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Belated Battleships (KanColle) [REHOST]

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Simon_Jester said:
I see your paddling, unwise Gruberman Thor, and raise you...

Boot to the head!

Some will question TheJMPer, arguing that a ship broadside-on is a BIG target, not a small one. They have not thought that one step further.

Thing is, in a naval battle you are a lot more likely to get the elevation wrong (misjudge the range to the target) than to get the azimuth wrong (and put your shell to the left or right of where the enemy really is). A ship that is approaching you is 200-300 yards long, so if your range estimate is wrong by 100 yards you still have a good chance of hitting. A ship that is sailing broadside-on is only 20-30 yards wide, and if you misjudge the range, the shells are very likely to either fall in the water short of the target, or 'go long' and whistle harmlessly over the deck to fall in the ocean on the other side.

Did I get that right, TheJMPer?
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Yup! It's easier to compute lead than it is range, so you want to minimize your cross-sectional area not your presented area.
 
Granted, my only experience with Naval Gunnery is World of Warships, which typically if you are sailing broadside onto a Battleship, particularly when you are in a Cruiser or a Battleship that well, you can get clobbered hard, to the point that you lose all of your health in one blow.
 
Something else to keep in mind about the USN Standard battleships is that naval logistics and plans required them to be able to fit through the Panama Canal. So for a good while the Navy used the equivalent of a 40K STC. It didn't help that Congress was always whinging about how much the Navy cost.

Fun fact one: Even the Navy decided that the Standards needed a boost which is why the BB-49 class was going to have higher horsepower engines to get up to 24-25 knots.

Fun fact two: With the WNT cancelling the BB-49 class, the Navy floated a plan to refit the Colorado class with the engines and the 16/50 Mk2 guns in order to waste not want not. Congress was unwilling to spend the money.
 
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Thorthemighty said:
Granted, my only experience with Naval Gunnery is World of Warships, which typically if you are sailing broadside onto a Battleship, particularly when you are in a Cruiser or a Battleship that well, you can get clobbered hard, to the point that you lose all of your health in one blow.
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As it turns out, an video game, while fun, is not particularly accurate and you should not assume it applies to real life. See also: lol infinite torpedo spam.
 
@theJMPer:

Yeah, that's another unrealism of World of Warships. Since the gun ranges are cut roughly in half, shell trajectories tend to be flat and there's a lot less issue with not knowing exact range to the target.

@MagisterAurelius:

To be fair, those would be some massively expensive refits, effectively rebuilding the ships from the keel up, I suspect- and the Big Five were already among the most powerful battleships in the world.

Also, it wasn't just Congress keeping costs down and forcing small redesigns of the same 'Standard' type each year; it was Josephus Daniels too.

Thorthemighty said:
Granted, my only experience with Naval Gunnery is World of Warships, which typically if you are sailing broadside onto a Battleship, particularly when you are in a Cruiser or a Battleship that well, you can get clobbered hard, to the point that you lose all of your health in one blow.
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Yes, and that is why you need to learn, which is why I compared you to Ed Gruberman from the video.

You're a university student. Go to your university library and read a few actual, honest-to-God books about World War I and II naval combat. Books written by professional scholars.

Don't try to obsessively memorize all the details, just acquire some more general knowledge of what did and did not work.
 
The refits wouldn't have been a complete rebuild as that was a technical no-no under the WNT. At that time they didn't have a whole lot of superstructure over the machine spaces so doing an "ice cream scoop" to pull out the original engines and replace them with the higher powered ones would just be about the same as a normal refit to remove worn out engines. Mounting the Mk2 guns would most likely be the expensive bit if putting in new hoists and such was necessary.

By the time of Pearl Harbor the Big 5 were in desperate need of a complete overhaul or even replacement of their power plants, but the Navy had never allowed enough necessary downtime for it, due to "Big 5 must always be in state of readiness" reasons.
 
Anyway, I think we have all agreed that the Battleship is the undisputed king of the ocean, when Mother Nature says so. Not even I would want to take a Battleship head-to-head with a Rouge Wave -and I can be a pretty crazy motherfucker when I want to particularly when I am playing a videogame- mainly because well, considering that Rouge Waves can be massive and having one break across your deck is a bad thing, but that's for another thread.
 
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Second part of the Omake. As before, feel free to criticize, point flaws and errors, and dissect the text.
============================================================================
Iron Lady part 2​

HMS Neptune, Nep for her friends, was going to the mess hall when one of her destroyers, HMS Ashanti, or Ash as she liked to be called, stopped before her.

"They did it!" she said happily, hopping before her like a jackrabbit on speed.

"What they did, Ash?" the silver-haired light cruiser asked, while trying to calm the hyperactive destroyer.

"The Spanish! They managed to summon a shipgirl here!." The shorter, spiky-haired redhead answered, clearly excited, "She is in the mess hall now! Let's go to see her!"

"Very well, Ash." Nep said, surrendering to the enthusiasm of the younger girl, and followed her to the mess hall.

When he arrived it was easy to find the new arrival, because the table was full of food, mostly hamburgers and Spanish-style sandwiches, that the young woman on the table, a tanned blonde in a short-sleeved uniform shirt, with a blue tank top underneath, and denim shorts was devouring.

She had had time to update her recognition manuals since she ahd been summoned, so it was not difficult to recognize the lines of her hull as an American Independence-class light carrier. And as she had been designed during the war, and hadn't had to deal with the Treaty, she had a more impressive… everything than Neptune.

The girl had noticed them staring and waved them to come there. Ash hopped toward the table, Nep following closely behind.

"Hi, I'm Dédalo…" she said, just after finishing with a hamburger that she was sure it wouldn't fit in her main battery.

"You look American." Ash said before Nep could say anything.

"Loaned in '67, sold in '74. I was USS Cabot before." She said with a shrug, between bites to a fried squid rings sandwich, almost as long as her arm. She stopped for a moment, and sighed, "I mean, it's weird…"

"We're ship that came back as girls. Weird doesn't even start to cover it." Nep said, with an smile, "HMS Neptune, by the way. Call me Nep."

"You are a Leander class light cruiser, and the kid is a Tribal class destroyer." Dédalo said, "Right?"

"I'm HMS Ashanti! But you can call me Ash!" the destroyer said, with a megawatt smile, "What's that?" she said, pointing to a barely seen tattoo in the carrier's neck.

"This?" Dédalo said, blushing for some reason, "Ah, well, my badge as Cabot. I seem to have returned with my Pacific War kit."

"Well, it seems to be a problem for everybody, returning with their original configuration." Nep said, with a gentle smile, "In fact…"

"Why are you still here?" another voice interrupted, belonging to a girl wearing a short black jacket over a striped sailor shirt, and a short miniskirt over long socks and black shoes. A C-class destroyer, Dédalo realized.

"Ah, hi, Cass." Ash said, "What do you mean?"

"The briefing, Ash, the briefing." She then noticed the carrier sitting there and blushed, "Sorry, I hadn't seen you. I'm HMS Cassandra. I didn't know that the Americans had sent somebody here."

"They haven't." Dédalo said, finishing the last sandwich, "I have been just summoned, and I was in service in the Spanish Navy for twenty-two years. I should go also, I think."
 
For the record, folks, sailing precisely broadside to your opponent was something that, in general, you did not ever want to do. As JMPer pointed out, computing azimuth lead is much easier than computing range lead, and therefore--so long as your fire control is up to the problem--you want to always be changing the range, either closing in or pulling away. In addition, you do gain the benefits of angling your armor. US Navy design practice was based on a "target angle" of 60 degrees, meaning that the target is either 30 degrees ahead of directly abeam, or 30 degrees behind it. Keeping the target at one of those two angles would keep the guns trained out far enough to minimize blast issues, present a significantly larger effective belt armor thickness, and keep the armor box's end bulkheads to a very small portion of the total target length; it would also allow you to (hopefully) change the range at a significant rate. Ideally, the only time you'd present yourself broadside-on is while turning to the other target angle when you're nearing one edge of your immune zone.

Of course, this is all in theory as determined by BuC&R, which, as per usual, did not really have that much bearing on reality. However, that's how the ships were designed. (Indeed, cruiser armor was only considered sufficient at the 60 degree target angle; broadside-on, it generally had no immune zone.)
 
Thorthemighty said:
Anyway, I think we have all agreed that the Battleship is the undisputed king of the ocean, when Mother Nature says so. Not even I would want to take a Battleship head-to-head with a Rouge Wave -and I can be a pretty crazy motherfucker when I want to particularly when I am playing a videogame- mainly because well, considering that Rouge Waves can be massive and having one break across your deck is a bad thing, but that's for another thread.
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*Pinches nose*
Thor? I'm going to ask you how much you know about rogue waves? Because large waves breaking across the deck of a warship is not going to do a whole lot of damage unless you are getting hit again and again from multiple sides. Case in point:

For example, in the North Sea, it's not odd to encounter fifty foot waves or higher during storms. Or do I need to pull up the video of when a Japanese Coast Guard ship encountered the 2014 Tsunami as it was building up and proceeded to climb over it?
 
Harry Leferts said:
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*Pinches nose*
Thor? I'm going to ask you how much you know about rogue waves? Because large waves breaking across the deck of a warship is not going to do a whole lot of damage unless you are getting hit again and again from multiple sides. Case in point:

For example, in the North Sea, it's not odd to encounter fifty foot waves or higher during storms. Or do I need to pull up the video of when a Japanese Coast Guard ship encountered the 2014 Tsunami as it was building up and proceeded to climb over it?
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Rouge Waves are not your normal wave Harry, we are talking just a wall of water, as the Captain of the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 which encountered a 95 foot tall rouge wave in the Gulf of Mexico during Hurricane Luis said "It came out of the darkness" and "It looked like the White Cliffs of Dover". Also here's another thing, modern ships are designed to handle the breaking force of 15 metric tons per square meter, a Rouge Wave generates a breaking force of 100 metric tons per square meter. Ships can't handle that sort of force, it just does catastrophic damage at best and fatal damage at worst to ships. So even if they don't sink, one hit from one of these monsters can leave you dead in the water with no power, no engines, and no steering, in a storm that's a death sentence.

BBC Horizon did a documentary on the subject of Rouge Waves:

 
Thorthemighty said:
Rouge Waves are not your normal wave Harry, we are talking just a wall of water, as the Captain of the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 which encountered a 95 foot tall rouge wave in the Gulf of Mexico during Hurricane Luis said "It came out of the darkness" and "It looked like the White Cliffs of Dover". Also here's another thing, modern ships are designed to handle the breaking force of 15 metric tons per square meter, a Rouge Wave generates a breaking force of 100 metric tons per square meter. Ships can't handle that sort of force, it just does catastrophic damage at best and fatal damage at worst to ships. So even if they don't sink, one hit from one of these monsters can leave you dead in the water with no power, no engines, and no steering, in a storm that's a death sentence.

BBC Horizon did a documentary on the subject of Rouge Waves:

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... Thor, my dad was in the Royal Canadian Navy. He's been on warships hit by rogue waves and the worse they've done is rip off gun mounts for the smaller guns, and that's it.
 
They do massive damage, it generally isn't bad if it's a bow on hit, but a broadside or god forbid a stern hit will just bury you. Still it can still be massive damage, look at SS Munchin sunk, something ripped away the starboard side lifeboat on the bow, it's located 20 meters above the waterline, the pins that held the thing in place where bent from forward to aft, something slammed into that thing with such massive force that it bent those pins, look at the SS Caledonian Star bow hit, blew in all the windows, wiped out the Navagational and Communications equipment, MS Bremen bow hit, one window blew in, the bridge was utterly wiped out, all power was lost that left the ship adrift for two hours.

These waves can break the back of a 300,000 ton Oil Tanker easily that sort of force hits a modern destroyer, the thing will be twisted beyond recognition. Ships today the biggest wave they are designed to handle is a 15-meter wave in the linear model. NOT a tremendous 30, 35, or 40 meter wall of water. These things can just take the side of a ship and just smash inwards like it's made of paper. It's not a matter of turtling or rolling a ship, you break a ship's goddamned back and they can't do diddy crap, breaking the back of a ship is almost always fatal. Because think about it, a ship can take only 15 metric tons per inch, having something hammer them with 100 metric tons per square inch, no matter how you slice it, that is always going to cripple a ship.
 
While Thor comes down from his latest wiki-fueled geekgasm, what is up with Jersey and Wash?

Might we get more Gale torment soon?
 
You know, @Thorthemighty, I have to congratulate you on something. You have honest to God managed to make me pissed the fuck off. No, you really have. Because here's the thing, Thor. I live right beside one of the stormiest parts of the North Atlantic, where you literally have the warm Gulf Stream slamming into the freezing Labrador Current. Storms coming out of nowhere and rogue waves are not unknown. But that's not what had me really cheesed off this time.

Oh no...

What has me personally so angry is that I just told you my dad, who served in the Royal Canadian Navy for more then a decade and was a Master Seaman, stated that warships have encountered rogue waves and survived with only minor damage... and then you go and call him a fucking liar. So yeah, I'm kind of pissed off at the moment.
 
Ash19256 said:
Thor, I would advise quitting while you aren't horrifically far behind. You aren't winning this argument, and all it does is make you look stupider at this point.
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Here's the thing, one of the ships sunk by these things, MS Munchin is the same length as an Iowa class Battleship in terms of length between perpendiculars, 262 meters, or roughly 859 feet, with a displacement of 43,000 tons only 2,000 tons lighter than the standard displacement for an Iowa class. What makes Rouge Waves so dangerous to any ship, is the fact that it is a breaking wall of water. Not an undulating wave like all ships are designed for. A ship can take about 15 metric tons per square meter without any damage, possibly double that and only suffering a dent, but 100 metric tons per square meter, ships can't handle that sort of force. Think of it this way, you fire at a PT-76 with a 22 Pistol which will just scratch the paint, hit it with a 12.7mm Machine Gun and you will just dent the armor, hit it with a 100mm Full Caliber AP round and it just punches clean through.

Case in point, take the 97,005 Gross Registered Tonnage, 205,808 Deadweight tonnage Crude Oil Tanker Energy Endurance, this ship was hit by a Rouge Wave and did the following damage:



The wave simply blew through both sides of ship near the bow, laughing at a large amount of steel like it was paper.

But I feel like I am beating my head against a wall that doesn't seem to understand the power of waves and the amount of force they can carry behind them and the major difference that their is between a Rouge Wave and a Normal Linear Model Wave. I am just going to watch Red vs. Blue now.
 
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Thorthemighty said:
Here's the thing, one of the ships sunk by these things, MS Munchin is the same length as an Iowa class Battleship in terms of length between perpendiculars, 262 meters, or roughly 859 feet, with a displacement of 43,000 tons only 2,000 tons lighter than the standard displacement for an Iowa class. What makes Rouge Waves so dangerous to any ship, is the fact that it is a breaking wall of water. Not an undulating wave like all ships are designed for. A ship can take about 15 metric tons per square meter without any damage, possibly double that and only suffering a dent, but 100 metric tons per square meter, ships can't handle that sort of force. Think of it this way, you fire at a PT-76 with a 22 Pistol which will just scratch the paint, hit it with a 12.7mm Machine Gun and you will just dent the armor, hit it with a 100mm Full Caliber AP round and it just punches clean through.

Case in point, take the 97,005 Gross Registered Tonnage, 205,808 Deadweight tonnage Crude Oil Tanker Energy Endurance, this ship was hit by a Rouge Wave and did the following damage:



The wave simply blew through both sides of ship near the bow, laughing at a large amount of steel like it was paper.

But I feel like I am beating my head against a wall that doesn't seem to understand the power of waves and the amount of force they can carry behind them and the major difference that their is between a Rouge Wave and a Normal Linear Model Wave. I am just going to watch Red vs. Blue now.
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... Oh for fucks sake. Thor, there is a major fucking difference between a cargo ship and a battleship made out of the best homogeneous armor in the world at the time.
 
Okay, can we please just get off this topic that has nothing to do with the thread? I try to avoid jumping in these things, but I would also like to not see a mod get pulled in here again. Please.

I'll speed-write a cracky Vasa omake if I have to* :V


*is only half-joking
 
You're right, so I got something for Jersey. Here...

Shame that while the USN doesn't want it, they don't want the company to sell it to close allies either.
 
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