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Washington v Kirishima v South Dakota wasn't exactly the fairest fight either. Kirishima just riddled the South Dakota's superstructure a bit despite having her lit up great with searchlights while the Washington put shells into her vitals like she was unarmored.

All in all the pacific theater kinda sucked for battleship actions, because when battleships got involved the Japanese didn't have anything like their torpedo tactics to counter the American love of radar gunnery at night and anyone who decided to fight a surface action at day would have planes in their face before they knew what was happening.

You could say that Jutland was the last battle of surface battlefleets, considering I don't remember the air scouts on either side doing much.

Then again, I haven't read a ton on WWI naval history. Does anyone have a quick recommendation for a good source on the ship design of both sides and/or how the fighting actually went?

Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie is pretty good.
It covers the entire war in some detail I seem to remember
Also, any book on Battleships (such as battleships, by H.P. Willmott) will cover it in some detail, especially the construction.

Castles of Steel isn't *bad*. It has a ton of conjecture though and is really read more like The Killer Angels than a serious examination of World War's naval conflict.

It's popular history rather than academic history. It's still a useful jumping off point, at least for someone not very familiar with the subject materiel.
For the change in theory and naval design, try Navies in Europe, 1815-2002 by Lawrence Sondhaus. It's a bit of a large period but it details why ships design evolved the way it did...

Zinegata wrote:Surigao Strait was more of a "massacre" rather than a battle, so a lapse is acceptable :p.

Kirishima at least got to shoot up the South Dakota before Washington smothered her.

http://www.navweaps.com/index_lundgren/ ... ummary.pdf

You're not quite correct

South Dakota was shot at by three or four different ships, including Kirishima, but most of the damage came from 8" or smaller shellfire, and a surprising number of hits were duds or ineffective. For example, only two of the six documented 14" strikes on South Dakota were from AP shells. Most of the hits on South Dakota, in other words, were from Japanese cruisers and destroyers.

The only true "battleship vs. battleship" action in that battle was the one-sided plastering of Kirishima by Washington (20 16" strikes in less than 10 minutes), but even then, Kirishima was really a battlecruiser that was up armored between the wars.

So... the Kirishima missed almost all of her shots?

Man, the IJN's battleship fleet really sucked.

Castles of Steel is pretty good though, but the focus is much less on the technical aspects of the naval war and more on the personalities that dominated it. There's much more Jellicoe vs Beatty in it than say, "Was the Iron Duke class really necessary compared to the Queen Elizabeth class?"

Zinegata wrote:So... the Kirishima missed almost all of her shots?

Man, the IJN's battleship fleet really sucked.

Castles of Steel is pretty good though, but the focus is much less on the technical aspects of the naval war and more on the personalities that dominated it. There's much more Jellicoe vs Beatty in it than say, "Was the Iron Duke class really necessary compared to the Queen Elizabeth class?"

UH, yeah. The QE began construction when the main gun hadn't even been tested. The Iron Duke was needed incase the QE turned out to be a huge lemon.

barnest2 wrote:It's popular history rather than academic history. It's still a useful jumping off point, at least for someone not very familiar with the subject materiel.

Marder and Woodward are better. At times it feels like Massie simply repeated their words verbatim.

For the change in theory and naval design, try Navies in Europe, 1815-2002 by Lawrence Sondhaus. It's a bit of a large period but it details why ships design evolved the way it did...

Meh. Brennecke is a better starting point IMO.

Lonestar wrote:

Zinegata wrote:So... the Kirishima missed almost all of her shots?

Man, the IJN's battleship fleet really sucked.

Castles of Steel is pretty good though, but the focus is much less on the technical aspects of the naval war and more on the personalities that dominated it. There's much more Jellicoe vs Beatty in it than say, "Was the Iron Duke class really necessary compared to the Queen Elizabeth class?"

UH, yeah. The QE began construction when the main gun hadn't even been tested. The Iron Duke was needed incase the QE turned out to be a huge lemon.

It was a rhetorical question meant to illustrate how Massie was interested in personalities and not the technical aspects .

Also, wasn't there an oil vs coal issue too? Or was that just QE vs the Royal Sovereign/Revenge class.

Zinegata wrote:So... the Kirishima missed almost all of her shots?

Man, the IJN's battleship fleet really sucked.

She did hit South Dakota six times, it's just that South Dakota was well protected against 16" shellfire, Kirishima wasn't carrying many AP shells (she was tasked with bombardment duty against Guadalcanal, and thus carrying HE shells), and Japanese shell quality was inconsistent (thus the large number of duds). Considering that Kirishima was operating without the benefit of radar fire control, six hits from medium range (10'000+ yards) at nighttime isn't bad.

Yeah, nighttime fighting sucked, I'd tend to say the Japanese were the best nighttime optics fighters in the world. The only problem is that it's really freaking hard, so even the best turn in crappy results like that. It's a lot of why they had such a leaning to torpedo attacks, they did their planning before radar got really good so they thought they'd be able to strike well above their weight by attacking when the US wouldn't be able to hit much at all, and they would still be pretty effective. Granted, they never got the long lance hit rate they wanted either, but it was still tons better than gunnery.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:
She did hit South Dakota six times, it's just that South Dakota was well protected against 16" shellfire, Kirishima wasn't carrying many AP shells (she was tasked with bombardment duty against Guadalcanal, and thus carrying HE shells), and Japanese shell quality was inconsistent (thus the large number of duds). Considering that Kirishima was operating without the benefit of radar fire control, six hits from medium range (10'000+ yards) at nighttime isn't bad.

She would have almost certainly had plenty of AP onboard. The Japanese never had a sufficient supply of bombardment or incendiary shrapnel shells, so the bombardments of Henderson field always involved a high proportion of AP projectiles being fired. This is a major factor behind why none of the naval bombardments was ever able to put the field completely out of action, despite some of them involving more then a thousand heavy caliber rounds plus thousands more light shells with extensive aerial spotting and night illumination (wasn’t blind fire or anything).

However, it is however almost certain that bombardment ammunition was already in the ammo hoists and ready racks for some gun mounts, usually the Japanese had half fire AP and the other half HE or IS, and once the ammo was in the hoists the quickest way to get rid of it was to shoot it from the guns. I think, don’t quote me on this as someone posted it on warships1 very long ago, that the ammo hoists and racks on Kirishima held a total of 9 salvos worth of ammo; so it would be a couple of minutes to completely expend that.

I’d agree that the performance of Kirishima was really not that bad considering one ship was effectively 25 years newer then the other and that Kirishima came under fire from a battleship which was not at all being hampered by return fire. The real puzzling thing is how the Japanese managed to miss so much with torpedo fire after slaughtering the American destroyers; neither American battleship made many evasive maneuvers and torpedoes were reported exploding in the wakes. Pretty much dumb blind luck. The battle very easily could have ended with both American battleships sunk and not a single scratch on Kirishima.

Zinegata wrote: It was a rhetorical question meant to illustrate how Massie was interested in personalities and not the technical aspects .

Also, wasn't there an oil vs coal issue too? Or was that just QE vs the Royal Sovereign/Revenge class.

The QE class pretty much had to be oil fired to get the speed and range the RN wanted; without an excessive rise in the size and thus cost of the ship. This was a huge problem throughout the dreadnought era, as battleship costs doubled several times over in the space of ten years. But the reluctance to accept oil was pretty much purely because the UK had the best coal on earth, while all the oil came from the Persian Gulf. The Gulf meanwhile was being threatened by the Berlin-Baghdad railway construction program. The Revenge class had both oil and coal burning boilers as a hedge against this risk.

Sea Skimmer wrote:I’d agree that the performance of Kirishima was really not that bad considering one ship was effectively 25 years newer then the other and that Kirishima came under fire from a battleship which was not at all being hampered by return fire. The real puzzling thing is how the Japanese managed to miss so much with torpedo fire after slaughtering the American destroyers; neither American battleship made many evasive maneuvers and torpedoes were reported exploding in the wakes. Pretty much dumb blind luck. The battle very easily could have ended with both American battleships sunk and not a single scratch on Kirishima.

Wow. I didn't think it was that close before.

To me, it reads like the Japanese destroyers underestimated the speed of the American BBs, or at least that is what my first impression was from reading torpedoes were detonating in the wake of the BBs.

Sea Skimmer wrote:I think, don’t quote me on this as someone posted it on warships1 very long ago, that the ammo hoists and racks on Kirishima held a total of 9 salvos worth of ammo; so it would be a couple of minutes to completely expend that.

6-10 rounds, and 3-5 minutes to work them through, according to this, which is probably the article you're thinking of.

Captain Seafort wrote: 6-10 rounds, and 3-5 minutes to work them through, according to this, which is probably the article you're thinking of.

No sorry man though that is handy to have out, I'm talking discussion thread type stuff that took place around ten years ago when warships1 was really thriving for a while, real olden time now when most of that navweapons tech stuff was first written. That’s back when I first met the Duchess of Zeon and a few other members here. Anyway people can look at the track charts in that report and see how confined the battle space is, and what an easy target the American ships were. At the Battle of Tassafaronga a Japanese destroyer squadron was able to torpedo four American heavy cruisers in about twenty minutes. One sank, but it could just as easily have been all of them.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ga_map.jpg

IIRC SMS Göben survived into the 70'ies before being scrapped - the last of the Kaiser's Dreadnoughts and the one ship in history that inflicted the most damage to it's enemies. Sadly there was no intrest at the time to preserve her and once lost such oppertunities never come again.

Not far from here in Lund they discovered the mass graves on the old battlefield, one of the bloodiest in Scandinavian history, when they expanded the city in the 70'ies. However at that time there was no intrest in examining the graves or the area in general so the whole area was dug up, built and paved over leaving the only sources available to us on this monumental event centuries old writings and reports.

barnest2 wrote:

CaptHawkeye wrote: Look no one thinks Jutland was was exactly a forgettable day but it sure as hell wasn't anything you say here. I mean, "last great naval battle"? Yeah ok. Quit gushing for a second and take a look at the reality. It was definitely an under rated battle that did more good than harm for Britain. But at the end of the day the battle ultimately just re-affirmed what everyone already knew. IE: The British Navy was running the seas and their was nothing Germany could do about it. In terms of anything else their was nothing special about it except for how unbelievably disorganized both sides were.

Whatever. How does that change anything about what I said? It was the last meeting of true battlefleets, and it was the last major combat at sea. Maybe I was waxing a bit lyrical, but excuse me for feeling something about a piece of our fucking history. So piss off.

Also:

Thanas wrote:Hey now.

They valiantly retreated after blowing up some British Battlecruisers.

And then 'valiantly' spent the rest of the war in port

hey, you do know just how badly outnumbered & outgunned the german navy was, don't you?
Their biggest gun was the 12", the Bitish was the 15" shell wt difference was 800lb to 1938lb! most of the German guns though were 11", firing tiny 500 lb shells. It was all they could do to just kill the Battlecruisers.

(Sadly the German Navy was so goddamned stupid, they never onceed tried to 'leapfrog' the British in ship performance. & actually understate their ships abilities. Like instead of continuing w/ 11" gun ships when UK made Dreadnought, jump to 13-14" guns, but still call them 11" & 15-16" being called 12". The Japanese pulled it off w/ Yamato, calling the 18" a 16". And they NEVER should've tried Unrestricted Uboat warfare. The Uboats were better used in hunting down Royal Navy Capital Ships.

Could one of the older members who's good at the math here run the numbers for a WW1 & ww2 uboat campaign EXCLUSIVELY targeting warships instead of wasting time on the THOUSANDS of merchant ships?

Basically, imagine a Royal Navy, depleted of Battleships & Battlecruisers, having to deal w/ Germany's hoarded battlefleet rushing out to devastate convoys & coastal ports.

BTW, the Germans don't give a damn about preserving old warships either, they turned down the Goebben when Turkey offered to return it. (Thanks Willi Brandt!) Pf course Germany is the only country to aggressively reject it's traditions. (Ignoring calls to restore the Iron Cross for heroes in Afghanistan, ot giving them the equipment they need, costing German lives) it'll likely change once the demographics shift to an immigrant majority. (The Turks & Poles are too awesome to let Greens, CDU & SPD continue f*ing things up.)

^If you had even an inkling of knowledge on the subject you'd notice that none of the things you said actually make sense.

Also, stop pointlessly necroing threads unless you have anything of value to add.

It's pointless to explain why the Germans fled the British? When the post I responded to was accusing the sailors of cowardice for their actions in running? I was explaing the reason the HochSeeFlote ran simply because it hade no hope in winning ship-to-ship. not because of cowardice like Barnest implied. Then I mentioned how the officials in charge of equipping said fleet (as well as overall naval strategy) should've actually responded to the famous arms race w/ the Royal Navy, rather than being 10 steps behind.


I'll agree the last part was a bit much & offtopic. though the goeben part was relevant re: ship preservation right? i'm sorry, i get a little hot blooded when i think of the waste of a beautiful ship like that & the reasons for it.

I'm guessing the 'necro' reference is about posting anything in a topic over a couple months old... I remember seeing old threads that were always getting locked once they got 'too' old. I don't see that much on other forums, actually, only here.

It was more in reaction to your "the germans were so stupid..." and the idiocy that followed it.

ComradeClaus wrote:Then I mentioned how the officials in charge of equipping said fleet (as well as overall naval strategy) should've actually responded to the famous arms race w/ the Royal Navy, rather than being 10 steps behind.

So are you going to put up some proof regarding that?

Since ComradeClaus already necroed it and Thanas, a moderator, hasn't locked it*, can I ask a question more in line with the original topic? Namely, why does the Royal Navy typically not keep old warships around as museum vessels like other navies do? (The USS North Carolina is one of Wilmington's major tourist attractions.)

* Sorry to backseat moderate.

Navies usually don’t.

Almost all historical USN warships are in fact held in private hands or part of the national park service, except USS Constitution which is still a commissioned unit. Ironclad Huáscar is still owned by the Chilean navy, cruiser Aurora by the Russian Fleet, but other then this examples of historical warships still in naval hands are relatively few. Britain is actually one of the few nations which has in fact had its navy save anything; HMS Victory is still commissioned Royal Navy property with her upkeep funded out of the UK defense budget. All of these ships mentioned above are units seen as having a major impact on the respective national histories, not just being successful in combat. That’s what it takes for a navy to save something. HMS Warrior only survived meanwhile because she was being used as floating oil depot all the way until 1979, only then being saved by private money after an eleven year campaign to raise the required funds. Outlasting about six generations of replacement warships as a fuel tank isn't bad!

None of the major UK ships from WW1 or WW2 survived because by the time the historical warship preservation movement really gained ground in the 1960s, they’d all already been scrapped. Britain was bankrupt by the war; actually she was bankrupt by the end of 1940, thus the US passage of lend lease, and ships were scrapped as quickly as possible. Efforts were made to try to save a few units, like HMS Warspite but raising the required sums simply wasn’t possible in time and the government needed scrap dollars.

The US had a huge navy, huge projected postwar naval requirements and a relatively good economy postwar so a lot of stuff that was seen has having value was kept around until about 1959 when a mass scrapping took place of older stuff. So such incredibly famous, decorated units as USS Enterprise still went to the scrap heap because as an older carrier she was seen as less valuable for potential mobilization in the Cold War compared to the Essex class spam, while slightly newer but far less famous ships like USS North Carolina survived just long enough for wartime nostalgia to kick in.

ComradeClaus wrote: (Sadly the German Navy was so goddamned stupid, they never onceed tried to 'leapfrog' the British in ship performance. & actually understate their ships abilities. Like instead of continuing w/ 11" gun ships when UK made Dreadnought, jump to 13-14" guns, but still call them 11" & 15-16" being called 12".

So basically your point is, you have no clue at all how much heavy warships cost, and how incredibly draining the historical construction already was? Did you ever stop for even a second Claus, and ask yourself… if one can just ‘leapfrog’ the enemy why didn’t everyone just build 80,000 ton battleships with 20 inch guns in 1895? The shift to dreadnoughts, and then the steady increase in dreadnought size and firepower already more then doubled the cost of battleships in a span of barely ten years while doing nothing to reduce the required numbers. The stupid thing was Germany trying to build a major fleet at all when Germany was clearly a land empire whose fate would and was decided on land.

The Japanese pulled it off w/ Yamato, calling the 18" a 16".

Japan was one of the most closed societies in the world at the time, and spent lavish amounts of money on guards, walls and even new buildings and anchoring merchant ships as screens to conceal its super battleships at a time when such a concept was already far obsolete. For all that Japan gained absolutely nothing from what it accomplished, and ended up with a modern battleship force that was just TWO ships, while the US built TEN and canceled SEVEN as unnecessary. So, that’s a sound strategy to you?

Such secrecy would have been impossible in Imperial Germany, and never accepted by the Kasier in the first place who wanted a navy for no other reason then to show it off to the rest of Europe. The only reason Germany had a big navy was the Kaiser had penis envy with his British cousins.