An Ideal Battleship for the British Fleet.

[director]

As you say, there was a tendency to concentrate battleship armor over the most critical systems (engines, central hull for flotation, turrets and magazines) which made smaller, fast-firing guns useful for blowing holes in the lightly-armored or unarmored ends of the ship. And the development of quick-firing guns made it possible to achieve a very large increase in rate of fire up to the 6" shell size, which was about the largest that the gun crew could reasonably man-handle. As I understand it, before Tsushima there was a school of thought that favored having lots of fast-firing guns (like 8" and 6") over the slower-firing and supposedly inaccurate 12", mainly for rate of fire and because portions of battleships could no longer be armored, so you see battleships with lots of 6" guns and smaller. As Bullethead says, the torpedo-boat threat did not really turn into a serious concern until the boats became ocean going, so those light guns had to be for use against cruisers and battleships.

But before Tsushima, some navies (like the US) were learning that intermediate guns (such as the 8") were only slightly faster-firing than the main battery - they couldn't be made quick-firing so they were not enough faster to be useful and too light a shell to injure the primary armored structures of a battleship. And at Tsushima the primacy of the big gun was confirmed, with Togo opening fire and making hits at what were then considered startlingly long ranges. From Tsushima came the observation that you couldn't tell the intermediate and main caliber shell splashes apart, so nations realized that from then-on fighting at longer ranges meant centralizing on one caliber and putting the battery under centralized control. Despite this, and despite other navies working on all-big-gun ships, I think the evolution from battleship to dreadnought might have happened much more slowly without Jackie Fisher pushing Dreadnought and Invincible.

In my opinion, you can look at a semi-dreadnought like Britain's Lord Nelson class (and the last big British armored cruisers, or Satsuma) and see the real example of Cuniberti's work.

[Bullethead]

Oct 1, 2016 17:31:20 GMT -6 director said:

......And at Tsushima the primacy of the big gun was confirmed, with Togo opening fire and making hits at what were then considered startlingly long ranges. From Tsushima came the observation that you couldn't tell the intermediate and main caliber shell splashes apart, so nations realized that from then-on fighting at longer ranges meant centralizing on one caliber and putting the battery under centralized control. Despite this, and despite other navies working on all-big-gun ships, I think the evolution from battleship to dreadnought might have happened much more slowly without Jackie Fisher pushing Dreadnought and Invincible.

In my opinion, you can look at a semi-dreadnought like Britain's Lord Nelson class (and the last big British armored cruisers, or Satsuma) and see the real example of Cuniberti's work.

Hmmm.  I believe that Yellow Sea was where the surprisingly long-range fire took place.  It was somewhat foggy on the morning of Tsushima and I believe firing was opened at only 5-6K yards, about normal expected pre-dreadnought range.

I've also heard the spotting argument came from Tsushima, too, but you have to ask, how did anybody ever reach that opinion there? The only ship at Tsushima with a mixed battery was the AC Kasuga, with 1x 10" on one end and 2x 8" on the other.  At Tsushima, Kasuga fired 50 rounds of 10" and 100 rounds of 8", indicating she fired salvos with both turrets working together on the same data, so couldn't have confused herself anyway.  All the other ships on both sides had the usual 12"/6" or 8"/6" batteries of the pre-dreadnought standard. So unless you had both an AC and a B shooting at the same target (which did happen at times), there wasn't any chance of confusing an 8" for a 12" splash. Furthermore, the 8" and 12" guns weren't in the same ships, so there was no possibility at all of different calibers causing confusion between the batteries of the same ship. Instead, any confusion over splashes would have been over which ship caused which splash and, without any effective concentration method, this problem would have been the same (perhaps worse) if both ships were shooting the same size gun.


When the RJW started, the ONLY mixed-battery battleships in service were all US.  In fact, nearly every USN pre-dreadnought, from first to last, had a mixed battery.  Some of the first examples fought at Santiago in 1898 and this experience, and subsequent peacetime training shoots, did not dissuade the USN from continuing to build them.  The idea was in fact beginning to catch on elsewhere.  The Brits were just then building their King Edward VIIs, the 1st few of which had just commissioned when the RJW ended, by which time they were building the Lord Nelsons.  Likewise, the IJN had ordered a (slightly larger) pair of KE7s itself (the Katori class) just prior to the start of the war, and designed Satsuma (originally with an all-12" battery, to be sure) after Yellow Sea.  And the Russians began the Evstafis (their KE7s) and Andre Pervozvannys (their Lord Nelsons) after the RJW had started, and revised everything about the latter except the armament in light of combat experience.

You also have to ask the fundamental question: Even for a mixed-battery ship, when would it ever be necessary to tell a 12" splash from an 8-10" splash? Once you have all guns firing together in salvos (as done by Kasuga), you're not spotting individual guns, you're spotting the salvo as a whole. The ship is firing a shotgun pattern and just trying to keep the pattern centered on the target, hoping at least 1 of the shells will hit. As long as the guns' ballistics are similar enough that there'd be no significant difference in time of flight so the shells would land together, a mixed-battery salvo would be no different from a single-caliber salvo for spotting purposes.

Bottom line: I believe that the oft-repeated saying that Tsushima (or anything in the RJW, for that matter) was an argument against mixed batteries stems from a misinterpretation by some historian, who was then cited by every historian afterwards who didn't bother to consult the primary sources himself.  There simply weren't any mixed-battery battleships involved there.  At the time of the war, the only experience with mixed-battery battleships was US, and it was apparently favorable or they wouldn't have kept doing it, and nobody else would have jumped on the bandwagon.

I myself believe that the demise of the mixed battery had nothing at all to do with splash confusion and everything to do with HMS Dreadnought.  This ship commissioned so quickly after the RJW that most of the Eurasian mixed-battery ships weren't yet complete (including the Lord Nelsons).  Once the all-big-gun ship was out of the bottle, nobody considered building anything else due to the need to match the firepower, so the mixed-battery battleship outside the US turned out to be ephemeral.  It was then a number of years later, just prior to WW1, when directors and fire control computers appeared.  These required a uniform caliber battery because they had gun ballistics hard-coded into them, so they worked for dreadnoughts and regular pre-dreadnoughts, but not semi-dreadnoughts.  And that was the final nail in their coffin.

[ccip]

Oct 1, 2016 21:59:16 GMT -6 Bullethead said:

Oct 1, 2016 17:31:20 GMT -6 director said:

......And at Tsushima the primacy of the big gun was confirmed, with Togo opening fire and making hits at what were then considered startlingly long ranges. From Tsushima came the observation that you couldn't tell the intermediate and main caliber shell splashes apart, so nations realized that from then-on fighting at longer ranges meant centralizing on one caliber and putting the battery under centralized control. Despite this, and despite other navies working on all-big-gun ships, I think the evolution from battleship to dreadnought might have happened much more slowly without Jackie Fisher pushing Dreadnought and Invincible.

In my opinion, you can look at a semi-dreadnought like Britain's Lord Nelson class (and the last big British armored cruisers, or Satsuma) and see the real example of Cuniberti's work.

Hmmm.  I believe that Yellow Sea was where the surprisingly long-range fire took place.  It was somewhat foggy on the morning of Tsushima and I believe firing was opened at only 5-6K yards, about normal expected pre-dreadnought range.

Yeah, you're correct on that. Both sides were firing from up to 13k yards at Yellow Sea (and evidently scored hits, despite neither side having rangefinders that were scaled for even half that range) - although the sea conditions were also much more favourable than Tsushima. Capt. Pakenham, the British attache with Togo, reported on this - noting that among other things, hits from 12in guns were far more effective than 10in, even though 10in guns used by the Russians actually had better range due to their mounts. Mikasa took a 12in hit at that maximum range which managed to penetrate the main belt, while other calibers had little to no effect even if they did get a hit or near miss. Pakenham's first-hand reports had a lot of influence and so the RN was already working on fire control improvements based on the results of Yellow Sea before Tsushima even took place.

[edit]

What's also interesting is that even Yellow Sea seems to confirm that despite the claims, difficulties with spotting splashes didn't really translate into lower chances of hitting. Pakenham reported that even at very long ranges, all calibers from 6in to 12in were landing with far better accuracy than expected. The real difference was their effect, where basically only the 12in was worrying the Japanese. Interestingly Pakenham also noted that, other than the very nasty 12in hit on Mikasa (where he was aboard along with Togo), the bigger effect was psychological. When the 12in guns were firing, all the smaller shells (even the 10in) seemed like peashooters and were basically disregarded by the ship's crew, but a 12in coming over or hitting the water had everyone ducking for cover.

One definitely shouldn't discount the effect of the smaller guns in RJW - but it does seem like no less than the outcome of Tsushima as such, Pakenham's own perspective on it (he himself was nearly killed by a Russian shell there) definitely helped the "big gun" camp - he saw the 12in as the decisively effective weapon. And by that point, really, the 12in mounts were already proving the difference in fire rate irrelevant - and it only became more so, because over time the weight of broadside it was able to throw out per minute exceeded the smaller calibers, and the more cramped turrets often used for the intermediate battery actually made them more difficult to operate. Plus the fact that under battle damage, different mounts and calibers made repairing and replacing crew casualties more difficult (and Tsushima again pointed out, especially from where Pakenham saw it, that ships were going to take hits and damage control and crew replacement was a significant factor in keeping up firepower).

[Bullethead]

ccip
Yeah, to me, the effectiveness of 12" compared to smaller guns was the real lesson of the RJW. But by that time of Pakenham made his report, the USN, RN, and IJN had all started their all-big-gun ships. So the report was more confirmation of the correctness of decisions already taken.

[garrisonchisholm]

Just silently loving this discussion. *thumbs up*

[axe99]

What Garrisonchisholm said .

[vonfriedman]

Cuniberti wrote about "choosing the most convenient position for striking the belt of the enemy in the most advantageous manner." Later on he wrote that "the (shooting) distance is considerable". Presumably he considered that the splashes of 12 in. guns broadside of his "dreadnought-like" battleship would have made fire control easier at long range.
Regarding Amalfi/Pisa cruisers (the museum ship Georgios Averoff in Greece is the third of that class) they were strongly influenced - to say the least - by Cuniberti's ideas, since their designer, Orlando, as far as I know, was not a Navy officer, as any other designer of Italian warships of that era.

[director]

As I understand it, the trends in naval warfare of increased battle range and increased ship speeds made for a basically unsolvable gunnery problem and the gunnery control developments of the next forty years were an attempt to square that circle.

Let's consider the factors that affect gunnery (if I miss some, point them out):
Range
Rate of change in range
Bearing
Rate of change in bearing
Target speed
Own speed
Wind and humidity; sea state (call these 'environemntal')
Visibility
Rate of fire
Number of guns firing
Flight time for shells (affected by range and muzzle velocity)
Wear of gun barrels (affecting accuracy and muzzle velocity)
Interference from a neighboring gun firing at the same time (usually corrected with a circuit to add a slight delay so that not all guns in a turret fire exactly together)


So. We know the approximate range to the enemy and the angle of bearing. But he is moving, both in range and bearing, and so are we. Our course and speed are known, but constantly changing because the captain is probably 'chasing salvos' to keep from being hit. We have estimates of the enemy range, bearing, course and speed (often not very good estimates - and the enemy is also probably dodging our shots). So we crank all the factors into our gunnery computer, fire a salvo into a general area (probably a 'ladder' with two shells in each 'rung' and the rungs separated by range) and then wait for the shells to land so the fall can be spotted. Then repeat the procedure until hits are landed, at which point the guns go to rapid fire on the current 'best guess'.

Now, this is a generalized version - it changes a bit by nation and over time (the Kriegsmarine used a different method from the High Seas Fleet, and so on). But the idea for long and mid-range fire is that you try to limit the size of the area the enemy can be in, and then cover that area with shells as much as possible - that's where having a large number of barrels and a fast rate of fire come in handy. Short-range fire, of course, is more point-and-shoot because of the short flight-time of the projectiles and the flatter trajectory. One writer called it 'shooting at a moving target a mile away while riding on a merry-go-round', and I think that's a decent description. The miracle is that any ship ever gets hit by a shell at all.

[theexecuter]

...then go from that extremely unlikely to hit reality to radar guided guns...where hit percentages go up immensely (at night fighting range, every shot is a hit).

After reading some of the gunnery analysis of Guadalcanal and Philippine sea battles, I pity the poor Japanese officers.

Who could fathom how an opponent could essentially hit you with every salvo...?

[director]

Hi theexecuter! Long time no hear from!

On the other hand, turn it around and consider the state of mind of the poor American admirals and captains who, before good gunnery control radar (and working out how to trust and use it) were surprised over and over again, ambushed by guns and torpedoes from inferior forces in night actions they never trained for or expected to be in. Just an opinion here, but I think the #1 killer of American seamen in 1941 and 42 was the absolute certainty of the American admirals that they would fight the war they wanted, in the way that they wanted, and that the Japanese would be an inferior opponent.