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Post by Airy W on Oct 29, 2018 8:49:30 GMT -6
Firstest with the mostest.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 29, 2018 8:02:16 GMT -6
The Kongōs were fast enough for the offensive operations of the combined fleet. The QEs were not fast enough for similar campaigns.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 28, 2018 22:13:48 GMT -6
The Queen Elizabeth class are the best battleships, purely because of their value for money. State of the art early in WW1, still competent battleships at the end of WW2. No other battleships gave such useful service in both wars. What about the Kongōs?
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Post by Airy W on Oct 28, 2018 5:55:09 GMT -6
Yes I concur that the Japanese are unlikely to make this choice. If it's down to seizing the territory in the first place and building defenses they would chose the former or they wouldn't have started the war in the first place.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 27, 2018 11:21:46 GMT -6
By the time they got into the battle area the Japanese would've likely established long range torpedo bomber squadrons within range Okay, so the Japanese are diverting their incredibly threadbare logistical abilities from invading the Dutch East Indies to building airfields in the Philippines. Remember, they can only support a single division in the dutch east indies at the start of the war because they have so little shipping after accounting for Singapore and the Philippines. So you've just slowed down the tempo of their expansion by about 3 months and the battleships haven't even left harbor. A delay during that crucial opening phase could very well mean that they never push the border back too far for US submarines to operate. So instead of becoming effective in 1943 they become effective in 1942 and Japan runs out of oil that much sooner. Remember, their cargo ship building was ramping up rapidly so making them start taking losses from submarines sooner would have an outsized impact. Fleet in being matters. It might not be the most important thing but it does matter.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 26, 2018 13:49:07 GMT -6
As a data science instructor it breaks my heart that someone painstakingly went to the trouble of making that when a bar chart would be more effective and take a fraction of the effort.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 26, 2018 12:50:43 GMT -6
I'm confused by that map. What is it showing? I dont think ships would have taken routes within the bands shown and the bands are so thick it's difficult to understand what they are connecting in more then a vague sense.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 25, 2018 18:02:07 GMT -6
Oh I am sure I have, just can't remember it. What would be HILARIOUS is if someone had one of their DDs sunk by a B/BB torp!! I wouldn't have minded it so bad if the destroyer had just shot back...
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Post by Airy W on Oct 25, 2018 15:12:39 GMT -6
As for Pearl Harbor, the 2400 men lost was a tragedy but the loss of five battleships did not really affect the Naval situation in the Pacific. Well I hope we can avoid reopening that whole "what does it mean to affect a war" argument but I think the war would have been quite different if the US has four or five dreadnoughts fit for action after Pearl Harbor. 1) Battleships control the seas. Even if they dont fire a single shot they can do that. Even if they sit in port they can do that by slowing the tempo of enemy operations. The Japanese wouldn't have advanced so quickly if they needed to maintain distance at night. And in particular think about the loss of the USS Hornet and how big a difference a few dreadnoughts could have made that night. 2) Radar guided fire control at night. Even though it wasn't on all the battleships yet, it was a big deal. And it's an even bigger deal because the Japanese didn't realize what they were up against. 3) Soaking up hits. Even though the Japanese planned to make carriers the focus of their attacks but it's still really hard to focus on a target when flak is flying.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 24, 2018 13:12:33 GMT -6
Because the Renown-class battlecruisers had a 3x2 main battery. Yes like that but with armor instead of speed.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 24, 2018 13:02:36 GMT -6
I would like to ask a question to move this in a slightly different direction. I think that Mahan has a very interesting discussion of lines of communication vs. raider warfare. Mahan famously comes down on the side of lines of communication. What would be the best naval strategist writer to present the opposing view to Mahan? Sir Julian Corbett, in my opinion. Both were advocates of the importance of Naval warfare but they did have their differences. I hope these two short pieces are useful. There were others like Sir Henry Richmond, Bradley Fiske, Rear Admiral Henry Eccles. This is a bit tangential but I found this little snippet interesting: It's interesting to me because in my mind there is no doubt that the two prominent American economists of the time period are Irving Fisher and Henry George and neither of them get's mentioned. Part of this is probably just cultural touchstone status (Henry George is for economists what the Velvet Underground is for musicians and Irving Fisher being the american stand in for classic economics in general). But I think the substantial difference is that Fisher and especially George had grand theories of the universe which made them quite memorable for their impact on future works. In my mind this is very much akin to Mahan's work and what I discern of Corbett from the pieces you linked. George and Mahan are birds of a feather in that they had grand theories that would allow for a more systematic and logical evaluation in their professional fields. This is what makes Mahan's work so intriguing to me, it's feels like the academic process of thinking is very modern even if the field itself is immature. These secondary sources seem to suggest that Corbett was similar.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 24, 2018 9:52:48 GMT -6
At what point was it clear that Fisher's view had won out within British circles and there would be no more intermediate batteries? Was it clear there wouldn't be any more non-dreadnoughts by the time they delayed Edward for Dreadnought? I think point is tonnage and length. If you compare Dreadnought with 160.6 m vs. King Edward VII with 138.23 it is quite a difference. And question could be if it is even possible to put everything in centerline. Dreadnought did only have three centerline turrets though. My eye isn't trained in this but it looks to me like there would be enough room for a third centerline turret in front of the funnels for the Edwards. It would definitely require giving up the front 9 inch guns. It would maybe require giving up the back two as well so that all the 6 inch guns could be shifted backwards. And the British did seem to like to keep their small caliber guns spread out. And that's another question. Why not put the small caliber guns in tight clusters where they could be heavily armored? Why spread them out? With 3 inchers it makes sense because you dont want "blind spots" but 6 inchers are shooting at pretty distant targets anyway. There weren't ever any dreadnoughts with only six main guns, right? The Brandenburgs with a midship secondary just slightly smaller then the main pair are the closest I can find. If Germany was capable of building those in 1890 when they had never built a battleship before, it suggests that naval engineers should have been able to build three centerline turrets long before dreadnought.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 23, 2018 19:19:06 GMT -6
Sorry that was ambiguously worded on my part. I mean I wonder why they didn't upscale those turrets to doubles and go to four intermediate guns per side.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 23, 2018 18:05:07 GMT -6
Excellent, thanks.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 23, 2018 5:44:40 GMT -6
I wonder what kept those from being double turrets for the intermediates.
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