolded." 43. During the action, power on fire control and interior communication circuits throughout the ship was lost for approximately three minutes as a result of short-circuits due to the destruction by gunfire of cable and equipment on I.C. and F.C. circuits in the superstructure. The short-circuits produced an overload such that the circuit breaker on the normal feeder to the I.C. switchboard tripped on main generator and distribution switchboard No. 1. The I.C. switchboard was equipped with automatic bus transfer to shift the power supply to the emergency Diesel generator switchboard No. 1 in case of interruption of normal power from the main board. As the capacity of the Diesel generator was considerably smaller than the connected load on the I.C. switchboard, the F.C. and I.C. bus was energized through a 1000 ampere circuit breaker which was designed to automatically open before the automatic bus transfer operated. Thus, only the load on the I.C. restricted bus, which was well within the capacity of the emergency generator, would remain on the board. The circuit breaker opened properly. But after the automatic bus transfer operated, the fuzes protecting the emergency supply "blew." Apparently several of the circuits connected to the I.C. restricted bus were still short-circuited. Defective circuits were isolated and power restored on all serviceable I.C. and F.C. circuits in approximately three minutes. 44. Ordinarily, matters which are not the result of damage by enemy action are not included in damage reports. In this case, however, the fact that electrical failure initiated by the shock of gunfire was a handicap to SOUTH DAKOTA while in action warrants some comment. As a result of this failure, numerous control shifts had to be made and it was reported that all power on the after part of the ship was lost for about a minute. This occurred before receiving the first hit. 45. At the time of the failure, normal power was being supplied to the after 5-inch director from generator and distribution switchboard No. 4 through a bus transfer panel, power distribution panel, and an automatic bus transfer switch (PLATE II). The automatic bus transfer switch received its alternate supply from generator and distribution switchboard No. 2 through a bus transfer panel and a power distribution panel. The AQB circuit breakers in the distribution panels, which were in unattended locations, were "locked in" in accordance with outstanding instructions. 46. The shock produced by Turret III firing astern caused the contactor for the alternate power supply in the automatic bus transfer switch to close, thereby paralleling generator and distribution switchboards No. 4 and No. 2. As the two power sources were not in phase the resulting synchronizing current surge welded the contacts on the automatic bus transfer switch closed and the normal feeder cable to the after 5-inch director (FE834) ruptured and short-circuited between phases on the No. 4 generator and distribution switchboard side of the rupture. Because no mention was made of trouble on the alternate power supply to the director, it is inferred that the rupture of the normal feeder cleared the short-circuit on the alternate supply which then continued to supply the director. As the AQB circuit breaker in the power distribution panel was "locked in" the fault on generator and distribution switchboard No. 4 was cleared by the tripping of generator No. 7 ACB circuit breaker. It was not reported whether the feeder ACB circuit breaker tripped also but it was implied that it did. 47. The operator then energized generator and distribution switchboard No. 4 from generator and distribution switchboard No. 3 by closing the bus tie (FE0404) circuit breaker. The circuit breaker for the normal feeder (FE0716) to the bus transfer panel was closed manually, causing the circuit breaker to generator No. 6 to trip. At this time, the circuit breakers on both normal feeder (FE0716) and alternate feeder (FE0420) to the bus transfer panel were opened. Power was restored to generator and distribution switchboards Nos. 3 and 4 by closing the circuit breakers to generators Nos. 5 and 6. The alternate feeder (FE0420) circuit breaker to the bus transfer panel was closed at generator and distribution switchboard No. 3, tripping out circuit breakers for generators Nos. 5 and 6 and the alternate feeder (FE0420). Circuit breakers for generators Nos. 5, 6 and 7 were immediately closed again, while circuit breakers on normal feeder (FE0716) and alternate feeder (FE0420) remained open. From the time of closure of the automatic bus transfer switch until closure of the circuit breakers for generators Nos. 5, 6 and 7 it was reported that about one minute elapsed. Repair parties then located the fault, isolated it and restored power to 5-inch mounts Nos. 6 and 8. 48. The source of these electrical failures was the unreliable operation of the automatic bus transfer switch. All of these switches have been replaced by a manual type transfer switch. 49. The power interruption on the after main switchboards was made more extensive by the failure of the feeder and the main generator circuit breakers to operate selectively under short-circuit conditions. As a result, instead of the feeder breaker operating alone to isolate the short-circuit, the generator breaker also tripped out at the same time. For proper operation, the generator circuit breakers should not open under fault conditions except when the fault is on the switchboard bus or between the generator and the switchboard. This means that the generator circuit breaker should have sufficient time delay at currents equal to the maximum short-circuit current of the generator to permit the feeder breakers only to trip. At the same time, the generator breakers must provide a reasonable amount of switchboard bus fault protection. After considerable study and development and subsequent to this casualty, improved circuit breaker performance was obtained by replacing the time delay dashpot trip devices on the main generator circuit breakers with a type PQ relay. The type PQ relays installed on the SOUTH DAKOTA were the first that became available. Nearly comparable improvement in selective breaker operation has been obtained on similar ships by the installation of special time delay dashpots on the generator breakers.

It's out of whack. Otherwise modern dreadnoughts would've stockpiled loads of 6'' guns on their decks. Not 12,14,15,16 and 18 inch guns. You mention tsushima - a battle where ranges were tremendously close - and even at those ranges guns under 12'' would not penetrate the main armor of battleships. The quick firing guns, true, did a sterling job... the sterling job of peppering and mangling superstructures and sending splinters on very problematic area (Rozhestvensky was killed by a shell fragment, for instance). Even then out of the russian ships sunk, Navarin and Veliky were sunk by torpedoes, Imperator Alexandr III was killed by 12'' gunfire, Borodino was blown up by a 12'' in the magazines. The only russian battleship sunk by cruiser gunfire was Oslyabya, but even then when swarmed by then, even then at knife fighting range, and even then, the loss was credited to the japanese cruisers' main guns (203mm), not to the smaller rapid firing ones. The damage dealt by guns smaller than 12'' was, summing up, meritory but not lethal on it's own. And limited to high explosive damage out of the vital areas. In this game is ravenously lethal, and their AP goes through armor as if they were coil guns. It's out of whack. I'm going to ask you about the source you're using here. Bismarck **WAS** turned into a combat loss by heavy gunfire. The shells that knocked out her FC tops were battleship shells. The sells that knocked out her turrets were battleships shells. The two shells registered in her machinery areas were battleship shells. Furthermore - the shell that forced Bismarck to abort the sortie was a battleship shell, and the shell that slowed her down to 28 knots tops, was also a battleship shell. All that cruiser gunfire did to Bismarck was to rearrange the already mangled superstructure a bit more, during the target pratice stretch of the engagement. Again, any kind of primary source that points out the opposite, please share it. Haguro was not a battleship, was a cruiser with a 4'' thick main belt, and laughable turret armor. I don't know what that name is doing in a discussion about the disgusting effect of light gun AP against battleships in the game, but Haguro was not a battleship so it's like naming a watermenlon in a discussion about oranges. Prinz Eugen did not "penetrate" Hood, nor did "penetrate" PoW, much less with HE shells. Prinz Eugen did hit Hood on the boat deck, as luck wanted it, where all the ready ammunition for the UP rockets was stored. Of course that did cause a pretty large fire - but then again it was a fire on the deck situation - nothing compromising for the ship's survability at all. So: A) Prinz Eugen did **NOT** hit an "AA magazine" (ready to use ammunition stored on the deck is not a "magazine", I'm sorry) and B-) The theory about Hood's sinking "not being bismarck" is a beautiful tale, but one discredited already more than 30 years ago, and with little grasp on reality. For many reasons, not the least that the inspection of the wreck that took place in the early 2000s pretty much confirmed that the ship blew up by the 15'' aft magazines going off, which killed many of the "theories" that had floated around since Hood's demise (including the one about the fire caused by PE). The definitive cause of the loss of HMS Hood is not completely certain, but what it's certain is that it was no "spreading fire from the boat deck". Meanwhile PoW took 8'' hits from Prinz Eugen. The total accounted damage from then can be summed up with one word: Testimonial. The shell lodged in PoW's wasn't "in the magazine" - was near the aft starboard boiler room. And it wasn't Prinz Eugen's either - it was a 380mm AP shell from Bismarck. Tenryu sank no cruiser with her 5.5'' guns. She does have at least one cruiser to her credit, indeed - result of her Long Lance torpedoes. We're not discussing torpedoes here at the moment. We're discussing gunfire, and tenryu sank nothing with her 140mm guns. Source, please. Prinz Eugen's 203mm AP could penetrate 24cm of armor at 10.000mm on the best of the days (source: http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_8-60_skc34.php ). I'm going to ask you again for that source you're using - because yes, PE's guns "could" penetrate 400mm of armor. Just after leaving the muzzle. And that doesn't even compute as "point blank range". And Prinz Eugen's guns were 8'' in caliber. 203mm. What people are complaining (and rightly so) are the completely out of whack penetration of small guns (2'', 3'', 4'',5'', 6'', the likes) so whatever those 8'' guns performed like, is completely offtopic to the debate at hand. I'm going to shorten this and just obviate the later passages of your post for the sake of brevity, but for the record, yes, you're wrong on those ones too. The point that stands is that nothing of what you stated adresses the problem at hand, and the problem at hand is that in the game small gun AP shells perform like railguns, not actual historical counterparts. I'm going to leave a single sample for you to understand what this all is about: In-game penetration performance for a 4'' Mark 4 gun at 5000m: 7.5'' of basic armor. Translated into Krupp IV: 3.5'' of armor at 5000m Real life penetration of the highest muzzle velocity 4'' gun of the era (American 4''/50 Mark9): 2'' of armor at 5750m. We're talking of an over performance in the 70-75% range here. And that is the highest muzzle velocity 4'' gun of the era. Not compared with the average ones (which usually were 40 calibers long). It's a pattern that is the same across the board and the smaller the gun, the bigger the discrepancy where the game gives small guns ludicrous penetration values at short ranges they never had (not even close). So yes, there's a problem with small guns in the game. Their penetration is completely out of place compared with their historical counterparts.

You have to account for many a thing here. First - magazine count. You load your ships with X ammount of shells. T being the number of turrets on yout ship, your ammo will have a X/T ammount of shells in each turret magazine. Out of any specific loadout you pick and choose for your ships, HE will be a Z % of your loadout so you'll end with X/T*Z/100 number of HE rounds in each of your magazines. Once those are spent from a given turret, that associated turret is done firing HE. In real terms, anyway - in game we have a "general" magazine which contents we dynamically pick each battle by choosing the ammo we fire. This has several branching results: First one is that we begin a fight, with say, 900 rounds for our 9 main guns. That doesn't mean each magazine holds 300, as it should be; the 900 is an overall number. You can't deplete a single turret magazines - all guns keep on firing until the "global" magazine round count is 0. This makes tactical decision making on when to fire and when to hold fire, and from which angles and from which turrets, negligible. But more importantly, we also have "dynamic" shells. Each one is dual purpose, and what it's good for is decided by the time is fired, depending on your ammo choice for the moment. If each magazine had a, say, 15% shells of HE, 25% of SAP and 60% of AP (a perfectly believable loadout) that translates into a reality where you're running out of HE by your 15th salvo - not to mention, each turret has it's own loadout and you can run out of a specific ammo for that turret alone. Which can't happen in the game right now. It's a convoluted way to say that the usage of ammo type right now in the game is quite skewed and far from what it should be. And the effects of this particular issue is branched out on fights against other capital ships. Because, simply stated, loading HE is "easy", yes. Specially on the AoN era there are quite wide stretches of the ship with little more than plating armor. An exploding volkswagen with highly volatile burst explosive is going to make a number on those areas. It's a way to say "you're going to deal damage with most of your hits" vs "you're going to deal damage with your penetrating hits only". HE seems attractive - but only so on the surface. Because under the hood, it's not that attractive of an idea. First because unless you go for completely bonkers loadouts (once those are implemented), you'll run out of HE very soon. And woe you then when you really need HE shells and you have none. It's less optimal than AP too, at least against ships with noticeable armor protection, because those shells won't reach any internals. The enemy can rearrange your superstructures with HE all day long if he wants to, but if you're putting shell after shell in his machinery areas and potentially, magazines, guess who's going to be the winner at the end. And once more, this is without accounting the realistic loadouts we should have in the game instead of the abstracted "global", "dinamic-pick-a-shell" system we have now. Once those are in, the "window" timeframe you'll have to just stay put and fire HE rounds will be severely restricted...unless you go for insane loadouts with maxed HE, and no AP - which then will mean your ability to truly hurt enemy capital ships is tremendously limited. This is a long winded way to say that HE looks far more attractive than what it really is right now, and it'll be far less attractive once believable magazine loadouts are implemented. Which should be, at some point in the future.

Quality of life stuff. Makes sense to see this kind of stuff put in somehow, but I'd rather have the devs work on actual mechanics of the game to improve them and leave the QoL things for when the game's being given the finishing touches :).

That it was done doesn't mean it was a common thing. The US subs were given 3'' guns but the mount hardpoint itself was designed to handle up to 5 in guns. It was the result of frontally opposite views on the usefulness of the deck gun by those who were in command at the time (who favored small guns) vs those who were coming up (who favored big guns). In the end the compomise was reached where the submarines would be fitted with 3'' guns, but the mounts would be big enough and stressed to mount bigger ones if needed. So when that change happened during WW2 it wasn't the result of a sudden urge of upgrading those weapons - it had been intended all along that those guns could be easily replaced with something bigger if need arised. Mogamis are also a similar exception. The japanese didn't want Mogami as anything other than a 8'' armed heavy cruiser. But they had already filled their allotment of heavy cruiser tonnage the London Treaty allowed them to have; so they cheated around the treaty by building those ships with 6'' triples that could be swapped almost overnight by 8'' dual mounts. Both turret designs were intentionally designed for that swap - same turret ring dimensions, similar traversing gear, similar overall tonnage. The ship structures and mechanisms were designed too with the swap in mind: shell handling mechanisms, shell and charge elevators on the barbette, every bit necessary was designed and built so they could handle both a 155mm shell or a 203mm one with the same efficiency. In essence the mogamis were designed with everything needed to make it a LEGO(tm) experience so you could pop out the 6'' triples and plug in the 8'' duples, and be good to go almost instantly without needing to bother with anything else. And were built that way. And were rearmed that way. So, it was a case of a class of ships designed with a changeover of weapons in the future, mounting turrets designed for the same purpose of being easy to swap with each other. Not a case of a ship that during a mid-life refit someone came with the idea of upgunning it on the spot without any kind of previous plans for that. Because the Mogamis, by being the exception that did such a swap succesfully, is also a role model why those gun swaps were far more complex and costly than they were worth, in ships that had not been designed for that upgrade in mind since the get go. Another instance, but out of the other end of the spectrum would be the Twins. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were given 11'' triple mounts, we all know that. But there's a lot of myth surrounding their "proposed" upgunning to the 15'' turrets of Bismarck, a lot of people believing that those ships were built with the specific intention of going through that upgrade. That myth that doesn't resist much analysis. For one the 15'' turret that later was adopted for Bismarck had not been designed by the time the Scharnhorst design was complete and sent to the yards. It's impossible to account for such an upgrade in your design when you don't even know the final dimensions of the turret you're going to place in those barbettes in a distant future. This is a long way to say that the german designers, unlike the japanese ones involved with Mogami, finalized the Scharnhorst design for 280mm guns, without even giving any thought to any weapon upscaling. What really happened is that during the construction process there still were (well founded) concerns about those guns not being big enough. And, once the Bismarck class was greenlighted with 15'' turrets someone actually bothered to do some approximate measurements and find out that the 280mm triple turret ring and barbette structures were of similar enough dimensions (though not identical) to those of the 380mm duple turret's as to allow a not-that-overly-complicated upgunning of the class on a later stage. But notice several parts. First - unlike with the Mogamis, the Scharnhorsts weren't designed nor built with that turret swap in mind, and the turrets themselves weren't designed to be swappable. By an accident and coincidence they ended up in similar enough turret ring dimensions as to not make the upgunning a not-that-complicated affair, but still a pretty convoluted one. Nothing like the mogamis at all which were designed with two different sets of .... "plug and play" turrets. For a lack of better definition. The process of upgunning a scharhorst to 380mm guns would've involved a quite major project as other than the turret dimensions, nothing else in the design contemplated that upgrade. From the barbette mechanisms to bring shells up and down (that weren't adequate for the 380mm much heavier shell) to the magazines themselves, lots of things needed to be worked on for that weapon changeover to be effective. And the hull itself wasn't deemed big enough for guns that big and all proposals to upscale those ships' weapons needed a complete overhaul of the hull bows. Accordingly even while those projects were considered, and existed, the Kriegsmarine never really fully intended to go through with them. Not at least until Gneisenau got written off by that bomb on her magazine - then the germans decided that if they were going to bother rebuilding the whole fore half of the ship - as it needed to be done after that damage- they might aswell go through with the 380mm upgunning proposals that had happened pre-war. It all shows very well that the idea of "meh, I'll just upscale my triple turrets with dual ones of a bigger caliber" isn't one that really worked that way. Yes, it was done in some cases, but in the cases where that happened, that upgunning was something that the designers had in mind during the design process of the ships and turrets themselves. If that wasn't the case, "upgunnning" a ship was a tremendously complicated affair, far too expensive, costly, complex, and involved, as to really get it going. so I do expect the game to allow you to do those mid-life refit weapon upgrades if you REALLY want to - but the associated cost should be equal to the actual complication of the task at hand.

No they were not. Those batteries, which in most cases were DP, were the cornerstone of the AA barrage those ships could put up. And they still had a critical role to play in antiship roles, as they were vital in restricted waters (think Guadalcanal) and when engaging ships of smaller size than battleships (saving main battery ammo and, almost as important, main battery barrel life). Anyone who has ever played RTW (Beyond actually reading about historical warfare, just playing that game) knows secondaries, and at certain point, even tertiaries are CRITICAL for a battleship's survival. Lest a night battle happens and you find a DD flotilla 2000yards away, and all you have are those 1-to-2 rounds per minute main guns available to fend them off. Without secondaries to fire on them, welcome to torpedo hell. Or during a normal engagement a flotilla comes in charging. Without secondaries to fire on them, welcome to "pick your poison" between spending a whole lot of time under enemy unanswered battleship fire while you try to shoot those main guns at the charging DDs, or just let them come and torpedo you into kingdom come. Oh, don't forget aswell that each time you fire on those dudes, its 1% of your ammo gone. If the main battlefleet engagement turns out to be long, good luck when you run out of ammo. I loathe to insist on it yet again - but as many times as it has been repeated, secondaries weren't ornamental - they had a purpose. That said purpose wasn't as shiny, charming, full of élan, etc as "massacring anything unarmoured within range just by looking at it funny" doesn't mean they are "useless decorations". I'll insist again that many of the reasons secondaries were useful are still not in the game yet. That doesn't mean that in the meantime it takes to implement those reasons, they have to do what they never did: Secondary guns had limited effective range and VERY limited accuracy when compared with the main battery. That holds true even for the times before secondary directors became a thing. And if this game aspires to be a realistic representation of naval warfare, secondaries will have limited range and very limited accuracy, when compared with the main battery too. That won't mean they will be "useless decorations". And repeating it won't turn them into those either.

Armor is not as important as bulkheads, if you're using less than standard. And I'd say that even less than "many". Simply stated, less bulkheads means fires spreading with ease, multi-"square" flooding, and opening your ship to very, very, very bad things that, when happen, and will happen, will make you regret not having more. "hotfix" status aside - I'd rather reduce one inch of belt armor than go to battle with few bulkheads. The somewhat thinner belt I can compensate for in battle (not giving perpendicular angles to the enemy, keeping a somewhat larger range, etc). The lack of bulkheads, I can not.

The reports from the Cameron expedition to Bismarck must be taken with a grain of salt. Allow me to explain. Bismarck was a notably overweight design - the initial intentions were to stay within the London Treaty limits (of which Germany was a de facto signatary after entering into the 1935 anglo-german naval agreements) and keep the design at 35.000 tons. Those initial good intentions didn't last. I'll make a long story short by saying that the design was overweight. The class ended up displacing 50.000tons+ (more in the case of tirpitz) when fully combat loaded. At those full combat loads the main armored belt was much lower on the water than the design intended initially, due to the ship actually weighing more than what it had been calculated when the armor layout was designed. And Bismarck sailed for Rheinübung at full tonnage. Now let me sum up some pre-final battle damage: 1- 14'' penetrating hit on the bows from PoW. Contaminated the fuel supply and caused quite serious flooding on the bows (a serious problem given that Bismarck, same as the Twins before her, was quite nose-heavy). Estimates for the flooding go from 1000tons to 2000 tons. At any rate, it wasn't little. 2- 14'' penetrating underwater hit from PoW in Section XIV - projectile went as far as the 45mm internal bulkhead exploding there, putting an electric room out of action and causing some leakage into the boiler room beyond the bulkhead. The electric room was a total loss and got fully flooded, the leakage into the boiler room was serious enough. I've seen quite a good different estimations of the flooding that this hit caused so I don't know which was correct - but what is known by the survivors is that after the battle the ship was 3º down at the bows and had reached lists of 9º to port. Counterflooding was needed to balance her out, which means even more water on board. 3-Victorious' swordfish torpedo hit: Abreast the mid-section of the ship, it was contained by the TDS - but that by necessity meant that the void layer of the TDS got flooded, and that to prevent listing counterflooding was needed. 4- Ark Royal's swordfish torpedo hits. One again in the midsection, contained by the TDS. The other one the infamous torpedo on the stern. the first again meant the TDS voids were flooded, the second almost tore the stern of the ship apart. What I'm adding up here is that Bismarck had already sailed on a full load condition (and had quite a bit of belt that was intended to be avobe the waterline, under the water just by that fact). At the time she was engaged by the british task force that sank her estimations of how much water she embarked at that point are wild, but the fact is that by that point, between damage-caused flooding and damage-control counterflooding, it was many, many thousands of tons of water. By that point only the uppermost part of Bismarck's belt must've been avobe water, if at all. Even more, most of the final engagement happened at point blank range. KGV at some point ranged Bismarck at under 2500m. At those ranges trajectories are just flat, and underwater hits almost impossible as with those straight trajectories and high shell velocities whatever impacts on the water would've been deflected upwards and ricochetted off the water. With most (if not all) of the main belt under water by that point, it was phisically impossible for the shells to impact it. And if you don't hit something you can't penetrate it. It's no wonder that Bismarck's main side armor wasn't penetrated even at the outter layer of the main armored belt. But it's clear that it wasn't due to the armor being thicker or thinner....but rather because that armor belt must've been almost fully submerged and unreachable for the shells by the time the worst of the firestorm was unleashed.

According to navweaps.com: British MK VII 14''/45 pen@10k yds: 15.6in (using 118% conversion from Krupp 4, equivalent pen: 34 in) US Mark 4 14''/50 pen@10k yds: 20.12 in (equivalent: 43.8 in) 42in of equivalent penetration in game for 14'' guns seems a tad weighed towards the best-case-scenario, but is well within the parameters of the US Mk4. Bismarck's lateral protection wasn't 12.6'' belt. At least not into the critical areas of the citadel. Bismarck's lateral protection was a 12.6'' belt, plus an 1.77'' internal vertical bulkhead, plus an internal angled deck 110mm thick (alongside machinery) or 120mm (alongside magazines) placed at a 22º angle from the horizontal. The degree of protection is misleading. 110mm of armor at that angle not only offers a massive increase of effective armor, it dramatically increases the chances of a straight up ricochet, especially given the fact that whatever projectile that hits it **WILL** be decapped. In the case of an effective penetration (and not a highly likely ricochet), quite literally the shorter the range the more penetration the combination offers. At point blank (0 degrees of shell falling angle the calculation would be as follow, for a hit alongside the machinery areas (110mm angled deck) . 12.6in+1.77in+ (angled deck effective armor). 110mm at 22º from the horizontal equals an armor multiplier of 2.67. Bluntly said, that 110mm plate if hit by an horizontal shell it would translate into 293mm of effective armor, or 11,53in of armor. Final calculation would thus be, for a shot at point blank (horizontall shell travel, no falling angle), 12.6+1.77in+11.53in= 25.9in of effective armor. Remember - this is on the machinery areas; on the magazine areas it was even higher. Bismarck's scheme lost efficiency as ranges increased and shells came with a vertical downwards angle. At 10.000 yards the incoming shell angle is highly depending on the weapon firing it. The US Mk4 14/50 had a drop of 5.6º at 10k yards. The US 16/45 Mk 8, 6.8º, but this last one is skewed because of the use of a superheavy shell and very low MV, unique for the americans. In general we can say that from 10k we can expect a representative fall of shot of 5.5º or so. There will be variance from gun to gun, but it's agood number to do a calculation: Assuming a 5.5º drop angle at 10.000yds Bismarck's protection is as follows from that range: In order: Side belt, internal bulkhead, internal angled deck: 12.66in+1.78in+9.38in = 23.82in effective armor protection. That's again ignoring the fact that in order to go into the vitals, the shell has to actually "bite" into a 110mm angled armor plate inclined at a relative 27.5º, while being decapped. That means ricochets, and lots of them. TL:DR: Rodney and KGV only had enough penetration to deal with Bismarck's layout at short ranges, literally, as the shell left their muzzles. Other than that, neither of them could practically do it in battle unless other circunstances were at play (extreme listing, or some kind of shot-trap effects)- nor could do almost anything used at the time. Bismarck's layout had many flaws and was obsolete, but still had by far the most tough vertical citadel protection of any commissioned warship, ever, at anything under 15km or so. Including Yamato. And yes i know there's no real way to adjust turtledecks in game. We'll have to wait for an eventual rework of the armoring model for that, if it ever happens. I'm talking about the real life ship. And no, HEAT 16'' shells wouldn't really do much to other battleships. HEAT rounds go off on the first surface they touch, and they lose energy very quickly afterwards. There's a reason why germans used Schürzen on many of their tanks and assault guns - even those thin plates were more than enough to protect their tanks' tinclad sides against HEAT impacts from any kind of shaped charge. The external "skirt" would set the warhead off, and it's penetration capability would be dispersed and lost in the rather small gap between the thin external standoff plate and the actual hull. All there'd be to shown for it would be a scorch mark on the tank's hull at best - but no penetration. A 16'' HEAT impact on a battleship's main belt (or weather deck) would set it off and cause a clean hole into whatever it hit - but it would expend all the energy in the void of the compartment behind, before reaching into the ship's vital internal compartments, defeating the whole purpose of shooting a 16'' shell at a battleship to begin with. It'd be quite nasty against thin ships such as DDs and some CLs though. But HE was more than enough to smash them without needing any kind of shaped charge. /Edit: let's anticipate what's next before it happens. Yes, I'm posting - there has been some PM activity behind the scenes in the last days which has cleaned up the air quite a bit after the unfortunate event that happened in this thread some pages back. So, as now it's cleared why I'm still here, I'd be thankful if nobody mentions it at all, for there's no reason to go on off-topics about it .

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ???????????????? Don't worry, after reading *that*, which I don't know where it comes from, nor why, I won't "try to convince anyone" of anything, ever again, in this forum, because for all intents and purposes I'm done with it.

Then argue for historically correct values. Not made up ones based on "how things feel on one end, so we adjust the other end". Because historically CLs, CA, and DDs were relevant and not useless. With historical performances, they will be relevant and useful here too. I think the problem is what it's being judged here as "relevancy" and "usefulness". Because it's being based on parameters that don't correspond to the ones that mattered in real life. And I'll insist again: in real naval fights, sinking enemy ships was awfully hard. Even lowly destroyers were hard to sink. Depending of which ships and class, crippling them was far less hard than sinking them. And so the ability to just cripple or damage enemies (without outright sinking them) was enough to make certain ships VERY relevant. And furthermore: sometimes just the threat of them being able to do that, was enough to provide effective screening. We've already spoken about this in the past - is down to features not yet in the game but that need to be in. Like a more evolved AI that weighs more the potential damage they might receive vs the damage they have actually received, and some noticeable effects of the supression being under fire meant. Currently we have DDs doing direct charges towards battleships, unabated of what it might happen to them and undisturbed by defensive fire. When in fact they should probably be a lot less agressive in the presence of a mass of enemy guns, and react in believable ways when subjected to those guns' attention. which they currently don't. That's why those ships you say were "useless" and "irrelevant" felt useless and irrelevant. Not because their intrinsic accuracy and damaging properties were lacking - but because we're missing vital pieces of the equation that were as important, if not more, than the accuracy of damage dealing ability of those ships. Look, when you're making a puzzle yet you're missing pieces, the solution to complete the puzzle is to find the missing pieces and putting them where they belong. Complaining the puzzle is incomplete and that it doesn't feel right that way, and somehow trying to change the shape of the perfectly functional pieces already in place to fit the idea you have of a complete puzzle will mean only trouble. trouble short term because by deforming the existing pieces you're breaking something that wasn't broken. And trouble long term because once the REAL missing pieces are put on the table, they won't fit on the puzzle anymore, and the result will be a distorted disaster. Judge things on their own on a modular basis. Compare how things are in game vs how they were in real life, leaving aside other ideas. pre-hotfix accuracy (except at point blank range) was perfectly believable. Pre-hotfix damage models (except on certain ship classes with outwordly and unrealistic ability to absorb damage as transports with full bulkheads) looked fine. that they didn't add up to a proper experience - yet- doesn't mean they were wrong. Meant there were missing pieces. We're still missing exactly the same pieces now, but now the things that before were ,analyzed on isolation, working rather well, now are out of whack too. The result is plain to see: the changes that happened with the last hotfix haven't fixed anything that was broken before, while they have broken things that weren't broken before. It all adds up to that right now, each battle feels like a fake experience that ruins any immersion the game had (which was notable for such an early testing stage) because every gun hits far more than what it should - and to compound it the damage model has been also tinkered with and not in a good way. TL:DR we have ships that turn into submarines after 10 minutes flat of engaging enemies against which they should've been able to fight for far longer. Yet you still think that "the accuracy changes" of that hotfix were "a step on the right direction". It defies comprehension. It really does. At least mine. Maybe it's that I'm really lacking in intelligence, but I just don't understand it.

Also sorry ,missed this. No. Or not that way. One thing is unrelated to the other. Guns did damage. Guns do damage here. Whatever damage a gun did in real life should be replicated here. That is completely unrelated with how many times those guns are expected to hit, or miss. Guns historically had a given accuracy. Guns hit at more or less known ratios. Guns should hit with the same accuracy or innacuracy here. Whatever accuracy ships showed to have in real life should be replicated here. That is completely unrelated with how much damage those hits will do. When both are right we'll have a credible simulation. If not at best we'll have some sci-fi game where the ship models and date settings are just circunstancial, and which could very well be based around airships fighting on the clouds of jupiter instead with just a change of skin and designer hull and weapon models. We're once again falling for WOWS "balance" traps. This game does not need "balance". HIstorical designs were balanced on their own out of compromises taken during the design of ships, so were fleets of the time which were balanced out of the compromises taken during the process of funds and costs allocation vs fleet size and composition. No need to artificially bring something that will mess up the immersion of the simulation aspect of the game by "balans" when no "balans" is needed. Otherwise you'd end up with something that's not a naval simulation, but yet another arcade game more. I've read the statements about what this game is intended to be - and they talk about immersive naval combat. Not about "balans for the sake of balans". So, no, the damage model should be worked on to believably portray the abilities of guns to deal damage, armor to deflect it, and ships to absorb it. And the gunnery model should be worked on to believably portray the actual chances to hit of weapons of the era. Both. At the same time. And independently from each other.

I'm sorry, did I read this properly?. So just after reading a quote that says that 6'' battery gunfire during the battle of Jutland was considered tremendously innacurate, you state that "buffing the accuracy" of guns was a "step in the right direction", when those guns now hit far too much than what they used to? (not to mention far more than what that very quote that you read mentions). I mean...what?.

First, you grossly underestimate the ability of bigger ships to better take damage. Think of this: a 45 caliber pistol will reliably kill a 100kg human being at 10 feet. Would you try your luck shooting a Panther that weighs 250 with the same gun?. Or will you rather have something with more "oomph"?. Then why do you expect that the same gun that can deal hash damage to a 400 ton ship is going to do the same with one that displaces twice and a half tons?. The truth is that bigger ships in general absorbed hits better. And that the increase of caliber deemed necessary for big ships to deal with them only underscores it. If it was the same to hit a bigger target with the same gun, why did the RN move up to 6'' guns from 4'' ones?. the answer you have in this same thread. I quoted it last page. As for sources, I have plenty about Jutland. The one I used for the list I provided is V.E. Tarrant's "Jutland, the German Perspective". Not my only book on Jutland and sources about the losses of the sunk ships during the battle that I can recall right now do not disagree at any point with the details I gave. And once again I'll have to insist. "posing a credible threat" does not equal "posing a mortal threat". "Disabling" does not equal "Sinking". Several of the DDs destroyed during the battle of jutland (notably Nestor and Nomad) were anihilated by secondary battery guns from the HSF battleline, because their machineries had been seriously damaged by destroyer gunfire and they couldn't move out of the way of the incoming battlewagons.. Getting your machinery shot out so the big guys can come and blast you into kingdom come for me qualify as a VERY "credible threat". I've insisted it many times in this forum , going back to the alpha 2 discussions about secondaries: disabling a ship does not equal SINKING a ship. The distinction is critically important, yet many times I see it disregarded here as if it was the same. When it was not. The result is that in game we don't have DDs "crippling" others. Which DDs could more or less do, not particularily greatly, but could very well do. What we have instead is DDs outright SINKING others - which was quite the uncommon thing, as I have to insist, Jutland underscores. And that is a problem.

And I don't disagree with that. But I don't see how we translate "being a credible deterrence" into "being a DD killer". Because that's the current state of affairs where DDs are concerned.

Yes, they were useful as screening forces. No they weren't very useful in their "capability of sinking enemy DDs", which is the part of your argument that I disagree with and the reason why I posted the jutland loss list of destroyers and their respective causes. Yes DDs sank DDs now and then. Of course they did. But no, DDs of that era, they weren't particularily efficient at doing it. And in the game right now, they are quite proficient at it. Which they shouldn't be.

No, I did not miss the point you made. Your point is that DD vs DD gunfire should be more effective than secondary BB battery vs DD. Somehow. I came back from the total list of destroyer losses that happened during the biggest battlefleet engagement of history, where a grand total of 0 were sunk by destroyer gunfire alone. While secondary battleship gunfire, exclusivelly, sank at least 3 out of 13. I did not miss any point, I'm afraid. I just have shown how history proves it wrong.

The study of 1906 was conducted on a 350 ton destroyer. If whole batteries of battleship 3'' secondaries weren't judged enough to stop (let alone sink) a 350 ton destroyer, and that only four years later it was judged that whole batteries of 4'' secondary guns (that could ammount to as much as a dozen) were inadecuate to properly deal with destroyers... That you're somehow arging that those same weapons, just because they happened to be in destroyers (in much less numbers, DDs had at most 2-3 guns of 3in or 4in caliber), firing from far less stable platforms should be more effective, somehow is... well. Let's just say it's not really a defendable position. If a weapon caliber is considered not to be adequate when in a battery of maybe 10 per side, how can you defend the idea that 2 or 3 of them in a much less stable hull as a destroyer is suddenly a super effective weapon is beyond me. Case in point: In the battle of Jutland there were several extremely ferocious encounters between enemy DD flotillas where they got to fight each other at point blank ranges. Particularily cruel was the one around Wiesbaden. 139 destroyers took part in that battle (78 british, 61 german). A grand total of 13 were lost. British side: HMS Nomad HMS Nestor Both with crippled machinery because of destroyer gunfire in a prior engagement (notice - they were crippled by destroyed gunfire- they weren't sunk). Destroyed by battleship secondary 150mm guns when the german battlefleet came close to them. HMS Shark Disabled by 150mm gunfire from german battlecruisers. Engaged at short range and fire at by a whole flotilla of german destroyers - did not sink. Finally at 7pm hit by a torpedo that did her in. HMS Ardent HMS Fortune Got lost and veered directly into a german battle squadron during the night of the 31st-1st. Both ships were blown out of the water by a hailstorm of 150mm shells at point blank range. HMS Turbulent destroyed by 150mm gunfire from german secondary guns during one of the the night engagements. HMS Tipperary HMS Sparrowhawk collided with each other during the night actions of the battle. To make a long (And eventful) story, that also includes 150mm secondary gunfire, short: both sank from the damage. Total losses on the british side: 8 Losses due to destroyer gunfire: 0 German side: V-27: Crippled by destroyer gunfire that severed her steam lines. Scuttled by V26 after taking her crew on due to incoming british forces. V-29: destroyed by torpedo hit, suspected coming from HMS Petard. S-35: Broke in two after being hit by two 13.5in shells from HMS Iron Duke V-48: Disabled due to 6in gunfire from HMS Valiant. Attacked by the 12th destroyer flotilla, sunk by gunfire. V-4: Bows blown up by underwater explosion. Reportedly a mine. Total losses: 5 Losses due to destroyer gunfire: 2 Losses due to EXCLUSIVE destroyer gunfire:0. Now explain that in terms that somehow agree with your estimation of how much more effective DD on DD gunfire was vs BB secondaries on DDs. Because not a single destroyer was sunk from destroyer guns, and the two which were, only happened because those ships had been disabled and immobilized by 6'' gunfire before. In the biggest naval engagement between surface ships ever seen, where there were multiple fierce engagements between destroyers, a grand total of 0 were sunk by the exclusive means of destroyer gunfire. Somehow that doesn't match your argument about their effectiveness. Nor does absolutely any favor to a game where DDs of that era can sink other DDs without too much difficulty.

LOL, mate, no need to go to offering me flowers, diplomatic or not XD. As far as I'm concerned my last post and your subsquent answer ended up whatever problem or misunderstanding we might have previously had. I stated that it wasn't my intention to get into any kind of personal discussion, and offered to "lets agree to disagree". Your answer made clear that you were OK with that, that you didn't mean to offend with your posts either. Gone and done, that chapter is closed ;). I was brief in my answer because I thought you'd get the reference just by naming the battle, as is one of those "great gestures" revered admirals used to have previous to big encounters that later turned out to be historically trascendent. It's a quite famous moment so I really thought you'd get the "Z" flag reference just by naming the battle of Tsushima. Previous to the engagement at Tsushima, Togo raised the Zulu flag (the "Z" flag) on Mikasa, as a message to his fleet to fight to the last and best to each man and ship. Given what happened next, Togo raising the Zulu flag achieved almost a mythical simbology for the japanese navy. They used it on Pearl Harbor, for instance. And some sources say that in some other places, such as Midway too. Hence the reference RedParadize made to the "Z" flag ;).

It makes some sense in that explosive shells detonating next to a plate of armor won't go through it but can slightly displace it, causing seals to break and leakage to happen. It won't happen all the time but now and then it's not unexpected, and the limited amount of flooding can easily be handled by the damage control parties while whatever leaks have happened get plugged. At least makes sense to some degree. What doesn't make sense is the scale of the flooding those hits cause, and how frequently they cause them.

Check the history of the battle of Tsushima.

I set the design year as 1905, and the Lord Nelsons construction began that year...

I disagree with your opinion on merchants. Historically (and nowadays too) there was a significant different between commercial construction and military construction. Merchant ships weren't built to the same standard as warships, for very understandable cost/efficiency reasons. Steel quality wasn't the same, structural integrity wasn't the same. They were designed with cargo capacity and fuel efficiency in mind, not taking any kind of steps towards improving battle damage absorption. In fact the differentiation can be seen in the WW2 crash programs that produced things as the british CVLs or the escort carriers. Commercial yards were used for the former using standard merchant construction practices to maximize hulls at minimal cost (and as a result the ships were nowhere near as tough as fleet carriers, nor were expected to be). The later were little more than merchant hulls, either converted or purposefully built, geared towards mass production with little other consideration in mind (in the american case; the british paid quite a lot of attention towards fire safety on their CVEs, that's why they were much slower to come online, as they would convert even transferred ships to their principles, much to the dismay of the americans). This applied not only to merchant shipping. Military geared transports (LTSs, fleet oilers, transports owned by the navy) were built to commercial standards. Maybe with slightly extra care for resistance against damage, but never anything close to a warship standard. Those also were dedicated military vessels, which represent only a minimal fraction of what would be used by a military in wartime. Because navies don't build anything beyond what represents a reasonable logistical sealift capacity for sustaining it's own logistical needs on peacetimes. In case of a war the merchant marine gets pressed into service and put directly under military control to ensure national supply, and then to give the navy any supplementary sealifting capacity they needed over what they had in peacetime. And all those ships pressed into service weren't built by the navy - they were built by private contractors to the request of private merchant shipping companies who would then go and operate them to earn money as transport companies. The merchant marine was made up of ships built by private investment, designed for their own priorities in shipbuilding, not yours. Which won't put any kind of stock on how well those ships can handle taking battleship shells. So you should have no say in how those ships are designed. There's no way, and I mean it seriously, NO WAY that a merchant ship would have the kind of subdivision and toughness the game gives to ships with top slider choices for bulkheads. Nor nowhere close to the damage control abilities they show in the game. I personally don't have any huge problem with how it is right now because, as many other things - placeholder. But this is nowhere near representative of how merchant ships should be able to take damage in the final release version of the game.

You can replicate a Lord Nelson too, to a point. For whatever unfathomable reason I can only place two twin 9in turrets on each of the sides. The single mounts I can't put in because the game tells me I can't put more :P. So you can't get a 10x9'' layout to emulate Lord Nelson's 9.2'' battery - but you can come close enough with an 8x9'' layout (not a big loss, frankly, Lord Nelson's single 9.2'' mounts had atrocious firing arcs anyway).

Quick one off the library shelf: John Robert's "Battlecruisers" published by Caxton editions: Reference to the 3'' (british 12 pounder) being labelled inadequate for anti-DD work already in 1906. Page 96: (Talking about secondary battery proposals for HMS Invincible): "The Committee on Designs initially favoured an ATB armament of 4in guns but the development of a new high velocity 12pdr gun of improved accuracy caused a modification of this view on the basis that more such guns could be mounted and they offered a higher rate of fire. However in 1906 firing trials against the old destroyer Skate with 3pdr, 12pdr, and 4in guns led to a reversal of this decision as the latter calibre was shown to be the only one of the three tried that stood a good chance a stopping a destroyer before she got close enough to deliver a torpedo attack" Please also note too, that "Stopping a destroyer" does not equal "Sinking a destroyer". Also, please note that Skate displaced 350 tons only. And 3in guns were thought as not being enough to deal with it. Now think of what that exactly entails for the 3'' caliber as a viable weapon to damage ships roughly three times that size (what was already common by WW1). Also please note that secondary batteries of battleships of the time ammounted for a lot of guns. Destroyers had guns in the single digits, usually no more than a couple, and generally of smaller caliber than battleship secondaries. They could kill other destroyers but it wasn't an easy job for them by far. Reference to the 4in gun being labelled as no longer adequate for anti-DD work in 1910 while discussing the Lion class secondaries: Page 97: "by 1910 the increased range and power of the torpedo meant that torpedo attack by destroyers in daylight action was a much more likely possibility. In addition, the size of destroyers had increased and the need to stop these vessels at much greter range soon led to demands for an increase in the power and range of the ATB armament." What follows is a long paragraph that I refuse to just go ahead and write on it's whole. The short version would be that at the time of the design of the Iron Duke and the Tiger classes 4in weapons were no longer trusted as enough to stop destroyer attacks, that a general consensus was agreed that something bigger was needed ("something bigger" means 6in guns, because the british lacked a 5'' weapon at the time) and that the german widespread use of secondary guns of 5.9in of caliber in their ships sealed the change. The upcoming Iron Dukes and Tiger were accordingly redesigned to incorporate 6in secondary guns instead of the 4in that had been standard in the RN until that point. Hope that helps.