RedBear87

I think it's safer to assume that the preliminary for Trento was identical or almost to the final design in most regards, you don't radically change a design in one year without radically altering something, armament and speed had been already set in 1923 when that draft was elaborated, I'm prone to believe that even the armour scheme would have been similar.

Yeah, it was a fanfiction from Craig Burke, it's mentioned in the home page.

According to the wiki article "superstructure and funnels were to be grouped together", probably to improve arcs of fire for AA weapons. If that piece of info is correct their profile would have been somewhat different.

You're welcome. I tried to look for drawings or models of those two ships, for a substitute picture, but unfortunately I didn't find anything.

Thank her lucky star that the nature of the battle prevented British cruisers and destroyers from participating as well.

Yeah, but placing that picture in the section dedicated to the never completed improved Grom class is... misleading?

More like trolling internet experts who want to see Bismarck as a "sniper". Still in an era where aviation was becoming increasingly more relevant I wouldn't call additional deck armour a waste. Even without using precognition powers to predict gunnery radars which would make weather conditions less relevant.

Why? What does she gain from 145mm of belt armour placed that high on the hull? Protection from destroyers and light cruisers at close range? This was in accordance with the idea that she would fight at close range even with those pests, instead of engaging in imaginary long range gunnery against opposite battle wagons. Placing that armour on the second deck level would have had largely the same effect against battleships.

"I think" was not part of the argumentation there.

I think I mentioned it before, the 145mm upper belt, it would have been more useful if that weight had been used for the deck. My bad, I must have misread it, still related to the topic of old myths, though. Which seems to confirm the "old myth" and in general focus more on comparing with British sets than American ones.

Talking about old myths, uh? [quote name=Many references claim that this was the fastest firing large caliber gun ever built. The ROF figures listed above represent generally published data that would support that claim. However, Krupp official documents cite the ROF as being 26 seconds at a four degree elevation, not notably faster than that of other nations' large-caliber weapons. Note that at this elevation the range would be considerably less than 10,000 meters. It is possible that well trained gun crews would reduce this time to the 20 seconds necessary to meet a ROF of 3 times per minute. A May 1941 report by the German Artillerieversuchskommando - AVSK (Artillery Testing Command for Ships) stated that the turret ammunition hoists on Bismarck were capable of delivering between 23 and 25 rounds per minute (for all four turrets), the equivalent of 3 rounds per minute per gun. However, this same report stated that design faults in the hoists led to two significant breakdowns during the evaluation, both of which caused long interruptions in the ammunition supply. Finally, it should be noted that Bismarck fired a total of 91 rounds during her thirteen minutes of firing at the Denmark Strait battle, which is actually less than one round per gun per minute.

High velocity guns at long range reach their target at too oblique angles because of their flatter trajectory, you're going to hit enemy ships with potentially thicker deck using a gun that has less penetration at that distance than your opponent. That's a nice suicide, especially when faced by American super-heavy projectiles fired by the North Carolina and South Dakota which had the best fire control systems in the world, period.

Tegethoff is comparable to Cavour, tier IV material.

A tribute to France and a gesture of friendship?

Déjà vu? "Uniform" main armament of a single turret?

Don't you remember Roberts and Erebus being confirmed but untiered in mr3awsome's thread? Anyway at least some of those monitors would actually be very well protected from torpedo attacks, just look at the massive bulges of Erebus.

Bismarck was exaggeratedly protected, in terms of percentage she was the most heavily protected battleship in the world, in an era where everyone espoused the all-or-nothing concept pioneered by the Americans. And if you make yourself more vulnerable by fighting at long range I don't see many reasons to do it. This was largely solved with the "Barbara" rearmament programme in 1944, at last. And the rest of the armament isn't bad, Z46 would have also introduced a dual purpose 12.8cm gun. EDIT: I think at most they carried 6 guns in twin mounts.

Given the protection scheme of every single German capital ship out there, which sacrificed horizontal protection in exchange for vertical protection, that should be a nice way to give an advantage to the enemy. Just looking at that exaggerated belt of Bismarck extending all the way up to the deck should give an idea about what they wanted to achieve, so much armour which could have been used for the deck wasted to get protection from destroyers, that's a brawler guys, not a sniper.

Oh yeah. Anyway thanks again, I finished to read the chapters availalble in English, I really enjoyed it so far. I suggest it to everyone else as well. As long as you're fine with ecchi and yuri, that's it. Thoughts about the last episode of Kancolle? A lot of people have been disappointed as far as I can see. I liked it myself, to be honest.

Not criticising the idea of Scharnhorst being a battleship, but Germany has plenty of battleships in the Hochseeflotte, they can probably cover more than half of the tech tree with those.

Incidentally, does anyone know the source for this list which is mentioned on navweaps? The article by Giorgio Giorgerini on Warships perhaps? The old (1972) book by Gay and Bargoni credits both the guns of Cavour and Da Vinci to Vickers-Terni. I actually noticed this discrepancy exactly when I mentioned the reconstruction of Cavour in the Kancolle thread some days ago... I'm perplex about KGV, but I'm becoming inclined to agree with you. It's the great mystery of the Kriegsmarine. ;-) To the point that I wonder if she would be still balanced vis a vis Strasbourg.

Never heard of this manga before actually. Thanks a lot for mentioning it, after reading the first chapter I have to say that it looks a little silly but quite interesting.

They were a perfect example of how to waste tonnage, though. Not unlike Bismarck, actually. Same turtle deck protection scheme taken directly from the 1910s.

The Großes Torpedoboot 1916 is pretty much anything but nothing special. Are you sure that we can call the Bismarck "resilient" and the Scharnhorst "fragile"? I would say the distinguishing point of projected German carriers would appear to be the heavy artillery armament, from what little I know about them. I would not overstate the raiding mission of the Kriegsmarine, battleships like Bismarck weren't real raiders, the Deutschaland class cruisers were raiders. The 1935 Anglo-German agreement and eventually Plan Z meant that Germany was more or less set on building a classical "balanced fleet". The usage as raiders of warships like Bismarck was an attempt at making good of a bad situation. I'm not even sure about what you meant to say here. Andrea Doria or Caio Duilio had nothing of German, if anything their original guns were of British (Armstrong/Elswick) design. We can only try to make educated guesses since, as far as I know, the game features only American and Japanese warships at the moment. Honestly I don't like the concept of "national traits" too much, they're too much of an oversimplification.