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Post by christian on May 29, 2019 5:15:52 GMT -6
I didn't bother with showing the other end of the Yamato class' immunity zone because it's likely outside 34k yards, and frankly that's outside realistic combat range. I'm not sure about that. New Jersey and Iowa straddled the destroyer Nowaki several times in the 34-39-kyd range band as she escaped from Truk, and even managed to inflict splinter damage. If they had been dealing with Yamato, which would not have been so quick to run, and could not have outrun them anyway, I think they could have maintained that range and managed to land hits. The big question is if they would have known they needed to, given that the USN thought that Yamato was a considerably smaller ship. a long range battle is basically who runs out of ammunition first because none of them are ever gonna sink at that range the hit chance and chance for penetration is just too low the us would likely try to close the range to increase the hit ratio and in turn the iowa would become vulnerable to the yamatos shells the shells effectively have the same penetration but the yamatos shells but yammys have much larger explosive filler in addition to this the fact that the yamatos turrets are pretty much invulnerable to penetrating hits and the tonnage is higher which leads me to personally believe the yamato would win also to be noted yamato has one of the longest "hits" on a warship at around 33km range "hitting" a light carrier (the shell went under the keel and exploded and destroyed the electrical power and several other components)
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Post by alexbrunius on May 29, 2019 5:28:01 GMT -6
Bismarck is a great example of even if your belt and central machinery space are extremely well protected you can still be rendered impotent easily by focused fire. With the entire super structure knocked out and all fire control destroyed, turret either jammed or knocked. It can’t do anything to fight back. If I remember correct the survey of the wreck have shown only 3 penetrating hit on upper belt area, non of which would’ve been fatal. I’d say Bismarck is a fine example of how protection only get you so far. Also, even if a shot does not penetrate does not mean it will have no effect, there are many example of non-penetrating hits jamming turret or killing crews(e.g Richelieu, Dunkirk). You don’t need to actually pierce the belt at all to mission kill a ship, sinking it can always be left to the destroyers after the ships essentially a floating wreck. That depends on what the goal is. If your goal is to sink the enemy ship that will be very hard to do as long as the rudder and engine stays intact and it can run away at full speed. The Bismarck was mission killed before a single shell hit her, by means of the torpedo knocking out the rudder. As long as your citadel stays intact that means the only thing that in theory can prevent the ship from reaching home port is the rudder getting jammed. In RTW1/2 reaching home or not is the difference between 4 months repairs for almost no cost or 33 months to build a new ship from scratch.
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Post by ramjb on May 29, 2019 8:35:42 GMT -6
As long as your citadel stays intact that means the only thing that in theory can prevent the ship from reaching home port is the rudder getting jammed.
This is technically true in an all-or-nothing design with the "citadel raft" principle applied to it, where as long as the citadel is not penetrated and suffers no flooding the ship has enough reserve buoyancy to stay afloat even if all the rest of spaces out of it are flooded.
In practice however things like uneven flooding, capsizing risk, progressive flooding, etc were a thing. Not to mention that nominally watertight structures may not be so "watertight", specially if the hull has sustained damage or severe vibrations due to shells exploding, even if they are out of the citadel. Structures can get distorted, things moved by a tiny bit, and end the watertight status of things like doors, etc, defeating the whole idea.
All in all the "Citadel raft" was a good idea to preserve as much buoyancy as possible and to even protect buyoyancy with armor. But I'd been extremely surprised if it had worked the way it was supposed to had a ship been in the extreme situation the principle was designed to cover: That is, undamaged citadel but all the rest of the ship open for flooding.
Also a ship suffering from such massive flooding would've been substantially slowed down, so it remains to be seen if a chasing enemy still couldn't catch with her, even with operational rudder.
At any rate: Bismarck wasn't designed with an AoN layout, nor had the "citadel raft" principle incorporated to it's design. Not as far as I know, so in what regards to her the citadel "buoyancy raft" principle doesn't apply.
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