Warship Appreciation Thread

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Morphic Tide said:
I imagine that nuclearizing the supporting logistics vessels would be very far down the budget priority list, so it's more going from short-term to full-time "last mile operations" rather than for strategic transit.
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On the contrary, Operation Sea Orbit directly proved that all-nuclear battlegroups could carry out high-speed, long-range strategic transit with surprisingly little need for support from fleet logistics vessels. The importance of underway replenishment would be greatly reduced (although not completely eliminated) in a nuclear navy.
 
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The sheer accuracy of the U.S. Navy's radar-controlled fire control systems is quite remarkable. Washington straddled Kirishima on her first main battery salvo and then scored solid hits with virtually every single subsequent salvo.

In all, Washington fired seventy-five 16" shells and scored at least twenty major-caliber hits -- sixteen hits out of thirty-nine shells fired in the first two minutes and thirty-nine seconds of the battle, then a further four hits out of thirty-six shells fired in a second firing phase of two minutes and forty-five seconds. Between these firing periods, Washington ceased firing for one minute thirty seconds due to an erroneous report that Kirishima was already sinking.

It is important to note that the first six hits alone already doomed Kirishima, as these hits by themselves caused catastrophic and uncontrollable flooding on her starboard side. The hits scored when Washington resumed fire were fewer but utterly devastating in placement: hits 17 and 18 destroyed her #2 main battery turret, hit 19 destroyed both of her main pump rooms (knocking out #3 and #4), and hit 20 smashed her rudder.
 
Lord Sovereign said:
Kirishima vs Washington becomes more horribly lopsided the more you look into it. Throwing a refitted First World War Battlecruiser against an (at the time) modern Battleship must have been like throwing a lamb at a hungry lion.
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Kirishima had been pretty extensively modernized and refitted as a fast battleship, so she wasn't as badly outmatched as "WWI battlecruiser" might imply, but what really screwed her over was the target fixation on USS South Dakota allowing Washington to close to point-blank range.
 
Spartan303 said:
South Dakota suffered a complete electrical failure and was backlit by the two burning destroyers. Bad time to suffer a ship wide short.
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And that only happened because some people had thrown open certain switches at the wrong time, and it ended up fucking the entire electrical system.

As much as Kiri vs Wash was a curb stomp, it only happened because Kiri was hyper-focused on SoDak.
 
Spartan303 said:
South Dakota suffered a complete electrical failure and was backlit by the two burning destroyers. Bad time to suffer a ship wide short.
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It wasn't just Kirishima; the entire vanguard of the Japanese fleet was basically pounding on South Dakota as she had inadvertently closed to within 5,000 yards. And the key counterpoint is that even at that close range, her armor belt rejected absolutely everything the Japanese hit her with.
 
BB56 absolutely dumpstered Kirishima, but I do have to point out that part of the reason for Washington's extreme success in this engagement was due to the efforts and experimentation of Vice Admiral Willis Augustus "Ching" Lee Jr. He had extensively drilled the men of the USS Washington on precision gunnery and was the first officer of the American Fleet to incorporate radar into obtaining firing solutions meaning that his personal battlebus was equally deadly in the day and night. The gunnery skill exhibited was, based on reports I could find, characteristic of any battleship from which Vice Admiral Lee flew his flag from.
 
An interesting detail: Admiral Lee continued to use USS Washington as his flagship even later in the war when he had newer and more powerful South Carolina and Iowa class battleships in his task force, due to a specific quirk of the design: the radar room in Washington was close to the flag quarters.

Willis' personal gunnery was just as outstanding as that he required of his flagship; the man won seven Olympic medals in shooting, five of them gold.
 
ShadowArxxy said:
An interesting detail: Admiral Lee continued to use USS Washington as his flagship even later in the war when he had newer and more powerful South Carolina and Iowa class battleships in his task force, due to a specific quirk of the design: the radar room in Washington was close to the flag quarters.

Willis' personal gunnery was just as outstanding as that he required of his flagship; the man won seven Olympic medals in shooting, five of them gold.
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Also he was an outstanding mathematician. In the book Neptune's Inferno is mentioned that he often talked shop with the gunnery officers of the Washington about the firing formulae of the fire director, and quite often the rest of the officer corps of the ship couldn't follow the extremely technical conversation. At the time of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal he probably was the only flag officer in frontline service who had a comprenhensive understanding of the potential and limits of the Mark 3 radar.
 
Now, my memory is probably playing tricks on me, but if I recall there was a cruiser action in the Pacific where the Americans came off worse against the Japanese. Apparently IJN Heavy Cruisers were pretty monstrous.
 
Lord Sovereign said:
Now, my memory is probably playing tricks on me, but if I recall there was a cruiser action in the Pacific where the Americans came off worse against the Japanese. Apparently IJN Heavy Cruisers were pretty monstrous.
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There were several such actions, I believe. Starting with Japanese conquest of Indonesia, though that was ABDA command and not just American cruisers.
 
Lord Sovereign said:
Now, my memory is probably playing tricks on me, but if I recall there was a cruiser action in the Pacific where the Americans came off worse against the Japanese. Apparently IJN Heavy Cruisers were pretty monstrous.
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Like IJN battleships, IJN heavy cruisers benefited from a combination of excellent optical fire control and well-trained crews; what made them extra-deadly, however, were the reloadable banks of Long Lance superheavy torpedoes. In contrast, USN heavy cruisers had far and away the best fire control in the world for both their primary and secondary batteries -- essentially the same hardware as on USN battleships, albeit with only two rather than four secondary directors -- but had no torpedoes at all.

Basically, best torpedoes in the world versus worst (none). While most major nations had invested in some degree of research into oxygen-fueled torpedoes during the inter-war years, the Japanese were the only ones who stuck to it and developed a viable oxygen torpedo design, which became the famous "Long Lance".
 
ShadowArxxy said:
Like IJN battleships, IJN heavy cruisers benefited from a combination of excellent optical fire control and well-trained crews; what made them extra-deadly, however, were the reloadable banks of Long Lance superheavy torpedoes. In contrast, USN heavy cruisers had far and away the best fire control in the world for both their primary and secondary batteries -- essentially the same hardware as on USN battleships, albeit with only two rather than four secondary directors -- but had no torpedoes at all.

Basically, best torpedoes in the world versus worst (none). While most major nations had invested in some degree of research into oxygen-fueled torpedoes during the inter-war years, the Japanese were the only ones who stuck to it and developed a viable oxygen torpedo design, which became the famous "Long Lance".
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And those same torpedoes became the IJN cruiser line doom because the launchers were vulnerable to incoming fire, in particular from straffing runs while the reload system made sure that they had a harder time getting rid of them when an air strike came.

On the other hand the US ships were at a transitional point between the optic systems of the past and the new naval radar, which led to some very basic mistakes in its use that limited the effectiveness of Fire Control and Search radar, particularly at night when USN naval doctrine was still untested and their commanders poorly trained. During the first clash of the naval battle of Guadacanal Callaghan both misread radar returns which partially lead to him basically running into the japanese force (which to be fair made its own mistakes) and made little to no effort to prepare his command for the incoming night battle, famously giving orders to odd and even numbers without actually assigning those beforehand.

Later during the later smaller skirmirshes against the Tokio Express supply deliveries younger commanders in charge of destroyer squadrons and cruiser divisions demostrated what the technology could do in the hands of well-drilled ships who knew how to use it both for navigation and as firing aids.
 
Doomsought said:
No, the Mark-14 Torpedo is worse than no torpedo at all. I'm pretty sure it killed more of the submarines that fired it than actual targets.
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Despite the much publicized early flaws, the Mark 14 torpedo in the hands of the U.S. submarine force was literally the single biggest factor in winning the Pacific War.

Also, the Mark 14 is a submarine-fired torpedo, which you are conflating with the surface ship fired Mark 15 torpedo.
 
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