Skywalker_T-65
Writer with too many ideas.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- Plural/They/He/Her
In other news, I need to get to adding onto the trope page. But...writing. Eh, maybe later.
Changing Destiny (Kancolle)
- Thread starter Skywalker_T-65
- Start date
- Location
- In the depts of despair.
You should add the TV Tropes page to the first post in order for other people to find it.
- Location
- State of Denial
Just came to mind, has Thompson heard of Gneisenau's(?) sinking and Lütjens capture yet?
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
It's not so much 'anger', as it is frustration and blank incomprehension at a world-leading institution, supposedly commanded by highly intelligent men, making such a boneheaded decision simply for the sake of maintaining their/the nation's prestige. I've never actually served in the military, and if this is the kind of alleged thought-process that comes out of the typical Head Shed, I doubt I would have survived prolonged exposure to such concentrations of Bozo Rays.
- Location
- In the depts of despair.
To be fair, back then showing the flag was supposed to be a deterrent to an actual war, of course it didn't work since the targets fo such political maneuvers were either unconcerned about naval warfare, had a quite superior navy, or simple were led by oportunistic morons.
Twei
I have a face!
- Location
- the land where they write things
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Missing spaces. Also, yay for update. Tis a good update. Insightful Richardson is insightful.
Well, you're going on incomplete information as far as I can determine.It's not so much 'anger', as it is frustration and blank incomprehension at a world-leading institution, supposedly commanded by highly intelligent men, making such a boneheaded decision simply for the sake of maintaining their/the nation's prestige. I've never actually served in the military, and if this is the kind of alleged thought-process that comes out of the typical Head Shed, I doubt I would have survived prolonged exposure to such concentrations of Bozo Rays.
The Royal Navy did not have an unlimited potential to modernize old ships and have new ships constructed at the same time, as it was, four other ships received modernization such as Hood would have received from 1936-1940, and the five new battleships of the King George V class were being constructed as well. All that took scarce docks, manpower and resources. Plus, two fast German battleships were completing across the North Sea.
Those four modernized ships were Warspite, Valiant, Queen Elizabeth and Renown, all older than Hood and their engines would have failed even sooner. Hood was newer and her machinery in a better state in 1936/1937 when the modernizations were scheduled. A 1939 estimate was that Hood's machinery would probably last (albeit with more and more problems and effort) until late 1942.
tl;dr: yes Hood could have been refit earlier but only if an even older ship did not get the rebuild she needed even more, or if the new German battleships went unanswered by a unit as powerful and fast as them. Neither was acceptable and so the first moment Hood could be taken in hand was beginning 1942, which was also about when her engines were expected to give up the ghost.
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It was plans to upgrade all FIVE in 1937 before political bullshit happen. And while those ships were older they also had less miles on them as it were, since the Hood was the go to ship for everything.
So they were in actually better shape then Hood, even Warspite since she had a rebuild in the mid 20s to fix some linger Jutland damage.
The most optimistic schedule was four ships at the same time, starting in 1937. At that time the order would be Warspite, Royal Oak, Malaya, Queen Elizabeth and Valiant. Then the rest. This of course changed later on, but notice that the three battlecruisers are not even included in the initial program. At that time Warspite already needed new engines very badly, and hence she was taken in first and became the prototype for the refit (Friedman, The British Battleship, page 258-260).
Hood was added to the program, but it was already questionable to have three battleships out of commission for three years at a time, four was out because of operational reasons. She was rather late in the queue because she was only three years out of a long refit (1929-1931).
In July 1937 it was estimated that her engines were good until 1950 (!) though her boilers would need another long retubing or even replacement earlier (page 270). In March 1939 it was estimated that she needed new boilers within three years and new turbines earlier than expected as well.
Explicitly not true for Warspite and as said, as late as 1937 Hood was estimated to be in better shape than many other ships. Now I didn't check this for every battleship, but the pattern should be clear.
The first open spot in the refit program was 1942.
And Hood had had a two year refit from 1929-1931 which included extensive repairs to hull and machinery. It didn't start showing more wear and tear than expected until 1938-1939 (Raven and Roberts, British Battleships of WW2, page 189).
One can I think excuse the people setting the schedule in 1934 for not scheduling Hood in when she was three years out of a long refit and not showing unexpected early machinery problems until years later.
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I've been pondering and have come up with an even easier way to show their existence. Simply ask the commanding officer to hold a number of fingers up behind their back and then relay the numbers in real time with your 'ship' standing behind them to watch. Simple, easy, relatively effective and hard to fake.
Of course being bodily lifted certainly would help, as would Sara being able to carry around pieces of paper... Fun stuff!
Of course being bodily lifted certainly would help, as would Sara being able to carry around pieces of paper... Fun stuff!
Mockups of Hood's armouring scheme had apparently (Loss of HMS Hood - Part 1 - Page 1) been live-fire tested in 1920 and revealed a vulnerability.
You can see what the British considered adequate against 15"-16" shellfire on the post-WW1 Nelson and King George V classes. These have inclined 14" or vertical 15" belts and single thickness 6"-7.75" decks. Much, much better protected than anything that came before, including Hood as she would have been reconstructed.
Hood still was one of the better armored older ships in the fleet, better protected than the Queen Elizabeth battleship class for example. No it wasn't truly considered enough but honestly no pre-1914 armor layout (i.e. Hood or anything older) would ever be considered truly adequate post-war.
Also note that in the article you linked, when the most likely trajectories are discussed (part 3), a good guess to the culprit is a hit under the belt. The refit of Hood would not have addressed that possibility since the belt armor would not have been mounted deeper.
tl;dr: Hood was vulnerable to Bismarck, but less so than any older capital ship. Those older ships needed rebuilds more urgently and even if she had received her refit, Bismarck still could have touched off her magazines anyway.
What really didn't help the Hood was that her powder magazines were above the shell rooms. Which increase the risk of them being hit by enemy fire. And make them harder to flood in case of fire, it was found that any hole in the magazine will flood it to fast for fire anyways...
This picture is very similar to what Hood had.
This is true, the rooms were reversed on her three sisters (which were never finished) but Hood was too far along to be reconstructed in that way, and it is something that is fixed at an early construction time.
Though in Hood's case, one of the more likely scenarios is that first the 4" anti-aircraft magazines were set off, then the 15" aft magazines went up. Since the 4" anti-aircraft guns used fixed ammunition according to navweaps, there would be no separate 4" propellant magazine that could be set off more easily than the 4" shells.
I have head of everything from that to a shell from Prinz Eugen setting off the Hoods torpedoes so...
Plus the Hood did have those AA rockets that may have went off right by the bulkhead by blow torching their way through to the magazines.
The funny thing about that design move, powder on bottom shells on top, is that the USN did that nearly tens years before the Hood was built, before Jutland. And that design is considered a post Jutland thing by the Brits. When apperantly they laughed at the idea when they head about...
It depends on the priorities of the designers. If they think torpedoes and mines are a bigger danger to the magazine, they put the shell rooms under the propellant magazine. This was apparently the pre-war RN position. There are numerous cases where ships indeed exploded after torpedo hits so it's not a completely unfounded idea.
If on the other hand the greatest danger is thought to be shellfire, then the situation should be reversed.
Post Jutland and after losing three battlecruisers to shells the pendulum swung the other way around in the Royal Navy (*) and the rooms were reversed if possible. For Hood, it was no longer possible.
(*) Not that their magazines were hit, though. But that's another story.
If on the other hand the greatest danger is thought to be shellfire, then the situation should be reversed.
Post Jutland and after losing three battlecruisers to shells the pendulum swung the other way around in the Royal Navy (*) and the rooms were reversed if possible. For Hood, it was no longer possible.
(*) Not that their magazines were hit, though. But that's another story.
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I've read that most of the time that a mag went up by torpedo wasn't because of the torpedo its self but from the fires that it started. Nine times out of ten the hole made by the torpedo flooded the magazines before the fire actually had the chance to do anything.
Yes, but then there cases like SMS Pommern, HMS Avenger or USS Juneau, where the torpedo hit did blow up the ship near instantaneously.
On the other hand, off-hand I can only remember Hood getting shelled in and exploding from a magazine hit in two World Wars. Edit: with comparative equal opponents. There were multiple cases of unlucky ships getting too close to something much too big for them.
It's a trade-off, to be certain. Something can be said for both sides.
On the other hand, off-hand I can only remember Hood getting shelled in and exploding from a magazine hit in two World Wars. Edit: with comparative equal opponents. There were multiple cases of unlucky ships getting too close to something much too big for them.
It's a trade-off, to be certain. Something can be said for both sides.
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It's telling that all those ships had basically no TDS to name.
I don't think you can really count USS Juneau... she was hit by 2 torpedoes in the same location, which makes it more likely that the second torpedo detonated inside the ship as opposed to setting off any ammunition stores.
Also, HMS Avenger was a converted escort carrier... and well... not much thought was given here to damage control (to put it mildly).
The ship exploded and effectively sank before the smoke had cleared. When gun turrets fly through the sky and drop down behind other ships it's a magazine explosion, there isn't explosive enough in one torpedo to blow up a cruiser like that regardless of where it explodes.
Now the magazine could possibly be hit because the structure had already been weakened, but that's not the point.
Yup, and Pommern wasn't exactly state of the art anymore.
But the point I was making was that protecting magazines from torpedoes is as necessary as it is to protect them from shells. It's just that you can't place the shells under the powder and the powder under the shells at the same time.
Which is what the TDS is for. Somethings that none of those ships had.
Plus wasn't Juneau hit by long lances? Aka the torpedo that had a thousand pounds of high explosive in it? Two in the engines to boot?
Probably set off the boilers cause steam explosions have been known to blow the bottom off of ships. The heat then cook off the brass cases for the 5 inch ammo. Plus those turret aren't really turrets. They are well this.
Not exactly the best off ammo protection...
- Location
- In the depts of despair.
Plus Juneau was a light cruiser, with a completely different purpose than a Battlecruiser, since the BC was intended to fight against ships as well armed as she was not to mention hunt the occasional unfortunate cruiser that crossed paths with her at long range it main priority armor-wise would have been to protect against naval artillery and not against torpedos or mines, the first a close ranged threat, the second usually found mostly during shore bombardment.